Podcasts about cultural society

Busie's father's sudden death 2 months before her graduation walk, changed her walk. She was to work for Citigroup and move back to Uganda. But she stayed and became a workaholic to deal with that trauma and thrust herself into entrepreneurship while working a 9-5pm job. As a result, she founded one of the first fashion tech companies which was then twice acquired.Another significant pivot was the birth of her 2nd child, who had severe food allergies. She was forced to move to remote working in 2012 as she was her daughter's primary caregiver. Busie left regular employment to become a stay at home mom then eventually a work from home mom. This moved her into consultancy as well as policy driven assignments such as board position, as she realized mom's careers suffer most and they are usually driven to make decisions which impact our families and the broader community. Busie realized, that we need more women at the policy tables. She has been fortunate to have doors open for others and believes also in amplifying others. She believes, if we light more candles we illuminate more light and there's an African Proverb which says "If you want to go fast go alone, if you want to go far, go together. Let's continue to build and amplify!!She reflects on what she has learned, we need to be anchored by a strong ecosystem, and that it's imperative that we intentionally and deliberately harness positive relationships. That's why some people bounce back more easily from adversity than others. Who you surround yourself matters. It's like a charging bank, a reserved you may tap into because of one's investment.A serial entrepreneur widely recognised for her impact leadership, Busie Matsiko-Andan is an award-winning global strategist and Board Trustee who has held positions on Wall Street at Smith Barney, Oppenheimer & Co and Citibank. She currently advises multilaterals like the African Union, Afreximbank, the Africa Renaissance and Diaspora Network, Lalela Project, and the Heritage and Cultural Society of Africa on private-sector scaling and development. As a global strategist and CEO of Pont Global, Busie has been instrumental in successfully scaling and growing companies and organizations. She is also the Executive Director of The Africa Future Summit which brings together investors and leaders in technology,entrepreneurship, and politics to address the challenges that affect Africa's future. She is also the first black woman trustee of Berkeley College, in the US. Busie was the founder of one of the first fashion technology companies, Fashion Indie, and also created RESET, a platform to discuss business strategies during the COVID-19 pandemic. Her initiatives have been featured in international and local publications. Busie is also a sought-after keynote speaker and moderator. Busie is the founder and president of the New York African Chamber of Commerce.To learn more about my guest, please visit her social media pages and websites:Instagram: @busiematsikoandanLinkedIn: Busie Matsiko-AndanWebsite: New York African Chamber of CommerceTo learn more about SHIFT HAPPENS, click here To learn more about Claudia's business Curated Conversations and her Salons in New York, Zurich and Berlin, click hereYou can also connect with Claudia on Instagram @shifthappens.podcast and LinkedIn at ClaudiaMahlerNYCThis podcast is created, produced and hosted by Claudia Mahler.Social Media support Magdalena Reckendrees 

On this episode of This Week in the Peace, Moose FM's Dub Craig catches up with Oliver Hachmeister from the North Peace Cultural Society. The Society is set to host Bright Nights in June on June 15, 2024, at the Cultural Centre, so we'll dig into some of the fun things you and the family can enjoy during this annual celebration of the arts in Fort St. John.Then, Energeticcity.ca's Steve Berard chats with two members of the North Peace Secondary School Robotics Team, Brant Churchill & Josh Coenders. The class recently designed and built their way to fifth place in the Skill Canada Robotics Competition.Check out This Week in the Peace live every Friday at 10am MST on 100.1 Moose FM or the Moose FM and Fort St. John Today social media pages. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

LISA'S BIO Born and raised in Oregon, Lisa Mensah joined Oregon Community Foundation in September 2022, following an illustrious career that has taken her from working on rural poverty with the Ford Foundation to serving as an Under Secretary for Rural Development in the U.S. Department of Agriculture, managing a $215 billion loan portfolio, to most recently leading Opportunity Finance Network, the largest network of Treasury licensed Community Development Financial Institutions.  She serves on the Boards of Ecotrust, Feeding America, Fidelity Bank of Ghana, and Heritage and the Cultural Society of Africa (USA). She also serves as a member of the Advisory Committees of Goldman Sachs One Million Black Women and the Gaia Impact Fund.Lisa is widely considered an expert on access to capital in low-wealth communities and has frequently testified before Congress on the subject. The media and others look to her as a voice of authority on the CDFI industry, finance's role in social, economic, and racial justice, and the need for more equitable capital access across the country. Forbes recognized Ms. Mensah as one of five women who safeguarded America's small businesses throughout the pandemic. She holds an M.A. from Johns Hopkins University and B.A. from Harvard University.  “Bridging communities of wealth with communities of poverty, understanding of the coping economy” EPISODE OUTLINE (00:00) - Intro (00:38) - Bio (01:38) - The early days; Ghana, Oregon (02:19) - The power of purpose; bridging wealth and poverty (04:39) - Unsticking resources; power, inertia, and the "coping economy" (08:13) - Essential workers; lenses and x-rays into societal gaps (10:01) - Oregon Community Foundation; what it does with $3 billion (11:18) - Common ground v partisanship; some things transcend  (12:10) - Deserted island castaway; what's on the playlist on repeat (13:13) - Outro LISA RELATED LINKS Oregon Community Foundation Bringing Philanthropy Home Feeding America Fireside Chat: Lisa Mensah and NextDoor's Sarah Fryar This episode was edited by Phil Lepanto. GENERAL INFO| TOP OF THE GAME: Official website: https://topofthegame-thepod.com/ RSS Feed: https://feed.podbean.com/topofthegame-thepod/feed.xml Hosting service show website: https://topofthegame-thepod.podbean.com/ Javier's LinkTree: https://linktr.ee/javiersaade & Bio: https://tinyurl.com/36ufz6cs  SUPPORT & CONNECT: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/96934564 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61551086203755 Twitter: https://twitter.com/TOPOFGAMEpod Subscribe on Podbean: https://www.podbean.com/site/podcatcher/index/blog/vLKLE1SKjf6G Email us: info@topofthegame-thepod.com    THANK YOU FOR LISTENING – AVAILABLE ON ALL MAJOR PLATFORMS

The idea for a monument to honor Felix Battles germinated about five years ago at the Historical and Cultural Society of Clay County. “Felix Battles is somebody that we at the historical society we've been studying for about 30 years,” explained program director Markus Krueger. “But he never really got out of our archives. He's got a fascinating story.”The story is about a Black man born into slavery who fought in the Civil War and was among the first residents of a new town on the western Minnesota prairie. As Krueger listened to the national debate in 2018 about removing Confederate Civil War statues in the south, he says he thought, “I know who deserves a statue. Felix Battles.”Started with a stencilWith a limited budget in mind, it began as a simple idea. “It started off with cutting out a piece of paper and spray painting a stencil onto a piece of wood,” said Krueger. The idea was to perhaps paint the stencil on a wall. Then a conversation with his neighbor, an engineer, raised the idea of cutting a silhouette from a thick sheet of steel. Krueger recently watched as a water jet machine carved the monument at a metal fabrication shop in Fargo, N.D. Using high pressure water jet the size of a pencil lead infused with crushed garnet, the computer guided machine precisely cut the design into a large steel plate. “It's three-quarter-inch steel. I can't do this in my garage. So this is pretty cool,” said Krueger. There are no known photographs of Battles and researchers have not found any living descendants. Krueger intentionally used a photo of an unidentified Black Civil War soldier to guide his design. “The idea of an unidentified soldier is just to represent everybody. So this particular statue is for Felix Battles, but it's also for all 209,000 African American soldiers and sailors who fought in the Civil War,” he said. A remarkable storyFelix Battles was born into slavery near Memphis, Tenn. Records track him to a plantation in Mississippi as a teenager.Battles then escaped and made his way north to St. Paul, working on Mississippi River steamboats, said Krueger.In 1864 he joined the army at Fort Snelling and fought for the Union. “I think one of America's great stories is at the start of the Civil War, we had millions of enslaved people. And then by the end of the war there were over 200,000 African American soldiers and sailors fighting in the United States Army,” said Krueger. “The stories of Black soldiers in the U.S. Army were intentionally written out of history. And so what we're trying to do here is bring awareness to that.”After the war, Battles became one of the earliest residents of Moorhead, arriving in 1873 with his wife Kate and several extended family members. A job with the newly constructed railroad likely led him to settle in Moorhead.A newspaper at the time called him “the pioneer barber of the Red River Valley.” He lived in Moorhead until his death in 1907. He shares a simple marker with other family members in a Moorhead cemetery.“He was a quiet guy, his obituary said, respected by all who knew him,” recalls Krueger. “All the old pioneers were going to go to his funeral, as well as the old soldiers of the community going to honor him at his funeral.”Delson Saintal also watched the monument take shape. Saintal is one of several Black community members on a committee advising the historical society on this project. He owns several barber shops and runs a barber school in Fargo.He's 30 years old, the same age Felix Battles was when he arrived in Moorhead 150 years ago. “Imagining what it was like around that time back in the early 1900s for him to be a Black barber in the Fargo-Moorhead area probably wasn't quite easy,” said Saintal, who thinks a permanent statue honoring a Black community pioneer is about representation. “And that really matters,” he said. “And if we have a Felix Battles monument in the Fargo-Moorhead area I think it just gives a chance for the younger generation to see that they are capable of doing stuff,” he said. Felix Battle More about the project Long overlooked Stories of Black history Felix Battles was 5 feet, 8 inches tall according to his army enlistment papers. The monument will be life size because Krueger wants people to be able to look Battles in the eye as they contemplate the history he represents. It will be located on a street corner where Battles once lived. The home is long gone and the site is now part of the Minnesota State University Moorhead campus. The goal is to raise enough money for benches and a small interpretive display so the spot can be a community gathering point. Krueger calls the statue an illustration to a biography, a marker that allows more people to learn the story of Felix Battles and a forgotten piece of history.

On this episode of Moose Talks, we check in with Peace River South MLA Mike Bernier on the evacuation of Tumbler Ridge and the evolving situation with the West Kiskatinaw River wildfire.Then, we catch up with the new Executive Director of the North Peace Cultural Society, Oliver Hachmeister. We chat about his journey in the arts in Fort St. John and beyond, and what he's planning for the future in his new role.Join us for Moose Talks every Friday morning at 10:00 a.m. on Moose FM and Moose FM and Energeticcity.ca's Facebook pages. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Kalpesh joins the show to talk about Sanatan Mandir Cultural Society (SMCS) & Murti Prana Pratishta Mahotsav event to mark the opening of the new Temple of Hindu Faith along with a cultural center located at 108 Abraham Gate.

on 103.7 The Buzz

This week we sit down with the amazing Zach Barocas. Zach is best known for his drumming in Jawbox, The Up On In, and BELLS≥. He is currently at work composing material for his latest project, New Freedom Sound. Since 2001, he has served as editor and publisher of The Cultural Society, a primarily-poetry micropress. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife, where they own a stationery store called Measure Twice. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So what happens when our producer Nox tries to do more complicated things in the studio than he really knows how to do? You get THIS unreleased gem missing the first half hour of conversation recorded February 27th, 2022. Markus Krueger joins us in the studio to chat about what life was like during the prohibition era in Minnesota, and we sample some beverages that were available at that time with our other guests Don Kenna, John and Maren Jorgenson, homebrewer John Anderson with the Prairie Homebrewers Companion, and Jacob Klueber. In this episode we sample and review: - (not recorded) Corpse Reviver #1 - (not recorded until final thoughts on both drinks) Corpse Reviver #2 - Spiked Malt (made with Budweiser Zero and New Amsterdam vodka) - Malt extract homebrewed Strawberry Lemonade Honey Wheat Kettle Sour by John Anderson - Markus's homemade cider - 4e Winery's Plum Wine - Markus's Rhubarb Jack - Minnesota 13 four grain whiskey Please visit the Historical and Cultural Society of Clay County here to learn new fun and interesting things about Minnesota! Thanks to https://fargounderground.com/  and https://www.bridgeviewliquors.com/ for supporting the show. If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions for future episodes, please feel free to e-mail us at info@brewsboozeandreviews.com. If you like this podcast, share us with a friend. If you would like to support our show, you can do so by heading to https://www.patreon.com/brewsboozeandreviews For more information, or to listen to our back catalogue of episodes, head over to https://brewsboozeandreviews.com/ On behalf of everyone at Brews, Booze, & Reviews, may your glasses be full, and your spirits high! Cheers! --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/brews-booze-and-reviews/message

Raul Gomez, longtime publisher of the High Plains Reader in Fargo recalls rushing to put the paper to bed by midnight so they could drive over to Ralphs' Corner Bar in Moorhead to cap off the week. Ralph's was a fixture of the music scene in northwest Minnesota, drawing big names from the punk and indie music scene. The bar was demolished in 2005. Gomez says he was pleased with the way the Historical and Cultural Society of Clay County paid homage to the venue in its Ralph's Corner Bar exhibit at the Hjemkomst Center in Moorhead. Each of the four rooms in the exhibit “captures different styles and vibes of Ralph's.” One of the exhibit's four rooms looks like the bar itself, complete with wood paneling, booths, and a wall that looks like a pool table. Other rooms record memories of patrons and pay homage to its musical history, including instruments, band memorabilia and posters. The exhibit is on view through June 25. Musician Sarah Larsson can't wait to get on the dance floor at the Minneapolis Afrobeats Dance Party Saturday at the Cedar Cultural Center, featuring some of her favorite local DJs and artists. Fanaka Nation, an Afropop/Afrotrap artist, is hosting. DJ Fawzi, whom Larsson calls the “go-to greatest Somali woman DJ in town,” will do a set, along with DJ K-Little and a live performance from singer/songwriter Carolyne Naomi, who recently released a new EP. Larsson loves the energy of these performers. This is an all-ages event. Doors open at 7 p.m. for an 8 p.m. show. If you're looking for unusual musical theater productions this holiday, Minneapolis actor Anissa Lubbers recommends “Striking 12,” a musical inspired by Hans Christian Andersen's story “The Little Match Girl.” Set on a cold, contemporary New Year's Eve, an overworked businessman plans to hunker down alone at home when he encounters a woman selling holiday lights who is determined to spark some holiday joy. Lubbers enjoys that the band providing the music, GrooveLily, also interacts with the performers on stage. “Striking 12” runs through Dec. 18 at the Gremlin Theatre in St. Paul. The show was staged by Minneapolis Musical Theatre, which specializes in rare musicals.

On this long (and we do mean LONG) awaited Gather Round season one finale, Pastors Russ and Joel welcome the one and only DeAndrey Howard of Alice's Jazz & Cultural Society into the studio! It was an absolutely mind-blowing conversation about DeAndrey's life, music superstars, DC history, GoGo music, and so much more. Be sure to tune into this one. It was worth the wait.

In Episode 23 of the Princeton Podcast, Mayor Mark Freda sat down with Shirley Satterfield, Educator, Princeton Historian, and Founder of the Witherspoon-Jackson Historical and Cultural Society. In this episode, Shirley discussed her family's 6-generation history here in Princeton, shared some experiences of her early education at the Witherspoon School for Colored Children on Quarry Street, and recalled some of the difficulties she witnessed during the Princeton School District's integration efforts in the 1950s.Shirley's early career as a teacher and later as a guidance counselor in Princeton area schools, her extensive accomplishments in preserving and sharing the history of Princeton's African American Community, and her life history of devotion, education, and historical preservation are impressive. The Princeton Podcast is produced as a community service by HG Media, providing audio, video, and website design services here in Princeton since 1999. If you enjoy the Princeton Podcast please share it with your friends and subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher or wherever you listen to podcasts.

P&C drink and review Thirst Monster Kolsch from Union Brewing, then discuss cultural literacy. Is it just about "dead white males"? Is there some benefit to reading the Bible and the western canon? We say yes, for three reasons. It helps everyone understand the world they live in; it helps bind the culture together with common stories; and it allows people to enjoy our shared culture more.

Tuesday, June 14, 2022 - Juneteenth is coming up on Sunday. This federal holiday commemorates the emancipation of enslaved black Americans. Coinciding with the holiday is an exhibit at the Historical and Cultural Society of Clay County titled “Stories of Local Black History.” Special contributor Brandi Malarkey stopped by and toured the exhibit with communications manager Gabby Clavo. Register for next Wednesday's Zoom event HERE. (http://www.hcscconline.org/events.html) ~~~ We continue with more history as historian Tom Isern shares a Plains Folk essay, “The Idea of North Dakota.” ~~~ When people think of jobs in agriculture, they might think of traditional jobs on a farm. But over the past few decades, the industry has changed. Now there's a real need for people who are interested in science. St. Louis Public Radio's Kate Grumke reports. ~~~ Speaking of jobs, we share a conversation with Carey Fry, of Job Service North Dakota as she visits with John Harris in an excerpt of this week's Prairie Pulse television show.

Updated: 7:01 a.m. Markus Krueger wants to bust a myth about the history of Fargo-Moorhead. "There arose this myth about us that isn't true, that everybody here was white for so long, up until year X. And that wasn't true," said Krueger, programming director for the Historical and Cultural Society of Clay County. "We had a thriving African American community for the first 50 years." "This was a part of local history that we hadn't delved into before. And it's about time,” he added. A new exhibit curated by the society focuses on the history of this long-overlooked group of early residents. Black communities and other BIPOC communities have a history in the area that hasn't been written down or documented well, said Gabby Clavo, communications manager for the Clay County Museum in Moorhead. “Collecting these stories is really important, so we can tell this story for future generations.” Courtesy North Dakota State University archives Frank Gordon quickly reopened his barbershop in a tent after a fire destroyed much of downtown Fargo in 1893. Some of the first non-Indigenous people to settle in Fargo-Moorhead were Black. Many were barbers attracted to new railroad boom towns in the late 1800s. "That profession happened to be what drew a lot of the first Black families to Fargo-Moorhead in that original generation,” said Krueger. "White men thought that it was the height of luxury to be able to get a shave and a haircut and get a bath drawn by an African American barber, by a tonsorial artist, they called them," said Krueger. Learning the stories of those early residents was a challenge. “For some people, we know almost nothing except for names,” said Krueger. “And then you find out about Julius Taylor, and Julius Taylor was a barber in Fargo in the 1880s. And then he left in 1889 to found the Broad Ax, which was Chicago's first African American newspaper, so we know a lot about him.” They learned some details by painstakingly tracing family histories. “We know that Frank Gordon was a barber who ran for (Fargo) city alderman in 1900. He didn't win, and he and his family eventually moved out to the West Coast. His grandson is actually world famous jazz saxophonist Dexter Gordon.” Much of was was learned about the early Black families came from The Appeal, an African American newspaper in St. Paul that tracked social happenings across the region including Fargo-Moorhead. "They describe in detail the parties that are held by the families they call “the elite”, and these tend to be the barber families," said Krueger. A notable resident discovered in the newspaper pages was Lottie Adams, the daughter of an 1880s barber family. She was a colorful figure and because only one photo of her could be found, the museum commissioned a Moorhead artist, born in Nigeria, to paint her portrait. "She's always organizing a party or there's a party being organized for her because she's visiting St. Paul or Grand Forks or Duluth,” said Krueger “She is one of the queens of the social scene in Fargo in the 1890s." Courtesy Historical and Cultural Society of Clay County The Horton Adams family in a photograph from the 1890s. Adams was one of several Black barbers who opened businesses in Fargo Moorhead in the late 1800s. The researchers found even getting an accurate count of early Black residents was difficult. The Black population of Fargo-Moorhead might have reached 200 by 1900, but Black families were often listed as white in census records. Clavo said decisions about identity were complicated, and obscuring their race might have been a necessary choice. "Because it could endanger their businesses, their safety,” she said. “And so we did see that researching some of the people in this exhibit. So safety was a big part in choosing what to identify as, and identifying as white was probably the safest option." By the 1930s most of those early families had left, lured away by economic opportunity and larger Black communities in the Twin Cities or Chicago, or perhaps driven away by the rise of a local Ku Klux Klan movement in the early 1900s, also documented in the exhibit. Krueger said Lottie Adams moved to the Rondo neighborhood in St. Paul, as did many other Black residents of Fargo-Moorhead. By 1965, when Yvonne Condell moved to Moorhead as a college professor with her husband, a psychologist and jazz musician, she recalls only one other Black resident. "I was fascinated by the fact that one could come to a town that was so unlike places we'd been before, Florida, Kentucky and Georgia,” she said in a recent interview. “So it was quite an experience to come to a town where you were persons two and three." The Condells taught at Minnesota State University-Moorhead, and they helped recruit students of color to the school. Yvonne Condell is an advisor to the Historical and Cultural Society on this exhibit, and she was struck by the history of Black barbers in the 1800s. Courtesy Rick Henderson Minnesota State University Moorhead Professor Emeritus Yvonne Condell served as an advisor to the Stories of Local Black History exhibit. Condell and her husband James, a psychologist and jazz musician, moved to Moorhead in 1965. Their story is part of the community's history. "For example, African American barbers could cut white men's hair. Okay, no problem. When the reverse came, when our students came, we had to find a way to get their hair cut because all the barbers at that time were white barbers who refused to cut black folks hair,” recalled Condell. The Black community remained small until the 1990s when immigrants from African countries began to resettle in Fargo-Moorhead. Krueger said the population has grown steadily in the past 20 years, and while the communities are still mostly white, according to the 2020 census, about 8 percent of residents in Cass County, (Fargo) and nearly 6 percent in Clay County (Moorhead) identify as African American/Black. The exhibit also discusses recent history, including the 2018 election of Johnathan Judd as Moorhead's first Black mayor. Judd is now a Minnesota district court judge, but he was mayor when George Floyd was murdered in Minneapolis, and in the aftermath, he challenged local residents to have difficult conversations about race. Moorhead's Judge Johnathan Judd: Welcoming tough conversations about race "We need to embrace the fact that we don't like having tough conversations that might cause us to think internally about how we view things, because we're not about expressing our vulnerability," he said in an MPR News interview in July of 2020. "During the protests, he said that our community has to start having conversations about these questions,” said Krueger, “I'm hoping that this exhibit can maybe be part of that conversation.” “Contributing to those uncomfortable conversations,” added Clavo, who expects the exhibit to make some residents uncomfortable. “But you know, to learn you have to get uncomfortable." Clavo wants this exhibit to spark conversations across the community, perhaps generating new stories about race and history the museum can collect, creating a more complete local history story for future generations.

Africa is globally rich in resources of cultural and natural value. The entirety of the people's cherished arts, customs, festivals, sacred or worship sites, norms, values, ideologies, dress and dress patterns, traditional monuments, and architectures, are cherished and conserved for their historical, political, educational, recreational, and religious significance among others” is known as cultural heritage. In recent times, digital preservation has become a contemporary trend of access to, and preservation of cultural heritage as it seems to be the most rational method of safeguarding cultural heritage. The preservation of the digital cultural heritage seems more like an extension of the traditional tasks of national libraries, archives, and museums. Execution of this traditional ask in the digital world, however, requires new knowledge and expertise. Nonso Mordi speaks with Natasha Gordon, operations manager at the Heritage and Cultural Society of Africa Foundation and HACSA-USA on “Safeguarding Africa's cultural heritage through digital preservation”

Africa is globally rich in resources of cultural and natural value. The entirety of the people's cherished arts, customs, festivals, sacred or worship sites, norms, values, ideologies, dress and dress patterns, traditional monuments, and architectures, are cherished and conserved for their historical, political, educational, recreational, and religious significance among others” is known as cultural heritage. In recent times, digital preservation has become a contemporary trend of access to, and preservation of cultural heritage as it seems to be the most rational method of safeguarding cultural heritage. The preservation of the digital cultural heritage seems more like an extension of the traditional tasks of national libraries, archives, and museums. Execution of this traditional ask in the digital world, however, requires new knowledge and expertise. Nonso Mordi speaks with Natasha Gordon, operations manager at the Heritage and Cultural Society of Africa Foundation and HACSA-USA on “Safeguarding Africa's cultural heritage through digital preservation”

Africa is globally rich in resources of cultural and natural value. The entirety of the people's cherished arts, customs, festivals, sacred or worship sites, norms, values, ideologies, dress and dress patterns, traditional monuments, and architectures, are cherished and conserved for their historical, political, educational, recreational, and religious significance among others” is known as cultural heritage. In recent times, digital preservation has become a contemporary trend of access to, and preservation of cultural heritage as it seems to be the most rational method of safeguarding cultural heritage. The preservation of the digital cultural heritage seems more like an extension of the traditional tasks of national libraries, archives, and museums. Execution of this traditional ask in the digital world, however, requires new knowledge and expertise. Nonso Mordi speaks with Natasha Gordon, operations manager at the Heritage and Cultural Society of Africa Foundation and HACSA-USA on “Safeguarding Africa's cultural heritage through digital preservation”

There are many ups and downs about the modern multi-cultural and that is why in this episode Barathi and I discuss them. We even discovered a few connections between this episode and the previous one.Hoster - SanjeevanCo-Hoster - BarathiFollow usInstagram - https://www.instagram.com/nover.studio/Check out more links here: www.linktr.ee/nover.studioNover Studio © All Rights are Reserved ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

The Historical and Cultural Society of Clay County joins It Takes Two with Amy & JJ to talk about a recent article from the Smithsonian detailing that items they have which were not given to the museum by the rightful owner are now subject to not being displayed and returned to the owner or culture that it originally came from. Do we do the same thing here in the Fargo-Moorhead area? Maureen and Lisa provide details on how they curate the items that are found on display at the Hjemkomst museum.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Historical and Cultural Society of Clay County invites those with memories, memorabilia and stories to join them at Rustica Eatery and Tavern on Tuesday, January 28, for a Ralph's Corner Bar history harvest. What's a history harvest? A rapidfire research event. We bring scanners, cameras, and audio recorders; you bring stories, photos, and artifacts; together we compile the stories of a Moorhead icon for a future Hjemkomst Center exhibition (and Rustica's throwing in free appetizers!).  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

For decades, the North Peace Cultural Society has managed Fort St. John's North Peace Cultural Centre. But now the city says it will be moving that job in-house. The Society's Oliver Hachmeister shares his reaction.

God's kingdom doesn't evaluate or organize like the rest of human civilization. This talk is based on Colossians 3:11

Wednesday, June 16, 2021 - The Historical and Cultural Society of Clay County and Fargo Veterans Affairs are collaborating on a series of public events featuring the art of local veterans in trauma recovery. One aspect of the project is a series of veterans' writing workshops. We visit with the facilitator of those workshops, Vietnam veteran Wendell Affield. ~~~ This June marks the 10th Anniversary of the Souris River flood, which caused millions of dollars in damage, displaced thousands of people and destroyed homes and businesses. Today we begin our special series Main Street, Minot: 10 Years After the Flood. We start with a montage of people reflecting on the event, then continue with excerpts from former KX news anchors Jim Olson and Shaun Sipma.

Almost a year after the height of the Black Lives Matter movement, we revisit the events of the last year, as well as the follow-up since, with our guest Tamara Steele. The first Executive Director of the Black Cultural Society of PEI, she chats with us about the incorporation of BCSPEI, anti-racism policy priorities, working with government to change the school curriculum, provincial and federal budgets, and more!

Aishworya Roy, a final year dual degree student from the Department of Electrical Engineering is not just a geek with exceptional benchmarks in academics but also an enthusiast holding an excellent record in extra-curricular activities on the campus. Her deck of roles spans from holding the position of Dean's Nominee for the Literary and Cultural Society of SAC, being the Vice President of Clarion to serving as the Content Coordinator of Microsoft Campus Club and representing NIT Rourkela in swimming at Inter-NIT. Having an inspiring record of prestigious internships like MITACS and interning at RailTel, IIT Hyderabad, PEARS NTU, and Hochschule Aalen, she is currently placed at Fractal Analytics. She has already received MS admits from universities like the University of Minnesota and Virginia Tech. Listen on to know more about her amazing journey at NITR. Read the complete article at https://mondaymorning.nitrkl.ac.in/article/2021/03/22/2941-of-wisdom-and-brilliance-aishworya-roy/

By 1914, the temperance movement had achieved significant gains in its goal to outlaw the sale of alcohol in the United States. But every push for nationwide prohibition had failed. Would the war--and the accompanying anti-German hysteria--give the Anti-Saloon League enough power to cross the finish line? Was a golden age of sobriety waiting on the other side? The Temperance Movement began in the 1840s and gained significant momentum through the rest of the century. Women were major leaders in the movement, with many pledging to never let the lips that touch liquor touch theirs. Unfortunately, this seemed to have little effect. In the second half of the 19th century, an influx of immigrants from beer-loving countries, including Germany and Ireland, dramatically increased the consumption of beer in the United States. German brewers arrived to meet the demand. The most successful among these brewers was Adolphus Busch. As owner of Anheuser-Busch, he built a massive, vertically integrated operation that controlled every aspect of beer production and distribution, from mining the coal that fueled the brewery to building the refrigerated railcars to deliver the beer to Anheuser-Busch owned saloons. Saloons were more than watering holes. They were hubs for the entire community and played important roles in the lives of patrons, especially when those patrons were recent immigrants. Pictured here is a saloon in Wisconsin. Notice the little boy sitting at the table with his own beer glass. Boys often accompanied their fathers to saloons. Women and girls, however, were not welcome, and a woman who stepped in a saloon ruined her reputation. Here's another saloon, this one from Michigan. In a saloon, men could meet friends, participate in local politics, eat a free lunch, take a bath, find a job, get his mail and pawn his watch. By 1900, most saloons were "tied houses." That is, they were tied to, if not actually owned by, breweries. In exchange for agreeing to sell only one brand of beer, a barkeeper would receive cash for his licensing fees, an inventory of glassware, and the furnishings for the saloon, including the pool tables and the mirrors on the walls. This photo shows a Miller bar in Chicago. Temperance activists believed saloons were evil through and through. This cartoon, probably from the mid- to late-19th century, shows children desperately calling for the father, who stands in his natty coat and top hat at the bar. The bartender is a grinning skull, and another skull atop crossed bottles decorates in the bar. In the background, a brawl has broken out. Clearly, nothing good happens at a saloon! Women's rights activists in particular believed that alcohol was the cause of domestic violence. In this illustration, a drunken man takes a swing at his wife as his children cling to his legs. Many woman suffragists believed that prohibition would stop violence in the home. The Anti-Saloon League became a force to be reckoned with by organizing all of the anti-alcohol groups. The League was led by Wayne Wheeler, a genial midwesterner that author Daniel Okrent noted resembled Ned Flanders. In fact, Wheeler was a passionate, focused organizer with a backbone of steel who could make or break political careers. Breweries tried reframe beer as a health-giving, nourishing beverage. The Saskatoon Brewing Company tried to sell their beer as "liquid bread." Knickerbocker Beer ran ads declaring "Beer is Food" and claiming that beer was not only "a wonderful aid to digestion" and a "valuable source of energy" but also "a mainstay of practical temperance." An Anti-Prohibition coalition produced this ad, showing a fat and happy baby drinking a stein of beer. No one was convinced by any of these campaigns. Once the United States entered World War I, a new argument began to be made against the alcohol industry: it wasted food and fuel. Americans were called upon to save food for the military, as well as for the British, French and Belgians. The Anti-Saloon League argued that the alcohol industry wasted tons of food and fuel. In this cartoon, Uncle Sam puts up posters calling to save food and fuel while the saloon tosses out barrels not only of goods but also of "wasted manhood." "Non-essential" was an insult during the war--anything non-essential to winning the war was useless and to be despised. Here a woman clad in an American flag hurls the word at a fat man identified as "Booze." In late 1917, riding the wave of anti-alcohol sentiment, the Dry alliance pushed the 18th Amendment through Congress. It went to the states for ratification. The Anti-Saloon League coordinated the ratification fight with an attack on the United States Brewers Association and an immigrant association it had long backed, the German American Alliance. The League convinced the Senate, and the American people, that the Alliance and the Brewers were under the control of the Kaiser and enemies of America. A Senate sub-committee investigated the charges and seemed to prove all sorts of underhanded dealings. It's true that the Brewers had played dirty by bribing politicians and and paying off newspapers, but their aim had been to stop Prohibition, not lost the war to Germany. No charges ever came out of the subcommittee, but it didn't matter. Americans had found the Alliance and the Brewers guilty in the court of public opinion. In this heady atmosphere, the 18th Amendment was rapidly ratified by all but two states on January 17, 1919. In one year, the amendment would go into effect. The most important job for Congress was to pass legislation defining the terms of the 18th Amendment (what constituted an "intoxicating beverage"?) and creating enforcement mechanisms. The man responsible for the bill was Andrew John Volstead, a man so strait-laced he did yardwork in a coat and tie. Volstead's bill passed in October, but then Wilson vetoed it. Americans were shocked. Wilson had never even committed on Prohibition. Congress, fed up with the president after the long and ugly League of Nations fight, overturned the veto two hours later. The Volstead Act called for the creation of a new Prohibition Unit to stamp out illegal alcohol. But the agents were to be paid measly salaries and the majority lacked any law enforcement training or experience. They were, inevitably, corrupt. Criminals also spent 1919 getting ready for Prohibition. Arnold Rothstein, who providing the funds to throw the 1919 World Series, organized a comprehensive smuggling operation to bring liquor from Europe to the United States. He was only one of many crooks and bootleggers getting their ducks in a row for the following year. Brewers had to find a way to make do. Anheuser-Busch sold malt extract, brewer's yeast, and Bevo, a soft drink. It was not a success. Companies also found creative ways to exploit loopholes in the Volstead Act. It was perfectly legal, for example, for wineries to condense grape juice down to semi-solid block known as a "grape brick." These bricks were sold along with careful instructions on how not to mix the juice with water to make wine. You wouldn't want people to accidentally break the law, now would you? Homebrew kits came with similar instructions. Moonshine operations sprang up across the country, with different regions developing their own recipes and reputations for quality or lack thereof. Pictured here are stills seized from moonshiners in Colorado. The metal was sold for scrap. It's likely by the time this photo was taken, the moonshiners had already begun their next batch. As the clock wound down to January 17, liquor stores began selling out their inventory. People stockpiled as much as they could afford--since, as far as they knew, alcohol would be illegal forever in the United States. Here a line extends out of the store as men line up to buy a last few bottles. It was going to be a long, dry time. Music from this Episode "The Lips that Touch Liquor Shall Never Touch Mine, (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSmfpm_y39Y)" by Sam Booth and George T. Evans, sung by the Women's Choir at Concordia College on February 2016 as part of the exhibit "Wet and Dry" at the Historical and Cultural Society of Clay County. "Under the Anheuser-Busch," (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOxrFGXQrzY), music by Harry von Tilzer, words by Andrew B. Serling, sung by Billy Murray. Charted at #2 in 1904. "Close Up the Booze Shop (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awHPcvRN-XA)," music by Charles H. Gabriel, words by Harry Edwards, sung by the Rose Ensemble on their 2014 album "A Toast to Prohibition: All-American Songs of Temperance & Temptation. "Molly and the Baby, Don't You Know, (https://archive.org/details/78_molly-and-the-baby-dont-you-know_homer-rodeheaver-h-s-taylor-j-b-herbert_gbia0028028a)" by H.S. Taylor and J.B. Herbert, sung by Homer Rodeheaver. Recorded in 1916. "Alcoholic Blue (https://archive.org/details/78_alcoholic-blues_billy-murray-edward-laska-albert-von-tilzer_gbia0095847a)s," by Edward Laska and Albert von Tilzer, sung by Billy Murray. Recorded in 1919. "How Are You Goin' to Wet Your Whistle? (When the Whole Darn World Goes Dry) (https://archive.org/details/78_how-are-you-goin-to-wet-your-whistle-when-the-whole-darn-world-goes-dry_billy-m_gbia0015508b)" by Francis Byrne, Frank McIntyre and Percy Wenrich, sung by Billy Murray. Recorded in 1919. "You Cannot Make Your Shimmy Shake on Tea (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XchfsEPqr-w)," music by Irving Berlin, words by Irving Berlin and Rennold Wolf. Sung by Ann Wilson with piano by Frederick Hodges at the Annual West Coast Ragtime Festival in Sacramento, California, 2008. "I'll See You in C-U-B-A, (https://archive.org/details/78_ill-see-you-in-c-u-b-a_jack-kaufman-berlin_gbia0002852b)" by Irving Berlin, sung by Jack Kaufman. Recorded in 1920. "A Toast to Prohibition (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiU72oJsNhc&app=desktop)," by Irving Berlin, sung by the Rose Ensemble on their 2014 album "A Toast to Prohibition: All-American Songs of Temperance & Temptation.

About Arun Boudh Arun Boudh is Co-Founder and Director of Lokuttara Leadership Academy and its educational residence, Blossom Projects, which provides English, Technology, Mathematics, Art, humane education and various life skills to students from the most remote regions of Kerala.  Arun is from Kerala, south India, with a BAin  Malayalam literature from BM College in Mavelikara, and a diploma in Buddhism and Social Work from Nagarjuna Training Institute in Nagaloka in Nagpur. He is a Buddhist Dhammamitra practicing in Triratna BouddhaMaghasangh. Arun has been collaborating with Dayamudra at  Jai Bhim International since 2009 and leads social work trainings, educational workshops, and Ambedkerite Buddhist teachings across Kerala. Earlier in his career, he launched The Ambedkar Education and Cultural Society, which evolved into a democratic public space for the learners and artists, providing English and Music education and hosting public forums on Ambedker thought. Arun has translated three works of  Dr. B.H. Ambedkar “Buddha and the Future of his Religion”, “1956 Conversion Speech”, “Buddha or Karl Marx”, as well as Urgyen Sangharakshita’s “Dhamma Revolution” into  Malayalam. About Dayamudra Dennehy Dayamudra Ann Dennehy is an ESL tenure track faculty member at City College of San Francisco, where she works with language learners at all levels of English language proficiency in Credit, Non-Credit, and Vocational classes, in face-to-face and online classes. Dayamudra has led grassroots educational projects with a Mayan weaving cooperative in Guatemala and a Roma/Gypsy community program in Hungary, taught at a language school in Indonesia, has led yoga and meditation workshops across the U.S., India, Mexico, Scotland, and Spain, and has studied 8 languages, including English. She founded her own non-profit organization, Jai Bhim International, in 2008, which she leads as volunteer Creative Director collaborating with with an India-based team on an alternative leadership academy, serving caste-oppressed Dalit and Adivasi students in Kerala who have dropped out of high school. Daya is currently enrolled in the Educational Leadership/ Equity and Social Justice doctorate program at San Francisco State University, to be completed 2021. Show Highlights Youth Retreat for Dalit in India Growth of the Youth Retreat Dalit Youth Becoming Role Models Leadership Academy India Schooling System India's National Languages Success Stories of Leadership Academy Connect with Arun arunboudh@gmail.com Connect with Daya Twitter: @sfdaya IG: @dayamudra_esl Website: Blossom Projects Connect with me on Twitter@sheldoneakins

Immigration from ancestors breaking the chain of fear --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/sanborn-phillips/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/sanborn-phillips/support

On this edition of Fort McMurray Matters, we speak with two members of the Fort McMurray Ukranian Cultural Society about their upcoming 'Malanka' celebration - taking place this Saturday at Shell Place.

Why is it so important for men to be involved in issues such as reproductive justice, women's rights and the #MeToo movement? What does it mean for a man to be an ally to these movements? What does that look like? How do we encourage more men of privilege to take action and to give back? What does positive masculinity mean to you? What pieces of masculintiy are effective and which are not? A fascinating foray into 5 decades of social justice. Dr. John interviews Paul Kivel, social justive educator, activist, and writer. Paul has been an innovative leader in violence prevention for more than 45 years. He is an accomploshed trainer and speaker on men's issues, racism and diversity, challenges of youth, and family violence, raising boys to manhood, and the impact of class and power on daily life. His work gives people the understanding to become involved in social justice work and the tools to become more effective allies in community strufggles to end oppression and injustive and to transform orgranization and institutions. Paul is the author of numerous books and curricula, including Uprooting Racism: How White People Can Work for Racial Justice, which won the 1996 Gustavus Myers Award for best book on human rights, Men's Work, Making the Peace, Healping Teens Stop Violence, Boys Will Be Men, and most recentle, You Call This a Democracy?: Why Benefits, WHo Pays, and Who Really Decides. If you like what you've heard, support us by subscribing, leaving reviews on Apple podcasts or Stitcher. The reviews help us to spread the word. Please share the podcast with friends and colleagues. Follow Dr. John on | Instagram | Instagram.com/@TheEvolvedCaveman | Facebook | Facebook.com/Anger.Management.Expert | Twitter | Twitter.com/@JohnSchin | LinkedIn | Linkedin.com/in/DrJohnSchinnerer Or join the email list by visiting: GuideToSelf.com Please visit our YouTube channel and remember to Like & Subscribe! https://www.youtube.com/user/jschinnerer Editing/Mixing/Mastering by: Brian Donat of B/Line Studios www.BLineStudios.com Music by: Zak Gay

Today as we sometimes contemplate the real possibility of the end of the American experience. We think about its roughly 250-year history, often in the context of the people that have led us, good and bad, and taken us to where we are today. So perhaps it might be instructive to look at the 500 years history of the Roman Empire, and look at some of its leaders. Some who drove it to great heights and others who were responsible for taking it over the proverbial cliff. Barry Strauss, professor of history and classics at Cornell, is a leading expert on ancient military and Roman history. His latest work, Ten Caesars: Roman Emperors from Augustus to Constantine, and our recent conversation gives us new insights to where we might be headed. My conversation with Barry Strauss:

Did you know 2019 is the 400 year Anniversary since the first slaves arrived in America?! This episode will teach you the TRUTH behind the lies of American history books. We're diving deep into the trauma our enslaved ancestors went through, how that trauma is still playing out in the black community today, and how we can finally heal our ancestral wounds. Our special guest, Ambassador Johanna Odonkor Svanikier, President & CEO of the Heritage and Cultural Society of Africa (HACSA), says our healing starts with learning the TRUTH - only then can we have reconciliation. Get ready for the history lesson you NEVER got as a kid! To learn more about the HACSA and their upcoming summit: https://thehacsa.org/

In this episode Edward Wendell speaks about how he went from a loner to Neirs supporter and to president of Woodhaven Residents Block Association, Woodhaven Historic and Cultural Society.  Find out the glue of a community and the one thing that got him out of being a loner. http://www.projectwoodhaven.com/ http://www.woodhaven-nyc.org/  

On this edition of Fort McMurray Matters, we speak with two people from the Fort McMurray Ukrainian Cultural Society, Greg Halinda and Isabelle Doblanko, about the importance of Christmas to those of Ukrainian descent and upcoming Malanka celebrations.

2017 AASLH Annual Meeting Session Recording Recorded in Austin, TX September 7, 2017 Beyond Ramps: The Ongoing Journey Toward Universal Accessibility Chair: Dr. Maureen Kelly Jonason, Historical and Cultural Society of Clay County, Moorhead, MN

In addition to the Good Food Markets report, and LOTS of news about upcoming activities (hint: Pokemon!) on RIA Main Street, we're joined by DeAndrey Howard, creative genius behind Alice's Jazz and Cultural Society. The newest hotspot for authentic jazz, located at 2813 12th St NE, is getting great reviews. Tune in to hear DeAndrey share the vision behind the club, then stop in and visit them. More details at their website, www.jazzandculturalsociety.com

Reclaiming Grimes: Author of the First Fugitive Slave Narrative Oakland, California native, REGINA E. MASON, has spent fifteen years authenticating the pioneering narrative of her direct ancestor William Grimes—author of the first fugitive slave narrative in American history.   Not only is she the gate-keeper of her family’s history, she is also coeditor of the new edition of her forefather’s book Life of William Grimes, the Runaway Slave. In recognition of her work, the San Francisco African American Historical and Cultural Society presented her the 2009 Herndon Lecturer award. She is currently working on the documentary Gina’s Journey: The Search for William Grimes. https://vimeo.com/119890622

Wednesday Reading Series Whit Griffin is the author, most recently, of A Far-Shining Crystal (Cultural Society, 2013). His book-length poem, We Who Saw Everything, is forthcoming from Cultural Society. Recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in Golden Handcuffs Review, Chicago Review and Hambone. Thomas Meyer grew up in Seattle, graduated from Bard College. His most recent books of poetry are Essay Stanzas (The Song Cave) and Kintsugi (Flood Editions), and most recent translations are Easy Answers: The I Ching (BlazeVOX), Beowulf (punctum), and the Daode jing (Flood Editions). A reprint of Staves Calends Legends is in the pffering from eth press.

Development of Modern Civilization (900.1) 81:0.1 REGARDLESS of the ups and downs of the miscarriage of the plans for world betterment projected in the missions of Caligastia and Adam, the basic organic evolution of the human species continued to carry the races forward in the scale of human progress and racial development. Evolution can be delayed but it cannot be stopped. (900.2) 81:0.2 The influence of the violet race, though in numbers smaller than had been planned, produced an advance in civilization which, since the days of Adam, has far exceeded the progress of mankind throughout its entire previous existence of almost a million years. 1. The Cradle of Civilization (900.3) 81:1.1 For about thirty-five thousand years after the days of Adam, the cradle of civilization was in southwestern Asia, extending from the Nile valley eastward and slightly to the north across northern Arabia, through Mesopotamia, and on into Turkestan. And climate was the decisive factor in the establishment of civilization in that area. (900.4) 81:1.2 It was the great climatic and geologic changes in northern Africa and western Asia that terminated the early migrations of the Adamites, barring them from Europe by the expanded Mediterranean and diverting the stream of migration north and east into Turkestan. By the time of the completion of these land elevations and associated climatic changes, about 15,000 B.C., civilization had settled down to a world-wide stalemate except for the cultural ferments and biologic reserves of the Andites still confined by mountains to the east in Asia and by the expanding forests in Europe to the west. (900.5) 81:1.3 Climatic evolution is now about to accomplish what all other efforts had failed to do, that is, to compel Eurasian man to abandon hunting for the more advanced callings of herding and farming. Evolution may be slow, but it is terribly effective. (900.6) 81:1.4 Since slaves were so generally employed by the earlier agriculturists, the farmer was formerly looked down on by both the hunter and the herder. For ages it was considered menial to till the soil; wherefore the idea that soil toil is a curse, whereas it is the greatest of all blessings. Even in the days of Cain and Abel the sacrifices of the pastoral life were held in greater esteem than the offerings of agriculture. (900.7) 81:1.5 Man ordinarily evolved into a farmer from a hunter by transition through the era of the herder, and this was also true among the Andites, but more often the evolutionary coercion of climatic necessity would cause whole tribes to pass directly from hunters to successful farmers. But this phenomenon of passing immediately from hunting to agriculture only occurred in those regions where there was a high degree of race mixture with the violet stock. (901.1) 81:1.6 The evolutionary peoples (notably the Chinese) early learned to plant seeds and to cultivate crops through observation of the sprouting of seeds accidentally moistened or which had been put in graves as food for the departed. But throughout southwest Asia, along the fertile river bottoms and adjacent plains, the Andites were carrying out the improved agricultural techniques inherited from their ancestors, who had made farming and gardening the chief pursuits within the boundaries of the second garden. (901.2) 81:1.7 For thousands of years the descendants of Adam had grown wheat and barley, as improved in the Garden, throughout the highlands of the upper border of Mesopotamia. The descendants of Adam and Adamson here met, traded, and socially mingled. (901.3) 81:1.8 It was these enforced changes in living conditions which caused such a large proportion of the human race to become omnivorous in dietetic practice. And the combination of the wheat, rice, and vegetable diet with the flesh of the herds marked a great forward step in the health and vigor of these ancient peoples. 2. The Tools of Civilization (901.4) 81:2.1 The growth of culture is predicated upon the development of the tools of civilization. And the tools which man utilized in his ascent from savagery were effective just to the extent that they released man power for the accomplishment of higher tasks. (901.5) 81:2.2 You who now live amid latter-day scenes of budding culture and beginning progress in social affairs, who actually have some little spare time in which to think about society and civilization, must not overlook the fact that your early ancestors had little or no leisure which could be devoted to thoughtful reflection and social thinking. (901.6) 81:2.3 The first four great advances in human civilization were: (901.7) 81:2.4 1. The taming of fire. (901.8) 81:2.5 2. The domestication of animals. (901.9) 81:2.6 3. The enslavement of captives. (901.10) 81:2.7 4. Private property. (901.11) 81:2.8 While fire, the first great discovery, eventually unlocked the doors of the scientific world, it was of little value in this regard to primitive man. He refused to recognize natural causes as explanations for commonplace phenomena. (901.12) 81:2.9 When asked where fire came from, the simple story of Andon and the flint was soon replaced by the legend of how some Prometheus stole it from heaven. The ancients sought a supernatural explanation for all natural phenomena not within the range of their personal comprehension; and many moderns continue to do this. The depersonalization of so-called natural phenomena has required ages, and it is not yet completed. But the frank, honest, and fearless search for true causes gave birth to modern science: It turned astrology into astronomy, alchemy into chemistry, and magic into medicine. (901.13) 81:2.10 In the premachine age the only way in which man could accomplish work without doing it himself was to use an animal. Domestication of animals placed in his hands living tools, the intelligent use of which prepared the way for both agriculture and transportation. And without these animals man could not have risen from his primitive estate to the levels of subsequent civilization. (902.1) 81:2.11 Most of the animals best suited to domestication were found in Asia, especially in the central to southwest regions. This was one reason why civilization progressed faster in that locality than in other parts of the world. Many of these animals had been twice before domesticated, and in the Andite age they were retamed once again. But the dog had remained with the hunters ever since being adopted by the blue man long, long before. (902.2) 81:2.12 The Andites of Turkestan were the first peoples to extensively domesticate the horse, and this is another reason why their culture was for so long predominant. By 5000 B.C. the Mesopotamian, Turkestan, and Chinese farmers had begun the raising of sheep, goats, cows, camels, horses, fowls, and elephants. They employed as beasts of burden the ox, camel, horse, and yak. Man was himself at one time the beast of burden. One ruler of the blue race once had one hundred thousand men in his colony of burden bearers. (902.3) 81:2.13 The institutions of slavery and private ownership of land came with agriculture. Slavery raised the master’s standard of living and provided more leisure for social culture. (902.4) 81:2.14 The savage is a slave to nature, but scientific civilization is slowly conferring increasing liberty on mankind. Through animals, fire, wind, water, electricity, and other undiscovered sources of energy, man has liberated, and will continue to liberate, himself from the necessity for unremitting toil. Regardless of the transient trouble produced by the prolific invention of machinery, the ultimate benefits to be derived from such mechanical inventions are inestimable. Civilization can never flourish, much less be established, until man has leisure to think, to plan, to imagine new and better ways of doing things. (902.5) 81:2.15 Man first simply appropriated his shelter, lived under ledges or dwelt in caves. Next he adapted such natural materials as wood and stone to the creation of family huts. Lastly he entered the creative stage of home building, learned to manufacture brick and other building materials. (902.6) 81:2.16 The peoples of the Turkestan highlands were the first of the more modern races to build their homes of wood, houses not at all unlike the early log cabins of the American pioneer settlers. Throughout the plains human dwellings were made of brick; later on, of burned bricks. (902.7) 81:2.17 The older river races made their huts by setting tall poles in the ground in a circle; the tops were then brought together, making the skeleton frame for the hut, which was interlaced with transverse reeds, the whole creation resembling a huge inverted basket. This structure could then be daubed over with clay and, after drying in the sun, would make a very serviceable weatherproof habitation. (902.8) 81:2.18 It was from these early huts that the subsequent idea of all sorts of basket weaving independently originated. Among one group the idea of making pottery arose from observing the effects of smearing these pole frameworks with moist clay. The practice of hardening pottery by baking was discovered when one of these clay-covered primitive huts accidentally burned. The arts of olden days were many times derived from the accidental occurrences attendant upon the daily life of early peoples. At least, this was almost wholly true of the evolutionary progress of mankind up to the coming of Adam. (903.1) 81:2.19 While pottery had been first introduced by the staff of the Prince about one-half million years ago, the making of clay vessels had practically ceased for over one hundred and fifty thousand years. Only the gulf coast pre-Sumerian Nodites continued to make clay vessels. The art of pottery making was revived during Adam’s time. The dissemination of this art was simultaneous with the extension of the desert areas of Africa, Arabia, and central Asia, and it spread in successive waves of improving technique from Mesopotamia out over the Eastern Hemisphere. (903.2) 81:2.20 These civilizations of the Andite age cannot always be traced by the stages of their pottery or other arts. The smooth course of human evolution was tremendously complicated by the regimes of both Dalamatia and Eden. It often occurs that the later vases and implements are inferior to the earlier products of the purer Andite peoples. 3. Cities, Manufacture, and Commerce (903.3) 81:3.1 The climatic destruction of the rich, open grassland hunting and grazing grounds of Turkestan, beginning about 12,000 B.C., compelled the men of those regions to resort to new forms of industry and crude manufacturing. Some turned to the cultivation of domesticated flocks, others became agriculturists or collectors of water-borne food, but the higher type of Andite intellects chose to engage in trade and manufacture. It even became the custom for entire tribes to dedicate themselves to the development of a single industry. From the valley of the Nile to the Hindu Kush and from the Ganges to the Yellow River, the chief business of the superior tribes became the cultivation of the soil, with commerce as a side line. (903.4) 81:3.2 The increase in trade and in the manufacture of raw materials into various articles of commerce was directly instrumental in producing those early and semipeaceful communities which were so influential in spreading the culture and the arts of civilization. Before the era of extensive world trade, social communities were tribal — expanded family groups. Trade brought into fellowship different sorts of human beings, thus contributing to a more speedy cross-fertilization of culture. (903.5) 81:3.3 About twelve thousand years ago the era of the independent cities was dawning. And these primitive trading and manufacturing cities were always surrounded by zones of agriculture and cattle raising. While it is true that industry was promoted by the elevation of the standards of living, you should have no misconception regarding the refinements of early urban life. The early races were not overly neat and clean, and the average primitive community rose from one to two feet every twenty-five years as the result of the mere accumulation of dirt and trash. Certain of these olden cities also rose above the surrounding ground very quickly because their unbaked mud huts were short-lived, and it was the custom to build new dwellings directly on top of the ruins of the old. (903.6) 81:3.4 The widespread use of metals was a feature of this era of the early industrial and trading cities. You have already found a bronze culture in Turkestan dating before 9000 B.C., and the Andites early learned to work in iron, gold, and copper, as well. But conditions were very different away from the more advanced centers of civilization. There were no distinct periods, such as the Stone, Bronze, and Iron Ages; all three existed at the same time in different localities. (904.1) 81:3.5 Gold was the first metal to be sought by man; it was easy to work and, at first, was used only as an ornament. Copper was next employed but not extensively until it was admixed with tin to make the harder bronze. The discovery of mixing copper and tin to make bronze was made by one of the Adamsonites of Turkestan whose highland copper mine happened to be located alongside a tin deposit. (904.2) 81:3.6 With the appearance of crude manufacture and beginning industry, commerce quickly became the most potent influence in the spread of cultural civilization. The opening up of the trade channels by land and by sea greatly facilitated travel and the mixing of cultures as well as the blending of civilizations. By 5000 B.C. the horse was in general use throughout civilized and semicivilized lands. These later races not only had the domesticated horse but also various sorts of wagons and chariots. Ages before, the wheel had been used, but now vehicles so equipped became universally employed both in commerce and war. (904.3) 81:3.7 The traveling trader and the roving explorer did more to advance historic civilization than all other influences combined. Military conquests, colonization, and missionary enterprises fostered by the later religions were also factors in the spread of culture; but these were all secondary to the trading relations, which were ever accelerated by the rapidly developing arts and sciences of industry. (904.4) 81:3.8 Infusion of the Adamic stock into the human races not only quickened the pace of civilization, but it also greatly stimulated their proclivities toward adventure and exploration to the end that most of Eurasia and northern Africa was presently occupied by the rapidly multiplying mixed descendants of the Andites. 4. The Mixed Races (904.5) 81:4.1 As contact is made with the dawn of historic times, all of Eurasia, northern Africa, and the Pacific Islands is overspread with the composite races of mankind. And these races of today have resulted from a blending and reblending of the five basic human stocks of Urantia. (904.6) 81:4.2 Each of the Urantia races was identified by certain distinguishing physical characteristics. The Adamites and Nodites were long-headed; the Andonites were broad-headed. The Sangik races were medium-headed, with the yellow and blue men tending to broad-headedness. The blue races, when mixed with the Andonite stock, were decidedly broad-headed. The secondary Sangiks were medium- to long-headed. (904.7) 81:4.3 Although these skull dimensions are serviceable in deciphering racial origins, the skeleton as a whole is far more dependable. In the early development of the Urantia races there were originally five distinct types of skeletal structure: (904.8) 81:4.4 1. Andonic, Urantia aborigines. (904.9) 81:4.5 2. Primary Sangik, red, yellow, and blue. (904.10) 81:4.6 3. Secondary Sangik, orange, green, and indigo. (904.11) 81:4.7 4. Nodites, descendants of the Dalamatians. (904.12) 81:4.8 5. Adamites, the violet race. (904.13) 81:4.9 As these five great racial groups extensively intermingled, continual mixture tended to obscure the Andonite type by Sangik hereditary dominance. The Lapps and the Eskimos are blends of Andonite and Sangik-blue races. Their skeletal structures come the nearest to preserving the aboriginal Andonic type. But the Adamites and the Nodites have become so admixed with the other races that they can be detected only as a generalized Caucasoid order. (905.1) 81:4.10 In general, therefore, as the human remains of the last twenty thousand years are unearthed, it will be impossible clearly to distinguish the five original types. Study of such skeletal structures will disclose that mankind is now divided into approximately three classes: (905.2) 81:4.11 1. The Caucasoid — the Andite blend of the Nodite and Adamic stocks, further modified by primary and (some) secondary Sangik admixture and by considerable Andonic crossing. The Occidental white races, together with some Indian and Turanian peoples, are included in this group. The unifying factor in this division is the greater or lesser proportion of Andite inheritance. (905.3) 81:4.12 2. The Mongoloid — the primary Sangik type, including the original red, yellow, and blue races. The Chinese and Amerinds belong to this group. In Europe the Mongoloid type has been modified by secondary Sangik and Andonic mixture; still more by Andite infusion. The Malayan and other Indonesian peoples are included in this classification, though they contain a high percentage of secondary Sangik blood. (905.4) 81:4.13 3. The Negroid — the secondary Sangik type, which originally included the orange, green, and indigo races. This is the type best illustrated by the Negro, and it will be found through Africa, India, and Indonesia wherever the secondary Sangik races located. (905.5) 81:4.14 In North China there is a certain blending of Caucasoid and Mongoloid types; in the Levant the Caucasoid and Negroid have intermingled; in India, as in South America, all three types are represented. And the skeletal characteristics of the three surviving types still persist and help to identify the later ancestry of present-day human races. 5. Cultural Society (905.6) 81:5.1 Biologic evolution and cultural civilization are not necessarily correlated; organic evolution in any age may proceed unhindered in the very midst of cultural decadence. But when lengthy periods of human history are surveyed, it will be observed that eventually evolution and culture become related as cause and effect. Evolution may advance in the absence of culture, but cultural civilization does not flourish without an adequate background of antecedent racial progression. Adam and Eve introduced no art of civilization foreign to the progress of human society, but the Adamic blood did augment the inherent ability of the races and did accelerate the pace of economic development and industrial progression. Adam’s bestowal improved the brain power of the races, thereby greatly hastening the processes of natural evolution. (905.7) 81:5.2 Through agriculture, animal domestication, and improved architecture, mankind gradually escaped the worst of the incessant struggle to live and began to cast about to find wherewith to sweeten the process of living; and this was the beginning of the striving for higher and ever higher standards of material comfort. Through manufacture and industry man is gradually augmenting the pleasure content of mortal life. (906.1) 81:5.3 But cultural society is no great and beneficent club of inherited privilege into which all men are born with free membership and entire equality. Rather is it an exalted and ever-advancing guild of earth workers, admitting to its ranks only the nobility of those toilers who strive to make the world a better place in which their children and their children’s children may live and advance in subsequent ages. And this guild of civilization exacts costly admission fees, imposes strict and rigorous disciplines, visits heavy penalties on all dissenters and nonconformists, while it confers few personal licenses or privileges except those of enhanced security against common dangers and racial perils. (906.2) 81:5.4 Social association is a form of survival insurance which human beings have learned is profitable; therefore are most individuals willing to pay those premiums of self-sacrifice and personal-liberty curtailment which society exacts from its members in return for this enhanced group protection. In short, the present-day social mechanism is a trial-and-error insurance plan designed to afford some degree of assurance and protection against a return to the terrible and antisocial conditions which characterized the early experiences of the human race. (906.3) 81:5.5 Society thus becomes a co-operative scheme for securing civil freedom through institutions, economic freedom through capital and invention, social liberty through culture, and freedom from violence through police regulation. (906.4) 81:5.6 Might does not make right, but it does enforce the commonly recognized rights of each succeeding generation. The prime mission of government is the definition of the right, the just and fair regulation of class differences, and the enforcement of equality of opportunity under the rules of law. Every human right is associated with a social duty; group privilege is an insurance mechanism which unfailingly demands the full payment of the exacting premiums of group service. And group rights, as well as those of the individual, must be protected, including the regulation of the sex propensity. (906.5) 81:5.7 Liberty subject to group regulation is the legitimate goal of social evolution. Liberty without restrictions is the vain and fanciful dream of unstable and flighty human minds. 6. The Maintenance of Civilization (906.6) 81:6.1 While biologic evolution has proceeded ever upward, much of cultural evolution went out from the Euphrates valley in waves, which successively weakened as time passed until finally the whole of the pure-line Adamic posterity had gone forth to enrich the civilizations of Asia and Europe. The races did not fully blend, but their civilizations did to a considerable extent mix. Culture did slowly spread throughout the world. And this civilization must be maintained and fostered, for there exist today no new sources of culture, no Andites to invigorate and stimulate the slow progress of the evolution of civilization. (906.7) 81:6.2 The civilization which is now evolving on Urantia grew out of, and is predicated on, the following factors: (906.8) 81:6.3 1. Natural circumstances. The nature and extent of a material civilization is in large measure determined by the natural resources available. Climate, weather, and numerous physical conditions are factors in the evolution of culture. (907.1) 81:6.4 At the opening of the Andite era there were only two extensive and fertile open hunting areas in all the world. One was in North America and was overspread by the Amerinds; the other was to the north of Turkestan and was partly occupied by an Andonic-yellow race. The decisive factors in the evolution of a superior culture in southwestern Asia were race and climate. The Andites were a great people, but the crucial factor in determining the course of their civilization was the increasing aridity of Iran, Turkestan, and Sinkiang, which forced them to invent and adopt new and advanced methods of wresting a livelihood from their decreasingly fertile lands. (907.2) 81:6.5 The configuration of continents and other land-arrangement situations are very influential in determining peace or war. Very few Urantians have ever had such a favorable opportunity for continuous and unmolested development as has been enjoyed by the peoples of North America — protected on practically all sides by vast oceans. (907.3) 81:6.6 2. Capital goods. Culture is never developed under conditions of poverty; leisure is essential to the progress of civilization. Individual character of moral and spiritual value may be acquired in the absence of material wealth, but a cultural civilization is only derived from those conditions of material prosperity which foster leisure combined with ambition. (907.4) 81:6.7 During primitive times life on Urantia was a serious and sober business. And it was to escape this incessant struggle and interminable toil that mankind constantly tended to drift toward the salubrious climate of the tropics. While these warmer zones of habitation afforded some remission from the intense struggle for existence, the races and tribes who thus sought ease seldom utilized their unearned leisure for the advancement of civilization. Social progress has invariably come from the thoughts and plans of those races that have, by their intelligent toil, learned how to wrest a living from the land with lessened effort and shortened days of labor and thus have been able to enjoy a well-earned and profitable margin of leisure. (907.5) 81:6.8 3. Scientific knowledge. The material aspects of civilization must always await the accumulation of scientific data. It was a long time after the discovery of the bow and arrow and the utilization of animals for power purposes before man learned how to harness wind and water, to be followed by the employment of steam and electricity. But slowly the tools of civilization improved. Weaving, pottery, the domestication of animals, and metalworking were followed by an age of writing and printing. (907.6) 81:6.9 Knowledge is power. Invention always precedes the acceleration of cultural development on a world-wide scale. Science and invention benefited most of all from the printing press, and the interaction of all these cultural and inventive activities has enormously accelerated the rate of cultural advancement. (907.7) 81:6.10 Science teaches man to speak the new language of mathematics and trains his thoughts along lines of exacting precision. And science also stabilizes philosophy through the elimination of error, while it purifies religion by the destruction of superstition. (907.8) 81:6.11 4. Human resources. Man power is indispensable to the spread of civilization. All things equal, a numerous people will dominate the civilization of a smaller race. Hence failure to increase in numbers up to a certain point prevents the full realization of national destiny, but there comes a point in population increase where further growth is suicidal. Multiplication of numbers beyond the optimum of the normal man-land ratio means either a lowering of the standards of living or an immediate expansion of territorial boundaries by peaceful penetration or by military conquest, forcible occupation. (908.1) 81:6.12 You are sometimes shocked at the ravages of war, but you should recognize the necessity for producing large numbers of mortals so as to afford ample opportunity for social and moral development; with such planetary fertility there soon occurs the serious problem of overpopulation. Most of the inhabited worlds are small. Urantia is average, perhaps a trifle undersized. The optimum stabilization of national population enhances culture and prevents war. And it is a wise nation which knows when to cease growing. (908.2) 81:6.13 But the continent richest in natural deposits and the most advanced mechanical equipment will make little progress if the intelligence of its people is on the decline. Knowledge can be had by education, but wisdom, which is indispensable to true culture, can be secured only through experience and by men and women who are innately intelligent. Such a people are able to learn from experience; they may become truly wise. (908.3) 81:6.14 5. Effectiveness of material resources. Much depends on the wisdom displayed in the utilization of natural resources, scientific knowledge, capital goods, and human potentials. The chief factor in early civilization was the force exerted by wise social masters; primitive man had civilization literally thrust upon him by his superior contemporaries. Well-organized and superior minorities have largely ruled this world. (908.4) 81:6.15 Might does not make right, but might does make what is and what has been in history. Only recently has Urantia reached that point where society is willing to debate the ethics of might and right. (908.5) 81:6.16 6. Effectiveness of language. The spread of civilization must wait upon language. Live and growing languages insure the expansion of civilized thinking and planning. During the early ages important advances were made in language. Today, there is great need for further linguistic development to facilitate the expression of evolving thought. (908.6) 81:6.17 Language evolved out of group associations, each local group developing its own system of word exchange. Language grew up through gestures, signs, cries, imitative sounds, intonation, and accent to the vocalization of subsequent alphabets. Language is man’s greatest and most serviceable thinking tool, but it never flourished until social groups acquired some leisure. The tendency to play with language develops new words — slang. If the majority adopt the slang, then usage constitutes it language. The origin of dialects is illustrated by the indulgence in “baby talk” in a family group. (908.7) 81:6.18 Language differences have ever been the great barrier to the extension of peace. The conquest of dialects must precede the spread of a culture throughout a race, over a continent, or to a whole world. A universal language promotes peace, insures culture, and augments happiness. Even when the tongues of a world are reduced to a few, the mastery of these by the leading cultural peoples mightily influences the achievement of world-wide peace and prosperity. (908.8) 81:6.19 While very little progress has been made on Urantia toward developing an international language, much has been accomplished by the establishment of international commercial exchange. And all these international relations should be fostered, whether they involve language, trade, art, science, competitive play, or religion. (909.1) 81:6.20 7. Effectiveness of mechanical devices. The progress of civilization is directly related to the development and possession of tools, machines, and channels of distribution. Improved tools, ingenious and efficient machines, determine the survival of contending groups in the arena of advancing civilization. (909.2) 81:6.21 In the early days the only energy applied to land cultivation was man power. It was a long struggle to substitute oxen for men since this threw men out of employment. Latterly, machines have begun to displace men, and every such advance is directly contributory to the progress of society because it liberates man power for the accomplishment of more valuable tasks. (909.3) 81:6.22 Science, guided by wisdom, may become man’s great social liberator. A mechanical age can prove disastrous only to a nation whose intellectual level is too low to discover those wise methods and sound techniques for successfully adjusting to the transition difficulties arising from the sudden loss of employment by large numbers consequent upon the too rapid invention of new types of laborsaving machinery. (909.4) 81:6.23 8. Character of torchbearers. Social inheritance enables man to stand on the shoulders of all who have preceded him, and who have contributed aught to the sum of culture and knowledge. In this work of passing on the cultural torch to the next generation, the home will ever be the basic institution. The play and social life comes next, with the school last but equally indispensable in a complex and highly organized society. (909.5) 81:6.24 Insects are born fully educated and equipped for life — indeed, a very narrow and purely instinctive existence. The human baby is born without an education; therefore man possesses the power, by controlling the educational training of the younger generation, greatly to modify the evolutionary course of civilization. (909.6) 81:6.25 The greatest twentieth-century influences contributing to the furtherance of civilization and the advancement of culture are the marked increase in world travel and the unparalleled improvements in methods of communication. But the improvement in education has not kept pace with the expanding social structure; neither has the modern appreciation of ethics developed in correspondence with growth along more purely intellectual and scientific lines. And modern civilization is at a standstill in spiritual development and the safeguarding of the home institution. (909.7) 81:6.26 9. The racial ideals. The ideals of one generation carve out the channels of destiny for immediate posterity. The quality of the social torchbearers will determine whether civilization goes forward or backward. The homes, churches, and schools of one generation predetermine the character trend of the succeeding generation. The moral and spiritual momentum of a race or a nation largely determines the cultural velocity of that civilization. (909.8) 81:6.27 Ideals elevate the source of the social stream. And no stream will rise any higher than its source no matter what technique of pressure or directional control may be employed. The driving power of even the most material aspects of a cultural civilization is resident in the least material of society’s achievements. Intelligence may control the mechanism of civilization, wisdom may direct it, but spiritual idealism is the energy which really uplifts and advances human culture from one level of attainment to another. (910.1) 81:6.28 At first life was a struggle for existence; now, for a standard of living; next it will be for quality of thinking, the coming earthly goal of human existence. (910.2) 81:6.29 10. Co-ordination of specialists. Civilization has been enormously advanced by the early division of labor and by its later corollary of specialization. Civilization is now dependent on the effective co-ordination of specialists. As society expands, some method of drawing together the various specialists must be found. (910.3) 81:6.30 Social, artistic, technical, and industrial specialists will continue to multiply and increase in skill and dexterity. And this diversification of ability and dissimilarity of employment will eventually weaken and disintegrate human society if effective means of co-ordination and co-operation are not developed. But the intelligence which is capable of such inventiveness and such specialization should be wholly competent to devise adequate methods of control and adjustment for all problems resulting from the rapid growth of invention and the accelerated pace of cultural expansion. (910.4) 81:6.31 11. Place-finding devices. The next age of social development will be embodied in a better and more effective co-operation and co-ordination of ever-increasing and expanding specialization. And as labor more and more diversifies, some technique for directing individuals to suitable employment must be devised. Machinery is not the only cause for unemployment among the civilized peoples of Urantia. Economic complexity and the steady increase of industrial and professional specialism add to the problems of labor placement. (910.5) 81:6.32 It is not enough to train men for work; in a complex society there must also be provided efficient methods of place finding. Before training citizens in the highly specialized techniques of earning a living, they should be trained in one or more methods of commonplace labor, trades or callings which could be utilized when they were transiently unemployed in their specialized work. No civilization can survive the long-time harboring of large classes of unemployed. In time, even the best of citizens will become distorted and demoralized by accepting support from the public treasury. Even private charity becomes pernicious when long extended to able-bodied citizens. (910.6) 81:6.33 Such a highly specialized society will not take kindly to the ancient communal and feudal practices of olden peoples. True, many common services can be acceptably and profitably socialized, but highly trained and ultraspecialized human beings can best be managed by some technique of intelligent co-operation. Modernized co-ordination and fraternal regulation will be productive of longer-lived co-operation than will the older and more primitive methods of communism or dictatorial regulative institutions based on force. (910.7) 81:6.34 12. The willingness to co-operate. One of the great hindrances to the progress of human society is the conflict between the interests and welfare of the larger, more socialized human groups and of the smaller, contrary-minded asocial associations of mankind, not to mention antisocially-minded single individuals. (910.8) 81:6.35 No national civilization long endures unless its educational methods and religious ideals inspire a high type of intelligent patriotism and national devotion. Without this sort of intelligent patriotism and cultural solidarity, all nations tend to disintegrate as a result of provincial jealousies and local self-interests. (911.1) 81:6.36 The maintenance of world-wide civilization is dependent on human beings learning how to live together in peace and fraternity. Without effective co-ordination, industrial civilization is jeopardized by the dangers of ultraspecialization: monotony, narrowness, and the tendency to breed distrust and jealousy. (911.2) 81:6.37 13. Effective and wise leadership. In civilization much, very much, depends on an enthusiastic and effective load-pulling spirit. Ten men are of little more value than one in lifting a great load unless they lift together — all at the same moment. And such teamwork — social co-operation — is dependent on leadership. The cultural civilizations of the past and the present have been based upon the intelligent co-operation of the citizenry with wise and progressive leaders; and until man evolves to higher levels, civilization will continue to be dependent on wise and vigorous leadership. (911.3) 81:6.38 High civilizations are born of the sagacious correlation of material wealth, intellectual greatness, moral worth, social cleverness, and cosmic insight. (911.4) 81:6.39 14. Social changes. Society is not a divine institution; it is a phenomenon of progressive evolution; and advancing civilization is always delayed when its leaders are slow in making those changes in the social organization which are essential to keeping pace with the scientific developments of the age. For all that, things must not be despised just because they are old, neither should an idea be unconditionally embraced just because it is novel and new. (911.5) 81:6.40 Man should be unafraid to experiment with the mechanisms of society. But always should these adventures in cultural adjustment be controlled by those who are fully conversant with the history of social evolution; and always should these innovators be counseled by the wisdom of those who have had practical experience in the domains of contemplated social or economic experiment. No great social or economic change should be attempted suddenly. Time is essential to all types of human adjustment — physical, social, or economic. Only moral and spiritual adjustments can be made on the spur of the moment, and even these require the passing of time for the full outworking of their material and social repercussions. The ideals of the race are the chief support and assurance during the critical times when civilization is in transit from one level to another. (911.6) 81:6.41 15. The prevention of transitional breakdown. Society is the offspring of age upon age of trial and error; it is what survived the selective adjustments and readjustments in the successive stages of mankind’s agelong rise from animal to human levels of planetary status. The great danger to any civilization — at any one moment — is the threat of breakdown during the time of transition from the established methods of the past to those new and better, but untried, procedures of the future. (911.7) 81:6.42 Leadership is vital to progress. Wisdom, insight, and foresight are indispensable to the endurance of nations. Civilization is never really jeopardized until able leadership begins to vanish. And the quantity of such wise leadership has never exceeded one per cent of the population. (911.8) 81:6.43 And it was by these rungs on the evolutionary ladder that civilization climbed to that place where those mighty influences could be initiated which have culminated in the rapidly expanding culture of the twentieth century. And only by adherence to these essentials can man hope to maintain his present-day civilizations while providing for their continued development and certain survival. (912.1) 81:6.44 This is the gist of the long, long struggle of the peoples of earth to establish civilization since the age of Adam. Present-day culture is the net result of this strenuous evolution. Before the discovery of printing, progress was relatively slow since one generation could not so rapidly benefit from the achievements of its predecessors. But now human society is plunging forward under the force of the accumulated momentum of all the ages through which civilization has struggled. (912.2) 81:6.45 [Sponsored by an Archangel of Nebadon.]

RECLAIMING GRIMES: THE FIRST FUGITIVE SLAVE NARRATIVE WITH REGINA E. MASON! Join Regina E. Mason the great great great granddaugther of William Grimes for a moving discussion of her research and discovery of the first fugitive slave narrative. Oakland, California native, REGINA E. MASON, has spent fifteen years authenticating the pioneering narrative of her direct ancestor William Grimes—author of the first fugitive slave narrative in American history. Not only is she the gate-keeper of her family's history, she is also coeditor of the new edition of her forefather's book Life of William Grimes, the Runaway Slave.  In recognition of her work, the San Francisco African American Historical and Cultural Society presented her the 2009 Herndon Lecturer award. She is currently working on the documentary Gina's Journey: The Search for William Grimes.

Discuss the Afsaneh Art and Cultural Society, which celebrates Central Asian art in the Bay AreaTRANSCRIPTSpeaker 1:Okay. [inaudible] Speaker 2:essentially, Asia is the crossroads of the world and for many centuries was the main trade route between Europe and Asia because of the influences of so many cultures. The art that was emanated from that region is astounding. From dance to music, [00:00:30] to science, to literature, poetry. There's a long and rich tradition of essential Asian art today with us. We have Charlene Sawyer, the founder of Asana Arts and Cultural Society, a nonprofit that has been celebrating Central Asian culture in the bay area for over 30 years. Stay with us. Speaker 3:So Charlene, first, um, tell us a little, Speaker 4:what about kind of your background [00:01:00] and how you came to, um, the appreciation of central Asian culture. Speaker 3:Wow. It's a, it's kind of a, you, you can't predict where you're going to fall in love. And I fell in love with Central Asian, uh, specifically Persian music when I was quite young. And in fact my parents were here, uh, in Berkeley. I grew up mostly in Berkeley and we had friends that were from that part of the world. [00:01:30] Uh, we're just, we're just so lucky here in the bay area. I mean really we are so lucky. And it, you know, in my early childhood we had friends, we'd go over to dinner and someone would whip out a Centaur and a violin and everybody would be singing, taking turns singing their favorite songs. And I was just enamored of the music and it followed me. It was just that was it. I was smitten. So from an early age [00:02:00] you were exposed and it was love. It was just for the love of, yeah, love at first, listen. And then as a dance artist, which is what I, that was my path in life, I became more immersed in dances of this region and more immersed in the culture and the history and being kind of a history buff, I really got excited about the inner reaction, the interactions of cultures along this enormous area of your Asia, [00:02:30] which had informed, you know, so much of your, our European culture. And it was just a lifelong learning experience that continues to this day. Speaker 4:Yeah, it is. It's such the crossroads of the world. And so amazing when you see the people from that part of the world, the features that they have, the really, really come from all four corners of the globe. They can, you know, these incredible green eyes you can have is Yannick features are just, it's so incredible. And people see the Buddhist statues in that part of the world. Speaker 3:They [00:03:00] look different from other parts of, you know, eastern Asia, Buddhist type statues. They have all these different features just to make, take the makeup of the gene pool. That's the incredible, that's their other constantly, it's like somebody described it like the roundabout of your Asia that like Afghanistan and bacteria was Becca's Don Tajikistan, uh, parts of Iran. We're, we're kind of like where all of the traffic came together and started to circle and it was this incredible diversity [00:03:30] of, of cultures and peoples that makes it in that area. Very, very a multiethnic. Yeah. Yeah. So you had a love for it and you have a dance background. Tell us a little bit about that. Well, like every, every good young girl pretty much. And in America, I was able to take ballet and modern dance and just all the advantages as far as dance goes. Speaker 3:And also world dance, which was offered here by various people who were from various parts of the [00:04:00] world. And that took African dance and Flamenco and uh, Middle Eastern dance and uh, folk dance of Bulgaria, the Balkans, you just everything. I was just soaking it up like a sponge. Uh, I started performing as a performing artist when I was maybe 12 years old and then started directing dance companies at about the age of 18. So ballet of Sauna. The grew out of that experience and my deep love for [00:04:30] this particular region of the world. And uh, I formed that company in 1986 in, uh, in a very interesting time as far as, you know, the politics of that part of the world went and my friends who are in the Persian community, it's a very, you know, Post Revolutionary Post Islamic revolution and a lot of, uh, a lot of people in the community were very, uh, there was a lot of profiling that was going on at that time. Speaker 3:And it was very [00:05:00] important to have some kind of, uh, self-expression that could also be a universal language for, for others in, you know, the general population to know more about their culture rather than, you know, what's behind the headlines. Interesting. But it's the Berkeley girl that started and not a lot of Iranian, well, you know, it was interesting. We, there were several Iranians who, who have, uh, been in the dance world and were here either in Los Angeles [00:05:30] or in California or would pass through. But there are other concerns, you know, when you're a recent immigrant who's coming to terms with, oh, well, I guess we're staying here for a while. Perhaps dance and the arts are not the first thing on your mind. Uh, so we were able to work with some of those dancers that were from, from Iran and had, you know, had learning that they had brought with them and also musicians who are here in the area and to start [00:06:00] to save and reconstruct and preserve and also to innovate, uh, in that genre. Speaker 3:And then became quickly aware that it was impossible to separate along national borders. The dance traditions or the music traditions or the cultural traditions of literature of this region, because the borders are really arbitrary. Yes. And relatively [00:06:30] recent politically speaking of we're, we see that there's some unifying factors. You know, you see Persian poetry in north India and you see Persian poetry in Istanbul, you see in Asia minor, you see Persian poetry and in Cairo, I mean these are, these are unifying forces. You see McCombs systems that are very similar in western China or what is called western China now, which [00:07:00] could be called Turkistan depending on which, which aspect you're, you're looking at. Uh, but those MACOM systems are fairly similar all the way through the entire Eurasian area that we're, we're interested in. Speaker 4:And it's so interesting that you said that you started it in somewhat in response to the revolutionary times of the 80s, but it's almost more even more relevant now with the beat of drum [00:07:30] going on. The, the, the war drums beating Iran, Afghanistan has been in chaos for over 30 years. Um, and you know, it's, it's so relevant to bring the beauty of that part of the world to this part of the world so that people can understand that there's more to those people than what you see on CNN or you know, the kind of the gory headlines that we, Speaker 3:right. It's hard to vilify someone whose music moves you or whose dance [00:08:00] is you're responding to the art and the culture and the history. It's a little hard to vilify that, that other as the other. Uh, and that's been kind of my subversive nature, you know, being at Berkeley, a good Berkeley girl, and having grown up with a family that it was all about social justice and civil rights and that this just tended to be my path. Speaker 4:You're listening to k a l x Berkeley 90.7 FM. This is method to the madness, a 30 minutes [00:08:30] show by the innovative spirit of the bay area. And I'm your host Ali Nasar. Thanks for listening. Today we're visiting with Charlene Sawyer, the founder and director of ballet off Santa and the off center arts and Cultural Society. We've been talking about Central Asian art and the beauty of it. I'm a big fan. My family's from there, have heritage there. Speaker 3:It's been a wonderful journey and I don't think I could have chosen to do anything else. It was almost [00:09:00] like, you know, the hand of fate grabbed you by the collar and pulls you along. Speaker 4:So let's talk about a little bit about, um, the performances that you guys do. And so you have yearly performances, you have a schedule. How many of you performances on your a year on average do you, do you do? Speaker 3:Yeah, we average about 18 to 20 public performances a year. Some of those are very small. Might be one, one solo, uh, artists at, uh, a community gathering or it might be [00:09:30] a 30 artists at of a large festival event or I think we went and did a New York, uh, parade out in New York for the awry, the Persian New Year parade. And we brought 30 dancers out for that. And it's a collaborating through the year. We do university performances. We've gone to the British Museum in London, so we're traveling quite a bit as well, uh, with the professional ensemble. [00:10:00] And then we have more of a community participatory group. Uh, ethnic dance festival has been a mainstay of our year for, for many, many years. I think I was performing myself and the first festival and uh, Speaker 4:yeah, I attended that a couple of years ago. Tell the audience a little bit about the ethnic dance festival. It's a really wonderful event. Speaker 3:Oh my God. There's nothing like it anywhere in the world. This is a festival that brings the enormous wealth of multicultural bay area ethnicities [00:10:30] that have all of these amazing groups that are either PR professional, pre-professional, or just folks getting together very high caliber work that's being turned out. And these are local northern California groups or specifically bay area. There are over, there are over 150 artists, most festivals. And it goes for three or four weekends in San Francisco. Uh, usually the palace of [00:11:00] fine arts, but they've started doing performances in other locations here. But Bueno, uh, at this point this year. And that takes place in June. And it's just, it's been a, a huge asset for San Francisco to help develop these diverse dance groups, specifically focused on dance. Interestingly enough, the media here has taken notice and it's very popular, but it took somebody from New York [00:11:30] doing a review of it to finally wake people up. You know, he was, uh, McCauley did this wonderful reviews, like where else, but San Francisco could you find this? And it's just, it's really not to be missed. Speaker 4:Yeah, it's breathtaking. I mean, you literally, it's every part of the world seems to be, you know, represented. So you'll be sitting there and you'll see a dance from Africa and you'll see one from China. [inaudible] Speaker 3:Korea. Yeah. Tycho I all over Asia. I mean, it's just the entire [00:12:00] world. And I, I like to think of San Francisco barrier is kind of kind of like a, uh, a city on the Silk Road and the old, the old historic Silk Road. It's, it's almost that this is now, you know, one of those cities, one of those diverse cities where the exchange of ideas and the, the fantastic sparking of new new culture and new flavor becomes, becomes possible with that diversity. Speaker 4:Yeah, that's [00:12:30] very much what my show is about is about the innovative spirit of the bay. And I think a lot of it is because of that, you know, the melting pot that we have here and, and there's so many different cultures represented and that's the promise of America. But I think the bay area being a very progressive place and more accepting, I think that there's a lot more celebration of those differences here or there might be in other parts of the country. Speaker 3:Yeah. I, I start to get that feeling as we travel, you know, and we oftentimes we're asked and you know, [00:13:00] in the old days it used to be asked here in the bay area, well, Joan, you're, you're doing dances from Iran and dances from Afghanistan. How come you guys aren't, you know, covered up when some kind of Burka situation, you know, I was like, well, you know, all these places are not all like that. You know, it's a very diverse area and there's a process of education that goes on and we still get those questions in, in many areas. Oh really? They play music is very interesting. Speaker 4:Yeah. [00:13:30] I'm not just music, beautiful music, a long history, a long tradition of music. Speaker 3:Amazing and, and very eclectic. You, you have everything from these very rough sounding, very rural, uh, rural pieces to this highly refined, highly developed, very, uh, ambitious compositionally. Uh, the, the mathematics, the sciences, the what, what we don't know about as a, as general American speaking as a general American [00:14:00] about the history and the contribution of that particular region of the world to world science, culture, religion, art. It's beyond, it's beyond measure. We, we know so little and it's high time that we know. Speaker 4:Yeah. Yeah, definitely. I think, you know, I always tell people about, um, then, you know, during the dark ages of, of Europe, this is, this is the part of the world I'd kept [00:14:30] the, the light of flame, a lot of the Greek knowledge came through, was transferred over and a Persian because that's, that's, those were the people who were interested at that time or in Arabic. And that's how it was preserved. Absolutely. Well, um, you know, I wanted to ask about, you talked about the Silk Road is I've always loved the Silk Road too, and that, um, just the, the romance Speaker 3:of it. Now this is huge. We've told total, tell listeners about the Silk Road. What, what is it? Okay. The basic facts, uh, 7,000 miles [00:15:00] of intersecting trade routes by land and by sea. Various points in history when it was in its heyday, I'd say one was, you know, 200 BC was, uh, a big, uh, big marker for, for the Silk Road Trade. And then we go into the, like you say, the medieval period from Europe when your Europe languished through the Dark Ages. And yet this enormous flourishing of art culture or science ideas was, was [00:15:30] it, you know, emanating from those regions in Eurasia, the Central Asia in particular. And then we move into the renaissance period, which were, was the benefit to Europe from that, that particular time on the Silk Road. That was the trade. It was coming straight out of China coming all the way through and meandering through with, by land, by sea, and eventually ending up in Venice, ending up in Istanbul [00:16:00] menace. Speaker 3:And that's where a lot of that, that knowledge sparked the renaissance in Europe and then was able to go on from there. So, uh, the link, it represented like the metaphorical, what it was actually a physical link between east and west. And this was, uh, this was a series of trade routes, various ways. He, I have a, a map that we bring to our festival that shows all of these intersecting routes. And it's, it's so much fun because we'll have an audience, oh, [00:16:30] we haven't even talked about the festival. Yeah, we'll get there. Yeah, we'll get there. But we'll have people in our audiences come up and point to where their family was from or you know, here's where, you know, this happened or, you know, and then at a certain point, all of the, the trade routes started to go by way of the sea. Speaker 3:You know, so the overland trade routes started to die out as a, as a conduit. And that was an interesting point in history. 1492, [00:17:00] Magellan and his crew young of all remember that that's when they were trying to find a way to circumvent those overland routes into China. And a lot of it had to do with the silk trade. A lot of it had to do with the fact that Rome and every empire after that, and Damascus as in Damask cloth as in Venice, uh, merchants who are hungry for silk and brocade, [00:17:30] which was controlled by the overland trade routes and all going through some Arakan Bukhara, uh, parts of parts of Iran, parts of the various countries. And those that we now know is countries in those areas and discovering a sea route and spices of course, discovering a sea route was imperative. It was like, we don't want to have to pay this high price for this stuff. Sure. Speaker 4:You're listening to k a LX, Berkeley [00:18:00] 90.7 FM university community sponsored radio. This is method to the madness, a 30 minutes show that celebrates the innovative spirit of the bay area. I'm your host. Tallinn is r and today we've had with us Sharlin Sawyer, the founder of Asana Arts and Culture Society and Belly Offs Center, a local dance troupe that celebrates central Asian culture here in the bay area. Yeah. So, um, you've built the, the kind of jewel of the belly off sauna. Um, season is the festival of the Silk Road. [00:18:30] It's going to be a celebration of this romantic time. So tell us a little bit about that. It's coming up soon, right? Speaker 3:Yeah, it's coming up on May 6th down in San Jose at the Mexican Heritage Plaza, which is a fabulous theater and a great garden venue. It's just this wonderful place to have this festival. And we started this as a home season back in 2001 for ballet off Sony and we had a great uh, several years where we were just doing it as an exclusively [00:19:00] ballet of Sana with our collaborators. And about 2008 we realized that this was getting prohibitively expensive for everybody involved. Production costs were going way up. Most of our sister companies in the bay area, the people that we were collaborating with and that we would often see at various performances, we're starting to feel the pinch and it was just a great idea. It's like, okay, let's just get together and do this all at the same [00:19:30] time and share the cost, share the work and be able to bring this in as a community. Speaker 3:Bring us together, celebrate and it's not exclusively traditional anymore. We have this, we're talking about self representation of peoples and communities who are not preserved in amber. I mean we're, we're innovating all the time and being able to innovate is part of what the Silk Road in my, [00:20:00] you know, in my opinion was about, it's like, what is it about, you know, bringing together different cultures and sparking some kind of creativity together. It doesn't just leave you as one thing. You're now being able to work with each other and create new ideas based on that input. So we look at the Silk Road is a metaphor for cultures in collaboration. So there's, there's these wonderful, they're wonderful innovative pieces [00:20:30] that are performed in the concert at the festival, the Silk Road. There's wonderful innovative goods and delicious food that are, you know, that are made that are there at the, at the bazaar we call the Silk Road Bazar there for the asking you. So it's this become wonderful community event. Speaker 4:So it's one evening May, is that what you said? Speaker 3:Yeah, it's actually, we're starting the at in the afternoon. Okay. Now this is something we remember, we started this during the crash of, you know, after the crash of 2008 [00:21:00] yeah. When everybody was, oh gee, can we really bring, even even bring in an audience, will our audience have the gas money to get to let alone buy a ticket? So we reduced the ticket prices to half. We brought in everybody and we started with an extended evening with a Silk Road, bizarre and the concert and just kept yearning to do an afternoon component to be able to bring in more folk dance and participatory [00:21:30] dances and more participation during the afternoon for kids and families. And this is the first year we're taking the plunge this year. So we're really excited about that. Not only is there a concert with master artists and performing next to young talent, but we're also going as the afternoon with some Turkish folklore dancing. You know, they're bringing in the big bagpipes and the dark hole. And we were just taking over the garden in the afternoon with the bazaar and the, [00:22:00] the various activities. Speaker 4:Wow, that sounds exciting. So that's may six, Speaker 3:May 6th, uh, we start at three o'clock in the afternoon and go, the concert gets done. We're starting the concert early because it's a Sunday night. And you know, the kids and the older folks have to get home at some point. So we'll probably be ending between nine 30, 10 o'clock and stay open another little bit, which is okay. Speaker 4:Yeah. And for the um, uh, listeners haven't been in the Mexican Mexican heritage hall, it is a really beautiful, Speaker 3:yeah, [00:22:30] that's [inaudible] Mexican Heritage Plaza Theater. Uh, it's, it's actually pretty convenient to east bay. I don't know how many of your listeners are from the East Bay, but it's, you just go straight down eight 80 and right where highway one oh one and eight 80 collide. That's the, that's the exit. Speaker 4:Yeah. We'll put it on our website, methods of the metastatic or you'll get a link to that if you want to go check it out and we'll put a link to, um, to Charlene's website as well. So give us a little bit, I always end my interviews with asking about the [00:23:00] future, the vision. So you've been doing this for a long time, but it's also, it seems to, in the recent time, the Silk Road Festival, you've, you've innovated and come to any place. So what, what does it look like in the future? What's your, your vision for the, uh, the arts and Culture Society? Speaker 3:Well, we fully expect to keep going. And the reason that I'm hopeful and excited about that right now is that we have a younger generation of artists who are now starting to, you know, [00:23:30] really go full full bore. They're really starting to take the reins of the administrative side of it and grapple with the, with the organizational side and the, the various ramifications of that. And you know, not only as artists but as you know, vital members of a community that forms a platform that can be a platform that lasts for, do the ages for people to either get their start or support their projects. So [00:24:00] that's what we, where we see our role at this point. Uh, yes, we still have our professional performance ensemble and yes, that's a big, uh, big flagship program for us. But we're looking, we also innovate in that we've got projects and various, uh, fiscal sponsored projects. [inaudible] Speaker 3:excuse me. The fiscally sponsored projects that we help bring to fruit and collaborate with our younger artists and our younger people who are in the community. [00:24:30] So it's starting to really, there's some changes afoot that are really getting exciting and as much more, uh, the community trust, uh, trust aspect of this is starting to emerge in a big way. That's great because that's the goal I think of. I've interviewed a lot of founders and been part of organizations and their founding, and that's almost always the goal is to create something that outlasts you. LSU, your participation absolutely indoors and it sounds like you're on the path. So congratulations. And thanks for coming in today. [00:25:00] Hey, thank you Ali. It's been great to be here Speaker 2:to learn more about the festival, the Silk Road, or the arts and arts and cultural society. Check out the links from our website, [inaudible] dot org you've been listening to minutes commanders on k eight LX, perfectly happy Friday. Everybody. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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