All posts by nedhamson

Activist, writer, researcher, addicted to sharing information and facts.

Afghan refugees find peace in Massachusetts | News | bdtonline.com

Afghan refugees find peace in Gloucester

After escaping the chaos in their home country last year, three Afghan refugees are beginning to find peace with their new lives in Gloucester.

Shamsul Rahman Dawodzai, 38, Ziarat Gul Dawoodzai, 36, and Hadayt Akbari, 21, share apartment space with two other Afghani men who were not home at the time of the interview.

“Gloucester is amazing,” said Shamsul, who is still taking English lessons. “It’s a small city but very beautiful. The people (are) nice. Everything is good.”

Shamsul has been at the apartment for the longest of the three men — he said he’s approaching his seventh month in Gloucester. In 2001, when the war began, he enrolled in the Afghan military and eventually achieved the rank of first lieutenant.

When U.S. forces pulled out of Afghanistan on Aug. 15 last year, Shamsul applied for evacuation four days later.

“An email come in from my mobile,” he explained. “’Please, you come in for airport and you leave this country because danger for you and I’m very sorry for your family’ — because my family right now is in Afghanistan, all of them.”

Shamsul said he hopes to get his green card soon so he can apply to be reunited with his wife and four children, one of which was born this March.

“This process is 50-50 right now,” he said. “The American paper work is very slow. It’s slowly, slowly going.”

Shamsul initially landed in Wisconsin and stayed at the Fort McCoy military base. Six months later, he boarded the plane for Gloucester where he was welcomed by Allies of our Afghan Allies, a local community group working with Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Boston to resettle Afghan refugees. In addition to the five men, the group has settled an Afghan family of four in another Gloucester apartment…

Source: Afghan refugees find peace in Massachusetts | News | bdtonline.com

‘Other Places in the Country Didn’t Do This’: How One California Town Survived Covid Better Than the Rest – POLITICO

Lots of universities and communities knew that the best way to control Covid was pre-symptomatic testing. But UC Davis is a world-class agricultural research institution, and so it had an advantage they didn’t: expertise in pandemic testing — for plants.

While the leap between plant and human disease might sound like a stretch, it wasn’t to Richard Michelmore, a plant geneticist who directs the university’s Genome Center. Michelmore had spent decades doing cheap, mass-scale pandemic testing — for plant pathogens like wheat rusts and downy mildew on spinach…

The university administration, desperate for a workable plan, agreed to pay for (testing equipment). And researchers across UC Davis, from the engineering department to the medical school, began to collaborate, searching for ways to solve the enormous logistical challenges. The plant researchers worked to refine the process, using a papaya enzyme to make human spit less viscous and easier to process. A colleague in the engineering department devised a machine to shake the vials, a necessary and laborious step previously done by hand.

These scientific innovations — and an anonymous $40 million donation — allowed this college town to do something that few, if any, other communities were able to do during Covid: Starting in the fall of 2020, the university tested its students and staff every week and made free, walk-in testing available throughout the town…

Source: ‘Other Places in the Country Didn’t Do This’: How One California Town Survived Covid Better Than the Rest – POLITICO

Minbari Mondays (B5:s4e15) “No Surrender, No Retreat” and Another Lesson in Practical Empathy

Context, Thought, and Learning: ShiraDest Offers Project Do Better

Empathy has very practical real life applications, like making it possible to understand the motivations of the captains on the opposing side, and adjust strategy accordingly.

The result? Keep reading!   🙂

On the 2nd of September, 2261, the drums beat for war, and the time has finally come to rescue Earth from a dictator. While Captain Sheridan plays steal-a-car prep, Londo hopes for forgiveness. Too soon. As G’Kar himself said about acknowledging change and redemption in another, and Brother Theo put in different words:

 “Forgiveness is a hard thing.”

Meanwhile, at Proxima 3, the fate of the war hangs on a man’s decision not to be a hypocrite, when it may well cost him his life:

“What does your conscience tell you?”

The result?

“Negative, Fleet Command. The Vesta will not engage in support of illegal orders.”

And, in tears of joy and wonder, mingled with not…

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LUNYK, Anton | USAO-DC | Department of Justice – got White House call 01/06/2021)

LUNYK, Anton

Case Number:
1:21-cr-410
Charge(s):

Entering or Remaining in a Restricted Building

Disorderly and Disruptive Conduct in a Restricted Building

Violent Entry and Disorderly Conduct in a Capitol Building

Parading, Demonstrating, or Picketing in a Capitol Building

Violent Entry

Location of Arrest:
NEW YORK, Brooklyn
Case Status:

Arrested 5/11/21. Initial appearance held 5/20/21.

Charged via criminal information 6/17/21.

Pleaded guilty 4/28/22.

Sentenced 9/15/2022 to 12 months of probation, including two months of home confinement, $742 fine, $500 restitution, 60 hours of community service.

Source: LUNYK, Anton | USAO-DC | Department of Justice

♫ Monday Morning ♫ — Filosofa’s Word

Last Monday, I played Jimmy Buffett’s Come Monday, mostly because it had “Monday” in the title and I was attempting to be creative.  Clive was the first to suggest another Monday song, then a few others followed suit with their own suggestions.  Since Clive was first, and since this isn’t a bad song, I’m playing […]

♫ Monday Morning ♫ — Filosofa’s Word

Plum Trees, Published at MasticadoresUSA — Develop. Inspire. Transform.

I am pleased to announce that my poem, Plum Trees, is now available at MasticadoresUSA. Thank you to Gabriela Marie Milton, and the team at MasticadoresUSA for their continued support and for publishing this piece. Plum Trees plum trees always takemy breath away as in their shade, we playwith notions of hope and trust and […]

Plum Trees, Published at MasticadoresUSA — Develop. Inspire. Transform.

Immigration to Rhode Island | EnCompass

Around 1890, a new and much larger wave of newcomers started to arrive.  These immigrants were primarily from Eastern and Southern Europe, with substantial numbers from Mexico and Asia, too.  In Rhode Island, this wave brought Portuguese (from mainland Portugal as well as Cape Verde and the Azores), Eastern European Jews, Poles, Greeks, Armenians, and most of all southern Italians.  The new immigrants had a much harder time than the older immigrants had.  Both native-born Americans and older immigrant groups looked down on them because they tended to have darker skin and came from less familiar cultures.   They also arrived at a time when there was less available land because the country already had achieved its “Manifest Destiny” of settling coast to coast, and the jobs available were less attractive.  As the nation entered the peak of its industrial age, many skilled jobs were downgraded to unskilled factory positions that required long hours in unsafe conditions for low wages and little job security.

During this period, the largest number of immigrants to Rhode Island came from southern Italy.  Political changes after Italy became a unified nation in 1871 had not benefited southern peasants, and overpopulation and an agricultural depression made it harder for farmers to earn a living.  Many Italians decided to seek their fortunes in the U.S..  The Italians who reached Providence tended to settle in the North End and on Federal Hill.  Outside the capital city they settled in the Pawtuxet Valley and in Westerly, where many labored in granite quarries.  Many Italians found jobs in construction, textile mills or jewelry factories.  Skilled workers labored as tailors, mechanics, stonecutters or bakers, and others ran barbershops, butcheries or grocery stores.  Wives took in boarders or helped run family businesses, and unmarried women labored in garment factories and millinery shops.[7]

Like the French Canadians, many Italians were slow to put down roots by learning English and becoming citizens as many hoped to save enough money to return home and buy a farm.  By the early twentieth century, steamship travel had become so much cheaper and safer that many Italians were what historians call “birds of passage” who traveled back and forth across the Atlantic, working in American factories during the winter and on Italian farms in the summer.  This changed after the U.S. enacted a harsh immigration restriction law in 1924, however, and Italians who lived in Rhode Island committed to staying.  They became increasingly active in politics, switching from the Republican to the Democratic Party by the 1930s, and in labor organizing (particularly in the building trades unions).  It was a great victory for the community when John Pastore, whose father had immigrated in 1899, became the first Italian-American in the nation to serve as governor (in 1944) and U.S. Senator (in 1950).[8]

 

At the same time, a smaller but substantial wave of Portuguese immigrants was arriving.  The Portuguese were not new to the state.  Before the Civil War, a number of Azoreans and Cape Verdeans who had arrived on whaling ships stayed on after the whaling industry declined to work in the Providence and New Bedford textile mills, or became farmers in Portsmouth or Little Compton.  After 1870, a much larger population (primarily from the Azores) arrived to work in the textile mills and settled in and around Providence (forming distinctive neighborhoods in areas such as Fox Point) and the East Bay.  They were motivated both by the promise of better jobs in the U.S. and by the political disruption caused by the founding of the Portuguese republic in 1910.[9]

Source: Immigration to Rhode Island | EnCompass

Museo de mujeres artistas – Museum of Women Artist — JaZzArt en València

(Photo by Tronvig Group) Bueno vamos a ver, ¿Hacen falta museos…en todos los países…para exponer las obras de mujeres artistas? Venga, creo que si porque, por ejemplo, en el Musée du Louvre, inaugurado en 1793, (creo que eso lo coloca como el primer museo y gracias a que surgieron los museos, empezó a escribirse la […]

Museo de mujeres artistas – Museum of Women Artist — JaZzArt en València