Well generally I do not consider myself an environmentalist at all, although my action appear to point to that? Additionally in my retirement and the author of over 6000 online articles; I will often write on environmental issues and have been called a 24/7 Eco Warrior? Do I like this title? Well it is interesting that perception one might get from their observations of my various activities.

However as far as a 24/7 Eco warrior; I am a 24/7 type of guy indeed, Eco Warrior, well I am a realist and believe in the cycles, flows and patterns of the Earth Systems and realize it will take care of its self, while the little human ants upon its surface do their thing. The issue really is that we need to be wise and not exacerbate the pendulum swings of the normal cycle flows. And we must maintain clean water and air if we want our own bio-systems to work right.

Indeed I feel the “Eco-Movement” often takes things too far and the doom and gloomers are not helping any real cause to change human behavior to prevent thru “noise canceling theory” to keep the normal frequency cycles of mother earth in line with what she has done for billions of years. I am not a Global Warming Alarmist, looking for a more balanced approach without destroying the flows of civilization to get there. I am a realist and have no problem debating in the real world, that’s where I live. Think on this in 2006 and ask yourself where do you fall on the environmental issues?

By Lance Winslow

I will never make it that far in life…

I even got my damn African glasses knocked off when I tried to go to the boy’s playground and interview them. They had a non-racist playground going. We had a racist, tallist, shortest, Jewest, Christian, fat girl segregated playground going, and somehow, if it meant something to us that we were evil incarnate, that worked for everyone else but me. Me? Nuh uh.

No fat girl section on the playground. All the girls were getting ready for an unknown zone called Basic Training for Viet Nam, I guess. They had to keep their figures.

I had to go to each segregated section of the playground, interviewing every evil loser queen on it, because the black girls were winning on our Negativity Playground.

As I went through life, I became the heroic Lost Girl Journalist in it. Yeah, there is now Jeanne Emerson, is there not? I was never able to become a tall white male journalist.

First I saw the black girl section, three black girls there, saw them skippin’ rope like sixty double dutch, and said to myself, “I can’t do that, what’s up with that? I know what. There’s a section of the playground I can play in.” I did a limp wrist at them and said aloud, “Ah, tha’s jus’ them,” and moved on to the white girls who were skipping rope. They hated me completely becuase they had forgotten what they were doing while being forced into doing it.

It wasn’t even double dutch, and I still couldn’t handle it. I jumped a teeny bit, and moved on. For I was the fat girl, I was ALWAYS new there, and there was no such fat girl section on the playground. But as I moved on, I headed towards the boy’s section of the playground, and as I walked toward it, thinking they wouldn’t mind, a white boy with black hair saw me, and threw the ball as hard as he possibly could.

It was a basketball and it zoomed straight into my face and knocked off my glasses because it didn’t hit very hard after all. I started to cry, contained myself, and picked up my glasses. There was no glasses section on the playground. I put my glasses back on and continued, as my part Indian self and part black self woke up, and knew it wasn’t Jesus Christ the Lord. I sighed. I would tell them something, somehow, but I didn’t know what. Some say I never did.

I moved on. Eventually there was the tall girl section of the playground. As I had previously exhibited courage, they let me in. Probably the tall Catholic girls. Dunno. They let me in conditionally, conditionally to what, I do not know. When I admitted I favored Indians, especially Indian chiefs, they kicked me out.

Wow. I next move on to the segregated Jewish and Christian or mostly Jewish or whatever section it was, cottoned to it being the Jewish section right away, you know Christians, they read both booksI hung out with them for this:

Miss Lucy had a steamboat
The steamboat had a bell
Miss Lucy went to heaven
The steamboat went to hello
Operator, give me number nine
And if you disconnect me
I’ll kick you in the behind
The refrigerator
There was a piece of glass
Miss Lucy sat upon it
And broke her little ask me
No more questions
I’ll tell you no more lies
So I added the last line, already, already. Which was the boys are in the —-room
Making chocolate pies.
The end.

By Karen Peralta

’Fauves’ means wild beasts in French. The finished look of the work was immaterial as the artists just painted what they visualized.

Leading the movement were Henri Matisse and Andre Derain. See Matisse’s 1908 ‘The Dessert’; and/or Derain’s ‘The Two Barges’.

Fauvism, had no concrete theories. Matisse’s aim was to use art as decoration. Seeing a work by Matisse one senses the feeling of d©cor, especially if harmonizes with the surroundings.

Rough and clumsy, intense, vivid, unnatural colour, distortion, was the emotional, driving force.

The movement was not popular and was subject to abuse. However, it gained some respect when art buyers began to show interest.

Much of the work was derived from primitive and tribal art. Unlike Impressionism, it presented hyper emotionalism, shocking, violent colours, lines, shapes, distorted forms, with no glimmer of seeing any representation of the real world.

Fauvism ceased after 1908, when the artists went their separate ways.

By Margaret Houghton

Media gurus and spinmasters realised that the Indian psyche loved this concept of a sneak peek.This lead to many scandals which were bordering on obscenity and definitely in the realm of bad taste.From sting operations on B-grade Bollywood character artistes to unknown television artists, we saw it all.News channels covered these faux pas of the relatively rich and famous as though it was credible news.Obscene MMS’s regularly pop up featuring Bollywood starlets and the girl-next-door.I guess the decades of prudish media coverage lead to this voyeristic streak in all of us.

In all fairness,we cannot blame the media agencies alone for this turn of events, as they just supply the public’s demand. Our nation stands at this critical juncture in History with increasing global clout and also increasing global aspirations of its citizens.But as the values subscribed to by the mass media change, the public perceptions are confusingly muddled.

This is definitely not the face of the Brave New World.Page 3 culture is well and good, but I hope we come to realise that there is a fine line between Celebrity worship and outright voyeurism.The only thing the Tehelka sting operation gave birth to was poor standards in journalism and of course provided a means for Tarun Tejpal to gain enough prominence to let loose his enormously poor contribution to literature, Alchemy of Desire.

By Kartikeya Bajpai

From this kind of experience kids, boys in particular, would be looking for model trains at the local department store for birthdays or Christmas. It brought excitement when kids would see a model train at the local department store at Christmas. Children would want to see the latest catalogs from Lionel or American Flyer.

Visiting a train depot was always a great experience to see the new streamliners and other railroad equipment. Many children lived very close to the mainline of a railroad or roundhouse. They could see the operation of a railroad in action.

Many of my friends grew up in the Midwest where a large number of railroads existed. Many times a father or relative worked for the railroad giving kids a chance to see a big steam engine up close or even getting a ride once in a while.

This was a great learning experience for a lot of young people. Some of them became famous photographers of the steam age and trains in general. There have been several artist who lived in the 30’s through the late 60’s painted some of the most famous art work on trains any where in the World.

Unfortunately this wonderful period of American History is all but gone. The steam engine was replaced by diesels, the roundhouses are gone, access to any railroad in this period of time is practically impossible. Because of the lawyers law suits are common when someone is given access to a railroad and hurts himself. No one takes responsibility for their own actions so all of us suffer because of a few.

Unless you have been exposed to the world of railroads it is very unlikely that you will ever be interested in them and their unique history. The libraries in this country are filled with historical books on the American railroads. However, if you are not exposed to this way of life it is improbable that you will pick one of these historical books to read.

Children are being robbed of one of the most interesting sagas of American History. With out the railroads the expansion of this country would have been very difficult. Trains are colorful and nostalgic and bring out the kid in us that makes us dream wonderful adventures about trains. Transportation devices have always fascinated the people of this country and should never be lost. The train may be the exception.

Even so people will flock to a train station or highway where one of the few big steam locomotives is visiting their area. Several railroads including the Union Pacific have kept or rebuilt steam engines for advertisement, excursion trips, and special train fares such as the one held in Sacramento, California a few years ago. Unfortunately these occasions are rare and most folks never see these huge steam giants.

The only way American will ever understand the various histories of this country is to be proactive in enlightening ones children. The transportation in this country is appalling. The technology to produce and build high speed trains in this country is already here. In fact it has been around for thirty years. We are to self centered to doing anything about anything unless something bad happens or a huge need is required for our survival.

To give you an example of what can be done we go to China where they have contracted the Germans to build them a Maglev train that goes over 300 miles per hour. This technology has been around for several years and has been tested on a regular basis in German.

The system uses magnetism to generate a high speed system which rides on top of magnetic coils. By giving the magnetic coil a great deal of electricity and polarizing the magnets to all positive or all negative cause the vehicle to move. If you have ever tried to press magnets together that are the same polarity you can’t. Plus and minus attract each other where the same polarity pushes away from each other. The pushing is what makes it go and by increasing power to the magnetic coils increases the magnetic flux which accelerates the vehicle even faster.

This is only a nut shell of what real makes Maglev work. I’ve watched it on discovery channel but my total knowledge of this system is way too inadequate to explain the total concept. I’ve just tried to give you look at a system based on my understanding.

There are other systems being developed by the Europeans. The railroad test track in Colorado run by the U.S. government is used to determine what would be the best technology for the United States among other railroad needs.

The old excuse is it costs too much money. If you let everything thing slide it will cost many times more to fix the problem. These technologies need to be taught to our children so it peeks their interest in trains and other types of transportation. If we intend to hold the technological edge we enjoy we better fix what we have and worry a little bit less about everybody else’s problems. That said, we should never give up our freedoms and ignore threats to our nation.

In the years I’ve spent in the Aero Space Industry I’ve learned that this country can do anything it wants to do. The trouble is nobody wants to do anything except gratify themselves. What a sorry state of affairs that is especially to our children. The old adage is nothing begets nothing.

By Michael W.P. Ball

Cubism dissected painted images, then reassembled them as abstract forms. Cubism showed images which could be seen from all angles. Subjects were painted in cube form, hence the name, Cubism.

French painters, Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso were foremost in introducing the movement. They worked closely until 1914. By 1910 cubism had become popular and was known as the”Cubist School.”

Other art movements began and new trends developed.

‘Analytical cubism’ displayed surfaces closely patterned with incomplete lines, which played the forms against one another. Often the works were painted in the same tone, making it difficult to identify images. Artists left clues, such as a pipe suggested someone smoking; also alphabetic letters, a newspaper or a bottle of wine.

In 1912 “synthetic cubism” emerged. Small objects were painted over then stuck onto the canvas, and superimposed one over another. Brighter colours replaced the dark, monochromatic scales which were hard to decipher.

Paper replaced paint and was pasted onto canvas forming an image. Patches cut from newspaper, presented images. Paper with woodprint, advertisements, were more colorful. Sand textured canvasses worked with graphite or charcoal forming shadows.

By Margaret Houghton

In 1885 at the suggestion of a retired British civil servant a group of leading Indian elites formed the Indian National Congress. In the beginning the National Congress was a very loose relatively apolitical body. It professed allegiance to the British Raj. However over time Congress began to attract the attention of radicals such as Bipin Pal, and Tilak. These young revolutionaries were the first to call for complete Indian independence and in some circumstances advocated violent resistance. One weakness of Congress however was that it failed to attract any of the Muslim population, it was also weakened by division about what the goals of the Congress were.

In 1905 the partition of Bengal created a wave of popular unrest as people felt threatened by a British decision taken without consultation and seemingly promoting a strategy of divide and rule. It led to the first organised campaigns of swadesh – the boycotting of British goods was so successful it would be repeated several times. This also escalated the tensions between the British and Indian revolutionaries. In 1909 there was the infamous Alipore bomb trial where several Indian revolutionaries were put on trial including Sri Aurobindo. In 1909 the Muslims also formed their own body to represent their interests.

During the First World War there was initially a widespread feeling of good will towards the British war effort with the Indians contributing many men and resources to the war effort. However by the end of the war with rising casualties, an influenza epidemic and rising prices there was an increase in nationalistic feeling again. In response the British introduced some policies to appease growing calls for Independence. However these tentative reforms were overshadowed by the Amritsar massacre of 1919. The viceroy of India had allowed the army unprecedented powers in controlling any suspected revolutionaries. On 13 April 1919 a British commander Reginald Dyer ordered his men to shoot over 1000 rounds into a large unarmed crowd of civilians who had gathered in Jallianwala Bagh a walled garden to celebrate a Sikh festival. Over 340 people died in the massacre and more than 1000 were seriously injured. The massacre enraged Indian public opinion swelling the ranks of the Independence movement. Rabindranath Tagore returned his knighthood in protest. But the lack of action against the British commander only served to fuel the antagonism to the British.

From 1919 -1922 there was a very strong movement of civil disobedience led by Mahatma Gandhi He argued for non violent civil disobedience, protesting against unjust laws and hurting British economic interests. The movement was remarkably successful and Gandhi became a hero in the eyes of many ordinary Indias. They viewed Gandhi as a man of the people. However in 1922 following the brutal murder of an Englishman Gandhi called off the struggle saying the Indians weren’t ready. This put back the independence movement for several years. Although others carried the fight on, often through violent action. These included men such as Surya Sen and Bhagat Singh. But India would have to wait for another world war until 1947 until they finally achieved Independence.

By Richard Pettinger