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David Henry Hwang

David Henry Hwang (born August 11, 1957) is an American playwright, librettist, screenwriter, and theater professor at Columbia University in New York City. He has won three Obie Awards for his plays FOB, Golden Child, and Yellow Face. Three of his works (M. Butterfly, Yellow Face, and Soft Power) have been finalists for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

Early life
He was born in 1957 in Los Angeles, California, to Henry Yuan Hwang, the founder of Far East National Bank, and Dorothy Hwang, a piano teacher. The oldest of three children, he has two younger sisters. He received a bachelor's degree in English from Stanford University in 1979 and attended the Yale School of Drama between 1980 and 1981, taking literature classes. He left once workshopping of new plays began, since he already had a play being produced in New York. His first play was produced at the Okada House dormitory (named Junipero House at the time) at Stanford University after he briefly studied playwriting with Sam Shepard and María Irene Fornés. In summer 1978, he studied playwriting with Sam Shepard and attended Padua Hills Playwrights Festival, both of which led him to write his first plays such as FOB.

Trilogy of Chinese America
Hwang's early plays concerned the role of the Chinese American and Asian American in the contemporary world. His first play, FOB, explores the contrasts and conflicts between established Asian Americans and "Fresh Off the Boat" new immigrants. The play was developed by the National Playwrights Conference at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center and premiered in 1980 Off-Broadway at the Joseph Papp Public Theater. In 1981 it won an Obie Award for Best New American Play. Papp produced four more of Hwang's plays, including two in 1981: The Dance and the Railroad, which tells the story of a former Chinese opera star working as a coolie laborer in the 19th-century American West, and Family Devotions, a darkly comic take on the effects of Western religion on a Chinese-American family. This was nominated for the Drama Desk Award. Those three plays added up to what the author described as a "Trilogy of Chinese America."

Branching out / national success
After this, Papp also produced the show Sound and Beauty, the omnibus title to two Hwang one-act plays set in Japan. At this time, Hwang started to work on projects for the small screen. A television movie, Blind Alleys, written by Hwang and Frederic Kimball and starring Pat Morita and Cloris Leachman, was produced in 1985 and followed a television version of The Dance and the Railroad.

His next play Rich Relations, was his first full-length to feature non-Asian characters. It premiered at the Second Stage Theatre in New York.

Hwang's best-known play was M. Butterfly, which premiered on Broadway in 1988. The play is a deconstruction of Giacomo Puccini's opera Madama Butterfly, alluding to news reports of the 20th-century relationship between French diplomat Bernard Boursicot and Shi Pei Pu, a male Chinese opera singer. Shi purportedly convinced Boursicot that he was a woman throughout their twenty-year relationship. The play won numerous awards for Best Play: a Tony Award (which Hwang was the first Asian American to win), the Drama Desk Award, the John Gassner Award, and the Outer Critics Circle Award. It was the first of three of his works to become a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

Work post-Butterfly
The success of M. Butterfly prompted Hwang's interests in many other different directions, including work for opera, film, and the musical theatre. Hwang became a frequent collaborator as a librettist with the world-renowned composer Philip Glass.

One of M. Butterfly's Broadway producers, David Geffen, oversaw a film version of the play, which was directed by David Cronenberg. Hwang also wrote an original script, Golden Gate, which was produced by American Playhouse. Hwang wrote an early draft of a screenplay based upon A. S. Byatt's Booker Prize-winning novel Possession, which was originally scheduled to be directed by Sydney Pollack. Years later, director/playwright Neil LaBute and Laura Jones would collaborate on the script for a 2002 film.

Throughout the 1990s, Hwang continued to write for the stage, including short plays for the famed Humana Festival at the Actors Theatre of Louisville. His full-length Golden Child, received its world premiere at South Coast Repertory in 1996. Golden Child was later produced in New York City. It won a 1997 Obie Award for playwriting for Hwang's 1996 off-Broadway production. In 1998 it was produced on Broadway, and was nominated that year for a Tony Award for Best Play.

Return to Broadway
In the new millennium, Hwang had two Broadway successes back-to-back. He was asked by director Robert Falls to help co-write the book for the musical Aida (based upon the opera by Giuseppe Verdi). In an earlier version, it had failed in regional theatre tryouts. Hwang and Falls re-wrote a significant portion of the book (by Linda Woolverton). Aida (with music and lyrics by Elton John and Tim Rice) opened in 2000 and proved highly profitable.

His next project was a radical revision of Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein, II, and Joseph Fields' musical Flower Drum Song. Although successful when introduced in the 1950s and early 1960s, it had become dated. The Civil Rights Movement and other cultural changes had disrupted continuing stereotypical portrayals of Asian American communities. Though it had never been a full critical success, the work inspired another generation of Asian Americans to re-imagine this musical. It was adapted from the novel The Flower Drum Song by C. Y. Lee, and tells the culture clash encountered by a Chinese family living in San Francisco.

The Rodgers and Hammerstein Organization allowed Hwang to significantly rework the plot, while retaining character names and songs. His 2002 version —both an homage to the original and a modern re-thinking— won him his third Tony nomination. Though Flower Drum Song is often called the first musical with an all-Asian cast, the original production had cast many non-Asians in leading roles, including Caucasians and an African-American (Juanita Hall). But the 2002 revival was produced with an all-Asian cast of actor-singers, and it toured nationally.

Back to The Public
Hwang's 2007 play Yellow Face relates to his play Face Value, which closed in previews on Broadway in the early 1990s. He wrote it in response to a controversy about the casting of Jonathan Pryce in an Eurasian role in Miss Saigon. Face Value, which included music and lyrics for a musical-within-a-play by Hwang, lost millions of dollars. It was a stumbling block in the careers of Hwang and producer Stuart Ostrow.

In Yellow Face, Hwang wrote a semi-autobiographical play, featuring him as the main character in a media farce about mistaken racial identity. This had been also an important element in Face Value.

Yellow Face premiered in Los Angeles in 2007 at the Mark Taper Forum as a co-production with East West Players. It moved Off-Broadway to the Joseph Papp Public Theater, an important venue for Hwang's earlier work. It enjoyed an extended run at the Papp, and won Hwang his third Obie Award for Playwriting. The play was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

Hwang also wrote a new short play, The Great Helmsman for the Papp's night of plays: Ten.

Opera
Hwang has continued to work steadily in the world of opera and musical theatre, and has written for children's theatre as well. Hwang co-wrote the English-language libretto for an operatic adaptation of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland with music (and part of the libretto) by the Korean composer Unsuk Chin. It received its world premiere at the Bavarian State Opera in 2007 and was released on DVD in 2008.

Hwang wrote the libretto to Howard Shore's opera The Fly, based on David Cronenberg's 1986 film of the same name. The opera premiered on July 2, 2008, at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, France, with Cronenberg as director and Plácido Domingo conducting.

Hwang wrote the libretto for Tarzan, a musical based on a film by Walt Disney Pictures, which was produced on Broadway.

Hwang also collaborated on the multi-media event Icarus at the Edge of Time, adapted from Brian Greene's novel of the same name. It featured music by Philip Glass and a film by "Al and Al." The piece premiered as part of the World Science Festival.

After its major success at Chicago's Goodman Theatre, Hwang's play, Chinglish, quickly made its way to Broadway in October 2011. It won the Joseph Jefferson Award. Chinglish was largely inspired by Hwang's frequent visits to China and his observations of interactions between Chinese and American people. Ticket sales of Chinglish were conservative.

Hwang's short play A Very DNA Reunion was written for the evening of plays The DNA Trail, which was conceived by Jamil Khoury and premiered at the historic Chicago Temple Building.

Since 2010
Hwang worked on a theatrical commission for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and Arena Stage in Washington, DC. This was a musical version of Aimee Mann's album The Forgotten Arm, with Mann and Paul Bryant. He also worked on screenplays for DreamWorks Animation and directors Justin Lin and Jonathan Caouette. In 2013, a production of Yellow Face premiered on YouTube. It was directed and adapted by Jeff Liu, and featured Sab Shimono among other actors.

In 2014 two new Hwang plays were premiered. The first, Kung Fu, about the life of Bruce Lee, premiered as part of his residency at the Signature Theatre Off-Broadway. The play opened February 24, 2014 in a production directed by Leigh Silverman, and featuring Cole Horibe, who had gained fame in the TV series, So You Think You Can Dance. The second was Cain and Abel, one of many plays included in The Mysteries, a re-telling of Bible stories. Conceived by Ed Sylvanus Iskander, The Mysteries also featured the work of playwrights Craig Lucas, Dael Orlandersmith, Jose Rivera, and Jeff Whitty.

In 2014, Hwang joined the Playwriting Faculty of the Columbia University School of the Arts Theatre Program. He was appointed the director of the Playwriting Concentration and will serve as an Associate Professor of Theatre in Playwriting. Hilton Als of the New Yorker has described him as "the most successful Chinese American playwright this country has produced."

In 2016, Hwang became a writer and consulting producer of the Golden Globe-winning television series The Affair and in 1993 wrote a song "Solo" in association with Prince.

In the fall of 2016, the San Francisco Opera premiered Dream of the Red Chamber, an opera by Hwang and Bright Sheng, based on the eighteenth-century Chinese novel of the same name. In the summer of 2016, Hwang became the chair of the board of the American Theatre Wing.

In the Spring of 2018, Hwang's Soft Power premiered at the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles, California. The music and additional lyrics are by Jeanine Tesori. Its cast is largely Asian. It transferred to Off-Broadway at the Public Theater in September 2019 (previews). In May 2020, it was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, making Hwang the first person to be a three-time finalist without winning.

Plays

 * FOB
 * The Dance and the Railroad
 * Family Devotions
 * The House of Sleeping Beauties (based on Yasunari Kawabata's novella House of the Sleeping Beauties)
 * The Sound of a Voice
 * As the Crow Flies
 * Rich Relations
 * M. Butterfly
 * Bondage
 * Face Value
 * Trying to Find Chinatown
 * Bang Kok
 * Golden Child
 * Peer Gynt (based on the play by Henrik Ibsen, co-written with Stephan Muller)
 * Merchandising (Humana Festival T[ext] Shirt play)
 * Jade Flowerpots and Bound Feet
 * Tibet Through the Red Box (based on Peter Sis' book)
 * The Great Helmsman
 * Yellow Face
 * A Very DNA Reunion
 * Chinglish
 * Kung Fu
 * Cain and Abel

Musical theater

 * Book for Aida (music by Elton John, lyrics by Tim Rice; libretto co-written by Linda Woolverton and Robert Falls, based on the opera by Giuseppe Verdi)
 * Revised book for a revival of Flower Drum Song (music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein, II, based upon the novel by C. Y. Lee and original book by Joseph Fields)
 * Book for Tarzan (music and lyrics by Phil Collins, based on the novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs and the Walt Disney Pictures film)
 * Book and lyrics for Soft Power (music and additional lyrics by Jeanine Tesori)

Opera libretti

 * 1000 Airplanes on the Roof (music by Philip Glass)
 * The Voyage (music by Philip Glass, libretto [in English, Latin, and Spanish] based on Glass' story)
 * The Silver River (music by Bright Sheng)
 * The Sound of a Voice (music by Philip Glass, based on Hwang's plays)
 * Ainadamar (music by Osvaldo Golijov, libretto in Spanish)
 * Alice in Wonderland (music by Unsuk Chin, libretto co-written by Chin, based on the books by Lewis Carroll)
 * The Fly (music by Howard Shore, based on the film by David Cronenberg)
 * An American Soldier (music by Huang Ruo)

Film/television

 * The Dance and the Railroad (Source of Adaptation only)
 * Blind Alleys (with Frederic Kimball)
 * Forbidden City, U. S. A. (Assistant only)
 * Forbidden Nights (story, with Tristine Rainer, based on Judith Shapiro's article "The Rocky Course of Love in China")
 * M. Butterfly (based on Hwang's play)
 * Golden Gate
 * Picture Bride (Script Advisor only)
 * The Monkey King (more commonly known as The Lost Empire)
 * Possession (with Laura Jones and Neil LaBute, based on the novel by A. S. Byatt)
 * Sound of a Voice (Source of Adaptation only)
 * White Frog (Executive Producer and Actor only)
 * The Affair (Consulting Producer, Writer of episode "206")

Other

 * Yellow Punk Dolls (live dance; choreography by Ruby Shang, music by John Zorn)
 * Dances in Exile (dance film; choreography by Ruby Shang, film by Howard Silver, music by David Torn, for Alive from Off Center)
 * Come (song "Solo;" co-written with Prince (musician))
 * After Eros (live dance; choreography by Maureen Fleming, music by Philip Glass)
 * Icarus at the Edge of Time (multi-media presentation; music by Philip Glass, film by Al+Al, co-written with Brian Greene, based on Green's novel)
 * Yellow Face (YouTube video; Source of Adaptation only)

Appearances

 * Maxine Hong Kingston: Talking Stories
 * The Chinese Americans
 * Literary Visions
 * Asian Pride Porn
 * Happy Birthday Oscar Wilde
 * Hollywood Chinese
 * Long Story Short
 * Joe Papp in Five Acts
 * Invitation to World Literature

Forewords/introductions/other texts

 * Red Scarf Girl: A Memoir of the Cultural Revolution
 * Asian American Drama: 9 Plays from the Multiethnic Landscape
 * Robot Stories and More Screenplays
 * The Flower Drum Song
 * The State of Asian America: Activism and Resistance in the 1990s
 * The Monkey King (Source of Adaptation Only)
 * Murder in San Jose (Translation Adaptation Only)

Honors/recognition
Hwang has been awarded numerous grants, including fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundations, the New York State Council on the Arts, and the Pew Charitable Trusts. He has been honored with awards from the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, the Association for Asian Pacific American Artists, the Museum of Chinese in the Americas, the East West Players, the Organization of Chinese Americans, the Media Action Network for Asian Americans, the Center for Migration Studies, the Asian American Resource Workshop, the China Institute, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. In 1998, the nation's oldest Asian American theatre company, the East West Players, christened its new mainstage The David Henry Hwang Theatre. Hwang was featured in an autobiographical series by Boise State University with a summary of his early work, as part of the Western Writers Series, written by Douglas Street. In 2011, Hwang received the PEN/Laura Pels International Foundation for Theater Award as a Grand Master of American Theater. In 2012, he was awarded the William Inge Award for Distinguished Achievement in the American Theatre, the Asia Society Cultural Achievement Award, the China Institute Blue Cloud Award, and the Steinberg Distinguished Playwright Award. In 2014, he received the Doris Duke Artist Award. In 2015, he received the 2015 ISPA Distinguished Artist Award.

Mr. Hwang sits on the boards of the Dramatists Guild, Young Playwrights Inc., and the Museum Of Chinese in the Americas (MOCA). He conducts interviews on arts-related topics for the national PBS cable television show Asian America. From 1994 to 2001, he served by appointment of President Bill Clinton on the President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities.

Hwang holds honorary degrees from Columbia College Chicago (1998), the American Conservatory Theater (2000), Lehigh University (2011), University of Southern California (2013), and State University of New York at Purchase (2015).

In 2012, Hwang was named a Fellow of United States Artists.

In 2015, Hwang was named a Ford Foundation Art of Change Fellow.

In 2018, Hwang earned induction into the American Theater Hall of Fame.

Personal life
Hwang was married to Ophelia Chong from 1985 until their divorce in 1989. In 1993, he married actress Kathryn Layng. They have two children together.

In November 2015, Hwang was the victim of a stabbing near his home in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. The assailant stabbed Hwang in the neck, severing his vertebral artery, before running from the scene. Hwang was seriously injured and underwent surgery before being discharged from the hospital. The attack appeared to be random, as nothing was taken; the assailant was never found. Hwang wrote about the experience in The New York Times. The stabbing also inspired a semi-autobiographical portion of Soft Power, in which the lead character, also named David Henry Hwang, is the victim of a random stabbing.

Selected published work

 * Broken Promises, New York: Avon, 1983. (out-of-print; includes FOB, The Dance and the Railroad, Family Devotions, and The House of Sleeping Beauties)
 * M. Butterfly, New York: Plume, 1988. (Acting edition published by Dramatists Play Service, Inc.; audio version available from L. A. Theatre Works; film version available from Warner Bros.)
 * 1,000 Airplanes on the Roof, Salt Lake City: Peregrine Smith, 1989. (Original Music Recording available from Virgin Records)
 * Between Worlds: Contemporary Asian-American Plays, New York: Theatre Communications Group, 1990. (includes Hwang's As the Crow Flies and The Sound of a Voice)
 * FOB and Other Plays, New York: New American Library, 1990. (out-of-print; includes FOB, The Dance and the Railroad, The House of Sleeping Beauties, The Sound of a Voice, Rich Relations and 1,000 Airplanes on the Roof)
 * On a Bed of Rice: An Asian American Erotic Feast, New York: Anchor Books, 1995. (includes Hwang and Prince's Come)
 * Golden Child, New York: Theatre Communications Group, 1998. (Acting edition published by Dramatists Play Service, Inc.)
 * Trying to Find Chinatown: The Selected Plays, New York: Theatre Communications Group, 1999. (includes FOB, The Dance and the Railroad, Family Devotions, The Sound of a Voice, The House of Sleeping Beauties, Bondage, The Voyage, and Trying to Find Chinatown)
 * Humana Festival 1999: The Complete Plays, New Hampshire: Smith and Kraus, 1999. (include Hwang's Merchandising)
 * Rich Relations, New York: Playscripts, Inc., 2002.
 * Flower Drum Song, music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, book by David Henry Hwang; based upon the libretto by Oscar Hammerstein, II and Joseph Fields and the novel The Flower Drum Song by C. Y. Lee; New York: Theatre Communications Group, 2003. (Broadway Cast Recording available from DRG)
 * 2004: The Best Ten-Minute Plays for Two Actors, New Hampshire: Smith and Kraus, 2003. (includes Hwang's Jade Flowerpots and Bound Feet)
 * Peer Gynt (with Stephan Muller), based upon the play by Henrik Ibsen; New York: Playscripts, Inc., 2006.
 * Tibet Through the Red Box, based upon the book by Peter Sis; New York: Playscripts, Inc., 2006.
 * 2007: The Best Ten-Minute Plays for Three or More Actors, New Hampshire: Smith and Kraus, 2008. (includes Hwang's The Great Helmsman)
 * Yellow Face; Theatre Communications Group, 2009. (Acting edition published by Dramatists Play Service, Inc.)
 * Chinglish; Theatre Communications Group, 2012. (Acting edition published by Dramatists Play Service, Inc.

title: David Henry Hwang


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Gish Jen

Gish Jen (born Lillian Jen; August 12, 1955) is a contemporary American writer and speaker.

Early life and education
Gish Jen is a second-generation Chinese American. Her parents emigrated from China in the 1940s; her mother was from Shanghai and her father was from Yixing. Born in Long Island, New York, she grew up in Queens, then Yonkers, then Scarsdale. Her birth name is Lillian, but during her high school years she acquired the nickname Gish, named for actress Lillian Gish.

She graduated from Harvard University in 1977 with a BA in English, and later attended Stanford Business School (1979–1980), but dropped out in favor of the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop, where she earned her MFA in fiction in 1983.

Fiction
Five of her short stories have been reprinted in The Best American Short Stories. Her piece "Birthmates", was selected as one of The Best American Short Stories of The Century by John Updike. Her works include five novels: Typical American, Mona in the Promised Land, The Love Wife, World and Town and The Resisters. She has also written two collections of short fiction, Who's Irish?, and Thank You, Mr. Nixon.

Her first novel, Typical American, was nominated for a National Books Critics' Circle Award. Her second novel, Mona in the Promised Land, features a Chinese-American adolescent who converts to Judaism. The Love Wife, her third novel, portrays an Asian American family with interracial parents and both biological and adopted children.

Her fourth novel, World and Town, portrays a fragile America, its small towns challenged by globalization, development, fundamentalism, and immigration, as well as the ripples sent out by 9/11. World and Town won the 2011 Massachusetts Book Prize in fiction and was nominated for the 2012 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.

Her fifth novel, The Resisters, was released in February 2020 and is a post-automation, feminist baseball dystopia. Set in the not-so-distant future, most jobs are now automated, much seacoast land is under water due to climate change, and the Internet and various social apps have been replaced by one all-seeing Alexa-like sentient Internet. The story centers around a "surplus" family with a prodigy pitching daughter where baseball becomes their field of resistance to an autocratic America. A related short story ("Tell Me Everything") was commissioned by The New York Times as part of their Privacy Project and published January 5, 2020. Audible commissioned a novella spin-off called "I, Autohouse" as part of its Audible Originals series.

Jen's second story collection, Thank You, Mr. Nixon, was published by Knopf on February 1, 2022. It consists of eleven interconnected stories that span the 50 years since Nixon's historic visit to China and meeting with Chairman Mao. The tenth story in the collection, "No More Maybe", was published in the March 19, 2018 edition of The New Yorker, and the final story in the collection, "Detective Dog", was published in the November 22, 2021 edition of The New Yorker, and takes place in COVID-ravaged New York City. "Detective Dog" was selected for the "Best American Short Stories of 2022".

Nonfiction
In 2013 Jen published her first non-fiction book, entitled Tiger Writing: Art, Culture, and the Interdependent Self. Based on the Massey Lectures that Jen delivered at Harvard in 2012, Tiger Writing explores East–West differences in self construction, and how these affect art and especially literature.

Jen's second work of non-fiction is "The Girl at the Baggage Claim: Explaining the East-West Culture Gap," published in February 2017. This is a provocative study of the different ideas Easterners and Westerners have about the self and society and what this means for current debates in art, education, geopolitics, and business. Drawing on stories and personal anecdotes, as well as recent research in cultural psychology, Jen reveals how this difference shapes what we perceive, remember, say, do, and make – in short, how it shapes everything from our ideas about copying and talking in class to the difference between Apple and Alibaba.

Jen has also published numerous pieces in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, and The New Republic, among others. In response to the 2021 Atlanta spa shootings, Jen penned an op-ed for the Times.

Honors and awards
In 2009, Princeton's Elaine Showalter devoted much attention to Jen in her survey of American women writers, "A Jury of Her Peers: American Women Writers From Anne Bradstreet to Annie Proulx." In an article in The Guardian, Showalter elaborated, including Jen in a list of eight top authors, and pointing out that Jen's "vision of a multicultural America goes well beyond the angry rants or despairing projections of Roth, DeLillo, McCarthy or other finalists in the Great American Novel competition." In 2012, Junot Diaz concurred, calling Jen "the Great American Novelist we're always hearing about." And in 2000, in a millennial edition of The Times Magazine in the UK, in which figures were asked to name their successors in the 21st century, John Updike picked Jen.

Thank You, Mr. Nixon was longlisted for the inaugural Carol Shields Prize for Fiction in 2023.

 * 2019     Honorary Fellow, Modern Languages Association
 * 2017     Legacy Award, Museum of Chinese in America, New York
 * 2015     Honorary PhD, Williams College
 * 2013     Named Sidney Harman Writer-in-Residence, Baruch-CUNY
 * 2013     Story included in The Best American Short Stories of 2013
 * 2012     Delivered the Massey Lectures at Harvard University (an annual lecture series sponsored by the American Studies program)
 * 2011	Winner of the Massachusetts Book Prize
 * 2011     Nominated for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award
 * 2009	Elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
 * 2006	Featured in a PBS American Masters Program on the American Novel
 * 2004    Honorary PhD, Emerson College
 * 2003	Received a Mildred and Harold Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters
 * 2003	Received a Fulbright Fellowship to the People's Republic of China
 * 2001	Received a Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study Fellowship
 * 1999	Story included in The Best American Short Stories of the Century
 * 1999	Received a Lannan Literary Award for Fiction
 * 1995	Story included in The Best American Short Stories of 1995
 * 1992 	Received a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship
 * 1991 	Finalist for the National Book Critics' Circle Award
 * 1988	Received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship
 * 1988	Story included in The Best American Short Stories of 1988
 * 1986	Received a Radcliffe College Bunting Institute Fellowship

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Gish Jen


text:
Ounce

The ounce  is any of several different units of mass, weight, or volume and is derived almost unchanged from the uncia, an Ancient Roman unit of measurement.

The avoirdupois ounce (exactly 1 oz) is $1/16$ avoirdupois pound; this is the United States customary and British imperial ounce. It is primarily used in the United States to measure packaged foods and food portions, postal items, areal density of fabric and paper, boxing gloves, and so on, but it is sometimes also used elsewhere in the Anglosphere.

Although the avoirdupois ounce is the mass measure used for most purposes, the 'troy ounce' of exactly 1 ozt is used instead for the mass of precious metals such as gold, silver, platinum, palladium, rhodium, etc.

The term 'ounce' is also used in other contexts:
 * The ounce-force is a measure of force (see below).
 * The fluid ounce is a measure of volume.

Historically, a variety of different ounces measuring mass or volume were used in different jurisdictions by different trades and at different times in history.

Etymology
Ounce derives from the Ancient Roman uncia (meaning: a twelfth), a unit in the Ancient Roman units of measurement weighing about 27.35 grams or 0.967 of an Avoirdupois ounce, that was one-twelfth ($1/12$) of the Roman pound (libra). This in turn comes from Latin uno ('one'), and thus originally meant simply 'unit'. The term uncia was borrowed twice: first into Old English as ynsan or yndsan from an unattested Vulgar Latin form with ts for c before i (palatalization), which survives in modern English as inch, and a second time into Middle English through Anglo-Norman and Middle French (unce, once, ounce), yielding English ounce. The abbreviation oz came later from the Italian cognate onza, pronounced (now oncia, pronounced ).

Definitions
Historically, in different parts of the world, at different points in time, and for different applications, the ounce (or its translation) has referred to broadly similar but still slightly different standards of mass.

International avoirdupois ounce
The international avoirdupois ounce (abbreviated oz) is defined as exactly 28.349523125 g under the international yard and pound agreement of 1959, signed by the United States and countries of the Commonwealth of Nations.

In the avoirdupois system, sixteen ounces make up an avoirdupois pound, and the avoirdupois pound is defined as 7000 grains; one avoirdupois ounce is therefore equal to 437.5 grains.

The ounce is still a standard unit in the United States. In the United Kingdom it ceased to be an independent unit of measure in 2000, but may still be seen as an (imprecise) indicator of portion sizes in burger and steak restaurants.

International troy ounce
A troy ounce (abbreviated oz t) is equal to 480 grains. Consequently, the international troy ounce is equal to exactly 31.1034768 grams. There are 12 troy ounces in the now obsolete troy pound.

Today, the troy ounce is used only to express the mass of precious metals such as gold, platinum, palladium, rhodium or silver. Bullion coins are the most common products produced and marketed in troy ounces, but precious metal bars also exist in gram and kilogram (kg) sizes. (A kilogram bullion bar contains 1 kg.)

For historical measurement of gold,
 * a fine ounce is a troy ounce of pure gold content in a gold bar, computed as fineness multiplied by gross weight
 * a standard ounce is a troy ounce of 22 carat gold, 91.66% pure (an 11 to 1 proportion of gold to alloy material)

Metric ounces
Some countries have redefined their ounces in the metric system. For example, the German apothecaries' ounce of 30 grams, is very close to the previously widespread Nuremberg ounce, but the divisions and multiples come out in metric.

In 1820, the Dutch redefined their ounce (in Dutch, ons) as 100 grams. In 1937 the IJkwet of the Netherlands officially abolished the term, but it is still commonly used. Dutch amendments to the metric system, such as an ons or 100 grams, has been inherited, adopted, and taught in Indonesia beginning in elementary school. It is also listed as standard usage in Indonesia's national dictionary, the Kamus Besar Bahasa Indonesia, and the government's official elementary-school curriculum.

Apothecaries' ounce
The apothecaries' ounce (abbreviated ℥) equivalent to the troy ounce, was formerly used by apothecaries, and is thus obsolete.

Maria Theresa ounce
"Maria Theresa ounce" was once introduced in Ethiopia and some European countries, which was equal to the weight of one Maria Theresa thaler, or 28.0668 g. Both the weight and the value are the definition of one birr, still in use in present-day Ethiopia and formerly in Eritrea.

Spanish ounce
The Spanish pound (Spanish libra) was 460 g. The Spanish ounce (Spanish onza) was $1/16$ of a pound, i.e. 28.75 g.

Tower ounce
The Tower ounce of 450 gr was a fraction of the tower pound used in the English mints, the principal one being in the Tower of London. It dates back to the Anglo-Saxon coinage weight standard. It was abolished in favour of the Troy ounce by Henry VIII in 1527.

Ounce-force
An ounce-force is $1/undefined$ of a pound-force, or about 1/16 lbf. It is defined as the force exerted by a mass of one avoirdupois ounce under standard gravity (at the surface of the earth, its weight).

The "ounce" in "ounce-force" is equivalent to an avoirdupois ounce; ounce-force is a measurement of force using avoirdupois ounces. It is customarily not identified or differentiated. The term has limited use in engineering calculations to simplify unit conversions between mass, force, and acceleration systems of calculations.

Fluid ounce
A fluid ounce (abbreviated fl oz, fl. oz. or oz. fl.) is a unit of volume. An imperial fluid ounce is defined in British law as 28.4130625 millilitres, a US customary fluid ounce is 29.57353 mL, and a US food labelling fluid ounce is 30 mL. The fluid ounce is sometimes referred to simply as an "ounce" in contexts where its use is implicit, such as bartending.

Fabric weight
Ounces are also used to express the "weight", or more accurately the areal density, of a textile fabric in North America, Asia, or the UK, as in "16 oz denim". The number refers to the weight in ounces of a given amount of fabric, either a yard of a given width, or a square yard, where the depth of the fabric is a fabric-specific constant.

Copper layer thickness of a printed circuit board
The most common unit of measure for the copper thickness on a printed circuit board (PCB) is ounces (oz), as in mass. It is the resulting thickness when the mass of copper is pressed flat and spread evenly over a one-square-foot area. 1 oz will roughly equal 34.7 μm.

title: Ounce


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Taira no Kiyomori

Taira no Kiyomori (平 清盛) was a military leader and kugyō of the late Heian period of Japan. He established the first samurai-dominated administrative government in the history of Japan.

Early life
Kiyomori was born in Japan, in 1118 as the first son of Taira no Tadamori. His mother, Gion no Nyogo, was a palace servant according to The Tale of the Heike.

Family
Father: Taira no Tadamori Mother: Gion no Nyogo (d. 1147) Concubine(s): Taira no Tokiko Children:
 * Taira no Shigemori
 * Taira no Munemori
 * Taira no Tomomori
 * Taira no Tokuko
 * Taira no Shigehira

Career
After the death of his father in 1159, Kiyomori assumed control of the Taira clan and ambitiously entered the political realm in which he had previously only held a minor post. Before that though, in 1156, he and Minamoto no Yoshitomo, head of the Minamoto clan, suppressed the rebels in the Hōgen Rebellion. This established the Taira and Minamoto as the top samurai clans in Kyoto. However, this caused the allies to become bitter rivals which culminated four years later during the Heiji Rebellion in 1160. Kiyomori, emerging victorious with Yoshitomo (whose two eldest sons were killed), was now the head of the single most powerful warrior clan in Kyoto. However, his clan's power and influence in the provinces at this time is a matter of debate. Kiyomori showed mercy and exiled a few of Yoshitomo's surviving sons, including Yoritomo, Noriyori, and Yoshitsune – a benevolence that would turn out to be the Taira clan's downfall later on.

Due to his status as the head of the sole remaining warrior clan, Kiyomori was in a unique position to manipulate the court rivalry between the retired emperor, Go-Shirakawa, and his son, Emperor Nijō. Because of this manipulation, Kiyomori was able to climb the ranks of government, though the majority of his promotions as well as the success of his family in gaining ranks and titles at court was due to Shirakawa's patronage. This culminated in 1167, when Kiyomori became the first courtier of a warrior family to be appointed daijō-daijin, chief minister of the government, and the de facto administrator of the imperial government. As was the norm, he soon relinquished the position and leadership of the Taira clan, with the goal of maintaining the social and political prestige of having attained the highest office in the land, but being free of the attendant duties. This had been a common practice for many years in the highest levels of Japanese government and in doing so Kiyomori was asserting what he felt was his strong position in the Kyoto government. However, many of the courtiers from traditional (non-warrior) noble families were less than pleased with both Kiyomori's attainment of power, and how he comported himself with regard to other high ranking courtiers.

In 1171, Kiyomori arranged a marriage between his daughter Tokuko and Emperor Takakura. Their first son, the future Emperor Antoku, was born in 1178. The next year, in 1179, Kiyomori staged a coup d'état forcing the resignation of his rivals from all government posts and subsequently banishing them. He then filled the open government positions with his allies and relatives, and imprisoned the cloistered Emperor Go-Shirakawa. Finally, in 1180 Kiyomori forced Emperor Takakura to abdicate and give Prince Tokihito the throne, who then became Emperor Antoku.

With the exertion of Taira power and wealth and Kiyomori's new monopoly on authority, many of his allies, most of the provincial samurai, and even members of his own clan turned against him. Prince Mochihito, brother of Emperor Takakura, called on Kiyomori's old rivals of the Minamoto clan to rise against the Taira, beginning the Genpei War in the middle of 1180. Kiyomori died early the next year from sickness, leaving his son Munemori to preside over the downfall and destruction of the Taira at the hands of the Minamoto in 1185.

The Tale of the Heike states that as he lay dying, Kiyomori's fever was so high that anyone who attempted to even get near him would be burned by the heat.

The rapid rise of certain notable figures to prominence, as well as their decline, have been popularly attributed to Dakiniten. A certain anecdote regarding the military leader Taira no Kiyomori found in the Genpei Jōsuiki (one of a number of variants of the Heike Monogatari) claims that Kiyomori once shot an arrow at a fox during a hunt. The fox then transformed into a woman who promised to grant Kiyomori whatever he wanted in exchange for her life. Kiyomori, realizing this woman is none other than the goddess Kiko Tennō (貴狐天王, lit. "Venerable Fox Deva-King", i.e. Dakiniten), spared her life. He subsequently became a devotee of the goddess, despite his awareness that the benefits obtained through the Dakiniten rite (吒天の法, Daten no hō) would not be passed on to his progeny. The story thus attributes both Kiyomori's rise in power and the subsequent fall of his clan to his performance of the Dakiniten ritual.

Cultural references
Taira no Kiyomori is the main character in the Kamakura period epic, the Tale of Heike.

The Daiei Film production of Kenji Mizoguchi's 1955 film Shin Heike Monogatari (variously translated as Taira Clan Saga, Tales of the Taira Clan, and The Sacrilegious Hero) credits its story as "from the novel by Yoshikawa Eiji", which in turn is a 1950 retelling of the 14th-century epic The Tale of the Heike. The opening introduction to the film, in its English subtitles, is "Japan, in the Tenth and Eleventh centuries, was virtually controlled by the Fujiwara clan. But in the Twelfth century, Fujiwara influence began to wane, partly due to the double-monarchy. An Emperor would abdicate but continue to rule from behind the scenes. Thus there was an Imperial Court and an ex-Emperor's Cloister Court, both emperors being descended from the Sun Goddess. Inevitably, there was conflict between the courts. Both began to depend on the warriors, the samurai. Until then, Fujiwara rule had involved little bloodshed. Some monasteries also had their own armies. The monasteries used them to intimidate both courts. Big landowners paid no taxes. Piracy and banditry increased. The Cloister Court attempted to restore order using the warriors of the samurai Taira Clan. Thus were sown the seeds of military governments which dominated Japan for 700 years [i.e., until 1868]. This story begins in 1137, in Kyoto, ancient capital of Japan."

Unlike most other tellings, Mizoguchi's film includes only the story of Taira no Kiyomori's youth, depicting him as a heroic character, particularly in breaking the power of the tyrannical armed monks and their palanquin shrines, where he says at his father's grave "Father, with two arrows from my bow I destroyed a superstition that gripped men for centuries. The courtiers and priests have tried to have me for blasphemy. But others have supported me, more than I expected. Some of them are lords, too. Father, a greater battle lies ahead. But I remain undaunted. No matter how I am beaten, I shall rise again". The film then ends with Kiyomori approaching an alfresco Fujiwara dance, vowing to himself, "Dance, my Lords, dance. Your end is near. Tomorrow will be ours!"

Taira no Kiyomori was featured by 19th-century woodblock print artists as an exemplar of guilt and retribution, see the accompanying print by Yoshitoshi. The famous print generally known as The Vision of Kiyomori by Utagawa Hiroshige depicts the actor Nakamura Utayemon IV in the character of Kiyomori, confronted by the horrific vision of his snow-filled garden transformed into the heaped bones and skulls of his slaughtered enemies.

In video games, Kiyomori appears in Warriors Orochi 2, 3 and 4 fighting for Orochi's army and using prayer beads as weapons. He also makes an appearance in Dynasty Warriors Strikeforce, as a boss in one of the game's Crossover Missions. Additionally, he is the main antagonist in Harukanaru Toki no Naka De 3.

Kiyomori also features prominently as a sympathetic villain in Osamu Tezuka's Phoenix series in the first half of the ninth volume, Turbulent Times (retitled Civil War in English), another Genpei War epic. Like most villains in the series he desires the titular bird for its immortality granting blood, due to his desire to continue to lead and protect the Taira clan and lack of confidence in his successors, but winds up being tricked into buying an imported peacock instead.

A character named Lord Kiyomori appears in Book 6, "The Lords of the Rising Sun" in the Fabled Lands adventure gamebook series, where he is portrayed as the Imperial Sovereign Takakura's chancellor, and on the verge of war with the self-proclaimed shogun by the name of "Yoritomo".

The 2012 NHK Taiga drama was about him.

Honours

 * Junior First Rank (11 February 1167)

title: Taira no Kiyomori


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Calendar of saints

The calendar of saints is the traditional Christian method of organizing a liturgical year by associating each day with one or more saints and referring to the day as the feast day or feast of said saint. The word "feast" in this context does not mean "a large meal, typically a celebratory one", but instead "an annual religious celebration, a day dedicated to a particular saint".

The system arose from the early Christian custom of commemorating each martyr annually on the date of their death, their birth into heaven, a date therefore referred to in Latin as the martyr's dies natalis ('day of birth'). In the Eastern Orthodox Church, a calendar of saints is called a Menologion. "Menologion" may also mean a set of icons on which saints are depicted in the order of the dates of their feasts, often made in two panels.

History

As the number of recognized saints increased during Late Antiquity and the first half of the Middle Ages, eventually every day of the year had at least one saint who was commemorated on that date. To deal with this increase, some saints were moved to alternate days in some traditions or completely removed, with the result that some saints have different feast days in different calendars. For example, saints Perpetua and Felicity died on 7 March, but this date was later assigned to St. Thomas Aquinas, allowing them only a commemoration (see Tridentine calendar), so in 1908 they were moved one day earlier. When the 1969 reform of the Catholic calendar moved him to 28 January, they were moved back to 7 March (see General Roman Calendar). Both days can thus be said to be their feast day, in different traditions. The General Roman Calendar, which list those saints celebrated in the entire church, contains only a selection of the saints for each of its days. A fuller list is found in the Roman Martyrology, and some of the saints there may be celebrated locally.

The earliest feast days of saints were those of martyrs, venerated as having shown for Christ the greatest form of love, in accordance with the teaching: "Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends." Saint Martin of Tours is said to be the first or at least one of the first non-martyrs to be venerated as a saint. The title "confessor" was used for such saints, who had confessed their faith in Christ by their lives rather than by their deaths. Martyrs are regarded as dying in the service of the Lord, and confessors are people who died natural deaths. A broader range of titles was used later, such as: Virgin, Pastor, Bishop, Monk, Priest, Founder, Abbot, Apostle, Doctor of the Church.

The Tridentine Missal has common formulæ for Masses of Martyrs, Confessors who were bishops, Doctors of the Church, Confessors who were not Bishops, Abbots, Virgins, Non-Virgins, Dedication of Churches, and Feast Days of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Pope Pius XII added a common formula for Popes. The 1962 Roman Missal of Pope John XXIII omitted the common of Apostles, assigning a proper Mass to every feast day of an Apostle. The present Roman Missal has common formulas for the Dedication of Churches, the Blessed Virgin Mary, Martyrs (with special formulas for missionary martyrs and virgin martyrs), pastors (subdivided into bishops, generic pastors, founders of churches, and missionaries), Doctors of the Church, Virgins, and (generic) Saints (with special formulas for abbots, monks, nuns, religious, those noted for works of mercy, educators, and [generically] women saints).

This calendar system, when combined with major church festivals and movable and immovable feasts, constructs a very human and personalised yet often localized way of organizing the year and identifying dates. Some Christians continue the tradition of dating by saints' days: their works may appear "dated" as "The Feast of Saint Martin".

As different Christian jurisdictions parted ways theologically, differing lists of saints began to develop. This happened because the same individual may be considered differently by one church; in extreme examples, one church's saint may be another church's heretic, as in the cases of Nestorius, Pope Dioscorus I of Alexandria, or Archbishop Flavian of Constantinople.

Ranking of feast days
In the Catholic Church feast days are ranked in accordance with their importance. In the post-Vatican II form of the Roman Rite, feast days are ranked (in descending order of importance) as solemnities, feasts or memorials (obligatory or optional). Pope John XXIII's 1960 Code of Rubrics, whose use remains authorized by the motu proprio Summorum Pontificum, divides liturgical days into I, II, III, and IV class days. Those who use even earlier forms of the Roman Rite rank feast days as doubles (of three or four kinds), Semidoubles, and Simples. See Ranking of liturgical days in the Roman Rite.

In the Eastern Orthodox Church the ranking of feasts varies from church to church. In the Russian Orthodox Church they are: Great Feasts, middle, and minor feasts. Each portion of such feasts may also be called feasts as follows: All-Night Vigils, Polyeleos, Great Doxology, Sextuple ("sixfold", having six stichera at Vespers and six troparia at the Canon of Matins). There are also distinctions between Simple feasts and double (i.e., two simple feasts celebrated together). In Double Feasts, the order of hymns and readings for each feast are rigidly instructed in Typikon, the liturgy book.

The Lutheran Churches celebrate Festivals, Lesser Festivals, Days of Devotion, and Commemorations.

In the Church of England, mother Church of the Anglican Communion, there are Principal Feasts and Principal Holy Days, Festivals, Lesser Festivals, and Commemorations.

Connection to tropical cyclones
Before the advent of standardized naming of tropical storms and hurricanes in the North Atlantic basin, tropical storms and hurricanes that affected the island of Puerto Rico were informally named after the Catholic saints corresponding to the feast days when the cyclones either made landfall or started to seriously affect the island. Examples are: the 1780 San Calixto hurricane (more widely known as the Great Hurricane of 1780, the deadliest in the North Atlantic basin's recorded history; named after Pope Callixtus I (Saint Callixtus), whose feast day is October 14), the 1867 San Narciso hurricane (named after Saint Narcissus of Jerusalem, feast day October 29), the 1899 San Ciriaco hurricane (the deadliest in the island's recorded history; Saint Cyriacus, August 8), the 1928 San Felipe hurricane (the strongest in terms of measured wind speed; Saint Philip, father of Saint Eugenia of Rome, September 13), and the 1932 San Ciprian hurricane (Saint Cyprian, September 26).

This practice continued until quite some time after the United States Weather Bureau (now called the National Weather Service) started publishing and using official female human names (initially; male names were added starting in 1979 after the NWS relinquished control over naming to the World Meteorological Organization). The last two usages of this informal naming scheme in Puerto Rico were in 1956 (Hurricane Betsy, locally nicknamed Santa Clara after Saint Clare of Assisi, feast day August 12 back then; her feast day was advanced one day in 1970) and 1960 (Hurricane Donna, nicknamed San Lorenzo after Saint Lawrence Justinian, September 5 back then; feast day now observed January 8 by Canons regular of St. Augustine).

title: Calendar of saints


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Talk:Commercials

This name of this article is in the plural and Commercial is a redirect to Commerce hmm... commercial advertising but then we already have Advertising? Mintguy 10:31 Feb 7, 2003 (UTC)

How about Advertisement? -- Tarquin

How about Television commercial? This would allow for another article on Radio commercial, and both would be links on Advertising -- GUllman

title: Talk:Commercials


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Saint Valentine

Saint Valentine (San Valentino; Valentinus) was a 3rd-century Roman saint, commemorated in Western Christianity on February 14 and in Eastern Orthodoxy on July 6. From the High Middle Ages, his feast day has been associated with a tradition of courtly love. He is also a patron saint of Terni, epilepsy and beekeepers. Saint Valentine was a clergyman –either a priest or a bishop –in the Roman Empire who ministered to persecuted Christians. He was martyred and his body buried on the Via Flaminia on February 14, which has been observed as the Feast of Saint Valentine (Saint Valentine's Day) since at least the eighth century.

Relics of him were kept in the Church and Catacombs of San Valentino in Rome, which "remained an important pilgrim site throughout the Middle Ages until the relics of St. Valentine were transferred to the church of Santa Prassede during the pontificate of Nicholas IV". His skull, crowned with flowers, is exhibited in the Basilica of Santa Maria in Cosmedin, Rome. Other relics of him are in Whitefriar Street Carmelite Church, Dublin, Ireland, a popular place of pilgrimage, especially on Saint Valentine's Day, for those seeking love. At least two different Saint Valentines are mentioned in the early martyrologies. For Saint Valentine of Rome, along with Saint Valentine of Terni, "abstracts of the acts of the two saints were in nearly every church and monastery of Europe", according to Professor Jack B. Oruch of the University of Kansas.

Saint Valentine is commemorated in the Anglican Communion and the Lutheran Churches on February 14. In the Eastern Orthodox Church, he is recognised on July 6; in addition, the Eastern Orthodox Church observes the feast of Hieromartyr Valentine, Bishop of Interamna, on July 30. In 1969, the Catholic Church removed his name from the General Roman Calendar, leaving his liturgical celebration to local calendars, though use of the pre-1970 liturgical calendar is also authorised under the conditions indicated in the motu proprio Summorum Pontificum of 2007. The Catholic Church continues to recognise him as a saint, listing him as such in the February 14 entry in the Roman Martyrology, and authorising liturgical veneration of him on February 14 in any place where that day is not devoted to some other obligatory celebration, in accordance with the rule that on such a day the Mass may be that of any saint listed in the Martyrology for that day.

Identification
Saint Valentine does not occur in the earliest list of Roman martyrs, the Chronography of 354, although the patron of the Chronography's compilation was a wealthy Roman Christian named Valentinus. There is a reference to his feast day on 14 February in one of the 9th century copies of the Martyrologium Hieronymianum, which may have been compiled originally between 460 and 544 from earlier local sources, but the entry may be much later. The widespread modern legend that the feast of St. Valentine on February 14 was first established in 496 by Pope Gelasius I, who included Valentine among all those "... whose names are justly reverenced among men, but whose acts are known only to God" is in fact based upon a statement in the Gelasian Decree which mentions St George but not St Valentine, and is not in fact by Gelasius.

The Catholic Encyclopedia and other hagiographical sources speak of three Saints Valentine that appear in connection with February 14. One was a Roman priest, another the bishop of Interamna (modern Terni, Italy) both buried along the Via Flaminia outside Rome, at different distances from the city. The third was said to be a saint who suffered on the same day with a number of companions in the Roman province of Africa, of whom nothing else is known.

Though the extant accounts of the martyrdoms of the first two listed saints are of a late date and contain legendary elements, "a common nucleus of fact" may underlie the two accounts and they may refer to "a single person". According to the official biography of the Diocese of Terni, Bishop Valentine was born and lived in Interamna and while on a temporary stay in Rome he was imprisoned, tortured, and martyred there on February 14, 269. His body was hastily buried at a nearby cemetery and a few nights later his disciples retrieved his body and returned him home.

The Roman Martyrology, the Catholic Church's official list of recognised saints, for February 14 gives only one Saint Valentine: a martyr who died on the Via Flaminia.

The name "Valentine", derived from valens (worthy, strong, powerful), was popular in Late Antiquity. About eleven other saints with the name Valentine are commemorated in the Catholic Church. Some Eastern Churches of the Western rite may provide still other different lists of Saint Valentines. The Roman martyrology lists only seven who died on days other than February 14: a priest from Viterbo (November 3); Valentine of Passau, papal missionary bishop to Raetia, among first patrons of Passau, and later hermit in Zenoburg, near Mais, South Tyrol, Italy, where he died in 475 (January 7); a 5th-century priest and hermit (July 4); a Spanish hermit who died in about 715 (October 25); Valentine Berrio Ochoa, martyred in 1861 (November 24); and Valentine Jaunzarás Gómez, martyred in 1936 (September 18). It also lists a virgin, Saint Valentina, who was martyred in 308 (July 25) in Caesarea, Palestine.

Hagiography and testimony
The inconsistency in the identification of the saint is replicated in the various vitae that are ascribed to him.

A common hagiography describes Saint Valentine as a priest of Rome or as the former Bishop of Terni, an important town of Umbria, in central Italy. While under house arrest of Judge Asterius, and discussing his faith with him, Valentinus (the Latin version of his name) was discussing the validity of Jesus. The judge put Valentinus to the test and brought to him the judge's adopted blind daughter. If Valentinus succeeded in restoring the girl's sight, Asterius would do whatever he asked. Valentinus, praying to God, laid his hands on her eyes and the child's vision was restored.

Immediately humbled, the judge asked Valentinus what he should do. Valentinus replied that all of the idols around the judge's house should be broken, and that the judge should fast for three days and then undergo the Christian sacrament of baptism. The judge obeyed and, as a result of his fasting and prayer, freed all the Christian inmates under his authority. The judge, his family, and his forty-four member household of adult family members and servants were baptised.

Valentinus was later arrested again for continuing to evangelise. He was sent to the prefect of Rome, to the emperor Claudius Gothicus (Claudius II) himself. Claudius took a liking to him until Valentinus tried to convince Claudius to embrace Christianity. Claudius refused and condemned Valentinus to death, commanding that Valentinus either renounce his faith or he would be beaten with clubs and beheaded. Valentinus refused and was executed outside the Flaminian Gate on February 14, 269.

An embellishment to this account states that before his execution, Saint Valentine wrote a note to Asterius's daughter signed "from your Valentine", which is said to have "inspired today's romantic missives".

The Legenda Aurea of Jacobus de Voragine, compiled in about 1260 and one of the most-read books of the High Middle Ages, gives sufficient details of the saints for each day of the liturgical year to inspire a homily on each occasion. The very brief vita of St Valentine states that he was executed for refusing to deny Christ by the order of the "Emperor Claudius" in the year 269. Before his head was cut off, this Valentine restored sight and hearing to the daughter of his jailer. Jacobus makes a play with the etymology of "Valentine", "as containing valor".

A popularly ascribed hagiographical identity appears in the Nuremberg Chronicle (1493). Alongside a woodcut portrait of Valentine, the text states that he was a Roman priest of exceptional learning who converted the daughter of Asterius and forty-nine others to Christianity before being martyred during the reign of Claudius Gothicus.

There are many other legends behind Saint Valentine. One is that in the 3rd century AD it is said that Valentine, who was a priest, defied the order of the emperor Claudius and secretly performed Christian weddings for couples, allowing the husbands involved to escape conscription into the pagan army. This legend claims that soldiers were sparse at this time so this was a big inconvenience to the emperor. The account mentions that in order "to remind these men of their vows and God’s love, Saint Valentine is said to have cut hearts from parchment", giving them to these persecuted Christians, a possible origin of the widespread use of hearts on St. Valentine's Day.

Churches named after Saint Valentine

There are many churches dedicated to Saint Valentine in countries such as Italy. Saint Valentine was venerated no more than other Christian martyrs and saints.

A 5th- or 6th-century work called Passio Marii et Marthae made up a legend about Saint Valentine's Basilica being dedicated to Saint Valentine in Rome. A later Passio repeated the legend and added the adornment that Pope Julius I (357–352) had built the ancient basilica S. Valentini extra Portam on top of his sepulchre, in the Via Flaminia. This church was really named after a 4th-century tribune called Valentino, who donated the land on which it is built. It hosted the martyr's relics until the 13th century, when they were transferred to Santa Prassede, and the ancient basilica decayed.

Saint Valentine's Church in Rome, built in 1960 for the needs of the Olympic Village, continues as a modern, well-visited parish church.

Saint Valentine's Day
Saint Valentine of Rome was martyred on February 14 in AD 269. The Feast of Saint Valentine, also known as Saint Valentine's Day, was established by Pope Gelasius I in AD 496 to be celebrated on February 14 in honour of the Christian martyr.

February 14 is Saint Valentine's Day in the Lutheran calendar of saints. Valentine is remembered in the Church of England with a commemoration on February 14. The Church of England had him in its pre-Reformation calendars, and restored his mention as bishop and martyr in its 1661–62 Book of Common Prayer, and most provinces of the Anglican Communion celebrate his feast. The Catholic Church includes him in its official list of saints, the Roman Martyrology.

Saint Valentine was also in the General Roman Calendar for celebration as a simple feast until 1955, when Pope Pius XII reduced all such feasts to just a commemoration within another celebration. The 1969 revision of the General Roman Calendar removed this mention, leaving it for inclusion only in local calendars such as that of Balzan, Malta. His commemoration was still in the 1962 Roman Missal and is thus observed also by those who, in the circumstances indicated in Pope Benedict XVI's 2007 motu proprio Summorum Pontificum, use that edition.

July 6 is the date on which the Eastern Orthodox Church celebrates the Roman presbyter Valentine; on July 30 it observes the feast of the Hieromartyr Valentine, Bishop of Interamna. Members of the Greek Orthodox Church named Valentinos (male) or Valentina (female) may observe their name day on the Western ecclesiastical calendar date of February 14.

English 18th-century antiquarians Alban Butler and Francis Douce, noting the obscurity of Saint Valentine's identity, suggested that Saint Valentine's Day was created as an attempt to supersede the pagan holiday of Lupercalia (mid-February in Rome). This idea has lately been dismissed by academics and researchers, such as Jack B. Oruch of the University of Kansas, Henry Ansgar Kelly of the University of California, Los Angeles and Michael Matthew Kaylor of Masaryk University. Many of the current legends that characterize Saint Valentine were invented in the 14th century in England, notably by Geoffrey Chaucer and his circle, when the feast day of February 14 first became associated with romantic love.

Oruch charges that the traditions associated with "Valentine's Day", documented in Geoffrey Chaucer's Parlement of Foules and set in the fictional context of an old tradition, did not exist before Chaucer. He argues that the speculative explanation of sentimental customs, posing as historical fact, had their origins among 18th-century antiquaries, notably Alban Butler, the author of Butler's Lives of Saints, and have been perpetuated even by respectable modern scholars. In the French 14th-century manuscript illumination from a Vies des Saints (illustration above), Saint Valentine, bishop of Terni, oversees the construction of his basilica at Terni; there is no suggestion here that the bishop was a patron of lovers.

During the Middle Ages, it was believed that birds paired in mid-February. This was then associated with the romance of Valentine. Although these legends differ, Valentine's Day is widely recognised as a day for romance and devotion.

Associated Christian relics
The flower-crowned alleged skull of St. Valentine is exhibited in the Basilica of Santa Maria in Cosmedin, Rome.

St. Valentine's remains are deposited in St Anton's Church, Madrid, where they have lain since the late 1700s. They were a present from the Pope to King Carlos IV, who entrusted them to the Order of Poor Clerics Regular of the Mother of God of the Pious Schools (Piarists). The relics have been displayed publicly since 1984, in a foundation open to the public at all times in order to help people in need.

Whitefriar Street Carmelite Church, Dublin, also houses some relics of St Valentine. On 27 December 1835 the Very Reverend Father John Spratt, Master of Sacred Theology to the Carmelite order in Dublin, was sent the partial remains of St Valentine by Cardinal Carlo Odescalchi, under the auspices of Pope Gregory XVI. The relics and the accompanying letter from Cardinal Odescalchi have remained in the church ever since. The remains, which include "a small vessel tinged with his blood", were sent as a token of esteem following an eloquent sermon Fr Spratt had delivered in Rome.

On Saint Valentine's Day in Ireland, many individuals who seek true love make a Christian pilgrimage to the Shrine of St. Valentine in Whitefriar Street Carmelite Church in Dublin, which is said to house relics of Saint Valentine of Rome; they pray at the shrine in hope of finding romance. There lies a book in which foreigners and locals have written their prayer requests for love.

Another relic was found in 2003 in Prague in the Basilica of St. Peter and St. Paul at Vyšehrad.

Saint Valentine's relics can also be found in Slovakia in two cities. The first is Košice, where the relic is placed in the Immaculate Conception (placed in 1720). The second is Nováky, which they had in the church of St. Nicholas and the rare statue of Saint Valentine, which was stolen in the 90s (according to one saved original part of the statue – the head, a new copy was created, which was ceremoniously placed in the church in 2000.

A silver reliquary containing a fragment of St. Valentine's skull is found in the parish church of St. Mary's Assumption in Chełmno, Poland.

Relics can also be found in Mytilene on the Greek island of Lesbos.

Another set of relics can also be found in Savona, in the Cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta.

Alleged relics of St. Valentine also lie at the reliquary of Roquemaure, Gard, France, in the St. Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna, in Balzan in Malta and also in Blessed John Duns Scotus Church in the Gorbals area of Glasgow, Scotland. There is also a gold reliquary bearing the words "Corpus St. Valentin, M" (Body of St. Valentine, Martyr) at Birmingham Oratory, UK, in one of the side altars in the main church.

title: Saint Valentine


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Talk:Biogeographic realm

Map
The realm map on this page, though very nicely done, contains some major inaccuracies. For instance, Sulawesi is classified as Indo-Malay when it should be Australasian. I'm looking into fixing it, but meanwhile not sure how to flag this -- would it be appropriate to note on the main page that it is in error? Sharp11 (talk) 03:00, 10 November 2008 (UTC) Never mind, I found a drop-in replacement that is accurate and up-to-date. Sharp11 (talk) 04:26, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

The position of Sulawesi and the rest of Wallacea is debatable and the boundary between the Autralasian and Indo-Malay (Oriental Regions) depends on whether you use Wallace's Line or Lydekker's Line. More troubling for me is the suggestion that the Afrotropical realms extends into Iran, something I have not seen anywhere else, and the curious boundary in southern China, which again I cannot find in any other map. The map claims to be based on Udvardy (1975) but it clearly isn't. Where was it sourced? It is a little worrying as this map appears very high in any search for zoogeographic realms. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.205.241.176 (talk) 21:25, 20 October 2021 (UTC)

title: Talk:Biogeographic realm


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Ellsworth Huntington

Ellsworth Huntington (September 16, 1876 – October 17, 1947) was a professor of geography at Yale University during the early 20th century, known for his studies on environmental determinism/climatic determinism, economic growth, and economic geography. He served as president of the Ecological Society of America in 1917, the Association of American Geographers in 1923 and president of the board of directors of the American Eugenics Society from 1934 to 1938.

He taught at Euphrates College, Turkey (1897–1901); accompanied the Pumpelly (1903) and Barrett (1905–1906) expeditions to central Asia; and wrote of his Asian experiences in Explorations in Turkestan (1905) and The Pulse of Asia (1907). He taught geography at Yale (1907–1915) and from 1917 was a research associate there, devoting his time chiefly to climatic and anthropogeographic studies. He was the 1916 recipient of the Elisha Kent Kane Gold Medal from the Geographical Society of Philadelphia.

In 1909, Huntington led the Yale Expedition to Palestine. It was his mission to determine "step by step the process by which geologic structure, topographic form, and the present and past nature of the climate have shaped man's progress, moulded his history; and thus played an incalculable part in the development of a system of thought which could scarcely have arisen under any other physical circumstances."

He was on the original standing committee of the Foundation for the Study of Cycles from 1941.

title: Ellsworth Huntington


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Talk:Ounce

This article, as well as that for pound (mass), need extensive review and checking for correctness.

1/16
How did it turn into 1/16th when the word ounce was derived from 1/12th? Novalia (talk) 10:17, 5 June 2020 (UTC)

"Tael=Traditional Ounce?!"
The tael should *not* be called the traditional ounce. The two units had different origins.Gamerktc12 (talk) 11:38, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

Symbol
What's "℥" ? In the UK, the symbol is "oz". -- Tarquin
 * That symbol is ancient and was especially common in apothecary usage. Christoph Päper 07:34, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
 * It'd be great if anything could add the etymology/history of the symbol ℥. Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 160.39.60.27 (talk) 18:13, 29 January 2021 (UTC)

Grams in 1 oz.
One ounce of gold is always 31.1 g. Really? Isn't it, as the article says, 31.104... g? 03:38, 13 May 2006 218.102.71.117
 * Does one always have to insert “approximately” or “circa” even when it’s obvious? Christoph Päper 07:34, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

There are 454 grams in a pound, and 16 ounces in a pound, so divide 454 by 16 and you get 28.375 grams in 1 oz. Will someone please replace 28.35 with 28.375? 21:19, 21 May 2006 24.0.71.248
 * An avoirdupois pound is exactly 453.59237 g today, which makes an avoirdupois ounce about 28.35 g indeed. Christoph Päper 07:29, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

How much the hell is an ounce?
"A troy ounce (abbreviation: t oz) is equal to 480 grains. There are 12 troy ounces in a troy pound. Consequently, the international troy ounce is equal to about 31.103 476 grams." Excerpted from the article. An ounce, conversion systems available online say, is 28.3495 grams. If the information is wrong it is grossly misleading. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.91.253.63 (talk • contribs)
 * You didn’t read the article, did you? Christoph Päper 19:22, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

Ounce (unit of force) see Pound-force
The linked page has no information on how Pound-force is related to an Ounce-force.

 * That is entirely the fault, and the responsibility, of User:Fibula. There was nothing there when he removed it from here, and there still is nothing there.  As far as I can see, there wasn't any real good reason for him to remove it from here, either. Gene Nygaard 21:56, 6 October 2006 (UTC)
 * It is a while ago now, but I believe my reasoning was as follows. In the case of the term "pound", the structure of the Wikipedia articles distinguishes between the units of mass (Pound (mass)) and the units of force (Pound-force), with the general distinction between units of mass and force being explained in the article on Weight. I was attempting to conform the structure of the article(s) on the term "ounce" to that of those on the related term "pound". I do not know enough about the existence and use of the term "ounce" as a unit of force, so I did not want to create a new article, say, Ounce (unit of force). Instead, I pointed the user towards the existing article Pound-force. I'll add a sentence to the latter article to deal with the relationship. Fibula 23:21, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Origin of "Oz"
Why is it "Oz" when there isn't a Z in ounce?
 * I was wondering the same thing.
 * From Old Italian ... see the intro. Jɪmp 16:31, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
 * But ISTR that the "z" in "oz." is not the alphabetical "z", but a similar-looking symbol which also appears in the abbreviation "viz." for videlicet. This article needs to explicitly cover this point; the ability to read Latin as written by monastic scribes is no longer a common skill. -- llywrch (talk) 20:05, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Marie Thersa ounce
does this actualy exist? google searches go round in circles. the name doesn't make any sense - *why* should Ethiopia have a 'marie theresa' anything? think this subsection should be deleted unless someone can verify it. raining_girl 19:26, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Maria Theresa thaler -- but I do not know whether it was used as a unit of weight besides currency. Christoph Päper 18:15, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
 * if anything that makes me doubt the existence of the ounce more, as it isn't mentioned anywhere. Does however explain why there would be a Maria Theresa anything in Ethiopia..  Still think this is worth considering for deletion.  raining_girl 14:35, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

IT WAS USED AS CURRENCY, AND IS STILL BEING MINTED....BUT IT IS NOT A FULL TR OZ. OF SILVER. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 205.208.227.29 (talk • contribs).

 * It seems from the Maria Theresa thaler article that a huge number of these coins ended up in Ethiopia, but not only was it not a troy ounce of silver, it was not a troy ounce in total, instead being 28.0668g and so closer to an avoirdupois ounce. --Henrygb 16:16, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

 * For the MT ounce, see Apothecaries' system. As for the Ethiopian ounce, I can attest it was used to measure gold before Maria Theresa was born; I've seen it used in 16th century writings. Where they came up with this unit is unclear to me: they could have (1) adopted it from the Ancient Romans; (2) from the Arabs; (3) from European visitors in the 16th century; or (4) invented it independently. -- llywrch (talk) 20:14, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Article misses the point.
This article needs to explain one thing: How much is an ounce! A plain, simple, american ounce! How much? Please respond on my Talkpage. [[User:Tutthoth-Ankhre|Tutthoth-Ankhre~ The Pharaoh of the Universe]] (talk) 20:32, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

How many normal ounces are in a normal pound? "X grams!!!" What useless answer. HOW MANY ARE IN A POUND? (50.92.182.106 (talk) 10:12, 20 March 2011 (UTC))

 * This user actually has a point. Zyxwv99 (talk) 16:35, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

 * Encyclopædia Britannica Online has:

 * ounce, unit of weight in the avoirdupois system, equal to 1/16 pound (437 1/2 grains), and in the troy and apothecaries’ systems, equal to 480 grains, or 1/12 pound.

 * Maybe we could add something that includes "in the USA" and put the word "ordinary" in parentheses after "avoirdupois." Even though the average older or well-educated adult in the USA would know that there are 16 ounces in a "regular American pound," some young people, immigrants, and people in other countries might seriously not know.

Zyxwv99 (talk) 16:47, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

Paris, Tower / Cologne ounces
Could add mention of these based on : in Simpson, A. D. C and Connor, R. D, 2004. The Mass of the English Troy Pound in the Eighteenth Century. Annals of Science 61 (3): 321-349, page 329: "From English usage and from Pegolotti’s account, we know that the ratio of the size of the English troy ounce (or the Bruges silver ounce) to the English tower ounce (or Cologne ounce) is 16:15, the ratio of Paris ounce to the Cologne ounce is 21:20, and the ratio of the eight-ounce Paris and Bruges gold mark to the six-ounce Bruges silver mark is 21:16.35 If these ratios are precise (and it is part of our purpose here to demonstrate that this is so) then, in terms of English troy grains, the Paris ounce is accurately 472.5 grains, and the tower or Cologne ounce is 450 grains, where the English troy ounce at 480 grains defines the troy grain." Rod57 (talk) 12:09, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Italian ? not Spanish ?
Onza is the Spanish word for ounce... didn't come oz from the Spanish onza ? Kintaro (talk) 09:33, 12 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Etymology: < Italian oz, 15th-cent. graphic abbreviation of onza ounce n.1
 * (OED Third Edition, March 2005)
 * Zyxwv99 (talk) 00:02, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

Humorous use of the ambiguity of the word ounce
I recall being caught out once by a smart Alec schoolboy who asked me which weighed more, an ounce of gold or an ounce of feathers...

Franciscus montmartinensis — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.220.44.12 (talk) 16:04, 18 July 2014 (UTC)

Unit of Weight?
Historically, people did not know or distinguish between weight and mass. Before Newton, we didn't have precise definition of force so I bet it would be meaningless to talk about the unit of weight in the past. While the concept of mass is not fully understood today, the definition of mass within the context of Special Relativity is well-defined. Special Relativity is a very appropriate model for most of the cases so long the curvature of spacetime is not significant. Weight is the measurement of the gravitational force that is exerted on a body within a gravitational field. I do not think people really wanted to measure the force albeit the need of scientific research. What people really wanted to know may be the mass which many people thought as the measurement of the amount of matter. Strictly speaking, mass IS NOT the measurement of the amount of matter. In fact, matter IS NOT a well-defined concept within Physics. Nevertheless, it is safe to say that the 'amount of matter' is at least 'directly proportional' to the mass although there isn't a time-independent proportionality constant. See also Force, Weight, Mass in special relativity, Mass in general relativity, Special relativity and General relativity and definition of matter Thljcl (talk) 11:20, 5 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I find it ironic that several of these articles on weights and measures refer to units of weight as measuring mass. Anyone that thinks they can easily determine mass by measuring weight will find out that they will be imprecise.  Weight is dependent on local gravitational acceleration which varies depending on where you are.  Mass doesn't change with location while weight does.  Units of weight are not units of mass though equivalences are used (by assuming a fixed value for g).  To be correct, these weights should not be referred to as measuring mass. This was drilled into me 40 years ago in university physics.  Something tells me changing the multitude of articles would just produce an editing war. 99.245.248.91 (talk) 23:19, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps we should have a box explaining the difference between mass and weight. Then in the article always call these units "units of weight" exclusively. Will (Talk - contribs) 07:16, 5 December 2015 (UTC)

 * I have to agree with anom as of viewing various measures articles today, things are all bolluxed up and contradictory. I'm sincerely alarmed and embarrassed for the encyclopedia project.

 * HE on the other hand has it correct. Pounds and ounces are WEIGHT and/or FORCE based terms in systems of measurement, or conversions between same. In any measurement system, because F=ma (we can rewrite that for Weight... W=mg, where g is the acceleration force in one gravity) either mass or weight are derived units of the other. (Force is a product, so always derived) People do NOT weigh kilograms, but weights are so pervasive in customary life and units, they have been perverted. These basic unit articles and those linking them need gone over to straighten out the mis-calling such units as units of mass, and a need to clarify the differences. This template suggested by is likely the way forward. // Fra nkB  19:18, 12 September 2016 (UTC) (Engineer)

Unit of Mass is wrong—Should unit of weight
Calling the "ounce" (and pound") a "unit of mass" is wrong. We need some way to explain these units are "units of weight"—not mass.  Now many users would be very confused.  If we aren't careful, we could end up with an edit war.

My suggestion would be to have a box like a sidebar providing a brief summary of the difference between weight and mass. If the imperial system has a unit of measure for mass, we should provide links to it. Will (Talk - contribs) 07:24, 5 December 2015 (UTC)
 * If ounces and pounds aren't units of mass, then does that also mean that there is no way to convert ounces and pounds into grams, because grams are a unit of mass rather than weight? That seems a bit odd. But if it is true, then many articles besides this one have to be changed. — Eru·tuon 20:30, 5 December 2015 (UTC)

Well, such conversions assume 1G. Will (Talk - contribs) 02:16, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

 * Given that the ounce has been defined in terms of pounds and therefore grams since 1966 in the US, and in the UK, Canada, and Australia in 1959-1964, it is clearly a unit of mass. As the Pound (mass) article says, "Usage of the unqualified term pound reflects the historical conflation of mass and weight. This accounts for the modern distinguishing terms pound-mass and pound-force." The term ounce-force can be used if necessary. --Macrakis (talk) 17:19, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

 * This is silly. The article you quoted even admits to conflation of mass and weight for the pound.  Why would a respected encyclopedia repeat this conflation?  That's silly!  Maybe explain the historical confusion, and give the real definition of the unit. -- 208.78.72.18 (talk) 15:53, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

The problem is that there are really three separate units that are commonly referred to as an "ounce": ounce mass, ounce force, and fluid ounce (which is a measure of volume). We should either change the lead to say that the ounce is a unit of mass, weight, or volume, or we need to move this article to Ounce (mass) and create Ounce (force) to go along with Fluid ounce. --Ahecht (TALK PAGE ) 15:13, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

 * I have rewritten the lead to clarify the common (mass) meaning, as well as the other meanings; take a look. --Macrakis (talk) 19:05, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

conversion between ounces and fluid ounces of water missing
The article is missing information about the very close equivalence between the weight of a fluid ounce of water and an ounce of water and also between the weight of a pint of water and a pound of water.

16 fluid ounces = 16.6908 ounces i.e. about 4% more

so 1 pint = 1.043175 pounds i.e. about 4% more (needs to be said again)

https://metric-calculator.com/convert-fl-oz-to-oz.htm --Espoo (talk) 08:40, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

title: Talk:Ounce


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John Mehegan

John Francis Mehegan (June 6, 1916 – April 3, 1984) was an American jazz pianist, lecturer and critic.

Early life
Mehegan was born in Hartford, Connecticut, on June 6, 1916, although he sometimes gave the year as 1920. He began playing the violin in 1926 and played for seven years without enjoying it. He initially taught himself to play the piano by matching his fingers to the notes played on a player piano. He went on to study at the Hartt School of Music in Hartford. He had gigs in the Massachusetts area, and then moved to New York in 1941.

Later life and career
In New York, Mehegan played in clubs. He recorded four quartet tracks as a leader for Savoy Records in 1945. In the same year, he became teaching assistant to pianist Teddy Wilson in the jazz department at the Metropolitan Music School, and became the head of its jazz department in 1946; a position he held for around a decade. In the early 1950s, his From Barrelhouse to Bop album was the first release by Perspective Records; it consisted of spoken introductions followed by performances in the style of other jazz pianists. He also taught at the Juilliard School of Music (1947–64), Columbia University Teachers College (1958 to 1961 or 1962), the University of Bridgeport (1968–77) and Yale University (1974–83).

He wrote the incidental music for A Streetcar Named Desire which he performed on Broadway for two years. Mehegan was questioned by the House Un-American Activities Committee, where he was an uncooperative witness. He was the jazz critic for the New York Herald Tribune from 1957 to 1960. "A summer concert, lecture, and research tour of South Africa in 1959 was cut short because he encouraged black musicians, but while there he recorded with the group which was about to become the Jazz Epistles". His final recordings, as a trio, were made in 1960.

He wrote numerous books on jazz, including the Jazz Improvisation series, which sets out the basic principles of jazz, and was published between 1959 and 1965.

The American composer Leonard Bernstein dedicated a piano composition to Mehegan in his 1948 collection Four Anniversaries. Mehegan died in New Canaan, Connecticut, on April 3, 1984.

Discography

 * 1952 From Barrelhouse to Bop (Perspective)
 * 1954 The First Mehegan (Savoy)
 * 1955 The John Mehegan Trio/Quartet (Savoy) - with Charles Mingus & Kenny Clarke
 * 1955 A Pair of Pianos (Savoy)- with Eddie Costa & Vinnie Burke
 * 1956 How I Play Jazz Piano (Savoy)
 * 1959 Casual Affair (T.J. Records)
 * 1960 The Act of Jazz (Epic) - a lecture on various aspects of jazz improvisation, using "I Got Rhythm" to illustrate the aspects discussed.

With Chuck Wayne
 * The Jazz Guitarist (Savoy, 1954 [1956])

Techniques, studies & etudes for piano

 * Contemporary Styles for the Jazz Pianist, in 3 books (1964–70)
 * Famous Jazz Style Piano Folio - with instruction on how to play jazz piano (1958)
 * Jazz Improvisation (1959-65)
 * Vol. 1: Tonal and rhythmic principles (1959)
 * Vol. 2: Jazz rhythm and the improvised line (1962)
 * Vol. 3: Swing and early progressive piano styles (1964)
 * Vol. 4: Contemporary piano styles (1965)
 * The Jazz Pianist, in 3 books: Studies in the art and practice of jazz improvisation (1960–61)
 * Styles for the Jazz Pianist, in 3 books (1962–63)
 * Studies in Jazz Harmony (1962)
 * Improvising Jazz Piano (1985, posthumous)

Original compositions for piano

 * Jazz Bourree (1960)
 * Jazz Preludes (1962)
 * Vienna Woodshed, a jazz waltz for piano 4-hands (1965)
 * Jazz Caper, jazz originals for piano 4-hands (1965)

title: John Mehegan


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Romsdals Budstikke

Romsdals Budstikke is a daily (except Sundays) newspaper published in Molde, Norway.

History and profile
Romsdals Budstikke was established in 1843. Politically the paper is liberal and used to be a newspaper for the Liberal Party, but has been independent since 1973. The coverage area includes Molde, Rauma, Vestnes, Midsund, Aukra, Sandøy, Nesset, Eide, Gjemnes, and Fræna.

Mecom owned Romsdals Budstikke until February 2009, when it was sold to the Polaris Media.

In the 1970s, the paper won a circulation war with its local competitor, Romsdal Folkeblad. In 2013 Romsdals Budstikke was named Newspaper of the Year in Norway.

Romsdals Budstikke had an all-time high circulation of 19,004 in 1999. In 2008 the circulation was 18,648. Its circulation was 12,632 copies and 14,903 digital subscribers in 2017 and 11,725 copies and 15,798 digital subscribers in 2019.

title: Romsdals Budstikke


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Tidens Krav

Tidens Krav (TK) English: The Time's Demands is a local newspaper published in Kristiansund, Norway. It was founded in 1906, is published Tuesday through Saturday, and reports news from Nordmøre.

The newspaper owned the local television station TKTV (previously TV Nordvest), before it was discontinued in November 2018.

Circulation
Circulation numbers verified by the Norwegian Media Businesses' Association:
 * 2006: 15 150
 * 2007: 15 412
 * 2008: 15 281
 * 2009: 14 900
 * 2010: 14 605

title: Tidens Krav


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Raetia

Raetia or Rhaetia was a province of the Roman Empire named after the Rhaetian people. It bordered on the west with the country of the Helvetii, on the east with Noricum, on the north with Vindelicia, on the south-west with Transalpine Gaul and on the south with Venetia et Histria, a region of Roman Italy.

It thus comprised the districts occupied in modern times by eastern and central Switzerland (containing the Upper Rhine and Lake Constance), southern Germany (Bavaria and most of Baden-Württemberg), Vorarlberg and the greater part of Tyrol in Austria, and part of northern Lombardy in Italy. The region of Vindelicia (today eastern Württemberg and western Bavaria) was annexed to the province at a later date than the others. The northern border of Raetia during the reigns of emperors Augustus and Tiberius was the River Danube. Later the Limes Germanicus marked the northern boundary, stretching for 166 km north of the Danube. Raetia was connected to Italy across the Alps over the Reschen Pass, by the Via Claudia Augusta.

The capital of the province was Augusta Vindelicorum, present-day Augsburg in southern Germany.

History
Little is known of the origin or history of the Raetians, who appear in the records as one of the most powerful and warlike of the Alpine tribes. Livy states distinctly that they were of Etruscan origin (a belief that was favored by Niebuhr and Mommsen). A tradition reported by Justin and Pliny the Elder affirmed that they were a portion of that people who had settled in the plains of the Po and were driven into the mountains by the invading Gauls, when they assumed the name of "Raetians" from an eponymous leader Raetus. Even if their Etruscan origin be accepted, at the time when the land became known to the Romans, Celtic tribes were already in possession of much of it and had amalgamated so completely with the original inhabitants that, generally speaking, the Raetians of later times may be regarded as a Celtic people, although non-Celtic tribes (es. Euganei) were settled among them.

The Raetians are first mentioned (but only incidentally) by Polybius, and little is heard of them till after the end of the Republic. There is little doubt, however, that they retained their independence until their subjugation in 15 BC by Tiberius and Drusus.

At first Raetia formed a distinct province, but towards the end of the 1st century AD Vindelicia was added to it; hence, Tacitus (Germania, 41) could speak of Augusta Vindelicorum (Augsburg) as "a colony of the province of Raetia". The whole province (including Vindelicia) was at first under a military prefect, then under a procurator; it had no standing army quartered in it but relied on its own native troops and militia for protection until the 2nd century AD.

During the reign of Marcus Aurelius, Raetia was governed by the commander of the Legio III Italica, which was based in Castra Regina (Regensburg) by 179 AD. Under Diocletian, Raetia formed part of the diocese of the vicarius Italiae, and was subdivided into Raetia prima, with a praeses at Curia Raetorum (Chur) and Raetia secunda, with a praeses at Augusta Vindelicorum (Augsburg), the former corresponding to the old Raetia, the latter to Vindelicia. The boundary between them is not clearly defined, but may be stated generally as a line drawn eastwards from the lacus Brigantinus (Lake Constance) to the Oenus (River Inn).

During the last years of the Western Roman Empire, the land was in a desolate condition, but its occupation by the Ostrogoths in the time of Theodoric the Great, who placed it under a dux, to some extent revived its prosperity. Much of Raetia prima remained as a separate political unit, Raetia Curiensis, for several centuries, until it was attached to the Duchy of Swabia in AD 917.

Economy
The land was very mountainous, and the inhabitants, when not engaged in predatory expeditions, chiefly supported themselves by breeding cattle and cutting timber, little attention being paid to agriculture. Some of the valleys, however, were rich and fertile, and produced wine, which was considered equal to any in Italia. Augustus preferred Raetian wine to any other. Considerable trade in pitch, honey, wax, and cheese occurred.

Geography
The chief towns of Raetia (excluding Vindelicia) were Tridentum (Trento) and Curia (Coire or Chur). It was traversed by two great lines of Roman roads: the Via Claudia Augusta leading from Verona and Tridentum across the Reschen Pass to the Fern Pass and thence to Augusta Vindelicorum (Augsburg), the other from Brigantium (Bregenz) on Lake Constance by Chur and Chiavenna to Como and Milan.

The Rätikon mountain range derives its name from Raetia.

Important cities

 * Alae (Aalen)
 * Arbor Felix (Arbon)
 * Abodiacum (Epfach)
 * Aquileia (Heidenheim an der Brenz)
 * Augusta Vindelicorum (Augsburg)
 * Ausugum (Borgo Valsugana)
 * Bauzanum or Pons Drusi (Bolzano)
 * Belunum (Belluno)
 * Bilitio (Bellinzona)
 * Brigantium (Bregenz)
 * Cambodunum (Kempten im Allgäu)
 * Castra Batava (Passau)
 * Castra Regina (Regensburg)
 * Clavenna (Chiavenna)
 * Clunia (probably Feldkirch or Balzers)
 * Curia (Chur)
 * Endidae (Neumarkt)
 * Feltria (Feltre)
 * Foetes (Füssen)
 * Guntia (Günzburg)
 * Gamundia Romana (Schwäbisch Gmünd)
 * Oscela (Domodossola)
 * Parthanum (Partenkirchen)
 * Sebatum (San Lorenzo di Sebato/St. Lorenzen)
 * Sorviodurum (Straubing)
 * Sublavio (Ponte Gardena/Waidbruck)
 * Tridentum (Trento)
 * Veldidena (Wilten district of Innsbruck)
 * Vipitenum (Vipiteno/Sterzing)

title: Raetia