What got me into this was my unfortunate tendency to mimic an elderly man who came to milk the cows in our neighbourhood. I used to lampoon his quavering voice asking for a vessel to collect the milk in – and the secretary heard it. From that alone he decided I could act, even though I had no such inclination or ambition myself.
So in a way, you could say that it was my boyish mimicry of our poor milk-man Suppiah-amman, which roped me into a lifetime of theater.
But once you got in, you got more involved and interested?
Not really. I just went where life took me, and it took me through a lifetime of theater. I have never been ambitious. I went along with the flow of life’s twists and turns. All that happened in my life, just happened to happen. I never planned for any of it.
Weren’t there any specific efforts you ever made of an ambitious nature?
There is only one that I can recall. I didn’t do my A’Ls adequately, and after a few years at the YMHA, my mother packed me off to do my B.A in India – again, against my will. While there, the Indian theater cum movie actor Cho Ramaswamy was my batch-mate. He was one of the live-wires at Madras University in organizing and directing plays, but I was still uninterested and did not get involved there.

On getting back to Sri Lanka in 1957 I became a teacher at Senkundha Hindu College. I also rejoined the YMHA. Soon after, a famous baratha-natyam danseuse of that time staged a dance show at the YMHA and some of us were roped in to set up the stage for her. The ‘stage’ was made up of library desks tied together. Those desks were not evenly sized; some were sloped, some were lower than others, some hobbled; she was a hefty lady to boot. We, the stage-makers had our hearts palpitating throughout her performance in case she came tumbling down with those desks. Fortunately the event completed without mishap. Only after that could we breathe a sigh of relief.
Meanwhile, at this performance, I had noticed Kalai-Arasu Sornalingam, then one of the stalwarts of Tamil theater, in the audience. For the one and only time in my life, I felt the strong need to make an impression.
When we were dismantling the make-shift stage after the performance, he stood by waiting for his car. I pretended not to see him standing nearby and acted as if I was engrossed in learning some lines for a play. The lines I chose for this impromptu demo were some rather dramatic ones from Raja Raja Cholan, a popular Indian play depicting olden day royalty.
He however paid absolutely no attention to me and went off. I was left feeling foolish.
Six months later, in 1958, someone came to Thirunelvely looking for me. “Who is Shanmugalingam? Kalai-Arasu Sornalingam would like to meet you.” That was when I realized, “Ah, it paid off, after all.”

So you got a chance to become a professional theater actor with that break?
We all were and still are amateurs. None of us could be called professionals. Theater for a long time (at it still is) was a passion and a hobby, not a profession. We all had day jobs to support ourselves and carried out performances for which we only put in money; not earned from it.
But yes, getting to work with him was a big break. He wanted me to play Arjuna in a play he was directing called Theroti Mahan (the charioteer’s son) in which Karna was the hero. That play became so hugely popular that we had to reproduce it nearly 10 times over the next few years.
Sornalingam was a brilliant dramatist whose chief brilliance lay in portraying negative characters empathetically. From Shakespeare’s Shylock to the Mahabharatha’s Shakuni – his portrayal of the characters were peerless. I learned a lot from him.
You are more famous in the theater world as a playwright than as an actor; how did you break into writing scripts?
Through necessity. We tried several times to get a famous writer of that time, ‘Sitpi’ Saravanapavan to write for us – but he was always busy. After some time, he saw a children’s play I had written, being staged. He thereafter encouraged me to write on my own as he said I had what it took. You could therefore say I became a playwright by ‘accident’ too; it was due to forced necessity.
Yet you must have realized at some point that these ‘accidents’ had made you tap into a heretofore unidentified passion or talent within yourself? Your plays are some of the most acclaimed in Jaffna today.

Again, no! I started writing because I had to and kept doing it because that was what life was leading me to do. People tell me they enjoyed my plays and that is good enough – but I don’t think I am a genius who wrote classics. Yes, my plays made it into school textbooks but most of my plays are topical. They were inspired by current events of the time and so are not going to live on in history, as timeless. That’s not what I aimed for anyway.
Which of your plays are you most known for?
Children’s plays mostly. As a teacher, my main work was with children until retirement, so many of my plays were also scripted for their sake. As such I am credited with innovating a modern form of theater to appeal to children.
Many of your plays have also been staged in Colombo as well as abroad. Have you had to travel much for this?
I rarely travel; I prefer to let the different directors who want to stage my plays manage it themselves. Attentions and felicitations irritate me and I avoid them wherever possible. I detest the Tamil habit of lauding people by conferring the glittery shawl (pon-adai) with pomp and ceremony. It’s an absurd waste of money.
The reason I have been able to write these plays which resonate with the people is because I am heavily introverted – and thus a quiet observer of people and society, which I then bring out in my plays. Given a choice, I would prefer to sit at a corner in a back row observing people than in the front row, being the center of attention myself.
Among your plays staged abroad, which was the most popular?

Hmm, that might be ‘Enthayum Thayum’ – a play about parents who sent their children abroad and then were left alone in their last years, back here.
I wrote it in 1991, at the request of my son, who lives in Canada. He wanted something topical that applied to the Canadian Tamils; I don’t know if this play was what he had in mind but it was what he got. It was staged in several countries with Tamil diaspora presence, as well as in Batticaloa and Colombo.
What was the feedback of the diaspora on it?
It definitely struck a chord with them, even if not necessarily a pleasant one. My friend Tarcisius, a veteran thespian himself was the director of the play in the UK. He called to tell me that people watched the play immobile, with tears in their eyes. There was an instance of a joke in the middle of one emotional scene – and only one audience member had laughed at it, for which he immediately drew dagger looks from the others apparently. I would say it was a success.
Final question: As someone who has seen much and recorded much in the form of your plays, what advice have you for Tamil youths? Many of us are caught between a fast globalizing modern world and a traditional culture of our own. We face the uncomfortable challenge of having to adapt to the fast-changing world as well as retain our distinctive culture. Where does one draw the line?
Culture is what is practiced by the people organically, not what the traditionalists tell us we should be like, based on what they imagine our ancestors were once like.
If there is one thing I have realized as a thespian over several decades, it is that reformative writers, playwrights, poets et al spring up only when there is something terribly wrong with society. As such, some terrible societies produce brilliant literature edifying ethics and values to be upheld. In a later time, clueless descendants of those people would look back and say, “Oh our ancestors were such wonderful people with advanced morals.”
For an example within our culture, people look on the admittedly brilliant rhyming couplets of our ancient poet Thirvalluvar or poetess Auviar, and say that Tamils once had a glorious culture. Most of the advice Thiruvalluvar or Auviar gave however were basic common-sense ethics. If they felt the need to tell people not to steal and not to harm, I imagine they lived in terribly lawless times.

I don’t recommend letting go of who you are to ape someone else’s culture – but I don’t recommend hanging on to the coat-tails of a ‘glorious past ‘either.
Culture is like a clock; it keeps moving with the times – inexorably. What the rigid traditionalists are doing, is trying frantically to stop the clock-hand marking seconds from moving – because that is what they can see. In the meantime, the clock-hand marking hours, which they can’t see and are not trying to control, is moving too. Change is inevitable. Just go with the flow.
Published: 11/12/2014

The post Kulanthai Shanmugalingam; a life spent in drama first appeared on M Thulashi.

I won’t however, because it isn’t the truth.
The average Sri Lankan has a very poor level of English. In a two month IELTS course, there is no way I can bring them up to 6.5.
If they study with me for two years or more, then yes, I can.
Even that is not guaranteed, as the students have to do a lot of work on their own apart from what I teach. If you take a region like Jaffna, people never hear English used around them in daily life. And if they are not in the habit of watching movies, reading books, travelling or interacting with English speakers from outside the region – which most of them are not – even studying with me is not going to be fully effective.
You can’t learn a language solely in the classroom. That’s not how it works. I have managed to do this only in a few instances; when I taught intensive courses, where the students were with me four hours a day, three days a week over four months. Because I had a captive audience for that many hours a day, I was able to ensure they read books, and watched movies for part of the class apart from textbook activities. They picked up rapidly.
Students who came in barely speaking English and certainly not writing it, went out speaking fluently, conducting vibrant debates, storytelling. public speaking, essay writing… the works. Even I was astounded by how fast they developed.

When I tried to replicate it via zoom during covid however, I failed with quite a few. (Also was successful with a few – but it was at best 50:50). Because the classes were only 1.5 hours each over the weekend. I taught the textbook basics and urged them to watch movies and read books on their own. Even took the trouble to search out cartoons and children’s movies as well as graded readers suitable to their level and sent them the links. The students who diligently followed those links picked up rapidly. But that was often less than 50 percent of the class. Most lack the discipline to follow through and so were not as successful.

Sri Lankans, especially the kind of students I get from my area who are monolingual, also have a very poor understanding of how to pick up a new language. I keep telling them it is not a classroom activity and they have to put in the work to interact with the language in order to learn it.

1. Their access to such measures are poor in these regions. Especially speaking. I do have speaking activities in my classes but not enough; only a couple of hours over the weekends is not enough.
   For this reason, I recently arranged for volunteers to come speak to my students regularly. Again less than 50 percent of my classes utilize this free opportunity. Those who do are developing fast.
   And those who don’t are getting left far behind. I often think of the adage, “You can take a horse to the water, but you can’t make it drink” with my students.
2. Which leads to my next point; Discipline and the willingness to work hard. Sorry to say, but many Sri Lankan students just want a certificate to prove they studied without the willingness to work for it, or indeed, even an interest in acquiring the knowledge associated with it.
   All they care about is which teacher is capable of getting them the target marks with the least effort possible on their side.
   I am getting distinctly nervous with the number of doctors, engineers and lawyers asking me if there is a way to bribe IELTS examiners or for me to leak the paper in advance.
   If this is how they qualified in their professions, we are in serious trouble.
3. Reading: this seems to be a distinctly Jaffna phenomenon – most of my students from around here are actively allergic to the concept of reading. You can’t develop a language, especially the vocabulary, grammar and spelling for writing, to the high level required in IELTS, without reading. I have had students fluently able to speak because they studied in international schools or watched movies etc – but were weak in writing, yet stubbornly resisted reading, despite all my efforts to make it interesting for them.The only advice I can give Jaffna parents is to get over your phobia of reading—many of you are beating it out of your children if they develop the habit on their own.Inculcate reading as a habit in your children if you want them to learn other languages well. Indeed, even to learn your own language well. It is near impossible to get adults prejudiced against reading, as in Jaffna, to form the habit late in life. And they lose out on a lot because of it.
4. Don’t fall for comforting lies. Sri Lankans are easy to fool. I often think I should lay out a mat with a parrot by my side and do astrological readings for a tidy sum. No matter what lies I tell and whatever predictions prove false in the future, you’ll never demand your money back. Indeed, you will keep coming back for more.I am noticing this phenomenon with IELTS teachers now.If a student gets the target band of 6.5 or higher, it’s because the teacher is a genius. If the student doesn’t however, it is all the student’s fault. They were too dumb.

None of you are dumb but you do have some dumb community wide attitudes and practices when it comes to getting an IELTS certificate. So here’s some free advice, uncomfortable though it may be: Investigate methods of language acquisition, take the time to follow it, work hard, and you will get your certificates.

You can’t bribe the examiners, and there are no shortcuts. Do the work.

The post My Experience teaching the IELTS in Jaffna first appeared on M Thulashi.

It is a peninsula left devastated by three decades of civil war. But looking at Jaffna now, one would be hard put to find evidence of it. ‘Development’ is in full swing everywhere; supermarkets, smoothly tarred and widened roads, multi-storeyed, modern buildings, and pretty houses.

A land and people who have thought of nothing but war and survival for over 30 years are moving on. Due to their circumstances, they have unique problems – which they are also learning to fend in unique ways. One of the best examples is the overabundance of war-affected widows and women-headed families. It is a peninsula that traditionally believed that a woman’s place was in the home. But now, of necessity, they have had to move out. Several non-governmental organizations (NGOs) tried to help them cope in various ways; poultry, farming implements and wells, sewing machines…
The Women’s Education and Research Centre (WERC) however identified another need and came up with something different: ladies driving three wheeler taxis. This is a country that already has female pilots. We also have plenty of women driving cars. In Jaffna, it is no uncommon sight to see girls on scooters, or even on motorcycles. Yet, nowhere in the country did we previously have women taxi drivers. A few women have been known to drive their own private three wheelers, but driving that hardy little vehicle is generally considered the unique preserve of men.

Thanks to the initiative of WERC, however, Jaffna, Batticaloa and Ampara now sport some scenes that the locals are still getting used to; seeing females driving three wheeler taxis. The initiative is nearly a year old in Jaffna and from there, it was taken to Ampara and Batticaloa three months ago, according to Director of WERC, Dr. Selvy Thiruchandran.
“We wanted to give the women some non-traditional skills, which would also be less laborious than their traditional skills set of farming or sewing,” explains Dr. Thiruchandran on why they chose this particular project for their target beneficiaries. “We chose women who were supporting their families, mainly single mothers and gave them intense training on assertiveness, personality development and gender equity before equipping them with the vehicles. We also taught them basic accounting and banking skills as well as how to cope with public and sexual harassment. As it turned out, however, they have been far better received by their communities and their fellow male taxi drivers than we anticipated.”
The women concur. According to Komaleswari Selvakumar (42), a mother of four, the male three wheeler drivers of the area are extremely helpful and protective. “They on their own, gave us their mobile numbers and told us to call them if we ever run into any trouble with customers but we have not had any such trouble so far,” she smiles. She has her stand in a busy spot in the heart of Jaffna town and according to her, other drivers immediately come up and offer to take the hire if a shady looking character walks up to her. “Just yesterday though, after I had accepted a hire, a fellow driver called me and told me the customer looked a little troublesome, so he would take him instead. I told him that he should have acted promptly (as they usually do) in diverting the hire to himself as the customer was already in my taxi and it would be insulting to him to transfer him after that. I took the hire – the man was indeed shifty-eyed and nervous, which in turn made me nervous. But when I got talking to him, I was amused to find he was actually afraid of me. He was a big, burly man, which is what must have set the alarm bells ringing in my colleague’s mind, but as it turned out, he was far more conscious of the fact that he was alone in my three wheeler than I was.”
According to her, the reception from the community has been positive but she does hear some snide remarks as well from ‘traditionalists’, not all of whom are men. Her husband, a labourer, unable to support his family had taken to drinking to drown his disheartenment, and so it has fallen to Komaleswari to not only bring up her children but earn their bread as well.“I do this out of necessity, not out of any wish to do so. But I hear a wide spectrum of comments, ranging from encouraging ones for supporting my family as well as staying on with my husband, to advice to divorce him and marry another man, to sneers on how dare I wear the pants in the marriage. I just shrug it off and do what I have to do. What else can I do?”
It is a daunting challenge that these women have taken up, not only because they juggle housework and childcare with their jobs but because of the nature of that job, which their culture and backgrounds had never prepared them for.
“I only knew how to go to the hospital and the local temple from my home. As girls we were not allowed to go anywhere else, especially unescorted. We lived such sheltered lives,” says Sujanthini Indrakumar (33) a mother of three. “I still have to ask my way around. Finding the places people wanted to go to was one of the biggest challenges. Along with learning to drive. We were not given adequate training and were launched before we were comfortable with the vehicle. I used to practise test runs outside my house for days.”
She has built up her own client base, mostly female office workers who are happy at the prospect of having a lady driver. “I have regular customers, mostly children and ladies. It is so much easier to be self-employed like this as I can regulate my times. I used to work in a supermarket before this and had to work till 8.00 or 9.00 p.m., coming home too exhausted to do anything else. My husband is an ex-cadre who surrendered after the war but has gone missing since then. I looked for him in all the rehabilitation camps but eventually gave up, figuring if he was alive, he knew his way home. I have to single-handedly look after my children and can’t afford to take time away to look for him, so I had to give up.”
In addition to not knowing the topography well like the men do, the women launched into a completely new field, didn’t know the rates to charge which had apparently caused some problems. It has since been solved by another innovation, new to the area: they are among the first meter taxi drivers there.

The rate, at Rs 70 for the first kilometre and 40 for every kilometre after is a lot heftier than Colombo rates, but is apparently the stipulated rate for outstation taxis.
“We fixed them up with the metres as they had no idea of what rates to ask for,” says Rajani Chandrasekaram, a Jaffna-based women’s rights activist, who was asked by WERC to supervise the project. According to her, the project is a success in that they hadn’t encountered the level of opposition they had feared at first. “We gave them a lot of training on how to deal with harassment and are still planning on self-defence classes too, but none of that has been necessary so far. Of course only four are currently driving their vehicles in Jaffna and all four are rather strong personalities.”
In the Jaffna project, 25 women had been selected to be beneficiaries, of which only 15 had stayed the course and 10 had finally passed the license to receive the vehicles. But only four are now actively running. The others gave various excuses as to why they are not running.
“One said KKS road is being repaired and she is scared of the heavy traffic running up and down the available half of the road, when I called to ask for an explanation,” says Rajani. “Mostly they seem to be giving in to community pressures and perceptions. They are getting remarried or preparing to remarry and so are getting culturally repressed from showing the image of a ‘strong woman’ which might be detrimental to their marital aspirations.”
The ones who are running meanwhile, project the ‘strong woman’ image for all its worth. “I have developed this personality where I talk to my customers in an easy manner,” says Komaleswari. “Men, especially adolescents and youths might make the mistake of thinking we are weak or meek otherwise. Lady drivers are still a novelty and so they gravitate towards us and if they find us friendly, try to flirt. I respond with witty repartee but make it clear in as genial a manner as possible that I am a strong woman not to be messed with.”

The post A female driving force first appeared on M Thulashi.

The Palk bay, running along the coast of Mannar, is known to many for various reasons, not the least of which is the controversial sethusamudram project.
Sethusamudram is the shallow sea off the Gulf of Mannar. She has allowed contact between India and Sri Lanka for millennia via simple boats, but ships cannot navigate her. Plans to dredge a deep channel to overcome this handicap have been proposed from over 200 years ago, starting with the British (and recently India) – but there were always other issues to be considered; economic, ecological and environmental. There still are.
In the meantime however, while the ship farers muse as to what to do, the boat farers had their own worries. The sea is a difficult mistress, but to Mannar fisherman, she was often also an inaccessible tease. If they didn’t time it right to operate within a few hours of high tide, the sea receded kilometers away from shore, making them either drag their boats out and in, though slush, or give up fishing for the day.
As the sea’s ebb and flow changed from day to day, they could not always bank on planning in advance to catch the tide, in order to minimize the stress on their bodies and boats.
“There were fishermen who got up at 3.00 am in the morning to catch the tide – but then had to wait more than an hour at the shore because the tide was late coming in,” says J. Manoj (50), a fisherman from Pallikuda village. “Then there were those who reached the shore at 6.00 in the morning only to see an expanse of marshy land before them, as the sea had receded.”
It was no easy task dragging their boats through this marsh out to sea, though it often wasn’t more than a kilometer. The fishermen, who are highly superstitious about not disrespecting their means of livelihood, would never dream of plying out to sea with footwear on. And so they waded barefoot, often encountering sharp, jagged coral or even crabs, sea cucumbers and sea snakes in the slush.
Even without those hazards however, the marshy bog they had to wade through was no cakewalk.
“It felt like the soil sucked the energy from our feet” remembers S. Rajkumar (42), secretary of the Fisheries Cooperative Society of Pallikuda-Valarmathy village. “It drained us to just lift each knee in front of the other, through that bog. Add the equipment we had to carry on top of that, and on some days we’d just cave in and decide not to go.”
Rajkumar is a teetotaler but most fishermen here aren’t. They have only one panacea for all their ills – the locally brewed and very potent Palmyrah toddy. Elaborates Rajkumar, on how the sea’s vicissitudes played out in their daily life: “Many a fellow here would trace his steps to the shore, see how far the sea had receded and change his mind about going fishing for the day. He would then retrace his steps – not back home, but to the local tavern. In the evening, the wife and children dependant on his daily income, waiting expectantly for father to come home with fish and money, would see him stagger home empty-handed instead, drunk and in debt.”

When the European Union Support to Socio Economic Measures (EU- SEM) project was launched in Sri Lanka however, many of these fishermen finally had a fighting chance of achieving a long held dream – excavations by their shores to prevent the sea from receding.
“Fishermen of this area have long known that channel excavations would help ease their burden,” says S.B Mirando, the Assistant Director of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources, Mannar. “But they did not have the financial resources required. Many different village communities tried digging channels manually but it was never enough. They couldn’t dig deep enough and the shallow excavations thus dug would keep the sea in for only a few months before shoring up again. The EU and ZOA (aid agency) have done us a valuable service. I regret that they could not do so for all our deserving fishing communities, and so I have asked our engineers to prepare proposals for the villages left behind, in the event of new Aid coming in.”
According to R.Oampragash, Technical Officer supervising the project for ZOA Sri Lanka, the EU’s implementing partner on the ground, the project was ground breaking in that it had never been attempted before. “We did feasibility studies with the aid of the Department of Coast Conservation’s engineers – but since nothing on this scale had been attempted before – we were all clueless as to what the project would entail and how it would eventually turn out. Naysayers deterred us from starting the project for a long time, claiming that the dredged up sand would shore in soon and so the project would be a failure. However the Department of Coast Conservation finally gave their assurance saying that as we were planning to excavate up to six feet, it would take five years to shore up – and that too could be prevented by yearly maintenance work to dredge up the shored sand. The villagers joyfully agreed to undertake this maintenance work themselves, and so we went ahead.”
As a testament to what kind of soil it was the fisherman encountered everyday, Oampragash and his team nearly lost two back hoes in their excavation attempts. “They were huge machines but they simply started sinking into the soil,” he recalls. “Since we were unprepared for these soil conditions, we wasted time figuring out what to do, during which time they almost sank completely. Fortunately, we were able to dig them back up using Palmyra trunks.”
Today, walks along those shores which have had channels excavated (nine in all), tell their own story. A boat cleaves the water neatly at 11.00 am on a hot day at one of these villages, as a group of fishermen come speeding right up to shore, bearing their day’s catch and happy grins.

“What difference have these channels made in your life?” I ask them.
“We would have to stagger back over 1km with our 50kg of fish if not for this channel,” they respond. “And that journey would have taken us over an hour. We carried the fish on our heads, and the sun beating down on it that length of time, made it spoil fast. So people had to cook and eat it immediately. If they didn’t buy it, our entire days’ efforts would go to waste.
Even so, we would have to drag ourselves back to sea again to clean our boats and bring them back – as they were too valuable to leave behind, along with our engines, nets and kerosene. Those who felt lazy to do this in the past have paid for it with the thefts of their engines and nets, and sometimes even their boats.”
Due to these exertions which resulted in severe bodily exhaustion, fishermen thus affected went fishing only three days a week at best, as they needed to rest and recuperate every alternate day. Now not only do they go out every day, but even two to three times a day – which has led to a marked increase in their income.
These being rural areas without access to even electricity in most places, they used to lose a lot due to wastage and damage, especially if they arrived too late to miss the morning market. “People here shop before 10.00 am, to prepare for their lunches” explains one. “If we missed that time bracket the fish would have to be either thrown away or sold at absurdly low prices.”
ZOA Sri Lanka under the EU SEM (2011-2014) project however, introduced not only the excavation channels but also auction centers to collectively sell their fish as well as marketing reps from various areas, to break the hold of the exploitative middlemen they were selling to.
Before, as soon as a fisherman dragged his catch to shore, he would be glad to dispose of it to anyone who would buy, especially if he had gone out too late and thus had a lesser market as well as rapidly deteriorating fish. Now however, collective sales have improved their bargaining power. They can time their fishing to come in early without being dependant on the tide. And even if they choose to go out again for a second time’s catch, they can opt to keep the fish in cool boxes till the next day if the middlemen standing by with coolers of their own do not offer a good price.
It has had a marked difference in their lives. “For the first time, we are living a life free of debt. We did not even know that such a thing was a possibility within our trade,” says S.Jeyaranji (29) who has broken ground as a female manager of a Fisheries Co-operative Society in this heavily patriarchal area, where girls are often even kept off the beach. There are women living here in some coastal areas who have thus never seen their beaches, much less gone out to sea.
“The semmatis (middlemen) cheated us on the scales used for weighing our fish, cheated us on the rates they offered, and cheated us on when they would pay the money – only at the end of every week,” says Jeyaranji. “Now, with these Auction Centers that ZOA built for us, our catches go for instant cash at double the prices the semmatis used to offer. Many of our men, motivated by the high prices and easy accessibility to the sea go out early in the morning and are done with their day’s work by 10.00 am (unless they choose to go out yet again), leaving them free to be more productive in other areas.”
Jeyaranji’s own husband is a disabled fisherman, who would not have been able to access the sea, if not for the excavated channel. “He had to have one leg amputated below his knee, due to shelling during the war,” she says. “But now, thanks to the channel, he can go out and come in early enough to help look after our daughter while I take care of work at my office.”
She adds smilingly, “He is the one who cooks lunch.” This intervention therefore can be said to have contributed not only to livelihood improvement within their community but also aided in addressing issues of women’s empowerment. Not all men are currently as supportive of their wives working as Jeyaranji’s husband – but it has given at least some women like her, a head start.
For a young woman who cowered heavily pregnant in a bunker during shelling and despaired of life for herself or her child, Jeyaranji has come a long way. She and her fellow community members have been through a lot; war, displacement, poverty, exploitation – but they are yet resilient and resourceful.
Getting these literally shell-shocked people back on their feet has been an arduous task. But this one intervention has given them a buoyancy and hope that has an impetus of its own.
The fishermen of Mannar are now far ahead of the farmers, in their journey to sustainability.
Published: 08/12/2014

The post Accessing the Seas of Mannar first appeared on M Thulashi.

So the whole dog culling issue that threw the animal lovers of Sri Lanka into a tizzy has now passed over as nothing more than a storm in a tea cup. However what this storm did achieve was to blow over surface calm and apparent harmony, thereby uncovering a lot of strongly felt feelings for or against on the issue.
To this writer who has lived on three different countries on this subcontinent, and who has been exposed to various others through media and books, Sri Lanka has always seemed to tower several notches over neighbouring countries when it comes to the issue of animal rights. In terms of compassion and regard for animals, Sri Lanka doesn’t really have too bad a track record, comparatively speaking.
No doubt many ardent animal rights activists would disagree and could provide me with various instances of cruelty to animals that happened previously or are happening now. And I would agree. But for me Colombo is a spiritual home because when I relocated here seven years ago, I was surprised to be left alone when I fed dogs on the street instead of being scolded by strangers. As someone who got abused for feeding strays in other cities and countries, both by people I knew as well as didn’t know, it was a haven to finally be in a place where most other people seemed like-minded; the only reaction I get here if I get any at all is an indulgent smile. And I never can pass by a carefully opened packet of rice and curry so often to be found all over our otherwise clean roads without an inner glow. People were taking the trouble to feed strays. Other people were taking the trouble to sidestep those parcels without getting angry or flinging them away with curses. There was not a skeletal cat or dog in the throes of hunger to be seen anywhere.In other places I’ve lived where scenes like these are the norm, I have had the added guilt of wondering if I was prolonging a stray’s agony by feeding it. Was it not better off dead? A pang I’ve never felt in Colombo though. Being a vegetarian myself, the vegetarian offerings I occasionally left out here were spurned by the strays – something else that warmed my heart. They had so many people looking out for their welfare, they could afford to be choosy. After so many years of feeling at odds with the rest of humanity, I finally came ‘home’ when I settled down in Colombo. There are other reasons for that of course but the most defining one was due to how the rest of the populace seemed to feel about animals in general and strays in particular. I finally, finally, finally lived in a city where they were not considered pests and I, an anachronism for not thinking them so.
After so many years of not hearing how strays were pests and ought to be exterminated, I had a rather rude awakening from my complacency when this furore opened up. Suddenly facebook, twitter and the blogsphere were teeming with posts – both for or against the culling solution. It was rather heartening to see that the pro-culling group was a definite minority but I was shaken to see quite a few close friends amongst their number.

Otherwise intelligent and seemingly humane people were advocating the culling of dogs on the basis that human life was more important than animal life. Over the years, I have had several interesting and intelligent (or so their votaries thought) responses to my stance on animal rights:
“You are vegetarian because you don’t like to kill life? Well, plants too have life!”
“Why are you feeding the strays? That’s a waste of good food.”
“You are perpetuating pests and disease in the neighbourhood.”
“Animals kill too; it’s the law of nature! You are going against nature by being herbivorous instead of omnivorous.”
“Man is obviously at the acme of all species on earth. God / Nature obviously intended animals only for our consumption and comfort.”
“Animals don’t really have feelings; that’s why they are called animals!”
And the biggest clincher yet:
“How dare you feed animals here while your human brethren might be starving in the Wanni?” (During the war years).
I never figured out how my not feeding animals in Colombo would have helped my fellow humans in the Wanni or why feeding them was such an offence to humanity but I knew better than to ask. That particular comment has come to me various time in various guises – the gist of it being how inhumane or frivolous it was to care about animal rights while there were humans suffering somewhere, be it Somalia, Ethiopia or Jaffna.And all these intelligent and pseudo intelligent questions I had mostly had a respite from raised their head all over again in the past week. I do not have any intelligent answers myself for all these highly intellectual people. But below are a few comebacks from other well known intellectuals. Perhaps they might help. Then again they might not. People seem rather rigid in their opinions. But in closing, may I say how glad I am to be living here in this space and time, when so many people rushed to the rescue of their ‘dumb’ brethren; to raise their voices for the voiceless! Short of living in the Utopia described by Arthur C. Clarke in his short story “Food of the Gods,” I suppose this is the best bet I have in the contemporary world. It makes me proud to be a Sri Lankan.

People must have renounced, it seems to me, all natural intelligence to dare to advance that animals are but animated machines…. It appears to me, besides, that [such people] can never have observed with attention the character of animals, not to have distinguished among them the different voices of need, of suffering, of joy, of pain, of love, of anger, and of all their affections. It would be very strange that they should express so well what they could not feel. ~ Voltaire
If you have men who will exclude any of God’s creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who will deal likewise with their fellow men. ~ St. Francis of Assisi
Why should man expect his prayer for mercy to be heard by What is above him when he shows no mercy to what is under him? ~ Pierre Troubetzkoy
The love for all living creatures is the most noble attribute of man. ~ Charles Darwin

A human being is a part of the whole, called by us the ‘Universe’, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separate from the rest – a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security. ~ Albert Einstein
If a man aspires towards a righteous life, his first act of abstinence is from injury to animals. ~ Albert Einstein

I am not interested to know whether vivisection produces results that are profitable to the human race or doesn’t…. The pain which it inflicts upon unconsenting animals is the basis of my enmity toward it, and it is to me sufficient justification of the enmity without looking further. ~ Mark Twain
During my medical education at the University of Basle I found vivisection horrible, barbarous and above all unnecessary ~ C.G.Jung
Anyone who has accustomed himself to regard the life of any living creature as worthless is in danger of arriving also at the idea of worthless human lives. ~ Albert Schweitzer
The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them; that’s the essence of humanity. ~ George Bernard Shaw
Very little of the great cruelty shown by men can really be attributed to cruel instinct. Most of it comes from thoughtlessness or inherited habit. The roots of cruelty, therefore, are not so much strong as widespread. But the time must come when inhumanity protected by custom and thoughtlessness will succumb before humanity championed by thought. Let us work that this time may come. ~ Albert Schweitzer
Now I can look at you in peace; I don’t eat you anymore. ~ Franz Kafka

Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages. ~ Thomas A. Edison
I care not much for a man’s religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it. ~ Abraham Lincoln
Ever occur to you why some of us can be this much concerned with animals suffering? Because government is not. Why not? Animals don’t vote. ~ Paul Harvey
Think occasionally of the suffering of which you spare yourself the sight. ~ Albert Schweitzer
Life is life – whether in a cat, or dog or man. There is no difference there between a cat or a man. The idea of difference is a human conception for man’s own advantage. ~ Sri Aurobindo
It is just like man’s vanity and impertinence to call an animal dumb because it is dumb to his dull perceptions. ~ Mark Twain

In an earlier stage of our development most human groups held to a tribal ethic. Members of the tribe were protected, but people of other tribes could be robbed or killed as one pleased. Gradually the circle of protection expanded, but as recently as 150 years ago we did not include blacks. So African human beings could be captured, shipped to America and sold. In Australia white settlers regarded Aborigines as a pest and hunted them down, much as kangaroos are hunted down today. Just as we have progressed beyond the blatantly racist ethic of the era of slavery and colonialism, so we must now progress beyond the speciesist ethic of the era of factory farming, of the use of animals as mere research tools, of whaling, seal hunting, kangaroo slaughter and the destruction of wilderness. We must take the final step in expanding the circle of ethics. ~ Pete Singer
If a group of beings from another planet were to land on Earth – beings who considered themselves as superior to you as you feel yourself to be to other animals – would you concede them the rights over you that you assume over other animals? ~ George Bernard Shaw
The time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look upon the murder of men. ~ Leonardo Da Vinci

It is the fate of every truth to be an object of ridicule when it is first acclaimed. It was once considered foolish to suppose that black men were really human beings and ought to be treated as such. What was once foolish has now become a recognized truth. Today it is considered as exaggeration to proclaim constant respect for every form of life as being the serious demand of a rational ethic. But the time is coming when people will be amazed that the human race existed so long before it recognized that thoughtless injury to life is incompatible with real ethics. Ethics is in its unqualified form extended responsibility to everything that has life. ~ Albert Schweitzer
If only we can overcome cruelty, to human and animal, with love and compassion we shall stand at the threshold of a new era in human moral and spiritual evolution – and realize, at last, our most unique quality: humanity. ~ Jane Goodall
He who is cruel to animals becomes hard also in his dealings with men. We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals. ~ Immanuel Kant
If you don’t want to be beaten, imprisoned, mutilated, killed or tortured, then you shouldn’t condone such behaviour towards anyone, be they human or not. ~ Moby
Nothing will benefit human health and increase the chances for survival of life on earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet. ~ Albert Einstein
The wild, cruel animal is not behind the bars of a cage. He is in front of it. ~ Axel Munthe
The soul is the same in all living creatures, although the body of each is different. ~ Hippocrates.All creatures have the same source as we have. Like us, they derive the life of thought, love, and will from the Creator. Not to hurt our humble brethren is our first duty to them; but to stop there is a complete misapprehension of the intentions of Providence. We have a higher mission. God wishes that we should succour them whenever they require it. ~ St Francis of Assisi
All beings tremble before violence.
All fear death, all love life.
See yourself in others.
Then whom can you hurt? What harm can you do?

The post The Issue of Animal Rights and Animal Feelings first appeared on M Thulashi.

The property, complete with a 30-seat screening room, a 100-seat amphitheater and a swimming pond with sandy beach and outdoor shower, was asking about $40 million, but J. Lo managed to make it hers for $28 million. As the Bronx native acquires a new home in California, she is trying to sell a gated compound.

Black farmers in the US’s South— faced with continued failure their efforts to run successful farms their launched a lawsuit claiming that “white racism” is to blame for their inability to the produce crop yields and on equivalent to that switched seeds.

Most of us felt like we could trust each other to be quarantined together, so we didn’t need to wear masks or stay far apart.

France’s repeat of the 2017 runoff confirms Macron’s and Le Pen’s own political analysis: That the divide between the left and the right is no longer relevant in France and has been replaced by an opposition between a mainstream bloc that is pro-European and open to the outside world on one side, and nationalists on the other.

Both candidates scored higher than five years ago, leaving the traditional right and left in an even more shambolic state than before. Macron went from 24 percent in 2017 in the first round to 27.6 percent Sunday and Le Pen went from 21.3 percent to 23.4 percent.

The gap between them is higher than last time around, showing that Macron has managed to drum up the most votes despite controversies in the campaign’s last mile, including over the state’s overuse of consulting firms. But the far-right bloc — Marine Le Pen, Eric Zemmour and nationalist Nicolas Dupont-Aignan combined — garnered than 30 percent of the total vote.

Allen is also really good at describing parties—or, at least, the ones the middle class and upper class attended. The historian wrote about how women taking up smoking had “strewed the dinner table with their ashes, snatched a puff between the acts, invaded the masculine sanctity of the club car, and forced department stores to place ornamental ash-trays between the chairs in their women’s shoe departments.”

I describe the “fun” parts of Only Yesterday because they’re wonderful, but also to make a point about the origin story we’ve learned about the mood of the ’20s. Looking back at Allen’s work from the vantage point of 1986, historian David M. Kennedy argued that the biggest failing of the book was its lack of historical depth: “Rarely did Allen forge an explanatory chain whose links ran back more deeply into the past than 1917.” And indeed, Allen seemed to blame World War I for every ash-covered carpet and scarred dining table.

What Will Be The Next Step to Complete?

The “new ’20s” idea might not work—there were a lot more young people in the United States then than now; a reprise of the world-changing inventions and discoveries of the 1920s would be a big surprise to those economists who believe that we have been in an invention dry spell since the 1970s. In his Businessweek piece, Peter Coy largely agrees, writing, “In all probability … the U.S. will continue to wrestle with ‘secular.

These experts make strong cases, and they satisfy my natural instinct not to go there. But I remain very interested in the reasons the ’20s appeal to our imagination right now. Of course, it’s the booze, the sex, and the parties. But it’s also a decade with a very strong identity—and I think that helps. Writing in the journal American Speech in 1951, Mamie J. Meredith argued that the ’20s boasted.

Apple Design Award Winners: Apps

• Parents Are Fed Up With Their Kids’ Expensive Berry Habits
• 15 Mother’s Day Gifts for the Burned-Out Mom in Your Life
• Really Though, What Jeans Are in Style Now?
• Don’t Fall for Fertility Fearmongering About Trans Men

Zemmour, a 60-year-old TV pundit-turned-politician, was once tipped to come second behind Macron, back in October. But he plummeted spectacularly in the polls after suffering from a perceived lack of credibility as the Ukraine war started and former comments praising Russian President Vladimir Putin resurfaced. He scored a measly 7 percent. Despite their bitter and unrelenting fighting throughout the campaign, he swiftly endorsed Marine Le Pen.

I have disagreements with Marine Le Pen,” Zemmour said at his concession speech Sunday, “but there is a man facing Marine Le Pen who has let in 2 million immigrants … who would therefore do worse if he were reelected — it is for this reason that I call on my voters to vote for Marine Le Pen.

The post Why Organizers Think They Got Creamed first appeared on M Thulashi.

The property, complete with a 30-seat screening room, a 100-seat amphitheater and a swimming pond with sandy beach and outdoor shower, was asking about $40 million, but J. Lo managed to make it hers for $28 million. As the Bronx native acquires a new home in California, she is trying to sell a gated compound.

Black farmers in the US’s South— faced with continued failure their efforts to run successful farms their launched a lawsuit claiming that “white racism” is to blame for their inability to the produce crop yields and on equivalent to that switched seeds.

Most of us felt like we could trust each other to be quarantined together, so we didn’t need to wear masks or stay far apart.

France’s repeat of the 2017 runoff confirms Macron’s and Le Pen’s own political analysis: That the divide between the left and the right is no longer relevant in France and has been replaced by an opposition between a mainstream bloc that is pro-European and open to the outside world on one side, and nationalists on the other.

Both candidates scored higher than five years ago, leaving the traditional right and left in an even more shambolic state than before. Macron went from 24 percent in 2017 in the first round to 27.6 percent Sunday and Le Pen went from 21.3 percent to 23.4 percent.

The gap between them is higher than last time around, showing that Macron has managed to drum up the most votes despite controversies in the campaign’s last mile, including over the state’s overuse of consulting firms. But the far-right bloc — Marine Le Pen, Eric Zemmour and nationalist Nicolas Dupont-Aignan combined — garnered than 30 percent of the total vote.

Allen is also really good at describing parties—or, at least, the ones the middle class and upper class attended. The historian wrote about how women taking up smoking had “strewed the dinner table with their ashes, snatched a puff between the acts, invaded the masculine sanctity of the club car, and forced department stores to place ornamental ash-trays between the chairs in their women’s shoe departments.”

I describe the “fun” parts of Only Yesterday because they’re wonderful, but also to make a point about the origin story we’ve learned about the mood of the ’20s. Looking back at Allen’s work from the vantage point of 1986, historian David M. Kennedy argued that the biggest failing of the book was its lack of historical depth: “Rarely did Allen forge an explanatory chain whose links ran back more deeply into the past than 1917.” And indeed, Allen seemed to blame World War I for every ash-covered carpet and scarred dining table.

What Will Be The Next Step to Complete?

The “new ’20s” idea might not work—there were a lot more young people in the United States then than now; a reprise of the world-changing inventions and discoveries of the 1920s would be a big surprise to those economists who believe that we have been in an invention dry spell since the 1970s. In his Businessweek piece, Peter Coy largely agrees, writing, “In all probability … the U.S. will continue to wrestle with ‘secular.

These experts make strong cases, and they satisfy my natural instinct not to go there. But I remain very interested in the reasons the ’20s appeal to our imagination right now. Of course, it’s the booze, the sex, and the parties. But it’s also a decade with a very strong identity—and I think that helps. Writing in the journal American Speech in 1951, Mamie J. Meredith argued that the ’20s boasted.

Apple Design Award Winners: Apps

• Parents Are Fed Up With Their Kids’ Expensive Berry Habits
• 15 Mother’s Day Gifts for the Burned-Out Mom in Your Life
• Really Though, What Jeans Are in Style Now?
• Don’t Fall for Fertility Fearmongering About Trans Men

Zemmour, a 60-year-old TV pundit-turned-politician, was once tipped to come second behind Macron, back in October. But he plummeted spectacularly in the polls after suffering from a perceived lack of credibility as the Ukraine war started and former comments praising Russian President Vladimir Putin resurfaced. He scored a measly 7 percent. Despite their bitter and unrelenting fighting throughout the campaign, he swiftly endorsed Marine Le Pen.

I have disagreements with Marine Le Pen,” Zemmour said at his concession speech Sunday, “but there is a man facing Marine Le Pen who has let in 2 million immigrants … who would therefore do worse if he were reelected — it is for this reason that I call on my voters to vote for Marine Le Pen.

The post The surprising benefit of Scary play on way out first appeared on M Thulashi.

The property, complete with a 30-seat screening room, a 100-seat amphitheater and a swimming pond with sandy beach and outdoor shower, was asking about $40 million, but J. Lo managed to make it hers for $28 million. As the Bronx native acquires a new home in California, she is trying to sell a gated compound.

Black farmers in the US’s South— faced with continued failure their efforts to run successful farms their launched a lawsuit claiming that “white racism” is to blame for their inability to the produce crop yields and on equivalent to that switched seeds.

Most of us felt like we could trust each other to be quarantined together, so we didn’t need to wear masks or stay far apart.

France’s repeat of the 2017 runoff confirms Macron’s and Le Pen’s own political analysis: That the divide between the left and the right is no longer relevant in France and has been replaced by an opposition between a mainstream bloc that is pro-European and open to the outside world on one side, and nationalists on the other.

Both candidates scored higher than five years ago, leaving the traditional right and left in an even more shambolic state than before. Macron went from 24 percent in 2017 in the first round to 27.6 percent Sunday and Le Pen went from 21.3 percent to 23.4 percent.

The gap between them is higher than last time around, showing that Macron has managed to drum up the most votes despite controversies in the campaign’s last mile, including over the state’s overuse of consulting firms. But the far-right bloc — Marine Le Pen, Eric Zemmour and nationalist Nicolas Dupont-Aignan combined — garnered than 30 percent of the total vote.

Allen is also really good at describing parties—or, at least, the ones the middle class and upper class attended. The historian wrote about how women taking up smoking had “strewed the dinner table with their ashes, snatched a puff between the acts, invaded the masculine sanctity of the club car, and forced department stores to place ornamental ash-trays between the chairs in their women’s shoe departments.”

I describe the “fun” parts of Only Yesterday because they’re wonderful, but also to make a point about the origin story we’ve learned about the mood of the ’20s. Looking back at Allen’s work from the vantage point of 1986, historian David M. Kennedy argued that the biggest failing of the book was its lack of historical depth: “Rarely did Allen forge an explanatory chain whose links ran back more deeply into the past than 1917.” And indeed, Allen seemed to blame World War I for every ash-covered carpet and scarred dining table.

What Will Be The Next Step to Complete?

The “new ’20s” idea might not work—there were a lot more young people in the United States then than now; a reprise of the world-changing inventions and discoveries of the 1920s would be a big surprise to those economists who believe that we have been in an invention dry spell since the 1970s. In his Businessweek piece, Peter Coy largely agrees, writing, “In all probability … the U.S. will continue to wrestle with ‘secular.

These experts make strong cases, and they satisfy my natural instinct not to go there. But I remain very interested in the reasons the ’20s appeal to our imagination right now. Of course, it’s the booze, the sex, and the parties. But it’s also a decade with a very strong identity—and I think that helps. Writing in the journal American Speech in 1951, Mamie J. Meredith argued that the ’20s boasted.

Apple Design Award Winners: Apps

• Parents Are Fed Up With Their Kids’ Expensive Berry Habits
• 15 Mother’s Day Gifts for the Burned-Out Mom in Your Life
• Really Though, What Jeans Are in Style Now?
• Don’t Fall for Fertility Fearmongering About Trans Men

Zemmour, a 60-year-old TV pundit-turned-politician, was once tipped to come second behind Macron, back in October. But he plummeted spectacularly in the polls after suffering from a perceived lack of credibility as the Ukraine war started and former comments praising Russian President Vladimir Putin resurfaced. He scored a measly 7 percent. Despite their bitter and unrelenting fighting throughout the campaign, he swiftly endorsed Marine Le Pen.

I have disagreements with Marine Le Pen,” Zemmour said at his concession speech Sunday, “but there is a man facing Marine Le Pen who has let in 2 million immigrants … who would therefore do worse if he were reelected — it is for this reason that I call on my voters to vote for Marine Le Pen.

The post 12 food you can eat lot of without getting first appeared on M Thulashi.

The property, complete with a 30-seat screening room, a 100-seat amphitheater and a swimming pond with sandy beach and outdoor shower, was asking about $40 million, but J. Lo managed to make it hers for $28 million. As the Bronx native acquires a new home in California, she is trying to sell a gated compound.

Black farmers in the US’s South— faced with continued failure their efforts to run successful farms their launched a lawsuit claiming that “white racism” is to blame for their inability to the produce crop yields and on equivalent to that switched seeds.

Most of us felt like we could trust each other to be quarantined together, so we didn’t need to wear masks or stay far apart.

France’s repeat of the 2017 runoff confirms Macron’s and Le Pen’s own political analysis: That the divide between the left and the right is no longer relevant in France and has been replaced by an opposition between a mainstream bloc that is pro-European and open to the outside world on one side, and nationalists on the other.

Both candidates scored higher than five years ago, leaving the traditional right and left in an even more shambolic state than before. Macron went from 24 percent in 2017 in the first round to 27.6 percent Sunday and Le Pen went from 21.3 percent to 23.4 percent.

The gap between them is higher than last time around, showing that Macron has managed to drum up the most votes despite controversies in the campaign’s last mile, including over the state’s overuse of consulting firms. But the far-right bloc — Marine Le Pen, Eric Zemmour and nationalist Nicolas Dupont-Aignan combined — garnered than 30 percent of the total vote.

Allen is also really good at describing parties—or, at least, the ones the middle class and upper class attended. The historian wrote about how women taking up smoking had “strewed the dinner table with their ashes, snatched a puff between the acts, invaded the masculine sanctity of the club car, and forced department stores to place ornamental ash-trays between the chairs in their women’s shoe departments.”

I describe the “fun” parts of Only Yesterday because they’re wonderful, but also to make a point about the origin story we’ve learned about the mood of the ’20s. Looking back at Allen’s work from the vantage point of 1986, historian David M. Kennedy argued that the biggest failing of the book was its lack of historical depth: “Rarely did Allen forge an explanatory chain whose links ran back more deeply into the past than 1917.” And indeed, Allen seemed to blame World War I for every ash-covered carpet and scarred dining table.

What Will Be The Next Step to Complete?

The “new ’20s” idea might not work—there were a lot more young people in the United States then than now; a reprise of the world-changing inventions and discoveries of the 1920s would be a big surprise to those economists who believe that we have been in an invention dry spell since the 1970s. In his Businessweek piece, Peter Coy largely agrees, writing, “In all probability … the U.S. will continue to wrestle with ‘secular.

These experts make strong cases, and they satisfy my natural instinct not to go there. But I remain very interested in the reasons the ’20s appeal to our imagination right now. Of course, it’s the booze, the sex, and the parties. But it’s also a decade with a very strong identity—and I think that helps. Writing in the journal American Speech in 1951, Mamie J. Meredith argued that the ’20s boasted.

Apple Design Award Winners: Apps

• Parents Are Fed Up With Their Kids’ Expensive Berry Habits
• 15 Mother’s Day Gifts for the Burned-Out Mom in Your Life
• Really Though, What Jeans Are in Style Now?
• Don’t Fall for Fertility Fearmongering About Trans Men

Zemmour, a 60-year-old TV pundit-turned-politician, was once tipped to come second behind Macron, back in October. But he plummeted spectacularly in the polls after suffering from a perceived lack of credibility as the Ukraine war started and former comments praising Russian President Vladimir Putin resurfaced. He scored a measly 7 percent. Despite their bitter and unrelenting fighting throughout the campaign, he swiftly endorsed Marine Le Pen.

I have disagreements with Marine Le Pen,” Zemmour said at his concession speech Sunday, “but there is a man facing Marine Le Pen who has let in 2 million immigrants … who would therefore do worse if he were reelected — it is for this reason that I call on my voters to vote for Marine Le Pen.

The post Why UX Designers Should Learn the Graphic Design? first appeared on M Thulashi.

The property, complete with a 30-seat screening room, a 100-seat amphitheater and a swimming pond with sandy beach and outdoor shower, was asking about $40 million, but J. Lo managed to make it hers for $28 million. As the Bronx native acquires a new home in California, she is trying to sell a gated compound.

Black farmers in the US’s South— faced with continued failure their efforts to run successful farms their launched a lawsuit claiming that “white racism” is to blame for their inability to the produce crop yields and on equivalent to that switched seeds.

Most of us felt like we could trust each other to be quarantined together, so we didn’t need to wear masks or stay far apart.

France’s repeat of the 2017 runoff confirms Macron’s and Le Pen’s own political analysis: That the divide between the left and the right is no longer relevant in France and has been replaced by an opposition between a mainstream bloc that is pro-European and open to the outside world on one side, and nationalists on the other.

Both candidates scored higher than five years ago, leaving the traditional right and left in an even more shambolic state than before. Macron went from 24 percent in 2017 in the first round to 27.6 percent Sunday and Le Pen went from 21.3 percent to 23.4 percent.

The gap between them is higher than last time around, showing that Macron has managed to drum up the most votes despite controversies in the campaign’s last mile, including over the state’s overuse of consulting firms. But the far-right bloc — Marine Le Pen, Eric Zemmour and nationalist Nicolas Dupont-Aignan combined — garnered than 30 percent of the total vote.

Allen is also really good at describing parties—or, at least, the ones the middle class and upper class attended. The historian wrote about how women taking up smoking had “strewed the dinner table with their ashes, snatched a puff between the acts, invaded the masculine sanctity of the club car, and forced department stores to place ornamental ash-trays between the chairs in their women’s shoe departments.”

I describe the “fun” parts of Only Yesterday because they’re wonderful, but also to make a point about the origin story we’ve learned about the mood of the ’20s. Looking back at Allen’s work from the vantage point of 1986, historian David M. Kennedy argued that the biggest failing of the book was its lack of historical depth: “Rarely did Allen forge an explanatory chain whose links ran back more deeply into the past than 1917.” And indeed, Allen seemed to blame World War I for every ash-covered carpet and scarred dining table.

What Will Be The Next Step to Complete?

The “new ’20s” idea might not work—there were a lot more young people in the United States then than now; a reprise of the world-changing inventions and discoveries of the 1920s would be a big surprise to those economists who believe that we have been in an invention dry spell since the 1970s. In his Businessweek piece, Peter Coy largely agrees, writing, “In all probability … the U.S. will continue to wrestle with ‘secular.

These experts make strong cases, and they satisfy my natural instinct not to go there. But I remain very interested in the reasons the ’20s appeal to our imagination right now. Of course, it’s the booze, the sex, and the parties. But it’s also a decade with a very strong identity—and I think that helps. Writing in the journal American Speech in 1951, Mamie J. Meredith argued that the ’20s boasted.

Apple Design Award Winners: Apps

• Parents Are Fed Up With Their Kids’ Expensive Berry Habits
• 15 Mother’s Day Gifts for the Burned-Out Mom in Your Life
• Really Though, What Jeans Are in Style Now?
• Don’t Fall for Fertility Fearmongering About Trans Men

Zemmour, a 60-year-old TV pundit-turned-politician, was once tipped to come second behind Macron, back in October. But he plummeted spectacularly in the polls after suffering from a perceived lack of credibility as the Ukraine war started and former comments praising Russian President Vladimir Putin resurfaced. He scored a measly 7 percent. Despite their bitter and unrelenting fighting throughout the campaign, he swiftly endorsed Marine Le Pen.

I have disagreements with Marine Le Pen,” Zemmour said at his concession speech Sunday, “but there is a man facing Marine Le Pen who has let in 2 million immigrants … who would therefore do worse if he were reelected — it is for this reason that I call on my voters to vote for Marine Le Pen.

The post Who Owns Your Body: 10 Steps to the Best Shape first appeared on M Thulashi.