Migraine Headaches Are The Result Of A Disturbance In The Neurochemist

Migraine headaches are the result of a disturbance in the neurochemistry of the central nervous system. They are relatively common, affecting three times as many women as men. Migraine sufferers typically report a definite pattern to their headaches, and they can report what stimuli bring them on. Most migraine sufferers experience their first attack before the age of 20. There is no single cause of migraines, but the tendency to get migraines does tend to run in families. When a migraine occurs, it means that something has altered several of the neurotransmitter-sensitive receptors located on the outside surface of the nerve cells (neurons) so that the nervous system is no longer able to constantly maintain the natural balance that the nervous system is intended to maintain. Neurotransmitters are chemicals that nerve cells (neurons) use to communicate messages to each other. Receptors are special areas that receive these chemical messages. The key neurotransmitter in migraine is called serotonin (often referred to in the scientific literature as 5-HT or 5-hydroxytryptophan). If something interferes with the normal functioning (production, release, receptor docking, and/or re-uptake) of serotonin, that disrupts the normal functioning of the nervous system and can lead to various symptoms associated with migraine. The severe pain associated with migraine occurs when the mechanism that normally inhibits and/or mediates pain is disabled. There is no actual tissue damage occuring during a migraine attack. Instead, the pain results from a deranged neurochemistry. Migraine pain is like a loud fire alarm bell ringing when there is no fire. Scientists suspect that a caffeine withdrawal could be the possible cause of common migraines. Why? Well, caffeine is a powerful psychoactive drug that is addictive. Caffeine withdrawals produce all the same symptoms as migraine. Chronic caffeine use causes a number of changes to the central nervous system. Caffeine use increases the number of some types of serotonin receptors and some types of adenosine receptors as well. Adenosine is another neurotransmitter; adenosine strongly inhibits serotonin release. Chronic caffeine use increases the number of adenosine receptors.(The body is trying to compensate for the constant presence of caffeine, which occupies and blockades adenosine receptors and thus interferes with adenosine reception.) When caffeine is withdrawn, however, the chronic caffeine user is left with too many adenosine receptors. Having too many adenosine receptors is equivalent to having too much adenosine. As a result, serotonin release is inhibited and this leads to migraine symptoms. As you know there are many drugs used against migraine. Many of these drugs contain caffeine, for good reason: caffeine relieves migraine by reversing caffeine withdrawal. Migraine drugs that contain caffeine include Fiorinal (40mg caffeine), Fioricet (40mg caffeine), Excedrin (65mg caffeine), Anacin (32mg caffeine), Cafergot, Norgesic Forte (60mg caffeine), and others. Sumatriptan (Imitrex) is effective in relieving migraine attacks presumably because the sumatriptan molocule mimics (is very similar to) the serotonin molocule, and thus is called a serotonin agonist (helper). Sumatriptan, in other words, makes up for the shortfall of serotonin by occupying certain types of serotonin receptors. Sumatriptan is called a selective serotonin agonist because it has a greater affinity for (sticks more to) certain types of serotonin receptors than others. Other drugs, such as Prozac, Paxil, and Zoloft, are intended for the treatment of depression but they also seem to reduce frequency and/or severity of headaches including migraine (although they are not as effective as sumatriptan against oncoming migraine attacks). These drugs are called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, which means they interfere in the reuptake of serotonin back into the interior of the nerve cells (neurons). To understand what reuptake means you need to understand that neurotransmitters, once released, must be quickly grabbed and transported back into the interior of nerve cells for reuse. That must happen to "clears the boards" for the next message. If something (like Paxil) interferes with re-uptake of serotonin, that makes more serotonin available to dock with serotonin receptors. That explains why these anti-depressant drugs help reduce migraine to a certain extent. If caffeine withdrawal causes migraines then there is a way to end your migraines without surgery. You would have to either quit caffeine entirely or else maintain consistent daily caffeine intake. To do either you would need to be aware of all caffeine sources in food, drink, and

Causes And Effects Of Child Abuse Social Work Essay Essays

Causes And Effects Of Child Abuse Social Work Essay Essays Causes And Effects Of Child Abuse Social Work Essay Essay Causes And Effects Of Child Abuse Social Work Essay Essay One of the common psychosocial jobs is child maltreatment that has been encountered most of kids worldwide. Child maltreatment can take several signifiers of ill-treatment, it is classified to 4 types chiefly, physical, emotional, sexual and neglect. Children s parents and the health professional have been identified to be the most abuser in such instances. There are a batch of concealed facts that contribute to child maltreatment ; emphasis, drug and intoxicant consumption are illustrations of the causes that lye down behind it. Some effects of childhood ill-treatments are so deep and can be extended to adolescence and adulthood. As wellness supplier you should be cognizant for the marks and symptoms abused because early designation and direction can assist to decrease the long-run effects of maltreatment. On other manus there are two types of bar of kid maltreatment primary, and secondary. Raising a kid is non easy. Child maltreatment is considers a chief job that is endangering kids all over the universe. Most of us ca nt conceive of the effects of kid maltreatment.Unfortunately most of the victim are abused by their parents or any household member who might be really near to them. In the same clip kid maltreatment can go on in anyplace at schools, nines, and street non merely at place. ( In 2007, about 5.8 million kids were involved in an estimated 3.2 million kid maltreatment studies and allegations. In the United States ) Child Abuse is defined as hazard to a kid inflicted by another individual, normally the health professional ( Leiter, n.d para1 ) and includes physical, sexual, emotional maltreatment, and disregard. Child maltreatment can be brought by any one at any clip. Child maltreatment is seen in different frame, physical, sexual, emotional, and disregard. This paper is designed to speak about the types, causes, effects of kid maltreatment and how to cover with it by pull offing and forestalling it. Physical maltreatment can be classified as any effort or injury to a kid where the health professional was scruples of the hazard before the fact. Physical maltreatment refers to non inadvertent hurt to a kid. Physical maltreatment is highly unsafe to the kid and can do lasting physical and mental disablements May include striking, combustion, agitating, squeezing or drawing hair or ear. The kid may come with seeable grade of ill-treatment such as: cuts or contusions, breaks and internal hurts. On the other manus Sexual maltreatment refers to any sexual behaviour between a kid and an grownup or an older, bigger, or more powerful individual, for that individual s sexual enjoyment. Sexual maltreatment while still wholly atrocious is frequently times blown wholly out of graduated table and is the most advertised type of maltreatment ( Leiter, n.d Para 2 ) . Sexual activity maltreatment ranges from unwanted busss to inappropriate touching to sexual interaction. It is the most unsafe signifier of maltreatment because it consequences in really bad cicatrixs that are deep and durable, impacting non merely abused kids but the whole society. Sexual maltreatment is frequently times kept hidden more than other types of maltreatment. Children are forced and threatened non to state any one of the brushs because of the societal humiliation of being involved in sexual maltreatment. While, Emotional maltreatment refers to a chronic attitude or behaviour directed at a kid, or the creative activity of an emotional environment, which is earnestly unfavourable to or impairs the kid s psychological and/or physical development. This type of opprobrious behaviour can convey down an person s feeling of ego worth and self-pride. It let the victims to experience ineptitude and it can hold more durable negative psychological effects than physical maltreatment. Such as deficiency of fondness, disregarding, rejecting, and isolating, failure to embrace, utmost penalty. Furthermore, Negl ect is frequently thought of as the most unsafe type of maltreatment. Neglect refers to any serious skip or committee by a individual which jeopardizes or impairs the kid s psychological, rational, or physical development ( Leiter, n.d Para5 ) Neglect includes anything from go forthing kids entirely for long periods of clip to non giving them the correct attention for illustration, failure to supply equal nutrient, vesture, or hygiene. Like any other maltreatment, kid maltreatment besides has a cause. There are many causes of kid maltreatment. The most major 1 among the causes is mental unwellness, every bit good as psychological jobs. The inclination is that people who are non in their right heads, could easy make injury to kids, whether knowing or non. Besides, household jobs are major causes of child maltreatment such as hapless household relationships, divorce and separation, desperation and inability to get by with parenting or hapless parental sexual relationship. Parents under the power of drugs could easy ache their kids, besides drug or intoxicant dramas an of import function in arousing and the uncontrolled behaviours towards the kid. Plus, fiscal jobs could raise parents or other members of the household to mistreat kids as an mercantile establishment of their emotions. Stress could besides be a root cause of kid maltreatment, besides disorganized household and socially isolated can be cause, in add-on t o these causes hard kid who have characteristics of demanding or overactive may arouse the pique of the parents which may take to physical maltreatment, on the other manus handicapped kid who frequently more dependent will be prone to any type of maltreatment because they have physical or mental disablements or both of them.It is good to cognize the cause of maltreatment on a certain kid so that the intervention will be easy to implement. The effects of kid maltreatment can be direct shown in childhood or maturity Childs who have experienced kid maltreatment are likely to hold some emotional and psychological jobs whether they show them or non and in worse instances, a kid might hold suicidal inclinations because of this. The effects of kid maltreatment on a kid depends on how great the maltreatment is, the greater the maltreatment, the greater the consequence on the overall province of the kid. Depression, emphasis and injury are besides some of the effects of kid maltreatment in kids. Abused kids besides exhibit conditions like trouble in constructing up relationships in people, low ego image, eating upsets, every bit good as physical disablements. Child maltreatment could besides take down the self worth of the kid who experienced it. In add-on to that some effects of kid maltreatment are obvious: physical or mental issues broken or bruised organic structure, mental upsets, eating, slumber, opprobrious etc, separation of household, kid become lone wolf, arrested development kid acts younger than age well and on intent, halt speech production, more accidents of lavatory trained, hapless instruction, failure to win, favoritism, low ego regard, hapless ego assurance, hapless ego image, self injury, aching others, can impact offense, teenage gestations Management of suspected kid maltreatment Abused kids may show in the infirmary or to medical nursing staff in the community. They may besides be brought for a medical sentiment by societal services or the constabulary. In all instances, the processs of the local country kid protection commission should be the followed.the medical audience should be the same as for any medical status, with a full history and full scrutiny.it is normally most productive when this is conducted in a sensitive and concerned manner without being accusatory or reprobating.any hurts or medical determination should be carefully noted, measured, recorded and drawn on a topographic chart they may necessitate to be photographic with parental consent.the tallness, weight and caput perimeter should be recorded and kept in a chart. All notes should be dated, timed and signed. Treatment of specific hurts should be ingested and blood trials and X-ray undertaken. If maltreatment is suspected or confirm, a determination needs to be made as to whether immediat e intervention is required and if the kid needs immediate protection from farther injury. If this is the instance, this may be achieved by admittance to infirmary, which besides allows probe and multidisciplinary appraisal. If sympathetically handled, most parents are willing to accept medical advice for hospital admittance for observation and probe. Occasionally this is non possible and legal enforcement is required. If medical intervention is non necessary but it is felt to be insecure for the kid to return place, arrangement may be found in a surrogate place. In add-on to a elaborate medical appraisal, rating by societal workers and other wellness professional will be required. A kid protection conference will be convened in conformity with local processs.in the UK, the conference will be chaired by senior member of societal services section or of the National society for the bar of inhuman treatment to kids ( NSPCC ) .Member of conference may include societal worker, wellness vi sitants, constabulary, general practician, instructors and attorneies.increasingly, parents attend all or portion of the cause conference.Details of the incidents taking to the conference and the household background will be discussed.good communicating and a swearing working relationship between the professional are critical as it can be highly hard to measure the likeliness that injures were inflicted intentionally and possible result of legal continuing.The conference will make up ones mind whether to put the kid s name on the kid protection, besides there should be an application to the tribunal to protect registry the kid and follow up is needed.if the kid is topographic point is placed on the kid protection protection registry, the societal services section will bring forth a kid protection attention program which will include medical follow up in many cases. There are many stairss which can be taken besides to protect the kid.in UK, this enshrined legislatively in kids act ( 1989 ) , which clarified and acknowledge the jurisprudence, and came into operation in late 1991. Child maltreatment bar: There are two types of kid maltreatment bar primary and secondary bar Primary bar involves placing households at hazard before any hurt occurs. There may be call for aid from the female parent, such as frequent visit to the physician for minor jobs or ailments of inordinate weeping or hard eating. The female parent may state that she thinks she will wound the kid: this should ever be taken earnestly and stairss taken to live over the crisis by acknowledging the kid to hospital if necessary. Once recognize as a household at hazard, add-on support from wellness visitant or societal worker may forestall the crisis taking to existent hurt. Secondary bar means identifying kids who have been injured and taken stairss to forestall farther hurt. Subsequent hurt is likely to be more terrible. Plans will usually be made at instance conference and may intend taking the kid from place at least temporarily, but many kids possibly 35-45 % can be reunited with their parents when state of affairs improves. Child maltreatment can be prevented through the attempts to construct on household strength. This could be achieved through activities such as parent instruction, place visit, parent support groups or public instruction. The Child Abuse Prevention Service ( CAPS ) was founded in 1973 and aims to relieve kid maltreatment in all its signifiers through household support and community instruction. CAPS runs a free, national telephone line offering support, information, and referral to those affected by or concerned about kid maltreatment. You can name the telephone line on 1800 688 009 and talk to one of our highly-trained support workers. In decision, kid maltreatment needs to be better recognized. In order for it to be more recognized, people need to derive more cognition. More information demands to be presented to the populace. Everyone needs to work together to diminish this job because whether or non you think it is impacting you, it truly is. Abuse affects society as ? ° whole and that includes everyone in it. Child maltreatment is the figure one slayer of kids all over the universe. The four signifiers neglect, emotional maltreatment, physical maltreatment, and sexual maltreatment continue to run kids all over the universe. Child maltreaters inflict physical, sexual, and emotional injury on defenseless kids every twenty-four hours. The cicatrixs can be deep and durable. Everyone can back up and assist abused kid by describing of any kid maltreatment instance so they can back up the kid by pull offing the maltreatment or forestalling farther harm.

Reading for the Implied Main Idea

Reading for the Implied Main Idea Before getting into a discussion on how to find an implied main idea, you have to know what the main idea is in the first place. The main idea of a paragraph is the point of the passage, minus all the details. Its the big picture - the Solar System vs. the planets. The football game vs. the fans, cheerleaders, quarterback, and uniforms. The Oscars vs. actors, the red carpet, designer gowns, and films. Its the summary. What Is an Implied Main Idea? Sometimes, a reader will get lucky and the main idea will be a stated main idea, where the main idea is easy to find because its written directly in the text. However, many of the passages youll read on a standardized test like the SAT or GRE will have an implied main idea, which is a little trickier. If the author doesnt directly state the main idea of the text, its up to you to infer what the main idea is. Finding the implied main idea is easier if you think of the passage as a box. Inside the box, is a random group of stuff (the details of the passage). Pull each item from the box and try to figure out what they each have in common, kind of like the game Tri-Bond. Once youve figured out what the common bond is among each of the items, youll be able to summarize the passage in a snap. How to Find the Implied Main Idea Read the passage of text.Ask this question to yourself: What do each of the details of the passage have in common?In your own words, find the common bond among all the details of the passage and the authors point about this bond.Compose a short sentence stating the bond and what the author says about the bond. Step 1: Read the Implied Main Idea Example When youre with your friends, its okay to be loud and use slang. Theyll expect it and they arent grading you on your grammar. When youre standing in a boardroom or sitting for an interview, you should use your best English possible, and keep your tone suitable to the working environment. Try to gauge the personality of the interviewer and the setting of the workplace before cracking jokes or speaking out of turn. If youre ever in a position to speak publicly, always ask about your audience, and modify your language, tone, pitch and topic based on what you think the audiences preferences would be. Youd never give a lecture about atoms to third-graders! Step 2: Whats the Common Thread? In this case, the author is writing about hanging out with friends, going on an interview, and speaking publicly, which, at first glance, dont seem to relate to each other that much. If you find a common bond among all them, though, youll see that the author is giving you different situations and then telling us to speak differently in each setting (use slang with friends, be respectful and quiet in an interview, modify your tone publicly). The common bond is speaking, which will have to be part of the implied main idea. Step 3. Summarize the Passage A sentence like Different situations requires different kinds of speech would fit perfectly as the implied main idea of that passage. We had to infer that because the sentence doesnt appear anywhere in the paragraph, but it was easy enough to find this implied main idea when you looked at the common bond uniting each idea.

CONTRACT LAW Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words - 1

CONTRACT LAW - Essay Example Promissory estoppel is important in the sense that it can be used as a defense by a party to prevent another from turning back from the concession he or she has given and enforce his or her rights against the recipient of the concession. In order for promissory estoppel to arise, there must be a clear and unequivocal representation made by the parties that a right will not be enforced against the other. According to the court in the case of Woodhouse Israel Cocoa v Nigerian Produce Marketing Company2, there is a need for the party or the parties making the concession to inform the other party or parties regarding the concession made. The parties must clearly state the rights being waived or the favors which are extended to the other parties to create a clear representation. In other words, the concession made must be clearly communicated and understood by both parties otherwise said concession may not be considered as validly made. As decided by the court in the case of Baird Textiles holdings ltd V Marks & spencer plc3, where the concession made is ambivalent and insufficient to establish a clear representation, the party or parties to whom the concession was made may not use the doctrine of promissory estoppel as a defense. Is there a need to make an express concession to in order for the parties to make use of the doctrine of promissory estoppel? Apparently, the court does not require an express concession from the parties but rather it only requires that the concession must be unequivocal and sufficiently clear to be understood by the parties. According to the decision of the court in the case of Hughes V Metropolitan Railway Co.4, an implied representation can be a ground for promissory estoppel. Thus, if the acts of one party impliedly tell the other party that it is granting a favor to the other and the party who had been impliedly

Parphrase for ibrahim Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Parphrase for ibrahim - Essay Example Pin 4 – The function of Pin number 4 is that of Reset. From the word on go, the Rest Pin stays within the state of High state connectivity in the form of resistance of 100 kilo resistor. The relational voltage in this accord is that of 0.8 Volts as a whole. The 555 timer based oscillator is actually a specific type of circuit that produces high intensity based and swiftly moving waveforms. The output frequency of these waveforms is alterable through the connection of an RC circuit by attaching a single capacitor and a pair of resistors. The circuit so obtained makes up for a particular form of flexible oscillator that produces square waveforms which themselves are relatively static in their outlook. The given waveforms may end up with a specific frequency ranging up to as high as 500 kHz and further more it assists the duty cycles which can provide the wavelength of as high as up to the range of fifty to a hundred percent. In contrast to the mono stable set of circuits which halts its movement through the course of given time is lapsed, oscillator circuit at hand enables the function of re-triggering mechanism obtained through the meddling of the trigger input pin Number two along with the given sixth Pin that are explained above and each operating to a specific threshold voltage. The scenario can be explained as following. The given set of oscillator circuit, Two pins, one Pin number Two and the second number that of Pin number six are used in the given coordinated combinational uniformity. The given combination enables for the process of a self-triggering formula in every round trip. This in turn enables the circuit to operate as the running oscillator. The aforementioned circuit is also given another name and that is the voltage-to-frequency converter. The name is given on the account of fact that the overall external frequency is variable in nature through the alteration of the internal voltage variation. Pin number five often serves for

Improving mathematics Essay Example for Free

Improving mathematics Essay It is important for Mathematics teachers to create an atmosphere in which the subject is not seen to be outside of the student’s sphere of involvement and therefore irrelevant. Mathematics techniques that relate the subjects to things in the everyday world will more readily grasp the student’s attention and get him or her fully involved in the learning process. Mathematics can become more powerful and engaging if it is built â€Å"into an extended inquiry on a topic of importance for [the] subject, for students, and for the world at large† (Daniels Zemelman, 2004). Since the techniques practiced in the subject are used by people from retailers to engineers, teachers should take real life situations to the classroom and connect them to each lesson. For example, since the world’s population has been growing exponentially, it is possible to illustrate a lesson on exponents using such an example (2004). The constructivist idea that learning should be predominantly an active and social experience should be applied to the teaching of mathematics (Crowther, 1997). Although it is easier to ascertain the level of achievement of a given student via individual work, it is possible for students to gain much more from learning sessions if they are allowed to interact with their peers while completing tasks. This has several advantages, but two very important ones are these: It gives students the opportunity to gain different perspectives on the problem as well as the chance to have the theory explained in a novel way. Since students are more in tune with the way other students think, those who understand the problem will be able to re-present it to their fellow struggling students and to reveal the nuances of their understanding possibly in ways that the teacher had never considered. The other benefit of allowing interaction is that it gives the teacher time and space to visit—not just individual students, which would take the entire class period, but groups. Within the groups, salient issues will likely have already come up, and will most likely be revealed more readily by the students, as the group setting reduces the embarrassment that generally attends airing one’s ignorance on a topic. It is often during working and not teaching that students â€Å"realize† that their understanding of the topic is limited. Creating an atmosphere in which questions will arise and will be easier for the student to ask is a general teaching method that will improve the mathematics learning. A very important and unnerving part of mathematics teaching is the assessment. Assessment has generally been used as a tool for screening and separating students who have an aptitude for mathematics from those who do not (Linchevski et al. , 1998). However, this use of assessment (along with ineffective teaching methods) has contributed to the hatred that many have of the subject (Cock Pickard). Instead, if assessment were used consciously as a tool to determine what students need to learn, it would become a more effective tool in teaching (Linchevski Kutcher, 1998). Inevitably, some (if not most) students in a class will attack at least one problem and come up with the wrong answer. However, during assessment it is necessary for the teacher to scrutinize the process. Mathematics problems can be considered similar to an essay in that the student allows the teacher a glimpse into his or her mental processes via the different steps taken to get from one level in the answer to another. The faulty reasoning that leads to these erroneous steps is the area in which students need help. Planning is a very important part of teaching mathematics, and it can be used in conjunction with this kind of assessment to benefit the students (Linchevski Kutcher, 1998). It might be found that several students make similar errors. In such cases, the teacher has the opportunity to plan general lessons to address the areas in which students have shown weakness. If only a few make similar errors, for one class period following the assessment students could be grouped according to the areas in which they demonstrated weakness. The teacher would then be able to move around to each groups and explain where the members went wrong. References Cock, S. P. Pickard. â€Å"Improving student learning on entry level mathematics courses through course design. † University of North London. http://homepages. north. londonmet. ac. uk/~pickardp/oxbrk696. htm Crowther, D. T.(1997). â€Å"The Constructivist Zone. † Electronic Journal of Science Education. Vol. 2(2). Daniels, H. S. Zemelman. (2004). Subjects matter: every teacher’s guide to content-area reading. Portsmouth: Heinemann. Linchevski, L. and Kutcher, B. (1998). â€Å"Tell me with whom you’re learning and I’ll tell you how much you’ve learned: Mixed-ability versus same-ability grouping in mathematics. † Journal for Research in Mathematics Education. November. Linchevski, L. , R. Liebenberg, M. Sasman A. Olivier. (1998). Assessme.

The Mysterious Gatsby in The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald Essay

In the novel, The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, we know that Gatsby, the main character, is a mysterious man who doesn’t seem to show much personal growth throughout this book. Although, we do learn a lot about him through what the other characters reveal. We learn many different things about Gatsby through these rumors that it helps give us a better understanding of things. In the beginning of this novel everyone seems to know, or at least have heard, about Gatsby. He is talked about a lot and it is manly in a good way. Gatsby appears to be a very powerful person who also has a lot of respect from people. He has a very strange and kind of mysterious personality. For example when he has his party’s, usually on ever Saturday night, he seems to isolate himself from ...

Iron Crowned Chapter 9

I propped myself up so that I could look Dorian in the face. Even in dim lighting, I could see he was serious. â€Å"Who, Kiyo?† I asked in astonishment. â€Å"No, the other annoying kitsune in your life.† â€Å"Why would you †¦ why would you suggest something like that?† â€Å"Excellent question,† he murmured. His brow furrowed in thought, then relaxed into resignation. â€Å"Because his human blood would protect him and – my personal opinions of him aside – he is a good asset in a fight. Most importantly, he would have no interest in the crown. Nor would it be of any use to him.† Every one of those things was true. But there was one obvious problem. â€Å"Kiyo wouldn't help me. Not anymore. Jasmine would be more willing – if only for a chance to escape.† The argument that Kiyo and I had had in the mountains was still fresh in my head. This brought a smile to Dorian's lips, and he trailed his fingertips down my arm. â€Å"You doubt your own charms. The kitsune will help you, if you ask him nicely. He's not over you as much as you think. And he too would jump at the chance at some foolhardy way to end this war.† â€Å"Foolhardy †¦ You've gone back and forth on the usefulness of the crown yourself. And now you're willing to – † I almost said â€Å"allow† but recalled my earlier words. Dorian didn't dictate my life. † – accept me going off with my ex-boyfriend?† â€Å"This is an acceptable solution. Still dangerous †¦ but I believe you two could manage it. And I trust you,† Dorian said simply. â€Å"As you trust me.† I stared down into his eyes, dark in the flickering torchlight, though the striking shape of his face and fair skin glowed like a masterpiece in marble. â€Å"I do trust you.† He smiled again. â€Å"Good. We'll make plans in the morning. But for now †¦Ã¢â‚¬  The smile gave way to a yawn. â€Å"I need sleep. This has been a long day.† It was true. He'd been part of an epic battle and then made love – or whatever you wanted to classify that kinky shit as – like a pro. My day had been pretty busy too, to say the least. I put my head down, wrapping back against him, and soon slept in spite of the shocking suggestion he'd just made. When we woke, however, the crown became our immediate breakfast topic. We'd opted for private dining at a small table in the sitting room adjacent to his bedroom. After hearing about my traipsing about in his too-long robe, he'd had my own made for these slumber parties: white velvet with gold embroidery. It was a bit more elaborate than I would have preferred but felt nice against my bare skin. The wounds certainly appreciated loose clothing too. â€Å"Invite him to your castle,† said Dorian. Fully rested, he'd shifted completely into cunning mode, barely touching the elaborate spread of pastries and meats his servants had set before us. â€Å"The gods know he won't come here.† â€Å"Or Tucson,† I suggested after swallowing a gentry version of a cinnamon roll. Maybe I could get Tim the recipe. â€Å"He'd probably come to my house there.† Dorian considered. â€Å"No. Get him to this world, to your domain, so that you can leave as soon as possible. Above all, you must not – under any circumstances – allow him to go back to Maiwenn and consult her on this.† I swallowed another bite and smiled. â€Å"You think she'd be jealous?† â€Å"That's the least of our reasons.† He ticked them off on his fingers. â€Å"Remember – she fears you. Us. She wouldn't see this as an end to the war. She'd see it as you scrambling for power. And, who knows? The kitsune might have no use for the crown himself, but she could coax him into bringing it to her.† â€Å"She's not vying for power, last I knew. Besides – it's winning the crown that's the big deal, right? If it was just given to her, no one would respect her for it. If it can even be given †¦ I thought it returns home when it's away from its victor.† Dorian didn't respond right away. â€Å"True. But then that would still keep the crown from you. And we mustn't forget she might simply talk him out of it because of simple concern for his life.† Dorian's tone implied this was a petty concern. â€Å"No, don't give him a chance to talk to her. Invite him to you and ask – beg, if need be – for his help. Stress whatever urgent reason will work. A need to end the war. Make up some ultimatum from the ghost.† I set the roll down and tapped my water glass absentmindedly. This was all starting to make me feel strange. â€Å"There's a lot of conniving here.† â€Å"There always is in politics. In war. In love, even. But this can help us – more than you can imagine. We must put our faith in the old adage that the ends justify the means.† I sighed. â€Å"Okay, then. I'll do it. When?† â€Å"As soon as possible. Katrice is regrouping. We can take advantage of that.† That smooth, calculating air faded. â€Å"Though I hate to lose you.† â€Å"Hey.† I reached across the table and laid my hand over his. â€Å"Don't think of it as ‘losing' me. It's just like I'm going to Tucson for a few days.† He grimaced. â€Å"Except your petty human job doesn't carry such risks. Fetches aside. I do wish you'd let my healers take care of those wounds before you go.† The stitched-up cut itched, though the rest weren't bothering me. I tested the range of motion on my left arm. It was stiff but moved. â€Å"Let your healers keep working here. Maybe I'll have Shaya fix it up.† She didn't possess the skill of a bona fide healer but could do some quick patches. Dorian didn't like that but let the matter go. We finished breakfast, rehashing what little he knew about the path to the Iron Crown. I shed my robe for my normal clothes, after first having one of his servants clean and re-bandage my back. My mother would be proud, seeing me follow doctor's orders. We didn't know where Kiyo was exactly, here or the human world, but Dorian sent a messenger to Maiwenn's court, inviting him to mine. No one from our lands would be welcomed with open arms in her territory, but she'd allow a messenger through and hopefully let us know if he wasn't currently in the Otherworld. I also sent Volusian to Tim and Lara, warning I'd be gone for a while and to cancel all my appointments. Lara wouldn't like that, but I had a feeling it would be the least of her worries when faced with Volusian for the first time. When the time for me to leave came, Dorian couldn't hide his conflicted feelings. The part of him always striving for advantage and control wanted that crown. The part of him that loved me worried about what I was walking into. â€Å"It'll be okay,† I said, wrapping my arms around him. â€Å"I'm Storm King's daughter, remember? This'll be cake. And hey, if that ghost's lying, I'll be back tonight.† â€Å"I don't know if I'd prefer that or not,† he mused. He rested his hand behind my neck and gave me a long, lingering kiss. â€Å"Be careful, Eugenie. Fight hard, but be careful. And take this.† From a hidden pocket in his cloak, he produced something glittering and handed it to me. I held it up. It was a ring, hanging on a fine chain. Both were made of gold. A diamond flanked by sapphires sat prominently on the ring, which was fashioned to look like a circle of leaves. â€Å"Is this magic?† I asked. He shook his head. â€Å"Just something to remember me by. Just something to think about.† I eyed him carefully. Marriage happened among the gentry, though not as often as among humans. Considering our divorce rate, maybe that was smart. They didn't give engagement rings like humans did, but he'd know my world's custom. This ring suddenly made me uneasy. â€Å"It's a thing of beauty,† he said, seeing my reaction. â€Å"For someone beautiful. I knew you wouldn't wear it on your finger, so keep it on the chain.† I nodded. Sometimes a gift was just a gift – particularly when someone was afraid his beloved might get killed soon. I kissed him again. â€Å"Thank you.† I'd come alone via the human world, so he sent an escort back to the Thorn Land with me. No one except Dorian and Masthera knew what I was going to do, but the group could sense something big was about to go down. Tension crackled around us as we traveled. Like so many, these soldiers considered Dorian and me a powerhouse. They could hardly wait to see what would happen next. Kiyo wasn't waiting for me in the Thorn Land, not that I'd expected results that quickly. No refusal had come from Maiwenn either, which I took as a good sign. â€Å"What are you and my lord planning?† asked Rurik when he saw me. â€Å"You've got that look.† â€Å"What look is that?† I asked curiously. He reminded me of Tim. â€Å"The look that says you're planning something.† I rolled my eyes. â€Å"Eloquent as ever, Rurik.† â€Å"Should I assemble fighters?† he asked, shrugging off my comment. Shaya joined us then, scrolls in her arms. â€Å"No. I do this alone. Well, not exactly. Kiyo's coming with me. I hope. He should be showing up here today.† I spoke more confidently than I felt. Despite Dorian's certainties, I still wasn't sure whether Kiyo would help or not. Rurik and Shaya exchanged glances. â€Å"Stop that,† I told them. â€Å"It's perfectly platonic. Dorian suggested it.† Rurik looked like he still had a few things to say about it, but Shaya interrupted. â€Å"The Linden King wrote back. He won't join with us – but he also won't fight against us.† â€Å"Not the best news, not the worst. We'll see if he comes crawling when his power's in dispute.† The words came out with more venom than I expected. Rurik seemed to approve. Shaya leafed through more papers. â€Å"Caria, the Laurel Queen, would like to meet with you and discuss the war, however.† I knew nothing about that land. â€Å"Have we even contacted her?† â€Å"No,† said Shaya, giving me a meaningful look. â€Å"But her kingdom borders the Linden Land.† â€Å"Ah.† I smiled. My comment to Ranelle that others would be eyeing her king's land as his power faded was true. In refusing my offer to defend against that, they'd allowed someone else to solicit me for the other side of that future dispute. â€Å"He'll regret his neutrality later. See if Caria'll meet with Dorian while I'm gone.† Dorian would understand the situation perfectly. I figured this was it and started to leave. â€Å"There's one more thing,† added Shaya, twisting a black braid in that nervous habit of hers. â€Å"Girard would like to see you.† Her unease had made me think something bad was coming, but Girard was one of the few people who rarely delivered bad news. If anything, he usually delivered gifts, always coming up with some marvelous new piece of craftsmanship. Some pieces – like Dorian's sword and Jasmine's chains – I'd commissioned specifically. Sometimes, however, inspiration struck the artist, and he'd present some intricately worked necklace or diadem that I felt certain was beyond human skill. He could even touch iron in very small amounts. â€Å"I'm sure he's made something great, but I'm not in the mood today,† I told her. â€Å"I want to see Jasmine.† â€Å"He's not here to display work. He wants to introduce you to his sister.† She looked at me expectantly and seemed surprised by my lack of reaction. â€Å"You've never heard of her? Imanuelle de la Colline?† I shook my head. â€Å"Should I have?† Shaya shrugged. â€Å"Maybe not. But I think you'll find her †¦ interesting. It'll only take a minute.† It was true I was in a hurry, but Shaya's attitude intrigued me. We went to Girard's workshop, rooms I'd given to him on the castle's outer edge in case his work ever set something on fire. He was bent over a table, fingers magically working a bundle of metal and jewels. â€Å"Another crown?† I asked with amusement. They seemed to be his favorite thing to make. Girard looked up, startled, and bowed. â€Å"No, Your Majesty. It's something Lord Rurik has requested. If you'd like another crown – â€Å" I waved him silent. â€Å"No, no. God knows I have plenty. Hardly seems like Rurik's style, though.† Girard didn't comment. Client confidentiality, I supposed. Turning, he pointed off toward the side of his workshop, and I gaped. A woman stood there, and somehow I hadn't noticed her upon entering – which seemed impossible. She and her brother shared the same dark skin and black hair, as well as a taste for bright clothing. The dress she wore was a stunning teal silk, cut shorter than most gentry dresses. Something about it gave me the impression she wore it for utility, not sexiness. â€Å"Your Majesty,† she said, sweeping me a curtsey. Also like Girard, a faintly French-sounding accent laced her words. â€Å"This is my sister, Imanuelle,† he said. Like Shaya, he seemed to expect me to know who his sister was. â€Å"It's nice to meet you,† I told her. When no one said anything, I shifted restlessly, impatient to go. Seeing this, Imanuelle strode forward, her steps graceful and liquid. â€Å"Your Majesty,† she said. â€Å"I've come to offer my services to you, should you like to hire me.† I glanced at the other faces, seeking more information, but received none. â€Å"What do you do?† I asked. â€Å"Do you work metal like Girard?† A mischievous smile crossed Imanuelle's face. She had caught on that I really didn't know who she was and appeared to enjoy that. â€Å"No. My talents are of †¦ a different nature.† I saw a slight gesture of her hand, and then suddenly, the teal silk dress turned yellow. A moment later, it changed form altogether, turning into a flowing velvet gown. Then, she wasn't Imanuelle at all. A clone of Shaya stood before me. After letting that sink in, Imanuelle returned to her original form. She bowed, as though having just performed a stage show. â€Å"I'm an illusionist,† she said. â€Å"I can make people see things that aren't there. Most importantly, I can make myself look like anything I choose.† It was one of the cooler gentry powers, but I didn't entirely see how it'd be useful for me. â€Å"So I can finally be in two places at once?† I joked. That brought another smile. â€Å"I suppose †¦ but I've honed other skills to accompany these. Ones many monarchs find useful. I †¦ get rid of problems.† Apparently guessing my confusion, Shaya sighed and dropped her usual formality. â€Å"You're better off not dancing around the subject. My queen prefers directness.† She turned to me. â€Å"Imanuelle is an assassin, Your Majesty.† Imanuelle's smile tightened a little. I think she preferred her more flowery description. â€Å"That's an ugly word for a formidable skill set.† It took me a moment to catch on. â€Å"So, you're here to – Wait. You think I'm going to hire you to, what, assassinate Katrice?† Imanuelle shrugged eloquently, and her brother spoke up for her. â€Å"Some might see that as a quick way to end the war, if I may be so bold.† Girard had picked up that I didn't like this idea at all and was understandably nervous. He valued his position with me. â€Å"It's a dirty, sneaky way to end a war!† I exclaimed. â€Å"It'd make me no better than Katrice and her bastard son.† â€Å"It would eliminate Katrice directly,† said Imanuelle. â€Å"Since she is the source of your problems. I could disguise myself as someone in her castle. Quick, easy. No other innocents need be hurt.† For a heartbeat, her words almost made sense. Then I shook my head emphatically. â€Å"No. I'm not going to stoop to that level.† Some of Imanuelle's pleasant demeanor faded. â€Å"There are monarchs who would give half their kingdoms for my services! I'm very selective. I'm doing you a great honor.† I narrowed my eyes. â€Å"You're doing me an honor?† She hesitated, realizing she was addressing one of the most formidable queens in the Otherworld. Again, Girard jumped in to save her. â€Å"Forgive our presumption, Your Majesty. We only wanted to offer it as an option.† â€Å"It's been offered,† I said bluntly. â€Å"And refused. Thank you for the ‘honor.' You're welcome to visit your brother, of course, but I'd prefer that you stay here no longer than absolutely necessary.† I turned dramatically away from them, just catching the outrage on Imanuelle's face, and strode out. Shaya hurried by my side. â€Å"Spoken like a queen,† she said. â€Å"Do I need to worry about that woman killing me now?† I asked. â€Å"Is she going to change into you and pull a knife on me?† â€Å"I'm sure you'd respond as efficiently as you do to the other attacks on you,† said Shaya dryly. â€Å"Her illusions aren't foolproof to everyone. I'm guessing Volusian could see through them if he were around. But, honestly †¦ although her pride has been hurt – she does have quite the reputation – I suspect she'll simply stalk off and leave you be, if only for her brother's sake.† â€Å"Well, that's nice. One less person trying to kill me.† I raked my hand through my hair. â€Å"Anything else I need to deal with?† That was a loaded question, of course. Shaya had a few more business matters for me to look over before I could finally see Jasmine. I hadn't talked to her after the dinner at Dorian's and felt she'd be a good distraction as I waited to see if Kiyo would come. I found her outside in one of the gardens, sitting in the shade of a mesquite tree as the sun grew higher and the heat increased. Her guards stood stoically nearby, and her fine chains glittered in the light. At my approach, she glanced up from a book. Petulant, power-hungry teen that she might be, she was also an avid reader, using fantasy to escape her mundane existence when she'd still lived among humans. This book was one I'd brought her recently, the first in a trendy series. â€Å"Is it good?† I asked, sitting down opposite her. â€Å"Not bad,† she said, playing cool. A moment later, she gave herself away. â€Å"Are there more out in the series?† â€Å"Three more, I think.† She said nothing but smiled as she set the book beside her. â€Å"Did you have fun at Dorian's?† I asked. â€Å"Yeah. It was nice to be out.† Her eyes gazed off, not really focusing on anything. â€Å"I think the best part was watching Shaya scare off all the guys hitting on me.† She turned back to me. â€Å"Is that what it's like for you all the time?† â€Å"Not since I got together with Dorian. They've slacked off – and Shaya doesn't scare them away. She abandons me.† Jasmine smiled again. â€Å"Dorian's crazy about you. Obsessed.† â€Å"That's kind of an extreme observation.† â€Å"It's true.† She brushed hair out of her eyes. The sunlight was turning it to gold, making me a little envious; I'd gotten true red from our father, rather than strawberry blond. She could wear pink. â€Å"It's good,† she continued. â€Å"His obsession. That bitch Ysabel wants him, you know. And she hates you. So does her mom.† â€Å"Yeah, I kind of figured that out.† She shrugged. â€Å"Well, then, keep Dorian close.† â€Å"I'm not worried.† â€Å"Ysabel's got kids, and you won't give him any.† I was so sick of hearing about me and procreation. â€Å"Lots of gentry women have kids. Are you saying I should worry about all of them, Little Miss Love Guru?† â€Å"Not all of them look like you. I mean, not exactly like you †¦ but I think Dorian gets off on redheads. Maybe he figures he'll have red-haired kids that way. I don't know. But, whatever. I'm just saying she's waiting there for you to slip up with Dorian. And he's already gone for her before. She's got a bigger chest than you, too.† â€Å"Hey,† I said indignantly. â€Å"That's irrelevant. Besides, he went for her – and she annoyed him. And I'm not going to ‘slip up.' He's not going anywhere.† I frowned, surprised by my next words, that I'd actually say them to her. â€Å"It's Kiyo I've got to pull in.† Jasmine's gray eyes widened in shock. â€Å"Him? He's no use to you †¦ unless, oh Jesus. You guys aren't planning some three-way, are you? I mean, I know you and Dorian get into some – â€Å" â€Å"No!† I exclaimed. â€Å"It's nothing like that. I need a favor from Kiyo, that's all. A big one. A dangerous one. I'm not sure what'll convince him.† I smiled weakly, remembering Dorian's expression when I'd showed up in the tight gentry dress. â€Å"I'd know what to do if it was Dorian.† Jasmine scoffed and gave me a scathing look. â€Å"How stupid are you? Even I know what to do if you want to suck in Kiyo. Look human.† â€Å"I am human. Who's stupid now?† Good grief. We'd advanced to snippy quarrelling. We were becoming real sisters more and more each day. â€Å"You're half human. Dorian likes that because he thinks he can knock you up †¦ but the rest? He wants you to be a queen. One of the shining ones. Kiyo doesn't. He hates all of that. He doesn't want you anywhere near it. You hooked up before you were into all the Otherworld stuff. Be like that.† I stared at her, startled because she had an excellent point. â€Å"Do I look human now?† Jasmine studied me critically. I had jeans and a T-shirt on, my hair pulled sloppily into a ponytail. My boots were sturdy, made for hiking. Plain. â€Å"Yeah,† she said, sounding surprised. â€Å"Scruffy and human. He'll be into that. Except for the ring. It's from Dorian, right? Put it under your shirt.† I touched the ring hanging on my chest, having forgotten about it. â€Å"How'd you know it was from him?† â€Å"Because you wouldn't get it for yourself, and no one else would either. It's also got oak leaves.† I peered down at it. Sure enough. I hadn't identified the leaves earlier. I followed her advice, concealing it under the shirt. She watched with approval, then seemed to really notice my shirt. â€Å"Who's Mà ¶tley Cre?† I was saved from lecturing her on classic rock when a servant scurried up to us, telling me Kiyo was here. The ease I'd felt with Jasmine vanished. I stood up, forcing calm, half-wondering if I should take her after all. No. Kiyo was the right choice. â€Å"Good luck,† Jasmine said, picking up her book. â€Å"And remember: be human.† I followed the servant away, embarrassed that I was taking advice from an insane fifteen-year-old. Except †¦ I knew she was right. I made sure my gait was casual, nothing regal. Then, I sent the servant away, deciding it'd be best to come to Kiyo on my own, rather than approaching with an escort, no matter how insignificant. He was waiting inside a parlor, pacing restlessly. I knew how uneasy I made him, and this invitation had no doubt put him on guard. I watched him unnoticed for a moment, admiring that muscled body while knowing it was wrong to do so. Sneaking up on him was impossible, though. He could smell me. My sweat and skin alone would have given me away, let alone the vanilla sunscreen and violet perfume I also wore. â€Å"Eugenie,† he said, turning around. â€Å"Nice to see you.† He seemed impassive, but his eyes made me think he really did like seeing me – physically at least. â€Å"Sorry for the abrupt request,† I said. â€Å"You were probably visiting Luisa, huh?† The mention of his daughter softened his expression a tiny, tiny bit. â€Å"Yeah, she's †¦ she grows every day. It's amazing.† He flipped back to alert mode. â€Å"But that's not why you asked me here.† â€Å"No.† I settled into one of the chairs, crossing my legs and hoping I looked casual and unassuming. â€Å"I need your help.† He continued standing. â€Å"That's unexpected.† â€Å"Well, I got an unexpected offer. Do you still want me to get out of this war?† â€Å"Of course.† He made a face. â€Å"Oh, Eug. Please tell me you don't want me to negotiate or something.† I smiled, both at the suggestion and his use of the nickname. â€Å"No, I need you for something that's more your specialty. I don't suppose you've ever heard of the Iron Crown?† Kiyo hadn't. I provided a brief rundown, explaining how the person who fought through and won it could allegedly inspire fear and awe. â€Å"And that's enough to make Katrice back off?† he asked skeptically. â€Å"So they say.† I shrugged. â€Å"It's weird to me too, but everyone I've talked to claims it'll intimidate Katrice and her armies.† Best not to mention that â€Å"everyone† was Dorian, a ghost, and a crazy seeress. â€Å"It'll prove what a badass I am. And if that forces her into peace talks †¦Ã¢â‚¬  I let him draw his own conclusions. â€Å"It's a gamble,† Kiyo said. He still sounded doubtful, but there was a crack there. He wanted the war over. He wanted me out of it. â€Å"But why ask me? Why not Dorian?† â€Å"Because he couldn't survive the quest. The way's lined with iron. It would take an insanely strong gentry – or people with human blood, like you and me. Plus, I trust you.† I didn't know if the human solidarity had gotten me anywhere, but he was definitely considering this more and more. I also wondered if admitting trust in him did anything. Part of what had driven us apart was my accusation that he didn't care enough about me to punish Leith. â€Å"I'd like to help you,† Kiyo said finally. â€Å"It's crazy – but no crazier than half the stuff around here. I should talk to Maiwenn first, though.† You must not – under any circumstances – allow him to go back to Maiwenn and consult her on this. â€Å"There's no time,† I said, hastily running through Dorian's laundry list of excuses. â€Å"We have to go now. The ghost who's going to help me threatened to back out if I didn't act soon. And we're currently on hold with Katrice. If I could return with the crown before the next battle, it would be †¦ well, it'd be amazing. No more bloodshed.† I could see him wavering, but he wasn't quite convinced. Really, I didn't blame him. If I had an ally who could advise me on some bizarre quest, I'd want to talk to her too before jumping in. â€Å"You can talk to her if you want,† I said. â€Å"But I've got to leave now. I can't stand waiting. I'll just go by myself.† That drove the dagger in. No matter how sketchy the logic, no matter how smart it would be to get Maiwenn's advice †¦ the fear of my running off into unknown dangers was too great. He stared at me for several heavy moments, his expression unreadable. Finally, he sighed. â€Å"Right now?† he asked. â€Å"Right now,† I said. â€Å"Then let's go.†

Protect Our Mother Nature

PROTECT OUR MOTHER NATURE Repeatedly in history, conceptions of nature have served as ideological justifications for political theory. The most obvious example is the Hobbesian state of nature against which even the most oppressive government appears perfectly legitimate. Whereas in most cases of political theory, nature looks like an incompetent savage or unreliable tramp, some anarchist lines of argument instead offer versions of nature as infinite, loving, or otherwise better than the artifices to which it is implicitly opposed.Whether for or against nature, depictions of the natural world in political theory consider it in cultural units of meaning, a combination of icons and stereotypes that change not only our understanding of nature, but also of the units of meaning being referenced. In the early twentieth century journal Mother Earth, a construction of nature comes together, in a publication interested mostly in anarchist and feminist goals, that worshipped nature as a huge, consuming, feminine super being.Certain traits in the construction of nature in this journal form an account of nature as a particular type of femininity to be admired, a move laden both with direct strategic value and creeping implications for the idealizations of womanhood. In order to establish the desirability of the journal’s goal of a world without artificial systems of control, the opposition of nature and artifice is a crucial first step. While it may seem tempting to define these terms, this neglects the primary function of both as catchalls with nebulous referents and amorphous structure defined only by their opposition to one another.The process of dividing the categories begins in the very first issue of the publication, in the foundational article †Mother Earth†. The article mythologizes that â€Å"Man issued from the womb of Mother Earth †¦ out of his efforts there arose the dreary doctrine that he was not related to the Earth, that she was but a temporary resting place for his scornful feet and that she held nothing for him but temptation to degrade himself. † This creation story of the present political situation clearly opposes the natural, which was original, to the artificial, which is only an egoistic and recent edifice.Nature as mother, of course, means artifice must be opposed, and thus becomes child, making the entirety of the anarchist argument parallel to motherly chastisement. In the same issue, â€Å"Without Government† bemoans government solutions as inevitably late and insubstantial, suggesting an analogy with illness where â€Å"the symptom of the disease was hidden† and only on its appearance would the government act. In this metaphor, artificial solutions to the world’s problems are only attacks on a flurry of symptoms as they slowly manifest themselves in increasingly visible ways, thus the profound animosity the journal expresses towards ‘Comstockery’.Regulation of sexuality becomes a direct example of the child trying to limit what mother had given to her children. Volume three number five offers an analogy for group resistance of bees on a tree branch, â€Å"it is only needful that one bee spread its wings, rise and fly, and after it the second, the third, the tenth, the hundredth, for the immobile hanging mass to become a freely flying swarm of bees. † The writing makes humans already bees in a thoroughly naturalized world upon which systems of domination such as the state and religion have only been imposed in a superficial sense.All we need to do, in this account, is realize the situation, and spread our wingsto fly back into an expansive and beautiful nature. This fetishization of nature provides a clear contrast between the world of that which the anarchafeminist politics of the publication oppose and the ‘real’ world of nature that underlies and surrounds the injustices of artificial living. The question then bec omes, in order to prove the insufficiency and downright failures of artifice by comparison, what is the character of nature? To begin with, nature is big.In the first issue’s article â€Å"Mother Earth†, the history of the world seems laid out in a quasi-mythical tale. â€Å"Earth was but one of a myriad of stars floating in infinite space. † The whole of the universe, with which nature remains implicitly identified, exceeds our abilities to measure, let alone comprehend – a myriad in infinity. Even in this cosmic understanding, that which is natural and surrounded is still itself huge. In an article in the first issue called â€Å"Try Love†, the argument concludes, â€Å"Let us be broad and big. Let us not overlook vital things, because of the bulk of trifles confronting us. The natural is large; problems from artifice can be numerous, but each is only of trifling size – thousands of children surrounding one huge mother. Beyond being large to begin with, the maniacal focus in the publication on freeing nature and being freed into nature also revolves around a hope for future growth. As if ‘we’ were already failing to be â€Å"broad and big† enough, â€Å"The Tragedy of Women’s Emancipation† proclaims: â€Å"Salvation lies in an energetic march onwards towards a brighter and clearer future. We are in need of unhampered growth out of old traditions and habits† as if nature and life in nature knew no limits.The image is of not just a sprouting weed, but a whole forest growing out of a street. This rhetorical strategy of associating the concept of nature so crucial to driving the arguments of the journal with hugeness seems strangely sympathetic with and to industrializing urges of the time. The conflict between the temptations of big machines with big outputs and direct material gain versus little anarchic communities with little to offer but some vague sense of satisfaction can finally be resolved in an anarchy run by a big nature figure, a loving cow mother replaces the cruel leviathan father.This solution gives all the benefits and reassurance of something so-big-it-must-work and avoids all the downfalls readers would consider so endemic to ‘modernization’ . Beyond simple scale, nature is inescapable. While a big nature appeals to childlike demand for an oversized mother who will ensure safety and grant all desires, the journal also shows nature as generally inevitable. Relying on one of many references to scientific certainty, â€Å"Liberty†, in the second volume, issue number three, reminds us: â€Å"the natural law of a social organism is as certain as, though less known than, the force of gravity.Like the latter it antedates, and is independent of, our knowledge of its existence, or of the law of its operation. † The natural law, suggesting the order inherent in ‘free’ ways of life, does not even need to be pro ven preferable to artificial laws so long as it is inevitable, the rhetoric suggests. No matter how much one tries to fight it, they can only impede the natural order of things, but never change it. Indeed, this sentiment, in argument form, makes up the bulk of the rest of the article. The natural law not only frames what is and is not tyranny, but even ‘proves’ the futility of passing any laws through the government.And men, brought up in law-abiding communities in the deepest respect for the law, will, under the changed conditions of life, not merely condone the infliction of a penalty in excess of that provided by law, but will themselves assist, virtuously satisfied with their conduct because the society of which they form a part has decided that horse-stealing shall be so punished. On the other hand, there are numerous laws on the statute books, still unrepealed and unenforceable because the acts treated of are no longer held to be offences against morality.In othe r words, the morals of a people can be regulated only by themselves. The trick is very simple, if a law is natural there is no reason to legislate about it, and if it is not natural no one will obey it. The rhetorical construction of nature as unavoidable already renders artifice more than avoidable – it is always already avoided. Rhetorical implications become argument: it would be impossible to describe any part of government’s power as belonging to government itself, because people only act based on nature. The closest government comes to legislation in this model is to prescribe behavior people already exhibit.The gist of this construction of nature is most clear in the case of a poem in volume three, number two entitled â€Å"The King†. In it, a dead king rots in nature, covered in lizards and â€Å"vile spineless things†, literally consumed by the overpowering feminine in his afterlife. â€Å"Faith lit his pathway with her loveliness; / Fair Hopeâ €™s voice called him from his barren fen; Love vainly strove to lure him with her grace. † As a feminine entity, nature is here the omnipresent mother, she tracks down her children and is always there for them to return to.Inescapable nature not only sets up a comparison in which government and artifice can never win, but simultaneously constructs the role of a feminine presence that is ineradicable and impossible to resist. The good mother must be always present and forever accepting of even her most lost children. Also, nature has youthful beauty. In the first issue of Mother Earth, the flagship article explains the history of nature in terms that make Earth unmistakably a young mother, â€Å"she renewed herself, the good mother, and came again each Spring, radiant with youthful beauty, beckoning her children to come to her bosom and partake of her bounty. Nature’s youth not only implies a relative trait against which all human-made construction can never appear more – almost sexually – attractive. The attempt to make nature look nice is nowhere so transparent as in this attempt to cast it as actually young and beautiful. Indeed, even its temporary failings can be excused by Earth’s renewal each spring. If some part of nature is dangerous or undesirable, it will soon be corrected in the regular course of the seasons. In volume five, number six, â€Å"The Esthetic Side of Jewtown† explains,Life is too strenuous in Jewtown to preserve the bloom of youth. Among the younger ones there are some who are very beautiful beneath their coating of filth, with the clove skin and large, soft, black eyes. They give themselves a coquettish appearance. The truly horrid part of life in the Ghetto, we learn, is that it covers or takes away the natural beauty of women. Artifice cannot destroy nature, because nature is big and inescapable, but it can blemish its beauty temporarily.This identification of nature with youth and beauty combined with the opposition of nature and the state sell anarchism almost exactly the way one might sell diet soda: government is actually too ugly to appreciate, gorgeous young women prefer anarchy. In classic advertising style, Mother Earth also describes nature as saturated with love. In the first issue, when describing a budding relationship crushed by the coldness of artifice and modern living, â€Å"The Tragedy of Women’s Emancipation† explains that â€Å"poetry and the enthusiasm of love cover their blushing faces before the pure beauty of the lady. Her admirer] silences the voice of his nature and remains correct. † The article condemns his correctitude as exactly the basic problem of modern living – its disconnect from love and contact. Tragically, the beauty of the lady, just as that of the kindly mother Earth, has been tainted to block the â€Å"poetry† and â€Å"enthusiasm of love† the article considers natural. In contrast to t he authentic state of love the various ‘systems’ of which anarchism complains give us poor simulations of affection: marriage and the nuclear family.In volume 3, number five, the article â€Å"Light and Shadows in the Life of an Avant-Gard†, we learn The poor women, thousands of them, abused, insulted, and outraged by their precious husbands, must continue a life of degradation. They have no money to join the colony in Reno. No relief for them. The poor women, the slaves of the slaves, must go on prostituting themselves. They must continue to bear children in hate, in conflict, in physical horror. The marriage institution and the â€Å"sanctity of the home† are only for those who have not the money to buy themselves free from both, even as the chattel slave from his master.Nature offers real love, civilization offers a slavery titled love. These stark terms of opposition function to set up an understanding of a loving motherly nature that makes it obviousl y superior to the uncaring childlike cruelties that comprise the artificial world. As is often thought, nature is also connected with freedom. It is quite arbitrary to say that those things to which a life in ‘nature’ is conducive represent the content of freedom. For instance, in nature one is not free to vote or go to work, and yet this is considered irrelevant to questions of liberty.In volume two, number three, of Mother Earth, the article â€Å"Liberty† proclaims that â€Å"whatever may be the form of social institutions, if it does no more than to declare and enforce well-known rules of natural justice, then I am free. † The simplistic opposition between the compromises of ‘artificial’ life and the freedom of nature is best exemplified in the pithy quote â€Å"Liberty escaped into the wilderness† from the journal’s founding article. This unbounded freedom seems excessively unrealistic as a description of a mother, and yet i t is precisely the freedom that mothers lacked that the journal constructs nature as having in spades.At the same time, the infinite youth, beauty, and inescapable freedom in and of nature primarily complement its fundamentally orderly state. Perhaps in one of the most bizarre fixations of anarchist literature, the journal seems careful to point out the extreme orderliness of life in anarchy. In this kind of reconciliation of total freedom and total justice one can actually see the neurosis of liberalism tentatively suggest what it most wishes simply come true: good freedom and good order. The very first issue, in the rticle â€Å"Without Government† we are told that, there are qualities present in man, which permit the possibilities of social life, organization, and co-operative work without the application of force. Such qualities are solidarity, common action, and love of justice. To-day they are either crippled [sic] or made ineffective through the influence of compulsion ; they can hardly be fully unfolded in a society in which groups, classes, and individuals are placed in hostile, irreconcilable opposition to one anotherAgain, like an orderly housewife, nature maintains a world that works, but without even so much as a broom. Instead, nature works through qualities always already present in people, as natural beings. It is through this sort of argument that anarchism can define government into such a position that it doesn’t even make sense to consider, having already had all its greatest advantages stolen over to the side of nature. Simultaneously, nature’s great assets will be willingly sacrificed to her children in cheerful martyrdom.Like the constructed role of a ‘good mother’, nature â€Å"sees the bleeding feet of her children †¦ hears their moans, and she is ever calling to them that she is theirs† beginning in the founding article of Mother Earth. The article continues to encourage the exploitation of nature because nature is asking for it, here with increasingly vivid maternal imagery. Mother Earth keeps sources of vast wealth hidden within the folds of her ample bosom, extended her inviting and hospitable arms to all those who came to her from arbitrary and despotic lands–Mother Earth ready to give herself alike to all her children.But soon she was seized by the few, stripped of her freedom, fenced in, a prey to those who were endowed with cunning and unscrupulous shrewdness. The rapaciousness of artifice and modern civilization becomes its primary characteristic when put in the terms of a kindly mother fallen prey to vicious quasi-Oedipal domination. Here, again, the journal’s construction of nature as feminine serves the direct political function of discrediting political opponents such as the state, capitalism, and religion.However, the indirect effect of such a construction may be more historically significant, as the natural world becomes increasingly femini zed in particular ways. It is impossible to simply associate nature with feminine, because there is too much to each category. Here the generality is retained on the term of nature – to the degree that it’s distinction from artifice can be kept plausible – and specificity is given to the feminine. Mothers should, in this account, sacrifice everything to their children, no matter how abusive they may be to her.Indeed, every praised trait of Mother Earth is a thinly veiled suggestion for mothers to fulfill. That Mother Earth is huge, inescapable, free and orderly says, at some level, that all good mothers are this way. Thus we end with a political theory laid out in Mother Earth that various artificial systems are bad because they are inferior to a young, beautiful martyr of an omnipresent loving mother who provides both freedom and order.In conclusion, the journal Mother Earth deployed rhetoric in various forms to craft a particular feminine version of nature tha t explicitly worked to delegitimize particular systems of oppression and implicitly functioned to worship an ideal maternal version of womanhood. The journal’s preoccupation with issues of concern to women, such as marriage, prostitution, birth control, and sexuality coincided with its normalizing urge to encounter (some) people as children of nature who could frolic freely within the limitless provisions of their mother’s great world.However, there are actually two possible roles for a subject here, children or mother herself. Politics and men immediately appear infantilized against the mother of nature, supplying a ready-made excuse and index for predicting their actions as irresponsible yet lovable children, but for many women Mother Earth was not their mother, but to be their role model.Nature was a mother whose private sphere expanded to one large planetary home and material limitations in age and restriction were erased by scientific appeal (and pure fiat) to ren der life in nature simultaneously completely free and problem-free. As a solution to the troubles of political theory, the journal instead invented a superhero character to replace the tired images of a drudging, used up, and insensitive nature with a glossy new young, beautiful cover girl – Mother Earth. Protect Our Mother Nature PROTECT OUR MOTHER NATURE Repeatedly in history, conceptions of nature have served as ideological justifications for political theory. The most obvious example is the Hobbesian state of nature against which even the most oppressive government appears perfectly legitimate. Whereas in most cases of political theory, nature looks like an incompetent savage or unreliable tramp, some anarchist lines of argument instead offer versions of nature as infinite, loving, or otherwise better than the artifices to which it is implicitly opposed.Whether for or against nature, depictions of the natural world in political theory consider it in cultural units of meaning, a combination of icons and stereotypes that change not only our understanding of nature, but also of the units of meaning being referenced. In the early twentieth century journal Mother Earth, a construction of nature comes together, in a publication interested mostly in anarchist and feminist goals, that worshipped nature as a huge, consuming, feminine super being.Certain traits in the construction of nature in this journal form an account of nature as a particular type of femininity to be admired, a move laden both with direct strategic value and creeping implications for the idealizations of womanhood. In order to establish the desirability of the journal’s goal of a world without artificial systems of control, the opposition of nature and artifice is a crucial first step. While it may seem tempting to define these terms, this neglects the primary function of both as catchalls with nebulous referents and amorphous structure defined only by their opposition to one another.The process of dividing the categories begins in the very first issue of the publication, in the foundational article †Mother Earth†. The article mythologizes that â€Å"Man issued from the womb of Mother Earth †¦ out of his efforts there arose the dreary doctrine that he was not related to the Earth, that she was but a temporary resting place for his scornful feet and that she held nothing for him but temptation to degrade himself. † This creation story of the present political situation clearly opposes the natural, which was original, to the artificial, which is only an egoistic and recent edifice.Nature as mother, of course, means artifice must be opposed, and thus becomes child, making the entirety of the anarchist argument parallel to motherly chastisement. In the same issue, â€Å"Without Government† bemoans government solutions as inevitably late and insubstantial, suggesting an analogy with illness where â€Å"the symptom of the disease was hidden† and only on its appearance would the government act. In this metaphor, artificial solutions to the world’s problems are only attacks on a flurry of symptoms as they slowly manifest themselves in increasingly visible ways, thus the profound animosity the journal expresses towards ‘Comstockery’.Regulation of sexuality becomes a direct example of the child trying to limit what mother had given to her children. Volume three number five offers an analogy for group resistance of bees on a tree branch, â€Å"it is only needful that one bee spread its wings, rise and fly, and after it the second, the third, the tenth, the hundredth, for the immobile hanging mass to become a freely flying swarm of bees. † The writing makes humans already bees in a thoroughly naturalized world upon which systems of domination such as the state and religion have only been imposed in a superficial sense.All we need to do, in this account, is realize the situation, and spread our wingsto fly back into an expansive and beautiful nature. This fetishization of nature provides a clear contrast between the world of that which the anarchafeminist politics of the publication oppose and the ‘real’ world of nature that underlies and surrounds the injustices of artificial living. The question then bec omes, in order to prove the insufficiency and downright failures of artifice by comparison, what is the character of nature? To begin with, nature is big.In the first issue’s article â€Å"Mother Earth†, the history of the world seems laid out in a quasi-mythical tale. â€Å"Earth was but one of a myriad of stars floating in infinite space. † The whole of the universe, with which nature remains implicitly identified, exceeds our abilities to measure, let alone comprehend – a myriad in infinity. Even in this cosmic understanding, that which is natural and surrounded is still itself huge. In an article in the first issue called â€Å"Try Love†, the argument concludes, â€Å"Let us be broad and big. Let us not overlook vital things, because of the bulk of trifles confronting us. The natural is large; problems from artifice can be numerous, but each is only of trifling size – thousands of children surrounding one huge mother. Beyond being large to begin with, the maniacal focus in the publication on freeing nature and being freed into nature also revolves around a hope for future growth. As if ‘we’ were already failing to be â€Å"broad and big† enough, â€Å"The Tragedy of Women’s Emancipation† proclaims: â€Å"Salvation lies in an energetic march onwards towards a brighter and clearer future. We are in need of unhampered growth out of old traditions and habits† as if nature and life in nature knew no limits.The image is of not just a sprouting weed, but a whole forest growing out of a street. This rhetorical strategy of associating the concept of nature so crucial to driving the arguments of the journal with hugeness seems strangely sympathetic with and to industrializing urges of the time. The conflict between the temptations of big machines with big outputs and direct material gain versus little anarchic communities with little to offer but some vague sense of satisfaction can finally be resolved in an anarchy run by a big nature figure, a loving cow mother replaces the cruel leviathan father.This solution gives all the benefits and reassurance of something so-big-it-must-work and avoids all the downfalls readers would consider so endemic to ‘modernization’ . Beyond simple scale, nature is inescapable. While a big nature appeals to childlike demand for an oversized mother who will ensure safety and grant all desires, the journal also shows nature as generally inevitable. Relying on one of many references to scientific certainty, â€Å"Liberty†, in the second volume, issue number three, reminds us: â€Å"the natural law of a social organism is as certain as, though less known than, the force of gravity.Like the latter it antedates, and is independent of, our knowledge of its existence, or of the law of its operation. † The natural law, suggesting the order inherent in ‘free’ ways of life, does not even need to be pro ven preferable to artificial laws so long as it is inevitable, the rhetoric suggests. No matter how much one tries to fight it, they can only impede the natural order of things, but never change it. Indeed, this sentiment, in argument form, makes up the bulk of the rest of the article. The natural law not only frames what is and is not tyranny, but even ‘proves’ the futility of passing any laws through the government.And men, brought up in law-abiding communities in the deepest respect for the law, will, under the changed conditions of life, not merely condone the infliction of a penalty in excess of that provided by law, but will themselves assist, virtuously satisfied with their conduct because the society of which they form a part has decided that horse-stealing shall be so punished. On the other hand, there are numerous laws on the statute books, still unrepealed and unenforceable because the acts treated of are no longer held to be offences against morality.In othe r words, the morals of a people can be regulated only by themselves. The trick is very simple, if a law is natural there is no reason to legislate about it, and if it is not natural no one will obey it. The rhetorical construction of nature as unavoidable already renders artifice more than avoidable – it is always already avoided. Rhetorical implications become argument: it would be impossible to describe any part of government’s power as belonging to government itself, because people only act based on nature. The closest government comes to legislation in this model is to prescribe behavior people already exhibit.The gist of this construction of nature is most clear in the case of a poem in volume three, number two entitled â€Å"The King†. In it, a dead king rots in nature, covered in lizards and â€Å"vile spineless things†, literally consumed by the overpowering feminine in his afterlife. â€Å"Faith lit his pathway with her loveliness; / Fair Hopeâ €™s voice called him from his barren fen; Love vainly strove to lure him with her grace. † As a feminine entity, nature is here the omnipresent mother, she tracks down her children and is always there for them to return to.Inescapable nature not only sets up a comparison in which government and artifice can never win, but simultaneously constructs the role of a feminine presence that is ineradicable and impossible to resist. The good mother must be always present and forever accepting of even her most lost children. Also, nature has youthful beauty. In the first issue of Mother Earth, the flagship article explains the history of nature in terms that make Earth unmistakably a young mother, â€Å"she renewed herself, the good mother, and came again each Spring, radiant with youthful beauty, beckoning her children to come to her bosom and partake of her bounty. Nature’s youth not only implies a relative trait against which all human-made construction can never appear more – almost sexually – attractive. The attempt to make nature look nice is nowhere so transparent as in this attempt to cast it as actually young and beautiful. Indeed, even its temporary failings can be excused by Earth’s renewal each spring. If some part of nature is dangerous or undesirable, it will soon be corrected in the regular course of the seasons. In volume five, number six, â€Å"The Esthetic Side of Jewtown† explains,Life is too strenuous in Jewtown to preserve the bloom of youth. Among the younger ones there are some who are very beautiful beneath their coating of filth, with the clove skin and large, soft, black eyes. They give themselves a coquettish appearance. The truly horrid part of life in the Ghetto, we learn, is that it covers or takes away the natural beauty of women. Artifice cannot destroy nature, because nature is big and inescapable, but it can blemish its beauty temporarily.This identification of nature with youth and beauty combined with the opposition of nature and the state sell anarchism almost exactly the way one might sell diet soda: government is actually too ugly to appreciate, gorgeous young women prefer anarchy. In classic advertising style, Mother Earth also describes nature as saturated with love. In the first issue, when describing a budding relationship crushed by the coldness of artifice and modern living, â€Å"The Tragedy of Women’s Emancipation† explains that â€Å"poetry and the enthusiasm of love cover their blushing faces before the pure beauty of the lady. Her admirer] silences the voice of his nature and remains correct. † The article condemns his correctitude as exactly the basic problem of modern living – its disconnect from love and contact. Tragically, the beauty of the lady, just as that of the kindly mother Earth, has been tainted to block the â€Å"poetry† and â€Å"enthusiasm of love† the article considers natural. In contrast to t he authentic state of love the various ‘systems’ of which anarchism complains give us poor simulations of affection: marriage and the nuclear family.In volume 3, number five, the article â€Å"Light and Shadows in the Life of an Avant-Gard†, we learn The poor women, thousands of them, abused, insulted, and outraged by their precious husbands, must continue a life of degradation. They have no money to join the colony in Reno. No relief for them. The poor women, the slaves of the slaves, must go on prostituting themselves. They must continue to bear children in hate, in conflict, in physical horror. The marriage institution and the â€Å"sanctity of the home† are only for those who have not the money to buy themselves free from both, even as the chattel slave from his master.Nature offers real love, civilization offers a slavery titled love. These stark terms of opposition function to set up an understanding of a loving motherly nature that makes it obviousl y superior to the uncaring childlike cruelties that comprise the artificial world. As is often thought, nature is also connected with freedom. It is quite arbitrary to say that those things to which a life in ‘nature’ is conducive represent the content of freedom. For instance, in nature one is not free to vote or go to work, and yet this is considered irrelevant to questions of liberty.In volume two, number three, of Mother Earth, the article â€Å"Liberty† proclaims that â€Å"whatever may be the form of social institutions, if it does no more than to declare and enforce well-known rules of natural justice, then I am free. † The simplistic opposition between the compromises of ‘artificial’ life and the freedom of nature is best exemplified in the pithy quote â€Å"Liberty escaped into the wilderness† from the journal’s founding article. This unbounded freedom seems excessively unrealistic as a description of a mother, and yet i t is precisely the freedom that mothers lacked that the journal constructs nature as having in spades.At the same time, the infinite youth, beauty, and inescapable freedom in and of nature primarily complement its fundamentally orderly state. Perhaps in one of the most bizarre fixations of anarchist literature, the journal seems careful to point out the extreme orderliness of life in anarchy. In this kind of reconciliation of total freedom and total justice one can actually see the neurosis of liberalism tentatively suggest what it most wishes simply come true: good freedom and good order. The very first issue, in the rticle â€Å"Without Government† we are told that, there are qualities present in man, which permit the possibilities of social life, organization, and co-operative work without the application of force. Such qualities are solidarity, common action, and love of justice. To-day they are either crippled [sic] or made ineffective through the influence of compulsion ; they can hardly be fully unfolded in a society in which groups, classes, and individuals are placed in hostile, irreconcilable opposition to one anotherAgain, like an orderly housewife, nature maintains a world that works, but without even so much as a broom. Instead, nature works through qualities always already present in people, as natural beings. It is through this sort of argument that anarchism can define government into such a position that it doesn’t even make sense to consider, having already had all its greatest advantages stolen over to the side of nature. Simultaneously, nature’s great assets will be willingly sacrificed to her children in cheerful martyrdom.Like the constructed role of a ‘good mother’, nature â€Å"sees the bleeding feet of her children †¦ hears their moans, and she is ever calling to them that she is theirs† beginning in the founding article of Mother Earth. The article continues to encourage the exploitation of nature because nature is asking for it, here with increasingly vivid maternal imagery. Mother Earth keeps sources of vast wealth hidden within the folds of her ample bosom, extended her inviting and hospitable arms to all those who came to her from arbitrary and despotic lands–Mother Earth ready to give herself alike to all her children.But soon she was seized by the few, stripped of her freedom, fenced in, a prey to those who were endowed with cunning and unscrupulous shrewdness. The rapaciousness of artifice and modern civilization becomes its primary characteristic when put in the terms of a kindly mother fallen prey to vicious quasi-Oedipal domination. Here, again, the journal’s construction of nature as feminine serves the direct political function of discrediting political opponents such as the state, capitalism, and religion.However, the indirect effect of such a construction may be more historically significant, as the natural world becomes increasingly femini zed in particular ways. It is impossible to simply associate nature with feminine, because there is too much to each category. Here the generality is retained on the term of nature – to the degree that it’s distinction from artifice can be kept plausible – and specificity is given to the feminine. Mothers should, in this account, sacrifice everything to their children, no matter how abusive they may be to her.Indeed, every praised trait of Mother Earth is a thinly veiled suggestion for mothers to fulfill. That Mother Earth is huge, inescapable, free and orderly says, at some level, that all good mothers are this way. Thus we end with a political theory laid out in Mother Earth that various artificial systems are bad because they are inferior to a young, beautiful martyr of an omnipresent loving mother who provides both freedom and order.In conclusion, the journal Mother Earth deployed rhetoric in various forms to craft a particular feminine version of nature tha t explicitly worked to delegitimize particular systems of oppression and implicitly functioned to worship an ideal maternal version of womanhood. The journal’s preoccupation with issues of concern to women, such as marriage, prostitution, birth control, and sexuality coincided with its normalizing urge to encounter (some) people as children of nature who could frolic freely within the limitless provisions of their mother’s great world.However, there are actually two possible roles for a subject here, children or mother herself. Politics and men immediately appear infantilized against the mother of nature, supplying a ready-made excuse and index for predicting their actions as irresponsible yet lovable children, but for many women Mother Earth was not their mother, but to be their role model.Nature was a mother whose private sphere expanded to one large planetary home and material limitations in age and restriction were erased by scientific appeal (and pure fiat) to ren der life in nature simultaneously completely free and problem-free. As a solution to the troubles of political theory, the journal instead invented a superhero character to replace the tired images of a drudging, used up, and insensitive nature with a glossy new young, beautiful cover girl – Mother Earth.

A Brilliant Madness essays

A Brilliant Madness essays This is his misery, this is his demise, this is his life. Bipolar disorder literally grasps the reins of your life control and all aspects experience a drastic change. A pitiful thought, to think that any individual can experience the grief of manic-depression, yet only .5 percent of the world is clinically diagnosed (Turkington 77). Sure, everyone feels the blues at times, it is a basic part of life and even some might have half-seriously considered suicide, but bipolar disorder is different from any brief sadness. It effects the brain, the nerves, and the heart; your body is lost in disease. Bipolar patients are diagnosed by a psychiatrict physician as a severely depressed individual who experiences periods of blunt solemness, next climax to hyperactive and impetuous behavior, and then downfall back to feeling despairful depressed emotions. Manic-depression has several relapses as victims suffer a continuous rollercoaster-like ride of emotions of sadness to extreme hyperactivity. Yet, Bipolar disorder has often been mistaken in the past for other false conditions such as an individual ¡s personal weakness. Manic-depression (or Bipolar Disord er) is a chronic, progressive disease due to the brain ¡s neurotransmitter ¡s failure to fit into special receptors and does not successfully circulate within the brain causing severe emotional distress to a patient; this can be treated by conversational therapy and/or the oral-disgestion of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors or other medications. Manic-depression is somewhat easily diagnosed by irregular behavior of a patient. All or a combination of these can be categorized as depression: being emotional, having a drastic change in appetite/weight, sleeping too much/too little, having anger, lack of interest in leisure/sex, lowering self-esteem and self-confidence, having trouble concentrating, being anxious/edgy/jumpy, being restless, having slow body movements, having an irregula...

A Dolls House Reaction

Reaction Paper on A Dolls House There has never been a shortage of literature with gender roles as a main topic, and A Dolls House by Henrik Ibsen is one of the premier works on the subject. Known for being startlingly ahead of its time, this play holds a firm spot in literary history and has been adapted in live theatre countless times over the past century. The dogma of what is proper and expected of both men and women for no other reason than their gender is questioned by Ibsen in a tongue-in-cheek sort of way, and his whimsical haracters cause viewers and readers to think about how relevant the topic of gender roles are today; perhaps even more so than when this play was first written. Ibsen provokes questions as to the roles of men and women in both a social and domestic setting and leads audiences to believe there is more to this complex subject than what lies on the surface of the everyday man and woman couple. The title of the play is the first clue as to the content. Dolls are toys meant for little girls and are mainly meant to be spruced up and look pretty, which fits perfectly with how Torvald elieves his little lark or his little squirrel should be. Torvald hides his belittlement with these terms of endearment and this creates a false image of love, Just like one would see as a scene inside a doll house. Nora believes he loves her unquestioningly and completely, and her actions are motivated by this belief in his love. She says to Dr. Rank at one point: miou know how devotedly, how inexpressibly deeply Torvald loves me; he would never for a moment hesitate to give his life for me. (House pg. 795). But in reality, Torvald cares more about his own image and the false respect he gets from others than he does about the overall wellbeing of his family and wife. To Torvald, the appearance of the dolls and their house is more important than anything else. The social role of women in cultures across the world has varied greatly. Some cultures have had women leading them for many years; other more male-dominated cultures cringe at the very idea of being subservient to a woman. Torvald cannot stand the idea of owing anything of importance to a woman, even his wn wife, the one person he should be able to show vulnerability to rely on as a companion. His male-driven ego puts the import of his image above even his love for his wife, which should be paramount to all things. Torvald exposes himself as a weak and cowardly man, bankrupt of moral fiber and substance, which Nora proves to be so much more than how she is first viewed. She rises above the adversities of the play and proves to be intelligent, resourceful, and able to make difficult decisions because she believes them to be right and good even though they cause her uffering. These two characters show a complete flip in role as Nora being the truly complex and human character while Torvald is shallow, conceited, and Just an abysmal excuse for a person. Ibsen shows desirable character traits are not specific to gender, and even when the most terrible conflicts arise there is no telling for certain who will snow their true and radiant colors, regardless ot gender. Another thing to consider is Just how much Nora sacrifices by the end of the play, while Torvald Jumps ship when he is first made aware of trouble. Nora is motivated by true ove to give up fancy clothes, to risk her name and reputation, and even precious time spent with her children and husband in order to save Torvalds life even though she never thinks the time will come when he should be made aware of her efforts and sacrifices. She silently takes the extra work in stride and even manages to trick her husband to buy into her false image of being a spendthrift, all so she can save his life. She even gives up her children, whom she loves to no end, because she truly believes their caretaker will be able to raise them into better people. Nora is willing to sacrifice her own happiness for the sake of her family throughout the entire play, and this shows incredible strength of character that any person, man or woman, should be Jealous of and strive to achieve. How many people would be able to deal with the kind of responsibility and burden she does without even the luxury of telling anyone about the situation for such a long time? By the end of the play, Ibsen has effectively flipped the typical role of man and woman even by todays cultures standards, though it is much more accepted now than it was in the past. Remembering the time frame in which this play was originally written speaks for itself in showing Just how ahead of its time this literary piece was. Nora walks out of her doll house and stakes her claim to independence as a woman and a human being, not with any malicious intent in her heart, but with the desire to pursue her own happiness. She considers these duties to herself Just as sacred as being a wife and a mother (House pg. 815). Her entire view of where her place in life is changes when she sees Torvald for how he is on the inside, and she begins to realize she is ot happy and never was. It comes time for her to take her life into her own hands and experience things without the tether of what a woman should be based on the declarations of a domineering male society. Ibsens genius seems like the normal views of todays standards, but the fact remains that he wrote this play back in 1879 when the roles of men and women were much more set in stone and had distinguished forms and etiquette. Women were seen as shallow, emotional, and incapable of dealing with serious issues while men were the true accomplishers and uilders of society.