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Lhasa Apso Q&A

Has anyone ever heard of a black boxer? I honestly do not believe in black boxers(with or w/o white markings), but someone told me that they do exist and that they are really rare to come by. Any ideas?

Answer Question

Answers (5)

A pure bread boxer does not carry the gene required to produce a pure black coat.

There certainly are what apprears to be "black" Boxers around although they are not truly black in the sense of the word, on closer inspection they are a mixer of dark browns from the brindle variety. Although I'm sure there are plenty of sites for you to check out I obtained my boxer Hooch from this organisation almost two years ago and never looked back, check out www.boxernothilfe.de a German organisation which re-houses Boxers, on their homepage you can see what appears to be black boxers.

There are no black boxers but a reverse brindle like my 14 week old male can appear black. The reverse brindle is where they are dark brown with fawn stripes instead of the usual fawn color with dark brown stripes.

I have one they are called reverse brindles

They exist and are not uncommon at all. Check breeder websites for pictures.

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This is the second in a series of six posts looking at a collection of articles written by Sir Dove-Myer Robinson in the mid 1970’s promoting and clearly trying to build support for his rapid transit plan. They come from a booklet I stumbled across while in the Takapuna Library one day. The first post is here.

This was published in the NZ Herald on 24 June 1975

‘All-Bus’ Scheme a Non-starter on Capital Cost

Despite gloomy prophesies of unbearable capital costs and ruinous operating costs, the philistines were confounded when the costs of an all roading-bus transport plan were compared with the proposed bus and rail plan.

First of all, we should get straight what we are talking about. When De Leuw Cather & Co. reported on the suitability of an all-bus, or a bus and rail transport plan for Auckland in 1965, after nearly two years of study, they strongly a bus system fed by a main railway artery.

This recommendation has supported by all Government departments and officials who have examined it, and by the ARA and the Government itself.

Simply stated, the plan is to widen to four lines the existing railway from Papakura to the city near the present railway station, and in a loop underground connecting up again with Main Trunk Railway at Newmarket.

The lines would be electrified and modern electric three-coach trains, controlled by the most modern electronic controls and signals, provide a service every 10 minutes during off-peak hours, and every seven a half minutes at busy periods.

There would four underground stations in the city:

At Beach Rd (“Railway”) near the present station.
Under Customs St (“Downtown”) adjacent to present bus station.
Near the junction of Queen St and Wellesley St West (“Civic”).
Under Karangahape Rd (“Karangahape”) near the top of Upper Queen St.

Another station is planned in the Grafton area, when estimates of passenger demand require it.

Ten other stations would be located at the suburban stations on the main line between the city and Papakura.

Provision would be made for large scale car parking and bus/rail transfer facilities at the suburban stations. The reorganised bus system would provide feeder services to and from the railway stations, providing for a fully integrated bus and rail service that would be fast, clean, silent, cheap, safe and comfortable. More important still, it would be reliable and not be affected by road congestion or other conditions. This would result from the reduction of private vehicles on the roads, thus allowing freer and speedier travel for the buses.

Various proposals have been made to construct the line and stations in phases, but there are disadvantages of rising costs and delays in getting the maximum benefits, if this “phasing” plan is adopted.

The Government has stipulated that results of operation of the first stage – Papakura – City – Newmarket – must be studied before, later, undertaking one or all of the three recommended main extensions, which are:

  • Eastern loop through Tamaki, Glen Innes and Mt. Wellington to Westfield.
  • Northern extension under the harbour to the North Shore.
  • Western line to Henderson and Glen Eden.

However, because of the high revenue-earning potential of the eastern loop in comparison with its capital and operating costs, strong pressure is likely to be brought to bear to persuade the Government to construct the eastern loop simultaneously with the Papakura-Newmarket stage 1.

The Government has agreed to provide the capital costs and to replay loans and interest, therefore, Auckland ratepayers will not have to bear any part of the capital costs. Nevertheless.
as rateplayers, they will be interested in the financial aspects of the scheme.

Based on 1974 prices, the estimated capital costs are as follows:—

Stage 1. Papakura-City-Newmarket, $125,254,000
Rolling stock, electronic equipment, signals, controls, buses, etc., $29,300,000.
Eastern loop, Tamaki-Glen Innes-Mt. Wellington-Westfield, $16,162,000.
Total cost stage 1, eastern loop, rolling stock. buses, etc., $170,716,000.

Now a very important factor must be considered. If, for any reason, the railway part of the plan were rejected, it would be necessary, in the area covered by this scheme, to provide additional motorways, bridges and parking facilities to cost a calculated $110 million.

Therefore the difference in cost between stage 1 plus the eastern loop, which would provide the backbone of a first-class transport system, as against the cost of perpetuating the un-satisfactory, bus-only present system, is $60 million.

To take the plan to completion, we have the following estimates:

Stage 1: Plus Eastern loop, rolling stock, electrification, etc., $170 million.
Now add in the later provision of the western line to Henderson and Glen Eden, estimated at $20 million.
Also, the harbour crossing to the North Shore estimated at $50 million.
Provide for additional rolling stock, signals and other contingencies $60 million.
The estimated cost, at 1974 prices, of the ultimate completion of the whole plan, $300 million.

This is where the financial advantages of this scheme begin to show up very clearly.

On the other hand, if the underground rail loop were not available, Auckland would be compelled to accept another bridge across the harbour with its inevitable disturbance of housing and other properties to provide more motorway approach roads.

The city would be on the horns of a dilemma, because the city council has already made it perfectly clear that under no circumstances will it agree to another harbour bridge that would further destroy the appearance of harbour and which would encourage the disgorgement on to already overcrowded city streets daily of more thousands of motor vehicles.

Summing up. the capital costs two alternatives, we have:—

Cost of new and upgraded motorways and roading, new buses, etc., in 25-30 years. at least $600 million.
Alternatively: Cost of providing electrified railway services, Papakura-City-Newmarket, including eastern loop to Westfield, western loop to Henderson and Glen Eden, and tunnel under harbour and connection to North Shore with rolling stock, etc., estimated at $300 million.

On this basis. the estimates show the capital costs of an all-bus system would be at least twice as great as the proposed bus/rail system

The reason for this great difference is simple: The need to provide more, and upgrade present roading systems to carry the immense additional load of traffic, if some means has not been provided to divert some of it off the roads.

The map below shows how the tunnel then proposed would have fed through the city centre.

As for the costs, running them quickly through the RBNZ’s inflation calculator gives us the following results:

  • Total cost of initial project, $1.8 billion
  • Eastern line, $174 million.
  • Rolling stock, signals, buses etc., $315 million.
  • Stage 1. Papakura-City-Newmarket, $1.3 billion
  • Western Line, $215 million
  • North Shore line, $538 million.
  • Additional rolling stock etc., $645 million.
  • Cost for the completion of the whole plan, $3.2 billion

And for the roads

  • Eastern Motorway if rail not built $1.2 billion
  • Total motorway package $6.5 billion

The next is titled Question of who pays the operating costs

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  1. Interesting and useful!

    The map is from the New Zealand Railway Observer, and it would be good for that to be acknowledged.

    1. The stupidity is the govt dropped the plan when there was the oil shock and despite the fact that this would be of assistance alleviating the pain in the case of any future oil shocks! So there haven’t been any oil shocks since but with the instability of the Middle East it doesn’t mean it won’t happen again.

      1. But it’s not just shocks, the point is we make our electrons here in NZ, and very cleverly, almost all oil and vehicles are imported which means the private car dominated transport model is extremely costly in terms of forex. We spend nearly every penny earned from dairy, each year, just to just fund this. The whole country would be so much richer if we had built our biggest city more on this Transit plan than entirely on the more expensive highway/sprawl one. And every year we double down on this pattern the poorer we are and, clearly, the stupider we show our selves to be.

        It is a source of constant surprise to me that people who claim to be fiscally sensible wilfully ignore this opportunity, with various nonsense stories that all boil down to claims that everyone always driving is a permanent inevitability. Bollocks. What we feed grows. Feed the better modes; get richer (be able to buy other cool stuff from overseas; not just stuff we burn).

        1. Plus another one, 40 years wasted, what’s wrong with the political system that breeds such incompetence. it’s now a race between climate change and oil depletion.

          The oil shocks in the 1970s were caused by a drop in production of about 5%. it gave me a wakeup call when I had to walk 5 miles to work when the busses were full. from that time I never had a car that wouldn’t do 40 mpg.

          The world got its first taste of what peak oil will be like and learnt nothing from it.

    2. Anyway, 30 years late we’re finally going with the plan. I hope Sir D M Robinson is looking on with a smile on his face. I hope his statue is moved to either the Aotea Station entrance or maybe the new plaza that will be in front of Britomart to give due respect!

      I’d just like to say we’ll get there on other parts of the plan sooner or later i.e. North Shore rail. Rail finally got momentum in this city and momentum gets things done. Started with Britomart, continued with station upgrades and the Western Line duplification. The momentum in numbers and popularity from that helped electrification get over the line. The obvious momentum that that has brought, is one of the factors that has helped get the CRL off the paper and into becoming a reality. The CRL will be such a game changer and offer a ton more momentum that will inevitably lead to strong calls for the North Shore and airport to be connected to the network.

      That’s why opponents fought tooth and nail against the first investment and improvement. Because they knew once the genie was let out, then the rest will be history. All we needed was for one or two things to get done that would attract more use and popularity and the rest would take care of itself. The CRL has faced opposition but the weight in momentum was too much even for the govt to stop the train this time.

      Hopefully when the success and effect of the CRL becomes broadly apparent it will mean less resistance to future projects.

      1. Great comment, Simon. So what do we really need to get people behind now the CRL is sort of under way? The third main, electrification to Pukekohe, North Western Busway? OR do we need to be pushing hard against the silly rules that stop NZTA pulling money out of the East West link and putting money into those rail and game changer transit projects. Or do we just get out there and focus hard on stopping silly road projects.

        1. I think a non-mode biased transport investment agency is key to achieving a more balanced transport system. It’s crazy that the NZTA can only spend billions of dollars on motorways because they are prevented from looking at the broader picture and investing in areas that might be a more efficient solution to a transport problem.

  2. That is quite shockingly amazing in that the government chose to go with the road option at almost double the price! Thing is roads are relatively easy to build they should have decided to build the rail and then if needed roads could have been built quickly.

  3. Years ago, IIRC, I heard Jo Brosnahan tell of how the Muldoon government cancelled the project in 1976 when a review “doubled the project’s costs in a morning”, and at that point, and in the economic climate of the time, it was no surprise that the project was canned. Can someone with more knowledge than I confirm if this was in fact the case? The view at the time I heard this story (about 2000) was that the scheme was trying to do too much at once, and a more incremental approach would have worked much better (and what in the end did work).

    1. Most likely “trying to do too much at once” was simply a cover for the fact that doing it required the importing a lot of expensive overseas sourced components and finished goods that couldn’t be “import substituted” (trains, modern signalling etc). And that would have (in Muldoons eyes) sucked up too much precious foreign exchange. Which would have impacted the ability of the government to allow NZ Inc to afford the equally, if not more, expensive (ruinous, and ongoing) oil imports.

      So it was really down to the simple political expediency keeping the status quo [of allowing unfettered car driving] over a short term pain Balance of Payments problem, for a much longer term gain.

      And since the Government Muldoon held the Foreign exchange reserves purse very, very closely, there was no chance that Robbies plan would get a fair hearing under Muldoon.
      As there would always be a more pressing need for that foreign exchange – say, I don’t know, another Marsden Point oil refinery expansion, or another Aluminium smelter or two, with matching hydro dam to power it, or a Glenbrook Steel Mill, or a Gas to Gasoline plant].

      So the “costs doubling in one day” story is most likely nothing but evidence of a political hatchet job done to ensure it wouldn’t happen on Muldoon’s watch.

      By the time more enlightened views prevailed the right of way was long gone.

    2. One other consideration – at this time, it was actually very expensive to buy a car, never mind run it, and yet the number of cars on our roads grew very strongly during the postwar period. This is not made clear in the Mees paper, but is important because this growth in car ownership and therefore road demand, even under these conditions, must have influenced the policymakers quite considerably. My take on things is that if Auckland had been offered a direct choice at the time between more motorways, and rapid rail (but not both) – they’d have opted for the road network they eventually got.

  4. Question: If for some reason or other it was decided to build a 3rd and 4th main on the NIMT is it actually still possible? More specifically is there the room for 4 lines? We all know that the 3rd main is likely and should be possible.

    1. I’m glad someone else is pondering that. The third main has started – in fact it was started long ago in that many of the bridges, platforms and track alignments made in the last ten years are future proofed for it and the corridor is wide enough with only a few exceptions. Parts of the track already exist through Otahuhu and Wiri. Plans for overcoming the Middlemore bottleneck have been made. The electrification from Westfield to Wiri is aligned to accommodate it. The only thing needed is dollars. I reckon it will be done before the CRL, at least from Wiri to Tamaki. Wiri to Westfield much sooner. Maybe from Papakura to GI if more money for some new bridges south of Wiri can be found. Purewa tunnel won’t be done. Not sure about Purewa to the Port. We might even see a Westfield to Penrose link one day, especially if the Onehunga branch gets duplicated. “Fourth Main” gets chucked around a lot in armchair speculation and wishlists, but it seems mightily premature and even more unlikely given the corridor limitations. There isn’t even money yet to lay the easy third, never mind the substantial challenge of acquiring land for a fourth and rebuilding all the bridges from Papakura to Westfield or beyond to take a fourth line. I’d be surprised if a fourth happened inside 40 years, if ever. Crossing loops at former station locations like Papatoetoe are as close as we’ll get.

      1. Yes the third is now done north of Middlemore. And adding it south of that station is relatively trivial, it’s more serious at that station itself, but entirely doable with funding. More maddening is the relatively recent closing off of the future at places like Newmarket: simply the retention of the couple of metres needed for a fourth track through there would add a huge resilience and capacity to the passenger network. And at very little cost had that trivial amount of space not been flogged off through privatisation. And indeed the failure of both railway and transport agencies to predict the chance of the passenger rail revival and therefore retain more of the prior existing rail reserves throughoit the city. Grrrrr.

        Still the challenge now is to reform our funding structures so that rail has a regular source of funding for capex.

        1. Compulsory (re) purchase of the land at Newmarket and skittling of the buildings should not be ruled out in future. It’s done for roads so why not for railways?

        2. It appears to me that just by removing some carparking and a bit of structural remodelling a fourth and even perhaps an additional platform could be routed through the vast subfloor of that rather miserable and greedy building to the west of the station. It’s already double height and pretty clear, and often not even used for parking that much.

          Am assuming what would be best is an Up platform and a Down one…?

        3. Two tracks and platforms to/from Parnell, two to/from Mt Eden. No changing ends post CRL so that will simplify operations.
          I did muse on a 3rd main that did a complete clockwise loop with freights always going down the Parnell bank but remembered that the Southern motorway is currently busy digesting any spare ROW.

    2. The third main southwards through Middlemore is an important project, which it was why it was mentioned specificalyl by Peter Reidy this week as something that needs to be done. I suspect it will happen, and soonish – and it’ll be interesting to see how it’s planned to get past Middlemore’s Up platform.

      A fourth main is much less likely, since apart from anything else it will require junctions at Westfield that will be complex and expensive. I suspect that when capacity does look like it’s running out (and that’s not yet in sight) other options will be on the table, such as grade separation (just as on roads, junctions – especially flat ones – are the main limitations on capacity), shorter headways (perhaps through automatic operation, though I doubt we’ll see driverless trains in the foreseeable future), longer trains. All of these will be expensive, though!

      A third main round the Westfield deviation would also be a complex beast, given the location of the freight facilities and the limitations imposed by such things as the tunnel and the embankments. A loop or loops perhaps, but a new main must be doubtful.

      1. Initially loops (“passing bays in AC’s ITP) are planned for the Westfield deviation with a full third main to follow in the 2030s if I recall the document correctly.
        As for complex and expensive junctions at Westfield; they would seem to be somewhat simple cf. Waterview don’t you think?

      2. Interestingly because freight traffic between MetroPort and PoT is on the west side of the NIMT, but between PoAL and its inland port at Wiri is on the east there is (to my inexpert musing) perhaps a case for a section of fourth track from the eastern line past the Westfield junction south. Then each generator of freight traffic through this congested area would have a means to essentially avoid any crossings at the junction, passengers train movements and each other’s freighters there.

        This is what the short section of 3rd main already achieves on the west for PoT’s MetroPort traffic. Depends of course on whether PoAL’s rail traffic grows significantly etc…

        1. Yes, a going to 4th main from Westfield to Wiri makes a lot of sense. You have one pair of tracks for Manukau and Ports of Auckland freight and one pair of separate tracks for Papakura-Penrose trains and mainline freight. The big benefit is you remove flat junction conflicts at both Wiri and Westfield and create the necessary line capacity for all the passenger and freight trains you could ever want to run.

          Consider the alternative of only building 3rd main. Eventually Westfield junction will have to be grade separated and this cost will probably be pretty similar to building a 4th main anyway.

          The only problem with using 4 mainlines as two separate railways, is that you don’t get dedicated ‘fast tracks” and I think that in addition to the urbanisation of housing close to the city (as per other successful cities), Auckland will also need a medium distance commuter service with fast trains from beyond the current city limits so people can live in the satellite towns and commute in, in less than an hour.

        2. Is there a document handy that has listed schematic of track/line numbers for our railways, or Auckland at least? Also, was thinking a similar thing of our motorway system would be handy also (ie number of lanes at each section, perhaps with exit only lanes marked also). Would be quicker for reference than trying to see on an often out of date satellite image or similar.

        3. Well its not hard: it’s two track Swanson south, a few moments of a little more around some older stations… but that’s it. And now horay! there’s a bit of a 3rd from north of Middlemore station to the MetroPort inland port west of the Westfield Junction.

  5. To get things done you need both money and political support. Robbie had neither. He didn’t have any money and neither the ARA nor the government were in favour. It was a dead duck even while he was still writing this stuff.

    1. Yet to think that as a country we would have been saving at least $500m pa (in today’s dollars) over the past 40 years in overseas oil payments alone (not too mention purchasing less cars and probably even more oil savings from not having a congested city). That’s $20B minimum that has left the country so in other words it would have paid for itself multiple times over (including rail to the Shore and Airport!) and ongoing savings.

      On another note the CRL alignment in this old plan was pretty cool allowing for a station near the hospital and also keeping a free track between West and South.

  6. Great post again Matt, thanks for bringing this to light (and for sparking such great, informative comments also).

    At the time of Muldoon pulling the funding, was there any decent counter-estimate of the oil (and car) import costs that would be saved each and every year due to the ART scheme from the year of opening to eternity? – And/or has such an estimate been done since?

  7. Interesting that the map shows the Dominion Road Flyover to be completely separate from the proposed Dominion Road Motorway; I’d always assumed that the Dominion Road Motorway was proposed to link in with the southern end of the junction.

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GLC's membership is made up of those who have received Christ as their Savior and Lord. As an outward expression of this salvation, each member has been baptized by immersion in water.

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Becoming of place

Being Bioregional

Dwelling Consciously

Our Contract with the Earth

We believe that sinking your roots into one place on this planet, and joining with your community to care deeply about your bioregion is one of the most powerful endeavors you can make toward restoring ecological balance. Plus, it feels good! The “greening” of the world relies on each of us making more conscientious choices about where and how we live. Making a solid commitment to place, becoming of that place.

Dwelling consciously in your home is to learn about the elements. To learn about how air circulates, how water flows, how materials are sourced, and how energy is conserved and renewed. Dwelling consciously is a practice of dropping in, of observing the seasons and light and how our trip around the sun is experienced by you in and through your home.

We are advocates for relating with the ground beneath your feet. For creating not just a purchase contract and a grant deed, but a contract with the earth that you steward. The earth that you are responsible for. The small piece of a vast integrated whole that is your bioregion, your watershed, which is ultimately your lifeboat in the chaotic seas of climate change.


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« It's Peony Time in Greensboro! | Main | Our Lady of Grace »

Saturday, May 06, 2017

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William Kendall

Here the fall-winter term ended with April exams, and summer classes on campuses tend to start next week and run through the end of August. It's a lot less students though, and less course offerings.

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Zoox Acquisition Can Help Amazon Build Army of Last Mile Delivery Robots and Save $20 bn Annually

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  • Zoox Acquisition Can Help Amazon Build Army of Last Mile Delivery Robots and Save $20 bn Annually

Amazon recently acquired Zoox for $1.2 bn. Zoox develops autonomous driving technology and electric vehicles with ride-sharing software.

Zoox will stay an independent entity and pursue its ambitious dream to develop a custom vehicle design suitable for a self-driving vehicle. Zoox believes that a custom vehicle design can overcome the limitations posed by legacy design on developing a self-driving system.

With the acquisition of Zoox, not only does Bezos came a step closer to foray into self-driving vehicle technology, but he also took another step to combat climate change for which Amazon announced a $2 billion fund after the company faced criticism in the past over Amazon’s increase carbon footprint. It’s clear as filtered water — Bezos hit two birds with a single stone.

Amazon Zoox Acquisition – Amazon’s Big Foot Forward into Fully Autonomous Delivery

In 2012, Amazon purchased Kiva Systems, a warehouse robotic company, for $775 million. The purchase gave Amazon a technical foundation to build new warehouse robots. Today Amazon owns a 200,000+ warehouse robot army. These robots have made it possible for Amazon to deliver packaged within 24 hours for its prime services.

Amazon has already been working on increasing automation in its distribution network with a keen focus on last-mile delivery. In 2019, Amazon unveiled Amazon Scout, a robot that walks on the sideways and carries packages from a delivery truck to door, and Prime Air Delivery Drone which has six full covered rotors for safety purposes.

Further, last year Amazon was seen testing an autonomous delivery truck by Embark to deliver cargo on Interstate-10. With the Zoox deal, Amazon has up the automation ante in its distribution network by bringing an immediate boost in sophistication.

With the acquisition of Kiva, during the last decade, Amazon focused on warehouse automation. The acquisition of Zoox has indications that in the coming years, Amazon could focus on increasing the level of automation in its distribution network and on the last mile delivery.

This makes more sense as bringing automation in delivery can decrease the cost of shipping and increase the profit margins of the company. A report by Morgan Stanley estimated that last miles deliveries using the robotic workforce can save Amazon more than $20 billion annually.

Seems like Bezos is putting money where the mouth is. And this surely is not a piece of good news for FedEx, DHL, and UPS.

Amazon Zoox Acquisition: Are we going to see Amazon Automobiles next?

Amazon already has released Alexa based dashboard and integrated voice assistants for cars. There are speculations that the acquisition can help Amazon foray into the autonomous vehicle industry.

What adds weightage to the speculation is that Zoox isn’t Amazon’s numero uno investment in the self-driving car arena. In 2019, Amazon invested in Aurora Innovation and Rivian. Aurora has been building the nervous system of a self-driving vehicle and Rivian has been working on its fully electric SUV and Pick-up truck. Zoox has been developing a steering wheel free self-driving vehicle that can travel in either direction (bi-directional).

Further, the recent acquisition will give Amazon a talent pool of 1000 professionals which is one of the pressing problems of the autonomous driving market. The right talent is nothing less than finding water in a desert.

The acquisition has taken Amazon a step closer to become an automobile company. No doubt, if Amazon pursues this, it can give ride-sharing and food delivery businesses a run for their money. It will be competing with the likes of Tesla, Wymo, Uber, and  Lyft.

Patent Portfolio of Zoox

Amazon has approx 231 patents filed on technologies related to drones and vehicle automation and Zoox has 347 patents in its portfolio.

The exhibits below represent Zoox’s patent filing trend over the years, in which countries they have filed how many patents, and the number of patents in the top 5 sub-tech areas of self-driving vehicles.

Analysis By: Nitin Balodi and Suraj Sabharwal

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Kustom9-Event 2018
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KUSTOM9 Event - February 2020

Start Date: February 15, 2020 - End Date: March 1, 2020
Starting at : 12 AM SLT

This new round of KUSTOM9 brings you an overload of fashion, decoration and more for your great times in Second Life®

A carefully selected group of designers and shops present their newest creations.

NEW - KUSTOM9 features now a cam shopping region in case the region is too crowded

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My Partner … Our Time

Olivia Gonzalez Reveals Love Story

April 13, 2016

Alejandro Toby Ybarra and Senior Olivia Gonzalez go out to celebrate Ybarra's birthday. These two have been engaged now for about a year and two months.

Photo Courtesy Olivia Gonzalez

Alejandro Toby Ybarra and Senior Olivia Gonzalez go out to celebrate Ybarra's birthday. These two have been engaged now for about a year and two months.

How I Met My Partner … in Time

The best year I’ve ever had was when I met my fiance at East Central High School in San Antonio. The year before we became a couple, we hated each other – I mean hated the very sight of one another, even the existence of each other. We would yell at one another in the halls; the scenes were terrible. The situation was even worse because he was dating one of my friends, which made it incredibly hard to get away from him. As the year went by, we became more used to seeing each other everyday, and we began to hate each other less.

Well, at least, I hated him less.

When the year closed, I couldn’t find a reason to talk to him during the summer. Summer went by fast, and it was time to start school again. The first day I saw him I said “hi,” even when I looked so awful, happiness flooded through me when I saw him. Unfortunately, my friend and he were still on and off. A few months later, they finally called their toxic relationship a quits.

“THANK GOODNESS,” I told myself.

Toby, my fiance, and I talked during those months. We talked all the time. We talked in between classes, at lunch, after school. We even called and/or texted each other;  he’s amazing. When they broke up, we became even closer, the days were better, and the nights grew longer because of Toby. As the semester went by fast, we no longer had lunch together, which caused me to be heartbroken. Although, that never stopped me from seeing him. I always found a way to have lunch with him, whether I finished my work early so I could leave class to be with him, or I just went to lunch without going to class.

I was a rebel in love.

He made me smile from cheek to cheek, giving me butterflies, and making my heart melt. I knew I had strong feelings for him just by the way he made me feel everyday. A few weeks later, I met his amazing parents before we were officially a couple. Meeting them made me fall in love with him even more. We both liked each other a lot. I would find excuses to hold his hand, which made him blush. I would find reason to go see him. Finally, after a long time, (It was only a month, but it felt longer, like a billion years) he asked me to be his girlfriend. We have been through our ups and downs many times, but he can still deal with my mood swings.

He never fails to surprise me, and he never makes me feel like I’m unwanted.

He spoils me so much, although not with flowers or jewelry, but with kisses, hugs, and his wonderful smile. Looking into his beautiful honey brown eyes, knowing that he has my back,  brushing my fingers through his curly hair, feeling that being with him is not a dream, is pure joy. I love holding his hand because he feels like home.

We have been through a lot. You can ask anyone, but the best part about going through the rough patches is that we never gave up on each other. I love the fact that no matter how embarrassed I am about something, I can count on him.

He’s my person, my best friend to gossip to, my partner in crime and in time, the person I would love to grow old and wrinkly with. We have been together for one year and five glorious months, and we will be together for many more. I’m glad to call him fiance.

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Isabella Fringe Earrings in Multi

Regular price $ 10.00 Save $ -10.00
3 in stock

Join the party in the Isabella Fringe Earrings in Multi! A surefire fun and festive accessory that will become your favorite, go-to earring.

How can you not live without these earrings?! Pairs perfectly with a strapless boho top for an on-trend look!

The Isabella Fringe Earrings in Multi at Groovy's - Multi-color, long tassel fringe and brushed gold pendants make these earrings a cove-table, statement accessory!

  • Hook backing
  • Gold metal
  • Multi-color fringe
  • Approximately 2.5" in length

Typically ships within 1-3 business days via USPS or UPS from our E-Commerce Fulfillment Center located in Rockwall, Texas.  Contact us at or (972)623-8077.

Groovy's store locations:

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Forney, TX 75126

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Purchasing at Bel*

Bel’s Purchasing teams handle company purchases with a view to performance and a commitment to building trusted and long-lasting relations with the Group’s suppliers everywhere in the world. This policy ties directly to Bel’s business model, which is based on the belief that reconciling rigorous management with exemplary practices, profitability with integrity, and growth with ethical behavior is both possible and vital.

Key purchasing figures

Our purchasing families

Purchasing is organized around six main purchasing families.

To meet consumer expectations for quality, taste and production mode, the Bel Group takes the utmost care to select the dairy raw materials and ingredients used to make our products, such as the liquid milk collected from producers close to our plants, cream, butter, cheese, milk powder, etc.

These raw materials, which are provided by strictly approved suppliers, are subject to stringent food safety and tracking requirements and must come with all the guarantees needed to obtain finished goods that meet a high standard of quality.

Bel's industrial knowhow is unique. It drives productivity and sets us apart, notably with single-serving portion formats, which deliver quality, satisfaction and practicality to consumers.

We select best-in-class partners of the highest quality and technical capability to support our unique knowhow.

As a world specialist in single-serving portions, packaging plays a major role in guaranteeing the food safety, taste and wholesomeness of our products and in communicating with consumers.

Beyond packaging cost and quality, we pay particular attention to our partners' capacity for innovation and corporate social responsibility (CSR) criteria. For example, we select cardboard from sustainably managed forests and, whenever possible, we favour cardboard made from recycled fiber.

Packaging types include cardboard to be embossed, corrugated cardboard, aluminum, plastic, paper, etc.

Our products are distributed in 130 countries. Accordingly, transportation and logistics providers must guarantee the integrity of our products' quality and their availability throughout our supply chain to our consumers.

Beyond cost, we pay close attention to ensuring that the cold chain is fully respected and that the carbon footprint of our transporters is limited.

Purchases of indirect goods and services encompass all purchases not used to make our products.

Such purchases break down into four main categories:

  • Marketing services aimed at raising familiarity with our brands and to support consumers at the point of sale;
  • IT and telecommunication services;
  • Consulting services;
  • Selling, general and administrative (SG&A) expenses, such as travel and lodging, facilities management, etc.

To meet the highly diversified needs of the Group's functions and employees, we select service providers capable of making the most relevant contributions to our operating efficiency, innovation and sustainable growth.

Bel's growth strategy is driven by the international development of its brands. To enter new markets or to design new products, the Group may decide to work in close collaboration with subcontractors. In such cases, we subject our partners to the same quality standards and demands in force at our own 30 production sites.

Approval priority is given to partners who are certified GFSI and committed to continuous improvement initiatives in the areas of the environment (ISO 14001) and employee safety (OHSAS 18001).

Our sustainable purchasing policy

Our Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) program requires collaboration at all stages of the value chain and must be shared with all Bel suppliers.

The objective of Bel’s Sustainable Purchasing Charter is to set out the commitments we take towards our supplier partners in relation to environmental, social and business ethics issues but also the commitments Bel expects from them.

This Charter reflects our desire to involve our suppliers in the implementation of due diligence measures as part of their CSR initiatives and to encourage continuous improvement actions on the social, ethical and environmental aspects of their business. It also recalls the duty of vigilance of suppliers to ensure that their own suppliers comply with these commitments.

By working with Bel, suppliers commit contractually to following the Sustainable Purchasing Charter. The ability of suppliers to commit and translate these commitments over time through appropriate practices is one of the evaluation criteria used by Bel to select its suppliers and monitor their performance. CSR requirements, specific to each purchasing category, may be included in the specifications of our calls for tenders and contracts, depending on the main issues or risks identified.

Through this policy, which has been implemented for many years, Bel fosters business relations with suppliers whose offers and practices are deemed to be compatible with its own responsible business model.

Assessing suppliers and their CSR performance

We ask our buyers everywhere in the world to integrate CSR criteria into the selection and performance tracking of their suppliers. Regularly, we conduct campaigns to assess and reassess the CSR performance of our suppliers and subcontractors deemed as priorities by virtue of the size of their business with the Group, the potential risk associated with the products and/or services they provide, or their geographical location.

To that end, Bel uses EcoVadis®, a service provider with recognized expertise in sustainable development. Based on the risks and/or the CSR demands associated with each of our purchasing categories, suppliers participating in calls for tender may be asked to undergo an EcoVadis® assessment. The assessment is based on 21 criteria grouped around four themes, including:

  • Environment,
  • Respect for labour and human rights standards,
  • Business ethics,
  • Suppliers / Supply chain.

To meet the same demands as its suppliers, the Group is regularly assessed for its CSR performance. With an EcoVadis score of 81 out of 100 in 2019, Bel has maintained it Gold status and ranks in the top 1% of companies evaluated by EcoVadis around the world.

The Bel Group wants to work with suppliers that share its values. Bel’s Code of Best Business Practices provides a set of common rules applicable to Bel and its suppliers. The Code is based on seven key principles to apply in all circumstances when doing business with Bel.
The effective application of these principles and rules by suppliers is an element that opens the way to initiating the selection and pursuing all business relations.

When a third party is a victim or witness of unethical conduct, they can report it through the Group’s alert system. It has been designed to deal fairly with all ethical issues of any kind. The processing of reports is handled as appropriate by ethical representatives at headquarters or subsidiaries, or by the Ethics Committee.

Become a Bel supplier

Bel also selects suppliers able to provide a competitive advantage to the Group. Encouraging suppliers to innovate and supporting the development of their exclusive solutions rank among Bel’s purchasing policy priorities.

In collaboration with Bel's function departments, buyers prepare a list of suppliers to consult for each call for tender.

Want to publicize your products or services?

Please complete the online form on our Sourcing@Bel Purchasing Portal.

These evaluations are carried out by independent, specialized service providers or by Bel on an ad-hoc basis.

We seek to avoid any economic dependency between Bel and its suppliers that could jeopardize either of the two parties.

Suppliers who are active in sensitive purchasing categories must systematically sign a confidentiality agreement.

The majority of our calls for tender are made via our e-sourcing platform, Sourcing@Bel, which ensures transparency and fairness.

Beyond cost and completing the necessary paperwork, we integrate criteria such as quality, deadlines, risk management, CSR performance, innovation, and the supplier's capacity to support the Group in its international development.

The contractual documents spells out the commitments of Bel and its suppliers.

Invoices should be sent to the address indicated on the purchase order and must contain the order number communicated by Bel.

Buyers conduct regular supplier performance assessment, which encompass quality, deadline, competiveness, innovation, CSR, and environmental criteria.

Buyers in charge of supplier relations lead a continuous improvement initiative through mutually respectful and transparent exchanges.

*Excluding MOM


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How Pandemics Wreak Havoc—and Open Minds

By July 28, 2020ISDose

The plague marked the end of the Middle Ages and the start of a great cultural renewal. Could the coronavirus, for all its destruction, offer a similar opportunity for radical change?

The social tumult caused by the Black Death helped lead to the Renaissance.Illustration by Bianca Bagnarelli

Great crises tend to bring profound social change, for good or ill. The consequences of wars and economic depressions have been amply studied; the consequences of pandemics, less so. This spring, in order to understand our possible future, I decided to look at the past through the eyes of Gianna Pomata, a retired professor at the Institute of the History of Medicine, at Johns Hopkins University. When we first talked, on Skype, she immediately compared covid-19 to the bubonic plague that struck Europe in the fourteenth century—“not in the number of dead but in terms of shaking up the way people think.” She went on, “The Black Death really marks the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of something else.” That something else was the Renaissance.

Since retiring, Pomata has returned to her home town, the old city of Bologna. “You know Bologna, right?” she asked in that first conversation, on March 27th. Decades ago, I was the best man at a wedding there. I recalled the giant churches, the red-tiled roofs, the marble walkways under arched porticoes; a stately city, low-slung, amber-hued, full of students and indomitable old couples. During the Middle Ages, Bologna was home to more than a hundred towers, the skyscrapers of their era, which served as showplaces of wealth and ambition for powerful oligarchs. Two of the remaining ones have become symbols of Bologna: one slightly out of plumb, the other as cockeyed as its cousin in Pisa. “You remember the Piazza Maggiore, the very heart of the city near the two towers?” Pomata said. “That’s where I live.”

Pomata’s country had been in a nationwide lockdown since March 10th. “In Italy, the streets are always crowded, night and day,” she said. “Our cities are medieval, made for a different way of life—not for cars but for people. Right now, to see them empty of people is so sad.” When we spoke, the number of confirmed cases in Italy had reached eighty-six thousand. Only the United States had a higher number, having just eclipsed China.

Pomata, who is sixty-nine, has brown hair, with a long, open face. That day, tortoiseshell glasses rested at half-mast on her nose, beneath upward-pointing, quizzical eyebrows. Like me, she was beginning to show the pallor of confinement. Having spent much of her adult life in the United States, her English had little accent, but she retained an Italian lilt, lingering on the broad vowels.

I asked Pomata to imagine walking out of her apartment six hundred and seventy-two years ago, during the Black Death. How would Bologna appear different? “If you try to imagine a plague-stricken city in the Middle Ages, the first thing you’d see would be dead people on the streets,” she said. “Just as we have to send the Army to take coffins to crematories in other cities, as in Bergamo right now, in the Middle Ages they couldn’t cope with so many dead. The bodies just piled up on the streets.” She paused and said, “I don’t have an idyllic vision of the Middle Ages.”

Italy at the beginning of the fourteenth century was a conglomeration of prosperous city-states that had broken free of the feudal system. Some of them, such as Venice, formed merchant republics, which became seedbeds for capitalism. Venice and other coastal cities, including Genoa, Pisa, and Amalfi, set up trading networks and established outposts throughout the Mediterranean and as far away as the Black Sea. Other Italian cities, such as Bologna, became free communes, which meant that peasants fleeing feudal estates were granted freedom once they entered the city walls. Serfs became artisans. A middle class began to form. The early fourteenth century was robust and ambitious. Then, suddenly, people began to die.

Bologna was a stronghold of medical teaching. The city’s famous university, established in 1088, is the oldest in the world. “What they had we call scholastic medicine,” Pomata told me. “When we say ‘scholastic,’ we mean something that is very abstract, not concrete, not empirical.” European scholars at the time studied a number of classical physicians—including Hippocrates, the Greek philosopher of the fifth century B.C. who is considered the father of medicine, and Galen, the second-century Roman who was the most influential medical figure in antiquity—but scholastic medicine was confounded with astrological notions. When the King of France sought to understand the cause of the plague, the medical faculty at the University of Paris blamed a triple conjunction of Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars in the fortieth degree of Aquarius, which had occurred on March 20, 1345.

A man seated behind his desk talks to a coworker.
“I just think things will work out for the best, and by the best I mean me.”
Cartoon by Barbara Smaller

“Whether it descended on us mortals through the influence of the heavenly bodies or was sent down by God in His righteous anger to chastise us because of our wickedness, it had begun some years before in the East,” Giovanni Boccaccio wrote in the Decameron, which was completed by 1353 and is set during the plague in Florence. “At its onset, in men and women alike, certain swellings would develop in the groin or under the armpits, some of which would grow like an ordinary apple and others like an egg.” These pus-filled swellings, called buboes, were inflammations of the lymph nodes. They eventually erupted. Internal organs broke down in a bloody froth, and bodies darkened with gangrene, which is why the plague came to be called the Black Death.

Before arriving in Italy, the rampaging contagion had already killed millions of people as it burned through China, Russia, India, Persia, Syria, and Asia Minor. It was said that there were entire territories where nobody was left alive. The source of the disease was sometimes thought to be “miasma,” or air that was considered unhealthy, such as sea breezes. Paradoxically, there was also a folk belief that attendants who cleaned latrines were immune, which led some people to confine themselves for hours a day amid human waste, absorbing the presumed medicinal odors. “The advice of doctors and the power of medicine appeared useless and unavailing,” Boccaccio wrote. Some people maintained that “the surest medicine for such an evil disease was to drink heavily, enjoy life’s pleasures, and go about singing and having fun, satisfying their appetites by any means available, while laughing at everything.” Others, he observed, “formed themselves into companies and lived in isolation from everyone else.” The Decameron tells of ten friends who shelter in place, entertaining one another with stories while the plague assails Florence. These ribald tales pay little heed to medieval notions of sacredness or piety; indeed, the society that the sequestered young people describe is amoral and cheerfully hypocritical. Priests are portrayed as stupid, lustful, greedy connivers. Illicit sex is exalted. The earthy realism of the Decameron, written in Italian vernacular rather than in classical Latin verse, sounded one of the opening notes of the Renaissance.

Pomata told me, “What happens after the Black Death, it’s like a wind—fresh air coming in, the fresh air of common sense.” The intellectual overthrow of the scholastic-medicine establishment in the Middle Ages was caused by doctors who set aside the classical texts and gradually turned to empirical evidence. It was a revival of medical science, which had been dismissed after the fall of ancient Rome, a thousand years earlier. “After the Black Death, nothing was the same,” Pomata said. “What I expect now is something as dramatic is going to happen, not so much in medicine but in economy and culture. Because of danger, there’s this wonderful human response, which is to think in a new way.”

In the fourteenth century, Tartar warriors in Crimea laid siege to the Black Sea port city of Caffa, which was owned by a group of wealthy Genoese traders. Like so many armies in history, the Tartars were also fighting an unseen enemy: they carried with them a horrible disease, which killed some victims in a few days, and left others to die in indolent agony. Before retreating from Caffa, the Tartar general, Khan Jani Beg, ordered the diseased bodies of dead warriors catapulted over the city walls, in one of the first instances of biological warfare. Panicked citizens took to boats, navigating through the Dardanelles into the Aegean Sea and the Mediterranean. A dozen ships made it to Sicily, in October, 1347.

Sicilians were appalled to find on their shores boats with dead men still at their oars. Other sailors, dead or barely alive, were in their bunks, covered with foul-smelling sores. The horrified Sicilians drove the ships back to sea, but it was too late. Rats and fleas, the carriers of Yersinia pestis, the bacterium that causes the plague, quickly infested the port of Messina. By January, Italy was engulfed. Ships arriving in the Venetian vassal state of Ragusa—present-day Dubrovnik—were required to sit at anchor for quaranta giorni, or forty days, which is where the term “quarantine” comes from.

Medieval mortality figures are a matter of speculation, but Bologna is believed to have lost half its population in 1348. Cities all over Europe were emptied. That first outbreak, between 1347 and 1351, is estimated to have killed at least seventy-five million people worldwide, and maybe as many as two hundred million.

“Child abandoned the father, husband the wife, wife the husband, one brother the other, one sister the other,” a contemporary writer, Marchione di Coppo Stefani, observed. Deep trenches were dug in churchyards. “Those who were responsible for the dead carried them on their backs in the night in which they died and threw them into the ditch,” Stefani continued. The next morning, dirt was thrown on the bodies as new corpses were piled on, “layer by layer, just like one puts layers of cheese in a lasagna.”

Pomata told me, “Chroniclers of the plague describe the crumbling of the family. At the same time, human beings are creative. They react to this perceived moral decay by creating new institutions. For instance, they create boards of health, which are in charge of quarantine.” For the first time, hospitals split patients up into specific wards, so that broken bones and wounds, say, were treated separately from diseases. There was also a rise in trade associations, to take care of medical costs and funeral expenses. “So you can see both trends,” Pomata said. “On the one hand, the plague works as a kind of acid. On the other hand, people try to re-create ties—and, perhaps, better ties.”

When I called Pomata again, on April 7th, using Zoom, she had set up an avatar: a bouquet of plumbago. I asked her why she had chosen it. “There was a big bush of plumbago next to the door of my grandmother’s little country house when I was a child,” she said. The house was in Sardinia, where Pomata grew up. “I loved my grandmother and I loved that house. So I just love that plant. It’s a color I remember from when I was very, very little.” Plumbago blossoms are a delicate blue, like a summer afternoon in Texas, where I live, when the color has almost been bleached out of the sky. Plumbago grows well in the heat.

Pomata’s sister, Daniela, is an emergency-room doctor in Bologna, at Sant’Orsola-Malpighi Polyclinic, the largest hospital in Italy. The two sisters live in the same building. “We used to be together constantly, and now I can’t see her,” Pomata said. From the start of the outbreak, her sister had emphasized that the coronavirus was not an ordinary flu. “She says, ‘I’ve never seen such pneumonias, they’re devastating,’ ” Pomata told me. When we spoke before, there was a fear that Sant’Orsola would run out of beds in its intensive-care unit. Now the crisis had begun to ease.

I asked Pomata if Italians who recovered would be allowed to return to work. “There is no work for them,” she said. Even before the global economic implosion caused by the coronavirus, unemployment for young Italians was thirty per cent. “What you need is exactly what the Fed is doing in the United States—you inject money into the system.”

Pomata’s daughter, Catherine, lives in New York, where she works in the film industry. “I don’t like the situation there at all,” Pomata said. “She is with her husband, she’s not by herself, so that’s good. They live in a tiny apartment near Columbia University, on the Upper West Side. Until recently, she was walking to Central Park, but now she doesn’t, because she feels that people don’t always pay attention to distance.” Catherine had sent her mother a video of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, just blocks from Catherine’s apartment, which was planning to house a temporary hospital. This underscored the scale of the contagion. “Catherine loves New York,” Pomata said. “Living in New York was a dream. But now I think she’s very scared.”

Another feature of the covid-19 pandemic reminded Pomata of the Black Death. “We cannot go and visit the dying, we cannot celebrate funerals,” she said. “I think, What if something happens to my daughter, and I couldn’t even see her body? It just feels intolerable.”

A mobsteresque father reads a bedtime story titled 'You're a Dead Man Moon' to his child.

Cartoon by Paul Noth

“Iam reflecting on the idea of disease waves,” I said, when Pomata and I spoke again, in May. Scientists were talking about a second wave of covid-19 in the fall, or perhaps many waves. The 1918 Spanish flu began in the early spring, disappeared in the summer, then returned in the autumn. October, 1918, was the deadliest month in American history. A third wave came in 1919; after that, the disease retreated, having killed at least fifty million people worldwide, including nearly seven hundred thousand Americans. Public-health officials dreaded the day the virus would return. In 1976, it did. This time, it killed only one American, a young Army recruit named David Lewis. Another variant of the same strain returned as a pandemic in 2009, but proved to be less severe than the usual seasonal flu.

The bubonic plague came in three great pandemics. The first, known as the Plague of Justinian, lasted from the sixth century until the eighth, with few letups, ravaging the Byzantine Empire. The second pandemic, the Black Death, arrived in Italy in December, 1347, and spread quickly across Europe. Pilgrims carried it to Mecca the following year. The plague soon infested Scandinavia. A third of the population of Egypt died. Subsidiary outbreaks continued to appear in Europe for three hundred years. The Great Plague of London, which Daniel Defoe chronicled, hit in 1665. After that, the plague mysteriously faded away.

“There was a much more circumscribed episode in Marseille in the early eighteenth century,” Pomata told me. “And that’s it for Europe, but not for Asia.” The last plague pandemic began in the mid-nineteenth century, in China, and spread to India, where it killed six million people. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the disease journeyed to America, where a Chinese resident of San Francisco was the first to die of it. Henry Gage, the governor of California at the time, tried to play down the outbreak, speculating that white people were immune to the disease; scores died. The plague has never been entirely eradicated, but, with each wave, it may have killed so efficiently that it starved itself of human hosts. Having persisted in flea and rat populations, the bacterium continues to infect humans from time to time. As many as two thousand cases are reported to the World Health Organization every year, often including a handful in the American Southwest.

The Black Death caused economic and demographic collapse throughout Europe, but some devastated regions rebounded surprisingly quickly. London, the engine of English prosperity even in the Middle Ages, lost an estimated forty thousand citizens, out of a population of perhaps seventy thousand, but it soon enjoyed greater affluence than ever. I asked Pomata about Italy’s economic experience after the Black Death. “It was a great time to be an artisan,” she said. “Suddenly, labor was scarce, and, because of that, market wages had to go up. The bourgeoisie, the artisans, and the workers started to have a stronger voice, simply because labor was scarce. When you don’t have people, you have to pay them better.” The relative standing of capital and labor reversed: landed gentry were battered by plunging food prices and rising wages, while former serfs, who had been too impoverished to leave anything but a portion of land to their eldest sons, increasingly found themselves able to spread their wealth among all their children, including their daughters. Women, many of them widows, entered depopulated professions, such as weaving and brewing.

At one point in our conversations, Pomata confessed, “I’m so upset and emotional, it’s difficult to think clearly.” I asked what was troubling her. “First of all, it is rediscovering the extreme fragility of life,” she said. “So much of our way of life is insane. Right now, for instance, in Italy we don’t have face masks.” Such masks used to be manufactured there, but today this work has been outsourced to China. If the pandemic had struck in the early nineteen-nineties, she believes, Italy would have responded more effectively from the start, and not just because masks would have been on hand. “Our national health-care system was better funded, we had more hospitals, the hospitals were better equipped, they had more intensive-care units, and all that has been cut, cut, cut for austerity policies dictated by Brussels”—that is, the European Union. Nevertheless, current talk about how the crisis could spell the end of the E.U. frightens her. “I am a Europeanist,” she said. “I have always believed in Europe as a culture and a political idea. But right now I see this. And I’m very angry.”

Pomata mentioned an essay that Mario Draghi, the former president of the European Central Bank, had published in the Financial Times, in March, suggesting that European leaders were questioning some fundamental ideas about economic growth. Draghi has been at “the pinnacle of the European bureaucracy that has been enforcing the economic policy called austerity,” Pomata explained. The southern tier of European countries—mainly Spain, Italy, Portugal, and Greece—have been struggling with heavy debt loads; northern countries, including Germany and the Netherlands, which hold the debt, insist that it must be repaid on a rigid schedule. She described the E.U.’s ethic as “Spending more than we have is heresy, and we should never do it.” She went on, “The problem, as John Maynard Keynes said, is that when you are in a crisis you don’t maintain that stance, because it makes the crisis worse. Which is what happened in the crisis of 1929. He said what you do is build an infrastructure—you build a pyramid if you have to, build anything. You create jobs and the economy doesn’t stop.”

She continued, “For a long time, European bureaucrats and the European ruling class have been firmly anti-Keynesian. And Draghi was part of that class—he was at the top of it! And suddenly he writes in the Financial Times saying the opposite of what he has been preaching all these years.”

Draghi described the coronavirus as “a human tragedy of potentially biblical proportions.” He added, “The challenge we face is how to act with sufficient strength and speed to prevent the recession from morphing into a prolonged depression, made deeper by a plethora of defaults leaving irreversible damage. It is already clear that the answer must involve a significant increase in public debt.”

Pomata said, “I’m glad, at least, that Draghi spoke up. But that ruling class, the European élite, has to really rethink.” Since then, the leaders of Germany and France have proposed creating grants, financed by collective borrowing, that would help prevent the poorer regions of Europe from falling into a lengthy recession. At the end of May, the E.U. presented a two-trillion-dollar coronavirus-response plan, with the aim of reviving flattened economies, especially in the south. If the member countries approve the plan, it could mark the moment when the E.U. moves toward a federal framework, like that of the United States. Germany’s finance minister, Olaf Scholz, has compared the measure to the actions taken in 1790 by Alexander Hamilton, the architect of the American financial system, to have the U.S. government assume the Revolutionary War debts of the states.

Pomata described the pandemic as “an accelerator of mental renewal.” She explained, “We listen more, perhaps. We’re more ready to talk to one another. Once again, I give Draghi’s example, because I’m so struck by it. An anthropologist should write about this kind of thing. Draghi’s world was very stable. He had some beliefs about how the economy should be handled. And suddenly he’s in a whirlwind, and he has to think anew.”

In 1345, shortly before the plague devastated Verona, the Italian poet and scholar Petrarch was rummaging through the library of the city’s cathedral. Among the crumbling manuscripts there, he found letters written by Marcus Tullius Cicero, the Roman statesman and orator who is sometimes credited with making Latin a literary language. Until Petrarch’s discovery, Cicero was almost totally forgotten, as were most of the great figures of the classical era. Reading Cicero’s letters—or other abandoned works, like Livy’s history of Rome—revealed to Petrarch how degraded civilization had become. He christened the period after the fall of Rome the Dark Ages. The beauty of Cicero’s language, the rigor of his thought, inflamed Petrarch with an ambition to restore the glory of the past. And that meant opening the minds of his contemporaries to the possibility of change.

“For Petrarch, it was about disliking his time and his age and the condition of Italy,” Pomata said. He expressed his frustration with his era by writing letters to the ancients. “It could be like someone today disliking the present state of America and wanting to talk to Thomas Jefferson or Martin Luther King.”

The Middle Ages didn’t end definitively until the fall of Constantinople, in 1453, when scholars of the Byzantine Empire migrated to Europe, especially to Italy, bringing their libraries with them. But new thinking was already under way, spurred partly by Petrarch’s embrace of old thinking, which is why he is often cited as the instigating figure of the Renaissance. Artists reclaimed ancient techniques for drawing and painting with perspective. Musicians recovered melody. Humanism unsettled the stagnant rule of religion over people’s minds. Michelangelo, da Vinci, Palladio, Brunelleschi, Boccaccio, Petrarch, Machiavelli, and Dante Alighieri became foundation stones of European thought. Italian explorers, including Christopher Columbus, Giovanni da Verrazzano, and Amerigo Vespucci, changed the map of the world. Galileo established the scientific method. The Italian Renaissance was perhaps the greatest efflorescence of science and art in Western civilization.

Two men on a deserted island find lots of absentee ballots in bottles.
“More absentee ballots.”
Cartoon by P. C. Vey

Before the coronavirus pandemic hit, Italy’s economy was already one of the weakest in Europe—its gross domestic product was at a dead stop. The U.S., meanwhile, had reached almost full employment, before plummeting to a level of joblessness not seen since the Great Depression. Congress and the Federal Reserve have acted forcefully, and a recent drop in unemployment suggests that some American jobs will come back quickly. Yet Jerome Powell, the Fed chairman, has predicted “a long road” to recovery. Both in the U.S. and in other countries, an era of significant unemployment is likely, creating a labor surplus—the reverse of the situation after the Black Death.

We seem to be at another point when society will make radical adjustments, for good or ill. History offers mixed lessons. The Plague of Athens, in 430 B.C., led to a protracted period of lawlessness and immorality. Citizens lost faith in Athenian democracy, which never regained its standing. The millions of deaths caused by the 1918 Spanish flu and the First World War brought on women’s suffrage but also inaugurated the Roaring Twenties, which featured disparities of wealth unequalled until the present day. After the shock of the Second World War, America transformed itself into the strongest economic power in history, largely through an expansive middle class. But after 9/11 the United States forged a dark path. Instead of taking advantage of surging patriotism and heightened international good will, America invaded Iraq and tortured suspects at Guantánamo; at home, prosperous Americans essentially barricaded themselves off from their fellow-citizens, allowing racial and economic inequalities to fester. The country we are now was formed in no small part by the fear and the anger that still linger from that tragic day.

Pomata and I began to speculate again on potential positive outcomes of the current pandemic. “People are noticing in Venice that the water is suddenly transparent,” she said. “It’s clean. And even I, here in Bologna, I open the window, and usually it smells foul because of too many motorini, and now it smells nice. It’s like being in the countryside.”

In Austin, the city where I live, I also have treasured the absence of the usual traffic roar, the neighborhood streets given over to pedestrians and exhilarated children on bicycles. I have been inspired by photographs of Los Angeles looking eerily pristine, and by newfound vistas of the Himalayas from Punjab, hidden for decades by smog. Could these images have a galvanizing effect, like the 1972 photograph of Earth taken from space by the crew of Apollo 17, which helped bring the environmental movement to life? The atmosphere feels scrubbed clean; the stars are sharper and more visible. The relationship between humanity and the natural world is more balanced and harmonious. Such ecological restorations, of course, have come at the cost of collapsed economies and punctured dreams. Traffic will necessarily resume, oil will be pumped, airplanes will take off. But I wonder if the glorious experience of living with less pollution, however momentary, will linger in our consciousness as an achievable destiny—and as a reminder that major transformations are possible.

Toward the end of spring, Italy began to open again. “Starting tomorrow, they’re going to relax the rules a bit,” Pomata told me, with excitement. “You’re supposed to be able to go and visit ‘relatives,’ but of course nobody knows what is meant by relatives. A fiancée? A lover? A mistress? We’re making lots of jokes about the meaning of a relative in Italy at this moment!”

Pomata’s optimism was further buoyed by the fact that her country’s shutdown, cohesive and well managed, had worked: new infections were petering out there. Italy had six thousand new cases a day when spring started and only two hundred a day when it ended. In the meantime, the epicenter of the contagion had moved to my own part of the world. By early July, Texas was reporting more than nine thousand infections a day, and was one of several Southern states that had boosted the spread of the disease to record levels. Hospitals in Houston were nearing full capacity, and Austin was preparing its convention center as a spillover medical outpost. Governor Greg Abbott, who had begun aggressively reopening the state in April and had even forbidden mayors to enforce rules concerning the use of face masks, now reluctantly tapped the brakes, warning of a “massive outbreak.” Texas had ended up basically in the same condition that Italy was in when Pomata and I first spoke.

Pomata was shocked by the direction that the pandemic was taking in the United States. She understood the reasons for the mass protests and political rallies, but, as a medical historian, she was uncomfortably reminded of the religious processions that had spread the plague in medieval Europe. And, as someone who had obediently remained indoors for months, she was affronted by the refusal of so many Americans to wear masks at the grocery store and maintain social distancing. In an e-mail, she condemned those who blithely ignored scientific advice, writing, “What I see right now in the United States is that the pandemic has not led to new creative thinking but, on the contrary, has strengthened all the worst, most stereotypical, and irrational ways of thinking. I’m very sorry for the state of your country, which seems to be in the grip of a horrible attack of unreason.” She continued, “I’m sorry because I love it, and have received so much from it.”

I understood her gloomy assessment, but also felt that America could be on the verge of much needed change. Like wars and depressions, a pandemic offers an X-ray of society, allowing us to see all the broken places. It was possible that Americans would do nothing about the fissures exposed by the pandemic: the racial inequities, the poisonous partisanship, the governmental incompetence, the disrespect for science, the loss of standing among nations, the fraying of community bonds. Then again, when people confront their failures, they have the opportunity to mend them.

We agreed on one thing: nothing about our societies could truly be fixed as long as everyone remained stuck inside. At one point, when Pomata and I were fantasizing about the end of our captivity, I asked her what she wanted to do when she finally went out again. “I don’t actually feel starved for human contact,” she said, with a bit of surprise. “I’ve never written so many letters as in this period of my life!” She then noted, “Of course, I see my sister from the window, and we cannot hug each other.” Above all, Pomata said, she longed to visit her mother, who lives in Sardinia, and to swim there again. This summer, she plans to make the trip. “Older people need exercise,” she said. “I don’t spend time at the beach gossiping with friends. I don’t even take the sun. I just go immediately into the sea.” ♦

A Guide to the Coronavirus

Guest Author: Lawrence Wright has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1992. He is also an author, a screenwriter, and a playwright.

This article first appeared in

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Protein AMPylation by an Evolutionarily Conserved Pseudokinase

Anju Sreelatha, Samantha S. Yee, Victor A. Lopez, Brenden C. Park, Lisa N. Kinch, Sylwia Pilch, Kelly A. Servage, Junmei Zhang, Jenny Jiou, Monika Karasiewicz-Urbańska, Małgorzata Łobocka, Nick V. Grishin, Kim Orth, Roza Kucharczyk, Krzysztof Pawłowski, Diana R. Tomchick, Vincent S. Tagliabracci
  • Cell, October 2018, Elsevier
  • DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2018.08.046

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Identifying Advanced Glycation End Products as a Major Source of Oxidants in Aging: Implications for the Management and/or Prevention of Reduced Renal Function in Elderly Persons

Helen Vlassara, Jaime Uribarri, Luigi Ferrucci, Weijing Cai, Massimo Torreggiani, James B. Post, Feng Zheng, Gary E. Striker
  • Seminars in Nephrology, November 2009, Elsevier
  • DOI: 10.1016/j.semnephrol.2009.07.013

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The Noble Guardian

Barbour Publishing recommended the ARC of Michelle Griep’s The Noble Guardian to me. It’s the compelling conclusion to her Bow Street Runners Trilogy. They know I love historical fiction and historical romance. Now I need to read the first two. Almost a Cinderella story, but not quite:  the heroine has a mind of her own; some of her ideas are very modern for her time — others, not so much.

What do you get when you pair a stubborn and very proper English lady with an equally stubborn English lawman? Sparks, of course! Abigail Gilbert is on her way to meet her fiancé – alone, thanks to her very evil stepmother’s machinations. Captain Samuel Thatcher, in pursuit of roving gangs of thieves, finally agrees to escort her through dangerous lands. Will they survive? Will they strangle each other? Or, will they admit their feelings to each other?

The Noble Guardian is a wonderful story for those of us who love historical romance and historical fiction. I know you will love it, too.

What makes The Grumpy Book Reviewer grumpy?  Again, because this was an advanced reader’s copy that that was sent to me before its final editing, I will let the verb tense disagreement and typos slide. Still, it had more than  its share of split infinitives, and the use of “bring” in place of “take” – which most editors these days seem to ignore.

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The Currumbin Wildlife Hospital is facing a 20% increase in admissions related to the recent bush fires and drought conditions affecting much of Australia.

Ember is one of many bushfire victims currently being treated at the Currumbin Wildlife Hospital, Gold Coast, Australia and is a representation of the major threats facing Koalas. Ember is recovering from both burns and chlamydia while receiving ongoing treatment for her complex conditions.

The severity of the current situation with all wildlife is extremely fragile and requires quality specialised care in treatment that very few hospitals provide at the same level as the Currumbin Wildlife Hospital. Chlamydia affects more than half of our Koala admissions which are rapidly affecting the number of healthy Koalas in the wild.  Sadly, the threat of chlamydia in the wild is as much manifested with the complexity of the recent bushfires, making this combination a threatening situation. Our team of wildlife experts will continue to make strides to save our Australian native wildlife with continued dedicated care, research and conservation.

It takes a minimum of $7,000 to treat, rehabilitate and release a Koala back into the wild after severe injury. The Currumbin Wildlife Hospital has seen an increase of 20% in admissions from fire and drought areas. Recovery and rehabilitation is a long process and the next 3 – 6 months is critical for wildlife.

“It’s important to understand it’s not just the animals that have been burned at the fire front, it’s around the edges where there aren’t fires but extreme drought and the extreme heat which has left many of our animals starving and dehydrated out there” said Dr Michael Pyne, Senior Veterinarian and General Manager of the Currumbin Wildlife Hospital.

“The pressure of the fire and the associated drought has put pressure on our wildlife and our resources here in the hospital and the time to act is now. You can make a big difference and save the lives of wildlife like Ember and get them the treatment they deserve along with a chance to be released back into the wild.”

The Currumbin Wildlife Hospital has grown to be one of the busiest wildlife hospitals in the world, with over 125,000 admissions in the last 20 years. 2019 saw over 12,200 animals, which included 600 Koalas - a service that is provided free of charge to the community. The skilled and experienced veterinary team, supported by volunteers, prides itself on providing the highest level of veterinary care to all of their patients.

We have a number of fundraising programs that reach all levels of the community from individuals, businesses and groups that support not-for-profit organisations by nominating the hospital as a ‘charity of choice’.

Currumbin Wildlife Hospital is over 30 years old and is a legacy of the founder of Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary, Alex Griffiths, who was committed to wildlife conservation. The Hospital is owned by independent charity National Trust of Australia (Queensland) and operates within the grounds of Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary, Gold Coast, Australia.

The Sanctuary and Hospital continue to operate with support of visitors, community and corporate donations.

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Greek Travel Pages

Location information

Listed 2 sub titles with search on: Ancient literary sources for destination: "FASSIS Ancient city KOLCHIS".

Ancient literary sources (2)

Perseus Encyclopedia

Phasis & Lycus rivers

There are several rivers in the country, but the best known are the Phasis and the Lycus, which empty into the Pontic Sea (Eratosthenes wrongly writes "Thermodon" instead of "Lycus"), whereas the Cyrus and the Araxes empty into the Caspian Sea, and the Euphrates and the Tigris into the Red Sea.There are also large lakes in Armenia; one the Mantiane, which being translated means "Blue"; it is the largest salt water lake after Lake Maeotis, as they say, extending as far as Atropatia; and it also has salt-works.

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Ferry Departures

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