Easy Chairs Research Articles

Icons: A Case Study in Spiritual Borrowing between Eastern Orthodoxy and the Emergent Church

Icons:A Case Study in Spiritual Borrowing between Eastern Orthodoxy and the Emergent Church Dann Wigner (bio) In the summer of 2011, while visiting an emergent church for a research case study in Tulsa, Oklahoma, I witnessed the following setup for corporate worship activities. The church met in an unfinished office building with a large open space with unadorned concrete walls, pillars, and exposed wiring. In the central portion of this space a variety of seating was provided: pews, folding chairs, easy chairs, couches, and school desks. Lyrics for songs and notes from sermons were projected on the bare wall behind the main speaker. On one side of this main seating area, a sectioned-off zone was designated as an art station, and the other side was a prayer station. The art station had chairs and tables covered with butcher paper. Crayons, Play-Doh, markers, and scissors were provided. Also, in this area, two easels were set up with blank canvases, a variety of paint colors, brushes, water, paint thinner, small wooden mannequins, old National Geographic magazines, and artwork completed in previous services, including one loosely interpreted portrayal of an icon. This area was separated from the main seating area by a six foot high votive candle divider, and lamps were provided for additional lighting. The prayer station was also separated by a votive candle divider. On this side, there were many candles, a chair and desk with prayer cards, a "surrender box" for prayers and struggles, a box of facial tissue, a suggested written "forgiveness prayer," a kneeling bench, a prayer journal, and an Eastern Orthodox icon prominently displayed. I was struck by the juxtaposition of a non-religious, multi-purpose space with the prominent place given to religious icons, encapsulating the epitome of traditional Christian ritual practice. This juxtaposition is a concrete, physical example of spiritual borrowing. Spiritual borrowing is the process of transplanting a spiritual practice that arose in one religion to another religion. For instance, spiritual borrowing occurs when Christians engage in Buddhist meditation or Neo-Pagans utilize prayer beads. Borrowing can range from single practices to theological tenets on up to a complete fusion creating a new religious movement, such as Santería. Here I am investigating a far subtler example of intra-religious borrowing from Eastern Orthodox Christianity by the nascent emergent church movement. Sociologically speaking, the examination of spiritual borrowing [End Page 78] Click for larger view View full resolution Our Lady of Tenderness 285. © 2004 by Clyde Rausch, OMI. [End Page 79] consists of close scrutiny of two inter-related processes: (1) the appropriation of a particular practice from one religion to another, and (2) the reinterpretation of the purpose and theology of the borrowed practice to fit within its new tradition. I investigate this process through the specific example of the Eastern Orthodox icon as appropriated and reinterpreted by the emergent church. My results show a complex relationship between belief and behavior in which the use of icons is viewed by the borrowing group as neutral containers to be divested and invested with theological content as needed. I follow a phenomenological methodology in this case study situated in an overarching qualitative framework for sociological study. To begin, a few brief definitions and categorizing remarks follow. First, this case study is qualitative rather than quantitative. Succinctly stated, "Qualitative data deals with meanings, whereas quantitative data deals with numbers."1 The difference in data gathered extends to a difference in conceptual logic with regard to analyzing that data. Specifically, quantitative data lends itself to deductive reasoning in which a researcher begins with a hypothesis and then either proves or disproves it on the basis of the specific data collected. Qualitative research and analysis approaches data from an inductive perspective, allowing inferences to rise out of many detailed observations.2 Qualitative research encourages the development of categories from examination of data collected rather than developing categories prior to examination of collected data. As a result, conclusions are returned that are not intended to be demonstrable, repeatable, and generalizable; rather, their aim is to produce "thick description" through use of a relatively small sample for the purpose of allowing outsiders to comprehend a "culture from...

Transition as Impasse: Critical Neoliberal Realism and the Problem of Agency

Transition as Impasse:Critical Neoliberal Realism and the Problem of Agency Carolyn Veldstra (bio) Between late 2008 and early 2009, political rhetoric in the United States and the United Kingdom emphasized a new spirit of responsibility as essential for citizens concerned to ease the recessions in those countries sparked by the 2008 financial crisis. For instance, in a campaign speech on 26 April 2009, future uk Prime Minister David Cameron warned that "the age of irresponsibility is giving way to the age of austerity." The latter era would usher in what Cameron called "responsible politics" that, he specified, would entail a significant burden of "personal responsibility" for citizens. Similarly, on 8 January 2009, in his speech on the economy, then President-elect Barack Obama declared an era of "profound irresponsibility" as at the root of the financial crisis and called for "a new spirit of responsibility" from Americans. As if anticipating the political rhetoric to come, the 2008 animated summer blockbuster WALL-E—which follows an anthropomorphized trash-compacting robot tasked with cleaning up an abandoned Earth overwhelmed by garbage—depicts some futuristic remainder of the human species evacuated to giant starliners sponsored by the megacorporation Buy-N-Large. Having succumbed to the weightlessness of space, their bodies soft, obese, and confined to hovering lounge chairs, humans have become lazy, complacent, and live only to consume. [End Page 33] It is not until humans can, quite literally, stand on their own two feet and regain the value of hard work that they can reclaim Earth and begin the project of renewal. The confluence of political and pop cultural discourses highlighting responsibility speaks to a transitional moment in which the effects of the financial crisis were beginning to be felt and understood. In each case, these narratives claim a certain version of capitalism as at the root of current problems: for Cameron and Obama, the capitalism of "Wall Street wrongdoers," to use Obama's phrasing, and for Pixar, the excess of consumer capitalism, variously construed as the material waste accumulated as trash and the flabby excesses of the consuming subjects' bodies. Each discourse is an oversimplification—to say nothing of WALLE's glib fat phobia—of both the sense of crisis and the availability of transition, particularly in light of the complexity of the financial crisis that in many ways remains ongoing. In their speeches, Obama and Cameron imply hubris not only on the part of banking executives but also among the public, imprudently lured to live beyond their means by promises too good to be true. If capitalism is posed as a problem, then, it is only because we allow it to become a problem by succumbing to the dreams of ease that represent its obscene edges. In this way, each of these texts imagines responsibility as crucial to solving crisis. Individual responsibility is framed as the ground on which a transition out of crisis will be built, and, by contrast, impasse is regarded as a failure of will, giving in to the promised ease of the Buy-N-Large or the mortgage broker, without considering the deleterious effects that will almost inevitably result from such promises. It is not coincidental, then, that the future humans populating WALL-E's starliners live immobilized in self-propelled easy chairs. Transition, responsibility, these entail movement, standing up, taking action, reclaiming Earth from piles of garbage through hard work. Impasse, on the other hand, is prefigured as human stasis. But have impasse and transition remained such clear-cut antonyms in the near-decade that has passed since the onset of the financial crisis? On the one hand, as its seeming opposite, the assumed threat of impasse as stasis lends urgency to transition and justifies an insistence on taking action, staying in motion. As such, one might seek transition to avoid or escape impasse. In a moment of impasse, transition can be a dream, a horizon on which hopes can be placed or dashed, a vague future promise of an exit or escape route. On the other hand, this imagined segue into something else is mirrored by another kind of transition, a perpetual and ongoing transition in a cyclical present in which one...

Investigation of ergonomic parameters of easy chairs in Moratuwa furniture manufacturing establishments

Sitting on a comfortable seat helps to relax the body and reduce energy consumption. but on the otherhand prolonged sitting slackens abdominal muscles and may cause back ache. Application of medicaland ergonomic principles in the design of a seat can maximize advantages and minimize disadvantagesin sitting.In Sri Lanka the demand for a furniture depends on the customer perception to comfort and beauty ofthe product. The present study aimed to find out whether the easy chairs manufactured in the MoratuwaFurniture Manufacturing Establishments were ergonomically designed for the Sri Lankan users.The investigation was initiated with the identification of easy chair designs in the Moratuwa FurnitureManufacturing Establishments. A representative sample of two popular easy chair designs, the KuluPutuwa and the Meda! Putuwa, was then selected.The different design parameters of these twochairs were measured. It was observed that there were differences in the dimensions of the majordesign parameters of the chairs between companies.Sri Lanka has no specific standards for designing offurniture. Hence design standards were developedfor easy chairs in the present study based on available anthropometric data for Sri Lankan users andother published anthropo:netric data on seat designs.The different design parameters of Kulu Putuwa and Medal Putuwa were then compared with thosedeveloped ergonomic standard values. It was observed that only the back rest height of the easychairs was ergonomically acceptable in all the companies surveyed. Seat height, seat depth. seatwidth and ann rest height were lower than the accepted standard values. Such improper dimensionsshould result in discomfort and body pain. The angle of rake and angle of tilt, which indicate theinclination of the back rest, were significantly lower in the sampled chairs. The inclination of the backrest was iower than the req u ired 115°- 120°, wh ich should resu It in low back stress and static musculartension, which may lead to development of back injuries.In order to improve the ergonomic parameters of the Medal Putuwa, a prototype chair was designed.Seat height, seat depth, seat width, arm rest height, of the prototype char was lower and it had higherangIe of ti It and angle of rake. The designed prototype chair was evaluated against a normal controlchair, and the users rated the ergonomically designed chair was much better compared with thecentro I in terms of comfort.The present study reveals the need for Sri Lanka to have specific standards based on the body sizesof users, for des ign of furn iture. This wi IIenable the production of ergonomically correct and aestheticallyacceptable quality furniture in Sri Lanka.

“Under These Classic Shades Together”:

cross American colleges and universities during the late antebellum period, young men associated outside the classroom in literary, social, and fraternal clubs, all-male spaces highly conducive to the formation of strong friendships. Strong male relationships developed in which such terms as “intimacy,” “fraternal love,” and the “after life” were fundamental tenets of a shared experience. Unlike the collective world found in the public sphere of adult men, the antebellum college setting differed precisely because the young men quite frequently lived and dined together in dormitories, boarding and rooming houses, and fraternities, often secretly organized, in the towns and cities in which their colleges were located. Their lives were marked by dynamic uncertainty: not yet fully independent adults, but no longer completely dependent for support on their families. Since at least the 1970s, historians have debated the possibilities of same-sex intimacy among women, the terms of which have often centered on their timing and their prevalence in early American society. Only recently, however, have men as gendered subjects A

Investigation of ergonomic parameters of easy chairs in Moratuwa furniture manufacturing establishments

Sitting on a comfortable seat helps to relax the body and reduce energy consumption, but on the other hand prolonged sitting slackens abdominal muscles and may cause back ache. Application of medical and ergonomic principles in the design of a seat can maximize advantages and minimize disadvantages in sitting. In Sri Lanka the demand for a furniture depends on the customer perception to comfort and beauty of the product. The present study aimed to find out whether the easy chairs manufactured in the Moratuwa Furniture Manufacturing Establishments were ergonomically designed for the Sri Lankan users. The investigation was initiated with the identification of easy chair designs in the Moratuwa Furniture Manufacturing Establishments. A representative sample of two popular easy chair designs, the Kulu Putuwa and the Medal Putuwa, was then selected. The different design parameters of these two chairs were measured. It was observed that there were differences in the dimensions of the major design parameters of the chairs between companies. Sri Lanka has no specific standards for designing of furniture. Hence design standards were developed for easy chairs in the present study based on available anthropometric data for Sri Lankan users and other published anthropometric data on seat designs. The different design parameters of Kulu Putuwa and Medal Putuwa were then compared with those developed ergonomic standard values. It was observed that only the back rest height of the easy chairs was ergonomically acceptable in all the companies surveyed. Seat height, seat depth, seat width and arm rest height were lower than the accepted standard values. Such improper dimensions should result in discomfort and body pain. The angle of rake and angle of tilt, which indicate the inclination of the back rest, were significantly lower in the sampled chairs. The inclination of the back rest was lower than the required 1150-1200, which should result in low back stress and static muscular tension, which may lead to development of back injuries. In order to improve the ergonomic parameters of the Medal Putuwa, a prototype chair was designed. Seat height, seat depth, seat width, arm rest height, of the prototype char was lower and it had higher angle of tilt and angle of rake. The designed prototype chair was evaluated against a normal control chair, and the users rated the ergonomically designed chair was much better compared with the control in terms of comfort. The present study reveals the need for Sri Lanka to have specific standards based on the body sizes of users, for design of furniture. This will enable the production of ergonomically correct and aesthetically acceptable quality furniture in Sri Lanka.

Juanita’s Paintings: A Manager’s Personal Ethics and Performance Reviews

It’s 10:30 in the morning. David, a reference librarian at Norringwood Library, leaves his desk and walks to his supervisor Juanita’s office. The door is open. David looks at Juanita, who has just settled into one of the easy chairs next to the window. She lifts a carafe of coffee from the side table and pours herself a cup. As Juanita sips her coffee, gazing out the window at the street traffic below, David pauses quietly
 in the doorway and looks around Juanita’s office—a place he’s been dozens of times.

"A Motion as Near Flying as Any Human Being Could Attain": The 19th Century Umpire as Sprinter

Nineteenth century baseball witnessed a whirlwind of change, and none of its participants was buffeted more than umpire. Up until Civil War, he was a ceremonial figure who sat in comfort of an easy chair and rarely was called upon to make a decision. By end of century, however, he was expected to be all things to all men and to be in all places diamond at once, which led to a dramatic expansion in requirements of position. One of most intriguing of his new requirements was great foot speed-a requirement that spurred world-record holder in 100-yard dash to join ranks of major league umpires during 1890s. This is story of how that odd episode came to pass.The early game's rules were structured so that umpiring generally required a minimum of effort. There were no called strikes or balls, and players strove to be honest about calling themselves out or safe since their reputation as gentlemen hung in balance. As a result, made decisions only relatively rare occasions when a player requested him to do so by calling out Judgment! And once match ended, no matter what, members of both nines regaled him with three hearty cheers.Befitting this role, one early player recalled that earliest umpires were accorded utmost courtesy by They were given easy chairs, placed near home plate, provided with fans hot days and their absolute comfort was uppermost in minds of players. To ensure his comfort, always received choicest bits of food and largest glass of beer-in case he cared for such beverage. he didn't, he needed but to express his desires in thirst-quenching line before game started- and he got it.1The umpire's chair was placed at a safe distance from home plate, and, according to another early player, on sunny days, he was entitled to an umbrella, either self-provided or a special one of vast circumference, fastened to chair and with it constituting one of fixtures of game. The had, in essence, best seat in house. Although he was free to get up and move about, the prerogative was rarely used.2 Who can blame him?But then a volley of rapid changes to game's rules and customs swept away all of comforts initially associated with umpire's position. Balls and called strikes were both introduced by end of Civil War, forcing umpires to make far more decisions than ever before. In turn, baserunners and fielders became less inclined to acknowledge an unfavorable result and began appealing for a ruling every play. Before long, it was taken for granted that would render a decision at end of each play. The consequences were revolutionary.At first, there was an effort to ensure that was treated with as much courtesy as ever. Sportswriter Henry Chadwick was an especially passionate crusader for civil treatment of umpire. After an 1866 game, he chastised Eckford Club of Brooklyn for asking a man ... to oblige them by acting as umpire only to have returned his kindness by disputing his decisions, and rating him all way home.... Why, thing is simply disgraceful.3 When National League was founded in 1876, its constitution warned: is sole judge of play, and is entitled to respect of spectators, and any person hissing or hooting at, or offering any insult or indignity to him, must be promptly ejected from grounds.But these high-minded principles proved unenforceable, and before long verbal abuse of became norm. As one sportswriter put it in 1879, If a man wants to find out how much he doesn't know and what a dishonest, mean, miserable cuss he really is,- let him a game of base ball and then stand around and hear losing club discuss him.4 Even physical intimidation and abuse were not unheard of. One newspaper editor, upon learning that a rival town's editor had nominated him to a game between two towns, replied that other man's reason for desiring us fatally injured is more than we can conjecture. …

Dare to Be Different

CHARLES Dickens Elementary School, with its scarlet brick exterior, is a hundred-year-old relic from a time when schools were built as no-nonsense fortresses to contain and socialize a swelling immigrant population. In spite of its down-at-the-heels condition, it manages to retain its grandeur, wearing its red coat as a banner of bravado: Dare to Be Different. For Charles Dickens Elementary is as distinct in its ethos as in its appearance from most other public schools in the city of Vancouver--and perhaps throughout the entire province of British Columbia. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The Vietnamese pho shops and other low-rent cafes that hawk sushi, samosas, pizza, and dim sum on the Kingsway, just up the block, manifest the diversity of the area and signal the ethnic mix of the children in the school. Many of them are new Canadians; some speak English as yet haltingly; others, not quite yet. In Annie O'Donaghue's class of third-through fifth-graders, a children-drawn world map on the bulletin board shows the students' countries of origin: El Salvador, Honduras, India, Canada, Portugal, China, Vietnam, Philippines, Ireland. Many of the children who are identified as coming from Canada are of First Nations heritage. Dickens is not the school one would have picked as most likely to defy every new curriculum du jour handed down by school boards and ministries of education over the last 30 years. It is certainly not the school one would have picked to remain true to its child-centered roots, facing off against such educational tsunamis as the back-to-basics movement, Madeline Hunter's direct instruction, and now the high-stakes testing madness that is passing for educational quality. And this is certainly not the school, given the challenges of the student population, that one would have picked to demonstrate such high performance levels, showing us once again what many educators know: that given the stuff --the right teachers, the right administration, the right conditions--all children can be successful learners. I came to visit Charles Dickens and left humbled at what I saw, for surely this is the kind of school and the quality of education that we all say we want for our children. I wanted to know what made it work and how, in the past 20 years, it has held onto its autonomy and endured as a beacon of what a school can and should be. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] SCENES FROM THE SCHOOL I walk up the steep stone steps and enter a large hallway, looking for the general office. The floor is patterned linoleum worn by the footsteps of hundreds and thousands of winter boots, but the visitor's eye is immediately drawn to the colors--children's art on every wall, including large-scale murals painted directly on the hallway lockers. Even the tops of the lockers are used to display children's dioramas. The colorful exhibits speak of the value put on children's creative work, and it is obvious that the students themselves, not the teachers, have put this art on display. In the rear area of the hallway, under the staircase, an old couch, some easy chairs, and a small bookcase containing paperback books and magazines make an informal reading corner. No one is on guard here; all the doors are unlocked, and the school can be entered from any side. There is a sense of non-orderliness here--not sloppy or unclean, but put together by children. The informality of it all is striking, and it is immediately clear that children own this environment and that order and control are not key issues in this school. John Perpich, principal of Charles Dickens Elementary School for the last six years, escorts me upstairs to Annie O'Donaghue's classroom. Like every other class in the school, this is a multi-age grouping: grades 3, 4, and 5 combined. The rationale for multi-age grouping, Perpich says, is that the numbers of same-age children in the school population of 455 children do not allow for even distribution into grade-level classes. …

Beginning, Continuation, and Future

Human Studies was the idea and invention of George (Psathas, in the hard to-imagine case that there is a reader who doesn't know that "George" is fol? lowed by "Psathas" ? but need I say how much I hate these parentheses?). Well, to continue: Human Studies has remained his concern ever since its inception. In the evenings I spent in George's house, the passionate but prolonged discussion was crowned with and relieved by cups of tea and some pastry which George, apparently indefatigable, brought around to us exhausted speak? ers and listeners, who nevertheless sat very comfortably on couches and easy chairs ?what a charming host! Among the faithful present were David Rasmussen, Vic Kestenbaum, Jeff Coulter, and Egon Bittner, as well as the spirits of Herbert Spiegelberg and Harold Garfinkel. There were many issues to consider, of course, e.g., content, readers, publisher, and number of copies. Was it going to be a social science or a philosophy journal? What was its re? lation to phenomenology? Was it to be exclusively or in a more general sense phenomenological? What would be the place of ethnomethodology? Through a series of spirited discussions we made important and consequential decisions ?that the journal would be influenced in a more general way by phenomenol? ogy as an overall orientation rather than a specialty, that ethnomethodology would be paid special attention to, and that the standards for scholarship would be high. The issue I remember best is that of the title of the new journal. The reason I remember it so well is that "human studies," which was my proposal, is H.A. Hodges' felicitous translation of Wilhelm Dilthey's Geisteswissenschaften, (study "of the mind" or "of the spirit"), that is, roughly, the social sciences and humanities. My effort was to make this distinction, well known in Ger? man, between the human studies and the natural studies or sciences. The hu? man studies understand, the natural sciences explain. The reason for this distinction is that the human being is a mixed phenomenon, both body and soul, and that therefore any investigation of human beings must do justice to both.

Early Childhood Education and Care in England

England has universal health care, job-protected and paid parental leave, child allowances, and universal preschool for 4-year-olds. Reform initiatives aim to decrease child poverty, increase opportunity, address social exclusion, and improve health. As a living laboratory for such reforms, England has much to teach U.S. IMAGINE a young mother in an economically depressed area in Midlands as she enters Pen Green Early Excellence Center for first time. The center is one of 100 that are being recognized by government as beacons of good practice in provision of health, education, and social services.1 The former head of center and current research director, Margy Whalley, describes how this mother and her infant could become involved: She might start to use baby clinic, which [is] run very informally with big cushions, sagbags, easy chairs, and toys for children. Volunteers [are] on hand to make coffee, health visitors [are available] to offer counseling and support; and digital scales [are] provided so that parents [can] weigh their own babies. She might then meet some other parents and decide to join an Open University study group during day; or she might work with pack on Living with Babies and Toddlers in evening. She might later want company and different kinds of play provision and join a parent and toddler session either run by nursery staff and community service volunteers or by nursery staff and parents. There, in comfortable, roomy surroundings, very young children get chance to explore with clay, sand, and paint more freely than would be possible at home. In this way, parents decide how they use center.2 As her child grows, center offers other services: a toy library run by parents, a parent-run home visiting scheme, groups for divorced fathers, immunizations and checkups for adults and children, a day care for children under three, and a nursery for children between 3 and 5 years of age. In this area of high unemployment, where many parents did not experience school success, fully 85% of mothers and up to 60% of fathers have participated in child study groups. Working with other parents and staff members, they analyze daily logs and video clips (with camcorders borrowed from center) to understand and support their children's learning. Once child enters primary school, she might attend after-school and homework club that comes to life when day ends at local primary schools and school-age children pour into center, some lugging tubas and trumpets for band practice. She might see senior citizens in computer lab, learning how to use e-mail. Her mother could take a crafts class or classes in adult basic education, or she could pursue a university degree on site. The list goes on. Pen Green is a work in progress, animated by long-standing efforts to work with rather than for parents and to base services on what people need and want. The staff members have adopted a public statement that links up close and personal with broader social goals: What a good and wise parent desires for his or her own children, a nation must desire for all its children.3 Pen Green is an example of coordinated service delivery tailored to needs of local communities. Yet Early Excellence Centers Pilot Program is but one facet of a new, broad-based social agenda. Public funds are being used to support a number of initiatives aimed at improving children's life chances, encouraging employment, and combating social exclusion. Since 1997, England has been engaged in reform of the early years. Until quite recently, however, English and American approaches to early childhood education and care (ECEC) were seen as more similar than different. In an earlier effort to make sense of cross-national differences, a team of researchers suggested four models of child-care policy, models they labeled Latin-European, Scandinavian, Socialist, and Anglo-Saxon. …

John Wesley Powell and the Unmaking of the West

Environmental historians have a fondness for the American West, for it is there that the squandering of America's wealth of natural resources is so conspicuous and, by modem standards, so shameful. It is there that the causes of overgrazed ranges, clear-cut forests, wildlife losses, regimented rivers, and mountains of tailings and lakes of toxic sludge are as crystal clear as the azure western sky. There, the sages of the West, from their easy chairs, from their lofty perches above the one-hundredth meridian, and from the besieged gates of the lords of yesterday, decry the sins of private greed, waste, and abuse that was and is, they claim, the unmaking of the West. Who can deny the environmental record of unbridled individualism or question the gallantry of a federal few to save the West from capitalist exploitation? Make no mistake-there was exploitation. Grass was extracted from arid prairies at rates that exceeded the historic harvests of tens of millions of migrating bison. Forests were cut at rates that exceeded the natural periodicity of fire and regeneration. Rivers, wild and choked with salmon, were blocked, stair-stepped, and channeled to make way for a new breed: cultivators and stockmen. Mountains that had taken ages to thrust upward, and then ages more to be sculpted by wind, water, and ice, were deconstructed to their basic elements of rubble. In fact, much of the West has been deconstructed. A generation of insightful and daring historians have dismantled the edifice of myth, the cultural belief that this home on the range of the winsome cowboy somehow steered clear of the ills endemic to the rest of America and stayed true, instead, to its ethos of individualism and its birthright of frontier democracy. But there is a problem, or more accurately a hesitancy. Slash and burn as they might, western historians have shown a stubborn reluctance to dismantle the one icon that is most responsible for the West's environmental undoing: the western hero. By western hero, I do not mean the fictional agents that pass down to us from the ages or the manufactured legends that occasionally grace the cinematic screen, though their ethos shares much in common with what I have in mind. Rather, the heroes I see, the ones who deconstructed the West to stubble, stumps, and stagnant pools, were flesh and blood, mostly male, living but much larger than life. They are the ones who won the West of wise use, the scribes who, in an

Ode To Boy (Whitman at a Mall)

Critical QuarterlyVolume 37, Issue 3 p. 93-99 Ode To Boy (Whitman at a Mall) ALLAN GURGANUS, ALLAN GURGANUS ALLAN GURGANUS is the author of Oldest Living Confederate Widou, Tells All and White People. His own obsessions include food, leather easy chairs accompanied by very good reading lamps, the collecting of American folk art, the avoidance of television (rays very harmful), and a continual rereading of Henry James. But his greatest obsession and favourite is: obsession itself. How it organises one's views, one's time!Search for more papers by this author ALLAN GURGANUS, ALLAN GURGANUS ALLAN GURGANUS is the author of Oldest Living Confederate Widou, Tells All and White People. His own obsessions include food, leather easy chairs accompanied by very good reading lamps, the collecting of American folk art, the avoidance of television (rays very harmful), and a continual rereading of Henry James. But his greatest obsession and favourite is: obsession itself. How it organises one's views, one's time!Search for more papers by this author First published: September 1995 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8705.1995.tb01077.xAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Volume37, Issue3September 1995Pages 93-99 RelatedInformation

Zouk: World Music in the West Indies

With its irresistible dance beat, strong bass line, straightforward harmonies lyrics, zouk has become wildly popular in the Caribbean, Africa, Europe. book complete with a compact disc numerous illustrations musical examples provides a thorough introduction to the sound, lyrics, choreography, social milieu of this vibrant infectious new music. This invigorating reference work companion CD of the Antilles' sexy zouk dance sound will lift readers out of their easy chairs and their complacency about the nonreggae aspects of Caribbean pop. . . . [Zouk] is a landmark achievement. Timothy White, Billboard

Easy Chairs for People with Arthritis and Low Back Pain: Results from an Evaluation

This article reports the findings of a Department of Health study of easy chairs for people with ankylosing spondylitis, rheumatoid arthritis, osteoarthritis of the hips and generalised low back pain. Fifteen chairs were tested for comfort, support, ease of sitting and ease of egress by a sample of 100 subjects in a controlled setting. The results demonstrated that several of the tested chairs could be used comfortably by people with arthritis and low back pain, and that common design characteristics influenced comfort for all subjects.

Selecting Easy Chairs for People with Arthritis and Low Back Pain

Summary Following a Department of Health (DoH) evaluation of easy chairs for people with rheumatoid arthritis, ankylosing spondylitis, osteoarthritis of the hip joints and low back pain, salient design characteristics were highlighted as contributing to the comfort experienced in an easy chair by all disability categories. This article presents the overall findings of the DoH study in terms of guide lines which will assist therapists in selecting the most comfortable and supportive chairs for their patients.

Real-time patient weight monitoring system for chair based renal dialysis

A system is described for monitoring weight changes in patients undergoing renal dialysis. Relatively fit patients dialyse in easy chairs rather than in bed but no commercial system is currently available to monitor weight changes under these conditions. The authors have considered basic requirements and have developed a cost effective system based on a Single Point Off-Centre load cell, all components being mounted under a platform on which the easy chair is located. There is an electrical output signal which may be used to drive a display or be sampled by a computer system.

Choosing easy chairs for the disabled.

Choosing easy chairs for the disabled.

A Review of: “Selecting Easy Chairs for Elderly and Disabled People.” By CAROLINE HARRIS and WENDY MAYFIELD (Loughborough: Institute for Consumer Ergonomics, University of Technology, 1983.) [Pp. 26.] £2·50. ISBN-0-950790419.

(1984). A Review of: “Selecting Easy Chairs for Elderly and Disabled People.” By CAROLINE HARRIS and WENDY MAYFIELD (Loughborough: Institute for Consumer Ergonomics, University of Technology, 1983.) [Pp. 26.] £2·50. ISBN-0-950790419. Ergonomics: Vol. 27, No. 12, pp. 1303-1303.

A Review of: “Selecting Easy Chairs for Elderly and Disabled People”. By C. HARRIS and W. MAYFIELD. (Institute for Consumer. Ergonomics, 1983.) £2-50.

(1984). A Review of: “Selecting Easy Chairs for Elderly and Disabled People”. By C. HARRIS and W. MAYFIELD. (Institute for Consumer. Ergonomics, 1983.) £2-50. Ergonomics: Vol. 27, No. 5, pp. 623-623.

Germans, Leftists, Jews

That anti-Semitism has nothing to do withJews has been noted; this is even more the case with the Jewish debate that has recently emerged*in West Germany. Touched off by a special issue of the Berlin journal, Asthetik und Kommunikation entitled, Germans, Leftists, Jews,' the newJewish problem has to do with German responsibility, guilt, the generational conflict, national identity, etc. The fate of the Jews as such has played almost no role. Nevertheless, the controversy surrounding the issue has brought some significant new perceptions. To the extent that they succeeded in abandoning some of the old postures, rhetorical strategies, and conceptual easy chairs, Asthetik und Kommunikation pushed the emotional and psychic temperature of the discussion to a new level of intensity. They have admitted that the idiom of the Left is no help, that the problem of national identity is linked to the national past and to the murder of the Jews, and above all that they cannot exorcise the German beast by good intentions alone. But they have also recognized their own hostility to theJews who constantly remind them of their moral vulnerability. In so doing they revealed an ugly, unpalatable side of themselves, sometimes reflectively, sometimes not. As a result they were subjected to massive criticism and reproach. For the first time in its history Asthetik und Kommunikation was acknowledged by the mass media, the press, and by a public not accustomed to browsing at thejournal racks of those radical bookstores that appear like oases in the German urban landscape. Even in the GDR this issue evoked a response by the small group of youngerJewish intellectuals which still manages to exist there. As the editors remarked: Never in the past 14 years has an issue of Asthetik und Kommunikation been so bitterly criticized, not even during the factional disputes in the aftermath of the student revolt.