tagged w/ Colonial America
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James Cameron’s Avatar is Disney’s Pocahontas?
Well, we all know the similarities between “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” and “Forrest Gump,” but what about the latest record-breaking 3D epic from James Cameron?
I thought it was the sci-fi version of “Dances With Wolves” (or maybe “FernGully: The Last Rainforest”) but Matt Bateman makes a pretty good argument for James Cameron’s “Avatar” actually being the same film as Disney’s “Pocahontas.”
http://www.scene-stealers.com/blogs/james-camerons-avatar-disneys-pocahontas/James Cameron’s Avatar is Disney’s Pocahontas?
Well, we all know the... more
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In an article for the Boston Globe, "A Pox on You," Andrew Wehrman reveals that the current national debate on health care is nothing new. The founding fathers debated their own health care regulations — and faced a revolt — some 200 years ago.
On a blustery January night in 1774, scarcely a month after the famous Tea Party in Boston, an even more shocking protest unfolded on Massachusetts’ North Shore. In the dead of night, a crew of 20 men blackened their faces and armed themselves with torches and buckets of tar. The object of their anger was not a chest of tea, a tax collector, or British soldiers. What these men, mostly sailors from Marblehead, burned down was the town’s brand new hospital.
Health care in Colonial America looked nothing like what we’d consider medicine today, but the debates it triggered were similar. The danger of smallpox and the high cost of its prevention led to divisive questions about who should pay, whether everyone deserved equal access, and if responsibility lay at the feet of the individual, the state, or the nation. Epidemics forced the early republic to wrestle with the question of the federal government’s proper role in regulating the nation’s health.
Colonial leaders and ordinary people alike possessed a similar sense that a proper solution to these issues would determine the brightness and shape of America’s future. At times conflicts over public health threatened the social and political fabric of communities. Did these rowdy Colonials, with the aid of the Founding Fathers, solve these dilemmas? Hardly. But their observations, questions, and compromises offer a useful lesson for what we can expect as we find ourselves again with health care in the forefront of the national conversation.In an article for the Boston Globe, "A Pox on You," Andrew Wehrman reveals... more
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Here's a piece from Larry Kramer from the Huffington Post in which he addresses the history of gays in colonial America ever since its inception in Jamestown. Here's an excerpt:
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"Jamestown was initially an all-male settlement. ...in subsequent years...male colonists outnumbered women by roughly six to one in the 1620's and four to one in later decades... It is difficult to believe that a group of young and notoriously unbridled men remained celibate for an extended period of time. It seems likely that some male settlers deprived of female companionship would have turned to each other instead.
"Settlers in the seventeenth-century Chesapeake often paired off to form all-male households, living and working together. ...it would be truly remarkable if all the male-only partnerships lacked a sexual ingredient... IT SEEMS REASONABLE TO ASSUME, [my caps and bold], that much of the sex that took place... was sodomitical."
These words are from Sexual Revolution in Early America, by Richard Godbeer an associate professor at UC Riverside and published by Johns Hopkins.
My own research for my book, The American People, has revealed that not only were male-only partnerships quite in evidence, but services were often conducted to join the partners "under God," and that, of equal interest, was their adoption of Indian children to raise as their own.
I hope it will not be too much longer before scholars will be able to deal with the fact that Jamestown was in fact not only America's first colony but its first homosexual community.
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The rest of this VERY interesting article delves into the topic much deeper and I highly recommend you all go the the link and read it for your own pleasure and education.Here's a piece from Larry Kramer from the Huffington Post in which he addresses... more
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