#faith and family ARE very private subjects for Martin :]

[onbanksofadragonriver]

Intimate

“Hey.”

The Inquisitor’s quiet voice was the last thing Cassandra expected to hear in her spot above the smithy in the small hours of the morning. The Seekers’ Book of Secrets lay heavy under her gloved hands, read and re-read in the past few days until she almost knew it by heart. She’d got lost in her thoughts, waiting for the dawn, when they would set out for Adamant.

“Inquisitor?”

She wondered how he’d even found her. He had never seemed too fond of her, or paying attention to where she preferred to spend her time.

Her surprise must have shown, because Martin shot her a faltering grin as he walked over and sat in the chair opposite her. Swallowing, he carefully laid on the table a gnarled wooden staff and a folded, sealed letter.

“A new staff?” Cassandra hazarded a guess. “Are you nervous about tomorrow?”

Martin swallowed again, hands with slender fingers running lightly down the length of the weapon. His chin dipped lower, and he had yet to look her in the eye.

“A fire staff,” he muttered. “And no, I’m not worried for myself. I… I wanted to talk to you.”

Cassandra felt her eyebrows rise, and instantly felt ashamed of her reaction. Martin Lavellan had supported her as she’d doggedly tried to find the Seekers, had spoken to her later with such unexpected warmth and lack of judgement… He’d been a friend, not just her leader. Could she not show him the same, instead of calling him out for never really talking to her before?

“You can tell me everything,” she said with a decisive nod.

The elf sat back in the chair, his light hazel eyes still trained on the staff.

“I wanted to thank you,” he said quietly. “For letting me follow my path as long as you have.”

Cassandra frowned.

“Me? Letting you follow your path as the Herald of Andraste? As the Inquisitor?”

Martin shook his head. “Vir Atish’an. The Way of Peace.”

“Oh.”

“You’ve indulged me long enough, and for that I am grateful.”

“Your barriers and healing spells have more than made up for the added combat strain on the rest of us, Inquisitor. Your people know their chances of returning from the field are higher just because of you being in it.”

“And to increase those chances further, tomorrow I bring a different staff. Tomorrow I fight.”

“You…” Cassandra blinked.

“I just wanted you to…” Casting his glance around, he seemed to be looking for the right words, as if they could be found in the dark corners of the room. “To know? To understand, maybe.”

“Understand what?” Cassandra was flummoxed. Martin Lavellan didn’t need her permission to fight, and he wasn’t asking for it, was he? Neither was he asking for any kind of forgiveness, for absolution. Unless this was some Dalish thing, in which case she’d just have to admit she didn’t follow.

Finally his gaze settled on her, greenish-grey and so unnervingly unguarded.

“That I wasn’t lying when I refused to fight before,” he said. “That I wasn’t trying to be difficult or to spite you, or the Inquisition. That this…” he wrapped his hand around the smooth wooden handle. “This does not mean I’ve rejected Vir Atish’an, and it doesn’t make my path weak or wrong.”

Still frowning, Cassandra slumped in her chair, wordlessly motioning for him to continue.

Martin gave her a small smile.

“A clan works in unison. It is not my job to convince a hunter that Andruil, the goddess of hunt, is somehow less real, or that their path is wrong. We’d die of cold and hunger if that were the case. A follower of Falon’Din, the god of death, would not try to convince me that my life’s work is futile. Neither would anyone else: we all like our good health and stories, and a welcoming hearth. Everyone chooses their path, their vallaslin, for themselves. There are no wrong paths.”

Something about his voice had relaxed her into simply listening.

“Why are you telling me this?” she asked quietly.

“Because,” Martin drew a deep breath. “A few days ago you asked me whether the Inquisition could end up as twisted as the Seekers of the Truth. And I promised you it never would.

“And so… when you see me rain fire tomorrow… I want you to know that I have not betrayed my truth. That this is hard for me. That this is not me going down some ‘slippery slope’ like the one your Lord Seeker took, because the Dalish don't value one path above another. Mercy is not inherently better than violence. 

“I'd like you to think of it as... as they say in Denerim, not bringing a bunch of flowers to a bar fight. Although I’m so much better with flowers,” he chuckled under his breath, and Cassandra couldn’t help a smile tugging at her lips as she recalled the huge pile of embrium Martin had recently brought back from Crestwood and dumped at the dumbfounded Surgeon’s feet.

“This is a personal choice. It doesn't change the direction of the Inquisition,” Martin said firmly. “It just means that tomorrow I’ll be able to take better care of myself during the attack, and our fighters won't have to split their focus that much.”

Cassandra nodded thoughtfully. “You should tell Cullen.”

Martin ran his hands over the length of his new weapon once more and then removed it from the table, swirling it deftly as he stood up and slid it into the harness across his back. “I will. But you… you I wanted to understand.”

“Thank you.” She nodded again. “I will… think about it.”

He was almost downstairs when she noticed the letter forgotten on her table.

“Inquisitor!” she called, grabbing the message and hurrying after him into the darkened yard. “You left this.”

“Oh.” Martin turned and gave a nervous laugh when he saw the folded piece of paper in Cassandra’s outstretched hand. “That.” He drew a hand through his hair before glancing up at the myriad stars blinking frostily from the darkness above.

“If this whole thing doesn’t work out…” He waved, encompassing his new staff, the smithy, the battlements and, it seemed, the Inquisition in general. “Meaning, if I die in the… foreseeable future... please bring that message to my family.”

Cassandra glanced down at the letter. “It says ‘To Mr and Mrs Foster in Denerim’.

Martin shrugged. 

“But you're from clan Lavellan!”

He glanced away for a long moment. Cassandra could only stare at him in flabbergasted horror. Had he lied to them this whole time?

“When you asked me my name,” he said softly. “I never gave you my surname, because that would be a bloody stupid thing to do when you’re captured, and chained, and accused of killing the Divine. I feared you’d go after my family.”

“But… Lavellan…”

“Is the clan I hail from. According to the Dalish customs, you can definitely call me Lavellan, and it’s not wrong. I'm fine with it. But I was born in Denerim, to Almaribel and Saeris Ralaferin, and when my father died, my mum married a human craftsman named Lowan Foster.”

Cassandra swallowed thickly, trembling fingers creasing the folded paper.

“And now you…”

Martin snorted, one hand rising to brush over his cheekbone where Cassandra had hit him on that first meeting.

“Yeah, funny how that works,” he murmured. When he looked at her again, he was grinning brightly, laugh lines creasing the corners of his eyes.

“Now you’re the only person I’d trust to bring them news of my demise.”

------

Based on the 30 Days OC challenge || Masterpost

[pamphletstoinspire]

Saint Anthony, The Miracle Worker

June 13th - Today is the Feast Day of Saint Anthony of Padua. Ora pro nobis. (Pray for us)

He is one of the most famous saints of the Church, known universally as the super-competent manager of the celestial “Lost and Found” department. (“Tony, Tony, come around; something’s lost and can’t be found” is a prayer whispered by millions.)

For those of us accustomed to this familiar relationship, however, it may come as a shock to learn who Saint Anthony of Padua, O.F.M. actually was. For though he only lived 35 years, Anthony was renowned during his lifetime for his forceful preaching and expert knowledge of scripture – and for his miracles.

So well regarded was he, in fact, that in all of the 2000-year history of the Church, Anthony was to become the second-most-quickly canonized saint, after Peter of Verona. Anthony was canonized by Pope Gregory IX on 30 May 1232, at Spoleto, Italy, less than one year after his death.

Fernando’s Life Plans, Changed

Fernando Martins de Bulhões was born in 1195 to an aristocratic Lisbon family and initially joined the Augustinians at the age of fifteen. He was the guest master for their abbey containing the famous library at Coimbra, when his whole world suddenly changed.

Franciscan friars had settled at a small hermitage nearby; their Order had been founded only eleven years before. News soon arrived that five Franciscans had been beheaded in Morocco; the King ransomed their bodies to be returned and buried as martyrs in the Abbey.

Inspired by their example and strongly attracted to their simple, evangelical lifestyle, Fernando obtained permission to join the new Order, upon his admission adopting the name ‘Anthony.’ He then set out for Morocco; however, he fell seriously ill and on the return voyage his ship was blown off course and landed in Sicily. When he found his way to northern Italy, Anthony was finally assigned to a rural Franciscan hermitage, due to his poor health. There he lived in a cell in a nearby cave, where he spent much time in private prayer and study.

ANTHONY THE HOMILIST: One Sunday in 1222 a number of Dominican friars visited for an ordination and a misunderstanding arose as to who should preach. The Dominicans were renowned for their preaching, but had come unprepared, thinking that a Franciscan would be the homilist. Anthony was entreated him to speak whatever the Holy Spirit should inspire him with; his homily that day created a deep impression and began his career as a speaker. By 1224, St Francis of Assisi, founder of the Order, entrusted Anthony with the theological preparation for his priests.

Anthony focused on the grandeur of Christianity in his homilies and when a few years later he was sent as the envoy from the Franciscans to Pope Gregory IX, the Pope commissioned his collection, Sermons for Feast Days (Sermones in Festivitates). Gregory IX himself described him as the “Ark of the Testament.”

ANTHONY THE MIRACLE WORKER: The stories of Anthony’s 13th century miracles make fascinating reading for today’s Catholic. Despite their obvious folkloric tone, it is the miracles’ utter originality that impresses most. One comes away thinking that such astonishing occurrences can only be fairy tales — or the special kind of reality that seems to envelope the saints. As there are far too many miracles to recount here, we’ll focus on three of the most famous:

THE KNEELING MULE: The teaching of the Real Presence was disparaged in northern Italy during the 1200s, as the gnostic heresy of the Albigensians had spread from France. One day, Anthony was publically challenged. “The heretic stood up and said: ‘I’ll keep my beast of burden locked up for three days and I will starve him. After three days, in the presence of other people, I’ll let him out and I’ll show him some prepared fodder. You, on the other hand will show him what you believe to be the body of Christ. If the starving animal, ignoring the fodder, rushes to adore his God, I will sincerely believe in the faith of the Church.’

“The saint agreed straight away. God’s servant entered a nearby chapel, to perform the rites of the Mass with great devotion. Once finished, he exited where the people were waiting, carrying reverently the body of the Lord. The hungry mule was led out of the stall, and shown appetizing food. The man of God said to the animal with great faith: “In the name of virtue and the Creator, who I, although unworthy, am carrying in my hands, I ask you, o beast, and I order to come closer quickly and with humility and to show just veneration, so that the malevolent heretics will learn from this gesture that every creature is subject to the Lord, as held in the hands with priestly dignity on the altar”.

God’s servant had hardly finished speaking, when the animal, ignoring the fodder, knelt down and lowered his head to the floor, thus genuflecting before the living sacrament of the body of Christ.”

THE LISTENING FISH: The story takes place in Rimini, a port on the Adriatic near Padua. On a Sunday morning, the Saint found the fishermen there not at Mass. He began to preach to them and met only with ridicule. Anthony then stood at the edge of the water, looked in the distance, and proclaimed so that everyone would hear:

“’From the moment in which you proved yourselves to be unworthy of the Word of the Lord, look, I turn to the fish, to further confound your disbelief.’

“And filled with the Lord’s spirit, he began to preach to the fish, elaborating on their gifts given by God: how God had created them, how He was responsible for the purity of the water and how much freedom He had given them, and how they were able to eat without working.

“The fish began to gather together to listen to this speech, lifting their heads above the water and looking at him attentively, with their mouths open. As long as it pleased the Saint to talk to them, they stayed there listening attentively, as if they could reason. Nor did they leave their place, until they had received his blessing.

ANTHONY & THE BABY JESUS: Anthony was welcomed by a local resident in an Italian town where he was to preach. His host gave him a room set apart, so that he could study and contemplate undisturbed. Soon, however, his curiosity about his famous guest overcame him and his host peeped through Anthony’s window. What he saw there has been immortalized in almost every Catholic Church in the world. “A beautiful joyful baby appear in blessed Anthony’s arms. The Saint hugged and kissed him, contemplating the face with unceasing attention. The landlord was awed and enraptured by the child’s beauty, and shocked when, after a long time spent in prayer, the vision disappeared; the Saint called the landlord, and he forbade him from telling anyone what he had seen. After the Saint passed away, the man told the tale crying, swearing on the Bible that he was telling the truth.”

SOMETHING’S LOST AND CAN’T BE FOUND: An incident in the university city of Bologna is the origin of the Saint’s fame as a finder of lost items, people and spiritual goods. Anthony possessed a book of psalms with valuable notes and comments for use in teaching his students. A novice who had decided to leave the Order stole the prized psalter. Anthony prayed his psalter would be found or returned. The thief was moved to restore the book to Anthony and return to the Order. The stolen book is said to be preserved in the Franciscan friary in Bologna.

THE FAME OF ST. ANTHONY SPREAD GLOBALLY with the former Portuguese Empire and with the diaspora of 19th and 20th century Italian emigrants. Stories of the Saint’s interventions are reported, therefore, from the four corners of the earth:

In Siolim, a village in the Indian state of Goa, St. Anthony is always shown holding a serpent on a stick . This is a depiction of the incident which occurred during the construction of the church wherein a snake was disrupting construction work. The people turned to St. Anthony for help, and placed his statue at the construction site. The next morning, the snake was found caught in the cord placed in the statue’s hand.

THE GRAVE OF SAINT ANTHONY OF PADUA: Anthony was proclaimed a Doctor of the Church on 16 January 1946, and his Basilica in Padua contains his mortal remains.

By Fr. Francis Xavier Weninger, 1877

St. Anthony, who derived his surname from the city of Padua, in Italy, because he spent many years there in preaching the Gospel, was a native of Lisbon, in Portugal. He received, in holy baptism, the name of Ferdinand, and was very piously educated by his parents. No sooner had he become acquainted with the dangers of the world, than he, in the fifteenth year of his age, to be safe from temptation, went into the cloister of the regular Canons, which is not far from Lisbon, where he also made his religious vows. As, however, he was disturbed too much there by the visits of his friends, he went, with the permission of his superiors, to Coimbra, into the monastery of the Holy Cross. To this house came, one day, five friars of the Order of St. Francis, who were travelling to Africa to preach the Gospel to the Moors. They suffered martyrdom, however, soon after their arrival there, and their holy bodies were brought back to the monastery of the Holy Cross, at Coimbra, and solemnly interred in the church attached to it. Antony, hearing how fearlessly these martyrs had preached the true faith and had suffered for Christ’s sake, conceived an intense desire to preach the Gospel to the heathen and to give his life for the word of God. Hence, he determined to enter the Order of St. Francis, that he might have an opportunity to gratify the wishes of his heart.

After much hardship, he was at length, when 20 years of age, received into the Order, and after his novitiate, he obtained permission to sail for Africa and preach the Gospel to the Saracens. Scarcely had he arrived there, when God proved him by a severe sickness, which exhausted all his strength, and forced him to return to Spain. The ship, however, in which he embarked for home, encountered contrary winds, and instead of going to Spain, was driven to Sicily. No sooner had he set foot on land, than he heard that St. Francis, the holy founder of his order, had called a general chapter at Assisium. He immediately went thither, in order to receive the blessing of the Saint, which was cheerfully given. When the assemblage dispersed, not one among the superiors was found willing to be burdened with Antony, who was greatly enfeebled by his long illness, and moreover, was thought to be not quite sane. The Father Provincial of the Roman province was at last moved with compassion, and sent him to a house called Mount St. Paul, which was situated in a wilderness. There St. Antony lived a most austere life, performing the most humble labor, and occupying all his other time with prayers and holy meditations.

After passing several years in this manner, he was sent with a few other religious to Forli to be ordained priest. The guardian of the monastery requested the Dominican priests, who had also assembled there, that one of them should make an exhortation or deliver a short sermon. As they all excused themselves from so doing, he said, more in jest than in earnest, that brother Antony should speak to those assembled. Antony obeyed, and delivered so eloquent a sermon that all were astonished at his knowledge and ability, as, until now, they had deemed him one of the least gifted. Not willing that his extraordinary talent should any longer be hidden, St. Francis himself had him ordained priest, and gave him a double employment, namely, to instruct his brethren in theology and also to preach. The duties of both functions were discharged by him, with great credit to himself and an indescribable benefit to others. He converted the most hardened sinners by his sermons, and among others induced twenty-two murderers to do penance and change their wicked course of life. The heretics he convinced so thoroughly of their errors, that they could not withstand him, on account of which he was called the “Hammer of the heretics.”

Many of them he converted to the true faith, among whom was Bonovillus, who had denied the substantial presence of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament. Not able to reply to Antony’s arguments he requested the following miracles. Having starved his ass for three days, he was to bring him food at the same time that Saint Antony should come with the holy Eucharist; and if the beast, before touching his food, should fall down before the Blessed Sacrament, he would believe the Saint’s words. At the appointed time, the Saint arrived with the Blessed Sacrament, accompanied by many Catholics, and addressing the ass, which was held by Bonovillus, he said: “I command thee, in the name of thy Creator and my Saviour, whom I, although an unworthy priest, carry at this moment in my hands, that you come, in all humility, and pay Him due honors.” Bonovillus, at the same time, threw down the animal’s food and called him to come and eat. But without touching the food, the ass fell down on his fore knees, and bent his head. The Catholics rejoiced at this incontestable miracle, but the heretics hid their heads and Bonovillus was converted. At Rimini, the chief seat of the heretics, he ascended the pulpit; but as no heretic would come and listen to him, the Saint went to the sea-shore, where just at that time many of them were standing, and called to the fishes to hear his words, as men would not be instructed. And behold! suddenly a great number of fishes raised their heads out of the water, as if to listen. Speaking for a short time of their Creator, he blessed and dismissed them. This miracle caused the heretics to listen more attentively to St. Antony and to follow his admonitions.

At another time, he made the sign of the cross over a goblet filled with poison, and drank it without being harmed. The cause of his doing this was that some heretics promised to return to the true Church, if he would drink the poison and not die. A perpetual miracle was the fact that, although he preached only in one language, yet all his hearers understood him, no matter what might be their nationality.

Who can count all the miracles God wrought through this Saint, or who can sufficiently praise the wonderful gifts with which he was graced? More than once it happened that at the same time when he was standing in the pulpit to preach, he appeared also in the choir and sang the lesson of the daily office of the Church, which was pointed out to him. He prophesied many future events and knew by divine revelation many secrets of the heart. There lived, in a French city, a writer, who publicly led a most immoral life. St. Antony resided for some time in this city, and as often as he met this man, he bowed very low to him. The writer, on perceiving it, was greatly incensed, as he believed it was done by the holy man only to deride him: hence he reproached him with menacing words. The Saint, however, replied: “Be not surprised that I show such respect to you before others. I have long prayed God for the grace to die a martyr, but it has not been granted me. You, however, will receive this honor, and therefore I evince such particular respect for you.” Although the writer laughed and made a mockery of this prophecy, yet the future showed that the Saint had spoken the truth. After the expiration of some time, this immoral man made a voyage to the Holy Land, in company with the Bishop of the city. On arriving there, he was seized by the Saracens, who demanded of him that he should deny his faith. He, however, remained firm in confessing it, and after having been greatly tormented, he suffered the death of a martyr.

St. Antony was as undaunted and fearless in punishing the wicked, when circumstances required it, as he was famous by the gift of prophecy. At that period Florence was governed by Ezelinus, who, among other cruel deeds, had executed 11,000 men of Padua, part of whom were in his service and part in garrison at Verona, because the inhabitants of Padua had rebelled. Nobody dared to oppose this tyrant in the execution of further barbarities but St. Antony, who had sufficient courage to go to him, and representing most powerfully his inhuman conduct, threatened him with the just wrath of the Almighty and the torments of hell, in case he repented not and abstained from, his tyranny.

During this menace flames of fire darted from the countenance of St. Antony, as Ezelinus afterwards related, which so thoroughly frightened the tyrant, that he fell trembling at the feet of the Saint, and most earnestly promised repentance. As he converted this and many other sinners by admonition, he moved others , in a different way to do penance. Many said that he had suddenly appeared before them at night and exhorted them to repent. “Rise quickly, said he at such times, and confess the sin by which you have offended the majesty of God.”

I should hardly know where to end, were I to relate all that St. Antony did to convert sinners, or how many future events he foretold. I will mention only a few more facts, from which the conclusion may be drawn that, as the holy man appeared in different places at the same time, so also, by the power of God, he was miraculously transported, in one moment, from one place to another. The father of St. Antony resided at Lisbon in Portugal, as treasurer of the royal revenues, the duties of which office he discharged with fidelity and integrity. One day, he was requested by some gentlemen in the king’s service to advance them some money out of the king’s treasury, making a verbal promise to return the same in a short time. The pious treasurer, who neither feared deception nor danger, gave them what they asked, without taking a written receipt. When the time arrived at which he had to deliver his account, he asked the officers for the borrowed money, but they denied having received any. This perfidy grieved the kind man deeply, and he knew not what to do. Seeking refuge in fervent prayers to God, he received help in a miraculous way through his son, who resided at that time in Italy. At the time he was to appear before the royal judge to be sentenced to return the missing money, his holy son suddenly appeared in the room, and addressed the officers in the following manner: “This kind man, my father, has advanced you, upon your request, a sum of money out of the royal treasury, on such a day, at such an hour, in such a place, as is well known to you. I warn you to return it to him and to indemnify him; otherwise, divine vengeance will strike you, and you will be heavily punished.” The guilty men were not less astonished at the presence of the holy man, than at his menaces and the revelation of their wickedness. They immediately testified in writing how much each of them had received, promising at the same time to repay it in a short time. No sooner was this done, than the Saint disappeared from their view.

This pious treasurer was in still greater danger at another time. He was accused of having committed murder, and sentence was to be executed on him and his servant on the following day. Antony was at Padua; but God revealed to him what had taken place at Lisbon. The Saint asked permission of his superior to seek some recreation out of the city. Hardly was he out of the place, when, like Habakuk, he was carried by an angel through the air to Lisbon. He went to the judge and represented his father’s innocence. Finding, however, no willing ear in the judge, he repaired to the grave of the murdered man, commanded him to rise, and leading him to the judge, he requested of him to say if his father was the man, who, with the aid of his servant had assassinated him. The risen man replied distinctly: “No: it was not he.” The Judge requested that St. Antony should demand of him the name of the real murderer: the Saint, however, replied: ” I have not come to bring death to a guilty man, but to rescue the innocent.” Upon this, his father and his servant were released, and Antony was carried back to Padua by the angel.

After this wonder-working servant of God had filled all Italy and France with the fame of his miracles and conversions, God revealed to him his approaching last hour. He repaired to an isolated spot, and having prepared himself for his end, he returned very sick to Padua, received extreme unction, recited the seven Penitential Psalms, and his usual prayer: “O Glorious Lady, &c.” The divine mother appeared to him with the child Jesus, and the Saint conversed with them most lovingly until his pure soul went to the abode of the blessed. This took place in 1231, when he was hardly 36 years of age. They desired to keep his death concealed from the people for some time, but the little children proclaimed it by calling out in the streets: “The Saint is dead.” Thirty-two years later, when his holy remains were raised, his tongue was found entirely incorrupt. St. Bonaventure taking it in his-hand, said: “O blessed tongue, which always praised God and taught others how to praise Him! Now we have evidence how great thy merits were before God!”

The Saint is generally represented with the divine Child, as He appeared to him and embraced him. The lilies are also dedicated to him as an emblem of his unspotted innocence and purity. It is well known that this Saint is invoked when things are lost or have been purloined. Countless occurrences show at this day that the intercession of this Saint is powerful at the throne of the Almighty.

By: Beverly Stevens

[blackkudos]

Percy Julian

Percy Lavon Julian (April 11, 1899 – April 19, 1975) was an American research chemist and a pioneer in the chemical synthesis of medicinal drugs from plants. He was the first to synthesize the natural product physostigmine, plus a pioneer in the industrial large-scale chemical synthesis of the human hormones progesterone and testosterone from plant sterols such as stigmasterol and sitosterol. His work laid the foundation for the steroid drug industry's production of cortisone, other corticosteroids, and birth control pills.

He later started his own company to synthesize steroid intermediates from the wild Mexican yam. His work helped greatly reduce the cost of steroid intermediates to large multinational pharmaceutical companies, helping to significantly expand the use of several important drugs.

Julian received more than 130 chemical patents. He was one of the first African Americans to receive a doctorate in chemistry. He was the first African-American chemist inducted into the National Academy of Sciences, and the second African-American scientist inducted (behind David Blackwell) from any field.

Early life and education

Percy Lavon Julian was born on April 11, 1899, in Montgomery, Alabama, as the first child of six born to James Sumner Julian and Elizabeth Lena Julian, née Adams. Both of his parents were graduates of what was to be Alabama State University. His father, James, whose own father had been a slave, was employed as a clerk in the Railway Service of the United States Post Office, while his mother, Elizabeth, worked as a schoolteacher. Percy Julian grew up in the time of racist Jim Crow culture and legal regime in the southern United States. Among his childhood memories was finding a lynched man hanged from a tree while walking in the woods near his home. At a time when access to an education beyond the eighth grade was extremely rare for African-Americans, Julian's parents steered all of their children toward higher education. Julian attended DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana. The college accepted few African-American students. The segregated nature of the town forced social humiliations. Julian was not allowed to live in the college dormitories and first stayed in an off-campus boarding home, which refused to serve him meals. It took him days before Julian found an establishment where he could eat. He later found work firing the furnace, waiting tables, and doing other odd jobs in a fraternity house; in return, he was allowed to sleep in the attic and eat at the house. Julian graduated from DePauw in 1920 as a Phi Beta Kappa and valedictorian. By 1930 Julian's father would move the entire family to Greencastle so that all his children could attend college at DePauw. He still worked as a railroad postal clerk.

After graduating from DePauw, Julian wanted to obtain his doctorate in chemistry, but learned it would be difficult for an African-American to do so. Instead he obtained a position as a chemistry instructor at Fisk University. In 1923 he received an Austin Fellowship in Chemistry, which allowed him to attend Harvard University to obtain his M.S. However, worried that white students would resent being taught by an African-American, Harvard withdrew Julian's teaching assistantship, making it impossible for him to complete his Ph.D. at Harvard.

In 1929, while an instructor at Howard University, Julian received a Rockefeller Foundation fellowship to continue his graduate work at the University of Vienna, where he earned his Ph.D. in 1931. He studied under Ernst Späth and was considered an impressive student. In Europe, he found freedom from the racial prejudices that had stifled him in the States. He freely participated in intellectual social gatherings, went to the opera and found greater acceptance among his peers. Julian was one of the first African Americans to receive a Ph.D. in chemistry, after St. Elmo Brady and Dr. Edward M.A. Chandler.

After returning from Vienna, Julian taught for one year at Howard University. At Howard, in part due to his position as a department head, Julian became caught up in university politics, setting off an embarrassing chain of events. At university president Mordecai Wyatt Johnson's request, he goaded white Professor of chemistry, Jacob Shohan (Ph.D from Harvard ), into resigning. In late May 1932, Shohan retaliated by releasing to the local African-American newspaper the letters Julian had written to him from Vienna. The letters described "a variety of subjects from wine, pretty Viennese women, music and dances, to chemical experiments and plans for the new chemical building." In the letters, he spoke with familiarity, and with some derision, of specific members of the Howard University faculty, terming one well-known Dean, an "ass".

Around this same time, Julian also became entangled in an interpersonal conflict with his laboratory assistant, Robert Thompson. Julian had recommended Thompson for dismissal in March 1932. Thompson sued Julian for "alienating the affections of his wife", Anna Roselle Thompson, stating he had seen them together in a sexual tryst. Julian counter-sued him for libel. When Thompson was fired, he too gave the paper intimate and personal letters which Julian had written to him from Vienna. Dr. Julian's letters revealed "how he fooled the [Howard] president into accepting his plans for the chemistry building" and "how he bluffed his good friend into appointing" a professor of Julian's liking. Through the summer of 1932, the Baltimore Afro-American published all of Julian's letters. Eventually, the scandal and accompanying pressure forced Julian to resign. He lost his position and everything he had worked for.

Some happiness for Dr. Julian, however, was to come from this scandal. On December 24, 1935 he married Anna Roselle (Ph.D. in Sociology, 1937, University of Pennsylvania). They had two children: Percy Lavon Julian, Jr. (August 31, 1940 – February 24, 2008), who became a noted civil rights lawyer in Madison, Wisconsin; and Faith Roselle Julian (1944– ), who still resides in their Oak Park home and often makes inspirational speeches about her father and his contributions to science.

At the lowest point in Julian's career, his former mentor, William Martin Blanchard, professor of chemistry at DePauw, threw him a much-needed lifeline. Blanchard offered Julian a position to teach organic chemistry at DePauw University in 1932. Julian then helped Josef Pikl, a fellow student at the University of Vienna, to come to the United States to work with him at DePauw. In 1935 Julian and Pikl completed the total synthesis of physostigmine and confirmed the structural formula assigned to it. Robert Robinson of Oxford University in the U.K. had been the first to publish a synthesis of physostigmine, but Julian noticed that the melting point of Robinson's end product was wrong, indicating that he had not created it. When Julian completed his synthesis, the melting point matched the correct one for natural physostigmine from the calabar bean.

Julian also extracted stigmasterol, which took its name from Physostigma venenosum, the west African calabar bean that he hoped could serve as raw material for synthesis of human steroidal hormones. At about this time, in 1934, Butenandt and Fernholz, in Germany, had shown that stigmasterol, isolated from soybean oil, could be converted to progesterone by synthetic organic chemistry.

Private sector work: Glidden

In 1936 Julian was denied a professorship at DePauw for racial reasons. DuPont had offered a job to fellow chemist Josef Pikl but declined to hire Julian, despite his superlative qualifications as an organic chemist, apologizing that they were "unaware he was a Negro". Julian next applied for a job at the Institute of Paper Chemistry (IPC) in Appleton, Wisconsin. However, Appleton was a sundown town, forbidding African Americans from staying overnight, stating directly: "No Negro should be bed or boarded overnight in Appleton."

Meanwhile, Julian had written to the Glidden Company, a supplier of soybean oil products, to request a five-gallon sample of the oil to use as his starting point for the synthesis of human steroidal sex hormones (in part because his wife was suffering from infertility). After receiving the request, W. J. O'Brien, a vice-president at Glidden, made a telephone call to Julian, offering him the position of director of research at Glidden's Soya Products Division in Chicago. He was very likely offered the job by O'Brien because he was fluent in German, and Glidden had just purchased a modern continuous countercurrent solvent extraction plant from Germany for the extraction of vegetable oil from soybeans for paints and other uses.

Julian supervised the assembly of the plant at Glidden when he arrived in 1936. He then designed and supervised construction of the world's first plant for the production of industrial-grade, isolated soy protein from oil-free soybean meal. Isolated soy protein could replace the more expensive milk casein in industrial applications such as coating and sizing of paper, glue for making Douglas fir plywood, and in the manufacture of water-based paints.

At the start of World War II, Glidden sent a sample of Julian's isolated soy protein to National Foam System Inc. (today a unit of Kidde Fire Fighting), which used it to develop Aer-O-Foam, the U.S. Navy's beloved fire-fighting "bean soup." While it was not exactly Julian's brainchild, his meticulous care in the preparation of the soy protein made the fire fighting foam possible. When a hydrolyzate of isolated soy yuh protein was fed into a water stream, the mixture was converted into a foam by means of an aerating nozzle. The soy protein foam was used to smother oil and gasoline fires aboard ships and was particularly useful on aircraft carriers. It saved the lives of thousands of sailors and airmen. Citing this achievement, in 1947 the NAACP awarded Julian the Spingarn Medal, its highest honor.

Steroids

Percy's research at Glidden changed direction in 1940 when he began work on synthesizing progesterone, estrogen, and testosterone from the plant sterols stigmasterol and sitosterol, isolated from soybean oil by a foam technique he invented and patented. At that time clinicians were discovering many uses for the newly discovered hormones. However, only minute quantities could be extracted from hundreds of pounds of the spinal cords of animals.

In 1940 Julian was able to produce 100 lb of mixed soy sterols daily, which had a value of $10,000 ($86,000 today) as sex hormones. Julian was soon ozonizing 100 pounds daily of mixed sterol dibromides. The soy stigmasterol was easily converted into commercial quantities of the female hormone progesterone, and the first pound of progesterone he made, valued at $63,500 ($543,000 today), was shipped to the buyer, Upjohn, in an armored car. Production of other sex hormones soon followed.

His work made possible the production of these hormones on a larger industrial scale, with the potential of reducing the cost of treating hormonal deficiencies. Julian and his co-workers obtained patents for Glidden on key processes for the preparation of progesterone and testosterone from soybean plant sterols. Product patents held by a former cartel of European pharmaceutical companies had prevented a significant reduction in wholesale and retail prices for clinical use of these hormones in the 1940s. He saved many lives with this discovery.

On April 13, 1949, rheumatologist Philip Hench at the Mayo Clinic announced the dramatic effectiveness of cortisone in treating rheumatoid arthritis. The cortisone was produced by Merck at great expense using a complex 36-step synthesis developed by chemist Lewis Sarett, starting with deoxycholic acid from cattle bile acids. On September 30, 1949, Julian announced an improvement in the process of producing cortisone. This eliminated the need to use osmium tetroxide, which was a rare and expensive chemical. By 1950, Glidden could begin producing closely related compounds which might have partial cortisone activity. Julian also announced the synthesis, starting with the cheap and readily available pregnenolone (synthesized from the soybean oil sterol stigmasterol) of the steroid cortexolone (also known as Reichstein's Substance S), a molecule that differed from cortisone by a single missing oxygen atom; and possibly 17α-hydroxyprogesterone and pregnenetriolone, which he hoped might also be effective in treating rheumatoid arthritis, but unfortunately they were not.

On April 5, 1952, biochemist Durey Peterson and microbiologist Herbert Murray at Upjohn published the first report of a fermentation process for the microbial 11α-oxygenation of steroids in a single step (by common molds of the order Mucorales). Their fermentation process could produce 11α-hydroxyprogesterone or 11α-hydroxycortisone from progesterone or Compound S, respectively, which could then by further chemical steps be converted to cortisone or 11β-hydroxycortisone (cortisol).

After two years, Glidden abandoned production of cortisone to concentrate on Substance S. Julian developed a multistep process for conversion of pregnenolone, available in abundance from soybean oil sterols, to cortexolone. In 1952, Glidden, which had been producing progesterone and other steroids from soybean oil, shut down its own production and began importing them from Mexico through an arrangement with Diosynth (a small Mexican company founded in 1947 by Russell Marker after leaving Syntex). Glidden's cost of production of cortexolone was relatively high, so Upjohn decided to use progesterone, available in large quantity at low cost from Syntex, to produce cortisone and hydrocortisone.

In 1953, Glidden decided to leave the steroid business, which had been relatively unprofitable over the years despite Julian's innovative work. On December 1, 1953, Julian left Glidden after 18 years, giving up a salary of nearly $50,000 a year (equivalent to $480,000 in 2019) to found his own company, Julian Laboratories, Inc., taking over the small, concrete-block building of Suburban Chemical Company in Franklin Park, Illinois.

On December 2, 1953, Pfizer acquired exclusive licenses of Glidden patents for the synthesis of Substance S. Pfizer had developed a fermentation process for microbial 11β-oxygenation of steroids in a single step that could convert Substance S directly to 11β-hydrocortisone (cortisol), with Syntex undertaking large-scale production of cortexolone at very low cost.

Oak Park and Julian Laboratories

Circa 1950, Julian moved his family to the Chicago suburb of Oak Park, becoming the first African-American family to reside there. Although some residents welcomed them into the community, there was also opposition. Before they even moved in, on Thanksgiving Day, 1950, their home was fire-bombed. Later, after they moved in, the house was attacked with dynamite on June 12, 1951. The attacks galvanized the community, and a community group was formed to support the Julians. Julian's son later recounted that during these times, he and his father often kept watch over the family's property by sitting in a tree with a shotgun.

In 1953, Julian founded his own research firm, Julian Laboratories, Inc. He brought many of his best chemists, including African-Americans and women, from Glidden to his own company. Julian won a contract to provide Upjohn with $2 million worth of progesterone (equivalent to $17 million today). To compete against Syntex, he would have to use the same Mexican yam, obtained from the Mexican barbasco trade, as his starting material. Julian used his own money and borrowed from friends to build a processing plant in Mexico, but he could not get a permit from the government to harvest the yams. Abraham Zlotnik, a former Jewish University of Vienna classmate whom Julian had helped escape from the Holocaust, led a search to find a new source of the yam in Guatemala for the company.

In July 1956, Julian and executives of two other American companies trying to enter the Mexican steroid intermediates market appeared before a U.S. Senate subcommittee. They testified that Syntex was using undue influence to monopolize access to the Mexican yam. The hearings resulted in Syntex signing a consent decree with the U.S. Justice Department. While it did not admit to restraining trade, it promised not to do so in the future. Within five years, large American multinational pharmaceutical companies had acquired all six producers of steroid intermediates in Mexico, four of which had been Mexican-owned.

Syntex reduced the cost of steroid intermediates more than 250-fold over twelve years, from $80 per gram in 1943 to $0.31 per gram in 1955. Competition from Upjohn and General Mills, which had together made very substantial improvements in the production of progesterone from stigmasterol, forced the price of Mexican progesterone to less than $0.15 per gram in 1957. The price continued to fall, bottoming out at $0.08 per gram in 1968.

In 1958, Upjohn purchased 6,900 kg of progesterone from Syntex at $0.135 per gram, 6,201 kg of progesterone from Searle (who had acquired Pesa) at $0.143 per gram, 5,150 kg of progesterone from Julian Laboratories at $0.14 per gram, and 1,925 kg of progesterone from General Mills (who had acquired Protex) at $0.142 per gram.

Despite continually falling bulk prices of steroid intermediates, an oligopoly of large American multinational pharmaceutical companies kept the wholesale prices of corticosteroid drugs fixed and unchanged into the 1960s. Cortisone was fixed at $5.48 per gram from 1954, hydrocortisone at $7.99 per gram from 1954, and prednisone at $35.80 per gram from 1956. Merck and Roussel Uclaf concentrated on improving the production of corticosteroids from cattle bile acids. In 1960 Roussel produced almost one-third of the world's corticosteroids from bile acids.

Julian Laboratories chemists found a way to quadruple the yield on a product on which they were barely breaking even. Julian reduced their price for the product from $4,000 per kg to $400 per kg. He sold the company in 1961 for $2.3 million (equivalent to $20 million today). The U.S. and Mexico facilities were purchased by Smith Kline, and Julian's chemical plant in Guatemala was purchased by Upjohn.

In 1964, Julian founded Julian Associates and Julian Research Institute, which he managed for the rest of his life.

National Academy of Sciences

He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1973 in recognition of his scientific achievements. He became the second African-American to be inducted, after David Blackwell.

Legacy and honors

In 1950, the Chicago Sun-Times named Percy Julian the Chicagoan of the Year.

Since 1975, the National Organization for the Professional Advancement of Black Chemists and Chemical Engineers has presented the Percy L. Julian Award for Pure and Applied Research in Science and Engineering.

In 1975, Percy L. Julian High School was opened on the south side of Chicago, Illinois as a Chicago public high school.

In 1980, the science and mathematics building on the DePauw University campus was rededicated as the Percy L. Julian Mathematics and Science Center. In Greencastle, Indiana, where DePauw is located, a street was named after Julian.

In 1985, Hawthorne School in Oak Park, Illinois, was renamed Percy Julian Middle School.

Illinois State University, where Julian served on the board of trustees, named a hall after him.

A structure at Coppin State University is named the Percy Julian Science Building.

In 1990, he was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

In 1993 Julian was honored on a stamp issued by the United States Postal Service.

In 1999, the American Chemical Society recognized Julian's synthesis of physostigmine as a National Historic Chemical Landmark.

In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed Percy Lavon Julian on his list of 100 Greatest African-Americans.

In 2011, the qualifying exam preparation committee at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine was named for Percy Julian.

In 2014, Google honored him with a Doodle.

In 2019, asteroid 5622 Percyjulian, discovered by Eleanor Helin at Palomar Observatory in 1990, was named in his memory. The official naming citation was published by the Minor Planet Center on 27 August 2019 (M.P.C. 115893).

Nova

documentary

Ruben Santiago-Hudson portrayed Percy Julian in the Public Broadcasting Service Nova documentary about his life, called "Forgotten Genius". It was presented on the PBS network on February 6, 2007, with initial sponsorship by the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation and further funding by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Approximately sixty of Julian's family members, friends, and work associates were interviewed for the docudrama.

Production on the biopic began at DePauw University's Greencastle campus in May 2002 and included video of Julian's bust on display in the atrium of the university's Percy Lavon Julian Science and Mathematics Center. Completion and broadcasting of the documentary program was delayed in order for Nova to commission and publish a matching book on Julian's life.

According to University of Illinois historian James Anderson in the film, "His story is a story of great accomplishment, of heroic efforts and overcoming tremendous odds...a story about who we are and what we stand for and the challenges that have been there and the challenges that are still with us."

Archive

The Percy Lavon Julian family papers are archived at DePauw University.

Patents

U.S. Patent 2,218,971, October 22, 1940, Recovery of sterols

U.S. Patent 2,373,686, July 15, 1942, Phosphatide product and method of making

U.S. Patent 2,752,339, June 26, 1956, Preparation of cortisone

U.S. Patent 3,149,132, September 15, 1964, 16-aminomenthyl-17-alkyltestosterone derivatives

U.S. Patent 3,274,178, September 20, 1966, Method for preparing 16(alpha)-hydroxypregnenes and intermediates obtained therein

U.S. Patent 3,761,469, September 25, 1973, Process for the manufacture of steroid chlorohydrins; with Arnold Lippert Hirsch

Publications

Studies in the Indole Series. I. The Synthesis of Alpha-Benzylindoles; Percy L. Julian, Josef Pikl; J. Am. Chem. Soc. 1933, 55(5), pp 2105–2110.

Studies in the Indole Series. V. The Complete Synthesis of Physostigmine (Eserine); Percy L. Julian, Josef Pikl; J. Am. Chem. Soc. 1935, 57(4), pp 755–757.

[mama-germany]

Submission: {IIRC, submission format is bad. This is feminists-against-feminism, hopefully unedited by Mama Germany :^), and ill end my submission with “/submission”, and the rest, if anything, is mama-germany. Also, hopefully the paragraph breaks take, and if they dont…. welp…}

Imma be real with u chief, I dunno what you want me to do with this.  I’m a Jew.  I don’t like communism.  I don’t actually live in Germany.  And I’m not reading all this.  Idk.

Karl Marx’s “On: The Jewish Question” seems a prototype for conflict theory, but has ‘the real jew’ as the 'Haves’ the in place of the 'bourgeois/rich/capitalist’ 'oppressor class’. Conflict theory, icydk, is the collectivist egalitarian pseudoscientific theoretical paradigm taught in sociology, underpinning essentially the whole social justice perspective, and directly encompassing marxist theory, feminist theory, critical race theory, critical theory, gender schema theory (and likely influenced John Money’s gender theory, and builds on gender theory), queer theory, gender critical theory, postmodern theory, lysenkoism (mostly abandoned), standpoint theory,  post colonial theory, animal liberationism, and of course, intersedtional theory which synthesizes them all together wherever they can be synthesized. Marx said the nature of jews is huckstery, he said the real lofe manifestationnof the god of israel is money itself, he said eliminating money would render the jew an equal and normal person. His whole theory, and every conflict theory since, relies on the presupposition the indovodual is irrelevant and what matters is only the aggregate disparities between groups. This turns his theoey ultimately against all boundaries of the individual, their private property and necessarily their innate natural self ownership, their right to self ddetermination. Marx viewed liberalism/individualism as egoism. His whole family was actually jewish, IIRC, he just didnt succeed like they did, he was jealous and a mooch, kind of a beta, likely an aspie if i am to go off the symptomology. He hated them, he was jealous, he wanted success and they had it and he didnt, and so he was basically spot-on like the character Cain from hebrew legend.

Martin Luther. He wrote “On The Jews and Their Lies��. He described jews as piglets suckling from their mother pig, israel, and blamed jews for pretty much everything he viewed as wrong in society. He was basically the predocessor to Hitler and Marx. And one might actually say Marx was an additional predocessor to Hitler. I sure would posot that as likely, even if by proxy of Hitler being influenced by left socialists. I mean, he literally modified the marxist “'class struggle” into his own version of “the struggle”, “MY Struggle/Mein Kampf”. Which brings us to out next german collectivist philosopher. If youre picking up the theme im putting down.

Third subject, Hitler. Self explanatory. Jew-hating anti-egalitarian ethno socialist. Obviously fits in with the last two subject entries. BTW,I have a larger point to all this random pattern listing. One more.

Slightly diverging from hatred of jews, and more toward the begining of postmodernist thought, Max Horkheimer who said freedom and justice are incompatible opposites, and argued everything are oppressive social constructs, every letter and word and phrase and interaction. He said there is no way to know what a just society is, but that we can complain and struggle against the things we dont like and dont find just. And so if you also consider he in the same sitting said freedom and justice are opposites, and this was while summarizing his academic ideas to an interviewer, we can deduce he was directly opposed to freedom, despite considering himself anti-authoritarian…. Anyways, he was bonkers, hope you dont live near Frankfurt, theyre bonkers around them parts, and i know someone who has told me firsthand just how horkheimer style bonkers that town is.

{Honorary mentions. The Kaiser Friedrich Wilhelm Viktor Albert. Although there was clearly nuance here, Prussia WAS part of the German Empire, but the german youth injunction/sinker was still set in him, to which collectivism was his driver/floatation. He was a nationalist and refused advisors compelling him into an anti-left policy. Honorary mention 2. Antifasciste Aktion, the communist vanguard formed by the german communist party, the KPD, formed to forght fire with fire, using brownshirt tactics against the brownshirts (to whom they lost).}

All four, all German. All of them. 5 if we include the Kaiser. The father of protestantism, the father of communism, the left reformer whos students sparked the “New Left” movement, and Hitler, HITLER. ALL GERMAN. Which is not an implicit racial claim im implying, but one about a sour philosophy. I refer to this as German Collectivism. It is the archetype if collectivism which germany seems particularly possessed by. These have ravaged the whole world, toppled entire nations and enslaved likely over two billion people considering just the PRC, USSR, and Nazi Germany esp with its labir camps. Luther could be viewed as the origin, certainly the origin of modern german collectivism (protestantism & lutherean conspiracy theory, left socialism, and nazism), but the purpose of germany has not changed through any of its past or present phases. It’s purpose seems to be unintentionally destroying itself in the process of intentionally trying to destroy the rest of Europe in attempt to conquer Europe and/or the world. Maybe it came from its clash with Rome, and it never left that modality of picking away at its neighbors. Perhaps its influence from the abrahamic faiths it long traded with, maybe that caused the sort of over-populate-and-make-conquest-youth-army kind of societal reproductive modality, by influence of the abrahamic faiths that did that in the middle east for millennia (with obvious great success, whereas Germany fails at the same niche). Maybe it’s because of their empire-orientation, their pre-lutherean state where they were catholic, and so the culture, thinkers and leaders became oriented toward empire. I dont know. But i do know Hitler, the Kaiser, and Marx were all three alienated children who were very disturbed, and assume Horkheimer and Martin Luther were of similar origins, it seems the common theme among these german influences. Disturbed children make for great communists, and germany has long been riddled with communists. Communists & new left communists like intersectionalists have been frequently compared to a religion, and germany was previously, according to Neitzsche who overtly shared my distain for German philosophy (to my surprise, i love him even more now), he said it seemed to him 4/5 people in germany  were part of protestant clergy. The whole state seems in an unending modality if one total hegemonic culthood after another.

The purpose for german collectivism being so consistently against jews, i assume. It is that jews are very successful on average by comparison to every other category in the west. So theyre integral to the structure of society, particularly around power. So to do the sort of semetic strategy, the strategy of Mohammad and Moses, the strategy of just toppling societies and inheriting the remains, in the west, one must (perhaps in a sidenote of historical irony) go through the jews. If they want to make their collectivist totalitarian ideology dominate, they have to go full cain, and stab their brothers - the jews. And just as stabbing Abel didnt wirk well for Cain, obviously taking out the most success oriented demographic (OF WHICH THERE ARE TWO) in your country is not going to work well for Germany. The other the German Collectivist opposes is the individualist - the English liberal, the stoic, the empiricist, the existentialist, the naturalist, the skeptic, these sorts. These sorts of ideas bring success, and so the authoritarian german collectivist requires their demise as well. The Kaiser hated types like us, the Fuhror hated types like us, marx hated types like us, Horkheimer, and Luther to a clear extent.

i should mention, im not a supernaturalist, the supernatural is all metaphor taken as superstition, im woth Neitszche. Theres certainly no supernatural, and race is a politically meaningless concept to me. But what is contained within the borders of germany…. There seems to be an eccentric kook persona, as a sort of cultural clone prevalent in germany, parallel to the American redneck or hillbilly. Theyre not all terrible people, but theyre often super fucked up like longislanders are in NY, or hillbillies from appalachia, or rednecks from alabama. Or just extremely eccentric like a german lady i knew IRL or Joerge Sprave, or oh my god, Max Horkheimer the kook. And it doesnt miss the city, theyre like that, but converted to progressive ideology. Crazy brutes from yesteryear, mostly tamed, or stubby and eccentric out the wazoo, or tall frail and vegan and metro af. And it’s not limited to the old german. Einstein, (not shitting in einstein, not calling him collectivist, but) absolute weirdo jewish german, Horkheimer, absolute nut job, jewish german, Marx, jewish family, the only correlation is they lived in Germany, like Hitler, the SS, and the kaiser. Even the nations east of them who share similar culture, look at Freud, absolutely a german collectivist type, but from Austria, which today is apparently an ethno national socialist state in all but admission. Prussia influenced the Kaiser’s collectivism. Even people i know from america who have all german ancestry and only third gen american, theyre bonkers, like ICP & Twisted clown-rap omega bonkers, and believe in shit like vampires and wicca and werewolf “lychen”. Oh, and i forgot to mention in summarizing Hitler, his wackjob supernaturalist beliefs. What is that? Why is this so normal there for so long and nowhere else for so long? It seems to spread from there more than anywhere else.

It has to be cultural, and deep seeded. It can be changed, and it needs to be. A german lady mutual of mine sees it and is clearly very weighted by it; i was hindered by it drastically, and i live in America. The nihilism, the self hatred, the narcissism, the psychopathy, the selective empathy (ie, selective psychopathy), the tribalism, the scapegoating. You live in germany, you must see it. You dont seem to like sj or right socialism. You seem closer to an individualist. A westerner despite Germany.

Would you consider it a real phenomenon? 'German Collectivism’? A label for describing the seeming german modality of collectivist government and the german philosophical origin of the majority of world’s largest, most wide spread, and deadly collectivist movements? Particularly today regarding the medium of marxian/intersectional conflict theory ideology? I can easily empirically trace intersectionalism and the french fake-gobbldigook-espousing 'intellectuals’ Peterson points at, back to the ideas of Marx (a german). What are your thoughts on it? What caused it? Why is it so historically persistent to this day? It’s still trying to domineer and control Europe via the proxy of the EU. And what the hell is wrong with so many (#notall) German children?! Or, likely, should i moreso be asking about ***the (#notall) parents***? But today, those parents were raised by nazis, or people raised by nazis. (#notall) but those nazis were raised by communists and imperialists, and those imperialists and communists were raised by communists and lutherean protestants, and those communists and lutherean protestants were raised by more protestants, and then catholics before them, and tribalist pagans before them. The hegemony is just unending waves of wacky who begat waves of wacky. Id like to see the origin of this crap fixed, see germany liberalized, just to show german collectivism undone SOMEWHERE it has been established for once, and in Germany itself no less. My first thought is just end the EU.

Is it real? What’s the cause? How do we undo it? 

[chroniclesofamber]

The Chronicles of Amber & Freeing the Fire Giant II

Continued from The Chronicles of Amber & Freeing the Fire Giant

The Hand of Oberon

The fourth book, The Hand of Oberon, features the cave of secrets and exposes the foundation of the worlds, and is therefore rooted in the element of Earth.  Despite this, it opens and closes with the Sun.  In that first scene, Corwin, Ganelon, and Corwin’s brother and ally Random are regarding a Pattern bathed in the brilliance of an unexpectedly bright and golden daystar.  A trail of black damage runs from the edge of this Pattern to its center, where an unidentifiable object lies.

Though the existence of this Pattern was previously unknown, certain signs make it clear that it is the original, the source for those that sit at the center of Amber, Amber’s submerged sister beneath the sea, Rebma, and the moon-borne reflection of Amber in the sky, Tir-na N’ogth.  When the object at the center of the Pattern is recovered, it turns out to be a trump from the worlds-crossing tarot deck.  But this is a trump no one has seen before, its subject a person neither Corwin nor Random immediately recognizes.  Another point worth noting, there is a dagger sticking through it.

The trump turns out to show Martin, the estranged son of Random born long ago in Rebma.  Random and Benedict set out to track down Martin in order to bring him to Amber and learn who attempted to kill him.  Carrying the silver arm in his backpack and grateful for Benedict’s efforts on behalf of his son, Random shows it to Benedict and performs the surgery required to attach the prosthesis.  Buoyed by this positive turn of events, Benedict’s suspicions regarding Corwin are allayed.  Corwin makes alliance with Benedict, then sets out to recover the Jewel of Judgment, which he abandoned during the failed attempt to assassinate him and which he has since learned can repair the damage to the original Pattern.  It is this damage which has opened up the eerie Black Road through the worlds being used by Amber’s foes to lay siege to her gates.

Corwin is too late:  Brand has already taken possession of the artifact with the aim of destroying the Pattern and replacing it with a new design — complete with a new multiverse — of his own making.  Around this time, Random returns with Martin, who is interviewed by Corwin and seems to be hiding something, though he takes no trouble to hide his desire to have vengeance on Brand, who used his blood to defile the Pattern.

The ruling family of Amber quickly unites once Brand is revealed as the nemesis who has enabled the enemies of Amber.  Llewella, princess of Amber, has the Pattern in Rebma kept under guard.  Gérard, the most physically impressive prince of Amber, secures the Pattern within Amber herself.  Corwin personally prevents Brand from working mischief with respect to the original Pattern, then posts his sister Fiona and a squad of guards there.

Leaving only the Pattern in Tir-na Nog’th, the city adrift in the night sky.  This location is particularly problematic given that it is notoriously difficult to access and navigate, and Brand meanwhile has developed the unique ability to travel through Shadow without the aid of the tarot or the Pattern.  Brand can therefore arrive in the Pattern chamber before anyone else.

Nevertheless, a clever plan is conceived which succeeds in putting Benedict — the greatest swordsman alive — where he needs to be as soon as Tir-na Nog’th is brought forth by the moon.  Brand appears, somewhat surprised his brother is there before him, protecting the Pattern.  He is also wearing Oberon’s ruby pendant, and uses it to immobilize Benedict since it can control more than weather.  Just when Benedict is about to be impaled on Brand’s dagger, however, the silver arm snatches the chain of the pendant, strangling Brand for a time before snapping.  Brand, damaged but alive, vanishes.  Benedict, Jewel of Judgment in hand, is returned safely to the mountaintop where Corwin waits, holding the trump for Benedict as the sunrise dissolves Tir-na Nog’th.

The Courts of Chaos

While the power freed in The Hand of Oberon was obviously Martin, who did little but whose presence drove so much of the plot, in the final installment, The Courts of Chaos, no new character appears to be introduced.  The story, for the most part, amounts to a kind of vision quest for Corwin, who sets out on a grand tour of Shadow all the way from Amber to her counterpart on the other side of existence, Chaos.

As this is largely an internal journey, it mainly consists of Corwin reviewing his life, his choices, his evolution as a person, values and perspectives he has lost and acquired, confronting various demons representing his own temptations and personal weaknesses along the way.  Oberon returns, true, but only briefly and just long enough to reconcile with his son before handing him a special assignment:  carry the Jewel of Judgment all the way to Chaos.  Then Oberon sacrifices himself in order to undo the damage to the Pattern.  And, as expected, Corwin prevails over some tough obstacles, keeps his faith — he is still the Grail knight, after all — and helps foil Brand’s scheme to reshape reality.

It is really only after Brand’s defeat, though, that everything comes together.  Brother Brand and sister Deirdre are lost to the abyss.  Dara, who was not genuinely interested in destroying Amber, but was somewhat interested in Corwin himself, has a change of heart and rejects him.  The death of Oberon is honored with a grand procession made up of representatives of many worlds.  The Unicorn, mother and symbol of Amber, appears and initiates a new dynasty.

And then Corwin finds himself alone and exhausted, sitting by a campfire on a ledge overlooking the abyss.  Nearly alone.  There is one other sitting there with him, his son Merlin.  Except for a brief appearance and four lines in a single scene in The Hand of Oberon, this character has not been part of the story until now.  In response to Merlin’s request to hear about his life, Corwin complies with, “I suppose the best place to begin is at Greenwood Private Hospital, on the shadow Earth…”

Before chronicling his adventures for his son, Corwin’s desire to remain in the world has reached an all-time low, leaving him less than convinced there is any point left in continuing.  Yet when the Unicorn appears shortly after his meeting with Merlin, bringing hope with her, Corwin’s first thought is that if there were in fact no hope then he would be losing this newfound relationship.

Corwin has spent his whole life struggling to work out his relationships with his siblings and most crucially with his father.  Now, that finally accomplished, he’s lost the most important male figure in his world, Oberon, and the most important female figure, Deirdre, his beloved sister.  Merlin represents the new connection which may take the place of those Corwin has lost, a chance for new meaning when other people and purposes are gone.  Oberon’s presence looms over this book, yet he is very early on retired from the story.  While it can be argued he is the power unleashed in this final installment, The Courts of Chaos is about the passing of the torch, a torch Corwin almost literally carries with him in the form of the Jewel of Judgment.  Corwin begins as the naïve son of Oberon in Nine Princes in Amber, but ends as the sadder but wiser father of Merlin in The Courts of Chaos.  The so-called giant set free this time is Oberon in the beginning, and Merlin by the end.

A Footnote for Fire Giants

As a footnote, it is perhaps interesting that while each of the books of The Chronicles of Amber is tied to one of the alchemical elements — water, fire, air, earth, void — the giants or powers set free as Corwin moves through the shadow worlds and their story of war and succession for the most part favor the element of fire.  In the first book there is Bleys, based in fiery Avernus, the Leo character in Amber’s zodiac.  Creatures of Chaos, as offered in the second book, burst into flame when wounded or destroyed — the giant hellcats, the demon Strygalldwir, the masked damsel in distress encountered on the Black Road (who may have been a manifestation of Dara).  Dara is revealed to be one of them, and therefore also a being with fire in her veins.  Brand lights a cigarette merely by staring intently at it, later encircles Corwin with a ring of flame, and his name itself, of course, connotes fire.  Martin and Merlin are a bit more difficult to pin down in this regard (though Martin is technically a Horus-like fire-breathing avenger seeking justice), but Oberon appears among the mystic tarot of Amber as the Sun.

Of course, in the end, as it was in the beginning in the first chapter of the first book, it is Corwin — alone with his thoughts, feelings, failures, triumphs, retired desires, refreshed readiness for a challenge, tormented, healed, regarding the Courts of Chaos from a bridge floating over the abyss — who has been freed.  He may have had a little more help this time around, but it is Corwin who is at last liberated to face life and all its troubles anew.

[join-the-joywrite]

Women in War -- 5

All Maggie Maravillla ever wanted was to help people. She never imagined losing damn near everything when winning a war.

WiW masterpost

Chapter 5

Becky was booked off work for at least two months. Maggie put in leave at the university. Peggy filed for all the leave she had accumulated while working -- a total of one month. Howard sent them plane tickets to Brooklyn.

Bucky was waiting in the airport.

The next month was spent nursing Becky back to normal. Winnifred was thrilled to have all her children under one roof again, though it broke her heart that one had to run so close to death to bring Maggie home.

Howard visited often to see how Becky was doing, to talk to Bucky about that car or something alike, to offer Maggie the job everytime. Peggy befriended both Alice and Evelyn before she left.

It was somewhere in the middle of their second month back in Brooklyn when Howard arrived at the Barnes home with a solemn expression, sans the expensive wine he usually brought for Winnifred.

Bucky opened the door. "Howard."

"Buck. Is Maggie free? There's something I need to discuss with her. Something, uh . . . private."

"Kitchen's free. I'll get Maggie."

Leaving Winnifred with detailed instructions for Becky's movement therapy exercises, Maggie headed to the kitchen. "What's with all the secrecy, Howard?"

Howard leaned against one of the counters in the kitchen. He beckoned Maggie over.

"What?"

"I'm seriously certain you should reconsider. From what I've heard, you handled the situation better than any doctor I've ever met. The army could really use someone like you. If I play the cards right, you might not have to subject yourself to being a nurse again."

"All the secrecy to tell me that?"

Howard moved closer to Maggie and dropped his voice even further. "The offer about helping me work with a German scientists who may have a superhuman formula is still on the table, and Maggie, I think your help would be invaluable. The formula is not yet complete and we are looking for experts in human anatomy as well as psychology. You fit the bill."

Maggie's eyes widened. "So it's not hypothetical anymore?" she whispered.

"You know it never was."

"I . . . I'll have to think about it, Howard. I have a job --"

"Teaching isn't what you wanted to do, Mags. You always wanted to help the world and you can. Do you really want to go back and find a new job as a nurse again? In between lectures?"

"Howard. . ."

"Or do you want to serve in the war? The way Peggy does, the way Becky does? The way only you can. You could save lives, Maggie, soldiers' lives. Imagine if Becky had had you there on that mission. She may have never gone so close to dying. You could do that for the soldiers. Or you can go back to your safe little lecture hall and walk around a different hospital being nothing more than a nurse."

"Howard Stark, I have never wanted to slap you more than I do right now."

"I'm sure there's a good reason why you haven't."

Maggie folded her arms and looked away from Howard. "It's because I think you might be right," she grumbled.

"So, it's a yes, then?"

"It's a maybe."

Two weeks later, Maggie bid her family goodbye again and left with Becky. For the next week, Becky stayed with Maggie in her apartment. Peggy eventually received orders to bring Agent Barnes back into the field and Becky was never happier to listen to a man's orders. Maggie continued as usual. Lecturing and searching for a job at a hospital. She eventually found one and her life fell back into its old routine.

1942

"Now, this topic is examinable, which means that it's going to be in your final. No doubt about it. It's a very important topic, so expect to see some essay questions and perhaps some contextuals surrounding it. It's going to account for at least twenty percent of the paper, so is everyone sure they understand this section?"

Of course, no one raised a hand to say no. Maggie put her hands on her hips. She glanced down at her shoes before scanning the lecture hall.

"Nod if you want me to arrange a session to re-explain the topic."

More than half the students in the hall nodded.

"Thought so," she murmured. "I will arrange an extra sessions to go through the topic. The notice will be put up on the board for all of you to see. The class will not be compulsory, but there will be some bonus quizzes that I will add to your final mark for the semester, so if you're not sure you're passing or if you want to secure that A for the class, I'd attend. The class will be on a weekend to ensure no clashes with other lectures. Before I let you all leave--"

Maggie stopped as the doors opened and a young girl walked in.

"Well, you're very late."

"Oh, I'm not a student, Dr Maravilla. This just arrived for you with orders to deliver as early as possible."

Maggie hesitated to take the envelope. The last time someone handed her an envelope saying it was of extreme importance, she found out a good friend of hers had been killed in the war and that her best friend would be running off to fight on a different front in the war. Quickly, she scanned the letter inside.

"There has been a slight change of plans, students."

Someone raised their hand. "Are we still going to have the extra class?"

"I've been . . . well, I suppose 'drafted' is the best word to use here. I've been drafted to the US Army."

The class erupted furiously. Dr Maravilla leave Cambridge? Outrageous! But come the next morning, when they expected Maggie to enter the lecture hall, an elderly man introduced himself as Dr Martin and explained that he was their temporary lecturer until the college found someone to replace the absent Dr Maravilla. The students had never been more furious, but none of them wanted to raise arms against government.

When Maggie glanced at a newspaper at the airport that evening, she found her own face beating the war to the front page.

Cambridge College students cut class to collectively bid Dr Maravilla farewell and good fortune as she leaves to join United States Army.

Maggie hadn't realised what an impact she had made during her years spent lecturing.

///////////////

"I cannot believe you, Howard Stark! How dare you get the government involved in my job?! Don't you know how to take 'no' for an answer? What gives you the right to meddle in my life?"

Howard raised an eyebrow. "Do you really want me to play that card, Maggie?"

"What card?" Maggie hissed.

"You owe me. Big time."

Maggie hissed again, not unlike a stray cat.

Howard smiled and gestured to the only other person in the room. "Dr Abraham Erskine." He gestured to Maggie with his other hand. "Dr Crystal Magdalena Maravilla."

"Gah!" Maggie jumped. "I'm sorry, Dr Erskine, I didn't see you when I came in."

Abraham Erskine smiled warmly at Maggie. "It's all right, dear. You've made quite an impression."

Maggie groaned and dropped her head into her hands.

"I'll let you two get acquainted," Howard said, leaving the lab Maggie had angrily stormed into a minute or so ago.

Erskine gestured to two of the chairs in the lab. Maggie set her bag down on a desk before sitting.

"I hear you've performed a fourteen-hour surgery without prior preparation or having any experience in real surgery before."

"She was my best friend, doctor, a sister to me. I couldn't stand by and let someone else juggle her life."

Erskine smiled. "I hear you got fired for it."

Maggie waved her hand in the air. "It happens. People in power hate to see inferiors stand up."

"I see. So, you are the doctor Howard has been mentioning all this time."

Maggie smiled. "You thought Dr Maravilla was a man."

"A thousand apologies, doctor."

"It's all right. So, I hear you have a superhuman formula."

Erskine nodded. "The super soldier serum. It will end the shortage of soldiers for this country. Once it is perfected, the serum will enhance every part of the subject, creating --"

"A super soldier," Maggie said, nodding, "but I still don't see why I'm needed."

"Dr Maravilla, you are better than any doctor this or any country I've seen has produced. You understand the human body in a way that most cannot. You understand the link between the physical and the mental. Who else would be able to develop the perfect balance in a formula to equally enhance every aspect to perfection?"

Maggie felt like she was glowing at the praise. "All right, doctor, I'm prepared to help."

"Then welcome, Dr Maravilla, to the Strategic Scientific Reserve."

///////////////

For the next year, Maggie and Erskine sat day and night in their lab, working on the serum, almost every single day. Howard would come and go as they worked, talking about something, briefly entertaining Maggie, sharing tales of his pathetic love life, so Maggie said. Three quarter way through the year, Howard started talking about the same woman. He never said a name, but Maggie and Erskine were both certain it was the same woman.

It was June of 1943 when they finally perfected their serum.

"Are you ready?" Erskine asked.

"For human trials? I've never been more afraid! We don't actually know what this will do to the average man."

"But we know what it will do to the right candidate."

Maggie shrugged. "I suppose that's a bit of a consolation. How are we meant to find the right candidate, though? Several soldiers will end up on the camp and partake in the training regime. What if none of the soldiers are right?"

"Doctor, you believe in fate, don't you? You always talk about how it got you here, how it got your friend Agent Barnes to her job. Trust in fate, she will lead us to the right candidate. And if we don't spot him, she will send him to us over and over and over again. We will find the right soldier for the serum. Have faith."

A week later, for the fifth time, Steve Rogers was denied enlisting into the army. He was quite pissed and ended up getting himself into a fight. Of course, it was Bucky Barnes to the rescue, as it always had been.

"I had him on the ropes."

But when Steve looked up to shoot his best friend a mock-annoyed look, he was met with the back of a woman, whose brown locks had escaped her braid and whose heels were hanging in her hands.

"I know you did," Evelyn Barnes said as she gave Steve a warm smile.

"Evie? What are you doing out here?"

Evelyn shrugged as she slipped her heels back on her feet. "I was on a date, having a really nice time. I'm perfectly ready to settle in and enjoy the upcoming movie and this asshole starts making a racket up near the front. So I resign myself to the sad state of humanity. But then, oh, this brave soul tells him to shut his trap. I came out here to find and thank him and what do I find but my hero getting his ass handed to him."

Steve rolled his eyes. "Very funny, Evie."

Evelyn grinned. "You gotta learn to pick your battles carefully, brother. One day, you're gonna fight someone and we won't be there behind you."

"You can't seriously expect me to stop."

Evelyn sighed as she picked up a paper next to Steve's jacket. "Again, honey?"

"I'm not gonna stop trying."

"Oh, you're from Paramus, now? What's next? Hanover? Trenton? You know it's illegal to lie on this stuff, right?"

Steve snatched his enlistment form away from Evelyn. "I'm not gonna stop. You can't stop me, neither can your sister, or your brother, or even your parents. One of these days I'll get into the army and I'll fight."

Evelyn sighed again as she handed Steve his jacket. "Get yourself cleaned up, Steve. Allie and Bucky are taking you out tonight."

"Where are we going?"

Evelyn handed Steve a newspaper. "To the future," she said as Steve studied the photo of the Stark Expo.

prev || next

WiW masterpost

[jam2289]

An Email About Writing, and a Reply

A friend sent me an email recently asking some pertinent questions about writing.

Here is part of the email from Sharon.

- - - - - - -

Have you ever coached a fantasy writer? How silly do you consider this genre?

I have this dream to finish my story before I die and that’s not looking as good as it used to! Years go by really fast as it turns out.

What’s a good first step for this process? Or, do you have a series of essays on how to get off your butt and just write?

- - - - - - -

Those are good questions, and hard to answer questions. Here is my response.

- - - - - - -

I quite like fantasy.

My writing coaching has just been on the skill rather than on projects, so I've mostly played with tiny little stories that we make up at the time.

There is no correct process for writing, and no correct writing time frames. Patrick Rothfuss worked on his first book for 14 years before it came out. Stephen King took 30 years to finish the Dark Tower series. J. K. Rowling had all seven books planned in detail before she began the first. Her planning took 5 years by itself. C. S. Lewis just did it one book at a time. George R. R. Martin has a general idea of where he's going, but no detail.

Writing only requires writing. So it's whatever works for you. I only really make progress when I'm doing articles for the blog where I'm going to publicly post them soon. I just happen to like that. If you can block out a certain time to write, do that. If you can set a goal of writing a certain number of words a day, do that. None of that works for me, my conscientiousness scores are just too low to handle it. But, writing in little bursts of inspiration has worked for many people as well.

It's whatever gets you going. If you feel like writing detailed plans and that will get you putting things on paper or screen, then do that. If there's a scene you're excited about, then write that. Gabaldon writes her books completely out of order just based on what she feels like doing at the time, and then arranges the scenes later. Robert Louis Stevenson made a list of chapters and then wrote Treasure Island chapter by chapter, and read each to his family by the fire that same night. When he wrote Jekyll and Hyde his wife awoke him in the middle of an inspiring nightmare and he wrote it in three days. When she didn't like it he burnt it and rewrote the entire thing again, all while being on doctor prescribed bedrest.

As for fantasy being silly, it is no more silly than any other genre. A western can be silly or serious. Fantasies are communicating personal and collective archetypes, patterns of interpreting and acting within the world, just as all narratives are. The Emperor Has No Clothes is an important work detailing deception, self-deception, authority, social structures, the value of innocence, fraud, and more. The Chronicles of Narnia is a Protestant religious work, and The Lord of the Rings a Catholic one. Harry Potter has an almost unlimited number of important subjects, not the least of which is the exploration of the good and evil that divides us all within ourselves, how the evil within being incorporated into us protects us from the evil without, and how by dying unto self we may be reborn. So, fantasy is not so silly. It allows us to have fun while confronting subjects of the utmost importance, and maintaining enough distance to allow us a less reactive perspective on emotionally engaging topics.

Finally, writing does require a leap of faith. That's why it's an adventure in itself.

- - - - - - -

Letter writing is a lost art. But I like it. I'm reading the letters exchanged between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson right now, along with the letters between John Adams and Abigail Adams. They offer some of the best insights into history, and into people, that I know of. And, fictional letter writing as in Johan Wolfgang von Goethe's "The Sorrows of Young Werther" and Ovid's "Heroides" give you a different feel than that of other literary works. (Technically that's its own field of study called epistolary writing.)

Emails are not letters. But sometimes they start to feel like that, and it feels good. Here is a slightly edited reply from Sharon.

- - - - - - -

Wow Jeff this is such a great email, you should post this to your blog as is!  It’s very motivating just reading about how other authors work. I usually imagine them as tirelessly holed up in book laden studies writing away for endless days.

I know it took Tolkien about 20 years to finish LOTR etc. and I often think maybe that is why it is so good.

The thing that has gotten me writing finally is that I just tell myself no one will ever see this...

Constructive criticism I take VERY well but someone saying “wow this is just a piece of garbage” I’d have a hard time with.

And everyone knows that “no filter” is sort of the new norm.

Thanks social media.

I guess I will just jump in and do whatever and see where it goes.

How are you enjoying isolation?

Feels pretty normal to me, I kind of live in a pumpkin anyway!

Have you written a book yet? Or mostly essays?

- - - - - - -

She has a lot of good points in this email. I've had the same concerns.

I wrote an article about other writer's writing processes a couple of years ago called "The Write Process", and it did help give me a well-rounded perspective on the reality of writing. There are many interesting ones that could be added to the list, like Michael Crichton writing scenes on 3x5 cards until he had a shoebox full, but just knowing that a dozen famous writers all disagree on almost every aspect of writing is quite helpful mentally and emotionally. Here's that article: http://www.jeffreyalexandermartin.com/2018/01/the-write-process.html

Then there's the whole can of worms on being on both ends of creating and criticizing. One important realization is that critics and creators aren't writing to each other or for each other, they are writing for a public, otherwise it would be in private correspondence. I wrote about that idea more in "Critics and Creators": http://www.jeffreyalexandermartin.com/2019/02/critics-and-creators.html

My last response reflects some of those ideas.

- - - - - - -

Lol. I was thinking the same thing about making that an article.

I agree that it's very motivating to see how other authors do it, and to realize that they all completely disagree. For instance, Shonda Rhimes is a prolific television writer known for Grey's Anatomy. She says that if you write every day you're a writer, if you don't you're not. Her favorite writer is Aaron Sorkin. He wrote The West Wing and various movies. He says that 90 percent of a writer's time is not writing. When he's writing a movie he usually thinks about it for about 18 months and then writes it in 6. So, by her definition Shonda Rhimes' favorite writer isn't a writer.

If keeping your writing close to the chest works for you, do that. Social media is crazy. I've even gotten some death threats for my political article on Antifa. I've had a number of insults for my writings on grief, where I'm developing an original theory. But, I've also had a lot of good compliments and people sharing my work. I'm certain that by this time my article on suicide has saved a few lives because of the circles that it's been shared in.

Isolation isn't too big of a deal for me. I teach English online and spend most of the rest of my time reading, writing, watching, and meditating.

I've written over 300 articles. Which would come to over 2,000 pages in a book, but no book yet. I'll probably make some article collections this year.

- - - - - - -

In addition to the over 300 articles I also have notes for more than 200 additional articles. I'll never run out of things to write, I'm guessing that the more I write the more I'll fall behind in comparison to the ideas that I have yet to write. I've been urged to write books about my adventure traveling out west mountain climbing, and my couple month road trip, and my near-death misadventure in Africa. Those would all be interesting, but I lived them, so it's not that adventurous for me to write about them. I do have some major works that I want to tackle in this lifetime though.

Out of all of the projects that I have started and have in mind there are two that would compromise major life works. One is a philosophical work creating a new structure connecting epistemology, ethics and morality, and political economics in a better way. The other is a literary work to compliment "Prometheus Bound" by Aeschylus. I do not know if I can accomplish either of those in this lifetime, they both still feel a little out of my reach in terms of mental insight and writing skill. But, there are other projects that have been growing which are unique and could contribute quite a lot to society, such as my original theory of grief, a new literary analysis method, work showing the emergent nature of morality in art, the historical pattern of abolition, my unique experiences and insights into meditation, and some of my current work in applied politics. So, my work has just begun.

Whenever we set out on a new venture doubts and concerns spring to the fore. Those are the things that make us stronger in overcoming them. And throughout history, letters have contributed to the overcoming of many such obstacles. Just maybe, it's helped in this case too.

________________________________________________

To read more from Jeff go to JeffThinks.com or JeffreyAlexanderMartin.com

[blackkudos]

Percy Julian

Percy Lavon Julian (April 11, 1899 – April 19, 1975) was an American research chemist and a pioneer in the chemical synthesis of medicinal drugs from plants. He was the first to synthesize the natural product physostigmine, plus a pioneer in the industrial large-scale chemical synthesis of the human hormones progesterone and testosterone from plant sterols such as stigmasterol and sitosterol. His work laid the foundation for the steroid drug industry's production of cortisone, other corticosteroids, and birth control pills.

He later started his own company to synthesize steroid intermediates from the wild Mexican yam. His work helped greatly reduce the cost of steroid intermediates to large multinational pharmaceutical companies, helping to significantly expand the use of several important drugs.

Julian received more than 130 chemical patents. He was one of the first African Americans to receive a doctorate in chemistry. He was the first African-American chemist inducted into the National Academy of Sciences, and the second African-American scientist inducted (behind David Blackwell) from any field.

Early life and education

Percy Lavon Julian was born on April 11, 1899, in Montgomery, Alabama, as the first child of six born to James Sumner Julian and Elizabeth Lena Julian, née Adams. Both of his parents were graduates of what was to be Alabama State University. His father, James, whose own father had been a slave, was employed as a clerk in the Railway Service of the United States Post Office, while his mother, Elizabeth, worked as a schoolteacher. Percy Julian grew up in the time of racist Jim Crow culture and legal regime in the southern United States. Among his childhood memories was finding a lynched man hanged from a tree while walking in the woods near his home. At a time when access to an education beyond the eighth grade was extremely rare for African-Americans, Julian's parents steered all of their children toward higher education. Julian attended DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana. The college accepted few African-American students. The segregated nature of the town forced social humiliations. Julian was not allowed to live in the college dormitories and first stayed in an off-campus boarding home, which refused to serve him meals. It took him days before Julian found an establishment where he could eat. He later found work firing the furnace, waiting tables, and doing other odd jobs in a fraternity house; in return, he was allowed to sleep in the attic and eat at the house. Julian graduated from DePauw in 1920 as a Phi Beta Kappa and valedictorian. By 1930 Julian's father would move the entire family to Greencastle so that all his children could attend college at DePauw. He still worked as a railroad postal clerk.

After graduating from DePauw, Julian wanted to obtain his doctorate in chemistry, but learned it would be difficult for an African-American to do so. Instead he obtained a position as a chemistry instructor at Fisk University. In 1923 he received an Austin Fellowship in Chemistry, which allowed him to attend Harvard University to obtain his M.S. However, worried that white students would resent being taught by an African-American, Harvard withdrew Julian's teaching assistantship, making it impossible for him to complete his Ph.D. at Harvard.

In 1929, while an instructor at Howard University, Julian received a Rockefeller Foundation fellowship to continue his graduate work at the University of Vienna, where he earned his Ph.D. in 1931. He studied under Ernst Späth and was considered an impressive student. In Europe, he found freedom from the racial prejudices that had stifled him in the States. He freely participated in intellectual social gatherings, went to the opera and found greater acceptance among his peers. Julian was one of the first African Americans to receive a Ph.D. in chemistry, after St. Elmo Brady and Dr. Edward M.A. Chandler.

After returning from Vienna, Julian taught for one year at Howard University. At Howard, in part due to his position as a department head, Julian became caught up in university politics, setting off an embarrassing chain of events. At university president Mordecai Wyatt Johnson's request, he goaded white Professor of chemistry, Jacob Shohan (Ph.D from Harvard ), into resigning. In late May 1932, Shohan retaliated by releasing to the local African-American newspaper the letters Julian had written to him from Vienna. The letters described "a variety of subjects from wine, pretty Viennese women, music and dances, to chemical experiments and plans for the new chemical building." In the letters, he spoke with familiarity, and with some derision, of specific members of the Howard University faculty, terming one well-known Dean, an "ass".

Around this same time, Julian also became entangled in an interpersonal conflict with his laboratory assistant, Robert Thompson. Julian had recommended Thompson for dismissal in March 1932. Thompson sued Julian for "alienating the affections of his wife", Anna Roselle Thompson, stating he had seen them together in a sexual tryst. Julian counter-sued him for libel. When Thompson was fired, he too gave the paper intimate and personal letters which Julian had written to him from Vienna. Dr. Julian's letters revealed "how he fooled the [Howard] president into accepting his plans for the chemistry building" and "how he bluffed his good friend into appointing" a professor of Julian's liking. Through the summer of 1932, the Baltimore Afro-American published all of Julian's letters. Eventually, the scandal and accompanying pressure forced Julian to resign. He lost his position and everything he had worked for.

Some happiness for Dr. Julian, however, was to come from this scandal. On December 24, 1935 he married Anna Roselle (Ph.D. in Sociology, 1937, University of Pennsylvania). They had two children: Percy Lavon Julian, Jr. (August 31, 1940 – February 24, 2008), who became a noted civil rights lawyer in Madison, Wisconsin; and Faith Roselle Julian (1944– ), who still resides in their Oak Park home and often makes inspirational speeches about her father and his contributions to science.

At the lowest point in Julian's career, his former mentor, William Martin Blanchard, professor of chemistry at DePauw, threw him a much-needed lifeline. Blanchard offered Julian a position to teach organic chemistry at DePauw University in 1932. Julian then helped Josef Pikl, a fellow student at the University of Vienna, to come to the United States to work with him at DePauw. In 1935 Julian and Pikl completed the total synthesis of physostigmine and confirmed the structural formula assigned to it. Robert Robinson of Oxford University in the U.K. had been the first to publish a synthesis of physostigmine, but Julian noticed that the melting point of Robinson's end product was wrong, indicating that he had not created it. When Julian completed his synthesis, the melting point matched the correct one for natural physostigmine from the calabar bean.

Julian also extracted stigmasterol, which took its name from Physostigma venenosum, the west African calabar bean that he hoped could serve as raw material for synthesis of human steroidal hormones. At about this time, in 1934, Butenandt and Fernholz, in Germany, had shown that stigmasterol, isolated from soybean oil, could be converted to progesterone by synthetic organic chemistry.

Private sector work: Glidden

In 1936 Julian was denied a professorship at DePauw for racial reasons. DuPont had offered a job to fellow chemist Josef Pikl but declined to hire Julian, despite his superlative qualifications as an organic chemist, apologizing that they were "unaware he was a Negro". Julian next applied for a job at the Institute of Paper Chemistry (IPC) in Appleton, Wisconsin. However, Appleton was a sundown town, forbidding African Americans from staying overnight, stating directly: "No Negro should be bed or boarded overnight in Appleton."

Meanwhile, Julian had written to the Glidden Company, a supplier of soybean oil products, to request a five-gallon sample of the oil to use as his starting point for the synthesis of human steroidal sex hormones (in part because his wife was suffering from infertility). After receiving the request, W. J. O'Brien, a vice-president at Glidden, made a telephone call to Julian, offering him the position of director of research at Glidden's Soya Products Division in Chicago. He was very likely offered the job by O'Brien because he was fluent in German, and Glidden had just purchased a modern continuous countercurrent solvent extraction plant from Germany for the extraction of vegetable oil from soybeans for paints and other uses.

Julian supervised the assembly of the plant at Glidden when he arrived in 1936. He then designed and supervised construction of the world's first plant for the production of industrial-grade, isolated soy protein from oil-free soybean meal. Isolated soy protein could replace the more expensive milk casein in industrial applications such as coating and sizing of paper, glue for making Douglas fir plywood, and in the manufacture of water-based paints.

At the start of World War II, Glidden sent a sample of Julian's isolated soy protein to National Foam System Inc. (today a unit of Kidde Fire Fighting), which used it to develop Aer-O-Foam, the U.S. Navy's beloved fire-fighting "bean soup." While it was not exactly Julian's brainchild, his meticulous care in the preparation of the soy protein made the fire fighting foam possible. When a hydrolyzate of isolated soy yuh protein was fed into a water stream, the mixture was converted into a foam by means of an aerating nozzle. The soy protein foam was used to smother oil and gasoline fires aboard ships and was particularly useful on aircraft carriers. It saved the lives of thousands of sailors and airmen. Citing this achievement, in 1947 the NAACP awarded Julian the Spingarn Medal, its highest honor.

Steroids

Percy's research at Glidden changed direction in 1940 when he began work on synthesizing progesterone, estrogen, and testosterone from the plant sterols stigmasterol and sitosterol, isolated from soybean oil by a foam technique he invented and patented. At that time clinicians were discovering many uses for the newly discovered hormones. However, only minute quantities could be extracted from hundreds of pounds of the spinal cords of animals.

In 1940 Julian was able to produce 100 lb of mixed soy sterols daily, which had a value of $10,000 ($86,000 today) as sex hormones. Julian was soon ozonizing 100 pounds daily of mixed sterol dibromides. The soy stigmasterol was easily converted into commercial quantities of the female hormone progesterone, and the first pound of progesterone he made, valued at $63,500 ($543,000 today), was shipped to the buyer, Upjohn, in an armored car. Production of other sex hormones soon followed.

His work made possible the production of these hormones on a larger industrial scale, with the potential of reducing the cost of treating hormonal deficiencies. Julian and his co-workers obtained patents for Glidden on key processes for the preparation of progesterone and testosterone from soybean plant sterols. Product patents held by a former cartel of European pharmaceutical companies had prevented a significant reduction in wholesale and retail prices for clinical use of these hormones in the 1940s. He saved many lives with this discovery.

On April 13, 1949, rheumatologist Philip Hench at the Mayo Clinic announced the dramatic effectiveness of cortisone in treating rheumatoid arthritis. The cortisone was produced by Merck at great expense using a complex 36-step synthesis developed by chemist Lewis Sarett, starting with deoxycholic acid from cattle bile acids. On September 30, 1949, Julian announced an improvement in the process of producing cortisone. This eliminated the need to use osmium tetroxide, which was a rare and expensive chemical. By 1950, Glidden could begin producing closely related compounds which might have partial cortisone activity. Julian also announced the synthesis, starting with the cheap and readily available pregnenolone (synthesized from the soybean oil sterol stigmasterol) of the steroid cortexolone (also known as Reichstein's Substance S), a molecule that differed from cortisone by a single missing oxygen atom; and possibly 17α-hydroxyprogesterone and pregnenetriolone, which he hoped might also be effective in treating rheumatoid arthritis, but unfortunately they were not.

On April 5, 1952, biochemist Durey Peterson and microbiologist Herbert Murray at Upjohn published the first report of a fermentation process for the microbial 11α-oxygenation of steroids in a single step (by common molds of the order Mucorales). Their fermentation process could produce 11α-hydroxyprogesterone or 11α-hydroxycortisone from progesterone or Compound S, respectively, which could then by further chemical steps be converted to cortisone or 11β-hydroxycortisone (cortisol).

After two years, Glidden abandoned production of cortisone to concentrate on Substance S. Julian developed a multistep process for conversion of pregnenolone, available in abundance from soybean oil sterols, to cortexolone. In 1952, Glidden, which had been producing progesterone and other steroids from soybean oil, shut down its own production and began importing them from Mexico through an arrangement with Diosynth (a small Mexican company founded in 1947 by Russell Marker after leaving Syntex). Glidden's cost of production of cortexolone was relatively high, so Upjohn decided to use progesterone, available in large quantity at low cost from Syntex, to produce cortisone and hydrocortisone.

In 1953, Glidden decided to leave the steroid business, which had been relatively unprofitable over the years despite Julian's innovative work. On December 1, 1953, Julian left Glidden after 18 years, giving up a salary of nearly $50,000 a year (equivalent to $480,000 in 2019) to found his own company, Julian Laboratories, Inc., taking over the small, concrete-block building of Suburban Chemical Company in Franklin Park, Illinois.

On December 2, 1953, Pfizer acquired exclusive licenses of Glidden patents for the synthesis of Substance S. Pfizer had developed a fermentation process for microbial 11β-oxygenation of steroids in a single step that could convert Substance S directly to 11β-hydrocortisone (cortisol), with Syntex undertaking large-scale production of cortexolone at very low cost.

Oak Park and Julian Laboratories

Circa 1950, Julian moved his family to the Chicago suburb of Oak Park, becoming the first African-American family to reside there. Although some residents welcomed them into the community, there was also opposition. Before they even moved in, on Thanksgiving Day, 1950, their home was fire-bombed. Later, after they moved in, the house was attacked with dynamite on June 12, 1951. The attacks galvanized the community, and a community group was formed to support the Julians. Julian's son later recounted that during these times, he and his father often kept watch over the family's property by sitting in a tree with a shotgun.

In 1953, Julian founded his own research firm, Julian Laboratories, Inc. He brought many of his best chemists, including African-Americans and women, from Glidden to his own company. Julian won a contract to provide Upjohn with $2 million worth of progesterone (equivalent to $17 million today). To compete against Syntex, he would have to use the same Mexican yam, obtained from the Mexican barbasco trade, as his starting material. Julian used his own money and borrowed from friends to build a processing plant in Mexico, but he could not get a permit from the government to harvest the yams. Abraham Zlotnik, a former Jewish University of Vienna classmate whom Julian had helped escape from the Holocaust, led a search to find a new source of the yam in Guatemala for the company.

In July 1956, Julian and executives of two other American companies trying to enter the Mexican steroid intermediates market appeared before a U.S. Senate subcommittee. They testified that Syntex was using undue influence to monopolize access to the Mexican yam. The hearings resulted in Syntex signing a consent decree with the U.S. Justice Department. While it did not admit to restraining trade, it promised not to do so in the future. Within five years, large American multinational pharmaceutical companies had acquired all six producers of steroid intermediates in Mexico, four of which had been Mexican-owned.

Syntex reduced the cost of steroid intermediates more than 250-fold over twelve years, from $80 per gram in 1943 to $0.31 per gram in 1955. Competition from Upjohn and General Mills, which had together made very substantial improvements in the production of progesterone from stigmasterol, forced the price of Mexican progesterone to less than $0.15 per gram in 1957. The price continued to fall, bottoming out at $0.08 per gram in 1968.

In 1958, Upjohn purchased 6,900 kg of progesterone from Syntex at $0.135 per gram, 6,201 kg of progesterone from Searle (who had acquired Pesa) at $0.143 per gram, 5,150 kg of progesterone from Julian Laboratories at $0.14 per gram, and 1,925 kg of progesterone from General Mills (who had acquired Protex) at $0.142 per gram.

Despite continually falling bulk prices of steroid intermediates, an oligopoly of large American multinational pharmaceutical companies kept the wholesale prices of corticosteroid drugs fixed and unchanged into the 1960s. Cortisone was fixed at $5.48 per gram from 1954, hydrocortisone at $7.99 per gram from 1954, and prednisone at $35.80 per gram from 1956. Merck and Roussel Uclaf concentrated on improving the production of corticosteroids from cattle bile acids. In 1960 Roussel produced almost one-third of the world's corticosteroids from bile acids.

Julian Laboratories chemists found a way to quadruple the yield on a product on which they were barely breaking even. Julian reduced their price for the product from $4,000 per kg to $400 per kg. He sold the company in 1961 for $2.3 million (equivalent to $20 million today). The U.S. and Mexico facilities were purchased by Smith Kline, and Julian's chemical plant in Guatemala was purchased by Upjohn.

In 1964, Julian founded Julian Associates and Julian Research Institute, which he managed for the rest of his life.

National Academy of Sciences

He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1973 in recognition of his scientific achievements. He became the second African-American to be inducted, after David Blackwell.

Legacy and honors

In 1950, the Chicago Sun-Times named Percy Julian the Chicagoan of the Year.

Since 1975, the National Organization for the Professional Advancement of Black Chemists and Chemical Engineers has presented the Percy L. Julian Award for Pure and Applied Research in Science and Engineering.

In 1975, Percy L. Julian High School was opened on the south side of Chicago, Illinois as a Chicago public high school.

In 1980, the science and mathematics building on the DePauw University campus was rededicated as the Percy L. Julian Mathematics and Science Center. In Greencastle, Indiana, where DePauw is located, a street was named after Julian.

In 1985, Hawthorne School in Oak Park, Illinois, was renamed Percy Julian Middle School.

Illinois State University, where Julian served on the board of trustees, named a hall after him.

A structure at Coppin State University is named the Percy Julian Science Building.

In 1990, he was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

In 1993 Julian was honored on a stamp issued by the United States Postal Service.

In 1999, the American Chemical Society recognized Julian's synthesis of physostigmine as a National Historic Chemical Landmark.

In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed Percy Lavon Julian on his list of 100 Greatest African-Americans.

In 2011, the qualifying exam preparation committee at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine was named for Percy Julian.

In 2014, Google honored him with a Doodle.

In 2019, asteroid 5622 Percyjulian, discovered by Eleanor Helin at Palomar Observatory in 1990, was named in his memory. The official naming citation was published by the Minor Planet Center on 27 August 2019 (M.P.C. 115893).

Nova

documentary

Ruben Santiago-Hudson portrayed Percy Julian in the Public Broadcasting Service Nova documentary about his life, called "Forgotten Genius". It was presented on the PBS network on February 6, 2007, with initial sponsorship by the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation and further funding by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Approximately sixty of Julian's family members, friends, and work associates were interviewed for the docudrama.

Production on the biopic began at DePauw University's Greencastle campus in May 2002 and included video of Julian's bust on display in the atrium of the university's Percy Lavon Julian Science and Mathematics Center. Completion and broadcasting of the documentary program was delayed in order for Nova to commission and publish a matching book on Julian's life.

According to University of Illinois historian James Anderson in the film, "His story is a story of great accomplishment, of heroic efforts and overcoming tremendous odds...a story about who we are and what we stand for and the challenges that have been there and the challenges that are still with us."

Archive

The Percy Lavon Julian family papers are archived at DePauw University.

Patents

U.S. Patent 2,218,971, October 22, 1940, Recovery of sterols

U.S. Patent 2,373,686, July 15, 1942, Phosphatide product and method of making

U.S. Patent 2,752,339, June 26, 1956, Preparation of cortisone

U.S. Patent 3,149,132, September 15, 1964, 16-aminomenthyl-17-alkyltestosterone derivatives

U.S. Patent 3,274,178, September 20, 1966, Method for preparing 16(alpha)-hydroxypregnenes and intermediates obtained therein

U.S. Patent 3,761,469, September 25, 1973, Process for the manufacture of steroid chlorohydrins; with Arnold Lippert Hirsch

[16thcenturyart]

Hans Holbein

http://fod.infobase.com/p_ViewVideo.aspx?xtid=59671

Hans Holbein has claims to be the greatest portrait painter who ever wielded a brush. A central figure in the spread of the Renaissance in northern Europe, whose deftness and pinpoint accuracy captured the spirit and the faces of his age, an artist whose roots were Continental, but he became the father of English painting.

Hans Holbein the Younger was born in Germany in the imperial capital of Augsburg in 1498. He came from an artistic family.

His father, Hans Holbein the Elder, was one of the leading artists of his generation in southern Germany. And his elder brother, Ambrosius, was already showing a precocious talent for drawing.So as soon as the two boys could be made use of, they joined their father's workshop.

But Augsburg was a lot more limited artistically. But further afield, particularly along the Rhine, to the south, things looked a lot more promising.And so in 1515, Hans, together with his elder brother, came here to the city that he effectively put on the European artistic map, Basel.

It was an attractive place for a young artist on the make, a thriving commercial city on the Rhine. It boasted a newly established university and a flourishing collection of printing presses. Books, pamphlets, and title pages all need illustration, which Holbein was eager to supply.

He was quickly accepted into Basel's intellectualcircles, led by the humanist scholar DesideriusErasmus. And it was a version of Erasmus' is InPraise of Folly, which gave the young artist anopportunity to show his skills with thecommission to provide illustrations in the marginof the celebrated satirical text, which analyzedhuman behavior and weakness.

When he was 18, Holbein got his first, illustriousportrait commission to do a picture of the newlyelected mayor of Basel, Jakob Meyer von Hasen,and his wife, Dorothea. Now this is a veryinventive picture. For a start, it's official. He's justbeen elected mayor. But the two figures are dressed relatively informally.

But also, it's a double portrait that has twodistinct images, who are separated and yet they're bound together by the same architecturaldetail in the background and a consistent lightsource that casts a shadow, in here, from theright, that cast shadows on the architecturaldetail, there and there.

So what we have is two figures, who are unifiedbut, at the same time, their own individuality isproclaimed. With Holbein, even from this stage,the detailing is extraordinary. And you look at therings, numerous rings on the mayor's fingers. Itlooks like a knuckle duster to our eyes. Butactually, it's a sign of his own prosperity.

He's a financier. He clutches a coin as a symbol ofthat but also symbolizing the fact that Basel hasjust been given permission to mint coins. He alsopoints towards his wife in a gesture of love.

In a way, it's a rather unglamorous portrait. Thebackground and the detailing is lavish. But thesetwo figures are certainly not made to lookparticularly attractive. It's as if Holbein haspainted them as they are or as they were. ButHolbein's also making his own mark.

And for the first time, he signs his work, hisinitials, HH, and the date, 1560, and a shield or ascroll surrounded by acanthus leaves as if he'sthrowing off the shackles of his apprenticeshipand emerging for the first time as a fully fledgedartist.

And in fact, from this moment on, his career takesoff. He gets a commission from the mayor todecorate the Basel council chamber, which issubsequently destroyed. But from then on in,other portrait commissions also roll in, includingthis one, of Boniface Amerbach, a professor of lawat Basel University.

This was an important commission for Holbein,for not only was Amerbach a close friend ofErasmus, but he became an important collector ofHolbein's works. Here it's clear that his approachwas evolving, a rare, square format, with alandscape adding depth to the image, and thepainting containing an inscribed panelproclaiming its own merits.

It reads, "I may be painted, unreal, but I'm notinferior to life. I am my master's true likeness ashe was at eight times three years."

Holbein's growing confidence stemmed in partfrom his growing acceptance in Basel, where he was made a master of the guild of painters. Hewas also granted citizenship, two years later, afterhis marriage to a local woman, Elsbeth Schmid,with whom we would have four children.

Holbein also began to turn his attention toreligious images, both for public and privatedevotion. This altarpiece, showing eight episodesof Christ's Passion, was begun by Holbein in 1524,some 7 years after an Augustinian monk andscholar, called Martin Luther, nailed his 95 Thesesto the door of the castle church in Wittenberg,railing against the sale of indulgences, or pardonsfrom sin, by the Catholic Church and triggering amovement, which began with the proposedreform of the papacy and ended up splitting theChurch, otherwise known as the ProtestantReformation, whose impact, throughout Europe,was huge.

One of the most eloquent examples of paintinginspired by the ideas of the Reformation, as wellas being one of the most powerful works in theentire history of religious art, is this one, Holbein'simage of the dead Christ, painted 1521.

What he does is a paradox. Because, in a way, he'strying to affirm the idea of the Bible and Christ'slife as a living force, by painting it as graphically aspossible, but through showing an image of Christat his lowest ebb, when he's died and his flesh isbeginning to rot and decay.

There's all sorts of speculation about the fact thatHolbein might have had a body, that he found inthe Rhine, put in his studio and used directly as amodel for this work. But whether that's true ornot, dead bodies were much more in evidence inlate medieval or early modern Europe. And unlikeour world, theirs was not sanitized from the ideaand the image of death.

What we see is something that's very curious and had art historians speculating for the last fewcenturies. Is this a commission? Is it the bottompart of an altarpiece? Well, there's no evidence tosuggest that it is. And in the end, no records provethat the work was commissioned at all.

And what we're left now is the thought that thismay be a personal image of private devotion byHolbein. It's a painting that almost smells as youget close up to is, such is its power as a trigger for the imagination.

Look at the eyes, how the sockets have becomerigid. Rigor mortis is setting in. And what Holbein,I think, is trying to say-- and I think achieves-- isby showing Christ in this putrefied form-- Christ,remember is the word made flesh-- he's alsoemphasizing the miracle of the Resurrection.

He's showing Christ, as no artist has done before,at his lowest ebb. And in a way, it's an affirmationof Holbein's own personal faith. It's also a workwhich establishes him as one of the great talentsof 16th century European painting.

Of all Holbein's patrons in Basel during his earlyyears, by far and away the most important for hissubsequent career was Erasmus, one of the mostcelebrated scholars of the time.

Erasmus' studies in Latin and Greek enabled himto translate the New Testament, which waseventually published in Basel in 1516, where hefirst came into contact with Holbein, whoseintense scrutiny of his subjects seemed to strike achord with the equally thorough scholar, whocommissioned Holbein to produce half a dozen or so portraits of him over the next decade or so.

I love these portraits that Holbein does of Erasmus. They have a detachment in their scrutiny and in their intense observation. But they're also so intimate. And it's as if Holbein, and by extension us, the viewer, has somehow crept into Erasmus' study. And he's peeking over the shoulder of the great scholar as he's wrapped up in his fur-lined cloak to keep the drafts away.

And we're watching as he writes his commentary  to St. Mark's gospel, that we can read there. But we've caught him unawares. And in a way, there's a parallel between what the young artist is tryingto do and what his intellectual mentor is doing.

As Erasmus scrawls away, so Holbein has this intense control. And in a way, he's trying to produce some kind of parallel in a visual form to what Erasmus is doing in intellectual and written form.

But the intellectual and religious turmoil in middle Europe had certain negative spin offs for artists, not least because religious commissions were suddenly frowned upon. And in addition,Holbein's portrait business, here in Basel, had allbut dried up.

So he look further afield, starting in 1524, by tripto France, where he tried to get work at the courtof Francis I. But that was unsuccessful. And then,two years later, probably with a recommendationfrom Erasmus himself, he set sail for TudorEngland to try and get work at the court of HenryVIII.

It was during the early part of Henry VIII's reignthat the renaissance was established in England.Architects, craftsmen, sculptors, painters, andpoets were all encouraged to make the journeyacross the Chanel, so that the king and hisministers might harness their talents to proclaimthe power and sophistication of the Tudormonarchy.

It was Erasmus' links with England that providedHolbein with his first introduction to the Englishcourt. Chief amongst Erasmus' friends, and thefirst port of call for Holbein, was Thomas More, afellow scholar and soon to become LordChancellor of England.

More welcomed Holbein to his Chelsea home andcommissioned him to paint a number of portraitsof his household. Most of these no longer survive.But we have this delicate study for an elaboratefamily portrait.

What does survive, however, is one of Holbein'smost direct and precise portraits, that of SirThomas More, himself, painted in 1527. More starsoff into space, a man whose thoughts were on thisworld and the next, wearing the rich gold chain ofa privy counselor.

What really grabs the viewer's attention, though,and perhaps makes the hairs stand up on theback of your neck, are the hairs on More's chinand the extraordinary detail rendered throughhundreds, maybe thousands of tiny brush strokes,which creates an image that seems almostphotographic.

In spite of his success here in England, Holbeinhad to return to Basel in 1528, because he was indanger of losing his citizenship. And over the nextfew years, in both Switzerland and then again,here, in England, he was to witness the fullonslaught of the Reformation and its politicalconsequences.

During Holbein's absence, the Reformation hadbegun to take serious root here in Basel. And theimplications were political as well as religious,with the small Catholic oligarchy beingthreatened by a Protestant democracy.

But things turned ugly at the beginning of 1529,on Shrove Tuesday, when the whole city wassupposed to be celebrating and suddenly anangry mob came up the hill, here, to thecathedral, broke in, tore down statues, smashedstained glass windows, and triggered off a wave oficonoclasm throughout the city.

It's difficult to know what Holbein's religiousviews were at the time. He was born and broughtup a Catholic. And he painted many religiousworks for Catholic patrons and churches. It'salmost certain that many of Holbein's works weredestroyed in the rioting, as very few still survive.

But what he did out of economic necessity andwhat he did from conviction, we'll never fullyknow. There's a clue, though, to his developingreligious inclinations during the turbulent decadeof the '20s in this woodcut, "Christ is the TrueLight," which shows Christ pointing to a candle,which illuminates the entire image and shows theway to the poor and the ordinary on the left,whilst, to the right, the pope and other churchdignitaries follow Plato and Aristotle, thephilosophers of the ancient, classical, paganworld, into the abyss. An image of clear andstrong Protestant sentiment challenging theauthority of the Catholic Church and its arcaneteachings.

During his time back in Basel, Holbein found timeto paint a portrait that wasn't a commission and,in fact, for many, was the most intimate work ofhis life. It shows his wife, Elsbeth, and two of hisfour children, Philipp, who is about six, andKatherina, who is two. In fact, Elsbeth is pregnantwith the third child when this was made.

And it's very curious work, not least because thebackground seems so bleak. It's black. Itenhances the figures. It makes them stand out inrelief. And it also emphasizes the fact that thecomposition mirrors the traditional image of themother and child, or, in fact, Leonardo's image ofSt. Anne, the Madonna, and child.

But in fact, there's something more practical here, or impractical. Because somewhere down theline, after Holbein finished this work-- and he didthe portraits on paper-- they've been cut out andthen mounted on a panel. And so this isn't quitehow they were intended to be seen.

But it's a very, very sad work. His son looks up, I think, more in hope than in expectation. And thedaughter, the young Katherina, doesn't seem toknow the figure that's painting her. But look at theface of the wife. She's red-eyed. Her face looksslightly puffy. And it's almost as if she knows thatHolbein is not going to be around for much longer.

And in fact, he isn't. He can't find work in Basel.And so in the end, in 1532, he goes back toEngland and never returns, leaving the family,effectively, to fend for themselves.

But the England of 1532 was dramaticallydifferent from the country that Holbein had left in1528. In fact, it was on the edge of revolution, withHenry VII in the middle of trying to secure adivorce from Catherine of Aragon.

The divorce scandalized Europe and lead to a splitwith the papacy, with Henry VII proclaiminghimself head of the Church of England. Hobein'spatron, Sir Thomas More, opposed the divorce,resigned, and was eventually executed.

But it doesn't seem to have had a detrimentaleffect on the painter's prospects, because, verysoon, he was moving in the circle surrounding thefuture queen, Ann Boleyn, including More's rivaland later Chancellor of the Exchequer, ThomasCromwell.

Cromwell became the architect of the EnglishReformation, supporting the break with Rome,and cementing it through the dissolution of themonasteries. He was depicted, in both oil paintand, even more tellingly, in this preparatorydrawing by Holbein, as man of ruthless, single-minded ambition.

And in the midst of all these troubles, and directlyconnected to them, Holbein is commissioned topaint what becomes his most celebrated, famous,and complex work, this one "The Ambassadors."Painted in 1533, showing two men, a rareexample, a very early example in European art ofa double, full length portrait.

Jean de Dinteville, he's the ambassador from theFrench court in London. And Georges de Selve,he's the Bishop of Lavaur, who comes overbecause his friend, Jean, is having problemsnegotiating with Henry VIII on behalf of the Kingof France, because Henry is antagonisticallyinvolved in an argument with the pope.

Now, Jean de Dinteville commissions the portrait.And that might explain why he seems to be themost prominent figure. He dominates, certainly interms of surface area. As always with Holbein, thedetails give us a much greater sense of knowledgeof these two men and their world.

For a start, Jean clutches an elaborate daggersheath that has on it his age, 29. Georges leans ona book that gives us his age, 25. And then werealize that, in the center the picture, between thetwo men, is a celebration of the renaissance worldand scholarship that the two of them practice.

So starting at the top, Holbein gives us a celestialglobe of the stars and the heavens and alsorecently invented navigational tools. And thendown below, there's a terrestrial globe, withFrance clearly visible. Then there's an oddtextbook. Next to it is a hymn book, open on thepage of a hymn written by Martin Luther, of allpeople. And then some musical instruments, alute and a collection of flutes.

So what do we make of all this? Well, certainscholars have put forward the view-- and it seemsperfectly credible to me-- that this mathematicalbook is about the process of division. And thatLuther, himself, as well as being a reformer, is alsoa divider of the Church. And that the lute, with isbroken string, is a symbol of frailty, but also itmeans that the hymn can't be fully realized.

And so what is happening here is that there's acomment by Holbein on the religious situation,specifically in England and also, more broadly, inEurope. But I think the key to these paintings arein two details that are not here in the center.

But they're found, first of all, in the top, left-handcorner, which is the crucifix, which is barely inview. But it's making its presence felt. Forsecondly, and much more curious, is this form,here, in the foreground, that you can only seewhen you start to walk and look from anotherperspective. And then you see, clearly, from thisangle, that it's a skull, through a process known asanamorphosis or stretching or distorting theimage.

And it's clear that there's this great symbol, thrustacross the surface of the painting, that it's amemento mori, a reminder of death and thefrailty of human life. And I think the broader pointis being made, by Holbein here, that, in fact,conflict obscures the truth.

The truth is up there, in the top, left-hand cornerof the painting for Holbein. Christ, himself,crucified on the cross, that's the redemptive hopefor mankind. But I think also, Holbein is makingand even more interesting point with this work.And it's to do with the whole process of painting,what Holbein is devoted his life to.

Because no one in European art, up to this point,has scrutinized the natural world as closely asHolbein and rendered it with such extraordinarycare and attention and detail. And what he'smanaging to show us, in this painting, is that youcan have scholarship, you can have diplomacy,you can have an expanded, new culture oflearning. But that you will never grasp the biggerpicture. You will never understand the worldtotally from one, fixed viewpoint. And that youhave to see the world from a number of differentperspectives. And that, I think, is a very profoundpoint.

Within three years of painting "The Ambassadors,"Holbein got the position he really wanted, painterto the king, and began a series of portraits thathave defined how that most familiar of Englishmonarchs has been seen down the ages.

This is the quintessential image of an overbearingand tyrannical monarch. Holbein depicts the Kingseemingly at face value, emphasizing the small,humorless eyes and mouth, the curiously flatcheeks and chin. But his authority is clear,formidable even, amplified by opulent jewelry,depicted in real gold leaf, and helping to create adomineering presence, even though the work,itself, is small.

Consequently, Henry approved of the painting, asdid Thomas Cromwell, who was cleverlyencouraging the use of the painter to promote thepower of the monarch. And idea which wasreinforced when Holbein was commissioned topaint a group portrait of the Tudor dynasty forHenry's Whitehall Palace. The picture,subsequently destroyed in the palace fire of 1698,showed Henry and his now third wife, JaneSeymour, together with his parents, Elizabeth ofYork and Henry VII.

The image of the two Henry's, which survive inthis preparatory drawing, affirms the idea ofdynastic progression and increasing power, fromlean father to vast son. But the Queen JaneSeymour was to die giving birth to Henry's long-awaited heir. But the King didn't spend much timemourning.

Together with the assistance was chancellorCromwell, he decided to try and find a new wife,preferably one who would combine politicaladvantage with the physical beauty that Henrysought. And so Holbein was dispatched to Europeto paint suitable candidates from which Henrycould then make his matrimonial choice.

Holbein's first port of call is to Brussels to paintthis young woman, Christina of Denmark, theDuchess of Milan. Now she's the youngerdaughter of the King of Denmark, who's aLutheran, and who's been deposed. She's alsomarried to the Duke of Milan but is a widow by theage of 12. 4 years later, when she's 16, she's readyto sit for this portrait, because the King of Englandwants to marry her.

Now Holbein gets three hours with her in the datein March. And he sketches her face and her handsand makes intricate studies, which is reflected inthe finished oil. And when Henry sees the results,rumor has it that he falls in love. Certainly, hewants to marry her. He sees, if not a ravishingbeauty, someone who's young and will give himmore heirs, perhaps a healthy heir.

But politically, there are machinations. She's verywell connected. She's also the niece of theEmperor Charles V, who doesn't want anyconnection with Henry VIII. And so the weddingdoesn't take place. Her response, though, is a bitmore diplomatic. She says, if I had two heads, I'dhappily place one at the disposal of the King ofEngland.

Henry finally settled on marrying Anne of Cleves.But Holbein was placed in an impossible position.He was dispatched to the Rhineland, with ordersto produce an instant likeness of Henry's nextintended, but be needed to exercise diplomacyand tact.

Anne's dress seems to have fascinated Holbeinmore than the strangely lifeless symmetry of herfeatures. And Henry's displeasure, at finding Anne of Cleves more, as he put it, like a flat Flander'smare when she arrived for the marriage ceremonyin January, 1540, cost Holbein dear in prestige.

In fact, he received no further significant workfrom Henry. Three years later, having completedhis last portrait, that of himself, Holbein fellseriously ill and died, probably the victim of theplague, which had spread through London 1543.He was 45 years old.

Holbein's influence on British painting isenormous. He made the human individual seemmore real and more exposed than any artistbefore him and is the father of a tradition ofportraiture which continues to this day.

But he also created images of a king and his courtwhich has lived on in the popular imagination,bringing to life one of the most dramatic periodsin English history.