Jamestown excavation unearths four bodies — and a mystery in a small box Archaeologists have discovered the graves of four founders of Jamestown, Va. The historic figures were buried in the long-vanished church built inside James Fort in 1608. (Jason Aldag/The Washington Post) JAMESTOWN, Va. — When his friends buried Capt. Gabriel Archer here about 1609, they dug his grave inside a church, lowered his coffin into the ground and placed a sealed silver box on the lid. This English outpost was then a desperate place. The tiny, hexagonal box, etched with the letter “M,” contained seven bone fragments and a small lead vial, and it probably was an object of veneration, cherished as disaster closed in on the colony. On Tuesday, more than 400 years after the mysterious box was buried, Jamestown Rediscovery and the Smithsonian Institution announced that archaeologists have found it, as well as the graves of Archer and three other VIPs. [The man who found James Fort] It also raises intriguing questions about Jamestown’s first residents. Unearthing a 400-year-old gravesite
aol CIA Meddling, Race Riots, and a Phantom Death Squad GEORGETOWN, Guyana — A jumbie, in Guyana, is an evil spirit. The term derives from the same Kikongo word — West African, like many of the enslaved who once toiled in this tiny South American IAountry — that zombie does. A rich cast of jumbies, evocative of Guyana’s history, populates the nation’s folklore and its country lanes, many of which were unlit well into the late 20th century. The lack of electricity was bad for economic development, but good for telling stories of the supernatural. In the glow of kerosene lamps, tales were spun about the Land Master, a spectral planter on horseback placated only by rum and cigarettes, or the churail, a wild-haired woman walking the night, inconsolable after dying in childbirth; pregnant women who saw this figure were fated to lose their babies. The PNC’s present avatar led the multiracial, but majority-black coalition seeking to unseat the PPP this year; the coalition’s presidential candidate was retired Brig. JUAN BARRETO/AFP/Getty Images
3 Simple Secrets To Getting Your Child Out of Defense Mode — Asperger Experts Dear Parents, For as long as I can remember, I’ve been victim to one of the most prominent issues that often accompanies an Asperger’s diagnosis: sensory overload. Some of my earliest memories involve dramatic episodes at local fireworks shows; I would clap my hands over my ears and scream until my mom hauled me from the scene. Trips to the movie theater also presented this problem, and my mom soon discovered the correlation between loud, invasive situations and environments and my frequent public meltdowns that left me so distraught. As you read this, you may nod in recognition, all too familiar with how frustrating, confusing, and unpleasant sensory overwhelm can be for everyone involved. You may not know this, but many people with Asperger’s (myself included, at one point) feel an almost crippling shame that they can’t go out and enjoy their days like almost everyone else can. That brings me to the actual advice part of this piece. You may be asking, “How do I go about doing this?”
Of Love and Other Demographics Three months ago, Guyana’s new president, then the candidate of an opposition coalition hoping to unseat the country’s ruling party, was saying goodbye to his host, who had arranged a sumptuous curry dinner for the politician with potential donors at a home in New York City. The middle-class professionals around the table, all of Indian origin, had warmly welcomed David Granger, a candidate with deep roots in a party long seen as representing the interests of African Guyanese. That night in Queens, while courting the dollars and goodwill of the country’s large diaspora in the United States, Granger joked more than once that Guyana was a country divided in two: between those in North America, and those in South America. The quip was a lighthearted allusion to another, deeper divide in this former outpost of the British empire, once worked by enslaved Africans then indentured Indians. Interracial couple from election day. Photo © Adrian Browne, Stabroek News Feature image © Gaiutra Bahadur
How People In Wedding Trades Can Defend Themselves The successful shutting down (or at least shutting up) of non-groupthink-compliant wedding cake and floral businesses has given gay-marriage agitators and their backers a taste of the vast power of ideological extortion in 2015 America. I’m optimistic that the law will eventually come to its senses and give wide berth to Christians in the wedding trades, or even to non-Christian libertarians who simply don’t want to be told who they have to do business with. Perhaps James O’Keefe will covertly record owners of a black-owned florist shop being asked to create an arrangement for a “KKK” event, or a Muslim-owned catering service being asked to cater a Bar Mitzvah. But something will eventually jar the nation out of its deep-seated fear of not giving gay marriage complete affirmation by every citizen at the expense of religious freedom. The Federal Bureau of Cakes Options for Conscientious Objectors Branding Is Everything What am I talking about? Cake Baker? DJ? Follow the Money
Norah Jones or Sex Pistols? Thinking style molds taste: study Prophetic Wannabees and the Prophetic Reformation R. Loren Sandford, one of my great friends and mentors, once wrote, "A group of prophetic wannabees is any pastor's worst nightmare." While this statement can be seen as both humorous and incredibly sad, I have personally spent the last five years sitting with pastors and leaders from across America listening to one painful story after another regarding their unpleasant encounters and interactions with prophetic people. "Jeremiah, our church has been incredibly wounded by the prophetic ministry, but yet we believe in it! Can you come help bring healing and restoration here?" I cannot count how many of these types of phone calls I receive every year from churches across the USA. In fact, for every 10 churches that call and invite me to speak at their conference or gathering, nine of them have had bad experiences with prophetic ministers and people. Where Have We Gone Wrong? Are Prophetic Roundtables Helpful? Blessing or Collateral Damage? Old Testament Delusions Those Lowdown Prophets
DuPont and the Chemistry of Deception KEN WAMSLEY SOMETIMES DREAMS that he’s playing softball again. He’ll be at center field, just like when he played slow pitch back in his teens, or pounding the ball over the fence as the crowd goes wild. Other times, he’s somehow inexplicably back at work in the lab. Wamsley calls them nightmares, these stories that play out in his sleep, but really the only scary part is the end, when “I wake up and I have no rectum anymore.” Wamsley is 73. He enjoyed the work, particularly the precision and care it required. At the time, Wamsley and his coworkers weren’t particularly concerned about the strange stuff. Today Wamsley suffers from ulcerative colitis, a bowel condition that causes him sudden bouts of diarrhea. Sometimes, between napping or watching baseball on TV, Wamsley’s mind drifts back to his DuPont days and he wonders not just about the dust that coated his old workplace but also about his bosses who offered their casual assurances about the chemical years ago. “Who knew?”
Redemption: A Lesbian Rescued From the Dead End of Sexual Sin Unbelievers don't "struggle" with same-sex attraction. I didn't. My love for women came with nary a struggle at all. I had not always been a lesbian, but in my late 20s, I met my first lesbian-lover. I simply preferred everything about women: their company, their conversation, their companionship, and the contours of their/our body. As an unbelieving professor of English, an advocate of postmodernism and poststructuralism, and an opponent of all totalizing meta-narratives (like Christianity, I would have added back in the day), I found peace and purpose in my life as a lesbian and the queer community I helped to create. Conversion and Confusion It was only after I met my risen Lord that I ever felt shame in my sin, with my sexual attractions, and with my sexual history. Conversion brought with it a train wreck of contradictory feelings, ranging from liberty to shame. What is the sin of sexual transgression? Meeting John Owen But after we lament, what should we do? 1. 2. 3. 4. a. b.
How language can affect the way we think Keith Chen (TED Talk: Could your language affect your ability to save money?) might be an economist, but he wants to talk about language. For instance, he points out, in Chinese, saying “this is my uncle” is not as straightforward as you might think. “All of this information is obligatory. This got Chen wondering: Is there a connection between language and how we think and behave? While “futured languages,” like English, distinguish between the past, present and future, “futureless languages” like Chinese use the same phrasing to describe the events of yesterday, today and tomorrow. But that’s only the beginning. Navigation and Pormpuraawans In Pormpuraaw, an Australian Aboriginal community, you wouldn’t refer to an object as on your “left” or “right,” but rather as “northeast” or “southwest,” writes Stanford psychology professor Lera Boroditsky (an expert in linguistic-cultural connections) in the Wall Street Journal. Featured illustration via iStock.
NYT Writer: Christians ‘Must Be Made’ to Embrace Gay Lifestyle Yet who could have expected the draconian measures the Times would propose? Either Christians fully embrace the gay lifestyle, or you will be coerced into doing so. Op-ed writer Frank Bruni, onetime Times restaurant critic and a gay activist, has written that Christians who hold on to “ossified,” biblically-based beliefs regarding sexual morality have no place at America’s table and are deserving of no particular regard. In one fell swoop, Bruni trashes all believing Christians as “bigots,” saying that Christians’ negative moral assessment of homosexual relations is “a choice” that “prioritizes scattered passages of ancient texts over all that has been learned since — as if time had stood still, as if the advances of science and knowledge meant nothing.” In other words, if you still cling to your benighted views and your “ancient texts,” you are living in the past and your views merit no respect. As a food critic, NY Times writer Frank Bruni was entertaining and occasionally informative.