ken atchity door to door: 2022

How European Royals Once Shared Their Most Important Secrets

Recent research highlights the use of letterlocking techniques by Queen Elizabeth, Catherine de’ Medici and Mary Queen of Scots.

Credit...National Library of Scotland

To safeguard the most important royal correspondence against snoops and spies in the 16th century, writers employed a complicated means of security. They’d fold the letter, then cut a dangling strip, using that as an improvised thread to sew stitches that locked the letter and turned the flat writing paper into its own envelope. To get inside, a spy would have to snip the lock open, an act impossible to go undetected.

Catherine de’ Medici used the method in 1570 — a time she governed France while her ill son, King Charles IX, sat on its throne. Queen Elizabeth did so in 1573 as the sovereign ruler of England and Ireland. And Mary Queen of Scots used it in 1587 just hours before her long effort to unite Britain ended in her beheading.

“These people knew more than one way to send a letter and they chose this one,” said Jana Dambrogio, lead author of a study that details Renaissance-era politicians’ use of the technique, and a conservator at the M.I.T. Libraries. “You had to be highly confident to make a spiral lock. If you made a mistake, you’d have to start all over, which could take hours of rewriting and restitching. It’s fascinating. They took great pains to build up their security.”

Disclosure of the method’s wide use among European royalty is the latest venture of a group of scholars, centered at M.I.T., into a vanished art they call letterlocking — an early form of communications security that they’re busy resurrecting. Early last year, they reported their development of a virtual-reality technique that let them peer into locked letters without tearing them apart and damaging the historical record.

Now, in a detailed article that appeared last month in the Electronic British Library Journal, the scholars lay out their expanding universe of discoveries and questions. They showcase instances of spiral letterlocking among the queens and posit that the method “spread across European courts through royal correspondence.”

A French letter from an unidentified author to city consuls dated Dec. 16, 1638.

Credit...Musée de La Poste

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Credit...M.I.T. Libraries

Cop saves donkey from busy highway, drives it safety in patrol car

Robin Strader, from Norman, Oklahoma was on her way to work, when spotted something really unusual in the middle of the busy highway she was driving on. A scared donkey was meandering along the road way. The woman immediately pulled over her car and jumped to help the scared creature, but not before to call the authorities.

Shortly after, officer Kyle Canaan at Norman Police Department, arrived at the scene. Meantime, Robin somehow managed to get the donkey off the road. Initially officer Canaan was not sure how to deal with this completely unusual challenge, but he soon figured out. The woman offered to foster the donkey they named Squishy at her home, a few miles away from there. But since it would have taken too long for a proper transportation vehicle to arrive, officer Canaan decide to give Squishy a drive-along. An invitation that Squishy gladly accepted.

“Our officers encounter unexpected things every day while on-duty,” the City of Norman, OK Police Department wrote on Facebook. “This morning, Officer Kyle Canaan responded to a call regarding a donkey on the loose in the 8100 block of 120th Avenue NE. To ensure the safety of the animal, he helped transport the donkey to a nearby home for safe-keeping until its owner could be located. It’s not everyday that you see a donkey in the backseat of a police car!”

The rescue donkey wasn’t bothered at all to ride in the back of the patrol car, a space usually reserved for outlaws. More than that the two got along very well and they even had a lot of fun on their way. Well, except for one thing. “It used the bathroom in the back of my police car,” Canaan told KFOR. “I mean, I must have got it right after breakfast, because there was a lot.”

However, the most important is that officer Canaan has safely drove his four-legged passenger to Robin’s place. And he even showed his interest in adopting it, if there won’t be anyone willing to do it.

#LOL

Jennifer Love Hewitt on Betty White and The Lost Valentine

The film earned Betty a nomination for the Screen Actors Guild Awards for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor.⁠

Hallmark “Honoring Betty White”

Hallmark Channel USA will host “Honoring Betty White with a marathon of her work airing on 1/17, which would have been her centennial birthday.⁠

Beginning at midnight on the 17th, the Hallmark Channel will air a 40-episode marathon of “The Golden Girls."

Hallmark movie “The Lost Valentine” airs @ 8pm/5pm ET/PT. ⁠

Developed for Hallmark, The Lost Valentine originally aired in 2011. Based on a novel by James Michael Pratt, the film is directed by Darnell Martin and stars Betty White alongside Jennifer Love Hewitt and Sean Faris. The film earned White a nomination for the Screen Actors Guild Awards for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor.

The "GG" marathon will resume following the movie and conclude on January 18 at 5:00 am ET/PT.

Banksy, working from Home

Found on Banksy’s Instagram account.

Vintage Western Electric Telephones

Found on eBay & Etsy.

via Messy Nessy

Sometimes, it’s the simple stories that stay with us the longest. Like that of Itsuo Kobayashi, a former Japanese soba chef born in 1962 who has recorded his meals in painstakingly detailed, hand-drawn food diaries of sorts for the past 32 years. In addition to recollections about taste, Kobayashi’s pen has accounted for every last spring onion and grain of rice, for the sheer pleasure of tasting life twice…

Itsuo Kobayashi, Untitled (Pop-up Paintings) (2018-19), ink on paper, each piece 9 x 13 x 5 inches. ©Kushino Terrace

©Kushino Terrace

His representation is a gallery called “Kushino Terrace” in Fukuyama, Japan, and they kindly explained a bit more about his life…

It turns out, Kobayashi has been writing about his meals since he was a teen in his bedroom, and it wasn’t until his twenties that he started the first of his now thousand-something drawings. “[He] worked as a chef and at a supply center for school meals in Saitama, northwest Tokyo until he was 46 years old,” they explained, until “[he] began having difficulty walking due to alcoholic neuritis.” Due to the difficulties of his condition, he usually orders take-out or receives meals from his mother – but rather than hinder his imagination, Kobayashi decided to use his time indoors as a means to further stretch his imagination, and cultivate his creative style. “In the blank spaces,” says the gallery, “he adds positive descriptive words about his subjects.”

Itsuo Kobayashi’s artwork at the New York’s 2020 Outsider Art Fair

“In his bedroom at home, in addition to his drawing materials, his bed is surrounded by seashells and crab legs from the seafood he has eaten, as well as by disposable chopsticks, unused condiments that come with packaged meals, and other items.” What we wouldn’t give to be a fly on the wall there.

via Messy Nessy

In Memory of Betty White

At her eightieth birthday celebration, in 2001, at KC’s Leawood-South Country Club, the entire family gathered to celebrate my mother’s endless good spirits and hospitality. Dancing and telling jokes and winking, she reigned over the event like the dowager empress she’d become, wearing her signature red dress. and looking for all the world like Betty White on a good day.

My mother was a force larger than life.

Oddly enough, I met Betty White because of Mom.

An aspiring novelist and former Mormon bishop named James Michael Pratt sent me a copy of his self-published book, The Last Valentine. I read the description on the back cover and thought it was maybe too romantic even for “Mr. Romance,” as I’d been dubbed during my years in Montreal producing Shades of Love.

But the concept nagged at me, so I sent the book to Mom and asked her to read it.

She called me two days later.

“You must get involved in this book,” she said. “It’s wonderful.”

I asked her for details. Her response was sketchy—she was already becoming forgetful, especially of things she’d read, which is why I’d learned to return her call the minute she reached out to me after a read. But it was clear emotionally: Mom didn’t use must loosely. This was beyond should!

Long story short, I did get involved. My Writers Lifeline company helped Jim perfect the story and my management company sold it, at auction, for a bunch of money to St. Martin’s Press. It became a New York Times bestseller, and led to four or five further bestselling books for Jim.

At one point in his book tour, we converged in KC where Jim was being hosted by Barnes and Noble—and he insisted on meeting Mom. “She’s the one who got this book published,” he said. I certainly wasn’t going to argue with that.

You’d think a New York Times bestseller would have an easy route to the screen. But I knew one lesson by heart: nothing is easy in Hollywood. It took over ten years before Valentine was picked up by Hallmark Hall of Fame. Their president, meeting me over breakfast at the Alameda Plaza overlooking KC’s Country Club Plaza, brought up a ticklish subject. “You know this company will never call a movie ‘The Last Valentine,’” he told me—then tipped his orange juice in a toast.

I laughed, at what I thought was a joke. But it wasn’t. The movie was retitled, “The Lost Valentine,” and starred Jennifer Love Hewitt and Betty.

It was one thing to meet the voluptuous Jennifer Love Hewitt—“Don’t avoid these,” she scolded our Director of Photography, having checked the replay of a wedding moment where the camera discreetly hovered above her cleavage line, “I built my career on these beauties.” Unleashing the camera, they did a more revealing take.

But it was meeting Betty White on the set in Atlanta that truly thrilled me, for two reasons. In her red dress, white hair, and feisty countenance, she looked exactly like Mom. And I was given the chance to tell Betty the story of how my mother had gotten this book published and this movie made.

Alas, Mom was no longer around to glory in the moment, or in the Screen Actor's Guild's "Outstanding Performance by an Actor" Award Betty received for our film.

Excerpt from My Obit: Vol 2: My Multi-Storied Mother, forthcoming 2022.

Meet the one of the Oldest Pasta-Making Grannies in the World! | Pasta Grannies

95 year old Giuseppa shows us how to make a Sardinian pasta speciality called macarrones de ungia - which are mini, knobbly versions of mallorreddus. They come from the town of Ozieri where Giuseppa has lived all her life. She continues to make pasta every day as well as cooking for her younger brother. Giuseppa, we salute you!

If you would like to try making this shape at home, try using the smooth side of a nutmeg grater.

For the dough, it's difficult to give exact quantities as the amount of water will depend on the flour, the temperature and humidity of the day. But start with the following, for 4 people: 400g semola flour 150 ml warm water, with a teaspoon of salt dissolved into it.

Add half of water to your flour to begin with and keep kneading it until you form a dough. Add water if a) it doesn't come together and b) feels too dry. You are aiming for a stiff dough which you then have to knead for a good 20 minutes, probably longer. It should start to feel smooth. Let it rest, covered, for at least 30 minutes, and keep it covered while you roll pieces out.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Yoga Gives Back

Written by Kayoko Mitsumatsu

From Posture To Power: Microcredit Changes Lives On Both Sides of the Ocean

We can talk about making change. But affecting real change in the world comes from impacting the lives of individuals. It comes from empowering people to be independent and able to make a living on their own while at the same time being fully integrated in our interdependent global community. Sometimes it takes something that seems to be radical to make this change, but these shifts can be deceptively small. They can be even as small (or as large) as the cost of a Los Angeles Yoga class.

How could this be? In the practice of microcredit, lending seemingly small amounts of money to small-scale entrepreneurs allows them to succeed and change their circumstances. This is the fundamental basis of microcredit’s transformative power; it’s a revolutionary concept in finance. This practice shifts the emphasis from financial transactions being focused only about large loans and large scale businesses, which are out of reach of many one-person operations, institutions and organizations – to lending practices that actually make a positive difference in a person’s life. Microcredit practices based on social justice and empowerment operate through a combination of small-scale loans based on trust and community support, with structured repayment plans and programs that encourage savings. In these situations, people actually have the opportunity to solidify long-term change in their lives.

Dr. Muhammad Yunus and the Yoga Gives Back Team: Joel Bender, Leslie Hendry, Dr. Muhammad Yunus and Kayoko Mitsumatsu (left-right)

In 2006, economist Dr. Muhammad Yunus and the institution he founded, the Grameen Bank, were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. This award was in recognition of their revolutionary efforts to create this micro-credit model, support sustainable economic practices, and provide an alternative to what were exploitive norms. When a person is caught in a cycle of poverty, they may become trapped in the system, particularly since large banking institutions have historically ignored people without assets or credit histories, who are just starting out and who may not have already proven themselves. Most banks prefer to lend large sums of money that represent a greater profit margin and are set up only for large loans in order to make a profit themselves. And even making it more challenging, people at the bottom of the economic scale worldwide have had to rely on moneylenders charging usurious terms and interest rates to obtain funds to plant the next crop, buy inventory of new equipment, or upgrade a business in any way. Institutions such as the Grameen Bank and their affiliates are offering another approach. It’s one that has significantly impacted millions of people.

As Dr. Yunus described in an exclusive interview with Yoga Gives Back in May, 2009, “We started in 1976, and today within Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, eight million people borrow micro loans, ninety-seven percent of them women.” This represents an enormous potential for change and empowerment that just did not exist on a large scale in this form prior to 1976.

There is a social cycle in economics, and Dr. Yunus explained this: “Poverty is not inside the person. Poverty is forced from outside. Poor people are as capable [a] human being as anybody else. They have the same power and energy, same potential. But they are denied such facilities. They cannot express themselves. Money is one of the most important items missing in their lives. You need a dollar to catch a dollar. You cannot catch a dollar with an empty hand. So, that first dollar, nobody has given to her. So she remains dependent on someone else. She has to be hired, to slave; she has to work to make food available on the table. What we have done, we have put that first dollar into her hands as a banking proposition. Conventional banks never come to the poor people. They go to rich people to make more money. The person who does not have a dollar – she cannot get it. So we did it. We did it in a way that is affordable to her. Because we do not insist on collateral. There is no collateral.”

While that may seem like a radical concept, the Grameen Bank has proven that their success is much more than ideological. Dr Yunus cited statistics for us, “The repayment rate is almost 100%, without collateral or anything. This is the strength of microcredit which is now spread all over the world. There are by now at least 150 million borrowers in the world today. Bu it is still very small comparing to the need. We need more microcredit organizations in the world so that more people can be reached.”

Yoga Gives Back is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization begun in LA, with the goal to provide a way for Western Yoga practitioners to give back to India, the birthplace of Yoga, which has given us so much. We’re heeding Dr. Yunus’ call to reach more people through expanded opportunities for and awareness of microcredit and have targeted India and Indian families, women, and would-be entrepreneurs, who would be otherwise stuck in the cycle of poverty that Dr. Yunus described. Yoga Gives Back supports microfinancing operations in India, through the Grameen Foundation, headquartered in Washington, DC. Donations go directly to Grameen Koota, Bangalore, South India and our YGB awareness campaign focuses on the real stories of how poor women are changing their lives with small loans from Grameen Koota.

Ms. Vinatha M Reddy

Grameen Koota was started by visionary teacher and philanthropist, Ms. Vinatha M Reddy (pictured, above) in 1999, who learned about Nobel Peace Recipient Dr Muhammad Yunus’ microfinancing and immediately began exploring ways of replicating his work in her hometown. In 2000, she started providing small microcredit loans, averaging $25.00 a month, to fifty local women. Today, Grameen Koota’s work is reaching out to over 280,000 women in Bangalore, Mysore and many areas of Karnataka state, in South India, making real impact on these women’s lives as well as on the local economy.

Yoga Gives Back

The Los Angeles-based Yoga Gives Back has a worldwide reach and began out of the inspiration and dedication of my Yoga mentor Joel Bender and me. Our group has suddenly started growing almost daily and our mission is shared by a quickly expanding and loving Yoga community.

When I was growing up in Japan, which is a very middle-class society, I had never experienced or seen any real poverty, especially growing up in Tokyo in 1960s and 1970s, when Japan's post-war economic miracle was taking place. Then, I had a chance to live in Brazil in the late 1970s for two years, where as a teenager, I saw the divide between poverty and wealth, the reality of the real slums, kids on the streets begging every time you stopped the car at the traffic light, all very much like India. Social injustice hit me hard.

Once I started Yoga practice and feeling my life being so enriched by it , I felt a need to use my resources to help others. I was producing a documentary on Social Entrepreneurship and learned about microfinancing. I shared this information with Joel [featured in the teacher profile in this month’s issue of LA YOGA] who had been looking for the way he could give back to India since his first visit there – so we teamed up.

When I think about the growth of Yoga Gives Back thus far, I give a lot of credit to the entrepreneurship and volunteer spirit of Americans, willing to embrace and support a new grass roots campaign like ours.

Kayoko Mitsumatsu, co-founder of Yoga Gives Back, is a documentary filmmaker whose films deal with social justice issues, including First They Killed My Father a memoir of a Cambodia’s Killing Fields’ survivor.

A Life Changing Story of Microcredit: Jayashree

Jayashree

Jayashree lives in the suburbs of Bangalore and is married and the mother of two children. We visited her at her humble dirt floor one room home for the first time in 2007. We were touched by her warm smile and most generous hospitality, serving us hot tea and cookies.

Jayashree was born into a very poor family in Bangalore. When she was a child, her family’s financial situation became so severe that she had to drop out of school and work at a garment factory. She toiled throughout her childhood and after she got married at fifteen, her meager earnings had to support her ailing in-laws. She had two children. Her husband’s rickshaw business was not enough to pay her sons’ education or secure food for the family.

In 2007, Jayashree learned from her neighbors about Grameen Koota’s microcredit program and applied for her first loan. She was granted a first loan of 7,000 rupees ($175), and immediately bought her husband’s auto rickshaw. Owning their own rickshaw business increased their income significantly.

Jayashree was able to pay back her entire loan in one year and became eligible for her second loan in 2008. Having proven her diligence, her second loan amount doubled to 15,000 rupees ($375). This time, she bought a sewing machine and started stitching bags. The family’s earnings have now tripled and she is earning 150 rupees ($3.75) a day. In addition, she opened a small shop next to her house to sell her products which is earning her an additional 100 rupees ($2.50) a day.

She is sending her elder son to a medical school. Her son dreams of becoming a doctor and thanks his mother’s business for providing his education, their own home and daily food.

To participate in a Yoga practice where the proceeds support Yoga Gives Back and directly impact the transformation of not only your own life, but that of someone in India, start your Thanksgiving week at Yogaglo, Sunday, November 22, 10:00 A.M. - 12 noon. Some of the teachers include John Sahakian, Felicia Tomasko, Alexandra Aiken and Ally Hamilton; more to be announced. Yogaglo.com; yogagivesback.com.

For more information on Yoga Gives Back or to host a Yoga Gives Back class at your own studio or location, visit: yogagivesback.org or contact yogagivesback@earthlink.net.

How European Royals Once Shared Their Most Important Secrets

Recent research highlights the use of letterlocking techniques by Queen Elizabeth, Catherine de’ Medici and Mary Queen of Scots.

#LOL

Cop saves donkey from busy highway, drives it safety in patrol car

#LOL

Jennifer Love Hewitt on Betty White and The Lost Valentine

Hallmark “Honoring Betty White”

Banksy, working from Home

Vintage Western Electric Telephones

10 Weird Websites That Will Cure Your Boredom!

In Memory of Betty White

Meet the one of the Oldest Pasta-Making Grannies in the World! | Pasta Grannies

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

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