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John Kennedy Toole
John Kennedy Toole (; December 17, 1937 – March 26, 1969) was an American novelist from New Orleans, Louisiana whose posthumously published novel, '' A Confederacy of Dunces'', won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1981; he also wrote ''The Neon Bible''. Although several people in the literary world felt his writing skills were praiseworthy, Toole's novels were rejected during his lifetime. Due in part to these failures, he suffered from paranoia and depression, dying by suicide at the age of 31. Toole was born to a middle-class family in New Orleans. From a young age, his mother, Thelma, taught him an appreciation of culture. She was thoroughly involved in his affairs for most of his life, and at times they had a difficult relationship. With his mother's encouragement, Toole became a stage performer at the age of 10 doing comic impressions and acting. At 16 he wrote his first novel, ''The Neon Bible'', which he later dismissed as "adolescent". Toole received an academic sch ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
:Template:Infobox Writer/doc
Infobox writer may be used to summarize information about a person who is a writer/author (includes screenwriters). If the writer-specific fields here are not needed, consider using the more general ; other infoboxes there can be found in :People and person infobox templates. This template may also be used as a module (or sub-template) of ; see WikiProject Infoboxes/embed for guidance on such usage. Syntax The infobox may be added by pasting the template as shown below into an article. All fields are optional. Any unused parameter names can be left blank or omitted. Parameters Please remove any parameters from an article's infobox that are unlikely to be used. All parameters are optional. Unless otherwise specified, if a parameter has multiple values, they should be comma-separated using the template: : which produces: : , language= If any of the individual values contain commas already, add to use semi-colons as separators: : which produces: : , ps ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tamale
A tamale, in Spanish tamal, is a traditional Mesoamerican dish made of masa, a dough made from nixtamalized corn, which is steamed in a corn husk or banana leaf. The wrapping can either be discarded prior to eating or used as a plate. Tamales can be filled with meats, cheeses, fruits, vegetables, herbs, chilies, or any preparation according to taste, and both the filling and the cooking liquid may be seasoned. ''Tamale'' is an anglicized version of the Spanish word (plural: ). comes from the Nahuatl . The English "tamale" is a back-formation of , with English speakers interpreting the ''-e-'' as part of the stem, rather than part of the plural suffix ''-es''. Origin Tamales originated in Mesoamerica as early as 8000 to 5000 BC. The preparation of tamales is likely to have spread from the indigenous cultures in Guatemala and Mexico to the rest of Latin America. According to archaeologists Karl Taube, William Saturno, and David Stuart, tamales may date from arou ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rotary Club
Rotary International is one of the largest service organizations in the world. Its stated mission is to "provide service to others, promote integrity, and advance world understanding, goodwill, and peace through hefellowship of business, professional, and community leaders". It is a non-political and non-religious organization. Membership is by invitation and based on various social factors. There are over 46,000 member clubs worldwide, with a membership of 1.4 million individuals, known as Rotarians. History The first years of the Rotary Club The first Rotary Club was formed when attorney Paul P. Harris called together a meeting of three business acquaintances in downtown Chicago, United States, at Harris's friend Gustave Loehr's office in the Unity Building on Dearborn Street on February 23, 1905. In addition to Harris and Loehr (a mining engineer and freemason), Silvester Schiele (a coal merchant), and Hiram E. Shorey (a tailor) were the other two who attended this ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kiwanis
Kiwanis International ( ) is an international service club founded in 1915 in Detroit, Michigan. It is headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana, United States, and is found in more than 80 nations and geographic areas. Since 1987, the organization has also accepted women as members. Membership in Kiwanis and its family of clubs is more than 600,000 members. Each year, Kiwanis clubs raise more than US$100 million and report more than 18.5 million volunteer hours to strengthen communities and serve children. Kiwanis International is a volunteer-led organization headed by a Board of Trustees consisting of 19 members: 15 trustees, four elected officers, and an executive director. The trustees serve three-year terms, with five trustees elected each year. As set out in the bylaws, nine trustees are elected from the United States and Pacific Canada Region, one trustee is elected from the Canada and Caribbean Region, two trustees are elected from the European Region, two trustees are elec ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Debate
Debate is a process that involves formal discourse on a particular topic, often including a moderator and audience. In a debate, arguments are put forward for often opposing viewpoints. Debates have historically occurred in public meetings, academic institutions, debate halls, coffeehouses, competitions, and legislative assemblies. Debate has also been conducted for educational and recreational purposes, usually associated with educational establishments and debating societies. These debates put an emphasis upon logical consistency, factual accuracy, and emotional appeal to an audience. Modern forms of competitive debate also include rules for participants to discuss and decide upon the framework of the debate (how the debate will be judged). History Debating in various forms has a long history and can be traced back to the philosophical and political debates of Ancient Greece, such as Athenian democracy or Shastrartha in Ancient India. Modern forms of debating and the e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
United States Merchant Marine
United States Merchant Marines are United States civilian mariners and U.S. civilian and federally owned merchant vessels. Both the civilian mariners and the merchant vessels are managed by a combination of the government and private sectors, and engage in commerce or transportation of goods and services in and out of the navigable waters of the United States. The Merchant Marine primarily transports domestic and international cargo and passengers during peacetime, and operate and maintain deep-sea merchant ships, tugboats, towboats, ferries, dredges, excursion vessels, charter boats and other waterborne craft on the oceans, the Great Lakes, rivers, canals, harbors, and other waterways. In times of war, the Merchant Marine can be an auxiliary to the United States Navy, and can be called upon to deliver military personnel and materiel for the military. In the 19th and 20th centuries, various laws fundamentally changed the course of American merchant shipping. These laws put an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Louisiana Purchase
The Louisiana Purchase (french: Vente de la Louisiane, translation=Sale of Louisiana) was the acquisition of the territory of Louisiana by the United States from the French First Republic in 1803. In return for fifteen million dollars, or approximately eighteen dollars per square mile, the United States nominally acquired a total of in Middle America. However, France only controlled a small fraction of this area, most of which was inhabited by Native Americans; effectively, for the majority of the area, the United States bought the "preemptive" right to obtain "Indian" lands by treaty or by conquest, to the exclusion of other colonial powers. The Kingdom of France had controlled the Louisiana territory from 1699 until it was ceded to Spain in 1762. In 1800, Napoleon, the First Consul of the French Republic, regained ownership of Louisiana as part of a broader effort to re-establish a French colonial empire in North America. However, France's failure to suppress a revol ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alcée Fortier
Alcée Fortier (June 5, 1856 – February 14, 1914) was a renowned Professor of Romance Languages at Tulane University in New Orleans. In the late 19th and early 20th century, he published numerous works on language, literature, Louisiana history and folklore, Louisiana Creole languages, and personal reminiscence. He had French Creole ancestry dating to the colonial period. He became president of the Modern Language Association and the Louisiana Historical Society, was appointed to the State Board of Education, and was active in the American Folklore Society and the New Orleans Academy of Sciences. Early life and education Fortier was born in St. James Parish, on Petit Versailles Plantation, which was owned by his maternal grandfather Valcour Aime and had long been cultivated for sugar cane. Alcée Fortier was the son of Florent-Louis Fortier and Marie-Edwige Aime. His father and grandfathers were sugar cane planters of French Creole ancestry. The Fortier family had been i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Great Famine (Ireland)
The Great Famine ( ga, an Gorta Mór ), also known within Ireland as the Great Hunger or simply the Famine and outside Ireland as the Irish Potato Famine, was a period of starvation and disease in Ireland from 1845 to 1852 that constituted a historical social crisis which subsequently had a major impact on Culture of Ireland, Irish society and History of Ireland, history as a whole. With the most severely affected areas in the west and south of Ireland, where the History of the Irish language#Nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Irish language was dominant, the period was contemporaneously known in Irish as , literally translated as "the bad life" (and loosely translated as "the hard times"). The worst year of the period was 1847, which became known as "Black '47".Éamon Ó Cuív – the impact and legacy of the Great Irish Famine During the Great Hunger, roughly 1 million people died and more than 1 million Irish diaspora, fled the country, causing the country's population to fa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Louisiana Creole People
Louisiana Creoles (french: Créoles de la Louisiane, lou, Moun Kréyòl la Lwizyàn, es, Criollos de Luisiana) are people descended from the inhabitants of colonial Louisiana before it became a part of the United States during the period of both French and Spanish rule. As an ethnic group, their ancestry is mainly of Louisiana French, West African, Spanish and Native American origin. Louisiana Creoles share cultural ties such as the traditional use of the French, Spanish, and Creole languages and predominant practice of Catholicism. The term ''Créole'' was originally used by the Louisiana French to distinguish people born in Louisiana from those born elsewhere, thus drawing a distinction between Old-World Europeans and Africans from their Creole descendants born in the New World.Kathe ManaganThe Term "Creole" in Louisiana : An Introduction, lameca.org. Retrieved December 5, 2013 [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Walker Percy
Walker Percy, OSB (May 28, 1916 – May 10, 1990) was an American writer whose interests included philosophy and semiotics. Percy is noted for his philosophical novels set in and around New Orleans; his first, '' The Moviegoer'', won the National Book Award for Fiction. Trained as a physician at Columbia University, Percy decided to become a writer after a bout of tuberculosis. He devoted his literary life to the exploration of "the dislocation of man in the modern age."Kimball, RogerExistentialism, Semiotics and Iced Tea, Review of Conversations with Walker PercyNew York Times, August 4, 1985. Retrieved 2010-06-12. His work displays a combination of existential questioning, Southern sensibility, and deep Catholic faith. He had a lifelong friendship with author and historian Shelby Foote and spent much of his life in Covington, Louisiana, where he died of prostate cancer in 1990. Early life and education Percy was born on May 28, 1916, in Birmingham, Alabama, the firs ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
