Archaeologist William Kelso is certain he's discovered the remains of the oldest Protestant church in the United States, standing between two holes he insists once held wooden posts.
In 1614, Pocahontas was "married right here, I guarantee," Kelso told AFP at the Jamestown, Virginia archeological site southeast of the nation's capital.
Near the James River, on May 14, 1607, a group of about a hundred men landed on commission from England to form the first colony in the Americas.
"It's fantastically exciting and significant because Jamestown is usually depicted -- the whole early settlement depicted -- as it was carried out by lazy gentlemen who wanted to get rich quick, and go right back to England."
The area was carefully excavated to reveal several large post holes 6.5 feet (two meters) deep and the trace remnants of four graves.
Two other Protestant churches are thought to have been built before, but left no trace, and remains of a Catholic church were also found in Florida -- but Kelso is sure this one is the oldest left.
"Religion played a big role" in the community, Kelso said as he stood near the river where small fluttering flags marked the building's outline. Settlers "put a lot of work in the building of this big church, and that became very important for the colony."
Noting the size of the wood post's holes, Kelso said the church would have been able to support the mud and stud building's heavy roof.
According to surviving records describing the church kept by the secretary of the colony, what was built matches what can be seen today at the site. "I'm convinced because it's the right size," said Kelso.
The four graves also match with the four important members of the colony who would have been buried so close to the church. Kelso said there were a knight, two captains and Reverend Robert Hunt, the first cleric to come to the site.
Pointing out where Pocahontas, Chief Powhatan's favorite daughter, would have stood when she married an Englishman, Kelso marveled at the event's place in colonial history, allowing further settlements in what was then foreign, hostile territory for the European settlers.
"With that wedding, the Indians backed off and there was no more fighting," Kelso recalled.
The Indian princess, well known to American children, was popularized through an animated Walt Disney romance.
Renamed Rebecca, she was later to marry another Englishman, John Rolfe, before dying in England at the tender age of 21.
The next tasks for archeologists in the coming months will be to dig up the graves.
"We know the ages, we have baptism records," Kelso said, excited at the tantalizing possibility of confirming their identities with the study of bones, teeth and possibly markings from injuries still traced to the bones.
Sunday, November 27, 2011
Archaeologist traces Pocahontas wedding site - Yahoo! News
Saturday, November 26, 2011
How much crazier can Black Friday get? - Yahoo! News
NEW YORK (AP) — Pepper-sprayed customers, smash-and-grab looters and bloody scenes in the shopping aisles. How did Black Friday devolve into this?
As reports of shopping-related violence rolled in this week from Los Angeles to New York, experts say a volatile mix of desperate retailers and cutthroat marketing has hyped the traditional post-Thanksgiving sales to increasingly frenzied levels. With stores opening earlier, bargain-obsessed shoppers often are sleep-deprived and short-tempered. Arriving in darkness, they also find themselves vulnerable to savvy parking-lot muggers.
Add in the online-coupon phenomenon, which feeds the psychological hunger for finding impossible bargains, and you've got a recipe for trouble, said Theresa Williams, a marketing professor at Indiana University.
"These are people who should know better and have enough stuff already," Williams said. "What's going to be next year, everybody getting Tasered?"
Across the country on Thursday and Friday, there were signs that tensions had ratcheted up a notch or two, with violence resulting in several instances.
A woman turned herself in to police after allegedly pepper-spraying 20 other customers at a Los Angeles-area Walmart on Thursday in what investigators said was an attempt to get at a crate of Xbox video game consoles. In Kinston, N.C., a security guard also pepper-sprayed customers seeking electronics before the start of a midnight sale.
In New York, crowds reportedly looted a clothing store in Soho. At a Walmart near Phoenix, a man was bloodied while being subdued by police officer on suspicion of shoplifting a video game. There was a shooting outside a store in San Leandro, Calif., shots fired at a mall in Fayetteville, N.C. and a stabbing outside a store in Sacramento, N.Y.
"The difference this year is that instead of a nice sweater you need a bullet proof vest and goggles," said Betty Thomas, 52, who was shopping Saturday with her sisters and a niece at Crabtree Valley Mall in Raleigh, N.C.
The wave of violence revived memories of the 2008 Black Friday stampede that killed an employee and put a pregnant woman in the hospital at a Walmart on New York's Long Island. Walmart spokesman Greg Rossiter said Black Friday 2011 was safe at most of its nearly 4,000 U.S. stores despite "a few unfortunate incidents."
Black Friday — named that because it puts retailers "in the black" — has become more intense as companies compete for customers in a weak economy, said Jacob Jacoby, an expert on consumer behavior at New York University.
The idea of luring in customers with a few "doorbuster" deals has long been a staple of the post-Thanksgiving sales. But now stores are opening earlier, and those deals are getting more extreme, he said.
"There's an awful lot of psychology going on here," Jacoby said. "There's the notion of scarcity — when something's scarce it's more valued. And a resource that can be very scarce is time: If you don't get there in time, it's going to be gone."
There's also a new factor, Williams said: the rise of coupon websites like Groupon and LivingSocial, the online equivalents of doorbusters that usually deliver a single, one-day offer with savings of up to 80 percent on museum tickets, photo portraits, yoga classes and the like.
The services encourage impulse buying and an obsession with bargains, Williams said, while also getting businesses hooked on quick infusions of customers.
"The whole notion of getting a deal, that's all we've seen for the last two years," Williams said. "It's about stimulating consumers' quick reactions. How do we get their attention quickly? How do we create cash flow for today?"
To grab customers first, some stores are opening late on Thanksgiving Day, turning bargain-hunting from an early-morning activity into an all-night slog, said Ed Fox, a marketing professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. Midnight shopping puts everyone on edge and also makes shoppers targets for muggers, he said.
In fact, robbery appeared to be the motive behind the shooting in San Leandro, about 15 miles east of San Francisco. Police said robbers shot a victim as he was walking to a car with his purchases around 1:45 a.m. on Friday.
"There are so many hours now where people are shopping in the darkness that it provides cover for people who are going to try to steal or rob those who are out in numbers," Fox said.
The violence has prompted some analysts to wonder if the sales are worth it, and what solutions might work.
In a New York Times column this week, economist Robert Frank proposed slapping a 6 percent sales tax on purchases between 6 p.m. on Thanksgiving and 6 a.m. on Friday in an attempt to stop the "arms race" of earlier and earlier sales.
Small retailers, meanwhile, are pushing so-called Small Business Saturday to woo customers who are turned off by the Black Friday crush. President Barack Obama even joined in, going book shopping on Saturday at a small bookstore a few blocks from the White House.
"A lot of retailers, independent retailers, are making the conscious decision to not work those crazy hours," said Patricia Norins, a retail consultant for American Express.
Next up is Cyber Monday, when online retailers put their wares on sale. But on Saturday many shoppers said they still prefer buying at the big stores, despite the frenzy.
Thomas said she likes the time with her sisters and the hustle of the mall too much to stay home and just shop online.
To her, the more pressing problem was that the Thanksgiving weekend sales didn't seem very good.
"If I'm going to get shot, at least let me get a good deal," Thomas said.
___
Associated Press Writers Julie Walker in New York, Christina Rexrode in Raleigh, N.C., John C. Rogers in Los Angeles and Terry Tang in Phoenix contributed to this report
Friday, November 25, 2011
5 Reasons to Skip Black Friday Sales - Yahoo! Finance
This year's Black Friday deals are impressive: The coupon site Brad's Deals reports that at Best Buy, you can get a 42-inch LCD television for $200, a Blu-ray player for $40, and a Lenovo laptop for $180. But do those discounts really justify standing in line, in the cold, for hours on Thanksgiving evening, when you could be home watching a movie instead? (This year, many stores plan to open at midnight or earlier on Thanksgiving instead of in the early morning hours on Friday.)
[In Pictures: 10 Ways to Start Earning Extra Money Now]
Telling shoppers to avoid sales might sound hypocritical coming from someone who has reported on the best deals and discounts out there. But there are some very good reasons why you should turn and walk the other way rather than let yourself be sucked into holiday sale mania. Here are five of them:
Many discounts will continue long after Black Friday is over. While certain so-called "doorbusters" are available for a limited time only (and in limited quantities), many deals will continue throughout the holiday season. (And, in fact, some, such as free shipping at online stories, are often available throughout the year.)
The best deals are only available to a few people. Those doorbusters aren't available in endless supply, which is why people line up so early in the hopes of being among the lucky few to snag one. While stores vary in how many doorbusters they keep in stock, Best Buy's ad specifies that stores will sell a minimum of 10 Lenovos for $180, for example. Circulars featuring Black Friday ads often contain information on the number of doorbusters, which helps shoppers gauge how competitive the day will be.
When you do score a discount, it often just leads to more spending. If you've ever impulsively bought a muffin to go with your coffee, or surprised yourself by buying a whole new outfit when you meant to get only a shirt, then you will understand why research shows that shopping leads to more shopping.
Shopping can be broken into two phases, researchers say. In the first stage, people question whether they want to make a purchase. When they decide that the pros outweigh the cons, the "buying phase" takes over. "Once that happens, a roller coaster of shopping can begin," says Uzma Khan, assistant professor of marketing at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and one of the study's authors. The researchers call the phenomenon "shopping momentum."
That means shopping sales can have the unintended consequence of leading to even more purchases, including ones that aren't on sale. Plus, many of the items that aren't doorbusters aren't even good deals, which is one reason shoppers should bring their smartphones and use them to compare prices on products before making purchases. (Certain apps, such as Pricegrabber's, make it easy to scan barcodes and see if a better deal is available elsewhere.)
[In Pictures: 10 Ways to Save on Food Costs]
Sales that get you to buy something you wouldn't have purchased otherwise are not good deals. It's just like the old joke: A woman brags to her husband about how much money she saved on a pair of shoes, and then he points out that she didn't save any money, she spent it, because she really doesn't need the shoes. The bottom line: Only take advantage of discounts when they're on items you would be purchasing anyway, even without the deal.
Frenzied buying almost never leads to smart shopping. One-day sales, midnight madness, and other sales techniques that spur quick decision-making tend to be disorienting and lead to over spending, says Kit Yarrow, consumer psychologist and author of coauthor of Gen BuY: How Tweens, Teens, and Twenty-Somethings Are Revolutionizing Retail. "They're training [consumers] to purchase even though they may not be ready," she says. "If people are buying for fear or anxiety that it won't be available, then they're less likely to make good purchasing decisions."
Here are some alternative ways to spend your Black Friday: Giving back or volunteering, eating turkey leftovers, and getting an early start on Christmas movies. Most of the discounts will still be there when you're ready to hit the stores.
Twitter: @alphaconsumer
More From US News & World Report
“Why we won’t move in together”
** Our Terms of Use Agreement was revised 9/7/2011.
© Copyright 2011 Match.com, L.L.C. wec1-070fec1-002s-
- partner sites:
- OurTime
- BlackPeopleMeet
- SingleParentMeet
Yahoo! and the Yahoo! logo are trademarks of Yahoo! Inc. The Match.com service is not operated or controlled by Yahoo!.
Thursday, November 24, 2011
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
How I Happily Spent Over $5,000 in a Futile Attempt to Save my Dog - Associated Content from Yahoo!
My pug Drea was a petite 18-pound, feisty pug that made me laugh for 13 happy years until cancer consumed her. From diagnosis to saying goodbye, she lived seven months. This is her story.
Learning the Horrible Truth
Giving Drea a belly rub one night, I felt a hard substance. It wasn't there before and I was immediately concerned.
Our first visit to the vet was tearful. Upon examination, he told us Drea had something in her mammary glands and needed X-rays. I didn't have a good feeling about it, although Drea didn't seem concerned. She trotted off to the lab to show them what a movie star she could be.
The X-rays revealed small masses. A sonogram was needed for greater clarity. The initial visit was $125, X-rays were $285 and the sonogram was $420. The total was $830.
Scheduling the Surgery
Our vet was patient and kind to explain the options. He said that, although there were no guarantees, the tumors appeared to be small and self-contained. Therefore, Drea had a good shot at recovery - if everything could be successfully removed. It was not a hard decision; she was scheduled for surgery the next day at a cost of $1,182.
The vet was happy - the tumors were easily removed and not embedded in tissue. He hoped he got it all - but reminded us there were no guarantees. It was just a matter of seeing what happened in the next few months.
Making Hard Emotional and Financial Decisions
Unfortunately, we didn't get months. The pathology report came back as cancer and within five weeks, the tumors grew back - this time bigger and harder than the original ones. It was difficult to believe it could happen that fast - but, it did.