Row after Jaishankar describes the founder of Buddhism as one of the greatest Indians ever

Nepal is the land of origin of Lord Buddha, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Kathmandu asserted on Sunday after Indias External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar described the founder of Buddhism as one of the greatest Indians ever. The comment from the Indian Minister also drew a series of reactions from leading Nepalese figures, including former Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal, who said Mr. Jaishankars comments about Lord Buddha were objectionable.

It is a well-established and undeniable fact proven by historical and archaeological evidence that Gautama Buddha was born in Lumbini, Nepal. Lumbini, the birthplace of Buddha and the fountain of Buddhism, is one of the UNESCO world heritage sites, said the official spokesperson of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Nepal in an official statement.

The controversy erupted after Mr. Jaishankar, during an interaction with the Confederation of Indian Industries on Saturday, referred to Buddha while discussing Indias soft power. Who are the greatest Indians ever that you can remember? I would say one is Gautama Buddha and the other is Mahatma Gandhi, said Mr. Jaishankar.

The spokesperson of the Ministry of External Affairs, however, responded saying that the Minister was referring to the shared Buddhist heritage. The Indian statement supported the Nepalese assertion and said, There is no doubt that Gautama Buddha was born in Lumbini, which is in Nepal. Indias statement, however, did not clarify how Mr. Jaishankar regarded the Lumbini-born Sakyamuni or the Buddha as an Indian.

It is understood that the Nepalese side believes Lumbini is of paramount importance in Buddhism, and the Indian side highlights the importance of Bodhgaya, the place of enlightenment of the Buddha and Sarnath, where the first Buddhist sermon was delivered.

Earlier Mr. Jaishankar drew an angry retort from Mr. Nepal who described the remarks as insensitive and wrong. The Indian Foreign Minister has described Nepals Lumbini-born Gautama Buddha as a great Indian. This amounts to misinformation and is objectionable, said Mr. Nepal.

The war of words about the Buddha has highlighted the Buddha diplomacy that both India and Nepal have been practising for the last few years. While Prime Minister Narendra Modis government has been highlighting Indias Buddhist heritage since 2014, Nepal, with the help of international partners, including China, has invested in developing Lumbini as a major tourism destination. During the Kathmandu visit of Chinese President Xi Jinping in October 2019, both countries agreed to collaborate on building a road connecting Kathmandu and Pokhara with Lumbini. Notably, Mr. Modi visited Bodhgaya, the place where prince Sidhartha Gautama became the enlightened Buddha. He, however, could not visit Lumbini during his visits to Nepal due to scheduling problems.

Apart from Lumbini, Bodhgaya and Sarnath, classical Buddhism also attaches high significance to Kushinagar, the place where the Buddha breathed his last.

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Nepal, India in war of words over Buddhas origins - The Hindu

If you have not read Francis Wheens wonderful book How mumbo-jumbo conquered the world, you have missed out on a lot of fun. It is a hilarious account of how people love to add words and activities that seem fairly complicated or pretty simple but which have no real meaning.

Before we discuss what mumbo-jumbo means and how it has creeped into nearly all walks of life, something about Francis Wheen and his book is in order. Wheen is a British broadcaster and journalist who has worked for some of the top newspapers in Britain. He is also author of several books including a biography of Karl Marx and a notional biography of Das Kapital dealing with the creation and publication of the first volume of Marxs most important work, as well as other incomplete volumes. Wheen is a keen observer of history and writes about it with passion.

How mumbo-jumbo conquered the world is subtitled as a short history of modern delusions. He contends that in the last quarter of the 20th century when the likes of Khamenei, Reagan, and Thatcher used mumbo-jumbo to conquer their countries, a period began in the worlds history when most things began to stop making sense. With changes in the Soviet Union and emerging crises in the socialist world, notions of history, progress, and reason vacated space for colonization by literary loons, management gurus, and spiritual cults. Irrational ideas presented by quackery brought about a New Age of confused mumbo-jumbo. He uses voodoo for such quackery.

Wheen exposes the march of unreason that threatens to clog our minds. He is an intelligent sceptic who raises pertinent questions about new hocus-pocus disguised as academic excellence, management marvels, mastery learning, post-whatever, and spiritual guidance. To Wheen, it shows an absence of common sense in most people who welcome every new jargon as impressive and self-evident. Wheens mission is to debunk such jargon as mumbo-jumbo. He attacks both complicated pomposity and simplistic explanations. The book was published in 2004 and my English friend Alan Hamilton who died last year at the age of 90 presented it to me.

For the past 15 years I have read it multiple times with new enjoyment as more and more mumbo-jumbo from education to politics emerges across the world and in Pakistan too. Wheen begins with Khomeini, Reagan and Thatcher, describing them as masters of mumbo-jumbo who had nothing concrete to offer but people liked their grandiloquent style and optimism. They cajoled their people into acquiescence by the promise of change that ultimately proved illusory. He enumerates the cost people paid for the political chicanery of these leaders. Why do people accept and welcome such mumbo-jumbo? Wheens answer is self-incurred immaturity.

Wheen suggests that we demand autonomy and clarity with intellectual and rational vigour from anyone who offers checklists and straitjackets to confine our thinking. For example, he says the word enlightenment itself has been misappropriated by the purveyors of mumbo-jumbo who dish out hundreds of books every year on enlightenment which tends to be more spiritual than intellectual. In its original meaning, enlightenment referred to rational enquiry rather than purifying your soul with meditation. Enlightenment gives you confidence in rational argument, and anything that moves you away from it we may consider as mumbo-jumbo that promotes obscurantist bunkum.

In most cases, mumbo-jumbo uses elegant phraseology to promise complex or simple solutions. It works both ways: complicated and simplistic. Some mumbo-jumbo uses complex discourse to sound academic and authentic, whereas at the bottom it is shallow. Some others use oversimplified language for ideas that need profound thinking. In both, they target and satisfy their own audiences which regale in, at times scientific approach and at others, in presumably down-to-earth simplicity. So, the mumbo-jumbo can work as a double-edged sword with its own sharp ends that appear to be cutting-edge but in fact blunt the minds.

Catchphrases turn into mantras which every other street-corner orator may use. In countries such as Pakistan, ideological and sectarian mumbo-jumbo is a favourite staple in all seasons. Most of this is intellectually unsound and self-defeating, but it sells. Even if such mumbo-jumbo is incredible, most people from academics and the clergy to the laity find it impressive and useful. Mumbo-jumbo has its own spell that prevents independent thinking be it in development and economics or in education and management. The mumbo-jumbo of the development sector presents agents of change, benchmarks, capacity development, community empowerment, decentralized planning, enabling environment, logical frameworks, theory of change, and many others.

Market economy presents a selective picture of society using its own mumbo-jumbo such as bottom-lines, choices, consumer satisfaction, derivatives, economic determinism, futures, game theory and trickle-down effect. Education has developed its own mumbo-jumbo that talks about academic achievement, behaviour-change communication, competency-based education, complementarity, curriculum delivery, classroom management, formative assessment, goal-oriented education, and higher-order learning. Management has its own alchemical formulas that have a veneer of scientific method to make them universally popular. All the above may have some utility but in most cases they become voodoo; meaning as if by the magic of this you will get the desired results.

In most cases, the mumbo-jumbo by itself does nothing to induce genuine change. Academics to celebrities who become influenced by such mumbo-jumbo end up as incorrigible fantasists. In every field there appears to be some old ham who makes you believe in fantasies. Do this or that, and the future is yours. Draft a single national curriculum and you get a uniform education system. Add more religion in the syllabus, and you get admirable believers. Develop good benchmarks and you have top scorers. Conduct training in community empowerment and you harvest empowered people. The trick is to cut through this mumbo-jumbo.

Most documents and speeches using mumbo-jumbo are vainglorious monuments waiting for followers. When academies, departments, institutions, ministries, or organizations adopt such mumbo jumbo, the people working there and expected beneficiaries are blithely left to the tender mercies of gurus who claim to be experienced and qualified. A good guru is sharp in using jargon with unsuspecting followers, but a better guru is able to develop a whole new set of jargon; and lo and behold, you are in with some brand-new mumbo-jumbo. But those who can challenge the jargon become a tiny and ever-shrinking group.

The rhetorical ammunition at the command of gurus is formidable, and that ammunition is used to wage a war against the enemy within. If you are working in a department that has decided to embrace such mumbo-jumbo, and you decide to challenge, the gurus are likely to declare you the enemy within. The mumbo-jumbo itself becomes a kind of theology that you cant question. Be it academic theology about categories and rankings or simple educational mumbo-jumbo about pacing guides, outcomes, topic sentences, and topic paragraphs, we should not consider them scriptural.

Ultimately, mumbo-jumbo is all about neologism in which you use a new word or expression, or simply give a new meaning to an existing one; and make people believe in it, no matter how irrational this exercise is. Then you lionize the gurus who use euphemisms such as downsizing, right-sizing, or rationalizing the number of employees rather than saying you are depriving them of their employment.

As Wheen says: legerdemain depends on its success on fooling all the audience all the time: any member of the crowd who points out that the entire operation is a con must be silenced at once

The writer holds a PhD from the University of Birmingham, UK and works in Islamabad.

Email: [emailprotected]

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Following and learning mumbo-jumbo - The News International

Not for the oiks British Gentlemen in Rome by Katharine Read, c.1750. Photograph: incamerastock/Alamy

The Grand Tour was one of the defining educational experiences of the 18th century, a kind of travelling finishing school, comprising aristocratic visits to ancient cultural sites, princely art galleries, and exclusive Enlightenment soirees. Typically, British tourists (the word dates from 1772) visited France, Germany and Italy. Some, like Byron, even went on to Greece and Turkey for headier pursuits. It was a year of sightseeing, hobnobbing and sex before returning home with good memories and possibly syphilis. But this was strictly an elite experience. It was very much not for the oiks.

My new novel tells the story of two brothers dispatched on to the Grand Tour in the 1760s to make fashionable new friends. Instead they meet the magnificently savage Lavelle, who destroys their plans. There is plenty of sex and culture in the book, but as a writer, I am more interested in the other side of history, the history of outsiders.

The Grand Tour is the ultimate story of insiders: rich, white Europeans go on an exclusive jolly before commencing a life of power and privilege. We can all imagine a certain blond-haired chap having done it as a youth. Writing my novel, I was asking: is there an outsider history of the Grand Tour? Does the other even exist in the Enlightenment, which spoke of freedom, but from the most elite vantage point?

1. The British Abroad: The Grand Tour in the Eighteenth Century by Jeremy Black (1992)If you want a readable introduction to the subject, this is it. It covers everything from the harsh realities of life on the road, the still-perilous journeys, that discovery of sex and suddenly running out of money 1,000 miles from home. It also shows how unforeseen events (the French Revolution) could suddenly change everything. Should you too be living through a time where unforeseen events have suddenly changed everything, I recommend it.

2. Of Travel by Sir Francis Bacon (1625)Gleaned from his own journeys around France, Italy and Spain, polymath genius Bacon recommends travellers should keep a journal, meet locals, get them to show you around, visit many famous sights, and regard travel as an illuminating experience. It is amazing to think these were new ideas then, but as with so much of modern life, Bacon had to show us first.

3. The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle by Tobias Smollett (1751)Frankly, Peregrine Pickle is a pain in the arse. The Grand Tour is only part of this story the hero only gets as far as France before turning back but he is cantankerous, offensive and hilarious right across his travels, not least in poisonous pen portraits of literary enemies such as Henry Fielding. George Orwell hated the book, deriding its snobbish, elitist impulses. But then again, Orwell was proudly, openly homophobic.

4. Travels through France and Italy by Tobias Smollett (1766)Despite Peregrine Pickles awfulness, you still want to like Smollett because of the circumstances in which he wrote his hugely influential Grand Tour travelogue: grief-stricken, fleeing the death of his only child. But the same wonderfully awful Smollett who insulted and berated through that book now picks stupid, pointless real-life fights all the way across France. He hates his travel companions and is dubiously withering about Catholic southern Europe. But his wicked in the real sense humour and perceptive eye make this glorious, shameless, appalling fun.

5. A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy by Laurence Sterne (1768)Written in response to Smolletts travelogue, it was allegedly inspired when the two writers met. Sterne so disliked Smollett that he created the odious, fabulously named Smelfungus, whom his own alter ego, Yorick, meets en route. Wandering aimlessly around France, Yorick is more interested in sex than culture. In so doing, Sterne cleverly reminds us of a big part of the Tours appeal for young British people: sex.

6. Sultry Climates: Travel and Sex Since the Grand Tour by Ian Littlewood (2001)Speaking of which, this very entertaining book explores the Grand Tour more fully as an opportunity for sex of every variety, frowned upon back home. It also considers the influence of the Tour on how weve holidayed ever since. Are you a Connoisseur, a Pilgrim or a Rebel? This book shows you how the Grand Tour shaped how you travel.

7. Italian Journey by Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1816)Where the British snigger and satirise, the Germans bring poetry. Italian Journey is a lovely work suffused with Goethes sincere, lush Romanticism genuinely new after the hard-eyed satires of the 18th century. Ruminations on art, culture, history, climate, even geology hover beautifully, while Goethe shows how Italy seemed to the Grand Tourist a great civilisation simultaneously alive and in ruins. Which is all great: but still white, male, elite business as usual.

8. Ladies of the Grand Tour by Brian Dolan (1992)Women rarely feature much in writing about the Tour but Dolans survey captures its liberating sometimes revolutionary impact on British women, celebrating them as writers, thinkers and observers. It finds interesting links between travel and radicalism for that first generation of women we now see as feminists, for example, Mary Wollstonecraft.

9. Mary Shelleys History of a Six Weeks Tour (1817)Speaking of whom, you could probably make a good argument for the influence of the Tour on Shelleys Frankenstein, but Mary Wollstonecrafts daughter also wrote an account of her own experience of the Grand Tour. Today, its a fascinating document of a politically radical young woman venturing off on her own adventures, claiming a female voice in an otherwise male space. And what a voice insightful, polemical, literary and all written when she was just 20. Marvellous.

10. The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano (1789)But while the upper classes had such fun on the Tour, many people in the 18th century were on far darker journeys. Equianos autobiographical masterpiece travels from his childhood in (what is now) Nigeria to slavery in the Caribbean and freedom and fame in Britain as a leading black activist. His book thus becomes a horrifically clever inversion of the classic Grand Tour narrative, boldly smashing open the vanity of so much of the Enlightenment.

In my book, Lavelle casts a withering eye over the self-regard of the Enlightenment. He retains his ire most of all for the adored Voltaire, who was also an antisemite who sucked up to autocrats. The world is rotten, Lavelle says. Lovers of books, do you think they do not rape their maids? And philosophers, do they not whip their slaves? Equiano teaches us the truth of 18th-century Europe as much as Voltaire, Sterne and Smollett. It is he, the outsider, who tells the truth of history, every bit as much as or more than its privileged heroes.

The Intoxicating Mr Lavelle by Neil Blackmore is published by Cornerstone. To order a copy, go to guardianbookshop.com.

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Top 10 books about the Grand Tour - The Guardian

Culture and the Death of God By Terry Eagleton | Yale University Press 240 pages Langans Book Mark: 4/4 stars

Terry Eagleton, Distinguished Professor of Literature at the University of Lancaster and author of forty books, investigates in Culture and the Death of God how our supposedly faithless age threatened by religious fundamentalism after 9/11 searches for a replacement for God.

The abstruseness of this search was brought home to me by a comment made by one of my daughters. When she saw that I reviewed an earlier Eagleton book, After Theory, in 2004, she said, Dad, who cares about that stuff?

Who cares indeed? This is the basic question. See if you care enough by reading this. Its longer and more complex than a usual review, because Eagleton is more intricate in his writing.

After Theory sustained a tightly woven argument asserting that cultural theory had become largely irrelevant. Cultural theory used to be an enterprise or a patch, as the author calls it, where intellectuals could raise basic questions about what is now quaintly called the human condition.

Despite my daughters remark, I think she cares, and others may as well about that stuff. Her impatience could be a trigger for a bigger issue agitating what passes for the collective conscience of the world. It is dissatisfaction with surrogates put in place of the Almighty. My daughter might say I was reviewing a book that nobody would buy because of the topic.

But thats Eagletons point: while many have jettisoned the idea of God, no good candidates have shown up to take his place. In his new book, Eagleton gives us a list of substitutes and reasons that they havent passed muster, and looks to a future it doesnt seem anywhere on the horizon to me where just and compassionate communities thrive.

So what are the loser replacements for God, our author asks? Good bye to culture, he says, as well as Enlightenment ideas, the philosophy of idealists, romantics, Reason, modernism and more. They all have their charms but come up short. The ache for permanence in humans wants more.

Here is how Eagleton states his case:

Those who find religion boring, irrelevant or offensive need not feel too deterred by my title. This book is less about God than about the crisis occasioned by his apparent disappearance. In pursuit of this subject, it begins with the Enlightenment and ends up with the rise of radical Islam and the so-called war on terror.Among other things, the narrative I have to deliver concerns the fact that atheism is by no means as easy as it looks.

Lets look at the usual suspects to replace God, and see why, according to Eagleton, none of these viceroys for God turned out to be very plausible

First of all, culture: Our author thinks this has always been the most credible candidate. After all, it involves, he says, foundational values, transcendent truths, authoritative traditions, ritual practices, sensuous symbolism, and much more.

So why did culture fail to take religions place? It couldnt, despite some Enlightenment scholars hopes, bridge the gap between the values of a minority and the life of the common people. Culture was unable to be a guarantor of social order and moral conduct because, as our man puts it, No symbolic form in history has matched religions ability to link the most exalted of truths to the daily existence of countless men and women.it was clear that there could be no salvation in aesthetic culture alone.

Not only that, Eagleton remarks, but when politically charged social divisions infiltrate the concept of culture itself, elements like language, symbol, kinship, heritage, identity and community are exploited, culture becomes part of the problem, shifting from a bogus transcendence to militant particularism. Read the front page of any newspaper describing various countries internecine warfare for verification of this remark.

What about idealist philosophy? German idealist philosophers, retaining some impetus from the Enlightenment, put Spirit in place of Reason as the mainspring of human history. This synoptic vision of science, art, Nature, history and politics represents one of the most astonishing intellectual syntheses of the modern era

In a sense, idealistic philosophy was a predictable candidate. It co-opted old religious ideas and put them into sectarian clothing. Idealistic thought was mid-way between traditional Christian doctrine and the creeping secularization of the modern era, according to Andrew Bowie, another historian. Still another historian, M.H.J. Abrams, called the Idealists and Romantics quest a pursuit of natural supernaturalism. Eagleton considers this a false transcendence there was no there, there and it ultimately failed.

What about Romanticism? Eagleton observes that Romanticism is a darker, more troubled affair than Idealism, even if, in some of its moods, it shares its zest and buoyancy. Like Goethes Faust, it must content itself with this endless process of becoming, not with any assured end product.

As Novalis, a pseudonym of George Friedrich Freiherr von Hardenberg (1772 1801), poet and philosopher of German Romanticism wrote, We seek everywhere the unconditional, and find only the conditional.

These rejections of God-substitutes give one a sense of Eagletons philosophic direction.

Then, how did religion capture the flag? Eagleton writes, The Church had sealed the rift between them (minorities and common people) in its own fashion enfolding clergy and laity in a single institution; and though the simple faithful may not be exactly on all fours with cardinals and theologians, this matters less than the faith they share.

A recurrent facet of the authors argument is that religion has not endured by assuming a series of cunning disguises, any more than it has been secularized away. Instead, religion, he says, has the capacity to unite theory and practice, elite and populace, spirit and senses, a capacity which culture was never quite able to emulate. Religion has all the qualities of culture, and more, a most tenacious and universal form of popular culture: according to Eagleton.

(As the author ironically puts it, The word religion crops up in university cultural studies prospectuses as often as the sentence We must protect the values of a civilized elite from the grubby paws of the populace.)

Why the omission? Eagleton writes that Almost every cultural theorist today passes over in silence some of the most vital beliefs and activities of billions of ordinary and women, simply because they happen not to be to their personal taste. Most them are also ardent opponents of prejudice.

Eagleton defends a highly unpopular concept in postmodern quarters: objective truth. He says that in fact it is a modest notion that many shy away from. The author chides those in the United States for slipping in to our speech the word like after every few words, as a postmodern reflex of not knowing what one thinks about anything. It would be dogmatic to suggest that something actually is what it is. Instead, you must introduce a ritual tentativeness into your speech, in a kind of perpetual semantic slurring.

About religion: If it were released from the burden of furnishing social orders with sets of rationales for their existence, he writes, it might be free to rediscover its true purpose as a critique of all politics. He notes that the New Testament has little or nothing to say of responsible citizenship. It is not a civilized document at all.

I question this last analysis of Eagletons. After all, the New Testament, echoing Exodus, set up rules for living that outline harmonious living among women and men.

In any case, the Almighty appears not to be safely nailed down in his coffin, Eagleton comments. He had simply changed address, migrating to the US Bible Belt, the Evangelical churches of Latin America and the slums of the Arab world. And his fan club is steadily swelling.

Michael D. Langan, the NBC-2.com Culture Critic, met Eagleton in the early 1990s when he spoke at the University of Heidelberg in Germany.

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Review: "Culture and the Death of God" - NBC2 News

An historic Napa Valley Victorian gets a new life, welcoming guests to experience Fausts modern approach to classic Cabernet Sauvignon

St. Helena, CA (August 14, 2020) After three years of restoration,Faustis thrilled to welcome guests and visitors to its daring and bold winery and tasting room, the Faust Haus. Opening its doors to the public on September 4, 2020, the Faust Haus (2867 St. Helena Highway) will feature experiences where guests can enjoy Fausts modern portrait of classic Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon in an equally fitting setting. With its distinct design and unexpected features, the Faust Haus breathes new energy into the traditional Napa Valley luxury wine scene.

Faust produces carefully crafted Cabernet Sauvignon sourced from its organically-farmed estate vineyard in Coombsville. From meticulously detailed harvesting to innovative methods of fermentation, the winemaking process is overseen by winemaker David Jelinek and estate director Jen Beloz.

We didnt want this to be like any other Napa Valley tasting room, says estate director, Jen Beloz. We wanted to push the boundaries of what was possible. The Faust folklore is all about the passion for the craft and were thrilled to have a home to share that story with guests, also diving deep into what makes our Coombsville estate such an amazing place to grow Cabernet Sauvignon.

Located in St. Helena just off Highway 29, the former farmhouse and prohibition-era cellar provides a creative escape from the typical trappings of Napa Valley. Each room within the historic Victorian home was intentionally designed to offer guests a unique experience, created to feel more like a luxurious living room than a traditional tasting room. Faust enlisted the architectural design firm Aidlin Darling Design to reimagine and restore the home, which was originally built in 1878.

We connected with this notion of moving up from darkness to light as one ascends through the housefrom a place of rich opulence to one of bright simplicity, as analogous to pursuing a state of enlightenment, says David Darling, Principal of Aidlin Darling Design. We hoped to build a new kind of wine tasting experience while honoring and amplifying the historic beauty of the home.

Ona LeSassier of Maca Huneeus Design created the interiors, selecting brightly colored, unique pieces and vintage findssuch as a Jean Lurcat mid-century tapestry and custom photography from conceptual, fine art photographer, Lindsey Rossto fully envelop guests in the Faust experience. A freehand wall mural by Italian artist Roberto Ruspoli lines the stairway up to the bright, white second floor, evoking the story and myth of Faust.

San Francisco-based landscape architecture and design firm, Surfacedesign, was brought in to envision the property grounds by designing distinct, memorable garden rooms linked together by shifting color gradients. Faust expanded Surfacedesigns palette by integrating literary allusions and color theory into the projects narrative, says lead landscape designer Roderick Wyllie, ASLA. We poured our souls into this project.

Faust will be taking all appropriate measures to ensure that staff and guests are safe and adhere to the latest guidelines from the state and county. For the foreseeable future, the Faust Haus will be hosting guests outdoors on the restored Victorian veranda and stunning outdoor gardens, overlooking sweeping views of Napa Valley on a reservation basis. Visitors can reserve an experience atfaustwines.com. Faust will welcome guests for indoor experiences in the renovated house once it is safe for customers and staff to do so. Tasting experiences include limited production wines from the Faust estate in Coombsville and start at $55 per person. Children and pets are not permitted.

About Faust

Faust produces limited-production Cabernet Sauvignon from Napa Valley, crafted from their organically-farmed estate vineyard in Coombsville. Faust purchased a property in Coombsville in 1997 and planted Cabernet Sauvignon on what would later become Napas newest, up and coming AVA. The Faust Haus opens September 2020, welcoming visitors inside the reimagined, historic Victorian home in St. Helena. For more information, follow Faust onInstagram,Facebookand visitwww.faustwines.com.

About Aidlin Darling Design

Principals Joshua Aidlin and David Darling founded Aidlin Darling Design around a woodshop in 1998 with a shared interest in exploring design across a wide range of scales, programs, and disciplines. Maintaining a closely held conviction that design can enlighten the human spirit by engaging all of the senses, they have cultivated a diverse and collaborative studio that acts as a creative hub for an extended network of builders, fabricators, engineers, chefs, and artists. Projects have included Scribe, Brecon Estate Winery, Bar Agricole and more. The firm has garnered over 180 regional, national, and international awards including the Smithsonian Cooper Hewitts National Design Award, two James Beard Awards, two International Civic Trust Awards, seven American Architecture Awards from the Chicago Athenaeum, and several local, state and national awards from the AIA, IIDA, and ASLA. For more information, please visitwww.aidlindarlingdesign.com

About Surfacedesign

San Francisco-based Surfacedesign, Inc., is an award-winning landscape architecture and urban design firm that creates dynamic parks, plazas, waterfronts, civic landscapes, and private gardens. Partners James A. Lord, FASLA, Roderick Wyllie, ASLA, and Geoff di Girolamo, ASLA, Assoc. AIA, in collaboration with a multidisciplinary team of landscape architects, urban designers, and architects, provide innovative design solutions for a wide range of projects, working directly with institutions, architects, community groups, and city agencies. Local winery projects have included Odette, Proper Hotel, Kistler Vineyards, Buena Vista and more. Winner of the 2017 National Design Award for Landscape Architecture (given by Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum), Surfacedesign focuses on cultivating a sense of connection to the built and natural worlds, pushing people to engage with the landscape in new ways. The firms work is the subject of Material Landscapes, a monograph published by The Monacelli Press (2019). For more information, visitwww.sdisf.com.

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Faust Announces September 4th Grand Opening of the Faust Haus - wineindustryadvisor.com

Award-winning producer, songwriter and musician Fraser T Smith renowned for producing hit records and critically acclaimed albums by the likes of Adele, Stormzy and Dave has made excellent use of his packed contacts book in assembling 12 Questions, the ambitious, expansive and challenging debut album under his Future Utopia moniker.

Set for release on October 23 via Platoon and Smiths own label 70Hz, 12 Questions was built around a series of thought-provoking and universal topics, ranging from the environmental crisis to the relentless march of technology, that Smith posed to his packed cast list of collaborators which includes Idris Elba, Arlo Parks, Bastille, Easy Life, Kano, poet laureate Simon Armitage and Kojey Radical.

NME caught up with Smith to delve into 12 Questions while also getting his take on the mammoth task of producing the recent Radio 1 charity cover of Foo Fighters Times Like These and explaining why he is so immensely proud of Stormzy and Dave.

Fraser T Smith (Picture: Press)

Smith: Ive worked for so long with so many incredible artists across the board musically, and more recently Ive become so close with Kano, Stormzy and Dave through making Made In The Manor, Gangs Signs & Prayer and Psychodrama. I really felt that those records talked about their personal struggles and big topics such as inequality. I started then to think about my own anxieties in terms of what was going on in the world, like a lack of acceptance of diversity, the environment, A.I., the wealth gap. This record was really a quest for enlightenment from some of the best people that I could think of to answer these questions. I think its really important to say that this isnt about me standing on a soapbox: Im literally in the middle, like a student of life and music, just seeking enlightenment from this amazing, diverse and rich group of collaborators that Ive been very fortunate enough to have worked with on the record.

Some of it is was driven by the music. For example, Id been a big fan of Kojey Radical for a while but Id never worked with him before. I had the music for Million$Bill I wanted a UK version of a Rick Ross-type of beat and I felt that Kojey could really flow on the beat so, so well and he did! I love what he talks about. But it was always the idea to flip the beat at the end to go to something that felt way more aggressive, and thats what Murray from Easy Life did both Kojey and Murray made that song incredible.

Sometimes the questions led my decisions, while sometimes my own personal relationships with the artists did. But there was nothing cynical about the decisions, which I think was important. If there was anything cynical about it, Id have tried to get Dave and Stormzy on a track going back-to-back over 32 fire bars which mightve been the obvious choice! But Im quite proud of the fact that Stormzy is only on eight bars [on How Do We Find Our Truth?] and those bars really resonate. Collaborating with Beatrice Mushiya, who is so poignantly talking about her son who was tragically killed in a knife attack, maybe shows that theres nothing cynical about this record. Theres a real breadth [of collaborators], and I love looking down at the tracklisting and seeing all these incredible names.

Shes just incredible. When we worked for the first time, it was quite daunting for both of us because I didnt know how shed take this question [What Matters Most?]. I think at the start Arlo felt that she had to come up with something that was super-profound. But I said that the thing about this and all the questions is that they can be as big or as small as you want them to be: they can be about, maybe, splitting up with your girlfriend two nights ago, or they can be about the meaning of life. The fact that she wrote the poem at the very beginning of the song and then we wrote Stranger In The Night gives a really great perspective on the question What Matters Most?. Ive grown to love her as a person as well as an artist, her voice is so impactful and emotional. Weve worked together on her upcoming debut album, too its super-exciting.

I think so. The record was pretty much written before lockdown, but its amazing how many of the lyrics pop out in terms of whats happening today: this was pre-lockdown, pre-George Floyd. I think this is a perfect time for people to be able to reflect, so I really hope that the questions and the answers give people a sense of ownership.

It was quite a daunting project because the original Times Like These is so good! I think the thing that people were surprised about, and that I anticipated, was that most artists dont have recording studios [at home], so they recorded their vocals on a phone. We had to sort of downplay the fact that it would feel pretty awkward and weird for artists to record Voice Notes or use whatever recording techniques that they could, but I really wanted to use the campfire-type approach so that it felt very warm, had a lot of integrity and was all about the sentiment of the song.

We found out that Dave Grohl was gonna appear on the song at the last minute. He wanted to hear how it was going, and we started getting into email conversations with Dave Grohl which was one of the best things Ive ever done in my life! He was feeling what wed done. It all came together, people seemed to respond to it and it went to number one. It more importantly raised a seven figure-sum for charity, which I thought was amazing.

With Stormzy, his trajectory since I first met him has been absolutely incredible. He described what he envisaged for GS&P and I spent a year getting to know him, his friends and his family. To [now] know so much about his influences and see how hes handled the fame and the success, to have released an incredible second record [Heavy Is The Head] and then to have performed that iconic headline performance at Glastonbury one of the best performances, if not the best performance ever is mind-blowing for me.

Its every producer and collaborators dream to see an artist realise their raw talent and momentum. To see all the good that [Stormzys] done in the world, too: his charitable donations, putting students into Cambridge and Oxford, the publishing company hes built to give a voice to young writers. People are using the expression national treasure, but I think its because he has so much to give to the world not only musically, but spiritually as an amazing human that really is changing the world. Im very, very, very proud of him.

Its one of those performances that was so big, it takes you out of yourself in a way. I think on a practical level, the terror that I felt about doing my first-ever piano performance in public was so huge that I just had to really condition myself and focus in on just playing as well as I could while being there for Dave so I could be the rock for him, rather than a quivering mess. We inspired each other on stage, I think. When Dave performed his last verse, coming off the piano and talking about Jack Merritt and all those subjects, I felt this surge of energy come from the crowd. It was really hard to keep my concentration because the power of Daves words just resonated through everybody. It was one of the most amazing experiences ever.

Absolutely. The thing that Im so proud about both Dave and Stormzy is that not only are they superstars, the social conscience that they both possess is so rare, globally. Theres some amazing emerging artists in Africa that have that similar level of consciousness and that mission, like Mr Eazi and Burna Boy. But I think Stormzy and Dave are leading the way in terms of what they can do socially as well as musically, and I think that thats where the sweet spot really is. Weve been bestowed with the gift of music, but theres also something else that music can do that can really help people in a variety of ways and I think theyre both doing that. Im now hoping that 12 Questions can do the same as well.

Fraser T Smiths 12 Questions is out on October 23.

More:
Fraser T Smith on his ambitious debut 12 Questions, producing a Foo Fighters mega-cover and helping launch Stormzy and Dave into stardom - NME

High drama amid furious winds, perilous ocean voyages and murder most yummy

Brief reviews of three books kick off Book Notes return after a bit of a hiatus. Readers, however, have not taken a hiatus. Book lovers of all ages have been busy this summer. Fifteen percent more books sold the first week of August 2020 than sold last year at this time. Juvenile nonfiction saw a 40 percent jump in sales and adult nonfiction saw an 18.9 percent increase in hardcover sales due in part to Mary Trumps book, Too Much and Never Enough.

All the books featured here are written by authors living on Bostons North Shore. Two are nonfiction books on the topics of hurricanes impact on the United States and the engrossing origin story of what is now the Peabody Essex Museum. Both are deeply researched, rich with fascinating detail and first-rate storytelling. The third is a cozy mystery with as much tasty food writing as suspense; happily, recipes for some of the Mexican dishes so lusciously described are at the back of the book.

Collecting the Globe: The Salem East India Marine Society Museum

By George H. Schwartz. University of Massachusetts Press, Amherst and Boston. 2020. Paperback, 296 pages, $28.95.

George H. Schwartz, associate curator at the Peabody Essex Museum and teacher of museum studies at Tufts University, has published a fine book about (among other things) how Salem, Massachusetts one of this countrys busiest ports in 1799 came to be the home of the United States oldest continually operating museum.

Schwartz starts off with the dramatic story of sail in Salem. Great risks at sea led to great wealth and also a keen awareness of cultures far from home. Master sailors and business agents known as supercargoes traded around the world. Complex trade schemes involved Japan, Jakarta, Yemen, China, India, the West Indies and ports along the western coast of what is now the United States. The countrys first millionaire, Elias Hasket Derby, was one of Salems captains who traded in the Baltic and Far East. The ports rise to great prominence, with its 40 busy wharves and growing fleet, writes Schwartz, mirrored the rise of the burgeoning nation.

The East India Marine Society was formed in 1799 by 22 of these pioneering sea captains. Membership was exclusive. Candidates had to have sailed the harrowing seas off the Cape of Good Hope or Cape Horn. Among the Societys aims was to form a Museum of natural and artificial curiosities known as the East India Marine Society Museum. This museum, transformed over time, would eventually become the Peabody Essex Museum that still retains much of the original collection.

The book, says Schwartz, demonstrates how the Society used its collection to support a vision of Americas identity tied to the sea. A fastidious researcher, he tells a story of risk and wealth and cunning. In 1795, for example, Salem captain Jonathan Carnes discovered a place to buy valuable pepper directly from local inhabitants of Sumatra. He went back to Salem and found a wealthy merchant to outfit a schooner he then sailed back to Sumatra where he bought pepper that yielded a 700 percent profit. This trip kicked off what was to be 50 years of lucrative trade for Salem merchants.

Fiction writer Arlo Bates (18501918) described Derby Street, along Salems waterfront, as follows: Derby Street was alive with bustle and excitement; when swarthy sailors were groups at the corners, or sat smoking before the doors of their boarding-houses, their ears adorned with gold rings, and their hands and wrists profusely illustrated with uncouth designs in India ink; when every shop window was a museum of odd trifles from the Orient, and the very air was thick with a sense of excitement and of mystery.

The acquisition of items from abroad meant that Salem residents possessed commodities normally associated with large European cities. Captains built elegant homes and owned art and objects from distant cultures. There were two newspapers in the city, 10 churches, along with schools, banks and much more. The community was, according to Schwartz, on the forefront of the American Enlightenment. It also accounted for 5 percent of the nations per capita income.

It was in this time of largess and cultural awareness that the captains built the museum on Essex Street and displayed some of the 6,400 objects they had collected from around the world. A canoe, kayak, a 6-foot, 7-inch sculpture of the Hawaiian god Kukailimoku, portraits, books, busts, spears and much more were exhibited.

Together, writes Schwartz, the vast ensemble was an organized display of the natural, cultural and spiritual world bound by the sea and open to visual inspection through the efforts of the American maritime trade. In so doing, it opened Americas eyes to a world beyond imagination and to relationships between world cultures that continue to this day.

Nacho Average Murder

By Maddie Day. Kensington Publishing Corp., 2020. Paperback. $7.99.

Award-winning author Maddie Day of Amesbury, Massachusetts, has published another of her increasingly popular cozy mysteries. Nacho Average Murder, set in Santa Barbara, is lots of fun despite the inevitable murder. This book is part of Maddie Days Country Store mystery series that is usually set in Indiana.

Amateur sleuth Robbie Jordan, owner of a restaurant and B&B in Indiana, traveled to her hometown of Santa Barbara for her 10th high school reunion. She meets Paul, a committed activist working to ban a prominent agrochemical companys fumigants. He believed the fumigants were a threat to the regions farm workers and animals. He tells Robbie that her recently deceased mother, who worked alongside Paul, may not have died of natural causes. A few days later he is found dead in his apartment. It turns out he died of an aneurysm, just as Robbies mother had. Robbie begins digging into her mothers and Pauls deaths.

Maddie Day does a fine job capturing the specialness of Santa Barbara. Her writing delivers something more than a virtual vacation to a beloved place. She nails the citys charms, with its miles of coast, the vast rolling expanse of foothills, the farmers market unlike any other for all that it has to offer, the delicious Mexican cuisine made with just-picked ingredients, the sweet and tangy perfumes of orange blossoms and gardenias, and that quirky side not everyone notices. Robbie visits a palm reader while out on a stroll. Madame Allegra tells her to pay attention. Danger lurks.

A Furious Sky: The Five-Hundred-Year History of Americas Hurricanes

By Eric Jay Dolin. W.W. Norton & Co., 2020. 393 pages. $29.95.

I happened to have read most of Eric Jay Dolins new book, A Furious Sky: The Five-Hundred-Year History of Americas Hurricanes, while Isaias was busy declaring itself. Reading about hurricanes while knowing one is headed your way is good and bad. We love weather. We fear weather. Hurricanes, a feature of summer and fall, are reliant on a handful of elements scorching desert air, 80-degee-plus ocean water, moist heated air and a low, horizontal wind shear. While landfall or colder waters can seriously alter their might, a hurricane fully manifest is among natures most deadly and destructive forces. You just never know.

And Dolin is not about to sugarcoat the story.

You can rely on this Swampscott author to dig deep, unearth reams of fascinating anecdotes, seek detailed historical records, and then tie it all together with plenty of his signature, edge-of-the-seat storytelling. Like so many of his earlier books on topics like whales, fur trade, privateering, lighthouses and more, Dolin has a special way of filling sentences with information while retaining your full attention. I brought his book with me everywhere.

He writes that a hurricane is the meteorological equivalent of a temper tantrum on steroids, with moods that rank from a Category 1 to Category 5 with winds that equal or exceed 157 mph. He reminds readers that a measly Category 1 rating is a ferocious thing, ripping off house shingles and siding, uprooting trees and tangling power lines. A No 5, however, is akin to catastrophe.

Dolin had to cover a lot of territory to write about hurricanes. We learn about Morse code, the impacts hurricanes had on Americas early settlers and settlements, the geographical configuration of this country, wars, and even the names of places, like Thacher Island off Rockport, Massachusetts coast. He tells the tragic but riveting story of how a hurricane drowned 21 of 23 people sailing from Ipswich to Marblehead. Thacher and his wifes survival was miraculous but horrific for they had to watch their children and relatives wrenched away by the storms roiling waves.

Books about weather are especially nerve-wracking. While reading A Furious Sky I was reminded of Sebastian Jungers Perfect Storm. He wrote about a Gloucester fishing boat that vanished in a late October, 1991, confluence of storms. Junger covered several related subjects including rogue waves, weather forecasting and harrowing rescues at sea. Dolins book is similarly instructive about related topics.

Dolin, with the benefit of hindsight, looks at the heroics and the mistakes made in the face of furious skies. He investigates the countrys most significant hurricanes including the Great Hurricane of 1938, Sandy, Katrina, Andrew, Camille and those that came much earlier in our history. The book is filled with images and meaty captions. And, like George Schwartzs book on the early days of Salems groundbreaking enterprise, the notes in the back of both books are exciting adventures, also.

Rae Padilla Francoeur is an author and journalist. She can be reached at rae@raefrancoeur.com.

Read more from the original source:
BOOK NOTES: Tied to the sea and other mysteries - Wicked Local Beverly

Our country is deeply divided along racial lines as we continue to try to shake off roughly 400 years of prejudice. Jim Wallis, in his book

Americas Original Sin: Racism, White Privilege, and the Bridge to a New America states unequivocally The United States of America was established as a white society, founded upon the near genocide of another race and then the enslavement of yet another.

Despite major advances in paring back de jure racism, we continue to struggle with de facto racism. Racism is still alive in America, and there are troubling signs that we may in fact currently be losing ground in this epic struggle.

A recent exhibit at the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC intending to encourage a dialogue entitled Talking About Race sparked major controversy as itself being racist. The museum, a part of the Smithsonian, bowed to pressure to remove a chart outlining signs of Whiteness used to describe salient aspects of White Privilege.

Such is the tinder box of political division currently in this nation. We are not even comfortable with posing propositions, regardless of their merit, that encourage debate and seek resolution. The maddening paradox remains as many who adamantly insist they abhor racism as a concept sit idly by while institutional barriers to equal justice perpetuate a definitive racist system.

Civil discourse, if exercised correctly, requires an ability to disagree and reach for a complete examination of the differences that separate those discussing the topic.

White privilege, defined as white people in America hold most of the political, institutional, and economic power, they receive advantages that nonwhite groups do not, is central to our racial division and is a good starting point for a national dialogue on racism.

Civil discourse, if exercised correctly, requires an ability to disagree and reach for a complete examination of the differences that separate those discussing the topic. If we cannot even begin a discussion without extracting concessions on potentially controversial assertions we seriously diminish the value of the discussion and its ultimate conclusions, or lack thereof.

I have often written over the last several decades about the conclusions reached by the Kerner Commission in 1968, a Presidential commission established by LBJ in the wake of riots that ripped through American cities during the 1960s. In short, the Commission concluded Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one whiteseparate and unequal.

If a Presidential Commission on Race were instituted today would they disagree? I sincerely doubt it, in fact I would assert that an objective assessment today might conclude that in fact we as a nation have already arrived at the point where we are two societies, one black, one whiteseparate and unequal.

The Southern Poverty Law Center released a report in March of this year that showed a 55% increase in white nationalist hate groups since 2017. The report also concludes the following: The most powerful force animating todays radical rightand stoking the violent backlashis a deep fear of demographic change. This fear is encapsulated in the conspiratorial notion that a purposeful white genocide is underway and that its driving the great replacement of white people in their home countries by foreign, non-white populations.

We are flirting dangerously with the medieval concept of a closed society, something that is prevalent in dictatorial and authoritarian regimes throughout human history. The very concept of an open, transparent, civil, and democratic society is characterized by its openness, inclusion and diversity. In order for our civilization to move in a forward looking direction we must reject the concept of us and them, and focus on us.

The American experiment in representative democracy has been the gold standard not because we shut ourselves off from the rest of the world, either through destroyed alliances, name-calling or walls to keep others out, but rather through the inclusiveness encouraged by the welcoming light emanating from the torch of Lady Liberty, modeled after Libertas, the Roman goddess of freedom. Her torch symbolizes enlightenment, Liberty enlightening the world. This is what will make America great again.

Our strength reflects our diversity and is our strongest asset. Mahatma Gandhi teaches us Our ability to reach unity in diversity will be the beauty and the test of our civilisation.

Our nation is fast approaching the day when we will be a majority minority population, hence it is in our best interest to develop a civic acknowledgement of the importance of unity through diversity. It is who we are and we must live up to the image we project not only to ourselves but to the rest of the world.

Dr. Martin Luther KingJr., taught us to reject violence in our pursuit of enlightenment and justice. Violence from either side of the ideological spectrum only breeds deeper division and must be rejected. Diversity bonds us together and represents conviction and strength, understanding and compassion, the key ingredients to success.

Lance Simmens

Continue reading here:
Us and Them, or US - LA Progressive

The Indian side said a comment by external affairs minister S Jaishankar on the shared Buddhist heritage of the two neighbours was misunderstood in the Himalayan country. (ANI)

India on Sunday dismissed a controversy over the birthplace of Gautam Buddha and said a comment by external affairs minister S Jaishankar on the shared Buddhist heritage of the two neighbours was misunderstood in the Himalayan country.

The clarification came a day after Jaishankar referred to the teachings of Buddha and Mahatma Gandhi at an event organised by the Confederation of Indian Industries. The remark triggered controversy in Nepal with political parties saying that Buddha, the philosopher and religious teacher who founded Buddhism, was born in Nepal and not India.

External affairs ministry spokesperson Anurag Srivastava said Jaishankars remark referred to common Buddhist heritage of India and Nepal. There is no doubt that Gautam Buddha was born in Lumbini, which is in Nepal, he said.

The Indian side said at the time of the Buddha, who lived in the 5th and 4th century BC, there was no separate nation state called Nepal, and that the Siddhartha Gautama became Buddha after attaining enlightenment in Bodh Gaya, which is in modern day Bihar.

Earlier in the day, Nepals foreign ministry said that historical and archaeological evidence showed Buddha was born in Nepalese territory. It is a well-established and undeniable fact proven by historical and archaeological evidences that Gautam Buddha was born in Lumbini, Nepal. Lumbini, the birthplace of Buddha and the fountain of Buddhism, is one of the UNESCO world heritage sites, a statement by the ministrys spokesperson read.

There were also protests by political parties such as the main opposition Nepali Congress and individuals such as former foreign secretary Madhu Raman Acharya and former prime minister Madhav Kumar Nepal, a top leader of the ruling Nepal Communist Party.

The controversy came against the backdrop of a border row that erupted earlier this year when India opened a new road leading to Lipulekh on the border with Tibet. Nepal responded by publishing a new political map that included Kalapani, Lipulekh and Limpiyadhura, which are controlled by India, as part of Nepalese territory.

Last month, Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli sparked a controversy with his remarks that the real Ayodhya is in Nepal and that Lord Ram was Nepalese.

Read the original:
India rejects Nepals stand on Buddha row - Hindustan Times

As the UK continues to struggle with an ongoing heatwave, things are about to take a turn with at least a week's worth of rain and thunderstorms according to meteorologists.

Many people across the country have complained this week as they struggle to sleep in this humid and unpredictable weather.

To help ensure a good nights rest isnt too heavily impacted by overnight storms, Lucy Askew, a sleep expert at home interiors specialist http://www.Hillarys.co.uk, has compiled a selection of tips.

Invest in earplugs

If you are a light sleeper and loud rain and thunder will easily wake you, then its a wise choice to invest in a good pair of earplugs so you can experience a peaceful and undisturbed nights sleep.

If you are worried about not hearing your alarm the following morning, try inserting just one earplug in the opposite ear you rest your head on, in order to block out as much of the storms noise as possible.

Receive newsletters with the latest news, sport and what's on updates from the Liverpool ECHO by signing up here.

Give essential oils a try

Essential oils such as lavender can help in calming down your body in preparations for a full night of rest.

You can purchase it in a multitude of forms, including a pillow spray, a massage oil or even to add to the bath for a luxurious soak before hitting the hay.

Many light sleepers already swear by the benefits of reflexology, so its a worth a go if the storms are likely to keep you up in the coming days.

Listen to sleep meditation/white noise

Focusing on something specific that distracts your focus away from the outside noise will help with preparing your body for sleep.

Pop in your headphones and listen to some relaxing music or podcasts, or alternatively try downloading one of the increasingly popular apps designed to help users drift off to sleep more quickly.

Plan your sleep

If its crucial for you to rack up a sufficient nights sleep whilst a thunderstorm is predicted, then try to plan ahead and keep checking the weather forecast for when its likely to hit your local area.

If a trusted weather source says thunder and heavy rain is forecast for 12:30am for example, then make sure you are in bed at least two hours beforehand as youll be less likely to wake up if youre already in a deep sleep and significantly into your nightly sleep cycle.

Blackout blinds/curtains

If you havent already, invest in some blackout blinds or curtains for your bedroom.

Creating a pitch-black atmosphere in your room will signal to your eyes and brain that its time to shut down for the night and enjoy some well-deserved rest.

The last thing you need waking you is flashes of lightning creeping through your window in the middle of the night.

Keep up to date with weather in your area by adding your postcode below

Dont worry

Try and get yourself in the right headspace before bed and reassure yourself that one night of poor rest wont be the end of the world.

The more you start thinking about not being able to sleep, the more likely it is that your worries will manifest into a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Find a thunder buddy

Whilst the humid weather can make it almost unbearable to share a bed with someone, having a partner, family member or friend there will bring you comfort if you are disturbed or scared of the noises that a thunderstorm can bring with it.

Read more here:

Expert's simple tips on how to sleep through a thunderstorm - Liverpool Echo