text:
NALLE v. YOUNG(1896)
In addition to his answer, to which a replication was filed, defendant made a reconventional demand, on which, upon a trial thereof, judgment passed against him. November 11, 1884, the cause was revived as to the heirs of Edward Nalle, who had deceased, and they entered their appearance March 24, 1885
Proofs were taken, and the cause was referred to a master to state an account, who made a report of the amount due to Nalle & Co., less a specified credit. The cause coming on to be heard on the pleadings and proofs, and oral testimony then adduced, a decree was entered, November 6, 1886, 'that plaintiff's mortgage on the property described in the act of mortgage annexed to the bill of complaint herein, viz. [here follows description], the said interest of Wade R. Young in the above lands having been ascertained by a survey made by [160 U.S. 624, 627] John Johnson, surveyor, on the 15th of March, 1879, be, and the same is, hereby, recognized, and ordered to be enforced to satisfy the sum of one thousand six hundred and thirty-two 61/100 dollars, with 8% per annum interest thereon from the 1st day of Dec., 1892, until paid, subject to the credit aforesaid, and also for the payment of the attorney's fees stipulated by said act of mortgage, being 5% on said amount, and the costs of this suit, to be taxed.'
An execution was thereupon issued, and the mortgaged premises seized and sold by the marshal, July 30, 1887, to Mrs. Mary Nalle, wife of Eustis F. Golson.
October 12, 1887, Mrs. B. F. Young, wife of Wade R. Young, on motion of her husband as her solicitor, was allowed to file 'her bill and intervening petition, by her husband and next friend,' against Nalle & Co., in which she averred that she was married to Wade R. Young in October, 1865, and resided with him continually in the state of Louisiana until the month of February, 1876; that in the year 1870 her father died in the parish of Catahoula, La., and left her a policy of insurance on his life for the sum of $5,000, which was collected by her husband for her, and by him converted to his own use, and to the use of the community existing between them; that her father also left a large estate, consisting of property, real and personal, which was sold at probate sale in 1881, and her interest therein, amounting to $2,500, adjudicated to her husband for his own sole use, benefit, and advantage, and for that of the community existing between them; and that her husband had so received the paraphernal moneys and property of complainant in the sum of $7,500, which had been converted by him to his own use, and that of the community, and was now legally due complainant by her husband.
The petition further alleged that, by an act of mortgage, in 1868, by Margaret A. Young, William C. Young, and Wade R. Young, as joint owners, St. Peter plantation was mortgaged to Miss Eliza H. Young, to secure their joint and several note for $11,250, with interest at 8 per cent., from January 1, 1867; and averred that, in the year 1876, by a transaction between her husband and Mrs. S. J. Metcalfe, as [160 U.S. 624, 628] sole surviving residuary legatee of Miss Eliza H. Young, and complainant, and undivided four-ninths of that note and mortgage, being the individual indebtedness of her husband thereon, was assigned to her by Mrs. Metcalfe by express warranty; that a new note was then made and delivered to her, and accepted by her in replacement of her paraphernal moneys and property, so secured and converted by her husband. It was further averred that, in 1881, complainant brought suit against her husband for a dissolution of the community and a separation of property in the Ninth district court in the parish or Tensas, and obtained judgment therein on the ___ day of _____ , for said sum of $7,500 and interest, with a recognition of her mortgage on the property described, and a decree dissolving the community of acquets and gains between them; that, in 1882, her husband desiring to execute a mortgage on the property in favor of Nalle & Co. to secure advances of money and supplies to enable him to carry on certain tain planting operations, at the request of Nalle & Co., applied to complainant to renounce her prior right of mortgage in favor of Nalle & Co., by authorizing the canceling and erasure of the inscription of the mortgage transferred to her by Mrs. Metcalfe, so as to give Nalle & Co. the first mortgage; that Nalle & Co. refused to make any advances until given priority of rank; that for that purpose complainant executed a mandate and power of attorney authorizing the canceling and erasure of her mortgage, and 'upon such authority the said mortgage was attempted to be canceled'; that the mortgage to Nalle & Co. was then executed by her husband; and that the inscription of her mortgage was then renewed. Petitioner then alleged that, at the October term, 1886, a decree was rendered, at the suit of Nalle & Co., against her husband for the foreclosure of their mortgage, the amount of indebtedness fixed, and the sale of the property ordered; that final process was issued in execution of that decree, and in obedience thereto the marshal advertised the property for sale for cash on Saturday, July 2, 1887; that on that day the property was appraised, according to the requirements of the Louisiana law, and offered to the highest bidder for cash at not less than two- [160 U.S. 624, 629] thirds of the appraised value, which had been placed at the sum of $6,000, and, no bid having been made, was advertised for sale on a credit of 12 months; that on July 30, 1887, her husband, as defendant, served notice and protest on the marshal of the prior incumbrance in favor of complainant for $7,500 and interest, and that any sale for a price less than the amount of such prior incumbrance would be invalid; that, notwithstanding the notice and protest, the marshal, acting under the direction of Nalle & Co.'s solicitor, accepted the bid of one of them for $ 2,000. Complainant charged that her attempted renunciation of her rights authorizing the erasure of her mortgage was of no effect under the laws of Louisiana, and set forth the grounds on which that charge was based; that her mortgage was the first incumbrance, and superior to the mortgage in favor of Nalle & Co.; that no sale could be made to a purchaser for less than the amount of such mortgage; and that the attempted sale was absolutely null and void. It was further averred that Nalle & Co. pretended to have paid the taxes on the mortgaged property for the years 1882, 1883, 1884, 1885, and 1886, amounting to the sum of $624.60, and to have become subrogated by such payments to the privilege of mortgage existing in favor of the state and parish, and claimed a priority of lien on the mortgaged premises in consequence of such payment and subrogation; that no such taxes were legally due on the mortgaged property; and that Nalle & Co. and Mrs. Mary Nalle acquired no right by such payment and attempted subrogation. The petition then charged that the revenue acts of Louisiana for 1880, 1882, 1884, and 1886, in pursuance of which these taxes were levied, were unconstitutional and void, as repugnant to the state constitution. It was further alleged that, notwithstanding complainant had a first and prior incumbrance for $7,500 and interest, Nalle & Co. did not make complainant a party to the foreclosure proceedings, according to the practice of the circuit court as a court of equity, and had caused the proceedings to be brought in disregard of complainant's rights, and had endeavored to have the mortgaged property sold and adjudicated to one of themselves for a low price, etc.; that if the [160 U.S. 624, 630] renunciation of complainant was invalid, as charged, no valid sale could be made for a price not exceeding the amount of the prior mortgage, and the attempted sale would be null and void; that if the renunciation, for any reason not known to the complainant, was valid and binding, complainant was entitled to redeem by paying the amount of the prior incumbrances, if any such there might be; and that, for the purpose of securing equitable protection, it had become necessary for complainant to intervene in the foreclosure suit, and to oppose the confirmation of the sale, in order that a reference might be made to determine the priority of liens and adjust all conflicting claims.
Petitioner therefore prayed to be allowed to file this intervention pro interesse suo, and that Nalle & Co. (that is, Flower and the heirs of Nalle) be summoned to answer by writ of subpoena served on their solicitor; that the sale of the mortgaged premises by the marshal on July 30, 1887, be not confirmed, but be set aside; that a reference be made, to have the priority of liens determined, and all conflicting claims adjusted; that a valid title be assured to the purchaser, and a sale made for the best interests of all concerned; that the attempted renunciation of her mortgage in favor of Nalle & Co. be declared null and void, and her mortgage recognized as the first and superior incumbrance on the property; that the revenue acts of Louisiana for 1880, 1882, 1884, and 1886 be declared unconstitutional, null and void; that the taxes levied in pursuance thereof be declared of no effect; and for general relief. This intervention was not sworn to, and was signed 'Wade R. Young, Solicitor.' On the 24th of October, 1887, Mrs. Young and her husband prayed to amend their original petition by alleging that, although Young removed, with his family, from Louisiana to Mississippi in 1876, he did not at that time establish a residence in Mississippi, and that it was not until January, 1883, that he abandoned, finally, his intention to return to Louisiana, renounced his residence and citizenship there, and declared himself a citizen of Mississippl, with the intention of remaining permanently.
The copy attached to the intervening petition showed an [160 U.S. 624, 631] act of mortgage, March 18, 1868, by Wade R. Young, William C. Young, and Margaret A. Young, of the parish of Tensas, to Miss Eliza H. Young, to secure their certain promissory note for $11,250, payable, with interest at 8 per cent., one year after date, on the property in question, being part of Lake St. Peter's plantation, with a confession of judgment,-Mrs. B. F. Liddell, wife of Wade R. Young, and Mrs. Willie T. Evans, wife of William C. Young, ratifying said act of mortgage, and renouncing all their rights in the property therein mortgaged, upon due examination, separate and apart from their husbands,-and an acceptance by Eliza H. Young. Upon the record of this mortgage in the parish of Tensas appeared the cancellation of five-ninths thereof, being the indebtedness of W. C. Young, one of the mortgagors, and special legatee for M. A. Young, deceased, leaving four-ninths of the indebtedness of Wade R. Young, for himself, and as special legatee for M. A. Young, leceased, still unpaid; also, the cancellation and erasure of the mortgage, to the extent of the remaining fourninths, on the 5th of June, 1882, under a power of attorney signed by Wade R. Young and his wife, Mrs. B. F. Young, whereby Charles Young, of the parish of Tensas, was constituted and appointed attorney in fact, with full and complete power, in the name of Mrs. Young, to cause the act of mortgage to be canceled and erased. This power of attorney was executed June 1, 1882, in the presence of two witnesses, who signed the act with the parties, as did also the notary. The cancellation and power of attorney were duly certified as correct copies of the original, as the same appeared on file and of record in the office of the clerk of the Ninth district court of Tensas parish.
The act of transfer from Mrs. Metcalfe to Mrs. Young was dated December 2, 1876, and stated that Mrs. Metcalfe, residing in the parish of Catahoula, Wade R. Young, of the parish of Concordia, and Mrs. B. F. Liddell, wife of Wade R. Young, 'herein represented by her special attorney and attornet in fact, Volney M. Liddell, with a procuration hereto annexed,' personally appeared before the notary, an declared that, whereas, Mrs. Metcalfe, as sole surviving residuary legatee of [160 U.S. 624, 632] Miss Eliza H. Young, was the holder and owner of the note of Wade R. Young, William C. Young, and Margaret A. Young for the sum of $11,250, secured by act of mortgage; and whereas, Mrs. Metcalfe was indebted to Wade R. Young for certain sums of money; and whereas, Wade R. Young was indebted to his wife, Mrs. B. F. Liddell, for $7,500, the dotal and paraphernal property of his wife, received by him, and converted to his own use, for the repayment of which his wife had a legal mortgage on the interest of her husband in his father's estate: Therefore Mrs. Metcalfe transferred and assigned to Mrs. Young four-ninths interest in said promissory note and mortgage, being the portion thereof due by Wade R. Young, and bearing on his interest in the St. Peter plantation, and warranted the validity thereof; and Wade R. Young declared that, in consideration of the transfer and warranty by Mrs. Metcalfe, he thereby acknowledged the receipt of the four-ninths interest of the note and mortgage, and granted to Mrs. Metcalfe an acquittance pro tanto of the sums due by her to him; and Mrs. Young declared that she accepted the transfer and assignment of said four- ninths interest, and, in consideration thereof, and of the warranty by Mrs. Metcalfe of the validity of the note and mortgage, joined her husband, 'in so far as the mortgage accorded to her by law to secure the repayment of her paraphernal funds may bear upon the interest of her said husband in the succession of his deceased father, in giving to the said Mrs. S. J. Metcalfe an acquittance and release pro tanto of the sum due by her.' This was signed by Wade R. Young, V. M. Lddell, attorney, S. J. Metcalfe, two witnesses, and the notary public, and a certificate was attached by the recorder of Catahoula parish that the foregoing was a true and correct copy of the original act of transfer and agreement on file in his office, and recorded in its records December 6, 1876. There was also a certificate, under date of October 18, 1887, of the clerk of the Ninth district court of Tensas parish that the foregoing was a true and correct copy of the copy of the act of transfer and agreement, 'as the same now appears on file in my office, and of record there.' The copy of the judgment of Mrs. Young against her husband was as follows: [160 U.S. 624, 633]
This was certified to by the clerk of the Ninth district court as 'a true and correct copy of original judgment rendered in suit of 'Bethia F. Liddell vs. Wade R. Young, Her Husband,' as the same appears on file and of record, in my office, in Mortgage Book O, page 649 et seq., on June 5, 1882.'
On the same day the intervening petition was filed, Young filed what was entitled an 'Opposition to Confirmation of Sale,' in which it was alleged that plaintiffs had attempted to proceed according to the practice of the courts of Louisiana, and in doing so had violated the rules and practice prescribed in the conduct of equity cases in the circuit court; that there was a want of parties; that there existed a prior incumbrance on the property fully equal to or exceeding its value; and that by the laws of Louisiana no valid sale of the property could be made for a price not exceeding the amount of such prior incumbrance. He then set forth the mortgage of 1868, in favor of Miss Eliza H. Young, to secure the $11,250 note; the transaction between Mrs. Metcalfe, his wife, and him- [160 U.S. 624, 634] self of 1876; the judgment of 1881 in favor of his wife for $7,500; the renunciation by his wife of her prior right of mortgage in favor of Nalle & Co.; and the execution of the mortgage to Nalle & Co. to secure the payment of his note for $1,632.61, with interest at 8 per cent. until paid,- and charged the renunciation to have been invalid. The rendition of decrede in favor of Nalle & Co. against defendant decree in favor of Nalle & Co. against defendant the issue of final process in execution of the decree, and the proceedings and sale thereunder, were rehearsed at length, as in the intervening petition; and it was averred that his wife's mortgage was a first incumbrance, and that no sale or adjudication could be made to a purchaser for less than the amount of the mortgage. It was further alleged that the marshal, in the second advertisement of the property for sale on 12 months' credit, required the purchaser, out of the price, to deduct and pay in cash an amount for printing, marshal's fees, and clerk's fees, as well as taxes due on the property, and that much the largest amount required to be paid was claimed by Nalle & Co., or one of them, for taxes alleged to have been paid by them or him on the property, the legality of which was contested by defendant and by his wife; that this requirement was an oppressive and unjust act towards the mortgagor, and deterred a purchaser with whom defendant had arranged to buy; and other irregularities were set forth. As to the claim of the payment of taxes for the years 1882, 1883, 1884, and 1885, and as to the taxes pretended to be due for the year 1886, the payment of which the marshal made a condition precedent to the accepting of any bid, no taxes were due, and no necessity existed for the payment thereof, and that Nalle & Co. acquired no rights by such payment and subrogation; and thereupon the grounds on which the illegality was charged were given at considerable length. Defendant prayed that the sale be not confirmed, and be set aside; that his wife be made, or allowed to become, a party to the suit; that a reference be made to a master to settle the priority of liens; that the renunciation of his wife be declared invalid, and her mortgage for $7,500 and interest be decreed the [160 U.S. 624, 635] first lien on the property, and prior in rank to Nalle & Co.; that the revenue acts of Louisiana for the years 1880, 1882, 1884, and 1886 be decreed unconstitutional, null, and void, and the inscription of the mortgage to secure the taxes be erased, as a cloud, and for general relief. And he further prayed that, if it be determined that the sale was a valid sale, he might be allowed to redeem by paying to complainants the amount of the debt, interest, and costs, and such other sums as might be found to be legally due.
Defendant also filed what he styled a 'cross bill' against the marshal, Mrs. Mary Nalle, and her husband, Golson, and Nalle & Co., alleging the sale of the property by the marshal, and the acceptance of the bid of Mrs. Mary Nalle, notwithstanding a written protest by defendant against the acceptance of any bid not exceeding $7,500, the amount of the prior incumbrance; that the marshal attempted to transfer the possession of the property to Nalle & Co., or Mrs. Mary Nalle for them, by giving complainants' solicitor an order to take such possession; and that the marshal and Mrs. Mary Nalle were now seeking to evict defendant from the possession of his property, and were trespassing thereon, all of which was without color of right; that the marshal had no power to pass the title to Mrs. Nalle until the oppositions to the sale had been tried and determined, and the sale confirmed, and that, even if he had, the sale was absolutely null and void, because the amount of the bid did not exceed the amount of the prior special mortgage; and prayed for an injunction, whereupon a restraining order was issued, and, subsequently, a writ of injunction.
Nalle & Co. demurred to the petition of intervention, and moved to dismiss the opposition and dissolve the injunction. The motion was denied, and the demurrer overruled. Thereupon Nalle & Co. answered the intervening petition of Mrs. Young, and the cross bill and opposition to confirmation of sale of Wade R. Young, alleging that Mrs. Young was, at the time of the erasure and cancellation of her alleged mortgage, to wit, June 1, 1882, a citizen of the state of Mississippi, and, as such, sui juris in every respect, having, under the laws of said state, full capacity as a feme sole to make any contract [160 U.S. 624, 636] whatever; denying that Wade R. Young moved his family to the state of Mississippi in 1876 with the intention of retaining, or that he did retain, either an actual or constructive domicile in the state of Louisiana; averring that the alleged agreement between Mrs. B. F. Young and Mrs. Metcalfe and Wade R. Young, under date of December. 1876, was null and void, for reasons given; and that Mrs. Young and Wade R. Young, were, in equity and good conscience, estopped from setting up her alleged mortgage. Wade R. Young and his wife filed a replication to the answer of Nalle & Co. and others 'to the cross bill and intervening petition.'
The case came on to be heard 'upon the cross bill and opposition to the confirmation of the sale, and the intervening petition,' and the various papers heretofore referred to were offered in evidence, as well as sundry depositions, and 'generally, everything of record in the suit.' On June 9, 1890, the court entered a decree, whereby it was 'ordered, adjudged, and decreed that the sale of the mortgaged property made by the marshal, in pursuance and execution of the foreclosure decree, be set aside, canceled, and avoided. And it is further ordered, adjudged, and decreed that the attempted renunciation by the intervening petitioner, Mrs. Bethia F. Young, of her special mortgage on the property, was and is invalid, and of no effect, and that said mortgage be recognized as the first mortgage on the property, superior in rank to the mortgage of the plaintiffs, E. Nalle & Co., and entitled to be paid by preference. And it is further ordered that the plaintiffs, E. Nalle & Co., pay the costs of the sale and of these proceedings.'
From this decree Nalle & Co. and Mrs. Mary Golson, as purchaser, appealed to this court.
C. J. Boatner, for appellants.
Wade r. Young, for appellees.
Mr. Chief Justice FULLER, after stating the facts in the foregoing language, delivered the opinion of the court. [160 U.S. 624, 637] The proceedings in the state court were ordinary and not executory, and in the circuit court the petition stood as a bill in equity to foreclose a mortgage. The decree of November 6, 1886, was a final decree, and the execution may be regarded as the equivalent of a direction to a master or commissioner to make sale in the enforcement thereof. Under the Civil Code and Code of Practice of Louisiana, judicial sales are conducted by the sheriff or other public officer in the manner minutely described, and adjudicated to the purchaser, who thereupon becomes the owner of the article adjudged. Rev. Civ. Code, Arts. 2601-2621; Code Prac. art. 663 et seq. But in an equity foreclosure in a circuit court, while the requirements of the state law should be complied with, and the forms of proceeding pursued as nearly as practicable, it is proper for the officer who makes the sale to make a report or return to the court for confirmation. Resistance to such confirmation may be made, under circumstances, and this sometimes results in the setting aside of the sale, and an order for a resale. But the scope of these pleadings was much wider. To the confirmation of the sale the defendant, indeed, interposed objections, waiving any formal report for confirmation, but they were not passed upon by the circuit court independently of defendant's alleged cross bill and the petition of Mrs. Young in intervention; and these papers may all be considered together, as they were by the circuit court, and, so treated, they constituted, in effect, an independent suit, brought by Young and his wife, to set aside the sale, and have the alleged mortgage of the wife declared the prior incumbrance and enforced, or for redemption.
The objections in respect of alleged irregularities in the conduct of the sale, or the invalidity of certain taxes, and the requirement of their payment, need not be considered, as they are not sustained by the record, and mere informalities or irregularities in a judicial sale in Louisiana do not constitute a sufficient ground for setting it aside. Stockmeyer v. Tobin, 139 U.S. 176 , 11 Sup. Ct. 504.
The principal objection to the sale was the insufficiency of the bid at which the property was disposed of, and that objection will be first examined. [160 U.S. 624, 638] Under articles 679, 683, and 684 of the Code of Practice of Louisiana, when there exists a special conventional mortgage or privilege on the property put up for sale, the property is sold subject thereto, and the purchaser pays to the officer so much of the price as exceeds 'the amount of the privileges and special mortgages to which such property is subject'; and, in case of sale on 12 months' credit, if there exist on the property any privileges or special mortgage, in favor of other persons than the judgment creditor, and who are preferred to him, the purchaser is entitled to retain in his hands, out of the price, the amount required to satisfy the privileged debts and special hypothecations to which the property sold was subject, but is bound to give his obligation for the surplus of the purchase money, if there by any, and subscribe his obligation at 12 months' credit, with security. But, if the price offered is not sufficient to discharge the privileges and mortgages existing on the property, having a preference over the judgment creditor, there shall be no adjudication, and other property, if there be any, shall be seized.
If, therefore, the mortgage claimed by Mrs. Young was conventional or special, and had been properly recorded, and not legally renounced, and it was prior to that of Nalle & Co., no sale of the mortgaged property could be made under the junior incumbrance of the latter, unless the price bid was sufficient to discharge the prior lien. But, if the prior mortgage was legal or judicial, this requirement did not apply, and the property passed to the purchaser subject to the payment of the prior lien. Alford v. Montejo, 28 La. Ann. 593; Godchaux v. Dicharry's Succession, 34 La. Ann. 579.
The circuit court held that the mortgage asserted by Mrs. Young was a special mortgage, which took precedence over that of Nalle & Co., that her renunciation was void, and, the price bid not being sufficient to discharge this prior special mortgage, that the sale could not be confirmed and must be set aside.
By the Civil Code, the partnership or community of acquets and gains exists between husband and wife by operation of law, unless otherwise stipulated in the contract. The separate [160 U.S. 624, 639] property of the wife is that which she 'brings into the marriage, or acquires during the marriage by inhertance, or by donation, made to her particularly,' and 'is divided into dotal and extradotal. Dotal property the marriage establishment. Extradotal property, to assist him in bearing the expenses of the marriage establishment. Extradotal properyt otherwise called 'paraphernal property,' is that which forms no part of the dowry.' Fleitas v. Richardson, 147 U.S. 550, 553 , 13 S. Sup. Ct. 495; Rev. Civ. Code, arts. 2332, 2399, 2334, 2335.
By article 2337, 'By dowry is meant the effects which the wife brings to the husband to support the expenses of the marriage.'
Article 2383 declares: 'All property, which is not declared to be brought in marriage by the wife, or to be given to her in consideration of the marriage or to belong to her at the time of the marriage, is paraphernal.'
Mrs. Young claimed an indebtedness on the part of her husband to her, arising from his having received the proceeds of a life insurance policy on the life of her father in her favor for $5,000, and the additional sum of $2,500, being an amount which came to her from her father's estate, and was received by him. This was paraphernal property. The wife has a legal mortgage on the property of her husband 'for the restitution or reimbursement of her paraphernal property.' Article 3319. 'Conventional mortgage is that which depends on covenants. Legal mortgage is that which is created by operation of law. Judicial morgage is that which results from judgments.' Article 3287. A legal mortgage results by operation of law, and 'no legal mortgage shall exist, except in the cases determined by the present Code.' Articles 3311, 3312.
Article 2376 declares that the wife has a legal mortgage on the property of her husband for the restitution of her dowry as well as for the replacement of her dotal effects; and by article 2379 it is provided that, during the marriage, the husband may, with the consent of his wife, 'be authorized by the judge, with the advice of five of the nearest relations of the wife, or friends, for want of relations, to mortgage, spe- [160 U.S. 624, 640] cially for the preservation of his wife's rights, the immovables which he shall designate; and then, the surplus of his property shall be free from any legal mortgage in favor of his wife'; while article 2390 is as follows: 'The wife may alienate her paraphernal property with the authorization of her husband, or in case of refusal or absence of the husband, with the authorization of the judge; but should it be proved that the husband has received the amount of the parphernal property thus alienated by his wife, or otherwise disposed of the same for his individual interest, the wife shall have a legal mortgage on all the property of her husband for the reimbursing of the same. The husband may release the mass of his property from this legal mortgage, by executing a special mortgage in the manner required in the preceding section, for dotal effects.' Thus, it appears that a legal mortgage on all the husband's property exists until a special mortgage is executed according to the foregoing provisions, and the law does not contemplate a legal and a special mortgage existing at the same time And the legal mortgage of the wife, to affect third persons, must be recorded in the office of mortgages for the parish where the property lies. Articles 3342-3349.
Mrs. Young must either stand upon her legal mortgage, resulting from the receipt of her paraphernal property, and recognized by the judgment of July 9, 1881, decreeing a separation of property, or a judicial mortgage arising from that judgment, or on the contract between herself and Mrs. Metcalfe, by which Mrs. Metcalfe purported to transfer to her an indebtedness due by Wade R. Young, secured on the property in controversy. If her mortgage be legal or judicial, its existence would not be a bar to the confirmation of a sale for an amount insufficient to satisfy and, moreover, it could not rank the special conventional mortgage of Nalle & Co., because it was not recorded until subsequently.
It is, indeed, insisted that it was altogether invalid under article 2428. 'The separation of property, although decreed by a court of justice, is null, if it has not been executed by the payment of the rights and claims of the wife, made to appear [160 U.S. 624, 641] by an authentic act, as far as the estate of the husband can meet them, or at least by a bona fide noninterrupted suit to obtain payment.' Chaffee v. Sheen, 34 La. Ann. 690; Nachman v. Le Blanc, 28 La. Ann. 345, 346; Bertie v. Walker, 1 Rob. (La.) 431, 432. But this becomes immaterial, as whatever rights, if any, might be claimed under it, it could have no effect as against Nalle & Co. for want of record.
According to Rev. Civ. Code, arts. 3345, 3349, all mortgages, whether conventional, legal, or judicial, are required to be recorded as provided, and the preservation of the legal mortgage or privilege in favor of a married woman depends on the record of the evidence of her mortgage or privilege in the mortgage book of the parish where the property is situated; and that evidence, if not by written instrument, must consist of 'a written statement, under oath, made by the married woman, or her husband, or any other person having knowledge of the facts, setting forth the amount due to the wife, and detailing all the facts and circumstances on which her claim is based.' There was no such evidence as last named here, and no such inscription until after the mortgage to Nalle & Co. had been given and registered. Lovell v. Cragin, 136 U.S. 130, 149 , 10 S. Sup. Ct. 1024.
The transaction between Mrs. Metcalfe, Young, and Mrs. Young appears to have been that, Mrs. Metcalfe being indebted to Young, and Young idnebted to Mrs. Metcalfe, the respective debts were discharged by agreement, and compensated each other, but that it was agreed that Young's indebtedness to Mrs. Metcalfe should be kept alive for the benefit of Mrs. Young, upon the consideration, on Mrs. Young's part, of the release of her paraphernal claims against her husbond. Compensation had, however, taken place, and the two debts were reciprocally extinguished. Rev. Civ. Code, arts. 2130, 2207, 2208.
This was the necessary effect by operation of law; and, when the principal obligation was discharged, the mortgage fell with it, and would not be revived, though the indebtedness were reacknowledged in favor of another. Smith v. McWaters, 22 La. Ann. 432; Davidson v. Carroll, 20 La. Ann. 199; Schinkel v. Hanewinkel, 19 La. Ann. 260.
Again, contracts between husband and wife are forbidden [160 U.S. 624, 642] in Louisiana except as specified. Contracts of sale between them 'can take place only in the three following cases: (1) When one of the spouses makes a transfer of property to the other, who is judicially separated from him or her, in payment of his or her rights. (2) When the transfer made by the husband to his wife, even though not separated, as a legitimate cause, as the replacing of her dotal or other effects alienated. (3) When the wife makes a transfer of property to her husband, in payment of a sum promised to him as a dowry.' Articles 1790, 2446; Carroll v. Cockerham, 38 La. Ann. 813, 824.
This transaction was an attempt to extinguish the wife's general mortgage by the transfer of the special mortgage of a third party, satisfied by the act as between the immediate parties thereto, and, if it could be done at all, it could only be when taking place in accordance with articles 2379 and 2390, and recorded, as required by article 3345; and, as already seen, these articles were not complied with.
But, were this otherwise, the judgment of 1881 did not recognize her alleged special mortgage, which recognition was evidently not prayed for, and recognized only her legal mortgage in complete disregard of her special mortgage if she had had any.
The rendition of judgment for all her paraphernal claims, without any recognition of a special conventional mortgage to secure them, would seem to have concluded the fact that none such then existed, or, at least, furnishes such persuasive proof thereof as must be controlling on this record. Nicolson v. Bank, 27 La. Ann. 369.
Conceding, then, that the renunciation by Mrs. Young is favor of Nalle & Co. was ineffectual, her legal or judicial mortgage, if outstanding, was, nevertheless, subordinate to their mortgage, and not entitled to precedence. In the jurisprudence of Louisiana, and under the statutes of that state, the right of redemption from a decree in foreclosure does not obtain. If a prior mortgage exists, the prior mortgagee is not a necessary party, and purchasers take subject to the prior lien. If there be a subsequent mortgage, the prior mortgage containing the pact de non alienando, as Nalle & Co,'s mortgage [160 U.S. 624, 643] did, the mortgagee therein need not be made a party, but must takenotice of the proceedings to enforce the prior mortgage at his peril. He may, however, apply to set aside the sale on proper grounds. Dupasseur v. Rochereau, 21 Wall. 130; Watson v. Bondurant, Id. 123; Carite v. Trotrot, 105 U.S. 751 .
As heretofore noticed, Mrs. Young and her husband prayed for redemption, which is not, in any foreclosure case, allowable as such; while, so far as their pleadings are regarded as seeking the setting aside of the sale and for a resale, we find no adequate grounds for according that relief.
The decree of June 9, 1890, is reversed, with costs, and the cause remanded to the circuit court, with instructions to enter a decree overruling the objections to the sale of July 30, 1887, dissolving the injunction, adjudicating the property to Mrs. Mary Nalle, wife of Eustis F. Golson, and ordering the delivery of possession to her.


text: Tutorial: No Sew Pillow Sham August 27, 2010 DIY, Home Decor, Tutorials 6 Comments 14951 Alright, I admit it-I'm a total no sew junkie. The truth is that I can sew, in fact I once made a bridesmaid dress that I actually wore in a wedding. I own a sewing machine (thanks to my super sweet and supportive mother-in-law). So why do I continue to do projects like this (and this, and these) that require zero thread? YOU! Yes, you. Because I know that not everyone can sew. Not everyone owns a sewing machine, even if they've sewn in the past. And some of you are probably just as lazy as I am, and don't want to go through the trouble of getting the machine set up and yada yada yada…the iron and Stitch Witchery just call to me, begging for a new project. And I obliged. Here's the deal, I love multifunctional things. Even when it comes to pillows. The fact is that our house is overrun with them (well, according my my pillow hating husband). So when I needed the perfect accent pillow for the bed in the guest room, I looked no further than my own stash. I have 2 pale blue 12" square pillows that hang out in our room, either on the bed or in the chair. So I came up with this idea to make a sham that would hold both of them stuffed together to create a whole new look! It was really easy to do, most of this should be fairly intuitive. Here's what you'll need: Materials: A pillow or two that you want to cover Stitch Witchery Iron On Tape Iron on Velcro (found at craft or fabric store) Iron Fabric, enough to cover pillow(s) Pencil Scissors After you wash and dry your fabric, lay your pillow(s) down on the fabric, fold over the top (saving one side to "sew") and trim to fit with about 2″ to spare around the edges. Next you'll want to hem one side with your tape. I always start by ironing a crease, then tucking the Stitch Witchery in and ironing again. Now fold the fabric in half, and "sew" the side together with your tape. Tuck your pillow(s) in the new pocket to ensure fit and mark the corners with pencil. The tape I used is 5/8″, so I hemmed the fabric on both sides to leave about that much BELOW the mark. Join the sides together down to the end where you've marked your other corner. Now, for the last side, you'll be using velcro. This was my first time using the iron on velcro, but it worked great! Cut 2 "sets" of strips to space out over the length, or really you can just arrange the velcro any way you want that works for your pillow. I ironed one side at a time, you want to iron through the fabric, i.e. not directly on the velcro. Tuck your pillows in, and admire your no sew handy work! Now my pillows do double duty, and this yellow beauty is a welcome pop of color! ****Linked Up**** 6 Responses themefresh August 27, 2010 very nice tutorial.. visit back, please.. 🙂 Reply Sandy Walters August 27, 2010 looks great in my room! Reply Janet August 27, 2010 hey, that's my room hahahahaha and it does look nice! Reply Adventures in Sewing October 14, 2011 […] WPI know I may have developed a reputation as the "no-sew" queen (see some projects here, here, and here), but I couldn't very well leave a brand new sewing machine in the box […] Reply Leave a Reply Cancel ReplyYour email address will not be published.CommentName* Email* Website Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. CAPTCHA Code * Notify me of follow-up comments by email. Notify me of new posts by email. Check here to Subscribe to notifications for new posts

subset: commoncrawl


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CINEMA SCAPE: The Place Beyond the Pines by Derek Cianfrance Starring Ryan Gosling, Bradly Cooper, Eva Mendes & Rose Byrne. In Theaters March 29, 2013
The Place Beyond the Pines
Ryan Gosling, Bradley Cooper, Eva Mendes, Ray Liotta, Rose Byrne, Mahershala Ali, Dane DeHaan, Emory Cohen, Ben Mendelsohn
The Place Beyond the Pines is the new movie from the director of Blue Valentine. Luke (Ryan Gosling) is a motorcycle performer. While passing through Schenectady, NY, he learns that a former lover, Romina (Eva Mendes), has given birth to their son Jason. Luke decides to give up life on the road to try and provide for his newfound family. His employer Robin (Ben Mendelsohn) proposes to partner in a string of bank robberies – which will place Luke on the radar of ambitious rookie cop Avery Cross (Bradley Cooper). Avery, who has to navigate a police department ruled by corrupt detective Deluca (Ray Liotta), is also struggling to balance life with his wife Jennifer (Rose Byrne) and their infant son AJ. The consequences of Avery's confrontation with Luke reverberate into the next generation, when the two sons, Jason (Dane DeHaan) and AJ (Emory Cohen), must face their fateful, shared legacy.


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[Editor's note: Fun site from the United Nations Environment Programme highlighting changes in the natural environment with side-by-side remotely sensed imagery and full write up of each place. Done both in Google Maps and available as a Google Earth feed. Map is fairly decent.]
Republished from United Nations Environment Programme.
Increasing concern as to how human activities impact the Earth has led to documentation and quantification of environmental changes taking place on land, in the water, and in the air. Through a combination of ground photographs, current and historical satellite images, and narrative based on extensive scientific evidence, this publication illustrates how humans have altered their surroundings and continue to make observable and measurable changes to the global environment.
Continue to Interactive Atlas: Google Maps | Google Earth


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The Open Compute Project, which wants to open up hardware the same way Linux opened up software, is starting to tackle its forklift problem.
You can't download boxes or racks, so open-source hardware needs a supply chain, said OCP president and chairman Frank Frankovsky Tuesday morning, kicking off the Open Compute Project Summit in San Jose. Most enterprises don't know how to make their own systems the way Facebook does, so it formed OCP four years ago to spread the gospel of open hardware and eventually build a market for it.
That vision has attracted an impressive array of vendors and customers. New members include Hewlett-Packard, networking players Cisco Systems and Juniper Networks, network chip maker Broadcom, and Samsung. Another new member is Apple, which has a lot in common with Web-scale companies like Facebook in its vast cloud services operations.
Companies looking to adopt this kind of gear include some blue-chip names: Bank of America, Goldman Sachs and Capital One are members.
The idea is that if a lot of vendors build hardware to OCP specifications, IT departments will have more suppliers to choose from for gear they can easily bring into their data centers. Standard hardware can also provide more platforms for innovative software, Frankovsky said.
Now HP and other vendors are starting to deliver OCP systems in a way the average IT department understands. At the same time, the organization is taking steps to make sure new projects are commercially viable rather than just exercises in technology.
The open hardware movement started with huge operators of data centers like Facebook that have the scale and expertise to buy hardware directly from manufacturers and put their own software on it. Most enterprises have stuck with buying conventional, tested products from vendors rather than trying to build open-hardware systems from scratch like the big shops do. OCP wants to give them a way to adopt open hardware more easily.
"It doesn't have to be such a bold choice anymore," Frankovsky said.
HP's entry into the fold marks a big step for open hardware, he said. It announced a line of no-frills servers, called Cloudline, based on standards defined by OCP and by the Open Networking Foundation. HP developed the servers with Foxconn, which is contributing its manufacturing might, and plans to market them to suppliers of Internet-based services like Facebook.
Other vendors, including Taiwan-based network supplier Accton and systems integrator StackVelocity, are also turning OCP specifications into commercial reality. But HP brings a name and a scale of distribution that few can match.
OCP is also looking to business realities when members propose new contributions to the project. It wants the name of a lead customer that wants to buy the technology and the lead supplier that's willing to build it, as well as whether it's available from multiple channels so users will have a choice of where to buy it.
Stephen Lawson covers mobile, storage and networking technologies for The IDG News Service. Follow Stephen on Twitter at @sdlawsonmedia. Stephen's e-mail address is email@example.com


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Call for Papers: Bloodwork
Bloodwork: The Politics of the Body 1500-1900
University of Maryland College Park, 6-7 May 2011
Proposals due by 15 October 2010
Conference Organizers: Kimberly Coles, Ralph Bauer, Zita Nunes, Carla L. Peterson
This conference will explore how conceptions of the blood—one of the four bodily fluids known as humors in the early modern period—permeate discourses of human difference from 1500 to 1900. "Bloodwork" begins with the assumption that the concept of "race" is still under construction and that our understanding of the term would profit through an engagement with its long, evolving, history. Specifically, it asks how fluid transactions of the body have been used in different eras and different cultures to justify existing social arrangements.
Recent scholarship has opened up the question of the continuities and discontinuities between early modern and modern rationalizations of human difference. In early modern England, "race" commonly referred to family lineage, or bloodline, and relied upon pervasive notions of what were believed to constitute the properties of blood. The anxieties anatomized in Thomas Elyot's Boke named the Governour (1537) about the degradation of "race," or the corruption of noble blood, describe the physical technologies by which virtue—both physical and moral—was thought to be conveyed through bloodlines. Daniel Defoe's later satire "A True-Born Englishman" (1708) echoes this rationale for difference. The language of his poem not only insinuates the crossover of the term "race" from family lines to national groups, but also supplies evidence that both kinds of racial ideology—whether affirming social hierarchy or national superiority—rest upon the invisible qualities of the blood. In late eighteenth-century Anglo-America, Thomas Jefferson invokes such notions as "White," "Indian," and "Negro" blood in order to suggest an essential difference between what he calls "the races," a difference that he sees as "fixed in nature," thereby anticipating modern racialism.
A comparative conference such as ours, that is trans-historical and transnational and draws literary critics and historians of cultures on both sides of the Atlantic world, will make a significant contribution to this ongoing debate about the "invention" of race.
Plenary Speakers:
- Colin Dayan (Department of English, Vanderbilt University)
- Michael Hanchard (Department of Political Science, Johns Hopkins University)
- Ruth Hill (Department of Spanish, Italian & Portuguese, The University of Virginia)
- Mary Floyd-Wilson (Department of English, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)
- How does blood rationalize bodily difference in the period in which you work?
- How is blood used as a metaphor in your period? How is it contested?
- How—and why—is the idea of blood transforming? How does it operate in the body?
- What are the physical technologies of the body and how are these pressed into the service of difference? Conversely, how is the rationalization of bodily difference embedded in "scientific" discourse?
- Is religious difference figured in cultural or somatic terms?
- Does the body have a moral constitution?
Please submit abstracts of 500 words for complete panels (abstract plus panel descriptions), incomplete panels, or individuals papers by October 15, 2010 to: email@example.com.


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In 1954, when James (Big Jim) Folsom was running for a second term as governor of Alabama, he drove to Clayton, in Barbour County, to meet a powerful circuit-court judge.* This was in the heart of the Deep South, at a time when Jim Crow was in full effect. In Barbour County, the races did not mix, and white men were expected to uphold the privileges of their gender and color. But when his car pulled up to the curb, where the judge was waiting, Folsom spotted two black men on the sidewalk. He jumped out, shook their hands heartily, and only then turned to the stunned judge. "All men are just alike," Folsom liked to say.
Big Jim Folsom was six feet eight inches tall, and had the looks of a movie star. He was a prodigious drinker, and a brilliant campaigner, who travelled around the state with a hillbilly string band called the Strawberry Pickers. The press referred to him (not always affectionately) as Kissin' Jim, for his habit of grabbing the prettiest woman at hand. Folsom was far and away the dominant figure in postwar Alabama politics—and he was a prime example of that now rare species of progressive Southern populist.
Folsom would end his speeches by brandishing a corn-shuck mop and promising a spring cleaning of the state capitol. He was against the Big Mules, as the entrenched corporate interests were known. He worked to extend the vote to disenfranchised blacks. He wanted to equalize salaries between white and black schoolteachers. He routinely commuted the death sentences of blacks convicted in what he believed were less than fair trials. He made no attempt to segregate the crowd at his inaugural address. "Ya'll come," he would say to one and all, making a proud and lonely stand for racial justice.
Big Jim Folsom left office in 1959. The next year, a young Southern woman published a novel set in mid-century Alabama about one man's proud and lonely stand for racial justice. The woman was Harper Lee and the novel was "To Kill a Mockingbird," and one way to make sense of Lee's classic—and of a controversy that is swirling around the book on the eve of its fiftieth anniversary—is to start with Big Jim Folsom.
The Alabama of Folsom—and Lee—was marked by a profound localism. Political scientists call it the "friends and neighbors" effect. "Alabama voters rarely identified with candidates on the basis of issues," George Sims writes in his biography of Folsom, "The Little Man's Best Friend." "Instead, they tended to give greatest support to the candidate whose home was nearest their own." Alabama was made up of "island communities," each dominated by a small clique of power brokers, known as a "courthouse ring." There were no Republicans to speak of in the Alabama of that era, only Democrats. Politics was not ideological. It was personal. What it meant to be a racial moderate, in that context, was to push for an informal accommodation between black and white.
"Big Jim did not seek a fundamental shift of political power or a revolution in social mores," Sims says. Folsom operated out of a sense of noblesse oblige: privileged whites, he believed, ought to "adopt a more humanitarian attitude" toward blacks. When the black Harlem congressman Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., came to Montgomery, on a voter-registration drive, Folsom invited him to the Governor's Mansion for a Scotch-and-soda. That was simply good manners. Whenever he was accused of being too friendly to black people, Folsom shrugged. His assumption was that Negroes were citizens, just like anyone else. "I just never did get all excited about our colored brothers," he once said. "We have had them here for three hundred years and we will have them for another three hundred years."
Folsom was not a civil-rights activist. Activists were interested in using the full, impersonal force of the law to compel equality. In fact, the Supreme Court's landmark desegregation ruling in Brown v. Board of Education ended Folsom's career, because the racial backlash that it created drove moderates off the political stage. The historian Michael Klarman writes, "Virtually no southern politician could survive in this political environment without toeing the massive resistance line, and in most states politicians competed to occupy the most extreme position on the racial spectrum." Folsom lost his job to the segregationist John Patterson, who then gave way to the radical George Wallace. In Birmingham, which was quietly liberalizing through the early nineteen-fifties, Bull Connor (who notoriously set police dogs on civil-rights marchers in the nineteen-sixties) had been in political exile. It was the Brown decision that brought him back. Old-style Southern liberalism—gradual and paternalistic—crumbled in the face of liberalism in the form of an urgent demand for formal equality. Activism proved incompatible with Folsomism.
On what side was Harper Lee's Atticus Finch? Finch defended Tom Robinson, the black man falsely accused of what in nineteen-thirties Alabama was the gravest of sins, the rape of a white woman. In the years since, he has become a role model for the legal profession. But he's much closer to Folsom's side of the race question than he is to the civil-rights activists who were arriving in the South as Lee wrote her novel.
Think about the scene that serves as the book's centerpiece. Finch is at the front of the courtroom with Robinson. The jury files in. In the balcony, the book's narrator—Finch's daughter, Jean Louise, or Scout, as she's known—shuts her eyes. "Guilty," the first of the jurors says. "Guilty," the second says, and down the line: "guilty, guilty, guilty." Finch gathers his papers into his briefcase. He says a quiet word to his client, gathers his coat off the back of his chair, and walks, head bowed, out of the courtroom.
"Someone was punching me, but I was reluctant to take my eyes from the people below us, and from the image of Atticus's lonely walk down the aisle," Scout relates, in one of American literature's most moving passages:
If Finch were a civil-rights hero, he would be brimming with rage at the unjust verdict. But he isn't. He's not Thurgood Marshall looking for racial salvation through the law. He's Jim Folsom, looking for racial salvation through hearts and minds.
"If you can learn a simple trick, Scout, you'll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks," Finch tells his daughter. "You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view . . . until you climb into his skin and walk around in it." He is never anything but gracious to his neighbor Mrs. Dubose, even though she considers him a "nigger-lover." He forgives the townsfolk of Maycomb for the same reason. They are suffering from a "sickness," he tells Scout—the inability to see a black man as a real person. All men, he believes, are just alike.
Here is where the criticism of Finch begins, because the hearts-and-minds approach is about accommodation, not reform. At one point, Scout asks him if it is O.K. to hate Hitler. Finch answers, firmly, that it is not O.K. to hate anyone. Really? Not even Hitler? When his children bring up the subject of the Ku Klux Klan's presence in Maycomb, he shrugs: "Way back about nineteen-twenty there was a Klan, but it was a political organization more than anything. Besides, they couldn't find anyone to scare. They paraded by Mr. Sam Levy's house one night, but Sam just stood on his porch and told 'em things had come to a pretty pass. . . . Sam made 'em so ashamed of themselves they went away." Someone in Finch's historical position would surely have been aware of the lynching of Leo Frank in Marietta, Georgia, in 1915. Frank was convicted, on dubious evidence, of murdering a thirteen-year-old girl, Mary Phagan. The prosecutor in the case compared Frank to Judas Iscariot, and the crowd outside the courthouse shouted, "Hang the Jew!" Anti-Semitism of the most virulent kind was embedded in the social fabric of the Old South. But Finch does not want to deal with the existence of anti-Semitism. He wants to believe in the fantasy of Sam Levy, down the street, giving the Klan a good scolding.
In the middle of the novel, after Tom Robinson's arrest, Finch spends the night in front of the Maycomb jail, concerned that a mob might come down and try to take matters into its own hands. Sure enough, one does, led by a poor white farmer, Walter Cunningham. The mob eventually scatters, and the next morning Finch tries to explain the night's events to Scout. Here again is a test for Finch's high-minded equanimity. He likes Walter Cunningham. Cunningham is, to his mind, the right sort of poor white farmer: a man who refuses a W.P.A. handout and who scrupulously repays Finch for legal work with a load of stove wood, a sack of hickory nuts, and a crate of smilax and holly. Against this, Finch must weigh the fact that Cunningham also leads lynch mobs against black people. So what does he do? Once again, he puts personal ties first. Cunningham, Finch tells his daughter, is "basically a good man," who "just has his blind spots along with the rest of us." Blind spots? As the legal scholar Monroe Freedman has written, "It just happens that Cunningham's blind spot (along with the rest of us?) is a homicidal hatred of black people."
Finch will stand up to racists. He'll use his moral authority to shame them into silence. He will leave the judge standing on the sidewalk while he shakes hands with Negroes. What he will not do is look at the problem of racism outside the immediate context of Mr. Cunningham, Mr. Levy, and the island community of Maycomb, Alabama.
Folsom was the same way. He knew the frailties of his fellow-Alabamians when it came to race. But he could not grasp that those frailties were more than personal—that racism had a structural dimension. After he was elected governor a second time, in 1955, Folsom organized the first inaugural ball for blacks in Alabama's history. That's a very nice gesture. Yet it doesn't undermine segregation to give Negroes their own party. It makes it more palatable. Folsom's focus on the personal was also the reason that he was blindsided by Brown. He simply didn't have an answer to the Court's blunt and principled conclusion that separate was not equal. For a long time, Folsom simply ducked questions about integration. When he could no longer duck, he wriggled. And the wriggling wasn't attractive. Sims writes:
One of Atticus Finch's strongest critics has been the legal scholar Steven Lubet, and Lubet's arguments are a good example of how badly the brand of Southern populism Finch represents has aged over the past fifty years. Lubet's focus is the main event of "To Kill a Mockingbird"—Finch's defense of Tom Robinson. In "Reconstructing Atticus Finch," in the Michigan Law Review, Lubet points out that Finch does not have a strong case. The putative rape victim, Mayella Ewell, has bruises on her face, and the supporting testimony of her father, Robert E. Lee Ewell. Robinson concedes that he was inside the Ewell house, and that some kind of sexual activity took place. The only potentially exculpatory evidence Finch can come up with is that Mayella's bruises are on the right side of her face while Robinson's left arm, owing to a childhood injury, is useless. Finch presents this fact with great fanfare. But, as Lubet argues, it's not exactly clear why a strong right-handed man can't hit a much smaller woman on the right side of her face. Couldn't she have turned her head? Couldn't he have hit her with a backhanded motion? Given the situation, Finch designs his defense, Lubet says, "to exploit a virtual catalog of misconceptions and fallacies about rape, each one calculated to heighten mistrust of the female complainant."
Here is the crucial moment of Robinson's testimony. Under Finch's patient prodding, he has described how he was walking by the Ewell property when Mayella asked him to come inside, to help her dismantle a piece of furniture. The house, usually crowded with Mayella's numerous sisters and brothers, was empty. "I say where the chillun?" Robinson testifies, "an' she says—she was laughin', sort of—she says they all gone to town to get ice creams. She says, 'Took me a slap year to save seb'm nickels, but I done it. They all gone to town.' " She then asked him to stand on a chair and get a box down from the chifforobe. She "hugged him" around the waist. Robinson goes on:
Mayella plotted for a year, saving her pennies so she could clear the house of her siblings. Then she lay in wait for Robinson, in the fervent hope that he would come by that morning. "She knew full well the enormity of her offense," Finch tells the jury, in his summation, "but because her desires were stronger than the code she was breaking, she persisted in breaking it." For a woman to be portrayed as a sexual aggressor in the Jim Crow South was a devastating charge. Lubet writes:
It is useful, once again, to consider Finch's conduct in the light of the historical South of his time. The scholar Lisa Lindquist Dorr has examined two hundred and eighty-eight cases of black-on-white rape that occurred in Virginia between 1900 and 1960. Seventeen of the accused were killed through "extra legal violence"—that is to say, lynched. Fifty were executed. Forty-eight were given the maximum sentence. Fifty-two were sentenced to prison terms of five years or less, on charges ranging from rape and murder to robbery, assault and battery, or "annoying a white woman." Thirty-five either were acquitted or had their charges dismissed. A not inconsiderable number had their sentences commuted by the governor.


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George Lucas As A Genre
Posted byJ. M. TuckermanPosted inPodcastTags:booked all night, genre, george lucas, harry potter, magical realism, Podcast, susan dennard, truthwitch, we got off topic, YA
Published by J. M. Tuckerman
J.M.Tuckerman is a neurodivergent writer with a big education. She holds an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults, an MA in Writing, and a BA in Writing Arts (specializing in Creative Writing, New Media Writing, and Publication; concentrating in New Media Production), which she somehow managed to earn despite her three very loud and large dogs. Jessica was lucky enough to intern at Quirk Books and Picador, USA while earning her master's degrees. Her service dog, Ringo, is very proud of all that she has accomplished and hopes to be on a back cover of a published book with her very soon. An avid reader, writer, and lover of young adult and middle-grade literature, Jessica's bookshelf is overflowing with hardbacks, paperbacks, and a million half-filled notebooks. She is a proud fur-mommy to two lab/st-bernard littermates, a retriever-mix service dog, and one orange little hobgoblin cat, all of whom have made very audible appearances on the Booked All Night podcast. View more posts


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Using Google Plus: A Guide for Local Businesses
This YouMoz entry was submitted by one of our community members. The author's views are entirely his or her own (excluding an unlikely case of hypnosis) and may not reflect the views of Moz.
Google+ provides a multitude of benefits for individuals and companies looking to promote unique content and help better optimize their website for organic search. But when most small-to-medium sized business owners think of using social media or having a content marketing strategy, Google+ is forgotten and almost always left behind.
Unfortunately, because Google has failed in their attempt to seamlessly integrate their social network in a relevant manner, many local businesses are left dazed and confused by simply trying to set up a company profile page. If you need help setting up a Google+ account, thorough, helpful walkthroughs already exist, but that's outside the scope of this post.
This post is meant to teach you how to utilize Google+ properly to create more exposure for your local business. Assuming your business has a Google+ profile, feel free to use the information below as a guide for social media strategy, SEO tips, and ways to keep your business fresh in the minds of your customers.
Basic Setup and Implementation
Once your Google+ profile has been set up, you can begin using it as another valuable social media asset. However, just creating a Google+ page isn't enough to increase traffic, sales leads, or general interest in your business. Yes, the social network is heavily integrated into Google's search algorithm, but no, magic does not happen simply by having a profile. Before you can create great content, share it with followers, and engage with customers, you must first make sure the profile is fully optimized.
- Verify the website and email address - As a brand page on Google+, it's critical that both your business' website and email address where customers can contact you are verified. Performing these small actions create a sense of authority and trust among users and help the search engine confirm the legitimacy of your business.
On the "About" page of the profile, in the "Links" section, click the "Link website" button in order to complete the verification process. When you click the button, a pop up appears that looks something like this:
Follow the instructions – or email them to your webmaster – and apply the small line of code to your website. When finished, click the "Test website" button. In order to verify the email address, simply click the "Verify" link next to the email in the "Content Information" section. Once you receive the email from Google asking for verification, simply follow the prompts and, "Boom!" You're all set.
- Setting up your circles - Another aspect that differentiates Google+ from Facebook, Twitter, and other popular social networks is the way you connect with other people. Your circles are a way to follow other people's accounts, notify people or brands of your existence, as well as topically organize your circles however you'd like. As somebody who's had to teach people about Google+ in the past, the options circles give you has become one of my favorite parts about the search giant's social network. Whether I've been talking with a social media professional or an oblivious local business owner, the discussion about setting up circles has created the most interest and intrigue on the other end of the conversation. For example, when you create a new profile, the circles are automatically generated like so:
These circles probably don't fit the profiles of your customers, nor are they the most search-friendly way to label and organize your following. Luckily, Google+ allows you to customize the names and number of circles you can have, creating unique branding opportunities.
For example, a local news station may want to create circles of people to follow that can be categorized into each of the sections of its online newspaper. "(city name) News," "(city name) Sports," and others are not only properly labeled and easily identified by followers, but also are more likely to be shared by other people.
If your business can develop an all-encompassing circle of influencers and businesses around a certain topic, it's likely to be identified and shared by local and even national influencers. Additionally, creating a circle of your organization's team members would give followers of the brand an easy way to connect and even interact with your employees.
- Enable authorship for all writers and contributors - If you're familiar with the SEO industry, then you've seen the benefits of authorship when searching in Google. But just in case this isn't an office-wide policy for your local business, it's time to implement it. Research has shown that listings in Google search results that include authorship are more likely to be clicked, regardless of their location on the page. Ranking #1 for a given term doesn't garner as many clicks if listings 3 and 5 have authorship integrated.
Assuming your website has a blog or some other form of fresh content stream, authorship is a must for your contributors. In order to set up authorship, each writer or editor must have a personal Google+ profile. The easiest way to establish authorship is by following the instructions here. Setting this up will allow for greater exposure of content produced by your business and help build credibility toward your brand both locally and nationally.
WARNING: Please make sure you don't set up authorship for pages that aren't specifically produced by a particular author. For example, don't set up authorship for your "About Us" or "Order Here" page hoping to increase organic traffic and sales leads. I've seen this attempted and Google considers this a form of spam. Trust me, it won't end well.
Posting and Engagement
The content you share on Google+ should follow the same rules and guidelines that apply on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, and other social networks. However, ignoring the unique factors that Google+ provides is wasting an opportunity to create search-optimized social posts and expose your brand to customers in more unique ways. Below are some tips and things to keep in mind when posting content about or created by your local business:
- Optimize title tags of posts – The first sentence of each post becomes the post's title tag, which is one of the most important ranking factors and has a large impact on click-through-rate. Similar to the rules of headlines for newspaper articles, make sure the title of the post is intriguing and likely to be clicked by searchers and shared by readers. Additionally, the next sentence of the post is usually what displays as the meta description in the search results page. Are the most relevant keywords and enticing statements included in that portion of the content? They should be.
- When sharing, use the "Link" feature – It seems obvious, but I've seen things this ignored frequently. While you can include multiple links inside each and every Google+ post, the one link that passes value - what we SEOs call a "do follow" link - that search engines measure is the link inserted via the "Link" button. When specifically advertising a piece of content from your website, make sure that's how the link is added. It's better for both users and search engines.
- Index bonus for new content – The rate in which search engines index websites and their pages has a lot to do with how often the website is updated. In this case, sharing new articles and other forms of new content on Google+ has proven to have a correlation with faster indexation of those pages on your website. Google has shown favor toward and rewarded fresh content in the past via the Caffeine update, and sharing via Google+ is one of the greatest ways to ensure it gets your content is indexed quickly.
- Don't forget about editing - You have the ability to edit social posts even after they were originally published! This feature gives Google+ a unique advantage for the content publisher. Be creative! Whether it's adding an image, correcting an error, or making an additional statement or two based on feedback, the possibilities are endless.
- Formatting tips - When crafting the social post, surrounding a word or phrase in "*" will create a bold feature, surrounding a word or phrase in "_" will create an italicized feature, and surrounding a word or phrase in "–" will create a strikethrough feature. Once posted:
- *Words* will appear as Words
- _Phrases_ will appear as Phrases
- -Sentences- will appear as Sentences
- Microblogging is an option - While character limits constrain content length can on other networks, Google+ doesn't prevent you from turning your posts into microblogs. Sometimes the best engagement and sharing on Google+ comes out of a post that, instead of just linking to a webpage, includes a large chunk of that pages' content within the post itself, and then guides the reader to read the rest of the story by sharing the link. If you're really feeling ambitious, posting the entire piece of content as a social share alone – with no link – has also been done and can lead to greater engagement from followers. Don't be afraid to test these strategies to see which work best for brand's followers.
- Sharing strategically – Assuming you've set up uniquely identified circles, take advantage of Google+'s ability to share content only with certain people. For example, a sports story may not always be relevant to share to all circles as its level of detail and expertise would only attract the most avid sports fans. Explore the different combinations of circles and see how followers react to different types of content you produce in order to maximize engagement and sharing potential.
- Encourage +1s - Companies sometimes ignore Google+ because it seems nobody is active on the social platform. While that may seem true on the face, it's an incorrect statement. Google+ is directly integrated into Google search and everyday people are performing search queries while signed in, creating personalized search results that could at any time include results directly from Google+. However, to help grow the following of your account, it would help if you performed the following actions:
- Occasionally promote the Google+ page on your social accounts with biggest following.
- Add a "+1" button to your website in order to allow readers to +1 each article as well as "Like" or "Tweet" it. +1s are (probably) another search ranking factor that help your content get discovered and maybe even ranked higher.
- Hangout with your customers! - Google's Hangout feature on Google+ allows you to get face-to-face with your following and have a conversation with them in real-time. There are countless creative ideas using this tool and is probably worth a day or two of brainstorming with your entire team. Are there questions your customers are asking that would best be addressed on live video? Does your "Frequently Asked Questions" page fall short?
You can also record video and post it to Google+ later, creating a piece of rich media that could be extremely valuable to your following. Recording a conversation about the latest industry news and how it affects your business may calm the nerves of your customers. Or, recording a video of your latest product and showing it in action may give people the reason they needed to go visit your store. For real-life creative examples of Google+ hangout videos, Conan's team has done this really well in the past.
Connecting with Local Influencers
When creating your circles, hopefully you've targeted and added local – and even national – influencers that may have an interest in the content you're sharing. Google+ gives you the unique opportunity to notify an influencer of your presence in a more natural, less awkward way than most other social networks.
Mentioning them in posts, commenting on their posts, adding them to a circle, and more will all notify that person thus increasing the exposure of your brand and getting your content in front of influential people. Without being spammy, your local business can continue to expand it's reach in your city and beyond by introducing itself to powerful people and showcasing unique content.
The Local Carousel and Reviews
When performing location-based queries, have you seen the new carousel feature? I bet you have (see the query for "atlanta restaurants" below). Launched earlier this year, the local carousel is designed to get the most relevant locations nearest you to the top of the SERP in order to help you find the business you're looking for as quickly as possible.
How does one get their business listed in the local carousel? I'm so glad you asked. If you perform multiple queries, it's clear that a number of positive reviews are the best way to increase your chances of moving into the carousel and closer to the far left of it. If your business has long-time customers that you've built strong relationships with, politely asking them to review your business on Google probably isn't asking too much. Google+ Local integration increases the power your local business can have when properly optimized for search.
But not all of the reviews should be done your customers. In fact, it'll look significantly more reasonable when you request reviews if your business is leaving valuable, positive reviews of businesses in and around the local area. David Mihm wrote a blog post on barnacle reviews earlier this year, and after reading it I immediately thought I'd try his experiment in order to increase the exposure of a local business' brand. After a couple months, the experiment was proven extremely successful. I highly encourage you go read the post for yourself, but the short of it goes like this:
- Using your local business' Google+ profile, leave honest, detailed reviews of local businesses in your city. Restaurants, parks, museums, whatever you'd like.
- The most detailed reviews are bumped to the top of the Reviews page.
- If yours is deemed most valuable, that becomes another SERP impression and additional organic search exposure for your brand. Not only does your brand get to interact directly with other businesses, but you also establish yourself as an authority figure in the area.
The Barnacle reviews idea was successful and an incredibly easy way to get additional exposure and traffic. I would highly suggest testing it out with your business page. You won't be disappointed.
Other Practical Google+ Tips
Google+ looks complicated at first, but when you dig into the social platform the SEO impact of utilizing it properly can be tremendous. Here are some other hands-on tips for using Google+ in an impactful way:
- Get people to share and promote your content using the +1 button
- Comment on other people's posts as the brand
- Encourage engagement and interact with your followers
- Add influential people – especially in your local area – to your circles
- Make it easy for people to know you have an active G+ profile
What are some of the best ways you've seen Google+ used by smaller brands? While I'm known as a Google+ expert to most of my friends and colleagues, I by no means have an all-encompassing knowledge of the social network. If I've left out some key strategies or ideas, please let me know in the comments.


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Is immortality real?
Science has isolated the immortality gene. We have death genes and immortal genes. According to * University of London's study of genes it's been concluded that genes do remember. Actually we bombrad our DNA with messages, good and bad, thoughts and emotions, words and ideas; all influence our genetic makeup. And, even now as you read this blog.
* [University College London (UCL) published its findings in 2006 in the European Journal of Human Genetics; see Emma Whitelaw, "Epigenetics: Sins of the fathers, and their fathers," European Journal of Human Genetics, February 1, 2006; http://www.nature.com/ejhg/journal/v14/n2/full/5201567a.html%5D
We carry war genes as well as peace genes. The nature of war is explosive, while the nature of peace is healing, soothing, restoring and never exploding.
Have you heard of the spontaneous human combustion? There have been two hundred reported cases over the last three hundred years.[i] What about the unreported cases? A living body going up in flames without any apparent external source of ignition is indeed a very strange phenomenon. But, this extreme example shows that the inner peace must be taken seriously. The past lives' demonic energies are so loaded with unrest, war, destruction and bloodshed; that eventually these entities manifest themselves in those involuntary combustions. Our chemical acidity increases not only because of the foods we consume, but also because of the strife we have inherited from our family gene pool; and outward projections of that warlike inner state. Peacemakers live and keep on living.
A book Excerpt
Numerous excavations in the Middle East keep on confirming the accuracy of the biblical record, and it is our task to arrive at logical conclusions. We do not diminish our faith in God, but rather augment it for then our faith is "smart" and no longer blind. Adam was only called to replenish (Genesis 1:28) the earth, naturally speaking, with his type. Instead of studying this record we bemoan the fall of Adam and Eve as if that fall was final and irreparable. Adam and Eve did not fall, but only transgressed the first and the ever given commandment. The faculty of contrast was a later addition. The contrast of "yes" and "no" came after they had learned the con-sequences, which was also temporary. God's creation continues. Formation and reformation also continues through education.
The peace ways educate us in the divine. The war ways only educate us in the history of this world. Now, the choice is yours, as to which education will you avail yourself with? Adam and Eve were very much spiritual beings, as much as they were physical, but the physical part of their development had to be taught for it is so to this day. Right education can turn you into a moral person and morality has to do with our behavior toward one another. Education is only a vehicle that brings us to our destination at which point we not only learn more, but also brings functionality. A university graduate uses his or her education for practical applications on the job. Their knowledge qualifies them to do something others are not qualified to do. Education also includes mistakes and their corrections, until the prefect is attained. Would God mind the fall of His children and not correct them? Would He not give them the proper education—and guide them into the fullness of righteousness, and the knowledge of Himself, and the laws that govern His kingdom—without the provision of repentance, and therefore also correction? – Of course not. The compassionate loving God is still in the business of educating us, but does this education of His infuse us with knowledge of His laws, His ways, and the "Spiritual Physics" that govern His realm? Or, perhaps we chose only a one-sided education of just the natural? We learn physics, biology, history, geography and economics, etc, but God seems to be stuck in a picture frame called religion. 'Don't you touch it lest He should jump out of the frame and directly affect your life?' But, if that happens to anyone then we either don't believe it or adopt a dumbfounded look, or out-right call it false, for after all, the miraculous does not fit in that narrow box of ours. When Adam had "ALSO" become flesh; his endlessness of days was limited to just 120. (Genesis 6:3) The incredible violence and constant aggressive behavior could not continue indefinitely. I am after another hunt. I hunt for true immortality.
That immortal gene also resides in us. The light this gene carries must be paid attention to. "Doctors are using genes to help people with blindness, clogged arteries and other issues. After years of complex research there are signs that gene therapy can fix what doctors once thought were untreatable diseases. A man once blind can now see… and a woman who had trouble walking… is now on her feet and working out with an intensity she never imagined." My point is this: these are just scraps of information we glean from research, for we know that genes carry healing, and as well as deadly properties; and they do remember. Repentance deals with a complete return to the Creator, and His original design, and I believe that it is solely our responsibility; hence, it comes down to our resolve and determination. As a solution to man's sick appetite for killing; death became the solution. Death is the final and forced-upon permanent peace. Earth could not endure the violent and perverse ways of its custodians. The rulers of this planet became its subjects. Ever since then, man carries wrath and malice in his bones, and even now tries to avoid a direct confrontation with this issue. The earth keeps opening its mouth swallowing all the sinners, and transgressors, into its dark corridors.
Later on in religion, man started to mystify death, and then blamed it all on Adam's transgression. In atheism, man became just another mammal. God is viewed as some sick sadist who enjoys frying people in hell for eternity just because they have supposedly rejected some religious frame. To this day we view God through our skewed eyesight. Being unwilling to come out from our skin and then see us from His point of view, but that would be already too much to ask. That's how much we are attached to our 'skin'… until one day we must altogether part with it. But, it was never God's plan.
We love our free will and we dread it; as a result we mismanage it. Either we accept the fact that we are endowed with the independent free will, when it comes to peacemaking, which is the work of righteousness (Isaiah 32:17), or we reject it. Even when God called Jonah to Nineveh, Jonah had the free will to not go and that's what he did. Even when the fish spewed him out, Jonah could have gone his own way. But, God would have to replace Jonah with someone else. But watch this, after Jonah completed his mission, his free will was there to guide him wherever he wished to go. God did not interfere with Jonah's will. Gideon did God's bidding, but after he finished the job Gideon returned to idolatry.