суббота, 4 апреля 2009 г.

Charlotte Brontë





Charlotte Brontë was born 21 April 1816, third of the six children of Patrick Brontë and Maria Branwell Brontë. The major event of her young life was the death of her mother in 1821, which created a lot of chaos. In 1824, Charlotte and her two older sisters, Maria and Elizabeth, were sent to the newly-opened Cowan Bridge Clergy Daughters' School.

Conditions there were bad even by the standards of the time, and it was not long before both Maria and Elizabeth became ill enough to be sent home, where they both died of consumption in the spring of1825. Patrick brought Charlotte and her younger sister Emily, who had recently joined them at the school, back home as soon as the other girls became ill, but Charlotte in particular never forgot what the school had been like.

The surviving kids all became each others' best friends. They created the kingdom of Gondal and wrote all kinds of epic stories and poems set in that realm. Charlotte and Branwell were in charge of Angria proper, while Emily and Anne (the youngest) ran the neighboring kingdom of Gondal.

Charlotte's next adventure was going to school in Brussels with Emily in 1842. Charlotte's time there was brief, less than two years, but it led to her eventual writing of Villette beginning in 1852.

Back home, Charlotte lapsed into chronic unemployment and severe hypochondria, actually thinking she was going blind, just like her father was. In 1846 the three sisters published a book of Poems, and though sales were very slow, the reviews were good and spurred on further literary endeavours. Charlotte's novel of this time, The Professor, was actually rather bad, suffering from a less-than-believeable main character. In August of 1846 Charlotte began work on Jane Eyre. Though it was published in 1847, Charlotte didn't tell her father about it until the next year, when the novel's success was plain.

This success was followed up by tragedy, however. In September 1848, Branwell died, probably due to his extrememly heavy drinking; this was closely followed by Emily's death from consumption in December 1848, and Anne's death of the same disease in May 1849. Bereft, Charlotte and her father clung to each other for support. Charlotte's grief is plain in the last third of her novel Shirley, which she'd been working on when all the death started.

Eventually, Charlotte started spending some time in London, meeting other writers of the day. Thackeray in particular was a fan of her works, and, when she attended one of his lectures, she found herself loudly and very publicly introduced to Thackeray's mother as "Jane Eyre".

Her father's curate, Arthur Bell Nicholls, proposed to Charlotte in December, and Patrick was absolutely furious, forbidding the marriage and saying some rather awful things about Arthur. This was the one thing that could possibly have gotten Charlotte to seriously consider marrying him, which she did, in June of 1854.

Marriage seemed good for Charlotte, though her best friend from school, Ellen Nussey, was extremely jealous of Arthur suddenly taking up all of Charlotte's attention. No one got to monopolize Charlotte's attention for very long: she died on 31 March 1855, of what was listed on the death certificate as "exhaustion".

Fortunately for Arthur and Patrick, they'd learned to get along. They were of great comfort to each other after Charlotte's death, which for some reason, was the signal for a lot of gossip, some of it malicious, in the newspapers and magazines. To counteract this, Patrick and Arthur eventually asked Mrs. Gaskell, an author friend of Charlotte's, to write an authoritative biography. Unfortunately for them, Mrs. Gaskell got nearly all of her information from Ellen Nussey, who took great advantage of this to make Arthur seem a villain, and Patrick ended up represented as a stern, overbearing father. This was all accepted as true for many years, and made all of Charlotte's critics suddenly feel sorry for her.

Vegetarianizm and Types of Vegetarians


Vegetarianism as a concept encourages the inclusion of plants and plant based products from the diet and discourages the consumption of animal flesh of any sort. However, with time vegetarianism has evolved to become a concept, which is pursued and practiced according to individual preferences of nutrition as well as tastes. Vegetarianism has thus evolved to contain several branches or different types of vegetarians.

Types of Vegetarians

Some people eat eggs but claim to be vegetarians. Some of them love the vegetarian cuisine but cannot give up the non-vegetarian delicacies. There exists a name for all sorts of vegetarians.
Vegans: Strict vegetarians who do not eat meat of any kind, eggs, dairy products, or even do not consume processed foods containing any animal-derived ingredients such as gelatin are termed as vegans. There also includes a subset of vegans who call themselves as ‘raw vegans’ who only consume unprocessed vegan foods.
Fnsruitaria: Some people have carried the concept of vegetarianism to another extreme wherein the people only eat fresh fruits, these people are called fruitarians.
Lacto-ovo-Vegetarians: Vegetarians who do not eat pork, beef, poultry, fish, or animal flesh of any kind, but do consume eggs and dairy products are called lacto-ovo vegetarians.
Lacto Vegetarians: Vegetarians who do not eat any type of animal meat or even poultry and eggs but consume milk are called lacto vegetarians.
Ovo Vegetarians: Vegetarians who do not eat any kind of animal flesh or meat, and do not even consume milk, but eat eggs are called ovo vegetarians.
Pescatarian: Pescatarians are those who refrain from eating all types of meat with the exception of fish. Usually this type of diet results owing to the demand for nutritional requirements fulfilled by fish.
Flexitarians
: Flexitarians are those who mostly stick to a vegetarian diet but occasionally eat meat.
Pollo-Vegetarians: People who eat poultry, such as chicken, turkey, and duck but no other type of animal flesh and meat and the regular vegetarian ingredients are termed as pollo vegetarians.

Our dear friends- hamsters




Hamsters are mammals that belong to the rodent family having large incisor teeth that are continually growing necessitating gnawing to prevent the teeth from overgrowing. The word 'rodent' is derived from the latin word 'rodere' which means 'to gnaw'.

Hamsters form the Family Cricetidae which is broken down into different Genera (including Cricetulus, Phodopus and Calomyscus). Within each Genera are various species of hamster. There are many different species of hamsters throughout the world and most hamsters inhabit semi-desert areas where they live in burrows. These burrows consist of many tunnels and separate chambers including chambers where the hamster will store food and sleep. Hamsters are nocturnal, sleeping during the hot days and waking in the cooler evenings. They have very poor eyesight but a keen sense of smell and excellent hearing.

Most species of hamsters have expandable cheek pouches in which they can carry food and bedding back to their burrow where they will store food. The word 'hamster' comes from the German word 'hamstern' which means 'to hoard'.

Only a few hamster species are widely kept as pets but the hamster is the most popular of the smaller rodents kept as a pet in many countries today.