FYI June 18, 2018

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On This Day

1900 – Empress Dowager Cixi of China orders all foreigners killed, including foreign diplomats and their families.
Empress Dowager Cixi1 (Chinese: 慈禧太后; pinyin: Cíxǐ Tàihòu; Manchu: Tsysi taiheo; 29 November 1835 – 15 November 1908), of the Manchu Yehenara clan, was a Chinese empress dowager and regent who effectively controlled the Chinese government in the late Qing dynasty for 47 years from 1861 until her death in 1908.

Selected as an imperial concubine of the Xianfeng Emperor in her adolescence, she gave birth to a son, Zaichun, in 1856. After the Xianfeng Emperor’s death in 1861, the young boy became the Tongzhi Emperor, and she became the Empress Dowager. Cixi ousted a group of regents appointed by the late emperor and assumed regency, which she shared with Empress Dowager Ci’an. Cixi then consolidated control over the dynasty when she installed her nephew as the Guangxu Emperor at the death of the Tongzhi Emperor in 1875, contrary to the traditional rules of succession of the Qing dynasty that had ruled China since 1644.

Although Cixi refused to adopt Western models of government, she supported technological and military reforms and the Self-Strengthening Movement. She agreed with the principles of the Hundred Days’ Reforms of 1898, but feared that sudden implementation, without bureaucratic support, would be disruptive and that the Japanese and other foreign powers would take advantage of any weakness. She placed the Guangxu Emperor, who she thought had tried assassinate her, under virtual house arrest for supporting radical reformers. After the Boxer Uprising led to invasion by Allied armies, Cixi initially backed the Boxer groups as defenders of the dynasty and declared war on all the invaders. The ensuing defeat was a stunning humiliation. When Cixi returned to Beijing from Xi’an, where she had taken the emperor, she became friendly to foreigners in the capital and began to implement fiscal and institutional reforms that began to turn China into a constitutional monarchy. The death of both Cixi and the Guangxu Emperor in 1908 left the court in the hands of Manchu conservatives, a child, Puyi, on the throne, and a restless, rebellious public.

Historians both in China and abroad have debated her reputation. The long time view portrayed her as a ruthless despot whose reactionary policies led to the fall of the Qing dynasty. Revisionists suggested that reformers and revolutionaries succeeded in blaming her for long term problems beyond her control and that she prevented political disorder, was no more ruthless than other rulers of her time, and that she was an effective reformer in the last years of her life.[1]

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Born On This Day

1900 – Vlasta Vraz, Czech-American relief worker, editor, and fundraiser (d. 1989)
Vlasta Adele Vraz (June 18, 1900 — August 22, 1989) was a Czech American relief worker, editor, and fundraiser. She was director of American Relief for Czechoslovakia, and president of the Czechoslovak National Council of America. In 1949 she was arrested by Czech authorities on espionage charges, but quickly released after pressure from the United States.

Early life
Vlasta Adele Vraz was born in Chicago and raised in Czech California, South Lawndale, Chicago. Her father was Enrique Stanko Vraz (1860-1932), a naturalist and explorer born in Bulgaria to Czech parents.[1] Her mother was also called Vlasta Vraz (1875-1961).[2] Her maternal grandfather August Geringer (1842-1930) published a Czech-language Daily, Svornost, in the United States, starting in 1875.[3]

Career
She lived in Prague as a young woman, from 1919 to 1939, at first helping her father who was lecturing there before he died in 1932. During World War II she returned to the United States with her widowed mother, and was a secretary in Washington, D. C. for the Czech government in exile. In 1945, she was back in Prague, directing American Relief for Czechoslovakia.[4] She was responsible for distributing $4 million in food, medicine, clothing and other supports. She was inducted into the Order of the White Lion by Jan Masaryk in 1946, for her relief work. But in 1949, Vraz was arrested by the Communist authorities, on espionage charges, sparking protests from the United States.[5]

Upon release after a week in custody,[6] Vraz returned to the United States,[7] where she became president of the Czechoslovak National Council of America, and edited two national publications for the Czechoslovak-American community.[3] She was called upon for reactions during the 1968 Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia.[8]

Personal life
Vlasta Vraz died in 1989, aged 89 years.[3] Her remains were buried in the Bohemian National Cemetery in Chicago, near those of her mother and her brother, Victor E. Vraz, an economics professor at Northwestern University. Some of her papers are in the Geringer Family Papers, archived at the Chicago History Museum.[9] The rest of her papers was bequeathed to the Náprstek Museum in Prague, Czech Republic. The same institution owns extensive personal papers of her father Enrique Stanko Vráz.

 
 
 
 

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Design Luck Community

Hi there,

Thank you for taking the time to join me.

Let’s get into it.

….

Here is the new article of the week:

The Best Way to Understand Reality – It’s rumored that Nikola Tesla could envision his complex inventions in his mind and then recreate them exactly as he predicted without any drawings to guide him and any mistakes to derail him. In this piece, I talk about what I think is the most effective way to interact with the world (Pocket).

Here is another piece that I wrote:

The Most Important Skill Nobody Taught You – It’s solitude; the art of being alone. A few thoughts here about the perils of connection and why most of us aren’t quite addicted to specific things but more so to a state of anti-boredom (Pocket).

A quote that I’ve been pondering:

“I’m a human being who remained independent, resisted conditioning, never belonged to any religion, political party, organization, nation, race. I’ve been myself, without any adjective. That has given me integrity, individuality, authenticity, and the bliss of fulfillment.” – Osho

A book that I’ve been enjoying:

Models of My Life – This is the autobiography of Herbert Simon, a polymath who made contributions to psychology, artificial intelligence, and information science. Oh, and he also won the Nobel Prize in Economics on the side. A forewarning – the book is fairly expensive. It’s also a little long at times, and not for everyone, but I liked it.

An idea that I’ve been playing with:

Memes (or ideas) survive and replicate in culture just like genes do in bodies; the effective endure. If something has beat the test of time and you can’t see its value, it’s more likely that you are wrong and don’t understand what is at play than the thing in question being useless. The wisdom of nature almost always prevails.

An interesting question to think about:

If you had to live this life again and again for eternity, would you be happy with that?

….

As always, thoughts and criticisms are more than welcome, too. Press reply.

Talk soon,

Zat Rana

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