SOMASI UNTUK PARTAI YANG MENGGUNAKAN GAMBAR GUS DUR
saco-indonesia.com, Istri mediang Gus Dur atau KH Abdurrahman Wahid, Hj Sinta Nuriyah Wahid telah menegaskan, jika ada salah satu partai yang akan menggunakan gambar almarhum suaminya itu, sama saja dengan mencuri. Sebab, itu pernah diwasiatkan oleh Gus Dur sendiri, sebelum wafat. Siapa saja atau lembaga apapun untuk dapat disomasi jika menggunakan gambarnya.
Hal ini telah disampaikan oleh Sinta Nuriyah saat menjadi pembicara di acara Partai NasDem di Surabaya, Jawa Timur, Kamis (26/12). Menurut Sinta Nuriyah, dia dan almarhum suaminya itu tidak membatasi harus ada di mana.
"Saya juga mengatakan ada di mana-mana. Gus Dur juga ada di mana-mana. Saya ada di Hanura, ada di Gerindra, dan ada di partai manapun. Sekarang saya ada di Partai NasDem, kecuali di satu itu (PKB)," tegas Sinta.
Lalu kenapa gambar Gus Dur digunakan sebagai sarana untuk kampanye di Partai Kebangkitan Bangsa (PKB)? Pada baliho calon legislatif (caleg) dari PKB, terdapat gambar Gus Dur dan tulisan: Penerus Perjuangan Gus Dur.
"Saya telah menegaskan, sebelum wafat, Gus Dur berwasiat. Dalam surat wasiat yang telah ditulis melalui pengacara dan ditandatangani oleh Gus Dur itu, beliau berpesan: Barang siapa yang menggunakan gambar dan kata-kata beliau, maka mereka berhak disomasi. Itu harus disomasi," kata Sinta Nuriyah saat menceritakan isi surat wasiat Gus Dur yang telah dibuat pada tahun 2008 lalu , pasca dibuang oleh PKB.
Sementara dalam menghadapi Pemilu 2014 mendatang, PKB yang telah menyingkirkan Gus Dur justru mengklaim, sebagai partai penerus perjuangan Gus Dur.
Bahkan, Sinta Nuriyah telah menyatakan, penggunaan gambar itu sama saja dengan mencuri. Penggunaan gambar Gus Dur yang telah dilakukan oleh PKB itu tanpa izin dan sepengetahuan keluarga Gus Dur.
"Itu namanya nyolong (mencuri), dan harus segera di turunkan," tegas Sinta Nuriyah tanpa menyebut partai yang menggunakan simbol-simbol milik Gus Dur.
Cucu pendiri Nahdlatul Ulama itu, saat ini juga sudah menjadi milik bangsa Indonesia. Sebagai guru bangsa. Namun, kata Sinta Nuriyah, untuk wilayah politik, Gus Dur punya 'rumah' sendiri.
"Gus Dur memang sudah menjadi milik bangsa. Namun, untuk masalah politik, Gus Dur juga punya rumah sendiri. Jadi kalau ada yang menggunakan gambar dan kalimat Gus Dur untuk kepentingan politik, inilah yang harus disomasi," tandas dia.
Editor : Dian Sukmawati
> SOMASI UNTUK PARTAI YANG MENGGUNAKAN GAMBAR GUS DUR
Aku mengenalnya semenjak aku berusia 5 tahun, tapi mulainya rasa itu ada ketika aku duduk di kelas 4 SD, semenjak itu aku merasa aneh, karena usiaku juga masih terbilang kanak2. Entah apa yang aku rasa saat itu, aku tak mengerti apa yang sedang terjadi kala itu, aku seperti orang yang tak tentu arah.
Saat aku sadari ternyata aku mulai suka, ya aku suka untuk yang pertama kali pada seseorang. Namun aku tak mampu melakukan apa yang ingin aku lakukan. Aku hanya mengaguminya dari kejauhan, aku hanya mampu melihat senyumnya dari sini dari tempatku duduk kala itu. Aku melihatnya tertawa dan melihat bermain bola di lapangan itu, apa lagi saat kita bermain dan kejar2an. Aku sungguh suka... Laki laki yang aku pandang terlihat tampan dengan gayanya yg khas dan aku suka itu. Matanya sangat indah, rambutnya yang agak kriting menambah getaran dalam dada ini. Huuuuh aku suka dia, benar-benar suka dia.
Rasa ini semakin hari semakin dalam. Setiap hari yang aku ingin hanya memandang wajahnya. Suatu hari aku melihat tatapan matanya, tatapan mata yang sangat sejuk. Yang mampu membuat jantung ini berdegup lebih cepat. Dan akhirnya aku mulai bisa dekat dgn dia, karena saat itu aku dukuk 1 bangku dengannya,1 minggu itu. sangat menyenangkan, aku merasa sangat bahagia.
Hingga suatu hari, apa yang aku takutkan terjadi, dia pergi. Pergi tanpa pesan terakhir. Kini, hanya ada aku dan kenangan itu. Aku hanya mampu mengingatnya, mengingat semua senyumnya dan tatapan indah itu. Aku berjalan gontai sambil meneteskan air mata, air mata kehilangan. Dia, takkan pernah tau betapa sakitnya aku saat itu, saat dia pergi dariku. Aku tak mampu berkata apapun, aku hanya menangis dalam diam, menyesali semuanya. Aku mencoba tegar, aku mencoba terus untuk menutup luka ini, luka yang kau beri. Aku mencoba bahagia dgn apa yg aku milikki saat itu. Aku mencoba bertahan dgn senyumanku.
"Yaa Allah, jaga dia selama dia jauh dari sisiku". Dan saat itu aku mulai sadar, inilah cinta pertamaku. Di dalam penantianku, ada seorang pria datang dgn membawa sejuta cinta. Aku masih ingin diam, dan diam menunggu cintaku kembali dalam pelukku. Namun kehadirannya membuat aku tertawa seperti dulu, tetapi sungguh dalam hati ini masih ada nama cinta pertamaku. Aku hanya mampu tertawa sesaat saja, setelah itu kembali menangis dalam diamku, dalam penantianku. Untuk sementara waktu, sakitku terobati oleh kehadirannya di dalam sepiku. Namun hanya sementara dan setelah itu kami berpisah...klik di sini untuk kelanjutan nya .
SURABAYA, Saco-Indonesia.com- Pusat Riset Penyakit Tropis
Universitas Airlangga Surabaya menemukan senyawa aktif pada ekstrak batang pohon cempedak
(Artocarpus champeden) dan sambiloto (Andrographis paniculata). Pada uji
klinis, ekstrak cempedak dapat menyembuhkan pasien malaria dalam waktu lima hari pengobatan.
Demikian disampaikan Aty Widyawaruyanti selaku Ketua Tim Riset Obat Antimalaria di
Institut Penyakit Tropis Universitas Airlangga, Kamis (16/5/2013), di Surabaya. Penjelasan ini
disampaikan saat kunjungan wartawan yang diadakan Kementrian Riset dan Teknologi.
Dalam penelitian, jelas Aty yang juga peneliti dari Fakultas Farmasi Unair, diketahui
beberapa senyawa aktif flavonoid terutama heteroflavanon C diketahui dpt melumpuhkan parasit
malaria. "Uji klinis saat ini telah sampai pada fase kedua, yaitu pemberian pada pasien
malaria," ujar Aty.
Pengujian tahap kedua melibatkan 60 pasien. Pada pengobatan
diberika dosis 2 tablet sehari. Setelah beberapa hari pasien tidak demam dan menggigil. Pada
hari kelima pasien sembuh.
Untuk dapat diproduksi dan dipasarkan, masih diperlukan dua
tahap lagi dengan melibatkan lebih banyak pasien, " urainya. Obat ini juga harus
ditinjau oleh Badan Pengawasan Obat dan Makanan.
Cempedak sebagai obat malaria yang
diteliti sejak tahun 2001 kini telah memperoleh paten untuk proses ekstraksi dan isolasi senyawa
aktif. Pendaftaran patennya sebagai obat antimalaria. Bahan herbal yang dinamai Artoner ini
dikemas dalam bentuk kapsul untuk ujicoba kepada pasien.
"Produk riset farmasi
ini, meski baru 70 persen menjalani tahap uji klinik sudah diminati oleh sebuah industri
farmasi untuk diproduksi," tambah Kepala Laboratorium fitokimia herbal ITD, Achmad Fuad
Hafid.
Riset lain
Penelitian cempedak untuk obat malaria,
lanjut Aty, diilhami penggunaannya secara tradisional di Kalimantan untuk obat malaria dan
larutan gosok pencegah gigitan nyamuk. Selain cempedak riset juga dilakukan pada tanaman
serumpun yaitu nangka, keluwih, dan sukun. Namun khasiatnya tak sebaik cempedak.
Sementara itu riset yang dilakukan pada tanaman herbal sambiloto juga menemukan senyawa
antimalaria yaitu Androglafolida. Namun untuk tanaman herbal yang selama ini dikonsumsi sebagai
jamu itu belum sampai ke uji klinik.
Editor :Liwon Maulana(galipat
Sumber:Kompas.com
> Obat Baru Malaria Ditemukan
MENYEGERAKAN IBADAH HAJI
Bagi orang yang telah memiliki kemampu-an dan memenuhi segala persyaratan, wajib untuk segera melaksanakan ibadah haji. Hal ini berdasarkan sabda Nabi Shalallaahu alaihi wasalam :
"Barangsiapa hendak melaksanakan haji, hendaklah segera ia lakukan, karena terkadang seseorang itu sakit, binatang (kendaraannya) hilang, dan adanya suatu hajat yang menghalangi."( HR. Ibnu Majah, dan dishahihkan oleh al-Albani. Lihat Shahih Ibni Majah No. 2331))
Dan sabda beliau:
"Bersegeralah melaksanakan haji, karena sesungguhnya salah seorang di antara kamu tidak mengetahui apa yang akan merinta-nginya."( HR. Ahmad dan dihasankan oleh al-Albani dalam Irwaa-ul Ghaliil No. 990).)
Makkah
MAKKAH merupakan sebuah kota utama yang berada di Arab Saudi. mayoritas penduduk di kota MAKKAH rata-rata beragama islam.
Kota MAKKAH merupakan kota yang menjadi tujuan utama kaum muslimin di seluruh penjuru dunia untuk melaksanakan ibadah UMROH dan haji. Di kota MAKKAH terdapat sebuah bangunan utama yang bernama Masjidil haram yang terdapat ka’bah di dalamnya. Ka’bah merupakan sebuah bangunan yang digunakan untuk menjadikan patokan arah kiblat untuk ibadah sholat untuk umat islam di seluruh dunia. Kota MAKKAH merupakan kota suci umat islam, karena di kota MAKKAH merupakan tempat lahirnya nabi akhir zaman yaitu Nabi Muhammad SAW.
Dengan banyaknya umat muslim yang melaksanakan ibadah UMROH di MAKKAH, maka apa UMROH itu?
UMROH
UMROH merupakan salah satu kegiatan ibadah di dalam agama islam.
Ibadah UMROH hampir mirip sekali dengan ibadah haji, ibadah UMROH merupakan ibadah yang dilakukan secara ritual di kota mekkah, khususnya yang bertempat di masjidil haram.
Menurut istilah UMROH yang berarti melakukan tawaf di ka'bah dan sa'i (lari-lari kecil) yang dimula dari shofa menuju MARWAH, sesudah memakai pakaian ihram dari miqat. dan sering juga disebut dengan haji kecil.
Perbedaan UMROH dan haji berbeda pada waktu dan tempat pelaksana'annya. ibadah UMROH bisa dilakukan sewaktu-waktu (setiap hari,bulan, dan setiap tahun) yang hanya dilakukan di kota mekkah, sedangkan haji harus dilakukan pada saat-saat tertentu saja yaitu mulai tanggal 8 dzulhijjah sampai 12 dzulhijjah dan dilaksanakan sampai keluar kota mekkah.
SYARAT,WAJIB,DAN RUKUN MELAKSANAKAN UMROH DAN HAJI.
1. Memakai pakaian ihram
2. Tawaf.
3. Sai(lari-lari kecil)
4. Memotong rambut pada bagian kepala atau memotong sebagaian.
5. Tertib.
dan ada satu wajib UMROH, yaitu dengan memulai ihram dari miqat.
MACAM-MACAM UMROH.
Adapun beberapa macam tipe UMROH, seperti UMROH yang di gabung pelaksanaanya dengan haji seperti haji tamattu, adapun UMROH yang tidak terkait dengan haji yaitu :
1. UMROH mufradah
2. UMROH tamattu
3. UMROH sunnah
Setelah kita tau pengertian dari UMROH, lalu bagaimanakah tata cara pelaksanaan UMROH ?
TATA CARA PELAKSANAAN UMROH.
1. Jika seseorang akan melaksanakan UMROH disunnahkan untuk mandi besar (janabah) terlebih dahulu, memakai wangi-wangian (jika ada) dan memakai pakaian ihram.
2. Tata cara memakai pakaian ihram. Untuk laki-laki berupa dua lembar kain ihram yang dijadikan sarung dan selendang, Sedangkan untuk wanita memakai pakaian yang telah di’isyaratkan untuk menutupi aurot, tidak ada hiasan dan tidak diperbolehkan memakai sarung tangan.
3. Niat untuk melaksanakan umrah dalam hati dan mengucapkan labbaikallahumma bi'umrotin atau labbaika'umrotan. dan setelah itu bertalbiyah suaranya di keraskan bagi laki-laki, dan dengan suara cukup yang bisa di dengar orang yang berada di sampingnya bagi wanita, dengan mengucapkan labbaikallahumma labbaika laa syarika laka labbaik. innal hamda wan ni'mata laka wal mulk laa syarika laka.
> ARTIKEL UMROH
William Sokolin, Wine Seller Who Broke Famed Bottle, Dies at 85
The bottle Mr. Sokolin famously broke was a 1787 Château Margaux, which was said to have belonged to Thomas Jefferson. Mr. Sokolin had been hoping to sell it for $519,750.
WASHINGTON — During a training course on defending against knife attacks, a young Salt Lake City police officer asked a question: “How close can somebody get to me before I’m justified in using deadly force?”
Dennis Tueller, the instructor in that class more than three decades ago, decided to find out. In the fall of 1982, he performed a rudimentary series of tests and concluded that an armed attacker who bolted toward an officer could clear 21 feet in the time it took most officers to draw, aim and fire their weapon.
The next spring, Mr. Tueller published his findings in SWAT magazine and transformed police training in the United States. The “21-foot rule” became dogma. It has been taught in police academies around the country, accepted by courts and cited by officers to justify countless shootings, including recent episodes involving a homeless woodcarver in Seattle and a schizophrenic woman in San Francisco.
Now, amid the largest national debate over policing since the 1991 beating of Rodney King in Los Angeles, a small but vocal set of law enforcement officials are calling for a rethinking of the 21-foot rule and other axioms that have emphasized how to use force, not how to avoid it. Several big-city police departments are already re-examining when officers should chase people or draw their guns and when they should back away, wait or try to defuse the situation
Richard Suzman, 72, Dies; Researcher Influenced Global Surveys on Aging
At the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Suzman’s signature accomplishment was the central role he played in creating a global network of surveys on aging.
Bruce Alger, 96, Dies; Led ‘Mink Coat’ Protest Against Lyndon Johnson
Mr. Alger, who served five terms from Texas, led Republican women in a confrontation with Lyndon B. Johnson that may have cost Richard M. Nixon the 1960 presidential election.
Sid Tepper Dies at 96; Delivered ‘Red Roses for a Blue Lady’ and Other Songs
Mr. Tepper was not a musical child and had no formal training, but he grew up to write both lyrics and tunes, trading off duties with the other member of the team, Roy C. Bennett.
The 2015 Met Gala has only officially begun, but there's a clear leader in the race for best couple, no small feat at an event that threatens to sap Hollywood of every celebrity it has for the duration of an East Coast evening.
That would be Marc Jacobs and his surprise guest (who, by some miracle, remained under wraps until their red carpet debut), Cher.
“This has been a dream of mine for a very, very long time,” Mr. Jacobs said.
It is Cher's first appearance at the Met Gala since 1997, when she arrived on the arm of Donatella Versace.
Advertisement Politics Obama Finds a Bolder Voice on Race Issues
As he reflected on the festering wounds deepened by race and grievance that have been on painful display in America’s cities lately, President Obama on Monday found himself thinking about a young man he had just met named Malachi.
A few minutes before, in a closed-door round-table discussion at Lehman College in the Bronx, Mr. Obama had asked a group of black and Hispanic students from disadvantaged backgrounds what could be done to help them reach their goals. Several talked about counseling and guidance programs.
“Malachi, he just talked about — we should talk about love,” Mr. Obama told a crowd afterward, drifting away from his prepared remarks. “Because Malachi and I shared the fact that our dad wasn’t around and that sometimes we wondered why he wasn’t around and what had happened. But really, that’s what this comes down to is: Do we love these kids?”
Many presidents have governed during times of racial tension, but Mr. Obama is the first to see in the mirror a face that looks like those on the other side of history’s ledger. While his first term was consumed with the economy, war and health care, his second keeps coming back to the societal divide that was not bridged by his election. A president who eschewed focusing on race now seems to have found his voice again as he thinks about how to use his remaining time in office and beyond.
At an event announcing the creation of a nonprofit focusing on young minority men, President Obama talked about the underlying reasons for recent protests in Baltimore and other cities.
By Associated Press on Publish Date May 4, 2015. Photo by Stephen Crowley/The New York Times.
In the aftermath of racially charged unrest in places like Baltimore, Ferguson, Mo., and New York, Mr. Obama came to the Bronx on Monday for the announcement of a new nonprofit organization that is being spun off from his White House initiative called My Brother’s Keeper. Staked by more than $80 million in commitments from corporations and other donors, the new group, My Brother’s Keeper Alliance, will in effect provide the nucleus for Mr. Obama’s post-presidency, which will begin in January 2017.
“This will remain a mission for me and for Michelle not just for the rest of my presidency but for the rest of my life,” Mr. Obama said. “And the reason is simple,” he added. Referring to some of the youths he had just met, he said: “We see ourselves in these young men. I grew up without a dad. I grew up lost sometimes and adrift, not having a sense of a clear path. The only difference between me and a lot of other young men in this neighborhood and all across the country is that I grew up in an environment that was a little more forgiving.”
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Organizers said the new alliance already had financial pledges from companies like American Express, Deloitte, Discovery Communications and News Corporation. The money will be used to help companies address obstacles facing young black and Hispanic men, provide grants to programs for disadvantaged youths, and help communities aid their populations.
Joe Echevarria, a former chief executive of Deloitte, the accounting and consulting firm, will lead the alliance, and among those on its leadership team or advisory group are executives at PepsiCo, News Corporation, Sprint, BET and Prudential Group Insurance; former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell; Senator Cory Booker, Democrat of New Jersey; former Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.; the music star John Legend; the retired athletes Alonzo Mourning, Jerome Bettis and Shaquille O’Neal; and the mayors of Indianapolis, Sacramento and Philadelphia.
The alliance, while nominally independent of the White House, may face some of the same questions confronting former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton as she begins another presidential campaign. Some of those donating to the alliance may have interests in government action, and skeptics may wonder whether they are trying to curry favor with the president by contributing.
“The Obama administration will have no role in deciding how donations are screened and what criteria they’ll set at the alliance for donor policies, because it’s an entirely separate entity,” Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, told reporters on Air Force One en route to New York. But he added, “I’m confident that the members of the board are well aware of the president’s commitment to transparency.”
The alliance was in the works before the disturbances last week after the death of Freddie Gray, the black man who suffered fatal injuries while in police custody in Baltimore, but it reflected the evolution of Mr. Obama’s presidency. For him, in a way, it is coming back to issues that animated him as a young community organizer and politician. It was his own struggle with race and identity, captured in his youthful memoir, “Dreams From My Father,” that stood him apart from other presidential aspirants.
But that was a side of him that he kept largely to himself through the first years of his presidency while he focused on other priorities like turning the economy around, expanding government-subsidized health care and avoiding electoral land mines en route to re-election.
After securing a second term, Mr. Obama appeared more emboldened. Just a month after his 2013 inauguration, he talked passionately about opportunity and race with a group of teenage boys in Chicago, a moment aides point to as perhaps the first time he had spoken about these issues in such a personal, powerful way as president. A few months later, he publicly lamented the death of Trayvon Martin, a black Florida teenager, saying that “could have been me 35 years ago.”
Photo
President Obama on Monday with Darinel Montero, a student at Bronx International High School who introduced him before remarks at Lehman College in the Bronx.Credit Stephen Crowley/The New York Times
That case, along with public ruptures of anger over police shootings in Ferguson and elsewhere, have pushed the issue of race and law enforcement onto the public agenda. Aides said they imagined that with his presidency in its final stages, Mr. Obama might be thinking more about what comes next and causes he can advance as a private citizen.
That is not to say that his public discussion of these issues has been universally welcomed. Some conservatives said he had made matters worse by seeming in their view to blame police officers in some of the disputed cases.
“President Obama, when he was elected, could have been a unifying leader,” Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, a Republican candidate for president, said at a forum last week. “He has made decisions that I think have inflamed racial tensions.”
On the other side of the ideological spectrum, some liberal African-American activists have complained that Mr. Obama has not done enough to help downtrodden communities. While he is speaking out more, these critics argue, he has hardly used the power of the presidency to make the sort of radical change they say is necessary.
The line Mr. Obama has tried to straddle has been a serrated one. He condemns police brutality as he defends most officers as honorable. He condemns “criminals and thugs” who looted in Baltimore while expressing empathy with those trapped in a cycle of poverty and hopelessness.
In the Bronx on Monday, Mr. Obama bemoaned the death of Brian Moore, a plainclothes New York police officer who had died earlier in the day after being shot in the head Saturday on a Queens street. Most police officers are “good and honest and fair and care deeply about their communities,” even as they put their lives on the line, Mr. Obama said.
“Which is why in addressing the issues in Baltimore or Ferguson or New York, the point I made was that if we’re just looking at policing, we’re looking at it too narrowly,” he added. “If we ask the police to simply contain and control problems that we ourselves have been unwilling to invest and solve, that’s not fair to the communities, it’s not fair to the police.”
Moreover, if society writes off some people, he said, “that’s not the kind of country I want to live in; that’s not what America is about.”
His message to young men like Malachi Hernandez, who attends Boston Latin Academy in Massachusetts, is not to give up.
“I want you to know you matter,” he said. “You matter to us.”
Ghostly Voices From Thomas Edison’s Dolls Can Now Be Heard
Though Robin and Joan Rolfs owned two rare talking dolls manufactured by Thomas Edison’s phonograph company in 1890, they did not dare play the wax cylinder records tucked inside each one.
The Rolfses, longtime collectors of Edison phonographs, knew that if they turned the cranks on the dolls’ backs, the steel phonograph needle might damage or destroy the grooves of the hollow, ring-shaped cylinder. And so for years, the dolls sat side by side inside a display cabinet, bearers of a message from the dawn of sound recording that nobody could hear.
In 1890, Edison’s dolls were a flop; production lasted only six weeks. Children found them difficult to operate and more scary than cuddly. The recordings inside, which featured snippets of nursery rhymes, wore out quickly.
Yet sound historians say the cylinders were the first entertainment records ever made, and the young girls hired to recite the rhymes were the world’s first recording artists.
Year after year, the Rolfses asked experts if there might be a safe way to play the recordings. Then a government laboratory developed a method to play fragile records without touching them.
A recording heard from Edison’s Talking Doll. (Audio quality is low.)
The technique relies on a microscope to create images of the grooves in exquisite detail. A computer approximates — with great accuracy — the sounds that would have been created by a needle moving through those grooves.
In 2014, the technology was made available for the first time outside the laboratory.
“The fear all along is that we don’t want to damage these records. We don’t want to put a stylus on them,” said Jerry Fabris, the curator of the Thomas Edison Historical Park in West Orange, N.J. “Now we have the technology to play them safely.”
Last month, the Historical Park posted online three never-before-heard Edison doll recordings, including the two from the Rolfses’ collection. “There are probably more out there, and we’re hoping people will now get them digitized,” Mr. Fabris said.
The technology, which is known as Irene (Image, Reconstruct, Erase Noise, Etc.), was developed by the particle physicist Carl Haber and the engineer Earl Cornell at Lawrence Berkeley. Irene extracts sound from cylinder and disk records. It can also reconstruct audio from recordings so badly damaged they were deemed unplayable.
“We are now hearing sounds from history that I did not expect to hear in my lifetime,” Mr. Fabris said.
The Rolfses said they were not sure what to expect in August when they carefully packed their two Edison doll cylinders, still attached to their motors, and drove from their home in Hortonville, Wis., to the National Document Conservation Center in Andover, Mass. The center had recently acquired Irene technology.
A recording from Edison’s Talking Doll. (Audio quality is low.)
Cylinders carry sound in a spiral groove cut by a phonograph recording needle that vibrates up and down, creating a surface made of tiny hills and valleys. In the Irene set-up, a microscope perched above the shaft takes thousands of high-resolution images of small sections of the grooves.
Stitched together, the images provide a topographic map of the cylinder’s surface, charting changes in depth as small as one five-hundredth the thickness of a human hair. Pitch, volume and timbre are all encoded in the hills and valleys and the speed at which the record is played.
At the conservation center, the preservation specialist Mason Vander Lugt attached one of the cylinders to the end of a rotating shaft. Huddled around a computer screen, the Rolfses first saw the wiggly waveform generated by Irene. Then came the digital audio. The words were at first indistinct, but as Mr. Lugt filtered out more of the noise, the rhyme became clearer.
“That was the Eureka moment,” Mr. Rolfs said.
In 1890, a girl in Edison’s laboratory had recited:
The first recording heard from Edison’s Talking Doll. (Audio quality is low.)
Right in the middle of her forehead.
When she was good,
She was very, very good.
But when she was bad, she was horrid.
Recently, the conservation center turned up another surprise.
In 2010, the Woody Guthrie Foundation received 18 oversize phonograph disks from an anonymous donor. No one knew if any of the dirt-stained recordings featured Guthrie, but Tiffany Colannino, then the foundation’s archivist, had stored them unplayed until she heard about Irene.
Last fall, the center extracted audio from one of the records, labeled “Jam Session 9” and emailed the digital file to Ms. Colannino.
“I was just sitting in my dining room, and the next thing I know, I’m hearing Woody,” she said. In between solo performances of “Ladies Auxiliary,” “Jesus Christ,” and “Dead or Alive,” Guthrie tells jokes, offers some back story, and makes the audience laugh. “It is quintessential Guthrie,” Ms. Colannino said.
The Rolfses’ dolls are back in the display cabinet in Wisconsin. But with audio stored on several computers, they now have a permanent voice.
GREENWICH, Conn. — Mago is in the bedroom. You can go in.
The big man lies on a hospital bed with his bare feet scraping its bottom rail. His head is propped on a scarlet pillow, the left temple dented, the right side paralyzed. His dark hair is kept just long enough to conceal the scars.
The occasional sounds he makes are understood only by his wife, but he still has that punctuating left hand. In slow motion, the fingers curl and close. A thumbs-up greeting.
Hello, Mago.
This is Magomed Abdusalamov, 34, also known as the Russian Tyson, also known as Mago. He is a former heavyweight boxer who scored four knockouts and 14 technical knockouts in his first 18 professional fights. He preferred to stand between rounds. Sitting conveyed weakness.
But Mago lost his 19th fight, his big chance, at the packed Theater at Madison Square Garden in November 2013. His 19th decision, and his last.
Now here he is, in a small bedroom in a working-class neighborhood in Greenwich, in a modest house his family rents cheap from a devoted friend. The air-pressure machine for his mattress hums like an expectant crowd.
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Mike Perez, left, and Magomed Abdusalamov during the fight in which Abdusalamov was injured.Credit Joe Camporeale/USA Today Sports, via Reuters
Today is like any other day, except for those days when he is hurried in crisis to the hospital. Every three hours during the night, his slight wife, Bakanay, 28, has risen to turn his 6-foot-3 body — 210 pounds of dead weight. It has to be done. Infections of the gaping bedsore above his tailbone have nearly killed him.
Then, with the help of a young caretaker, Baka has gotten two of their daughters off to elementary school and settled down the toddler. Yes, Mago and Baka are blessed with all girls, but they had also hoped for a son someday.
They feed Mago as they clean him; it’s easier that way. For breakfast, which comes with a side of crushed antiseizure pills, he likes oatmeal with a squirt of Hershey’s chocolate syrup. But even oatmeal must be puréed and fed to him by spoon.
He opens his mouth to indicate more, the way a baby does. But his paralysis has made everything a choking hazard. His water needs a stirring of powdered food thickener, and still he chokes — eh-eh-eh — as he tries to cough up what will not go down.
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Mago used to drink only water. No alcohol. Not even soda. A sip of juice would be as far as he dared. Now even water betrays him.
With the caretaker’s help, Baka uses a washcloth and soap to clean his body and shampoo his hair. How handsome still, she has thought. Sometimes, in the night, she leaves the bedroom to watch old videos, just to hear again his voice in the fullness of life. She cries, wipes her eyes and returns, feigning happiness. Mago must never see her sad.
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Abdusalamov's hand being massaged.Credit Ángel Franco/The New York Times
When Baka finishes, Mago is cleanshaven and fresh down to his trimmed and filed toenails. “I want him to look good,” she says.
Theirs was an arranged Muslim marriage in Makhachkala, in the Russian republic of Dagestan. He was 23, she was 18 and their future hinged on boxing. Sometimes they would shadowbox in love, her David to his Goliath. You are so strong, he would tell her.
His father once told him he could either be a bandit or an athlete, but if he chose banditry, “I will kill you.” This paternal advice, Mago later told The Ventura County Reporter, “made it a very easy decision for me.”
Mago won against mediocre competition, in Moscow and Hollywood, Fla., in Las Vegas and Johnstown, Pa. He was knocked down only once, and even then, it surprised more than hurt. He scored a technical knockout in the next round.
It all led up to this: the undercard at the Garden, Mike Perez vs. Magomed Abdusalamov, 10 rounds, on HBO. A win, he believed, would improve his chances of taking on the heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko, who sat in the crowd of 4,600 with his fiancée, the actress Hayden Panettiere, watching.
Wearing black-and-red trunks and a green mouth guard, Mago went to work. But in the first round, a hard forearm to his left cheek rocked him. At the bell, he returned to his corner, and this time, he sat down. “I think it’s broken,” he repeatedly said in Russian.
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Bakanay Abdusalamova, Abdusalamov's wife, and her injured husband and a masseur in the background.Credit Ángel Franco/The New York Times
Maybe at that point, somebody — the referee, the ringside doctors, his handlers — should have stopped the fight, under a guiding principle: better one punch too early than one punch too late. But the bloody trade of blows continued into the seventh, eighth, ninth, a hand and orbital bone broken, his face transforming.
Meanwhile, in the family’s apartment in Miami, Baka forced herself to watch the broadcast. She could see it in his swollen eyes. Something was off.
After the final round, Perez raised his tattooed arms in victory, and Mago wandered off in a fog. He had taken 312 punches in about 40 minutes, for a purse of $40,000.
In the locker room, doctors sutured a cut above Mago’s left eye and tested his cognitive abilities. He did not do well. The ambulance that waits in expectation at every fight was not summoned by boxing officials.
Blood was pooling in Mago’s cranial cavity as he left the Garden. He vomited on the pavement while his handlers flagged a taxi to St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital. There, doctors induced a coma and removed part of his skull to drain fluids and ease the swelling.
Then came the stroke.
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A championship belt belonging to Abdusalamov and a card from one of his daughters.Credit Ángel Franco/The New York Times
It is lunchtime now, and the aroma of puréed beef and potatoes lingers. So do the questions.
How will Mago and Baka pay the $2 million in medical bills they owe? What if their friend can no longer offer them this home? Will they win their lawsuits against the five ringside doctors, the referee, and a New York State boxing inspector? What about Mago’s future care?
Most of all: Is this it?
A napkin rests on Mago’s chest. As another spoonful of mush approaches, he opens his mouth, half-swallows, chokes, and coughs until it clears. Eh-eh-eh. Sometimes he turns bluish, but Baka never shows fear. Always happy for Mago.
Some days he is wheeled out for physical therapy or speech therapy. Today, two massage therapists come to knead his half-limp body like a pair of skilled corner men.
Soon, Mago will doze. Then his three daughters, ages 2, 6 and 9, will descend upon him to talk of their day. Not long ago, the oldest lugged his championship belt to school for a proud show-and-tell moment. Her classmates were amazed at the weight of it.
Then, tonight, there will be more puréed food and pulverized medication, more coughing, and more tender care from his wife, before sleep comes.
Goodbye, Mago.
He half-smiles, raises his one good hand, and forms a fist.
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Nepal’s Young Men, Lost to Migration, Then a Quake
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Many bodies prepared for cremation last week in Kathmandu were of young men from Gongabu, a common stopover for Nepali migrant workers headed overseas.Credit Daniel Berehulak for The New York Times
KATHMANDU, Nepal — When the dense pillar of smoke from cremations by the Bagmati River was thinning late last week, the bodies were all coming from Gongabu, a common stopover for Nepali migrant workers headed overseas, and they were all of young men.
Hindu custom dictates that funeral pyres should be lighted by the oldest son of the deceased, but these men were too young to have sons, so they were burned by their brothers or fathers. Sukla Lal, a maize farmer, made a 14-hour journey by bus to retrieve the body of his 19-year-old son, who had been on his way to the Persian Gulf to work as a laborer.
“He wanted to live in the countryside, but he was compelled to leave by poverty,” Mr. Lal said, gazing ahead steadily as his son’s remains smoldered. “He told me, ‘You can live on your land, and I will come up with money, and we will have a happy family.’ ”
Weeks will pass before the authorities can give a complete accounting of who died in the April 25 earthquake, but it is already clear that Nepal cannot afford the losses. The countryside was largely stripped of its healthy young men even before the quake, as they migrated in great waves — 1,500 a day by some estimates — to work as laborers in India, Malaysia or one of the gulf nations, leaving many small communities populated only by elderly parents, women and children. Economists say that at some times of the year, one-quarter of Nepal’s population is working outside the country.
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