Hypatia of California: March 2012

Saturday, March 3, 2012

Our Native American Immigrant Roots 1

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oglala_Lakota

Sylvia Mitchell Lynch bore and raised her children Bernard, Rose Iva, and Patricia Ann in Lily, South Dakota. Their father Leo Louis Lynch came from German and Irish stock.

Sylvia was born in 1905, of the same stock. Nothing surprising about that. The great German and Irish immigrations occurred during the 19th century. Sylvia fell in love with Leo Lynch when she was 14. Oglala Lakota Sioux blood ran through her veins as well, with some French thrown in for spice. I am not surprised, remembering Grandma. Lily is smack dab in the middle of ancient Sioux land, so no surprises there either.

Sylvia's father Emerson Mitchell was half Oglala Lakota Sioux. A handsome man with a sunny personality, Emerson delighted in playing the fiddle on the front porch of the farmhouse during parties he dreamed up. My mother Rose said that "everyone loved Pa." Sylvia, my grandmother, did not play the fiddle but she played a sweet harmonica.

Many terrible events devastated the Sioux, and yet they remain. We come from them. It's easy to learn more about the Sioux. The two most important books in their 20th Century history are Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee and In the Spirit of Crazy Horse. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, by Dee Brown, was made into a movie.

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Hypatia of Alexandria

Hypatia of Alexandria (Greek: Ὑπατία; born between 350 and 370 CE – 415 CE) was a Greek scholar from Alexandria in Egypt, considered the first notable woman in mathematics, who also taught philosophy and astronomy. She lived in Roman Egypt, and was killed by a Coptic Christian mob who blamed her for religious turmoil. She has been hailed as a "valiant defender of science against religion", and some suggest that her murder marked the end of the Hellenistic Age.

A Neoplatonist philosopher, she followed the school characterized by the 3rd century thinker Plotinus, and discouraged mysticism while encouraging logical and mathematical studies.

Hypatia was the daughter of Theon, who was her teacher and the last known mathematician associated with of the Musaeum of Alexandria. She traveled to both Athens and Italy to study before becoming head of the Platonist school at Alexandria in approximately 400 CE. According to the Byzantine Suda, she worked as teacher of philosophy, teaching the works of Plato and Aristotle. It is believed that there were both Christians and foreigners among her students.

Although Hypatia was herself a pagan, she was respected by a number of Christians, and later held up by Christian authors as a symbol of virtue. The Suda controversially declared her "the wife of Isidore the Philosopher" but agreed she had remained a virgin.

Hypatia maintained correspondence with her former pupil Bishop of Ptolomais Synesius of Cyrene. Together with the references by Damascius, these are the only writings with descriptions or information from her pupils that survive.

The contemporary Christian historiographer Socrates Scholasticus described her in his Ecclesiastical History:
There was a woman at Alexandria named Hypatia, daughter of the philosopher Theon, who made such attainments in literature and science, as to far surpass all the philosophers of her own time. Having succeeded to the school of Plato and Plotinus, she explained the principles of philosophy to her auditors, many of whom came from a distance to receive her instructions. On account of the self-possession and ease of manner, which she had acquired in consequence of the cultivation of her mind, she not unfrequently appeared in public in presence of the magistrates. Neither did she feel abashed in going to an assembly of men. For all men on account of her extraordinary dignity and virtue admired her the more.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypatia_of_Alexandria

Hypatia of California

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Thursday, March 22, 2012

New Jersey mayor (R) admits he never served in Vietnam

Saturday, March 3, 2012

Our Native American Immigrant Roots 1

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