HOW OLD IS A woman of a certain age?

http://www.nytimes.com/1995/07/02/magazine/in-language-a-woman-of-a-certain-age.html

Only a Nosy Parker would try to find out. But the expression is becoming androgynous, and the age seems to be creeping upward. Sidney Wade, a woman who lives in Gainesville, Fla., reports that she was complaining to a friend, Debora Greger, about a loss of hair: "My friend remarked that we, as women of a certain age, were prone to a number of peculiar developments. At first I was surprised by her use of the phrase to describe us (we are mildly ripening), remembering it from my more youthful days in France as an insulting kind of polite elocution but one that remains rather wonderful and precise." Then Ms. Wade was stunned to see a headline in The New York Times "3 Explorers of a Certain Age, Scaling Mountains and More" about three men in their 80's. "Reeling, I reported this to Debora, who supposes that the phrase itself seems to have developed a pronounced middle-aged spread. Is this so? I hope not."

The phrase, in English, can be cited to 1754: "I could not help wishing," wrote an anonymous essayist in Connoisseur magazine, "that some middle term was invented between Miss and Mrs. to be adopted, at a certain age, by all females not inclined to matrimony." (This was two centuries pre-Ms.)

The certain age suggested spinsterhood; the poet Byron in 1817 wrote, "She was not old, nor young, nor at the years/Which certain people call a certain age,/Which yet the most uncertain age appears." Five years later, in a grumpier mood, he returned to the phrase: "A lady of a 'certain age,' which means Certainly aged." Charles Dickens picked it up in "Barnaby Rudge": "A very old house, perhaps as old as it claimed to be, and perhaps older, which will sometimes happen with houses of an uncertain, as with ladies of a certain, age."

The Oxford English Dictionary defined that sense of certain as "which it is not polite or necessary further to define." That was the sense meant by William Dean Howells when he wrote of "gentlemen approaching a certain weight." The special sense reverses the literal meaning of the word certain, which is "fixed, definite" (much as "I could care less" means "I could not care less&quot .

The phrase was repopularized in a 1979 book by the psychotherapist Lillian B. Rubin, "Women of a Certain Age: The Midlife Search for Self," in which midlife spanned 35 to 54.

Reached in San Francisco, Dr. Rubin, whose book indicates she is now in her early 70's, was surprised to learn of the long English history of the phase because "it has a long history in French, where it refers to women of fortyish and thereabouts who are able to initiate boys and young men into the beauties of sexual encounters. The early use in English seems to be about spinsterhood, but the French meaning has nothing to do with marriage." In French, the phrase has erotically or sexually charged overtones. "It comes from a society where sexuality is freer," Dr. Rubin notes, "and more understood as an important part of human life." The phrase in French is femmes d'une certaine age. The term, however, can apply to either sex. Without the certain, the phrase un homme d'un age translates literally as "a man of an age" and is defined in the Oxford-Hachette French Dictionary as "a man of advanced years."

And now to the point: is that certain age getting older?

"When I wrote the book in 1979," Dr. Rubin says, "the 'women of a certain age' were in their late 30's and early 40's. I think that has changed with the baby boomers and the lengthening of the life span. I'd say the 'certain age' has now moved to the age of 50 or 55."

Look at it this way: late 30's or early 40's is no longer that "certain" age; it's moved up a decade. The good news is that 40 is still young, at least linguistically. That's how it seems to a language maven of a certain weight and getting long in the tooth...

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia...

Helen Carte or Helen Lenoir (12 May 1852 – 5 May 1913) was the second wife of impresario and hotelier Richard D'Oyly Carte. She is best known for her stewardship of the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company and Savoy Hotel from the end of the 19th Century and into the early 20th century.

Born in Wigtown, Scotland, Helen attended the University of London from 1871 to 1874 and pursued brief teaching and acting careers. In 1875, she met Richard D'Oyly Carte and soon became his assistant and business manager. She helped produce all of the Gilbert and Sullivan and other Savoy Operas, beginning with The Sorcerer in 1877 and for the rest of her life, and helped Carte with all of his business interests. One of her principal assignments was to superintend arrangements for American productions and tours of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas. Her grasp of detail and her diplomacy surpassed even Carte's.

Helen Lenoir married Richard D'Oyly Carte in 1888. During the 1890s, with Carte's health declining, Helen took greater and greater responsibility for the businesses, taking full control upon his death in 1901. She remarried in 1902 but continued to own the opera company and run most of the Carte business interests until her death, when they passed to her stepson, Rupert D'Oyly Carte. Although the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company's operations decreased after Richard's death, Helen staged successful repertory seasons in London from 1906 to 1908, establishing that the Gilbert and Sullivan operas could continue to be revived profitably.

By the time of her death in 1913, the opera company had become a repertory touring company, and W. S. Gilbert had died. Helen hired J. M. Gordon to preserve the company's unique style. In her will, she left the Savoy Theatre, the opera company and the Savoy Hotel to Rupert, and the company continued to operate continuously until 1982.

“Russia … is now recognized as the center of the global ‘mutiny’ against global dictatorship of the US and EU. Its generally peaceful .. approach is in direct contrast to brutal and destabilizing methods used by the US and EU…. The world is waking up to reality that there actually is, suddenly, some strong and determined resistance to Western imperialism. After decades of darkness, hope is emerging.” – Andre Vltchek, Ukraine: Lies and Realities, CounterPunch

How Christianity Was Created by Jesus's Enemies

http://www.viewzone.com/ventriloquest.html



RESEARCH METHODOLOGY:

This is the first work to apply to the interpretation of classical documents the methodology which courts of law in a democracy apply when reconstructing a sequence of events on the basis of documentary evidence referring to them. Among the principles employed here, which haven't previously been used by historians, are:

(1) For any alleged historical reconstruction, cite only the best (the most reliable) evidence (and exclude the rest under the best-evidence rule);

(2) Things that a cited document necessarily implies, rather than explicitly asserts, have higher evidentiary value (credibility) than any explicit assertions; and,

(3) Each explicit assertion cited in evidence must be questioned not just as to its accuracy, but also as to its honesty-of-intent. These three principles have never been applied to the documents concerning earliest Christianity. Applying them produces a radically new understanding of how Christianity began.

FINDINGS:

This first-ever legal/forensic exegesis of Paul's letter to the Galatians, and associated legal/forensic analysis of the four canonical Gospels, finds that Christianity started in or around the year 49 CE in Antioch (present-day Antakya, Turkey) as a direct consequence of a personal conflict which had arisen, during the prior 14 years, between Paul and the leader of this (at that time) Jewish sect, which Jesus had begun prior to his crucifixion at around the year 30 by the Romans for sedition.

The sect's leader was not Peter, such as Paul's followers who wrote the Gospels said, but was instead Jesus's brother James. Peter was and remained a follower of James, and he died (as did the rest of the sect) as a member of this Jewish sect, not as a Christian -- not as a member of the group which Paul started on this occasion. Jesus's sect soon itself expired.

What's known today as Christianity started with Paul, and was then developed by his followers, who wrote the canonical Gospels and the rest of the New Testament. The religion of the New Testament actually has nothing to do with the person of the historical Jesus: The NT was written and assembled to fulfill Paul's Roman agenda, not Jesus's Jewish one. This is shown to explain the entire Christian myth.

The conflict between Paul and James has to do with the circumcision-commandment, Genesis 17:14, which is Judaism's signature-commandment, by which a person signs God's contract in blood and becomes eligible to be a member of God's People.

Paul doesn't want to enforce it, because neither anesthesia nor antibiotics yet exist in this ancient era, and so any medical operation is an excruciating horror for these adult men, and frightening also because all operations have a high fatality rate from infections. James knows that if Genesis 17:14 is to be enforced upon Paul's men, then most of them will simply abandon Jesus's sect and will abandon Judaism altogether.

But finally in the year 49 or 50, right after the council in Jerusalem (which Paul refers to in Galatians 2:1-10), James does try to enforce it, and Paul calls James's bluff and refuses to comply. This is the moment when Paul first announces Christianity: the occasion Paul describes approximately four years later in Galatians 2:16-21.

The event that created Christianity is referred to in carefully veiled language in Galatians 2:11-21: James here changes his mind and decides that Genesis 17:14 will have to be enforced after all, and he sends Peter to Paul in Antioch to order him to have all his men circumcised. James also sends a back-up team to check up on Peter (who is very reluctant to do this), and to make sure that Peter does what he is told.

But when the back-up team arrives and sees Peter instead dining with Paul's uncircumcised men, Peter is startled and embarrassed to be seen dining with these non-members, and so he backs away from the table. At this moment, Paul responds to Peter by announcing, for the first time ever, Christianity, which is the doctrine that Paul states in Galatians 2:16-21.

Although Paul says that he's rejecting the circumcision-commandment because he rejects the entire covenant, he is actually rejecting the entire covenant because he rejects the circumcision-commandment. This is the only way Paul can keep his men with him; he simply can't admit to them that they are not Jews. So, from now on, he needs to be very careful about how he words things. Only gradually do his men come to recognize that they aren't Jews. Paul prepares them for this by telling them how horrible strict Jews are, such as he does in Galatians 1:13-14, 1 Thessalonians 2:3-16, and Philippians 3:2-8.

James is now trapped by circumstances: If he publicly announces that Paul's men are no longer members of Jesus's sect, then James will lose the vast majority of his sect's members, since Paul had converted them.

Furthermore, Paul's followers are Gentiles in a Gentile world ruled by Gentile Rome, during the time when Rome is at war against the Jews in Jerusalem. Jerusalem's Jews are a poor and defeated people. James is relying on the financial contributions coming in from Paul's many Gentile congregations, to support the Jesus sect. James therefore needs to remain silent about Paul's coup d'etat.

The "Jesus" who is described in the Gospel-accounts is written later, by Paul's followers, not by James's, and is written so as to add narrative flesh to the bones of Paul's agenda -- the agenda exposed in Galatians and in the other six authentic letters from Paul -- the earliest-written of all Christian documents...