An Award for Ashraf Fayadh

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

Last week, PEN International, in affiliation with Oxfam Novib, named Ashraf Fayadh and Malini Subramaniam co-winners of the annual Oxfam Novib/PEN International Free Expression Award. The two join fifty previous winners, including the late Hrant Dink of Turkey.

Ashraf Fayadh remains in prison in Saudi Arabia and was not able to attend the ceremony. He is a poet, an artist, who has faced an array of blasphemy-related charges in Saudi Arabia, from “insulting the divine self” to being an infidel.
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January 23 in History

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

By October 1847, Elizabeth Blackwell (above) was 26 and had been studying medicine privately for a couple of years. She applied to medical schools and she was rejected by each one.

Hobart College (then called Geneva Medical College) in Geneva, New York, received her application and created its own standard to use in the decision to accept or deny her for matriculation: the administration put her cause up for a vote among the student body of 150 male students.

If even one student rejected her, against the votes of the 149 others, she would be rejected. The student body came through: the 150 voted unanimously to accept her as a fellow student, and on this date in 1849, Blackwell graduated with her class.

Blackwell was the first woman to earn a medical degree in the United States. She practiced medicine in America and in Europe in the 1850s and ’60s.
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Be a Success at Success

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

A Bronze level “Jim Rohn 1-Year Success Plan” is $179, a Silver is $299, and a Gold is $499. A subscription to Success Magazine, a Jim Rohn publication, is about $35 for a year. Who was Jim Rohn?

Rohn was one of a long line of American entrepreneurs who sold plans and strategies for success and achievement and leadership in one’s field, whatever that may be. If you are a fan of Tony Robbins, you are a fan of Jim Rohn by extension. According to Robbins, Rohn was one of his mentors, and he got his start selling plans like the ones cited above. (I am agnostic on the topic of self-betterment entrepreneurs, but I am a believer in the grace and beauty of getting to know oneself, which is something that all successfulness sellers sell.)
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