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Showing posts from September, 2018

Golden Dreams - Chapter 1

San Fernando Valley 1915 large parts of valley voted into the City of Los Angeles 1910s -30 - agricultural 1915 Universal moves in then Warner Bros to Burbank 1929 WW2 and cold war defence industries important - Lockhead Burbank 1928 and was major employer by 40s High wage earners - 45% families had 2 cars Population double 45-50 and again 50-60 White population 1950s most of California's population living in cities or towns With ww2 many newcomers seeking defense jobs Post war preference for single family home Family and childbearing on mass - average 3.7 children per married woman at peak in 1957 The poor excluded from government assistance in home ownership 1938 house building still a cottage industry Became mass developers Doelger - Sunset property - finishing 2 houses a day at peak in 34-40

Dutch Learning

Initial contact 1600 - same year battle of Sekigahara ended the civil war and Tokugawa in charge The Study of The West 1543 3 Portuguese cast-aways reached southern coastal island - Tanegashima Not long after trade established from ports in Kyuto 1549 Francis Xavier and 2 other Spanish Jesuits arrive Start of what some Historians call 'the christian century' Sakoku (closed country) - 1640- 1853 Only the Dutch remained so knowledge of the west became known as rangaku or Dutch Learning Rangaku At first Rangaku scholars defined Dutch studies as the scholarship of Holland (Oran) Since the knowledge the Dutch brought was only knowledge of the West so became name for all western learning Two strands Medicine - botany, pharmacopoeia, mineralogy, physics, chemistry and zoology - wanted to save and prolong lives Astronomy - focus on calendrical science - cartography, geography, surveying - desire to correct calendar for better agricultural cycle These two c...