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There was immense social and economic upheaval between the Black Death and the English Reformation, and contemporary writers often blamed this upheaval on immorality, singling out women's behavior for particular censure. Late medieval moral treatises and sermons increasingly connected good behavior for women with Christianity, and their failure to conform to sin. Katherine L. French argues, however, that medieval laywomen both coped with the chaotic changes following the plague and justified their own changing behavior by participating in local religion. Through active engagement in the parish church, the basic unit of public worship, women promoted and validated their own interests and responsibilities.Scholarship on medieval women's religious experiences has focused primarily on elite women, nuns, and mystics who either were literate enough to leave written records of their religious ideas and behavior or had access to literate men who did this for them. Most women, however, were not literate, were not members of religious orders, and did not have private confessors. As The Good Women of the Parish shows, the great majority of women practiced their religion in a parish church. By looking at women's contributions to parish maintenance, the ways they shaped the liturgy and church seating arrangements, and their increasing opportunities for collective action in all-women's groups, the book argues that gendered behavior was central to parish life and that women's parish activities gave them increasing visibility and even, on occasion, authority. In the face of demands for silence, modesty, and passivity, women of every social status used religious practices as an important source of self-expression, creativity, and agency.

Looks at the history of parish nursing (aka faith community nursing) in NZ beginning with the pilot set up in 1998 at the Anglican Church’s Nelson Cathedral, through to the establishment of the New Zealand Faith Community Nurses Association (NZFCNA) in 2003 until the association's final deregistration in July 2023 due to there now being only one paid faith community nurse in practice in NZ. Source: National Library of New Zealand Te Puna Matauranga o Aotearoa, licensed by the Department of Internal Affairs for re-use under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 New Zealand Licence.

Purpose:  The objective of this study was to identify whether the reorganization of parishes carried out in Portugal, in the District of Braga, in 2013, is the one that enhances the greatest efficiency gains.   Theoretical framework: The study is based on the relationship between financial sustainability, efficiency, and territory, seeking the optimal dimension of the local power unit.   Methodology: The study is based on the Data Envelopment Analysis method, using data from the parishes of the district of Braga in two moments, the year 2012 and the year 2015. For this year, a new territorial reorganization was also proposed and analysed.   Results and Conclusions: The reform increased efficiency in 10 of the 14 municipalities. However, it was possible to observe that a reorganization that gives the parishes a larger size, that is, closer to the average seen in the European Union, would bring average efficiency gains in all municipalities. Thus, it is concluded that the reform of the parishes carried out in 2013 in the district of Braga is not the one that allows greater efficiency, since this can be enhanced if they benefit from a larger geographical scale.   Research implications: The research contributes to the knowledge of the efficiency of territorial reforms, namely, regarding the impact of the dimension in this context, as well as to the evaluation of the public policy adopted, allowing the public decision-maker to make a sound and sustained decision.   Originality/value: This study is original because it studies smaller units of local government, the parishes, on which research is very incipient, namely in Portugal. O objetivo deste estudo foi identificar se a reorganização de freguesias realizada em Portugal, no Distrito de Braga, em 2013, é a que potencia maiores ganhos de eficiência. O estudo baseia-se na relação entre sustentabilidade financeira, eficiência e território, buscando a dimensão ótima da unidade de poder local. Esta investigação baseia-se no método de Análise Envoltória de Dados, utilizando dados das freguesias do distrito de Braga em dois momentos, o ano de 2012 e o ano de 2015. Para este ano foi também proposta e analisada uma nova reorganização territorial. A reforma aumentou a eficiência em 10 dos 14 municípios. No entanto, foi possível observar que uma reorganização que desse às freguesias uma dimensão maior, ou seja, mais próxima da média observada na União Europeia, traria ganhos de eficiência médios em todos os municípios. Assim, conclui-se que a reforma das freguesias realizada em 2013 no distrito de Braga não é a que permite maior eficiência, uma vez que esta pode ser potenciada se beneficiarem de uma maior escala geográfica. A investigação contribui para o conhecimento da eficiência das reformas territoriais, nomeadamente, no que diz respeito ao impacto da dimensão neste contexto, bem como para a avaliação da política pública adotada, permitindo ao decisor público tomar uma decisão sólida e sustentada.

The Star Creek Papers is the never-before-published account of the complex realities of race relations in the rural South in the 1930s. When Horace and Julia Bond moved to Louisiana in 1934, they entered a world where the legacy of slavery was miscegenation, lingering paternalism, and deadly racism. The Bonds were a young, well-educated and idealistic African American couple working for the Rosenwald Fund, a trust established by a northern philanthropist to build schools in rural areas. They were part of the Explorer Project sent to investigate the progress of the school in the Star Creek district of Washington Parish. Their report, which decried the teachers' lack of experience, the poor quality of the coursework, and the students' chronic absenteeism, was based on their private journal, The Star Creek Diary, a shrewdly observed, sharply etched, and affectionate portrait of a rural black community. Horace Bond was moved to write a second document, Forty Acres and a Mule, a history of a black farming family, after Jerome Wilson was lynched in 1935. The Wilsons were thrifty landowners whom Bond knew and respected; he intended to turn their story into a book, but the chronicle remained unfinished at his death. These important primary documents were rediscovered by civil rights scholar Adam Fairclough, who edited them with Julia Bond's support.

With a long and colorful family history of defying storms, the seafaring Robin cousins of St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana, make a fateful decision to ride out Hurricane Katrina on their hand-built fishing boats in a sheltered Civil War-era harbor called Violet Canal. But when Violet is overrun by killer surges, the Robins must summon all their courage, seamanship, and cunning to save themselves and the scores of others suddenly cast into their care. In this gripping saga, Louisiana native Ken Wells provides a close-up look at the harrowing experiences in the backwaters of New Orleans during and after Katrina. Focusing on the plight of the intrepid Robin family, whose members trace their local roots to before the American Revolution, Wells recounts the landfall of the storm and the tumultuous seventy-two hours afterward, when the Robins' beloved bayou country lay catastrophically flooded and all but forgotten by outside authorities as the world focused its attention on New Orleans. Wells follows his characters for more than two years as they strive, amid mind-boggling wreckage and governmental fecklessness, to rebuild their shattered lives. This is a story about the deep longing for home and a proud bayou people's love of the fertile but imperiled low country that has nourished them.