title: Viola Beach

text: In February 2021, to mark the 5th anniversary of the incident, a group of Warrington-based musicians were invited to collaborate to record a cover version of Viola Beach’s song Swings & Waterslides with all proceeds going to charities chosen by the band’s families. The track was produced by Cal Bate, sound engineer for Viola Beach and Blossoms, along with WAM Warrington Music. The tribute featured contributions from members of A.V Club, Sienne, Uno Mas, Crawlers, The K’s, Aligners, Filthy Tricks and The Zangwills. It was premiered on 5 February by Steve Lamacq on BBC Radio 6 Music and had further support on TV from "BBC North West Tonight".


title: Viola Beach

text: On 25 September 2021, a bronze frieze in memory of the band was unveiled near Parr Hall in Warrington.


title: Women in the Middle Ages

text: Women in the Middle Ages in Europe occupied a number of different social roles. Women held the positions of wife, mother, peasant, artisan, and nun, as well as some important leadership roles, such as abbess or queen regnant. The very concept of women changed in a number of ways during the Middle Ages, and several forces influenced women's roles during this period, while also expanding upon their traditional roles in society and the economy. Whether or not they were powerful or stayed back to take care of their homes, they still played an important role in society whether they were saints, nobles, peasants, or nuns. Due to context from recent years leading to the reconceptualization of women during this time period, many of their roles were overshadowed by the work of men. Although it is prevalent that women participated in church and helping at home, they did much more to influence the Middle Ages.


title: Women in the Middle Ages

text: In the early Middle Ages, women's lives varied greatly dependent upon their location and status. We know the most about women living under Christian rule, as most sources are ecclesiastic, but there are some leftovers from the Roman era that offer clues. For example, following Roman and German Law, women had some limited control over her own marriage, dowry, and property.


title: Women in the Middle Ages

text: As Christianity began to spread, women's roles were largely defined in relation to the Christian Church. For some women, Christianity was attractive due to the independence and autonomy the religion could offer. Christian monasticism allowed women to reject the identity of wife and mother, as well as childbirth, which could be life-threatening. Christian women could have active religious roles: For example, abbesses could become important figures in their own right, occasionally ruling over monasteries of both men and women, and holding significant lands and power. Figures such as Hilda of Whitby (c. 614–680) became influential on a national and even international scale.


title: Women in the Middle Ages

text: For secular Christian women, authority largely was attached to class status. Women such as Radegund were able to contribute to the spread of Christianity through her role as wife and Queen. Wealthy women such as Dhuoda illustrate that female autonomy in the Carolingian era was possible, but women's relationships were largely still shaped around familial and communal connections. In fact, evidence of matronymic names indicate that a matriarchal lineage could be useful when distinguishing a lineage, or when relying on a woman's prominent position within society.


title: Women in the Middle Ages

text: Non-elite women shared labour with their male counterparts, but this work was still largely gendered. Women oversaw household activities such as cooking, brewing, spinning, and weaving, as well as care of livestock. Following Burgundian law and Visigothic law, women might also act as land owners and managers, particularly when they were unmarried, widowed, or when their husbands were away from home.


title: Women in the Middle Ages

text: By the end of the tenth century, Christianity had reached most corners of the European world. Al-Andalus, the region which became modern-day Spain and Portugal, was still largely Islamic, and the Norse countries, while in contact with Christianity, were still undergoing conversion. There is more evidence of Jewish communities being established in towns and cities throughout central Europe. Historians also have more evidence of women (and in general) and how they interacted with the world around them beginning in the High Middle Ages.


title: Women in the Middle Ages

text: Developments within the Christian Church during the eleventh and twelfth centuries impacted women in Western Europe, both religious and secular. The Gregorian Reforms heavily restricted clerical marriage, which in turn affected a number of women who had previously held positions as priest's wives. The Reforms entailed a restructuring of the monastic system which largely excluded women, creating zones that were male only. Moreover, the Reforms triggered a type of repression in which celibacy was a marker of ritual purity distinguishing clerics from laypeople. Women's bodies in turn were viewed as inherently polluting.


title: Women in the Middle Ages

text: At the same time, however, there were aspects of Christianity that enabled female spiritual growth. For a brief moment, double monasteries again became popular, through which abbesses held spiritual and political power (for ex: Fontevraud Abbey). Herrad of Landsberg, Hildegard of Bingen, and Héloïse d'Argenteuil were influential abbesses and authors during this period. Hadewijch of Antwerp was a poet and mystic.


title: Women in the Middle Ages

text: Moreover, the growing cult of Mary Magdalene allowed destitute women, such as the poor, widowed, prostitutes, and former priest's wives to seek refuge at Magdalene houses. The parallel cult of the Virgin Mary reframed contemplation of Christ through Mary's suffering. Regarding the role of women in the Church, Pope Innocent III wrote in 1210: "No matter whether the most blessed Virgin Mary stands higher, and is also more illustrious, than all the apostles together, it was still not to her, but to them, that the Lord entrusted the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven". Both cults allowed secular women to engage with female sanctity where they had been previously excluded due to their non-celibate status.


title: Women in the Middle Ages

text: Secularly, female rulers became incredibly prominent in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The Empress Matilda fought for the right to rule her father's kingdom, successfully guaranteeing an extension of her lineage and the rule of the Plantagenets. Her son married the infamous, Eleanor of Aquitaine (1122–1204) who was one of the wealthiest and most powerful women in Western Europe during the High Middle Ages. She was the patroness of such literary figures as Wace, Benoît de Sainte-Maure, and Chrétien de Troyes. Eleanor succeeded her father as "suo jure" Duchess of Aquitaine and Countess of Poitiers at the age of 15. Constance, Queen of Sicily, Urraca of León and Castile, Joan I of Navarre, Melisende, Queen of Jerusalem and other queens regnant exercised political power.


title: Women in the Middle Ages

text: The development of canon law also impacted Christian women's status. The Fourth Lateran Council solidified the need for consent within marriage, assuring women of some autonomy. However, men such as Thomas Aquinas dictated that women owed their husbands a conjugal debt.


title: Women in the Middle Ages

text: In the Late Middle Ages women such as Saint Catherine of Siena (helped stimulate interest in a crusade with Pope Gregory XI to reform Catholic Church).and Saint Teresa of Ávila (emphasized impact of the love of God on the heart) played significant roles in the development of theological ideas and discussion within the church, and were later declared Doctors of the Roman Catholic Church. The mystic Julian of Norwich was also significant in England for being considered the first woman to write a book that survived and was also written in English (took several approaches to her work.


title: Women in the Middle Ages

text: Isabella I of Castile ruled a combined kingdom with her husband Ferdinand II of Aragon, and Joan of Arc successfully led the French army on several occasions during the Hundred Years' War.


title: Women in the Middle Ages

text: Christine de Pizan was a noted late medieval writer on women's issues. Her "Book of the City of Ladies" attacked misogyny, while her "The Treasure of the City of Ladies" articulated an ideal of feminine virtue for women from walks of life ranging from princess to peasant's wife. Her advice to the princess includes a recommendation to use diplomatic skills to prevent war:


title: Women in the Middle Ages

text: If any neighbouring or foreign prince wishes for any reason to make war against her husband, or if her husband wishes to make war on someone else, the good lady will consider this thing carefully, bearing in mind the great evils and infinite cruelties, destruction, massacres and detriment to the country that result from war; the outcome is often terrible. She will ponder long and hard whether she can do something (always preserving the honour of her husband) to prevent this war.


title: Women in the Middle Ages

text: From the last century of the Middle Ages onwards, restrictions began to be placed on women's work, and guilds became increasingly male-only; some of the reasons may have been the rising status and political role of guilds and the increasing competition from cottage industries, which prompted the guilds to tighten their entrance requirements. Female property rights also began to be curtailed during this period.


title: Women in the Middle Ages

text: Medieval marriage was both a private and social matter. According to canon law, the law of the Catholic Church, marriage was a concrete exclusive bond between husband and wife; giving the husband all power and control in the relationship. Husband and wife were partners and were supposed to reflect Adam and Eve. Even though wives had to submit to their husbands' authority, wives still had rights in their marriages. McDougall concurs with Charles Reid's argument that both men and women shared rights in regards to sex and marriage; which includes: "the right to consent to marriage, the right to ask for marital debt or conjugal (sexual) duty, the right to leave a marriage when they either suspected it was invalid or had grounds to sue for separation, and finally the right to choose one's own place of burial, death being the point at which a spouse's ownership of the other spouse's body ceased".


title: Women in the Middle Ages

text: Regionally and across the time span of the Middle Ages, marriage could be formed differently. Marriage could be proclaimed in secret by the mutually consenting couple, or arranged between families as long as the man and woman were not forced and consented freely; but by the 12th century in western canon law, consent (whether in mutual secrecy or in a public sphere) between the couple was imperative. Marriages confirmed in secrecy were seen as problematic in the legal sphere due to spouses redacting and denying that the marriage was solidified and consummated.


title: Women in the Middle Ages

text: Peasants, slaves, and maidservants and generally lower class women needed the permission and consent of their master in order to marry someone; and if they did not they were punished (see below in Law).


title: Women in the Middle Ages

text: Marriage also allowed for the couples' social networks to expand. This was according to who investigated the marriage of Henry Kroyl Jr. and Agnes Penifader, and how their social spheres changed after their marriage. Due to the couples' fathers, Henry Kroyl Sr. and Robert Penifader being prominent villagers in Brigstock, Northamptonshire, approximately 2,000 references to the activities of the couple and their immediate families were being recorded. Bennett details how Kroyl Jr.'s social network expanded greatly as he gained connections through his occupational endeavors.


title: Women in the Middle Ages

text: Agnes' connections expanded also based on Kroyl Jr.'s new connections. However, Bennett also signifies that a familial alliance between the couples' families of origin did not form. Kroyl Jr. had limited contact with his father after his marriage, and his social network expanded from the business he conducted with his brothers and other villagers. Agnes, though all contact with her family did not cease, her social network expanded to her husband's family of origin and his new connections.


title: Women in the Middle Ages

text: Upon the death of a spouse, widows could gain power in inheriting their husbands' property as opposed to adult sons. Male-preference primogeniture stipulated that the male heir was to inherit their deceased father's land; and in cases of no sons, the eldest daughter would inherit property. However, widows could inherit property when they had minor sons, or if provisions were made for them to inherit. Peter Franklin (1986) investigated the women tenants of Thornbury during the Black Death due to the higher than average proportion of women tenants. Through court rolls, he found that many widows in this area independently held land successfully. He argued that some widows may have remarried due to keeping up with their tenure and financial difficulties of holding their inherited land, or community pressures for the said widow to remarry if she had a male servant living in her home. Remarriage would put the widow back under the thumb and control of her new husband. However, some widows never remarried and held the land until their deaths, thereby ensuring their independence. Even young widows, who would have had an easier time remarrying, remained independent and unmarried. Franklin considers the lives of widows to have been "liberating" because women had more autonomous control over their lives and property; they were able to "argue their own cases in court, hire labour, and cultivate and manage holdings successfully".


title: Women in the Middle Ages

text: Franklin also discusses that some Thornbury widows had second and even third marriages. Remarriage would have affected inheritance of property, especially if the widow had children with her second husband; however there are several cases where sons from the widow's first marriage were able to inherit before the second husband.


title: Women in the Middle Ages

text: McDougall also notes like the varying forms of marriage, the canon law regarding remarriage varied across regions. Both men and women could have been permitted to freely remarry or may have been restricted and/or deemed to serve penance before remarrying.


title: Women in the Middle Ages

text: In the Middle Ages the upper socioeconomic groups generally included royalty and nobility. Conduct books from the period present an image of the role of elite women being to obey their spouse, guard their virtue, produce offspring, and to oversee the operation of the household. For those women who did adhere to these traditional roles, the responsibilities could be considerable, with households sometimes including dozens of people. Further, when their husbands were away the role of women could increase substantially. By the High and Late Middle Ages there were numerous royal and noble women who assumed control of their husbands' domains in their absence, including defense and even bearing arms.


title: Women in the Middle Ages

text: Noble women were natural parts of the cultural and political environments of their time due to their positions and kinship. Particularly when acting as regents, elite women would assume the full feudal, economic, political and judicial powers of their husbands or young heirs. These women were never prohibited during the Middle Ages from receiving fiefdoms or owning real property during their husbands' lives. Noble women were often patrons of literature, art, monasteries and convents, and religious men. It was not uncommon for them to be knowledgeable in Latin literature.


title: Women in the Middle Ages

text: As with peasant men, the life of peasant women was difficult. In terms of labour, women of the peasantry had more gender equality than in the nobility. However, most scholars agree that impoverished women had fundamentally the same subordinate status as women elsewhere in medieval society. Women were generally prohibited from acting as elected town officials, and likely only attended village meetings if they were unmarried, or widowed. Due to poor nutrition and the dangers of childbirth, women's life expectancy at birth was less than that of male peasants: perhaps 25 years. As a result, in some places there were four men for every three women.


title: Women in the Middle Ages

text: Chris Middleton made these general observations about English peasant women: "A peasant woman's life was, in fact, hemmed in by prohibition and restraint." If single, women had to submit to the male head of her household; if married, to her husband, under whose identity she was subsumed. English peasant women generally could not hold lands for long, rarely learnt any craft occupation and rarely advanced past the position of assistants, and could not become officials.


title: Women in the Middle Ages

text: Peasant women had numerous restrictions placed on their behaviour by their lords. If a woman was pregnant, and not married, or had sex outside of marriage, the lord was entitled to compensation. The control of peasant women was a function of financial benefits to the lords. They were not motivated by women's moral state. Also during this period, sexual activity was not regulated, with couples simply living together outside a formal ceremony, provided they had permission by their lord. Even without a feudal lord involved with her life, a woman still had supervision by their father, brothers or other male members of the family. Women had little control over their own lives.


title: Women in the Middle Ages

text: Middleton provided some exceptions: English peasant women, on their own behalf, could plead in manorial courts; some female freeholders enjoyed immunities from male peers and landlords; and some trades (such as ale-brewing), provided female workers with independence. Still, Middleton viewed these as exceptions which required historians only to modify, rather than revise, "the essential model of female subservience."


title: Women in the Middle Ages

text: In medieval Western Europe, society and economy were rural-based. Ninety percent of the European population lived in the countryside or in small towns. Agriculture played an important role in sustaining this rural-based economy. Due to the lack of mechanical devices, activities were performed mostly by human labour. Both men and women participated in the medieval workforce and most workers were not paid by wages for their labour, but instead independently worked on their land and produced their own goods for consumption. Whittle cautioned against the "modern assumption that active economic involvement and hard work translate into status and wealth" because during Middle Ages, hard work only ensured survival against starvation. In fact, although peasant women worked as hard as peasant men, they suffered many disadvantages such as fewer landholdings, occupational exclusions, and lower wages.


title: Women in the Middle Ages

text: Land-ownership involved various inheritance patterns, according to the potential heir's gender across the landscape of medieval Western Europe. Primogeniture prevailed in England, Normandy, and the Basque region: In the Basque region, the eldest child -regardless of sex- inherited all lands. In Normandy, only sons could inherit lands. In England, the eldest son usually inherited all properties, but sometimes sons inherited jointly, daughters would inherit only if there were no sons. In Scandinavia, sons received twice as much as daughters' inheritance, yet siblings of the same sex received equal shares. In northern France, Brittany, and the Holy Roman Empire, sons and daughters enjoyed partible inheritance: each child would receive an equal share regardless of sex (but Parisian parents could favour some children over others).


title: Women in the Middle Ages

text: Female land-owners, single or married, could grant or sell land as they deemed fit. Women managed the estates when their husbands left for war, political affairs, and pilgrimages. Nevertheless, as time passed, women were increasingly given, as dowries, movable properties such as good and cash instead of land. Even though up the year 1000 female landownership had been increasing, afterwards female landownership began to decline. Commercialization also contributed to the decline in female landownership as more women left the countryside to work for wages as servants or day labourers. Medieval widows independently managed and cultivated their deceased husbands' lands. Overall, widows were preferred over children to inherit lands: indeed, English widows would receive one third of the couples' shared properties, but in Normandy widows could not inherit.


title: Women in the Middle Ages

text: Notable examples of women landowners in England in the Middle Ages include: countess Gytha, mother of Harold Godwinson, who held lands across the south west of England; Asa, who held land in Yorkshire; and Judith, who owned large amounts of land in the East Midlands (all three women and their claims are recorded in the Domesday Book); and Margaret de Neville, who owned extensive lands in 13th-14th century Yorkshire.


title: Women in the Middle Ages

text: Generally, research has determined that there is limited gender division of labour among peasant men and women. Rural historian Jane Whittle described this gender division of labour thus: "Labour was divided according to the workers' gender. Some activities were restricted to either men or women; other activities were preferred to be performed by one gender over the other:" e.g. men ploughed, mowed, and threshed and women gleaned, cleared weeds, bound sheaves, made hay, and collected wood; and yet others were performed by both, such as harvesting.


title: Women in the Middle Ages

text: A woman's standing as a worker might vary depending on circumstances. Generally, women were required to have male guardians who would assume legal liability for them in legal and economic matters: For the wives of elite merchants in Northern Europe, their roles extended to commercial undertakings both with their husbands and on their own, however in Italy tradition and law excluded them from commerce; in Ghent, women had to have guardians unless these women had been emancipated or were prestigious merchants; Norman women were forbidden to contract business ventures; French women could litigate business matters, but could not plead in courts without their husbands, unless they had suffered from their husbands' abuses; Castilian wives, during the Reconquista, enjoyed favourable legal treatments, worked in family-oriented trades and crafts, sold goods, kept inns and shops, became domestic servants for wealthier households; Christian Castilian wives laboured along with Jewish and Muslim free-born women and slaves. Yet over time Castilian wives' work became associated with or even subordinated to that of their husbands, and when the Castilian frontier region had been stabilized, Castilian wives' legal standing deteriorated.


title: Women in the Middle Ages

text: Both peasant men and women worked in the home and out in the fields. In looking at coroner records for 14th-century rural England detailing the accidental deaths of 1,000 people, which represent the lives of peasants more clearly, Barbara Hanawalt found that 30% of women died in their homes compared to 12% of men; 9% of women died on a private property (i.e. a neighbour's house, a garden area, manor house, etc.) compared to 6% of men; 22% of women died in public areas within their village (i.e. greens, streets, churches, markets, highways, etc.) compared to 18% of men. Men dominated accidental deaths within fields at 38% compared to 18% of women, and men had 4% more accidental deaths in water than women did. Accidental deaths of women (61%) occurred within their homes and villages; while men had only 36%. This information correlated with the activities and labours regarding the maintenance and responsibilities of working in a household. These include: food preparation, laundry, sewing, brewing, getting water, starting fires, tending to children, collecting produce, and working with domestic animals. Outside of the household and village, 4% of women died in agricultural accidents compared to 19% of men, and no women died from labours of construction or carpentry. The division of gendered labour may be due to women's being at risk of danger, like being attacked, raped and losing their virginity, in doing work in the fields or outside of the home and village.


title: Women in the Middle Ages

text: Three main activities performed by peasant men and women were planting foods, keeping livestock, and making textiles, as depicted in Psalters from southern Germany and England. Women of different classes performed different activities: rich urban women could be merchants like their husbands or even became money lenders; middle-class women worked in the textile, inn-keeping, shop-keeping, and brewing industries; while poorer women often peddled and huckstered foods and other merchandise in the market places, or worked in richer households as domestic servants, day labourers, or laundresses. Modern historians assumed that only women were assigned childcare and thus had to work near their home, yet childcare responsibilities could be fulfilled far from the home and -except breastfeeding- were not exclusive to women. In spite of the patriarchal medieval European culture, which posited female inferiority, opposed female independence, so that female workers could not contract out their labour services without their husband's' approval, widows have been recorded to act as independent economic agents; meanwhile, a married woman -mostly from among the female artisans- could, under some limited circumstances, exercise some agency as a "femme sole," identified legally and economically as separate from her husband: she could learn artisan skills from her parents as their apprentice, she could work alone, conduct business, contract her labours, or even plead in law-courts.


title: Women in the Middle Ages

text: There was evidence that women performed not only housekeeping responsibilities like cooking and cleaning, but even other household activities like grinding, brewing, butchering, and spinning; and produced items like flour, ale, meat, cheese, and textile for direct consumption and for sale. An anonymous 15th-century English ballad appreciated activities performed by English peasant women such as housekeeping, making foodstuffs and textiles, and childcare. Even though cloth-making, brewing, and dairy production were trades associated with female workers, male cloth-makers and brewers increasingly displaced female workers, especially after water-mills, horizontal looms, and hop-flavoured beers were invented. These inventions favoured commercial cloth-making and brewing dominated by male workers who had more time, wealth, and access to credit and political influence and who produced goods for sale instead of for direct consumption. Meanwhile, women were increasingly relegated to low-paying tasks like spinning.


title: Women in the Middle Ages

text: Besides working independently on their own lands, women could hire themselves out as servants or wage-workers. Medieval servants performed works as required by the employer's household: men cooked and cleaned while women did the laundry. Like their independent rural workers, rural wage-labourers performed complementary tasks based on a gendered division of labour. Women were paid only half as much as men even though both sexes performed similar tasks.


title: Women in the Middle Ages

text: After the Black Death killed a large part of the European population and led to severe labour shortages, women filled out the occupational gaps in the cloth-making and agricultural sectors. Simon Penn argued that the labour shortages after the Black Death furnished economic opportunities for women, but Sarah Bardsley and Judith Bennett countered that women were paid about 50-75% of men's wages. Bennett attributed this gender-based wage-gap to patriarchal prejudices which devalued women's work, yet John Hatcher disputed Bennet's claim: he pointed out that men and women received the same wages for the same piece-work, but women received lower day-wages because they were physically weaker and might have had to sacrifice working hours for other domestic duties. Whittle stated that the debate has not yet been settled.


title: Women in the Middle Ages

text: To illustrate, the late medieval poem "Piers Plowman" paints a pitiful picture of the life of the medieval peasant woman:


title: Women in the Middle Ages

text: Peasant women during the time period were subjected to a number of superstitious practices when it came to their health. In "The Distaff Gospels", a collection of 15th-century French women's lore, advice for women's health was plentiful. "For a fever, write the first 3 words of the Our Father on a sage leaf, eat it in the morning for 3 days and you will be cured."


title: Women in the Middle Ages

text: Male involvement with women's healthcare was widespread. However, there were limits to male participation because of the resistance to males' viewing women's genitalia. During most encounters with male medical practitioners, women remained clothed because viewing a women's body was considered shameful.


title: Women in the Middle Ages

text: Childbirth was treated as the most important aspect of women's health during the period; however, few historical texts document the experience. Women attendants assisted in childbirth and passed their experiences to one another. In addition to serving as midwives or nuns, women also served in other scattered capacities ranging from physicians to empirical healers, even when they unequaled compared to roles men held, they still found a way to serve in important capacities. Midwives, women who attended childbirth, were acknowledged as legitimate medical specialists and were granted a special role in women's health care. There is Roman documentation in Latin works evidencing the professional role of midwives and their involvement with gynaecological care. Women were healers and engaged in medical practices. In 12th-century Salerno, Italy, Trota, a woman, wrote one of the "Trotula" texts on diseases of women. Her text, "Treatments for Women", addressed events in childbirth that called for medical attention. The book was a compilation of three original texts and quickly became the basis for the treatment of women. Based on medical information developed in Greek and Roman eras, these texts discussed ailments, disease, and possible treatments for women's health issues.


title: Women in the Middle Ages

text: The Abbess Hildegard of Bingen, classed among medieval single women, wrote, in her 12th-century treatise "Physica and Causae et Curae", about many issues concerning women's health. Hildegard was one of the most well known of medieval medical authors. In particular, Hildegard contributed much valuable knowledge in the use of herbs as well as observations regarding women's physiology and spirituality. In nine sections, Hildegard's volume reviews the medical uses for plants, the earth's elements (earth, water, and air), and animals. Also included are investigations of metals and jewels. Hildegard also explored such issues as laughter, tears, and sneezing, on the one hand, and poisons and aphrodisiacs, on the other. Her work was compiled in a religious environment but also relied on past wisdom and new findings about women's health. Hildegard's work not only addresses illness and cures but also explores the theory of medicine and the nature of women's bodies.


title: Women in the Middle Ages

text: Just as Classical Greco-Roman writers, including Aristotle, Pliny the Elder, and Galen, assumed that men lived longer than women, medieval Catholic bishop Albertus Magnus agreed that in general men lived longer, but he observed that some women live longer and posited that it was "per accidens", thanks to the purification resulting from menstruation and that women worked less but also consumed less than men. Modern historians Bullough and Campbell instead attribute high female mortality during the Middle Ages to deficiency in iron and protein as a result of the diet during the Roman period and the early Middle Ages. Medieval peasants subsisted upon grain-heavy, protein-poor and iron-poor diets, eating breads of wheat, barley, and rye dipped in broth, and rarely enjoying nutritious supplements like cheese, eggs, and wine. Physiologically speaking, women require at least twice as much iron as men because women inevitably lose iron through menstrual discharge as well as to events related to child bearing, including fetal needs; bleeding during childbirth, miscarriage, and abortion; and lactation. As the human body better absorbs iron from liver, iron salts, and meat than from grains and vegetables, the grain-heavy medieval diet commonly resulted in iron deficiency and, by extension, general anemia for medieval women. However, anemia was not the leading cause of death for women; rather anemia, which lessens the amount of hemoglobin in blood, would further aggravate such other diseases as pneumonia, bronchitis, emphysema, and heart diseases.


title: Women in the Middle Ages

text: Since the 800s, the invention of a more efficient type of plough—along with three-field replacing two-field crop rotation—allowed medieval peasants to improve their diets through planting, alongside wheat and rye in the fall, oats, barley, and legumes in the spring, including various protein-rich peas. In the same period, rabbits were introduced from the Iberian Peninsula across the Alps to the Carolingian Empire, reaching England in the 12th century. Herring could be more effectively salted, and pork, cheese, and eggs were increasingly consumed throughout Europe, even by the lower classes. As a result, Europeans of all classes consumed more proteins from meats than did people in any other part of the world during the same period—leading to population growth that almost outstripped resources at the onset of the devastating Black Death. Bullough and Campbell further cite David Herlihy, who observes, based on available data, that in European cities in the 15th century, women outnumbered men, and although they did not have the "absolute numerical advantage over men," women were more numerous among the elderly. A noteworthy difference with in the population of men and women is that women under the age of fifteen outnumbered men 105 to 99. However, over the age of fifteen and still unmarried men outnumbered women. Many women were married at a younger age, which contributed to those numbers. This is important while considering medical treatment of the time which often proved to be misogynistic in nature.


title: Women in the Middle Ages

text: Cultural differences across Western and Eastern Europe meant that laws were neither universal nor universally practised. The "Laws of the Salian Franks", a Germanic tribe that migrated into Gaul and converted to Christianity between the 6th and 7th centuries, provide a well-known example of a particular tribe's law codes. According to Salic Law, crimes and determined punishments were usually orated; however as their contact with literate Romans increased, their laws became codified and developed into written language and text.


title: Women in the Middle Ages

text: Peasants, slaves, and maidservants were considered as property of their free-born master(s). In some or perhaps most cases, the unfree person might be regarded as of the same value as their master's animals. However, peasants, slaves, and maidservants of the king were regarded as more valuable and even considered to be of the same value as free persons because they were members of the king's court.


title: Women in the Middle Ages

text: If someone were to abduct another person's slave or maidservant and were proven to have committed the crime, that individual would be responsible to pay 35 solidi, the value of the slave, and in addition a fine for lost time of use. If someone abducted another person's maidservant, the abductor would be fined 30 solidi. A proven seducer of a maidservant worth 15 or 25 solidi, and who is himself worth 25 solidi, would be fined 72 solidi plus the value of the maidservant. The proven abductor of a boy or girl domestic servant will be fined the value of the servant (25 or 35 solidi) plus an additional amount for lost time of use.


title: Women in the Middle Ages

text: A free-born woman who marries a slave will lose her freedom and privileges as a free-born woman. She will also have her property taken away from her and will be proclaimed an outlaw. A free-born man who marries a slave or maidservant shall also lose his freedom and privilege as a free-born man.


title: Women in the Middle Ages

text: If a freeman fornicates with another person's maidservant and is proven to have done so, he will be required to pay the maidservant's master 15 solidi. If anyone fornicates with a maidservant of the king and proven to do so, the fine would be 30 solidi. If a slave fornicates with another person's maidservant and that maidservant dies, the slave will be fined and also be required to pay the maidservant's master 6 solidi and may be castrated; or that slave's master will be required to pay the maidservant's master the value of the deceased maidservant. If a slave fornicates with a maidservant who does not die, the slave will either receive three hundred lashes or be required to pay the maidservant's master 3 solidi. If a slave marries another person's maidservant without her master's consent, the slave will either be whipped or required to pay the maidservant's master 3 solidi.


title: Women in the Middle Ages

text: The first group of peasant women consisted of free landholders. Early records such as the Exon Domesday and Little Domesday attested that, among English land-owners, 10-14% noble thegns and non-noble free-tenants were women; and Wendy Davies found records which showed that in 54% of property transactions, women could act independently or jointly with their husbands and sons. Still, only after the 13th century are there records which better showed free female peasants' rights to land. In addition, English manorial court-rolls recorded many activities carried out by free peasants such as selling and inheriting lands, paying rents, settling upon debts and credits, brewing and selling ale, and - if unfree - rendering labour services to lords. Free peasant women, unlike their male counterparts, could not become officers such as manorial jurors, constables, and reeves.


title: Women in the Middle Ages

text: The second category of medieval European workers were serfs. Conditions of serfdom applied to both genders. Serfs did not enjoy property rights as did free tenants: serfs were restricted from leaving their lords' lands at will and were forbidden to dispose of their assigned holdings. Both male and female serfs had to labour as part of their services to their lords and their required activities might be even specifically gendered by the lords. Many serfs also had no choice but to be controlled by their Lords, as in turn from protection from tax collectors and other protections, they were bound to them, which is an early example of taking advantage of peasants/serfs who had their roles more concrete in society. A serf woman would pass her serfdom status to her children; in contrast, children would inherit gentry status from their father. A serf could gain freedom when released by the lord, or after having escaped from the lord's control for one year plus one day, often into towns; escaping serfs were rarely arrested.


title: Women in the Middle Ages

text: When female serfs got married, they had to pay fines to their lords. The first fine upon a female serf getting married was known as merchet, to be paid by her father to their lord; the rationale was that the lord had lost a worker and her children. The second fine is the leyrwite, to be paid by a male or female serf who had committed sexual acts forbidden by the Church, for fear that the fornicating serf might have her marriage value lessened and thus the lord might not get the merchet.


title: Women in the Middle Ages

text: Chris Middleton cited other historians who demonstrated that lords often regulated their serfs' marriages to make sure that the serfs' landholdings would not be taken out of their jurisdiction. Lords could even force female serfs into involuntary marriages to ensure that the female serfs would be able to pro-create a new generation of workers. Over time, English lords increasingly favoured primogeniture inheritance patterns to prevent their serfs' landholdings from being broken up.


title: Women in the Middle Ages

text: Although many women served in more traditional roles, and it was mainly men who had a more influential hold over society, that doesn't mean women didn't participate in civil discourse. Even though the voices of women were heavily suppressed due to society's undemocratic nature, they still had a voice through writing, or in courts or synod. Although there are not many interpretations available on women's civic practices, it is believed that they participated heavily through writings and letters, a quieter way of participation.


title: Women in the Middle Ages

text: Women had much involvement in the church as religion is very important to the Middle Ages. However, one of the most prominent roles a woman could be in the church was serving as a nun or working in a hospital (mostly nuns as well). Women generally participated in the church in a different way than men would, as well as having different beliefs, such as purifying women after birth, or denying communion to menstruating women. Many ideas were conceptualized by men about women in the church which led to such treatment because of gender roles.


title: Women in the Middle Ages

text: The status of women differed immensely by region. In most of Western Europe, later marriage and higher rates of definitive celibacy (the so-called "European marriage pattern") helped to constrain patriarchy at its most extreme level. The rise of Christianity and manorialism had both created incentives to keep families nuclear and thus the age of marriage increased; the Western Church instituted marriage laws and practices that undermined large kinship groups. From as early as the 4th century, the Church discouraged any practice that enlarged the family, like adoption, polygamy, taking concubines, divorce, and remarriage. The Church severely discouraged and prohibited consanguineous marriages, a marriage pattern that has constituted a means to maintain clans (and thus their power) throughout history. The church also forbade marriages in which the bride did not clearly agree to the union. After the Fall of Rome, manorialism also helped to weaken the ties of kinship and thus the power of clans; as early as the 9th century in Austrasia, families that worked on manors were small, consisting of parents and children and occasionally a grandparent. The Church and state had become allies in erasing the solidarity and thus the political power of the clans; the Church sought to replace traditional religion, whose vehicle was the kin group, and substituting the authority of the elders of the kin group with that of a religious elder; at the same time, the king's rule was undermined by revolts on the part of the most powerful kin groups, clans or sections, whose conspiracies and murders threatened the power of the state and also the demand of manorial lords for obedient, compliant workers. As the peasants and serfs lived and worked on farms that they rented from the lord of the manor, they also needed the permission of the lord to marry; couples therefore had to comply with the lord and wait until a small farm became available before they could marry and thus produce children. Those who could and did delay marriage presumably were rewarded by the landlord and those who did not were presumably denied said reward. For example, Medieval England saw the marriage age as variable depending on economic circumstances, with couples delaying marriage until the early twenties when times were bad and frequently marrying in the late teens after the Black Death, when there were labour shortages and it was economically lucrative to workers; by appearances, marriage of adolescents was not the norm in England.


title: Women in the Middle Ages

text: In Eastern Europe however, there were many differences with specific regional characteristics. In the Byzantine Empire and Bulgarian Empire, the majority of women were well educated and had a higher social status than in Western Europe. Equality in family relations and the right to common property after marriage were recognized by law with the Ekloga, issued in Constantinople in 726 and Slavonic Ekloga in Bulgaria in the 9th century. In some parts of Russia the tradition of early and universal marriage (usually of a bride age 12–15, with menarche occurring on average at 14) as well as traditional Slavic patrilocal customs led to a greatly inferior status for women at all levels of society. In rural South Slavic areas, a custom of women marrying men younger than themselves, in some cases only after the age of thirty, remained until the 19th century. The manorial system had yet to penetrate into Eastern Europe where there was a lesser effect on clan systems and no firm enforcement of bans on cross-cousin marriages. Orthodox laws banned marriages between relatives closer than third and fourth cousins.


title: Niklas Luhmann

text: Niklas Luhmann (; ; December 8, 1927 – November 6, 1998) was a German sociologist, philosopher of social science, and a prominent thinker in systems theory.


title: Niklas Luhmann

text: Luhmann was born in Lüneburg, Free State of Prussia, where his father's family had been running a brewery for several generations. He entered the Gymnasium Johanneum at Luneburg in 1937. In 1943, he was conscripted as a Luftwaffenhelfer in World War II and served for two years until, at the age of 17, he was taken prisoner of war by American troops in 1945. After the war Luhmann studied law at the University of Freiburg from 1946 to 1949, when he obtained a law degree, and then began a career in Lüneburg's public administration. During a sabbatical in 1961, he went to Harvard, where he met and studied under Talcott Parsons, then the world's most influential social systems theorist.


title: Niklas Luhmann

text: In later days, Luhmann dismissed Parsons' theory, developing a rival approach of his own. Leaving the civil service in 1962, he lectured at the national Deutsche Hochschule für Verwaltungswissenschaften (University for Administrative Sciences) in Speyer, Germany. In 1965, he was offered a position at the Sozialforschungsstelle (Social Research Centre) of the University of Münster, led by Helmut Schelsky.


title: Niklas Luhmann

text: Two earlier books were retroactively accepted as a PhD thesis and habilitation at the University of Münster in 1966, qualifying him for a university professorship. In 1968/1969, he briefly served as a lecturer at Theodor Adorno's former chair at the University of Frankfurt and then was appointed full professor of sociology at the newly founded University of Bielefeld, Germany (until 1993). He continued to publish after his retirement, when he finally found the time to complete his magnum opus, "Die Gesellschaft der Gesellschaft" (literally, "The Society of Society"), which was published in 1997, and has been translated into English as "Theory of Society" (volume I in 2012 and volume II in 2013). This work describes segmented societies where territory is a dividing line.


title: Niklas Luhmann

text: Luhmann wrote prolifically, with more than 70 books and nearly 400 scholarly articles published on a variety of subjects, including law, economy, politics, art, religion, ecology, mass media, and love. While his theories have yet to make a major mark in American sociology, his theory is currently well known and popular in German sociology, and has also been rather intensively received in Japan and Eastern Europe, including Russia. His relatively low profile elsewhere is partly due to the fact that translating his work is a difficult task, since his writing presents a challenge even to readers of German, including many sociologists. (p. xxvii Social Systems 1995)


title: Niklas Luhmann

text: Much of Luhmann's work directly deals with the operations of the legal system and his autopoietic theory of law is regarded as one of the more influential contributions to the sociology of law and socio-legal studies.


title: Niklas Luhmann

text: Luhmann is probably best known to North Americans for his debate with the critical theorist Jürgen Habermas over the potential of social systems theory. Like his erstwhile mentor Talcott Parsons, Luhmann is an advocate of "grand theory", although neither in the sense of philosophical foundationalism nor in the sense of "meta-narrative" as often invoked in the critical works of post-modernist writers. Rather, Luhmann's work tracks closer to complexity theory broadly speaking, in that it aims to address any aspect of social life within a universal theoretical framework — as the diversity of subjects he wrote on indicates. Luhmann's theory is sometimes dismissed as highly abstract and complex, particularly within the Anglophone world, whereas his work has had a more lasting influence on scholars from German-speaking countries, Scandinavia and Italy.


title: Niklas Luhmann

text: Luhmann himself described his theory as "labyrinthine" or "non-linear" and claimed he was deliberately keeping his prose enigmatic to prevent it from being understood "too quickly", which would only produce simplistic misunderstandings.


title: Niklas Luhmann

text: The core element of Luhmann's theory pivots around the problem of the contingency of meaning and thereby it becomes a theory of communication. Social systems are systems of communication, and society is the most encompassing social system. Being the social system that comprises all (and only) communication, today's society is a world society. A system is defined by a boundary between itself and its environment, dividing it from an infinitely complex, or (colloquially) chaotic, exterior. The interior of the system is thus a zone of reduced complexity: Communication within a system operates by selecting only a limited amount of all information available outside. This process is also called "reduction of complexity". The criterion according to which information is selected and processed is meaning (in German, "Sinn"). Meaning being thereby referral from one set of potential space to another set of potential space. Both social systems and psychic systems (see below for an explanation of this distinction) operate by processing meaning.


title: Niklas Luhmann

text: Furthermore, each system has a distinctive identity that is constantly reproduced in its communication and depends on what is considered meaningful and what is not. If a system fails to maintain that identity, it ceases to exist as a system and dissolves back into the environment it emerged from. Luhmann called this process of reproduction from elements previously filtered from an over-complex environment autopoiesis (pronounced "auto-poy-E-sis"; literally: self-creation), using a term coined in cognitive biology by Chilean thinkers Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela. Social systems are "operationally closed" in that while they use and rely on resources from their environment, those resources do not become part of the systems' operation. Both thought and digestion are important preconditions for communication, but neither appears in communication as such.


title: Niklas Luhmann

text: Maturana, however, argued very vocally that this appropriation of autopoietic theory was conceptually unsound, as it presupposes the autonomy of communications from actual persons. That is, by describing social systems as operationally closed networks of communications, Luhmann (according to Maturana) ignores the fact that communications presuppose human communicators. Autopoiesis only applies to networks of processes that reproduce themselves, but communications are reproduced by humans. For this reason, the analogy from biology to sociology does not, in this case, hold. On the other hand, Luhmann explicitly stressed that he does not refer to a "society without humans", but to the fact that communication is autopoietic. Communication is made possible by human bodies and consciousness, but this does not make communication operationally open. To "participate" in communication, one must be able to render one's thoughts and perceptions into elements of communication. This can only ever occur as a communicative operation (thoughts and perceptions cannot be directly transmitted) and must therefore satisfy internal system conditions that are specific to communication: intelligibility, reaching an addressee and gaining acceptance.


title: Niklas Luhmann

text: Luhmann likens the operation of autopoiesis (the filtering and processing of information from the environment) to a program, making a series of logical distinctions (in German, "Unterscheidungen"). Here, Luhmann refers to the British mathematician G. Spencer-Brown's logic of distinctions that Maturana and Varela had earlier identified as a model for the functioning of any cognitive process. The supreme criterion guiding the "self-creation" of any given system is a defining binary code. This binary code is not to be confused with a computer's operation: Luhmann (following Spencer-Brown and Gregory Bateson) assumes that auto-referential systems are continuously confronted with the dilemma of disintegration/continuation. This dilemma is framed with an ever-changing set of available choices; every one of those potential choices can be the system's selection or not (a binary state, selected/rejected). The influence of Spencer-Brown's book, "Laws of Form", on Luhmann can hardly be overestimated.


title: Niklas Luhmann

text: Although Luhmann first developed his understanding of social systems theory under Parsons' influence, he soon moved away from the Parsonian concept. The most important difference is that Parsons framed systems as forms of action, in accordance with the AGIL paradigm. Parsons' systems theory treats systems as operationally open, and interactive through an input and output schema. Influenced by second-order cybernetics, Luhmann instead treats systems as autopoietic and operationally closed. Systems must continually construct themselves and their perspective of reality through processing the distinction between system and environment, and self-reproduce themselves as the product of their own elements. Social systems are defined by Luhmann not as action but as recursive communication. Modern society is defined as a world system consisting of the sum total of all communication happening at once, and individual function systems (such as the economy, politics, science, love, art, the media, etc.) are described as social subsystems which have "outdifferentiated" from the social system and achieved their own operational closure and autopoiesis.


title: Niklas Luhmann

text: Another difference is that Parsons asks how certain subsystems contribute to the functioning of overall society. Luhmann starts with the differentiation of the systems themselves out of a nondescript environment. While he does observe how certain systems fulfill functions that contribute to "society" as a whole, he dispenses with the assumption of "a priori" cultural or normative consensus or "complimentary purpose" which was common to Durkheim and Parsons' conceptualization of a social function. For Luhmann, functional differentiation is a consequence of selective pressure under temporalized complexity, and it occurs as function systems independently establish their own ecological niches by performing a function. Functions are therefore not the coordinated components of the organic social whole, but rather contingent and selective responses to reference problems which obey no higher principle of order and could have been responded to in other ways.


title: Niklas Luhmann

text: Finally, the systems' autopoietic closure is another fundamental difference from Parsons' concept. Each system works strictly according to its very own code and can observe other systems only by applying its code to their operations. For example, the code of the economy involves the application of the distinction between payment and non-payment. Other system operations appear within the economic field of references only insofar as this economic code can be applied to them. Hence, a political decision becomes an economic operation when it is observed as a government spending money or not. Likewise, a legal judgement may also be an economic operation when settlement of a contractual dispute obliges one party to pay for the goods or services they had acquired. The codes of the economy, politics and law operate autonomously, but their "interpenetration" is evident when observing "events" which simultaneously involve the participation of more than one system.


title: Niklas Luhmann

text: One seemingly peculiar, but within the overall framework strictly logical, axiom of Luhmann's theory is the human being's position outside the strict boundaries of any social system, as initially developed by Parsons. Consisting of, but not being solely constituted by, "communicative actions" (a reference to Jürgen Habermas) any social system requires human consciousnesses (personal or psychical systems) as an obviously necessary, but nevertheless environmental resource. In Luhmann's terms, human beings are neither part of society nor of any specific systems, just as they are not part of a conversation. People make conversation possible. Luhmann himself once said concisely that he was "not interested in people". That is not to say that people were not a matter for Luhmann, but rather alluding to the scope of the theory where, the communicative behavior of people is constituted (but not defined) by the dynamics of the social system, and society is constituted (but not defined) by the communicative behavior of people: society is people's environment, and people are society's environment.


title: Niklas Luhmann

text: Thus, sociology can explain how persons can change society; the influence of the environment (the people) on a given social system (a society), the so-called ""structural coupling"" of ""partially interpenetrating systems"".


title: Niklas Luhmann

text: In fact Luhmann himself replied to the relevant criticism by stating that "In fact the theory of autopoietic systems could bear the title "Taking Individuals Seriously", certainly more seriously than our humanistic tradition" (Niklas Luhmann, "Operational Closure and Structural Coupling: The Differentiation of the Legal System", Cardozo Law Review, vol. 13: 1422).


title: Niklas Luhmann

text: Luhmann was devoted to the ideal of non-normative science introduced to sociology in the early 20th century by Max Weber and later re-defined and defended against its critics by Karl Popper. However, in an academic environment that never strictly separated descriptive and normative theories of society, Luhmann's sociology has widely attracted criticism from various intellectuals, including Jürgen Habermas.


title: Niklas Luhmann

text: Luhmann's systems theory is not without its critics; his definitions of "autopoietic" and "social system" differ from others.


title: Niklas Luhmann

text: At the same time his theory is being applied or used worldwide by sociologists and other scholars. It is often used in analyses dealing with corporate social responsibility, organisational legitimacy, governance structures as well as with sociology of law and of course general sociology. His systems theory has also been used to study media discourse of various energy technologies throughout the US, including smart grids, carbon capture and storage, and wind energy.


title: Niklas Luhmann

text: His approach has attracted criticism from those who argue that Luhmann has at no point demonstrated the operational closure of social systems, or in fact that autopoietic social systems actually exist. He has instead taken this as a premise or presupposition, resulting in the logical need to exclude humans from social systems, which prevents the social systems view from accounting for the individual behavior, action, motives, or indeed existence of any individual person.


title: Niklas Luhmann

text: Luhmann was famous for his extensive use of the "slip box" or "Zettelkasten" note-taking method. He built up a zettelkasten of some 90,000 index cards for his research, and credited it with making his extraordinarily prolific writing possible. It was digitized and made available online in 2019. Luhmann described the zettelkasten as part of his research into systems theory in the essay "Kommunikation mit Zettelkästen".


title: Niklas Luhmann

text: Luhmann also appears as a character in Paul Wühr's work of literature "Das falsche Buch", along with Ulrich Sonnemann, Johann Georg Hamann, Richard Buckminster Fuller and others.


title: Niklas Luhmann

text: Luhmann owned a pub called "Pons" in his parents' house in his native town of Lüneburg. The house, which also contained his father's brewery, had been in his family since 1857.


title: The X-Files (season 7)

text: The seventh season of the American science fiction television series "The X-Files" commenced airing on the Fox network in the United States on November 7, 1999, concluded on May 21, 2000, and consists of twenty-two episodes. Taking place after the destruction of the Syndicate, this season marks the end of various other story lines; during this season, Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) learned the true fate of his sister, Samantha.


title: The X-Files (season 7)

text: Before the broadcasting for the season began, Duchovny sued Fox and eventually announced his decision to leave the show. As a result, the season would be the last to feature Duchovny in a full-time capacity until the show's tenth season (which aired in 2016), although he would return in seasons 8 and 9 as an intermittent main character. Due to this eventual character change, this season would be the last to feature the original opening sequence for the series, as the two later years updated the intro in an attempt to renew and revive the series.


title: The X-Files (season 7)

text: The seventh-season premiere "The Sixth Extinction", debuted with a Nielsen rating of 10.6 and was viewed by 17.82 million viewers, marking a noticeable drop in viewership since the sixth season. The series fell from number 12 to number 29 for the 1999–2000 television year. Critically, the show's seventh season received mixed to positive reviews; many reviewers felt that the show still produced good episodes, but that it was the weakest of the Duchovny and Anderson seasons of the show.


title: The X-Files (season 7)

text: After the events of the season six finale, Walter Skinner (Mitch Pileggi) and Michael Kritschgau (John Finn) are desperately attempting to find the truth behind the so-called alien object. Meanwhile, Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) is still imprisoned by his own frenetic brain activity. Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) and Skinner are unaware of FBI Special Agent Diana Fowley's (Mimi Rogers) duplicity—she is working for Cigarette Smoking Man (William B. Davis). Scully then travels to Africa to unravel the secrets of the alien artifacts, finding something that looks like a spaceship buried under the shoreline off the Côte d'Ivoire coast. The object may prove that life originated elsewhere, and all religion is based on the Navajo contact with alien life. Unsuccessful, Scully returns from Africa to revisit Mulder in Washington, D.C., but instead she finds out that he has disappeared. She contacts Kritschgau and Skinner to find her partner. Cigarette Smoking Man has taken Mulder to a place where all his problems seem to have disappeared. Fowley helps Scully locate Mulder, which leads to her death at the hands of Cigarette Smoking Man.


title: The X-Files (season 7)

text: While investigating a bizarre disappearance of a young girl from her home, Mulder becomes obsessed with the number of children who have vanished in similar circumstances. Scully fears that he is emotionally involved due to his sister's disappearance. At the same time it is revealed to him that his mother, Teena Mulder (Rebecca Toolan), committed suicide. He then tries to prove that his mother did not take her own life, but is ultimately forced to accept that his mother's death was by her own hand. He is led by a man whose son disappeared years earlier to another truth—that his sister may be among the souls taken by "walk-ins", saving the souls of children doomed to live unhappy lives. Together they locate evidence that proves that Samantha was abducted by Cigarette Smoking Man and was forced to live in a now-abandoned US Army base. It is later revealed that Samantha had become a "walk-in" spirit.


title: The X-Files (season 7)

text: Mulder and Scully investigate a case which leads them back to Oregon, the site of their first case together. With a series of Alien abductions taking place, Mulder and Scully are contacted by Billy Miles (Zachary Ansley). Scully falls ill during the investigation and returns to Washington, D.C. Cigarette Smoking Man contacts Marita Covarrubias (Laurie Holden) and Alex Krycek (Nicholas Lea), in an attempt to revive the government conspiracy. With Covarrubias unwilling to assist, and Krycek seeking revenge, they contact Mulder after he visits an alien crash site. Skinner and Mulder return to Oregon, while Scully is hospitalized in Washington, D.C. Mulder becomes trapped by an alien device, and is abducted by an Alien Bounty Hunter (Brian Thompson) together with Miles and several others. Skinner returns to Washington, D.C. where Scully informs him that she is pregnant, though she does not tell him that Mulder is the father.


title: The X-Files (season 7)

text: After five seasons in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, production of "The X-Files" moved to Los Angeles. "The X-Files" sixth season was the first season of the show to be filmed in the new location. The move was instigated by Duchovny in order to facilitate his work in films as well as to give him a chance to be nearer to his wife, Téa Leoni. Series creator Chris Carter opposed the move, but Fox network officials eventually made the decision to film in California. Although the move was unpopular with some members of the cast and crew, both series director Kim Manners and Anderson supported the move, although less vocally than Duchovny. Many fans accused the show of "Hollywood-izing" by adding notable guests stars as well as making the plots simpler and more enjoyable for mass audiences. Furthermore, the move to Los Angeles also meant a drastic increase in production costs.


title: The X-Files (season 7)

text: Originally, the mythology for season seven was supposed to continue from and show the ramifications of the "Two Fathers"/"One Son" story arc. Frank Spotnitz, in an interview, explained that the mythology episodes for season seven would feature "characters you saw in 'One Son' coming back" and explore "what happens now that the conspiracy has been destroyed, what are the politics of the new landscape that exists. […] There are aliens from outer space, two different races that are warring with each other." In addition, he said that the then-planned series finale would feature "the big idea that Chris [Carter] had in the beginning." However, these ideas never came to pass, and the season finale, "Requiem", segued directly into the eighth season premiere "Within". Duchovny later revealed that, had the show ended, the final three episodes would have been devoted to the myth-arc.


title: The X-Files (season 7)

text: While filming was underway for the seventh season, many members of the crew felt that the show had entered into its final season. Executive producer Frank Spotnitz later explained, "There was a pretty strong sentiment inside and outside the show that it was time to call it a day." Because the show's producers felt that the show was nearing its end, many story arcs were ended in the season. The fourth episode, "Millennium" was written as a way to bring closure to the recently cancelled Carter-created series of the same name. The episode features Lance Henriksen reprising his role as Frank for the last time. The eleventh episode, "Closure", features Mulder discovering what happened to his sister. The idea to close the story arc received mixed reactions from various production and crew members. However, many of the show's producers realized that the time had come to answer one of the show's biggest questions. Paul Rabwin noted that, "It's been seven years. I don't think any of us are going to miss Samantha Mulder. That device and motivation were very strong in the early years of the show. But as the years have gone by, the speculation kind of melted away." As the season progressed, however, the idea of producing another season emerged. Paul Rabwin explained that, "we found ourselves starting to get energized again. [...] As we got toward the end of the season, everyone was kind of hopeful."


title: The X-Files (season 7)

text: The season also saw several of the show's cast write their own episodes. Series co-star Gillian Anderson directed and wrote her first episode of the series, "all things". Anderson originally approached Carter about writing and directing an episode of the series during the sixth season. Anderson crafted a script that would see Scully pursuing a "deeply personal X-File, one which in [she] is taken down a spiritual path when logic fails her". Anderson had only a rough outline of the script until one day she wrote a majority of the story in one sitting. She explained, "A certain concept began to form, [and] I just wrote the entire outline for 'all things' right then and there. It all just kind of came together on the page". The next day, Anderson pitched the script to Carter, who approved of the "personal and quiet" characteristics of the story. In addition, series regular Davis wrote his only episode, "En Ami". Davis approached Carter with his idea about Cigarette Smoking Man trying to seduce Scully with medical knowledge, and Carter, who was intrigued, responded positively to the idea. He assigned executive producer Spotnitz to work with Davis and craft a full-fledged script. The script went through many revisions. Because Cigarette Smoking Man was able to manipulate Scully, Carter later referred to the "En Ami" as "the creepiest episode of the year."


title: The X-Files (season 7)

text: Before the season aired, David Duchovny filed a lawsuit against 20th Century Fox. Duchovny claimed that Fox had undersold the rights to its own affiliates, thereby costing him huge sums of money. Originally, in the contract, Duchovny was eligible for an estimated five percent, but, according to him, he "had seen only a fraction" of the money. Eventually, the lawsuit was settled, and Duchovny was awarded a settlement of about $20 million. The lawsuit put strain on Duchovny's professional relationships. Although his lawsuit never called Chris Carter a defendant, their friendship was notably impacted. One anonymous source noted that "the whole lawsuit thing revealed that Carter knew (Duchovny) was getting screwed and didn't warn him. Carter proved where his loyalties lay with his actions."


title: The X-Files (season 7)

text: Neither Carter nor Duchovny were contracted to work on the series beyond the seventh season; however, Fox entered into negotiations near the end of season in order to bring the two on board for an eighth season. After the airing of "Requiem", Duchovny expressed his intentions to leave the series. He explained, "I was kind of a free agent after season seven, and to me, there was not much else to do in terms of the character. So it was really about me wanting to pursue other parts of my career as a writer, director, and actor." Rumors began spreading—and were eventually confirmed—that, since Duchovny had not expressed an interest to appear as a main character in the eighth season, that another character would take Mulder's place. Many fans on the internet believed that Mitch Pileggi, who portrayed Walter Skinner, would take the role; Pileggi later called this guess "ridiculous."


title: The X-Files (season 7)

text: Series creator Chris Carter also served as executive producer and showrunner and wrote six episodes. Spotnitz continued as executive producer and wrote five episodes. Vince Gilligan continued as co-executive producer and wrote six episodes. John Shiban was promoted to supervising producer and wrote two episodes. David Amann was promoted to co-producer and wrote two episodes. Jeffrey Bell was promoted to story editor and wrote two episodes. Cyberpunk novelists William Gibson and Tom Maddox returned to write their second of two episodes for the series. Cast member Duchovny wrote two episodes in the season, while other cast members Anderson and Davis also wrote an episode each. New writers in the seventh season included Steven Maeda and Greg Walker, who wrote one episode; and Chip Johannessen who wrote a single freelance episode. Other producers included Paul Rabwin, Harry V. Bring and Bernadette Caulfield, and Michelle MacLaren who joined as co-executive producer.


title: The X-Files (season 7)

text: Producing-directors for the show included producer Rob Bowman, supervising producer Manners, and co-executive producer Michael Watkins, who directed the bulk of the episodes for the season. Bowman directed two episodes for his final season on the series, Manners directed seven, and Watkins directed three. Cast members David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson each directed one episode. Series creator Chris Carter directed a single episode, while series writer Vince Gilligan made his television directorial debut. Other directors for the season included Thomas J. Wright who directed three episodes, with Robert Lieberman, Cliff Bole, and Paul Shapiro each directing one.


title: The X-Files (season 7)

text: The seventh season of "The X-Files" debuted with "The Sixth Extinction" on November 7, 1999. This episode earned a Nielsen rating of 10.6, with a 16 share, meaning that roughly 10.6 percent of all television-equipped households, and 16 percent of households watching television, were tuned into the episode. The episode was viewed by 17.82 million people, an increase from the sixth season's finale, "Biogenesis", which was viewed by 15.86 million viewers. However, the debut marked a decrease from the sixth season debut, "The Beginning", which garnered 20.34 million viewers. As the season continued, however, ratings began to drop. The season hit a low with the eighteenth episode, "Brand X", which was viewed by 10.81 million viewers. The season finale, "Requiem", earned a Nielsen rating of 8.9, with a 14 share, and was viewed by 15.26 million viewers, marking a 14 percent drop in viewers when compared to the season premiere, and a 4 percent drop in viewers when compared to the previous season finale. The series was ranked at number 29 during the 1999–2000 television season, finishing with an average of 14.2 million viewers.


title: The X-Files (season 7)

text: During 2000, companies were paying Fox $225,000 for every 30-second spot that would air between acts of "The X-Files". Many Information technology (IT) companies were buying commercials during the show, largely due to the fact that "many ['coders IT geeks'] get their weekly fix of science fiction from this prime-time show."


title: The X-Files (season 7)

text: The seventh season received moderately positive reviews from critics, although increasingly critical reviews were more common this season. While critics enjoyed many of the episodes, many also felt that, as a whole, the season was the weakest of the show's original seven. Eric Mink of the "New York Daily News" praised the season, noting that it was "proof that "The X-Files" still has more than enough creative life in it to justify an eighth season". He called many of the stand-alone episodes "wonderfully creepy" and noted that the season possessed a "terrific bunch of episodes". Thomas Doherty from "Cinefantastique" gave the season a mixed review and noted that the series was hurt by the partnership between Mulder and Scully "settl[ing] into the comfortable groove of a modern two career marriage—supportive, professionally rewarding, and utterly sexless." Further, he noted that "the most entertaining episode lately have been the self parodies, where killer cockroaches scurry and living dead roam, or where (in the Duchovny written and directed episode) Scully and Mulder are played by Téa Leoni and Garry Shandling in a motion picture only slightly more ludicrous than a 1998 motion picture called "The X-Files"." Doherty argued that the "self-parody" style of the series caused viewers to not take it seriously anymore, explaining that, "No longer going for the big chill, Carter and company are winking at their audience, as if to say: even we can't pretend to believe in this muddled mishmash anymore." Tom Kessenich, in his book "Examination: An Unauthorized Look at Seasons 6–9 of the X-Files", was positive towards the first half of the season, but soon saw the episodes in more of a negative light. He wrote, "A season that began with such hope ended with a sense of sorrow given the end result of the season-long backstage wheeling and dealing [a reference to David Duchovny's lawsuit]. Not even the magnificent season finale […] could erase the nagging doubts I had that a series that had been so amazing for so long would soon embark upon a new course wrought with pitfalls and turmoil." "The A.V. Club" noted that while the first eight seasons of "The X-Files" were "good-to-great", the seventh season of the show was "flagging" and possessed "significant problems.


title: The X-Files (season 7)

text: The episodes themselves received a variety of reviews. Some were positively received: several reviews praised the episode "X-Cops", the show's highly promoted cross-over with the police reality show "COPS". One review from the "New York Daily News" called the outing "exceptionally clever" whereas Starpulse named the episode the funniest of the series. The Duchovny-penned "Hollywood A.D." was praised for its self-reflexive comedy by several reviews. Other episodes were more harshly received. Anderson's writing debut, "all things" was critiqued for being "dull" and "heavy-handed". "Brand X", on the other hand, was called "a waste of an episode."


title: The X-Files (season 7)

text: The seventh season earned the series six Primetime Emmy Award nominations, with three wins. The episode "First Person Shooter" won for Outstanding Sound Mixing for a Drama Series and Outstanding Special Visual Effects for a Series. The episode "Theef" won for Outstanding Makeup for a Series. Other nominations included Mark Snow for Outstanding Music Composition for a Series (Dramatic Underscore) for "Theef", the episode "First Person Shooter" for Outstanding Sound Editing for a Series, and "Rush" for Outstanding Special Visual Effects for a Series. The series, as well as Gillian Anderson, won a Teen.com Entertainment Award for Best Drama Series and Best Actress in a Series, respectively. Other nominations included two Screen Actors Guild Award nominations for David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson, an Environmental Media Awards nomination for "Brand X", and an International Monitor Award nomination for "Rush".


title: Hyperuricemia

text: Hyperuricaemia or hyperuricemia is an abnormally high level of uric acid in the blood. In the pH conditions of body fluid, uric acid exists largely as urate, the ion form. Serum uric acid concentrations greater than 6 mg/dL for females, 7 mg/dL for men, and 5.5 mg/dL for youth (under 18 years old) are defined as hyperuricemia. The amount of urate in the body depends on the balance between the amount of purines eaten in food, the amount of urate synthesised within the body (e.g., through cell turnover), and the amount of urate that is excreted in urine or through the gastrointestinal tract. Hyperuricemia may be the result of increased production of uric acid, decreased excretion of uric acid, or both increased production and reduced excretion.


title: Hyperuricemia

text: Unless high blood levels of uric acid are determined in a clinical laboratory, hyperuricemia may not cause noticeable symptoms in most people. Development of gout which is a painful, short-term disorder is the most common consequence of hyperuricemia, which causes deposition of uric acid crystals usually in joints of the extremities, but may also induce formation of kidney stones, another painful disorder. Gout symptoms are typically inflammation, swelling and redness of a joint, such as a toe or knee, accompanied by intense pain. Not all people with hyperuricemia develop gout.


title: Hyperuricemia

text: Many factors contribute to hyperuricemia, including genetics, insulin resistance, hypertension, hypothyroidism, chronic kidney disease, obesity, diet, iron overload, use of diuretics (e.g. thiazides, loop diuretics), and excessive consumption of alcoholic beverages. Of these, alcohol consumption is the most important.


title: Hyperuricemia

text: Causes of hyperuricemia can be classified into three functional types: increased production of uric acid, decreased excretion of uric acid, and mixed type. Causes of increased production include high levels of purine in the diet and increased purine metabolism. Causes of decreased excretion include kidney disease, certain drugs, and competition for excretion between uric acid and other molecules. Mixed causes include high levels of alcohol and/or fructose in the diet, and starvation.


title: Hyperuricemia

text: A purine-rich diet is a common but minor cause of hyperuricemia. Diet alone generally is not sufficient to cause hyperuricemia (see Gout). Foods high in the purines adenine and hypoxanthine may aggravate symptoms of hyperuricemia.


title: Hyperuricemia

text: Various studies have found higher uric acid levels to be positively associated with consumption of meat and seafood and inversely associated with dairy food consumption.


title: Hyperuricemia

text: Myogenic hyperuricemia, as a result of the Purine Nucleotide Cycle running when ATP reservoirs in muscle cells are low, is a common pathophysiologic feature of glycogenoses such as GSD-III, GSD-V and GSD-VII, as they are metabolic myopathies which impair the ability of ATP (energy) production for the muscle cells to use. In these metabolic myopathies, myogenic hyperuricemia is exercise-induced; inosine, hypoxanthine and uric acid increase in plasma after exercise and decrease over hours with rest. Excess IMP (inosine monophosphate) is converted into uric acid. IMP → Inosine → Hypoxanthine → Xanthine → Uric Acid


title: Hyperuricemia

text: Hyperuricemia experienced as gout is a common complication of solid organ transplant. Apart from normal variation (with a genetic component), tumor lysis syndrome produces extreme levels of uric acid, mainly leading to kidney failure. The Lesch–Nyhan syndrome is also associated with extremely high levels of uric acid.


title: Hyperuricemia

text: The principal drugs that contribute to hyperuricemia by decreased excretion are the primary antiuricosurics. Other drugs and agents include diuretics, salicylates, pyrazinamide, ethambutol, nicotinic acid, ciclosporin, 2-ethylamino-1,3,4-thiadiazole, and cytotoxic agents.


title: Hyperuricemia

text: The gene SLC2A9 encodes a protein that helps to transport uric acid in the kidney. Several single nucleotide polymorphisms of this gene are known to have a significant correlation with blood uric acid. Hyperuricemia cosegregating with osteogenesis imperfecta has been shown to be associated with a mutation in GPATCH8 using exome sequencing


title: Hyperuricemia

text: A ketogenic diet impairs the ability of the kidney to excrete uric acid, due to competition for transport between uric acid and ketones.


title: Hyperuricemia

text: Elevated blood lead is significantly correlated with both impaired kidney function and hyperuricemia (although the causal relationship among these correlations is not known). In a study of over 2500 people resident in Taiwan, a blood lead level exceeding 7.5 microg/dL (a small elevation) had odds ratios of 1.92 (95% CI: 1.18-3.10) for renal dysfunction and 2.72 (95% CI: 1.64-4.52) for hyperuricemia.


title: Hyperuricemia

text: Causes of hyperuricemia that are of mixed type have a dual action, both increasing production and decreasing excretion of uric acid.


title: Hyperuricemia

text: High intake of alcohol (ethanol), a significant cause of hyperuricemia, has a dual action that is compounded by multiple mechanisms. Ethanol increases production of uric acid by increasing production of lactic acid, hence lactic acidosis. Ethanol also increases the plasma concentrations of hypoxanthine and xanthine via the acceleration of adenine nucleotide degradation, and is a possible weak inhibitor of xanthine dehydrogenase. As a byproduct of its fermentation process, beer additionally contributes purines. Ethanol decreases excretion of uric acid by promoting dehydration and (rarely) clinical ketoacidosis.


title: Hyperuricemia

text: High dietary intake of fructose contributes significantly to hyperuricemia. In a large study in the United States, consumption of four or more sugar-sweetened soft drinks per day gave an odds ratio of 1.82 for hyperuricemia. Increased production of uric acid is the result of interference, by a product of fructose metabolism, in purine metabolism. This interference has a dual action, both increasing the conversion of ATP to inosine and hence uric acid and increasing the synthesis of purine. Fructose also inhibits the excretion of uric acid, apparently by competing with uric acid for access to the transport protein SLC2A9. The effect of fructose in reducing excretion of uric acid is increased in people with a hereditary (genetic) predisposition toward hyperuricemia and/or gout.


title: Hyperuricemia

text: Starvation causes the body to metabolize its own (purine-rich) tissues for energy. Thus, like a high purine diet, starvation increases the amount of purine converted to uric acid. A very low calorie diet lacking in carbohydrates can induce extreme hyperuricemia; including some carbohydrate (and reducing the protein) reduces the level of hyperuricemia. Starvation also impairs the ability of the kidney to excrete uric acid, due to competition for transport between uric acid and ketones.


title: Hyperuricemia

text: Medications used to treat hyperuricemia are divided into two categories: xanthine oxidase inhibitors and uricosurics. For people who have recurring attacks of gout, one of these two categories of drugs is recommended. The evidence for people with asymptomatic hyperuricaemia to take these medications is not clear.


title: Hyperuricemia

text: Xanthine oxidase inhibitors, including allopurinol, febuxostat and topiroxostat, decrease the production of uric acid, by interfering with xanthine oxidase.


title: Hyperuricemia

text: Uricosuric agents (benzbromarone, benziodarone, probenecid, lesinurad, sulfinpyrazone, ethebencid, zoxazolamine, and ticrynafen) increase the excretion of uric acid, by reducing the reabsorption of uric acid once it has been filtered out of the blood by the kidneys.


title: Hyperuricemia

text: Some of these medications are used as indicated, others are used off-label. In people receiving hemodialysis, sevelamer can significantly reduce serum uric acid, apparently by adsorbing urate in the gut. In women, use of combined oral contraceptive pills is significantly associated with lower serum uric acid. Following Le Chatelier's principle, lowering the blood concentration of uric acid may permit any existing crystals of uric acid to gradually dissolve into the blood, whence the dissolved uric acid can be excreted. Maintaining a lower blood concentration of uric acid similarly should reduce the formation of new crystals. If the person has chronic gout or known tophi, then large quantities of uric acid crystals may have accumulated in joints and other tissues, and aggressive and/or long duration use of medications may be needed. Precipitation of uric acid crystals, and conversely their dissolution, is known to be dependent on the concentration of uric acid in solution, pH, sodium concentration, and temperature.


title: Hyperuricemia

text: Non-medication treatments for hyperuricemia include a low purine diet (see Gout) and a variety of dietary supplements. Treatment with lithium salts has been used as lithium improves uric acid solubility.


title: Hyperuricemia

text: Serum pH is neither safely nor easily altered. Therapies that alter pH principally alter the pH of urine, to discourage a possible complication of uricosuric therapy: formation of uric acid kidney stones due to increased uric acid in the urine (see Nephrolithiasis). Medications that have a similar effect include acetazolamide.


title: Hyperuricemia

text: Low temperature is a reported trigger of acute gout. An example would be a day spent standing in cold water, followed by an attack of gout the next morning. This is believed to be due to temperature-dependent precipitation of uric acid crystals in tissues at below normal temperature. Thus, one aim of prevention is to keep the hands and feet warm, and soaking in hot water may be therapeutic.


title: Hyperuricemia

text: Increased levels predispose for gout and, if very high, kidney failure. Metabolic syndrome often presents with hyperuricemia. Prognosis is good with regular consumption of allopurinol.


title: Hyperuricemia

text: People with gout, and by inference hyperuricemia, are significantly less likely to develop Parkinson's disease, unless they also require diuretics.


title: Sweetgreen

text: Sweetgreen (legally Sweetgreen, Inc., stylized as sweetgreen, previously swɘetgreen) is an American fast casual restaurant chain that serves salads. It was founded in November 2006 by Nicolas Jammet, Nathaniel Ru, and Jonathan Neman. In August 2007, they opened their first store in Washington, D.C., three months after they graduated from the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University.


title: Sweetgreen

text: Sweetgreen's corporate headquarters moved to the Los Angeles area from Washington, D.C., in 2016. , it had 158 stores in operation in thirteen states across the United States, including California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Georgia, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Texas, Florida and the District of Columbia, with a location opening soon in Indiana. The company has over 4,000 employees.


title: Sweetgreen

text: Customers can order in-store or through their app for pickup, delivery and outpost as well as use their app to pay for in-store ordering. They are also on various marketplaces.


title: Sweetgreen

text: In November 2018, Sweetgreen had raised in funding. Sweetgreen was named one of the Most Innovative Companies in 2019 and 2020, and won the 2020 Webby Award for Food & Drink in the Apps, Mobile & Voice category.


title: Sweetgreen

text: Sweetgreen was founded in 2006 by Nicolas Jammet, Nathaniel Ru, and Jonathan Neman, all Georgetown University students at the time. The trio were disappointed with campus food options.


title: Sweetgreen

text: Sweetgreen raised its initial $375,000 of startup funding from investors including the three founders' parents, Joe Bastianich, Seth Goldman, and Washington's Latino Economic Development Center. In 2013, it accepted a $22 million investment from Revolution Growth, a venture capital fund founded by Steve Case. In 2014, it received $18.5 million in investment from Revolution Growth. In 2015, it raised an additional $35 million in investment under the lead of T. Rowe Price with contributions from existing investor Revolution Growth. The company has raised over $95 million to date.


title: Sweetgreen

text: In 2018 the startup raised a $200 million Series H round led by Fidelity that valued the company at more than $1 billion, and bringing Sweetgreen's total amount of funding to $365 million.


title: Sweetgreen

text: In the fall of 2019, Sweetgreen raised an additional $150 million Series I round led by Lone Pine Capital and D1 Capital Partners, bringing the company's total valuation to $1.6 billion.


title: Sweetgreen

text: In July 2021, "Axios" reported that Sweetgreen had filed confidentially for an IPO. It became a public company on 18 November 2021 traded under the New York Stock Exchange symbol SG.


title: Sweetgreen

text: In August 2021, Sweetgreen announced its plans to acquire Massachusetts Institute of Technology startup, Spyce, a Boston-based restaurant that uses service robots to prepare meals.


title: Sweetgreen

text: In August 2022, Sweetgreen opened a location in Birmingham, Michigan, their first in Michigan, with plans to expand to Troy and Ann Arbor later in 2022.


title: Sweetgreen

text: Sweetgreen serves a variety of salads and warm bowls. Their seasonal menu rotates 5 times a year, based on produce availability and location.


title: Sweetgreen

text: The restaurant launched a mobile app in 2015. In May 2020, the brand added order status tracking and push notifications in real time, allowing the customers to know when their order is received or ready following restrictions from the COVID-19 pandemic. In January 2020, Sweetgreen launched its own delivery service within their app.


title: Sweetgreen

text: Sweetgreen has partnered with local chefs and restaurants on time-limited menu items, often when opening locations in a new city. These collaborations have included chef duo Jon and Vinny in Los Angeles, Nancy Silverton, Michael Solomonov in Philadelphia area, Danny Bowein in New York, Ken Oringer in Boston, and Chris Shepherd in Houston.


title: Sweetgreen

text: Sweetgreen has collaborated multiple times with David Chang of Momofuku, including a new salad dressing that was featured in the New York locations during the summer of 2014. In February 2020, Sweetgreen again partnered with David Chang to launch the Tingly Sweet Potato and Kelp Bowl. The collaboration brought attention to ocean acidification and its effects on marine life through the use of sustainable kelp.


title: Sweetgreen

text: In 2015, in the lead up to the Sweetlife music festival, Sweetgreen collaborated with musician Kendrick Lamar leading up to his second appearance at the Sweetlife music festival. The salad, named "Beets Don't Kale My Vibe," was a pun playing off one of Lamar's most well known lyrics. The collaboration resulted in over 100 articles featuring the salad, and 10% of proceeds from the salad went to FoodCorps to connect kids to real food.


title: Sweetgreen

text: In 2018, Sweetgreen partnered with Hank's Mini Market, a family-owned corner store in L.A.’s Hyde Park neighborhood, a known food desert, to help bring healthier options to its customers as part of their work to expand food access.


title: Sweetgreen

text: In 2019, Sweetgreen partnered with FoodCorps again, committing $1 million over the next two years to support FoodCorps’s endevours.


title: Sweetgreen

text: During the onset of the COVID-19 crisis, Sweetgreen announced the launch of the Sweetgreen Impact Outpost Fund in partnership with World Central Kitchen to deliver free meals to hospital workers on the frontlines. In 2020, the company served more than 400,000 meals to over 400 hospitals nationwide.


title: Sweetgreen

text: Sweetgreen made it easier for employees to vote in the 2020 election by providing up to 3 hours of paid time off for all hourly employees to either vote early or vote on election day. The chain also created a registration portal and QR code in partnership with When We All Vote, making it easier for team members to register.


title: Sweetgreen

text: In May 2021, Sweetgreen announced their first-ever national athlete ambassador, tennis player Naomi Osaka. Osaka announced a new menu item supporting The Asian American Foundation.


title: Sweetgreen

text: Between 2011 and 2016, Sweetgreen hosted an annual music and food festival at the Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, Maryland.


title: High Desert (California)

text: The term "High Desert" is commonly used by local news media, especially in weather forecasts, because of the high desert's unique and moderate weather patterns compared to its low desert neighbors. It generally gets much hotter in the summer and much colder in the winter than the lower elevation areas closer to the coast and in the lower valleys. The term "High Desert" serves to differentiate it from southern California's Low Desert, which is defined by the differences in elevation, climate, animal life, and vegetation native to these regions. Comparison example: Palm Springs is considered "Low Desert", at above sea level. In contrast, Landers is considered "High Desert", at above sea level.


title: High Desert (California)

text: The High Desert, along with the "Mojave River Valley" and the Victor Valley, is mostly used to describe the area centered around Victorville. The region extends as far west as Lancaster, as far northwest as Palmdale, and north to the Barstow desert. High Desert has also been incorporated into the names of businesses and organizations in these areas. The term "High Desert" is also used to refer to the communities north and west of Joshua Tree National Park - Twentynine Palms the Morongo Basin (Yucca Valley). These are also at a higher elevation than the Low Desert that surrounds the Coachella Valley and Imperial Valley.


title: High Desert (California)

text: Depending on how the boundaries of the Mojave and the Colorado Desert region are defined, the High Desert either includes the entire California portion of the Mojave Desert (using a smaller geographic designation than its ecoregion) or the northern portion of the California desert (using a larger geographic designation including the ecotope area of the lower and adjacent Sonoran Desert).