Letter from Edna Saffy to Betsy Griffey, Earl Farris, Jerry Patterson, Request for Support April 6, 1999

Letter from Dr. Saffy, Professor of Speech Communication to Betsy Griffey, Department Chair, Earl Farris Dean, Jerry Patterson, President of FCCJ South Campus and Other Appropriate Distribution requesting support for attending meetings for 1999-2000 President Advisory Committee on the Arts of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Florida Community College at Jacksonville letterhead. Box 41 Folder General Correspondence 1999-200

Daniel Thunbergin tuolit – Suomen ensimmäiset keinutuolit?

The idea of fitting a chair with runners to create a rocking chair probably originated in Lancashire in England in the early 18th century. lt was soon introduced to the American colonies. As old chairs were fitted with runners, new rockers were made. The earliest references to rocking chairs in England date from the 1740s. Early rocking chairs were often used by invalids and were confined to sick rooms and nurseries. Today nearly every home in Finland has a rocking chair. The most popular Finnish rockers use Windsor chair construction and are products of local industry. The massive popularity of the Windsor rocking chair began in America in the 1820s and spread to many countries in Europe. The first references to rocking chairs in Finland occur in inventory lists from the late 18th century. A few rockers in neo-classical style may also date from that time. In Porvoo Museum there is a rocking chair with features of an older style popular in 1720–1760. Is it possible that the chair and its runners date from the same time? A reference to an older rocking chair can be found in a letter written by General Ehrensvärd's secretary Captain C. F. Bergencrantz to Master Builder Thunberg and dated 7 Sept. 1771. On behalf of the General's wife he begs Thunberg to send her a drawing for a similar rocking chair that Thunberg had made for Governor Nordenskiöld, saying that Ehrensvärd is sickly and would greatly benefit from such a rocking chair. The persons mentioned in the letter were connected with the building of the Suomenlinna fortress (in Swedish Sveaborg) off Helsinki, begun in 1748 and continued for nearly 40 years. Augustin Ehrensvärd (1710–1772, later Field Marshal and Count) was, exept for short intervals, the director of the project. Daniel Thunberg ( 1712–1788, later af Thunberg) was responsible for the technical constructions. Anders Johan Nordenskiöld (1696–763) a fortification officer, had been involved in the general defence plans of the country. From 1756 he served as Governer of the southernmost province of Finland. All these men also had international contacts. Nordenskiöld broke his femur in the spring of 1757. Although unable to walk, he was back at his office in Helsinki by the beginning of the next year. Private letters mention him conducting his work "sitting in a leaning chair". In a memorial speech held at The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm after the Governer's death, his 'leaning chair' is mentioned twice. Was this chair the rocking chair Ehrensvärd knew about? Maybe the word 'rocking chair' was unknown to most people at the time amd was therefore simply referred to as a 'leaning chair'? Thunberg's last year in Suomenlinna was 1758 when he supervised the building of the docks. The following year he left Finland and moved back to Sweden where he became a well known constructor of canals. The special chair för Nordenskiöld may have been constructed already at the end of 1757 orin 1758, at the latest. We can only hope that also Ehrensvärd got the rocking chair he needed so much. Nothing is known of the later fate of either chair. Both may have been similar to the Porvoo Museum rocking chair. The long building period of the Suomenlinna fortress was culturally important since it introduced many new inventions, innovations, and ideas to Finland. It is interesting to note that among these is also the rocking chair

Heart of Darkness: New Hampshire Campaign Finance Law Since Citizens United

[Excerpt] “Perhaps one of the greatest election law paradoxes in the United States is that New Hampshire—the First in the Nation Presidential Primary State—a State whose citizenry famously prides itself on political engagement—is also a State with some of the most complicated and sporadically enforced campaign finance laws in any jurisdiction. The post-Citizens United world, wherein vast quantities of unlimited and anonymous corporate and individual donations by some of the wealthiest citizens are freely flowing (so-called “Dark Money” because the identities of donors are shielded by law), has only exacerbated the loud creaks of the rickety campaign finance law firmament in New Hampshire. Further, a maze of statutory loopholes, known to few and understood by fewer, operate to allow for parallel large-dollar transactions of campaign financing which echo the freewheeling spending of corporations and individuals through nonprofit organizations and Super PACs that Citizens United and subsequent court cases allow. Republican Grant Bosse, a one-time congressional candidate and conservative political commentator, captured the sense of the New Hampshire campaign finance law landscape in 2010 in a line that became prophetic of what the next four years would hold, and what this article takes as its daunting subject: “Over the years, a series of legal cases and administrative rulings have poked so many holes into New Hampshire’s once strict campaign and expenditure limits that even Gov. John Lynch has been forced to ask the attorney general what’s allowed and what isn’t.” With these dynamics as a backdrop, this article examines two spheres of major change in New Hampshire campaign finance law in 2014 in an effort to shed some light on the dark heart of campaign finance law in the most political of states. First, a great deal of campaign finance law was made during the contentious 2014 midterm election in the form of decision letters issued by the New Hampshire Attorney General’s office—the office charged by law with enforcement of campaign finance and election law. The significance of these administrative law decision letters—typically issued to a small circle of attorneys, candidates, and political leaders—cannot be underestimated in both understanding New Hampshire’s campaign finance law as it stands today, and the contribution of these quietly-issued letters to the general state of confusion, where such significant legal developments are often neither statutory nor even a matter of case precedent. Like weathered and tattered family histories, these decision letters are jealously guarded and handed down from campaign to campaign as the stuff of lore—and, for better or worse, the stuff of precedent. The frequency of and publicity surrounding high-profile campaign finance law complaints in the 2014 election have also established campaign finance complaints and litigation as a new arena for sophisticated electoral battle in New Hampshire, as this article will show. Second, this article reviews changes to New Hampshire state law, which have been made in reaction to the influx of Dark Money and related outside spending since 2010. The reforms contained in Senate Bill 120, proposed by Senator Jeb Bradley of Wolfeboro, the Senate Majority Leader, are summarized along with a discussion of post-Citizens United developments in New Hampshire that illustrate some of the perceived ills Senate Bill 120 is intended to remedy. Compliance with the new law is mixed, and rumblings of constitutional challenge are on the horizon, as this article will discuss. From the outset I note, for the purposes of full disclosure, that I served as counsel to Governor Maggie Hassan’s reelection campaign. I have endeavored to write with reasonable objectivity about major changes to campaign finance law that have recently evolved—many of which arose out of complaints against the campaign that I defended. Any hints of opinions that may peek between the lines are strictly the author’s own and not those of Maggie ’14 or the Friends of Maggie Hassan.