Beyond the Book: Background information when reading Sing Them Home

Beyond the Book

This article relates to Sing Them Home

The Gymanfa Ganu
In Sing Them Home, the town of Emlyn Springs celebrates an annual Gymanfa Ganu, also known as Cymanfa Ganu (pronounced cuh-MAN-va GA-nee), which is a Welsh festival of sacred hymns sung with four part harmony by a congregation, usually under the direction of a choral director.

The tradition grew out of the temperance movement in mid-nineteenth century Wales when choral societies were founded as one solution to the grave problem of drinking. Because of the unsanitary conditions in the rapidly-growing housing developments, water was unsafe to drink and beer (sterilized by the fermentation process) was drunk in prodigious quantities. On Christmas Day 1837, a temperance procession marched through the streets of Dowlais, joined by choirs from neighboring towns. Inspired by the success of the day's events, choral singing of the beautiful, stirring hymns went hand-in-hand with the temperance movement across Wales.

The tradition has experienced a great revival in North America where the Welsh National Gymanfa Ganu Association organizes an annual event in a different city each year, where thousands of Welsh Americans and Canadians get together to sing their beloved hymns in what has now become a four-day festival and the largest gathering of Welsh in North America. The 78th National Festival took place in Pittsburgh in early September 2009. The 79th will be in September 2010 in Portland, Oregon.


Some Tornado Statistics

• Nebraska averages over 40 tornadoes per year, the highest number on record being 110 in 2004.
• Tornados have occurred in all 50 states. Nebraska is ranked 5th in the USA for total tornados. Texas is ranked #1.
• Tornados have occurred on every day of the year in the United States - except January 16.
• The top three killer tornadoes in Nebraska occurred in 1913 on Easter Sunday, killing 133 people in three separate towns, causing tremendous destruction as well.

Multiple Sclerosis
MS is a disease of the central nervous system (CNS). The CNS consists of the brain, optic nerves and spinal cord. MS damages the protective insulation (known as "myelin") surrounding the nerves (known as "axons"), and may also damage nerves within the CNS. As a result, nerve impulses carrying messages from the brain and spinal cord may short circuit, causing reduced or lost bodily function.

Currently there are 350,000 to 500,000 people in the United States who have been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. According to research presented at the 2007 American Academy of Neurology's Annual Meeting, the ratio of women to men with MS in the USA has increased from about 2:1 in 1940 to 4:1 in 2000.

This is a promising time for individuals who have been diagnosed with MS. Since the early 1990s, treatment options have increased dramatically from effectively none to about half a dozen promising avenues. MS drugs under investigation include cancer-fighting drugs, antiviral medications, vaccines, bone marrow transplants, pregnancy-related hormones, cholesterol-fighting drugs, stem cells, and agents such as growth factors that may repair myelin.

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This "beyond the book article" relates to Sing Them Home. It originally ran in January 2009 and has been updated for the September 2009 paperback edition. Go to magazine.