John Fife

John Fife is a human rights activist and retired Presbyterian minister who lives in Tucson, Arizona. He was a member of the Sanctuary Movement and was a co-founder of the immigrant rights group No More Deaths.

Rev. John Fife served as a minister for 35 years at Southside Presbyterian Church in Tucson, a church with a strong focus on social justice issues. In 1992 Fife was elected Moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA). He is now a pastor emeritus at Southside Presbyterian.

In the 1980s John Fife co-founded the Sanctuary Movement in the United States. Volunteers in the movement provided support to Central American refugees, many of whom were fleeing U.S.-supported death squads in their home countries of El Salvador and Guatemala. The movement organized over 500 churches to help the refugees cross the border and find sanctuary in the U.S., in defiance of federal law. In 1986 Fife was convicted, along with seven other people, of violating federal immigration laws and served five years probation.

John Fife (surgeon)

Sir John Fife (1795–1871), was an English surgeon.

Fife was born at Newcastle upon Tyne in 1795, his father being a medical man of Scottish origin, practicing there. After qualifying as a member of the London College of Surgeons, he was for a short time an army assistant-surgeon at Woolwich, but returned to Newcastle in 1815, and commenced practice with his father. As a practitioner, and especially as a surgeon, the took a leading position in his town and throughout the northern counties, being remarkable for his punctuality and for the long distances he would ride in all weathers. In 1834 he took an active part in founding the Newcastle School of Medicine, in which he long lectured on surgery, being also surgeon to the Newcastle Infirmary. He became fellow of the College of Surgeons in 1844.

Politics

Fife

Fife ([ˈfəif]; Scottish Gaelic: Fìobha) is a council area and historic county of Scotland. It is situated between the Firth of Tay and the Firth of Forth, with inland boundaries to Perth and Kinross and Clackmannanshire. By custom it is widely held to have been one of the major Pictish kingdoms, known as Fib, and is still commonly known as the Kingdom of Fife within Scotland.

It is a lieutenancy area, and was a county of Scotland until 1975. It was very occasionally known by the anglicisation Fifeshire in old documents and maps compiled by English cartographers and authors. A person from Fife is known as a Fifer.

Fife was a local government region divided into three districts: Dunfermline, Kirkcaldy and North-East Fife. Since 1996 the functions of the district councils have been exercised by the unitary Fife Council.

Fife is Scotland's third largest local authority area by population. It has a resident population of just under 367,000, almost a third of whom live in the three principal towns of Dunfermline, Kirkcaldy and Glenrothes.

Fife (instrument)

A fife /ˈfaɪf/ is a small, high-pitched, transverse flute, that is similar to the piccolo, but louder and shriller due to its narrower bore. The fife originated in medieval Europe and is often used in military and marching bands. Someone who plays the fife is called a fifer. The word fife comes from the German Pfeife, or pipe, which comes from the Latin word pipare.

The fife is a simple instrument usually consisting of a tube with 6 finger holes, and diatonically tuned. Some have 10 or 11 holes for added chromatics. The fife also has an embouchure hole, across which the player blows, and a cork or plug inside the tube just above the embouchure hole. Some nineteenth-century fifes had a key pressed by the little finger of the right hand in place of a seventh finger hole.

Fifes are made mostly of wood: grenadilla, rosewood, mopane, pink ivory, cocobolo, boxwood and other dense woods are superior; maple and persimmon are inferior but often used. Some Caribbean music makes use of bamboo fifes.

Fife (Parliament of Scotland constituency)

Before the Acts of Union 1707, the barons of the shire of Fife elected commissioners to represent them in the Parliament of Scotland and in the Convention of the Estates.

After 1708, Fife was represented by one Member of Parliament in the British House of Commons at Westminster.

List of shire commissioners

During the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland, the sheriffdoms of Fife and Kinross were jointly represented by one Member of Parliament in the Protectorate Parliament at Westminster. After the Restoration, the Parliament of Scotland was again summoned to meet in Edinburgh.

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