Fairuza Balk is an American actress and musician. She made her theatrical film debut as Dorothy Gale in Disney's 1985 film Return to Oz. Balk appeared in Valmont, The Craft, The Island of Dr. Moreau, American History X, The Waterboy, Almost Famous, Personal Velocity: Three Portraits. Balk was born as Fairuza Alejandra Feldthouse in California; until the age of two, Balk lived in California with her mother. They moved to Vancouver, British Columbia, where she began acting at age six, they moved to London and to Paris for another role. They remained there for six months before returning to Vancouver. Balk moved to Los Angeles as a young woman upon signing to act in The Craft. Fairuza's mother, Cathryn Balk, has studied and taught traditional dance forms of many countries including Egypt, Turkey and Spain, her father, Solomon Feldthouse, was one of the founding members of the 1960s psychedelic rock group Kaleidoscope, is a traveling folk musician. He was born in Pingree, Idaho and, between the ages of 6 and 10, lived in Turkey where he learned Greek, Turkish and Iranian music.

Balk has stated that her father is of Romani and Cherokee ancestry, that her mother is of Irish and French descent. Balk's debut role was in a 1983 television film titled The Best Christmas Pageant Ever. While in London, Balk was cast by Walt Disney Productions to star as Dorothy Gale in Return to Oz, the unofficial sequel to MGM's 1939 musical The Wizard of Oz; this role led including that of Mildred Hubble in The Worst Witch. In 1988, at age 14, she moved to Paris to work on Valmont with Miloš Forman. By 1989 she was back in Vancouver. However, she soon decided to take correspondence courses instead and went back to Hollywood, where she gained increasing notice as an actress. In 1992 she was awarded an Independent Spirit Award as best actress for her performance in the Allison Anders film Gas Food Lodging. In 1996, she appeared in a lead role in The Craft, in which her character formed a teenage coven with characters portrayed by Neve Campbell, Rachel True and Robin Tunney. Since Balk has continued to find roles dark ones.

In 1996, she co-starred in The Island of Dr Moreau. In 1998, she played a neo-Nazi goth-punk opposite Edward Norton in American History X, was featured in The Waterboy, alongside Adam Sandler. Since 2000, she has appeared in over a dozen films and was in a band called G-13, she has done voice work for animated films, TV shows and video games, including Justice League, Family Guy, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City and Lords of EverQuest. The 2007 documentary Return to Oz: The Joy That Got Away was dedicated to her. In 2010, Armed Love Militia, Balk's musical outlet, released the single "Stormwinds"; the track was sung by Balk. Armed Love Militia continued, with Balk collaborating on an EP with singer and songwriter Mel Sanson. In 2011, Balk began to exhibit art in New York. On August 4, 2012, she participated in the group show'MiXTAPE', with other notable artists Mark Ryden, Camille Rose Garcia, Jessicka Addams, Marion Peck. Artists were asked to create art inspired by that song. Fairuza created a 16 "x20 "x12" mixed-media sculpture.

The eclectic mix of songs chosen were featured for digital download on iTunes. In 2017, the emo puppet band Fragile Rock performed a song entitled "Fairuza Balk" on their NPR Tiny Desk Concert. Balk made her year. Official website Fairuza Balk on IMDb Fairuza Balk at AllMovie

A ceremonial pipe is a particular type of smoking pipe, used by a number of Native American cultures in their sacred ceremonies. Traditionally they are used to offer prayers in a religious ceremony, to make a ceremonial commitment, or to seal a covenant or treaty; the pipe ceremony may be a component of a larger ceremony, or held as a sacred ceremony in and of itself. Indigenous peoples of the Americas who use ceremonial pipes have names for them in each culture's indigenous language. Not all cultures have pipe traditions, there is no single word for all ceremonial pipes across the hundreds of diverse Native American languages. Native American ceremonial pipes are used in prayer ceremonies. Sometimes they have been called "peace pipes" by Europeans, or others whose cultures do not include these ceremonial objects. However, the smoking of a ceremonial pipe to seal a peace treaty is only one use of a ceremonial smoking pipe, by only some of the nations that utilize them. Various types of ceremonial pipes have been used by different Native American and First Nations cultures.

The style of pipe, materials smoked, ceremonies are unique to the specific and distinct religions of those nations. The pipes are called by names in that tribe's language; the specific type of pipes smoked in Catholic conversion rituals first in Illinois and in Mi'kmaq territory were known as Calumets. Ceremonial pipes have been used to mark war and peace, as well as commerce and trade, social and political decision-making. During his travels down the Mississippi River in 1673, Father Jacques Marquette documented the universal respect that the ceremonial pipe was shown among all Native peoples he encountered those at war with each other, he claimed. The Illinois people gave Marquette such a pipe as a gift to ensure his safe travel through the interior of the land. In ceremonial usage, the smoke is believed to carry prayers to the attention of the Creator or other powerful spirits. Lakota tradition tells that White Buffalo Calf Woman brought the čhaŋnúŋpa to the people, instructed them in its symbolism and ceremonies.

Many Native American cultures still practice these ceremonies. According to oral traditions, as demonstrated by pre-contact pipes held in museums and tribal and private holdings, some ceremonial pipes are adorned with feathers, animal or human hair, quills, carvings or other items having significance for the owner. Other pipes are simple. Many are not kept by an individual, but are instead held collectively by a medicine society or similar indigenous ceremonial organization. Indigenous peoples of the Americas who use ceremonial pipes have names for them in each culture's indigenous language. There is no single word for all ceremonial pipes across the hundreds of diverse Native cultures; the Lakota sacred pipe is called a chanupa spelled chanunpa or c'anupa. In some historical sources written by colonists, a ceremonial pipe is referred to as a calumet. Calumet is a Norman word, first recorded in David Ferrand's La Muse normande around 1625–1655, used by Norman-French settlers to describe the ceremonial pipes they saw used among the native peoples of the region.

The settlers used the word to refer to the hollow decorated pipe shaft alone while the pipe bowl was a separate ritual object, a "sort of reeds used to make pipes", with a suffix substitution for calumel. It corresponds to the French word chalumeau, meaning'reed'; the Calumets smoked in Catholic conversion rituals first in Illinois and in Mi'kmaq territory were elaborately carved and decorated. The name of the Calumet Region in Illinois and Indiana may derive from the French term or may have an independent derivation from Potawatomi. There is a current Umatilla term, čalámat. Tobacco, Nicotiana rustica, was used by eastern tribes, but western tribes mixed it with other herbs and plant matter, in a preparation known as kinnikinnick. One material used for ceremonial pipe bowls in the Upper Midwest is red pipestone or catlinite, a fine-grained worked stone of a rich red color of the Coteau des Prairies, west of the Big Stone Lake in South Dakota; the pipestone quarries of what today is Minnesota, were neutral ground as people from multiple nations journeyed to the quarry to obtain the sacred pipestone.

The Sioux people use long-stemmed pipes in some of their ceremonies. Other peoples, such as the Catawba in the American Southeast, use ceremonial pipes formed as round, footed bowls. A tubular smoke tip projects from each of the four cardinal directions on the bowl. A number of Indigenous North American cultures use ceremonial pipes. However, there are Native American cultures that do not have a ceremonial smoking tradition, but make pipes for social smoking only; the types of materials used vary by locality. Some of the known types of pipe stone and pipe materials are: Clay – The Cherokee and Chickasaw both fashion pipes made from fired clay, however these are only used for social smoking, they use small reed cane pipestems made from river cane. These pipes are made from aged river clay hardened in a hot fire. Red pipestone – Catlinite is an iron-rich, soft argillite or claystone excavated from beds occurring between hard Sioux Quartzite layers below groundwater level, as the stone erodes when exposed to the weather and outside air.

Red pipestone is used by the Plains Tribes, the Western and Great Basin Tribes. The stone can be found in Minnesota, Utah. Sacred pipestone comes from Pipestone

In the Singapore Armed Forces, specialists are the group of ranks equivalent to non-commissioned officers in other armed forces. This term was introduced in 1993, for a more "positive" rank classification and shorter waiting time for WOSPEC career soldiers' rank advancements. In the SAF, warrant officers are not considered specialists. Like many other modern militaries, the specialist corps forms the backbone of the military. Specialists are the supervisors for the training and discipline of the enlisted men, as well as the supervisors in the use of weapons and equipment and ceremonies; the following ranks are specialist ranks: Specialist cadet Third sergeant Second sergeant First sergeant Staff sergeant Master sergeant Senior specialists may be promoted to warrant officer ranks, through attending the Joint Warrant Officers Course at SAF Warrant Officer School. In the new scheme, they need to first go through the rank of third warrant officer, attained just before or after they go through the warfighter course from the Specialist and Warrant Officer Advanced School.

With the SAF Warrant Officer School and Warrant Officer Advanced School and Specialist Cadet School, Pasir Laba Camp, site of the former Singapore Armed Forces Training Institute is the new home of the warrant officer and specialist corps of the SAF. Despite being an armed service under the Home Team umbrella organisation under the Ministry of Home Affairs as opposed to the Ministry of Defence as in the case of the SAF, the Singapore Civil Defence Force trains specialist cadets known as fire & rescue specialists upon graduation from the emergency response specialist course administered by the Civil Defence Academy's Command & Staff Training Wing. On top of completing a firemanship course which makes specialists trained firefighters and rescue specialists are trained in a panoply of incident management, fire safety enforcement and fire investigation, leads a team of fire fighters in fire fighting and rescue operations as section commanders, for some, as deputy rota commanders. Fire & rescue specialists form the backbone of the command operations of the Singapore Civil Defence Force at the station level, filling the position of junior officers.

All Singapore Civil Defence Force specialists graduate with the sergeant rank, while regulars may subsequently be promoted to the rank of staff sergeant. Senior staff sergeants may be selected to undergo a warrant officer course and become a warrant officer in the force. Apart from that, there are disaster and rescue team, hazardous materials and paramedic specialists who are made up of regulars in the Singapore Civil Defence Force; the disaster and rescue team specialist is skilled in urban search and rescue, prolonged fire fighting operations and confined space operations, road traffic and industrial accidents and water rescue. On the other hand, the Hazmat specialist specialises in detection and containment of hazardous chemicals and toxins while the paramedic specialist is part of the emergency ambulance service team providing efficient and accurate pre-hospital care to accident victims and patients in critical condition. Singapore Armed Forces ranks Comparative military ranks SAF Military Ranks Specialist & Warrant Officer Institute