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In light of the COVID-19 crisis and the introduction of the Canada Emergency Response Benefit, the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) wants to make it easier for Canadians to sign up for its direct deposit service or change their existing account information by creating an enrolment process that can be accessed through financial institutions.
We can now offer this enrolment service to you, giving you the ability to simply and securely transmit your direct deposit enrolment information to the CRA when you log onto our online banking. You will then be able to receive the following CRA payments through direct deposit: the new Canada Emergency Response Benefit, income tax refund, Canada child benefit, goods and services tax/harmonized sales tax (GST/HST) credit, Canada workers benefit and related provincial and territorial payments.
Direct Deposit through a Financial Institution
The Government of Canada has partnered with Canadian financial institutions, including Prospera to offer Canada Revenue Canada (CRA) direct deposit enrolment online through our website.
Log into online banking (only available on desktop).
Click on account services (left-side navigation)
Click on set-up CRA direct deposit
Fill out the form and submit
Once you provide consent through Prospera for your banking information to be shared with the CRA, your direct deposit information will be updated the following day.
If you aren’t already registered for the CRA’s digital services, signing up for direct deposit or changing your account information through us is easy and secure!
Canadian taxpayers are eligible for the direct deposit enrolment service. If an individual has never filed a tax return with the CRA, they are not eligible to sign up for the CRA direct deposit service through their financial institution.
The direct deposit service is strictly for individuals using their SIN to register. The CRA has confirmed that the that Canada Emergency Response Benefit only supports SIN-based payouts and are not applicable to loans currently being provided for small businesses with a Business Number.
Small businesses with a Business Number will be able to update their Direct Deposit information through their CRA business portal. Payments Canada will circulate CRA’s link to ‘my business’ account where business can sign up.
You can verify that a payment has been received by checking your banking statement on the account you used to sign up for direct deposit. Your payment amount will be deposited directly into the account.
You can also confirm that the payment was sent by the CRA by logging into CRA’s My Account.
Prospera or the CRA will never send you an email, text or Interac e-transfer to a link asking for your personal information to receive your benefit payment or refund. These are scams and taxpayers should never respond to these fraudulent communications or click on any of the links provided.
Direct deposit helps reduce the risk of mail fraud and delays caused by a postal disruption.
With direct deposit, you receive your tax refunds and benefit payments faster and securely, directly in your account at a Canadian financial institution, including Prospera Credit Union.
You can also sign up for direct deposit through My Account or by using the MyCRA and MyBenefits CRA apps from your mobile device, or through your financial institution. For more information, go to canada.ca/cra-direct-deposit.
If you file online and have direct deposit, you should receive your refund in as little as eight business days. Paper returns could take up to eight weeks.
Direct deposit is a fast, convenient and secure way to get your CRA payments directly into your bank account at a financial institution in Canada.
For more information and ways to enrol for direct deposit, go to canada.ca/cra-direct-deposit.
With direct deposit, you can quickly receive payments directly into your account with a financial institution. This includes payments such as your:
Income tax refund
GST/HST credit and any similar provincial and territorial payments
Canada child benefit and any similar provincial and territorial payments
Canada workers benefit
If you have already signed up for direct deposit with the CRA, we will use the existing bank account information for any payments you are entitled to receive.
If you are fully registered for the CRA’s My Account, you can verify your direct deposit information through this online self-service portal.
If your payment method is direct deposit, you can expect to receive the payment within 5 business days of the scheduled payment date. If your payment method is cheque, you can expect the cheque in the mail within 10 business days. Please allow this time before contacting the CRA about your payment.
If you submit multiple requests to update your direct deposit information, the most recent enrolment you complete will become the account on file with the CRA. Direct deposits will only be made into one account, at one financial institution.
What is a direct deposit payment?
Direct deposit is a secure electronic transfer of funds deposited directly into your account at Prospera. Direct deposit replaces the need to issue payments by paper cheque.
Who is eligible to enroll in the direct deposit service through financial institutions?
Canadian taxpayers. If an individual has never filed a tax return with the CRA, they are not eligible to sign up for the CRA direct deposit service through their financial institution.
Why is direct deposit enrolment only available to individuals and not businesses?
The direct deposit service is strictly for individuals using their SIN to register.
The CRA has confirmed that the that Canada Emergency Response Benefit only supports SIN-based payouts and are not applicable to loans currently being provided for small businesses with a Business Number.
Small businesses with a Business Number will be able to update their Direct Deposit information through their business portal. Payments Canada will circulate CRA’s link to ‘my business’ account where business can sign up.
Why should I sign up for direct deposit?
Direct deposit allows you to access your money faster and is more convenient as your payment will not be delayed due to unforeseen circumstances such as bad weather. It is reliable and your payment will always be deposited on time in your account.
For those eligible for the Canada Emergency Response Benefit, we encourage you to sign up for direct deposit with us as soon as possible to receive your benefit payments on time.
Will I still receive cheques if I sign up for direct deposit?
No. Once you are enrolled for direct deposit, you will receive CRA payments such as benefits, credits and refunds directly to your account.
What payments can I receive through direct deposit?
If you are eligible, you can receive your Canada Emergency Response Benefit payments directly to your bank account.
You can also receive payments such as your income tax refund, benefits and credits such as the Canada child benefit (CCB), the goods and services tax/harmonized sales tax (GST/HST) credit, Canada workers benefit (CWB), and provincial and territorial payments such as the Ontario Trillium Benefit (OTB).
Is it safe to sign up for direct deposit?
In order to offer this direct deposit enrolment service, Prospera signed an extensive Terms of Use Agreement with the CRA which obliges us to use consent and privacy statements with all our clients who enroll in CRA direct deposit. By signing these consent and privacy statements you will acknowledge and agree that:
To facilitate your direct deposit enrolment with the CRA:
Prospera will provide to the CRA your name and bank account information as set out above, as well as the date of birth and SIN that we have on file for you.
Once the CRA has completed your direct deposit enrolment, the Receiver General will deposit any amounts to be paid to you by the CRA.
The Government of Canada considers privacy and security of utmost importance in the issuance of payments. Any information you provide to the Government of Canada when you enrol for direct deposit is protected under the Government of Canada Privacy Act and as described in Receiver General Payments (Personal Information Bank PWGSC PCU 712).
How do I register for direct deposit through my Prospera?
Visit prospera.ca/OnlineBanking/AccountServices/CRADirectDeposit/ where you can access a form which will simply and securely transmit your details to CRA.
What should I do if direct deposit enrolment is not yet available through my financial institution?
We will have direct deposit enrolment available to our customers by April 6, 2020. You can also sign up for direct deposit and enter your bank details through CRA’s My Account online or by using the MyCRA and MyBenefits CRA apps from your mobile device. For more information, go to canada.ca/cra-direct-deposit.
How long will it take to process my direct deposit enrolment or update through my financial institution?
Once you provide consent for your banking information to be shared with the CRA, your direct deposit information will be updated by your financial institution the following day. The CRA aims to process your direct deposit enrolment or information updates in one or two business days. Given the current environment, you may experience longer than usual processing times once the CRA receives your information from your financial institution.
What information do I have to provide to my financial institution to sign up?
Your financial institution will provide to the CRA your name and bank account information, as well as the date of birth and SIN that we have on file for you.
How will I know that my direct deposit information has been updated?
If you are fully registered for CRA’s My Account, you can verify your direct deposit information through this online self-service portal.
How do I know that I have received my direct deposit payment from the CRA?
You can verify that the payment has been received by checking your banking statement on the account you used to sign up for direct deposit. Your payment amount will be deposited directly into the account.
You can also confirm that the payment was sent by the CRA by logging into CRA’s My Account.
Fraud prevention: The CRA or your financial institution will never send you an email, text or Interac e-transfer to a link asking for your personal information to receive your benefit payment or refund. These are scams and taxpayers should never respond to these fraudulent communications or click on any of the links provided. If you submit multiple requests to update your direct deposit information, the most recent enrolment you complete will become the account on file with the CRA. Direct deposits will only be made into one account, at one financial institution.
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The convention represents a continuation of a public discussion begun finally year’s Femme Gender Conference, sponsored by the Harvey Milk Institute as the primary in a series of conferences exploring gender. If you establish as bisexual, pansexual, or sexually fluid, you’ve got probably faced a different set of challenges than someone who’s gay or lesbian. You might have dealt with homophobia from straight people, but biphobia exists too, and it is a double-whammy. Both straight and gay folks alike might let you know that your bisexuality is only a “section” or a stepping stone to being “really gay for real.” Another form of bi-erasure can occur when you’re in a straight-passing relationship, aka a relationship with somebody of a unique gender. Coming out is already exhausting, however popping out whereas in a “straight” relationship could be extra tough for bi and pan people because of all of that extra social baggage.
She does not, however, converse negatively of the way butch-femme roles formed lesbian identity in the midst of this century, however rather makes an attempt to account for the ability and prevalence of these roles, and what they meant in the lives of women who lived them. In the reading “Butch femme relationship”, it portrays a butch lesbian in a derogatory manner, looking at them as if they’re too manly and totally different. But the truth is that a butch lesbian is somebody so courageous, empowered, and places their delight aside, truly expressing themselves as they really feel.
As several historians have shown, this practice became dominant in communities that had no publicity to medical accounts of inversion the place butch/femme developed as a well-liked form of identity. In their essential historical past of the lesbian community in Buffalo, New York within the 1940s and Fifties, social anthropologist Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy and activist and historian Madeline D. Davis recommend that butch/femme is a survival strategy within a violently homophobic culture.
Findings are examined as they shed light on the constructed and essential elements of gender, and using gender signifiers as methods to convey energy. This research also examines the impetus for the event of those ontological classes, which is interpreted in reference to the cultural context inside which they arose. The erotic nature of those identities is known as a radical shifting of values in which they arrive to be materialized as gender signs that form a subcultural aesthetic. Although butch–femme wasn’t the only organizing precept amongst lesbians within the mid-20th century, it was significantly prominent in the working-class lesbian bar tradition of the Nineteen Forties, ’50s, and ’60s, where butch–femme was the norm, while butch–butch and femme–femme relationships were taboo. It has been noted that, at least partly, kiki women were unwelcome where lesbians gathered as a result of their apparent lack of know-how of the butch–femme dress code might indicate that they had been policewomen.
Community
This is particularly apparent in our work as musicians,” the band advised Out. Sexology does not, nonetheless, provide an sufficient explanation for the rise of butch/femme in the twentieth century.
Lesbians and genderqueers who establish as Butch or Femme have experienced a renaissance as the web has brought the butch-femme group together via giant web sites like Butch-Femme.com. Among the subcultures composed of butch gay men is the “bear neighborhood”. Gay men who are more femme are sometimes described as “flamers”.
He has three youngsters from his earlier marriage to Sherrill Redmon and is presently married to Elaine Chao who’s the Secretary of Transportation under Donald Trump. Though he is an influential chief, he has to constantly guard towards his opponents within the opposition in addition to in his personal get together.Jared Kushner Jared Kushner is a former real-property mogul and publisher who presently serves as a senior advisor to US President Donald Trump. Jared is the son of one other real estate guru, Charles Kushner, who owned ‘Kushner Companies’ earlier than he was imprisoned for 2 years. Jared was in his early 20s when he took over his father’s business.
But there is another strain of feminist thought that argues, rather powerfully, that such practices are actually potentially sexually liberating for ladies, and therefore shouldn’t https://findasianbride.com/japanese-women/ cause moral panic amongst feminists. Rubin’s critique, then, is of those forces that work towards the oppression of sexual minorities, significantly of those forces that claim to be feminist.
But this, de Lauretis argues, is hommo-sexuality, because of the privileged status of the “male” in any conception of gender and sexuality, whereas a homosexuality that does not define itself when it comes to difference has the potential to subvert the hierarchical system of male privilege. Thus, de Lauretis argues in favor of the determine of the “mannish woman” as the illustration of a “reverse discourse,” one which stands as “the representation of lesbian need https://marriagemissions.com/technologically-bless-your-marriage/ towards each the discourse of hommo-sexuality and the feminist account of lesbianism as woman-identification” . This is often the critique of consciously function-taking part in lesbians in particular, similar to those who adopt butch-femme identities, who’re accused of an imitation which is at finest inferior and inadequate.
He was the chief executive officer of the corporate and of ‘Observer Media,’ writer of the ‘The New York Observer.’ After owning a successful enterprise in publishing, Jared also co-based ‘Cadre,’ an online actual-property investment platform. He is the husband of Ivanka Trump, President Trump’s daughter and advisor. He spearheaded Trump’s media marketing campaign whereas managing media promotions and digital strategy. He used the best know-how from Silicon Valley for the political campaign.
Our aim to be recognized as an established company that balances the social, environmental and ethical issues created by our business activities, without compromise to our continued ability to deliver projects with commercial success.
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Sarah joined BCS as the Executive Branch Director for Iowa and Nebraska in 2019 and began working with the South Dakota branch in 2021. She earned her bachelor’s degree from the University of Nebraska Omaha in Criminal Justice and her master’s degree in Mental Health Counseling from Wayne State College. Sarah has worked in the areas of Child Welfare, foster care and adoption since 2004. She has a passion for advocating for vulnerable children and families. Sarah serves as the President of the Nebraska Adoption Agency Association and has been involved in a number of associations and committees throughout Nebraska and Iowa. Sarah is married and has two young daughters. In their free time, Sarah’s family enjoys traveling, boating at nearby lakes and spending time outdoors.
Womens advocate/case manager - Eastern South Dakota
Amanda joined Bethany Christian Services in October, 2021. Amanda has an undergraduate degree in criminal justice from Dakota Wesleyan University and a Master’s in management with a concentration in criminal justice from Colorado Technical University. Amanda has been serving youth and families at Lutheran Social Services for the past 10 years and looks forward to expanding her professional experiences with ReNew as the Women’s Advocate and Case Manager. Amanda has a passion for providing advocacy and support to women with children who have a history of substance use disorders and looks forward to serving in this new role. Amanda is married to her wife, Sharlyse and they have two children together. They enjoy spending time together as a family, exploring the outdoors and loving on their dog and 3 cats.
Tamara joined Bethany Christian Services in October, 2021 as the ReNew Peer Support Specialist. Experiencing recovery in her own life, Tamara has been serving a valuable role in the community as a mentor and support to many individuals who have substance use disorders. It is her passion to walk along side women in their recovery journey. Tamara received her Associate of Science Degree in Medical Assisting in June of 2006. She has educational and professional experiences serving as a Medical Assistant and looks forward to connecting with women through our ReNew program in meaningful ways. Tamara and her husband have been married for 18 years and have 5 adult children together. Tamara enjoys spending time with her family and friends, listening to music, caring for her aging grandfather-in-law and continuing to grow in her own recovery process.
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Hi, just introducing myself. My name is kimberly, i'm 25 years old and hate running (so far). I've never struggled much with my weight, I'm naturally pretty thin and don't do much exept for pilates touch football and volleyball to stay fit. With running being more popular than ever, people have been asking me to sign up with them for 5k runs, spartan races and other races such as prison break, expecting me to say yes right away. People give me the strangest look when I tell them I'm not a runner and that my cardio endurance is actually horrible. I can't even run 1 minute without having a litre of saliva in my mouth and side cramps. So that's why I'm giving this a try... I'm tired of the odd looks of people who don't get that you can have a runners body without actually being a runner. I want to be able to say "i'm in" and not be ashamed that I can't run like everyone else. I want to surprise my friends by running 5k at the end of june for charity. Wish me luck!
March 31, 2015
1 reply
Not a runner
5k
I have syncope which really isn't a big deal if I wanted to sleep all the time. Syncope means I faint or black out when I stand or when I do something that should raise my blood pressure even slightly. This is caused by a series of events that all come from hypotension, or low blood pressure. This is the short definition of course. Either way, it doesn't happen every single time. When I decided to lift weights was when I became very aware of my syncope. I just cannot get my heart rate up consistently to get a good workout in. Not to mention I looked odd constantly yawning while lifting. It's almost like I could take a nap between every rep. It's annoying more than anything. So I wanted to learn to train my heart to do it's job. When you run with syncope it takes a very very long time to get your heart rate up and once it gets up, you could run forever. Of course you may pass out repeatedly trying to get your heart rate to that point. That's the miserable way to do it. The better way to train syncope is to walk then run and walk then run. Over time, you walk less and run more. This is the best way to train your heart rate for anyone but especially for those with syncope. It keeps your heart guessing and trying to keep up until finally, it figures out it's just going to have to raise on demand. So for those of you out there with super low blood pressure and heart rates and for those of you who faint or blackout when you do anything strenuous, it takes time but you CAN get there!
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And he loves sharing them.
“He changed my life, and I will do everything to keep his legacy alive.”
Vigars, who was Fox’s publicist, was at SFU Surrey Friday (Sept. 23), sharing stories of the time he spent with Terry more than four decades ago, during the Marathon of Hope.
“The one thing that people don’t realize is how nice he was,” Vigars told his audience. “He was funny, he was relaxed, he loved kids. He was driven by what happened to him in the hospital.”
Fox would often say, “I can quit the run any time I want, but the kids in the hospital can’t,” he recounted.
Vigars, who has never worked for the Terry Fox Foundation, was 33 when he joined the Marathon of Hope. He was responsible for getting the word out about Fox and his historic run. He was working with the Canadian Cancer Society at the time.
The first time he met Fox was on June 9, 1980. He was sent down to Edmundston, New Brunswick, to meet him on his run. Vigars saw how small towns were “transfixed” with Fox when he ran through. He thought to himself, “if this guy gets into a populated area, he’ll explode.”
There was really no schedule for the run, although Fox had to be in Ottawa for July 1 and July 11 in Toronto.
Vigars left Edmundston, and for the next three weeks he drove to as many small towns between Toronto and Ottawa, asking them to organize an event for Fox. They all said the same thing, if Fox made it this far, they would organize an event, said Vigars. Each one of these small towns has a monument for Fox.
He set up several events for Fox for when he would run through Toronto – an appearance at a Blue Jays Game and meeting Bobby Orr.
Members of the Surrey Beavers rugby association participate in the Cloverdale Terry Fox run in 2019. This year the run was held Sept. 18. (Photo: Malin Jordan)
When Vigars asked Fox how he did it, the young man responded that he took it one telephone pole at a time.
“He would run from one pole to another, then so on. He said he could not run 42 kilometres, but could run with the mindset of running from pole to pole.”
Shortly after the cancer returned, invading Fox’s lungs and forcing him to abandon his cross-Canada run on Sept. 1, 1980, outside Thunder Bay, Ont. Soon after, Vigars spoke with the CBC.
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Penland School of Craft is an international center for craft education offering residential workshops, residencies, community education programs, and exhibitions. Located on 423 acres in the NC Mountains, Penland has 16 teaching studios and 60 historic and contemporary buildings. We are an equal opportunity employer with a staff of 70 and serve 1500 students and 14,000 visitors annually. Penland operates with a $54 million endowment and an annual operating budget of $6.7 million. We are located about an hour northeast of Asheville, NC. Our mission supports individual and artistic growth through creative practice and discovery.
Commitment to Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion
We believe that equity, diversity, and inclusion are essential to fulfilling our mission. We want to inspire and nurture the human spirit, and we value the perspectives and contributions of all people. We want the Penland experience to include varied ideas, world views, and personal characteristics. Penland is committed to being a community that welcomes and respects everyone regardless of age, ability, ethnicity, race, religion, philosophical or political beliefs, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, nationality, geographic origin, and socioeconomic status. We are committed to providing an environment free of discrimination.
The photography & drawing/painting studio coordinator reports directly to the studio operations manager and provides specialized oversight for the photography studio and the drawing/painting studios. The coordinator works directly with the studio team and collaboratively across the organization to support all programming and studio use throughout the year by assuring that the facilities and equipment are in good working order, and by communicating with key staff, studio assistants and/or interns, and instructors to plan and support successful programming. The studio coordinator is also responsible for budget planning and tracking, inventory management, processing purchase orders for materials, tools, and equipment as it relates to programming, and communicating and facilitating safety guidelines and practices.
This is a technical, administrative, and services-oriented position.
Qualifications
In-depth knowledge of the equipment and technical processes to be used in the studios, general understanding of the field of craft, and the ability to troubleshoot and repair, or facilitate service of, tools and equipment in the studios are required; note that the Penland photography program includes workshops in digital and analog photography, including black and white darkroom and 19th-century printing processes.
Knowledge of and commitment to health and safety as it applies to equipment operation and materials handling regulations
At least 2-3 years of relevant professional experience in a public or teaching studio; or equivalent combination of educational and professional experience
This position requires strong interpersonal and customer service skills in keeping with Penland’s commitment to generosity. The individual must have excellent communication skills (written and verbal) and be able and willing to handle sensitive and confidential situations.
Ability to work independently, proactively, and also collaboratively
Organizational and task management skills are required; prior experience with budget and/or project management is desirable.
Experience and proficiency with Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom and proficiency with Epson printers and printer software; functional ease with Google Suite and Mac/Windows platforms
First Aid and CPR certifications are required and can be provided by Penland.
Primary Responsibilities
Manages the studio space and equipment throughout the year for programs such as spring, summer, and fall workshops; short-term residencies; demonstrations, lectures, special events; community education, staff access, and occasional rentals
Under the studio operations manager’s direction, works collaboratively with the studio team and facilities staff to maintain equipment and safety systems and manage hazardous waste disposal and materials storage and handling
Provides technical assistance and oversight to instructors, students, and staff as it relates to the demonstration and training in the safe operation of studio equipment and materials handling
Supports the needs of instructors before and during programming, including: assures good working order of tools and equipment; configures studio space; orders and stocks supplies and materials as requested; researches and shares information about local resources, as needed; serves as the point person for all studio-related questions and concerns for the duration of programming
Coordinates and manages the workflow of programming changeovers (weekends), including reviewing and coordinating programming needs upon instructor arrival and conducting onboarding for, and assigning tasks to, studio assistants or interns
Trains and manages studio assistants and/or interns: establishes and enforces safety standards, operational procedures, equipment usage guidelines, and procedures for resale for materials; works with studio assistants and/or interns to establish studio safety guidelines; collaborates with studio operations manager to provide regular studio assistants check-ins for duration of programming
Works with studio operations manager to create an annual budget proposal for studio operating and capital budgets; monitors projects, maintenance, and inventory to remain within the approved annual budget
Supports the director of programs and programs manager as requested by providing instructor recommendations, offering input on course topics, and making recommendations about the studio’s capacity for enrollment and ability to support various types of activities
Collaborates with and serves as a strong, effective member of the studio team to assure and uphold consistency of safety and administrative policies and procedures across all Penland studios
Performs additional duties as required
While performing the duties of this job, the employee is regularly required to sit, to work at a computer, and to perform repetitive tasks. The employee is frequently required to use hands to handle or touch objects, tools, or controls and to talk fluently, and hear. The employee is frequently required to stand, walk, bend, and handle hazardous materials. The employee must regularly lift and/or move objects weighing up to 50 pounds or more, including delicate and expensive photo equipment, and remove trash and hazardous chemistry. Specific vision required by this job includes close vision. Evening and weekend work is sometimes required by studio programming.
This is a full-time, year-round, benefits-eligible position consisting of 35 hours per week over the course of the year with hours flexing up to 40 in the summer months.
Compensation discussions are a part of the interviewing process, but the starting wage for this position is $16.00 per hour. At 1890 budgeted hours per year, the expected annual salary is $30,240. A higher salary will be considered for those with more experience. Employees at Penland enjoy competitive pay, engaging benefits, and a lively, creative work environment. Studio staff also enjoy a limited studio access benefit.
The position will remain open until filled, however, our initial review will prioritize applications received by January 7, 2022. The scheduled start date is April 1, 2022. Send résumé, contact information for 3 references, and a cover letter addressing relevant experience and interest in the position to employment@penland.org. Please include photography & drawing/painting studio coordinator as the subject of your email.
We look forward to hearing from you!
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As technology gets better and pandemics get worse, we rush to the internet for a sense of connectedness that we lack in the real world. We go online to talk to others, laugh, argue or mindlessly scroll through the endless amount of content.
With the recent presidential election of Joe Biden, it seems many of us can’t escape political content in particular. For instance, in late January 2021, our feeds were filled with the Bernie Sanders meme where he sits at the inauguration with his mittens and crossed legs.
Former President Donald Trump also seemed to “dabble” in viral content. He is known for many controversial tweets that ended up getting him banned from Twitter in early January 2021, according to CNN.
CNN quoted Twitter, “After close review of recent Tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account and the context around them we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence."
Some think this ban infringes on Trump's First Amendment right to free speech. RIT associate professor of Political Science, Benjamin Banta, begs to differ. He thinks this ban is the step in the right direction of curbing the amount of extreme content that seems to gain traction online.
“To me, that [the Twitter ban] is not a First Amendment issue. It’s clearly not a censorship issue. It’s a community standards issue ... it’s a group of people deciding what’s appropriate or what’s not,” Banta said.
"It's a community standards issue ... it's a group of people deciding what's appropriate or what's not."
The more years we spend with the internet, the more we come to realize it can be quite a toxic place. What were once feeds solely filled with Nyan Cat and the Annoying Orange are now feeds also filled with extreme content.
Extreme content can be anything from political propaganda, fake news, abusive content, conspiracy theories and more.
John Sohrawardi is a third year Ph.D. student in the Department of Computing and Information Sciences who has done a great amount of research on extreme content online. In particular, he focuses on fake news and “deep fakes.”
“I primarily work with journalists on the new detection of deep fakes and how they verify fake news ... they [journalists] are like the first line of defense against fake news because they are the ones that verify and publish it,” Sohrawardi said.
However, Sohrawardi explained that this first line of defense is having a tough time in battle.
“Deep fake technology has grown to levels where nobody with a normal observation can be able to tell whether it’s fake or real,” he continued.
This means that information that goes viral is not always factual, yet people will still continue to share and believe in it.
As Sohrawardi explained, people want to believe in things that support their bias. This means overlooking credibility to promote their viewpoint. Yet, why are we now seeing so much more of this extreme content?
Social media algorithms are partially to blame in the rise of extreme content. Social media platforms are profit driven — they want to keep their users engaged.
These algorithms will track their users through clicks and hovers in order to guide them to new content that aligns with their tastes.
Sometimes these algorithms are harmless and will lead you to more of those cat videos you love. However, Banta explained it's usually content that angers and riles us up that we end up interacting with.
“It’s the extreme, angering stuff that keeps people online,” Banta stated.
"It's the extreme, angering stuff that keeps people online."
This means our emotions and outlook on life can also be to blame. It is the content that most people are more likely to watch , so it’s the content that is produced the most.
As Banta said bluntly, “The media empire has been successful purveyors of bullshit ... they cooperated in closing themselves into one single narrative.”
However, it’s important to note that the media is not this evil giant trying to feed us more and more extreme content. As Banta explained, this is a naturally occurring process. It’s a give and take between viewers and the media.
Sometimes these viewers are simply bots and trolls on the internet trying to make a buck by sharing extreme content.
Banta recalled back to an article he read after the 2016 election. The Washington Post found purveyors of fake news and discovered that they purposefully shared false information. They were throwing extreme propaganda online in hopes to gain traction and money.
“Fake news is just this phenomenon of people trying to make money off of fake articles,” Banta explained.
With there being so many ignitors of extreme content, it doesn’t seem likely that change will occur.
As Sohrawardi said, “You have to just get used to this new age of information.”
Luckily, not all hope is lost quite yet.
Sohrawardi noted that many platforms are trying to restrict the amount of extreme content by using technology and humans side by side. This new duo monitors and tracks content on their platforms, and ciphers out anything they deem unacceptable.
As Banta explained, at the end of the day these platforms care about their image. They will lose customers if their platform seems too hateful.
Younger generations are also becoming more tech savvy and strong willed. They are less likely to stand to extreme content, especially that which is hateful.
“I grew up in the '90s where we were all fat and happy and stupid. There was nothing like what we’re facing today,” Banta recalled.
So extreme content may even die down naturally as this generation comes to rise. For now, all we can do is stay alert to what we give fire to online.
About Author
Victoria Sebastian is majoring in Film Production with a focus in producing. On the side she likes to write screenplays, as writing has always been a favorite hobby of Victoria. She also has a passion for animals and hopes to one day have a rescue farm or a wolf sanctuary. Her dream is to have a happy and fulfilling life and career alongside her friends, family and various animals.
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About Author
Victoria Sebastian is majoring in Film Production with a focus in producing. On the side she likes to write screenplays, as writing has always been a favorite hobby of Victoria. She also has a passion for animals and hopes to one day have a rescue farm or a wolf sanctuary. Her dream is to have a happy and fulfilling life and career alongside her friends, family and various animals.
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A survey completed by the Eczema Society demonstrated the significant emotional impact of living with eczema. Out of 530 adults surveyed, 85% described feeling self-conscious or embarrassed about their eczema.
We are no ecz-perts, as we have never suffered from the condition ourselves. However, as doctors, we feel it is so important to try and understand what it is really like living in a sufferers skin in order to appropriately treat and support holistically. With this in mind, we asked Grace, a psychology masters student and blogger of @AllThings.Eczema about her eczema journey.
Hi Grace, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us about your eczema journey and how it impacts you. Can you tell us a little bit about the type of eczema you have?
Hi Girls! I actually have experienced three types of eczema. I wasn’t aware until it happened to me, that you could suffer from more than one type, even at one time. My first experience was with atopic dermatitis, which developed when I was a toddler and settled relatively quickly. My next experience of eczema began in my teens when I developed what I now know to be contact dermatitis. This began not long after I started experimenting with makeup and I would have a constantly sore upper lip and eczema around my eyes. I found out years later that the eczema on my face and the excruciating cracked hands I would get all year round was a result of both Atopic and contact dermatitis, with allergies to limonene, a fragrance derived from the skin of citrus fruits, and methylisothiazolinone, a preservative mix. At the time of my diagnosis, these products were in the process of being eliminated from ‘leave on products’ due to the number of contact dermatitis cases it was creating!
Finally, I suffered with dyshidrotic eczema, or pompholyx on my hands whilst I worked behind a bar. On reflection, this may have been more of an occupational problem as this specific type of eczema quickly settled after I left (because my skin was too severe to continue working at that time!).
Wow, you have had such vast experience of various types of eczema, how has this impacted on you, and can you talk about the emotional aspect too?
Living with eczema affects every aspect of my life. It can be extremely tough but has, undoubtedly, built my mental resilience and appreciation for the little things in life.
Eczema can be a heavy burden and it can be difficult to change the narrative to find the positives in the situation when it feels like your body is giving up on you. Our skin is our largest organ and greatest protector, and there were times where I forgot how significant it was and was very bitter towards it and my condition. Sadly, that only served to make my condition worse and also led me to understanding the link between our minds and skin. I went on to study the importance of a healthy doctor-patient relationship in atopic dermatitis at university.
Dealing with eczema can often feel like a full-time job. It affected my relationships, mainly my friendships due to my skin stopping me from socialising and destroying my self-confidence, and eventually led to anxiety and depression. Eczema is tormenting, leading to lack of social contact, pain and loss of sleep, and can be a driving force behind these mental health conditions.
Despite its unpredictable nature and its ability to steal away those little quirks that make you you, and the negative effects it has had on my mental health, it has also encouraged me to look at my health holistically. I am more attuned to my body and recognise when something is not quite right. Subsequently, I have the confidence to approach healthcare professionals about any issues. I also focus on my mental health through running (or at least trying to!), setting boundaries, understanding that those around me have a detrimental effect on my mental wellbeing, and intend to begin journaling.
Click on the image to expand
Thank you for being so open and honest about the impact eczema has had on all aspects of your life. It is eye-opening. I think people often disregard eczema as just a rash, but as you demonstrate it can have debilitating effects. With this in mind, how have you found your experience with healthcare professionals managing your condition?
I have had a real variety of experiences with healthcare professionals when I have approached them about my skin. I have been refused dermatology referrals, skin infections have been missed and point-blank ignorance. I have, however, also experienced incredible support, from education on emollients, ongoing support and treatment that puts my needs and wishes at the forefront, as well as a general understanding and empathy from a team that go above and beyond for their patients.
If I could highlight one thing, it would be for GPs or healthcare professionals to explain the importance of emollient therapy. I have found over the years that prevention over treatment is a concept that is pushed by GPs, but the guidance for how best to use this first-line treatment - and ingredients to look out for - is lacking. I appreciate that time is not on the side of healthcare professionals, however I believe that a conversation about this would greatly improve the outlook for those with eczema.
For me, personally, when I seek help with my skin, empathy and understanding is without a doubt at the forefront for me. It is so easily embraced by patients in times of suffering and can be the difference between a positive and negative experience, irrespective of treatment management options and referrals to additional support.
I also felt that I was to blame for the spread of my eczema, due to an assumption that I was not adhering to the treatment recommendations based on my very visible symptoms and subsequently was refused dermatology referrals. I could not get away from this until receiving treatment from a dermatology clinic. Healthcare professionals were always very quick to downplay my experiences with eczema, despite presenting with a severe case. I would encourage healthcare professionals to listen to the lived experiences of their patients and not assume.
Your experience is really interesting, and hopefully by raising awareness, we can improve the way we manage those with eczema, aiming for a more holistic approach. Having lived with eczema for many years, is there anything you’d advise people who are also suffering from this condition?
This a difficult one only because I could go on and on! I would say firstly to make emollient therapy a priority. I’m sure the words of your doctor or a parent/guardian are echoing in your mind as you read that, but it has taken me years to really appreciate the importance of a consistent emollient routine and finding an emollient that suits my skin. It can feel like a chore, but it is the best way to exert some control over the condition!
I would also encourage others to educate themselves on eczema. Education is absolutely key to understanding eczema and I believe that subsequently you become more equipped in dealing with and accepting your condition. Become the expert on your skin condition and this will set you in good stead to speak with healthcare professionals, ensuring that your expectations can be well communicated.
Setting boundaries has also been absolutely key for me. Trying to make people understand your condition will prove difficult and so, from experience, I would encourage setting boundaries and understanding that saying ‘no’ does not make you a bad person; prioritising your health, both mentally and physically, is incredibly important. Talk to friends and family, talk to professionals. Just talk! Write your feelings down. Anyway you can let your thoughts and feelings out to relieve the weight, do!
Finally, are there any resources you’d recommend for healthcare professionals, both to read as well as giving to their patients?
As I go along my eczema journey, I access lots of fantastic resources that have driven my hope and determination and have provided brilliant tips on how to deal with my condition. However, for every great resource, there are thousands of unreliable resources that, in my opinion, can be extremely damaging to a vulnerable individual suffering with eczema, desperate to find some relief. Therefore, I would highly recommend the National Eczema Society, and the National Eczema Association. They each share lots of evidence-based information and research, and give tips on how best to manage eczema including what treatments are currently available.
I would also highly recommend engaging with the eczema community online. This has been my greatest support and has allowed me to chat with others in a similar situation. Eczema can be difficult to understand and is often downplayed by non-sufferers, so having thousands of others that understand and empathise can be extremely helpful.
Thank you Grace @AllThings.Eczema for giving us a glimpse into what it is truly like to live with a chronic condition such as eczema. It was really informative. We will definitely be changing the way we practice, ensuring we focus on a holistic approach when treating those with eczema!
Thanks so much to The Aesthetic Medics and the lovely Grace for providing us with some incredible insight into eczema!
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In 1935, the painter, Henri Matisse, received a commission to illustrate an exclusive edition of the novel, Ulysses, by the Irishman, James Joyce. The edition was to consist of one thousand copies, signed by the artist and 250 of them signed by Joyce. When these books turn up on the market today, they generally start out at prices between $7,000 and $9,000 USD.
The book remains a cult object for art collectors and for followers of the legacy James Joyce. Among these is Maria Popova, who described the volume as “a glorious leather-bound tome with 22-karat gold accents, gilt edges, moire fabric endpapers, and a satin page marker.”
But one can’t really speak of a true collaboration between the painter and the writer, because while one of the first translations of the Ulysses had been into French, Matisse had not read the book he illustrated.
In the history of illustrated books – we think, for example, of Doré’s engravings of Don Quixote, images as a sort of visual translation of the literary universe onto the page. But for this edition of Ulysses, Matisse decided to go directly to one of Joyce’s sources: in Homer’s Odyssey.
While there is much talk of the greatness of Ulysses, the truth is that few adventurers conclude any careful reading of it. Pierre Bayard warned of something like this in his own book, How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read. One can “feel perfectly comfortable when Ulysses comes up in conversation […] I know, for example, that it is a retelling of the Odyssey, that its narrative takes the form of a stream of consciousness, that its action unfolds in Dublin in the course of a single day, etc.”
In this sense, Matisse – who incidentally also illustrated an edition of Baudelaire’s The Flowers of Evil – had even an advantage over other Joyce non-readers: he was a Masterful draftsman. Relying directly on his own imaginative resources, his drawings are less literal illustrations to accompany Joyce’s words but rather a correlative, reinterpretation of Homer. In this sense, the Joyce text is accompanied, without having been interfered with and without limiting the possibility of readers’ interpretations of the book. In the manner of Buck Mulligan, the unanswered questions of Stephen Dedalus pose entirely new scenarios and landscapes.
Thus, the extravagance of this edition goes beyond it precise and careful publication: it’s not merely a luxury object for collectors, but a true piece of art, extended and taking the ancient Greek epic as its starting point. Striving in two ways, it is a journey – one with words, another through drawings – of a man’s return home.
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Much of the food around our house, until I was ten-years-old, was dictated by my grandfather. He was a meat and potatoes kind of guy so we had a lot of meat and potatoes. Roast beef every Sunday with mashed potatoes. Fried catfish that absolutely melted in my mouth. Duck he had shot himself (and we would pick the BBs out while we ate). Shepherd’s pie which I remember only because it usually meant I would go to bed hungry. (I am not a person who likes their food all mixed up and I would usually only eat the crust.) About once a month my grandmother would make corned beef and then I would beg for a bowl of cereal or something else to eat. I have never acquired the taste for it. Creamed tuna on toast was a fallback when nothing was available or she didn’t feel like cooking.
My grandmother made grilled cheese sandwiches in same grille she used for making waffles – you could flip the irons over and use the flat side. It squished the sandwiches really flat and all the cheese was melted. It was a long time before I could eat a grilled cheese sandwich that wasn’t smooshed flat like a pancake. Cheese was Velveeta. I loved fried bologna and grilled Spam. In my lunch box I took bologna sandwiches (mustard only) with the crusts cut off and Ding Dongs or Ho Hos or Hostess cupcakes.
There was a lot of Bisquick used for waffles and pancakes and biscuits. We had turkey for Christmas and ham for Easter. Always. It wasn’t often but sometimes I got Kool Aid or Hi C or Tang. Carnation made this chocolate breakfast bar that I remember liking a lot.
My grandmother had a yellow cake she made from scratch and timed it so that it came out of the oven just when dinner was done. She’d make a single layer and then serve it with giant globs of butter. I loved Bosco syrup on my ice cream and loved to whip the ice cream until it was a soup I could drink with a straw.
My all-time favorite sandwich was (okay, still is) creamy peanut butter on soft white bread with slices of sweet pickles.
What about you? What foods stand out in your memories from childhood? I know I’ll remember more once someone else chimes in.
jamarattigan June 3, 2008 at 2:50 pm - Reply
I also loved spam and bologna, and remember lots of Bisquick for pancakes and waffles. Never had Velveeta, though.
In Hawai’i food is an institution, and I grew up with all kinds of wonderful ethnic dishes. I loved musubi (rice balls), saimin (ramen), Chinese rice cakes/dim sum, and my aunt’s apple pie.
I also remember loving frosty malts, chocolate babies, and jujy fruit at the theatre. I had many happy moments at Dairy Queen — for 50 cents I got a hamburger, french fries and coke. Loved their dilly bars and ice milk sandwiches, too.
I must try some p butter with pickles!
testcase June 4, 2008 at 2:32 pm - Reply
Frosty Malts. I remember those. Yum!
Anonymous June 3, 2008 at 3:57 pm - Reply
I remember thumb print cookies to use up all the globs in the bottom of the jam jars. There are lots more memories of food of course but right now I have to know how the heck does one cream a tuna?
testcase June 3, 2008 at 4:05 pm - Reply
LOL. As I recall it was a basic white sauce with some butter and some flour and then she dumped in the canned tuna.
Then we’d make toast and she’d spoon that over the toast.
I remember liking it as child. I also remember making it as a new young wife and making my then husband sick as a dog. Oops.
beckylevine June 3, 2008 at 4:32 pm - Reply
Okay, this’ll tell you how boring I was as a kid. My mom was a pretty good cook, although, yes, a lot of meat for my dad. By the time I remember food, she was working school hours and still cooking a full dinner each night–which blows me away, since I can’t manage that while I’m home!
Anyway, my favorite, favorite food when I was young (and I’d still eat it in mounds today, if I could handle the calories) was Uncle Bens’ Rice with magarine. (My dad’s cholesterol was always high…hmm, all that meat?), so we did margarine, not butter, but it was what I knew, and I loved it.
We’d all put our rice helpings on the plate with everything else, and eat, then maybe take second. Then, when it looked like everyone else was done, I’d ask politely if anyone else wanted more rice, and when the answer was no, I’d pull the pot over to my place and finish it all off.
Other special treats were fried matzo (in chicken fat) and bagels and cream cheese. For years, we couldn’t get any of those in our town, so when my great-aunt and great-uncle would come up from LA, they’d bring those foods up. Again, we’d all have our bagels with cream cheese on top (the basic Philly solid block in the foil wrapper), then we’d pretty much sit around and just slice slabs of cream cheese off the main block and eat it plain.
Oh…and my father is the inventor of the Peanut Butter & Jelly omelet, which I perfected during 9 months of pregnancy and which my son now eats, as well. Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it, people!
testcase June 4, 2008 at 2:32 pm - Reply
Love the rice story! You’re not boring, you were just dedicated.
mirtlemist June 3, 2008 at 4:37 pm - Reply
A&W root beer served in a big frosty mug, along with a barbecue beef sandwich. It was the only place in town back then that served it just the way I liked it.
Pies. My mother didn’t like to bake, so whenever we went to my grandmother’s house, I looked forward to her pies. She made a combo banana cream with a layer of sour cherries on the bottom that was scrumptious. But to this day, I can’t bear lemon meringue. Just the meringue part. She sucked at it. Yak.
Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Every Saturday morning, my best friend would park in front of the TV and watch old Tarzan movies while eating them. Johnny Weismuller rocked!
testcase June 4, 2008 at 2:33 pm - Reply
Oh yes, A&W root beer. My grandfather did love them. They would come out to the car and put the little tray over the window. I still have my little bitty mug from them. Holds about one swallow. I think they would fill it for the kids for free.
alixwrites June 3, 2008 at 5:34 pm - Reply
Mmm, bologna and mustard. My best friend’s mother used to give her bologna and mustard every day, and I traded my tuna salad for it. Now, my daughter trades her PB&J for Lunchables. I never understood why Laura wanted my soggy tuna, and I don’t understand why anyone wants my daughter’s peanut butter with strawberry jelly.
Never developed a taste for corned beef either — and it is the one and only thing (that isn’t canned or frozen) my mother-in-law can make!
testcase June 4, 2008 at 2:34 pm - Reply
Why is it that foods we traded always tasted better to us?
alixwrites June 4, 2008 at 2:39 pm - Reply
Forbidden fruit, I guess. I wasn’t allowed to have bologna because it was unhealthy. My daughter isn’t actually allowed to have Lunchables except if I’m travelling.
slatts June 4, 2008 at 12:07 am - Reply
…(on my Dad’s side) was a lousy cook. And the more she’d drink….
My Grandmother on my Mom’s side was a good cook for those who liked what she cooked. I didn’t. So, Mom always sent me with liverwaurst (sp) or salami sandwiches.
Though my Grandmother Slattery couldn’t cook she’d always have the best things to eat at her house. For anything we saw on TV, she’d order the next day. Fresca, Bugles, Pop Tarts… some of the “new” stuff we’d see on TV–that my Mom would never buy–but Grandma always did.
I can remember Saturday morning junk-food fests. We’d eat Pop Tarts–and every new flavor of the week–til we’d burst! (And these Pop Tarts were the REAL thing!–they were REALLY STUFFED with Smuckers Brand jellies and jams).
Another bizarre “heart-stopping” treat we use to have at Grandma’s, were Bacon Grinders. Somewhere in a Good Housekeeping or some other mag of the day, some mom wrote in about a treat she gave to her kids of the ’60’s. REAL simple! Cook up some bacon. Stick it in a hot dog roll. Add lettuce. Tomato. and Mayo. If you’d like. But if your grandchildren were anything like us. Bacon on bread was fine. And often two or three of us would go through a pound or more.
How I’m even alive, I don’t really know.
testcase June 4, 2008 at 2:35 pm - Reply
How I’m even alive, I don’t really know.
Oh boy. I hear you there! Real Pop Tarts! Yes. I remember trying some a few years ago and I was shocked at how bad they tasted.
The bacon grinders sound good to me. Nothing wrong with bacon.
slatts June 4, 2008 at 3:13 pm - Reply
No, kids born after 1969 or 1976 or whenever they got cheesy with Pop Tarts, lost out BIG time!
I tasted one about five years ago and it was like a doughy, dry cookie with one dollop of filling!
dorichaconas June 4, 2008 at 1:41 am - Reply
I love reading about everyone’s favorite foods!
Sometimes the things we remember as delicious, wouldn’t appeal to others, but you have to remember that for that person, they’re being transported back to a time and place, and a taste that takes them there immediately!
Although I probably wouldn’t enjoy it now, I remember onion sandwiches… sliced scallions on soft bread slathered with horseradish mustard, then sprinkled with salt and pepper. Sounds awful, I know, and while it left my stomach feeling like I’d drilled a huge hole into it, it was satisfying.
And the precursor to baked potato with sour cream… hot mashed potatoes with cold buttermilk poured over it. (And on a good day, bacon bits mixed in.)
testcase June 4, 2008 at 2:37 pm - Reply
It is interesting, isn’t it, the way food can characterize a time or a place? My stomach would rebell at the scallions and horseradish combo but it does sound good. I love the spicy stuff but we never had much spicy food when I was young.
roseleaf June 5, 2008 at 2:13 am - Reply
I just have to comment on your food memories…I LOVE Shepherd’s Pie and corned beef.
My grandma had a special iron for grilled cheese. It was old and cast iron, and you’d just use it over a burner. It was forever before I could eat a grilled cheese that wasn’t round.
hulabunny June 7, 2008 at 7:46 am - Reply
I probably have slightly different food memories. Take a whiff of a first-generation Chinese childhood: Braised onion duck, which was lots and lots of onions at the bottom of a stone pot and a duck on the top, all cooked in a sweet soy sauce until all the duck fat is rendered and the meat falls off the bone. Mmmm…
Saturdays were always “porridge and noodle” lunches: a simple rice porridge with meat and green onions and then stir-fried noodles and usually my mother daring my brother and I to add as much hot sauce to the noodles as we could take without crying.
Anonymous November 22, 2009 at 9:11 am - Reply
He was a wise man who invented beer.
Anonymous December 19, 2009 at 5:07 pm - Reply
thanks for the shout out!
well, I’m technically supposed to be completely off-line and unplugged, but I HAVE to say thank you for sharing about my blog. Empowering GLBTQ Teens – in fact, ALL teens, is really my passion, and I really appreciate your enthusiastic support!
Namaste and Happy Holidays,
and now I’m going to try to go truly off-line…
Anonymous January 14, 2010 at 6:08 am - Reply
I think the animals have the right idea with the living in the now. I’m trying to adopt that. And yes on the rewards!
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The self-portrait genre has been favoured by artists since time immemorial, yet the heavyweights of Moscow Conceptualism and Sots-Art managed to weave new and surprising layers of meaning into this age-old manifesto of the artistic ego.
The Moscow artist Alexander Yulikov (b. 1943) is mostly known for his abstract paintings, which often spread into several canvasses. In his works, he re-thinks the heritage of the Russian Avant-Garde and challenges our perception of shape and balance, as well as painting as a medium. Some of his works are three-dimentional objects consisting of several layers of canvas glued together. The only performance in his career, called ‘Hair-cutting’, dates back to 1976. Within an hour, he bid farewell to his long curly mane, beard and moustache which made him look like a hippie version of Jesus. According to the artist, the resulting black-and-white “before” and “after” photographs, printed life-size, demonstrate the “transforming power of art in literal sense”. To emphasize the somewhat unsettling effect of his mesmerizing gaze, the artist had drawn identical pentagrams on both his images. The hair itself was saved for the sake of documentation and is often displayed at exhibitions, along with the photographs.
The rich and surprising visual world of Pivovarov, an important artist of Moscow Conceptualism, stems from many different traditions and styles, among them the Russian Avant-Garde and Soviet children’s book illustrations. However in his ‘Self-portrait as a young man’, Pivovarov (b.1937) pays an unexpected and somewhat tongue-in-cheek homage to Albrecht Durer and Lucas Cranach the Elder. It belongs to the series ‘Lost Keys’ (2015), which was inspired by the works of Northern Renaissance artists. These eight paintings were first exhibited at the Pushkin Museum of Fine Art, which holds Moscow’s biggest hoard of the European art of different epochs. The artist plays with the poetic and mysterious symbolism of Old Master paintings, which makes their hidden meaning obscure for us. Pivovarov, who is approaching the age of 80, ponders over his life in art, staging his youthful figure as St. Hieronimus. The artist is surrounded by this saint’s faithful companions, a lion, a hare and other wild animals and birds, transferred from the ancient hermit’s cave to Pivovarov's studio by force of his own imagination.
Viktor Pivovarov. Self-portrait as a young man, 2015. Oil on canvas
A younger protagonist of Moscow Conceptualism, Yuri Albert is known for his irony and sarcastic wit. His playful series of homages to the big names of contemporary art titled ‘I am not…’ is one of his best-known projects. In it, the medium and the message clash in an absurd and humorous way. Albert faithfully imitates the style of Roy Lichtenstein or Andy Warhol and at the same time proclaims that he is NOT either of them. He thus manifests his own creative identity in opposition to them. This seemingly jocular post-modernist game raises very serious issues of appropriation, artistic individuality and reproducibility of art. The selection of artists he chooses to contradict is certainly not random. Albert picks the ones who are widely known for some easily recognizable stylistic trait, but are at the same time important for his own artistic development, such as his mentor Ilya Kabakov (b. 1933) or his peer Vadim Zakharov (b. 1951).
The founding fathers of the Sots-Art movement, Vitaly Komar (b. 1943) and Alexander Melamid (b. 1945) conquered the global art scene by mocking Socialist Realism and its hollow propaganda, dated visual language and blatant hypocrisy. In their famous ‘Double self-portrait as pioneers’ (1982), the duo poses as members of the Soviet youth organization whose rituals and uniforms were largely copied from the Boy/Girl Scouts' movement. Membership in the organization was obligatory for all the schoolchildren in the USSR. Mass-produced sculptures of a young pioneer blowing his horn at summer camps and parks, were a staple of the country’s landscape for many decades. The cult of Stalin had long been crushed by his successor Nikita Khrushchev and these two artists are ridiculing the shattered, but still ominous idol. The bearded youth blows his horn into the ear of the late tyrant’s bust, as if heralding the approach of Perestroika.
Komar and Melamid. Double self-portrait as pioneers, 1982
Moscow artist Boris Orlov (b. 1941) has been exploring the idea and mysterious allure of Empire for several decades. His primary medium is sculpture, yet in his whimsical ‘Self-portrait in Empire style’ (1995--1996) he chose to experiment with photo-collage. The result is a mosaic of seemingly incompatible cultural references. In the first panel, the artist represents himself in the style of an 18th century portrait, dressed in a fancy uniform hung with military decorations. However, in the following parts the illusion of pathos and grandeur is shattered. The subject shakes off his clothes and reveals a body tattooed all over with the same military decorations. This is a clear allusion to prison tattooes and, generally, to the criminal sub-culture which surfaced and blossomed in Russia during the what is now called the wild 1990s. At the same time, it is a subtle reminder that ideological clichés and the cult of power are not so easy to shake off.
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In 2019, more young people were receiving youth care than in 2015. On the other hand, there were relatively lower shares of young children in families living on income support, third-year secondary general students at VMBO, and young registered crime suspects. Youth labour participation was relatively higher while alcohol consumption remained unchanged in this period. Statistics Netherlands (CBS) reports this based on figures regarding key indicators and the use of youth care, published today in the Annual Report of the National Youth Monitor 2020.
Girls more likely to be harassed, stalked online
5.3 percent of 12 to 24-year-old internet users report that they were bullied, stalked or threatened online in 2018. Over 140 thousand young people were affected. Girls were almost twice as likely to be a victim as boys (7.1 versus 3.6 percent). Statistics Netherlands (CBS) reports this based on a survey on cybersecurity and cybercrime.
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Henry David Thoreau was an American author, poet, philosopher, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, historian, and leading transcendentalist He is best known for his book Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay Civil Disobedience, an argument for individual resistance to civil government in moral opposition to an unjust state.
Thoreau's books, articles, essays, journals, and poetry total over 20 volumes. Among his lasting contributions were his writings on natural history and philosophy, where he anticipated the methods and findings of ecology and environmental history, two sources of modern day environmentalism. His literary style interweaves close natural observation, personal experience, pointed rhetoric, symbolic meanings, and historical lore, while displaying a poetic sensibility, philosophical austerity, and "Yankee" love of practical detail. He was also deeply interested in the idea of survival in the face of hostile elements, historical change, and natural decay; at the same time he advocated abandoning waste and illusion in order to discover life's true essential needs.
He was a lifelong abolitionist, delivering lectures that attacked the Fugitive Slave Law while praising the writings of Wendell Phillips and defending abolitionist John Brown. Thoreau's philosophy of civil disobedience later influenced the political thoughts and actions of such notable figures as Leo Tolstoy, Mohandas Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, Jr.
Thoreau is sometimes cited as an anarchist, though Civil Disobedience seems to call for improving rather than abolishing government – "I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government" – the direction of this improvement points toward anarchism: "'That government is best which governs not at all;' and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have." Richard Drinnon partly blames Thoreau for the ambiguity, noting that Thoreau's "sly satire, his liking for wide margins for his writing, and his fondness for paradox provided ammunition for widely divergent interpretations of 'Civil Disobedience.'"
Early Life and Education
He was born David Henry Thoreau in Concord, Massachusetts, into the "modest New England family" of John Thoreau (a pencil maker) and Cynthia Dunbar. His paternal grandfather was of French origin and was born in Jersey.His maternal grandfather, Asa Dunbar, led Harvard's 1766 student "Butter Rebellion", the first recorded student protest in the Colonies. David Henry was named after a recently deceased paternal uncle, David Thoreau. He did not become "Henry David" until after college, although he never petitioned to make a legal name change. He had two older siblings, Helen and John Jr., and a younger sister, Sophia. Thoreau's birthplace still exists on Virginia Road in Concord and is currently the focus of preservation efforts. The house is original, but it now stands about 100 yards away from its first site.
Thoreau studied at Harvard University between 1833 and 1837. He lived in Hollis Hall and took courses in rhetoric, classics, philosophy, mathematics, and science. A legend proposes that Thoreau refused to pay the five-dollar fee for a Harvard diploma. In fact, the master's degree he declined to purchase had no academic merit: Harvard College offered it to graduates "who proved their physical worth by being alive three years after graduating, and their saving, earning, or inheriting quality or condition by having Five Dollars to give the college." His comment was: "Let every sheep keep its own skin", a reference to the tradition of diplomas being written on sheepskin vellum.
Name Pronunciation and Appearance
Amos Bronson Alcott and Thoreau's aunt each wrote that "Thoreau" is pronounced like the word "thorough". Although in current media (standard American English) this word rhymes with "furrow",Edward Emerson wrote that the name should be pronounced "Thó-row, the h sounded, and accent on the first syllable."This would in fact rhyme with "thorough" as pronounced in 19th century New England.
In appearance he was homely, with a nose that he called "my most prominent feature." Of his face, Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote: "[Thoreau] is as ugly as sin, long-nosed, queer-mouthed, and with uncouth and rustic, though courteous manners, corresponding very well with such an exterior. But his ugliness is of an honest and agreeable fashion, and becomes him much better than beauty."Thoreau also wore a neck-beard for many years, which he insisted many women found attractive. However, Louisa May Alcott mentioned to Ralph Waldo Emerson that Thoreau's facial hair "will most assuredly deflect amorous advances and preserve the man's virtue in perpetuity."
The traditional professions open to college graduates—law, the church, business, medicine—failed to interest Thoreau, so in 1835 he took a leave of absence from Harvard, during which he taught school in Canton, Massachusetts. After he graduated in 1837, he joined the faculty of the Concord public school, but resigned after a few weeks rather than administer corporal punishment. He and his brother John then opened a grammar school in Concord in 1838 called Concord Academy. They introduced several progressive concepts, including nature walks and visits to local shops and businesses. The school ended when John became fatally ill from tetanus in 1842 after cutting himself while shaving. He died in his brother Henry's arms.
Upon graduation Thoreau returned home to Concord, where he met Ralph Waldo Emerson through a mutual friend. Emerson took a paternal and at times patronizing interest in Thoreau, advising the young man and introducing him to a circle of local writers and thinkers, including Ellery Channing, Margaret Fuller, Bronson Alcott, Nathaniel Hawthorne and his son Julian Hawthorne, who was a boy at the time.
Emerson urged Thoreau to contribute essays and poems to a quarterly periodical, The Dial, and Emerson lobbied editor Margaret Fuller to publish those writings. Thoreau's first essay published there was Aulus Persius Flaccus, an essay on the playwright of the same name, published in The Dial in July 1840. It consisted of revised passages from his journal, which he had begun keeping at Emerson's suggestion. The first journal entry on October 22, 1837, reads, "'What are you doing now?' he asked. 'Do you keep a journal?' So I make my first entry to-day."
Thoreau was a philosopher of nature and its relation to the human condition. In his early years he followed Transcendentalism, a loose and eclectic idealist philosophy advocated by Emerson, Fuller, and Alcott. They held that an ideal spiritual state transcends, or goes beyond, the physical and empirical, and that one achieves that insight via personal intuition rather than religious doctrine. In their view, Nature is the outward sign of inward spirit, expressing the "radical correspondence of visible things and human thoughts," as Emerson wrote in Nature (1836).
On April 18, 1841, Thoreau moved into the Emerson house. There, from 1841–1844, he served as the children's tutor, editorial assistant, and repair man/gardener. For a few months in 1843, he moved to the home of William Emerson on Staten Island,and tutored the family sons while seeking contacts among literary men and journalists in the city who might help publish his writings, including his future literary representative Horace Greeley.
Thoreau returned to Concord and worked in his family's pencil factory, which he continued to do for most of his adult life. He rediscovered the process to make a good pencil out of inferior graphite by using clay as the binder; this invention improved upon graphite found in New Hampshire and bought in 1821 by relative Charles Dunbar. (The process of mixing graphite and clay, known as the Conté process, was patented by Nicolas-Jacques Conté in 1795). His other source had been Tantiusques, an Indian operated mine in Sturbridge, Massachusetts. Later, Thoreau converted the factory to produce plumbago (graphite), which was used to ink typesetting machines.
Once back in Concord, Thoreau went through a restless period. In April 1844 he and his friend Edward Hoar accidentally set a fire that consumed 300 acres (1.2 km2) of Walden Woods. He spoke often of finding a farm to buy or lease, which he felt would give him a means to support himself while also providing enough solitude to write his first book.
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.”
— Henry David Thoreau, Walden, "Where I Lived, and What I Lived For
Thoreau needed to concentrate and get himself working more on his writing. In March 1845, Ellery Channing told Thoreau, "Go out upon that, build yourself a hut, & there begin the grand process of devouring yourself alive. I see no other alternative, no other hope for you." Two months later, Thoreau embarked on a two-year experiment in simple living on July 4, 1845, when he moved to a small, self-built house on land owned by Emerson in a second-growth forest around the shores of Walden Pond. The house was in "a pretty pasture and woodlot" of 14 acres (57,000 m2) that Emerson had bought, 1.5 miles (2.4 km) from his family home.
On July 24 or July 25, 1846, Thoreau ran into the local tax collector, Sam Staples, who asked him to pay six years of delinquent poll taxes. Thoreau refused because of his opposition to the Mexican-American War and slavery, and he spent a night in jail because of this refusal. (The next day Thoreau was freed, against his wishes, when his aunt paid his taxes.) The experience had a strong impact on Thoreau. In January and February 1848, he delivered lectures on "The Rights and Duties of the Individual in relation to Government" explaining his tax resistance at the Concord Lyceum. Bronson Alcott attended the lecture, writing in his journal on January 26:
Heard Thoreau's lecture before the Lyceum on the relation of the individual to the State– an admirable statement of the rights of the individual to self-government, and an attentive audience. His allusions to the Mexican War, to Mr. Hoar's expulsion from Carolina, his own imprisonment in Concord Jail for refusal to pay his tax, Mr. Hoar's payment of mine when taken to prison for a similar refusal, were all pertinent, well considered, and reasoned. I took great pleasure in this deed of Thoreau's.
Thoreau revised the lecture into an essay entitled Resistance to Civil Government (also known as Civil Disobedience). In May 1849 it was published by Elizabeth Peabody in the Aesthetic Papers. Thoreau had taken up a version of Percy Shelley's principle in the political poem The Mask of Anarchy (1819), that Shelley begins with the powerful images of the unjust forms of authority of his time – and then imagines the stirrings of a radically new form of social action.
At Walden Pond, he completed a first draft of A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, an elegy to his brother, John, that described their 1839 trip to the White Mountains. Thoreau did not find a publisher for this book and instead printed 1,000 copies at his own expense, though fewer than 300 were sold. Thoreau self-published on the advice of Emerson, using Emerson's own publisher, Munroe, who did little to publicize the book.
In August 1846, Thoreau briefly left Walden to make a trip to Mount Katahdin in Maine, a journey later recorded in "Ktaadn," the first part of The Maine Woods.
Thoreau left Walden Pond on September 6, 1847. At Emerson's request, he immediately moved back into the Emerson house to help Lidian manage the household while her husband was on an extended trip to Europe. Over several years, he worked to pay off his debts and also continuously revised his manuscript for what, in 1854, he would publish as Walden, or Life in the Woods, recounting the two years, two months, and two days he had spent at Walden Pond. The book compresses that time into a single calendar year, using the passage of four seasons to symbolize human development. Part memoir and part spiritual quest, Walden at first won few admirers, but later critics have regarded it as a classic American work that explores natural simplicity, harmony, and beauty as models for just social and cultural conditions.
American poet Robert Frost wrote of Thoreau, "In one book ... he surpasses everything we have had in America."
John Updike wrote in 2004,
“A century and a half after its publication, Walden has become such a totem of the back-to-nature, preservationist, anti-business, civil-disobedience mindset, and Thoreau so vivid a protester, so perfect a crank and hermit saint, that the book risks being as revered and unread as the Bible.”
Thoreau moved out of Emerson's house in July 1848 and stayed at a home on Belknap Street nearby. In 1850, he and his family moved into a home at 255 Main Street; he stayed there until his death.
In 1851, Thoreau became increasingly fascinated with natural history and travel/expedition narratives. He read avidly on botany and often wrote observations on this topic into his journal. He admired William Bartram, and Charles Darwin's Voyage of the Beagle. He kept detailed observations on Concord's nature lore, recording everything from how the fruit ripened over time to the fluctuating depths of Walden Pond and the days certain birds migrated. The point of this task was to "anticipate" the seasons of nature, in his words.
He became a land surveyor and continued to write increasingly detailed natural history observations about the 26 square miles (67 km2) township in his journal, a two-million word document he kept for 24 years. He also kept a series of notebooks, and these observations became the source for Thoreau's late natural history writings, such as Autumnal Tints, The Succession of Trees, and Wild Apples, an essay lamenting the destruction of indigenous and wild apple species.
Until the 1970s, literary criticsdismissed Thoreau's late pursuits as amateur science and philosophy. With the rise of environmental history and ecocriticism, several new readings if this matter began to emerge, showing Thoreau to be both a philosopher and an analyst of ecological patterns in fields and woodlots. For instance, his late essay, "The Succession of Forest Trees," shows that he used experimentation and analysis to explain how forests regenerate after fire or human destruction, through dispersal by seed-bearing winds or animals.
He traveled to Quebec once, Cape Cod four times, and Maine three times; these landscapes inspired his "excursion" books, A Yankee in Canada, Cape Cod, and The Maine Woods, in which travel itineraries frame his thoughts about geography, history and philosophy. Other travels took him southwest to Philadelphia and New York City in 1854, and west across the Great Lakes region in 1861, visiting Niagara Falls, Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Mackinac Island. Although provincial in his physical travels, he was extraordinarily well-read and vicariously a world traveler. He obsessively devoured all the first-hand travel accounts available in his day, at a time when the last unmapped regions of the earth were being explored. He read Magellan and James Cook, the arctic explorers Franklin, Mackenzie and Parry, David Livingstone and Richard Francis Burton on Africa, Lewis and Clark; and hundreds of lesser-known works by explorers and literate travelers. Astonishing amounts of global reading fed his endless curiosity about the peoples, cultures, religions and natural history of the world, and left its traces as commentaries in his voluminous journals. He processed everything he read, in the local laboratory of his Concord experience. Among his famous aphorisms is his advice to "live at home like a traveler."
After John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry, many prominent voices in the abolitionist movement distanced themselves from Brown, or damned him with faint praise. Thoreau was disgusted by this, and he composed a speech—A Plea for Captain John Brown—which was uncompromising in its defense of Brown and his actions. Thoreau's speech proved persuasive: first the abolitionist movement began to accept Brown as a martyr, and by the time of the American Civil War entire armies of the North were literally singing Brown's praises. As a contemporary biographer of John Brown put it: "If, as Alfred Kazin suggests, without John Brown there would have been no Civil War, we would add that without the Concord Transcendentalists, John Brown would have had little cultural impact."
Thoreau contracted tuberculosis in 1835 and suffered from it sporadically afterwards. In 1859, following a late night excursion to count the rings of tree stumps during a rain storm, he became ill with bronchitis. His health declined over three years with brief periods of remission, until he eventually became bedridden. Recognizing the terminal nature of his disease, Thoreau spent his last years revising and editing his unpublished works, particularly The Maine Woods and Excursions, and petitioning publishers to print revised editions of A Week and Walden. He also wrote letters and journal entries until he became too weak to continue. His friends were alarmed at his diminished appearance and were fascinated by his tranquil acceptance of death. When his aunt Louisa asked him in his last weeks if he had made his peace with God, Thoreau responded: "I did not know we had ever quarreled."
Aware he was dying, Thoreau's last words were "Now comes good sailing", followed by two lone words, "moose" and "Indian". He died on May 6, 1862 at age 44. Bronson Alcott planned the service and read selections from Thoreau's works, and Channing presented a hymn. Emerson wrote the eulogy spoken at his funeral. Originally buried in the Dunbar family plot, he and members of his immediate family were eventually moved to Sleepy Hollow Cemetery (N42° 27' 53.7" W71° 20' 33") in Concord, Massachusetts.
Thoreau's friend Ellery Channing published his first biography, Thoreau the Poet-Naturalist, in 1873, and Channing and another friend Harrison Blake edited some poems, essays, and journal entries for posthumous publication in the 1890s. Thoreau's journals, which he often mined for his published works but which remained largely unpublished at his death, were first published in 1906 and helped to build his modern reputation. A new, expanded edition of the journals is underway, published by Princeton University Press. Today, Thoreau is regarded as one of the foremost American writers, both for the modern clarity of his prose style and the prescience of his views on nature and politics. His memory is honored by the international Thoreau Society.
"Most of the luxuries and many of the so-called comforts of life are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind."
Thoreau was an early advocate of recreational hiking and canoeing, of conserving natural resources on private land, and of preserving wilderness as public land. Thoreau was also one of the first American supporters of Darwin's theory of evolution. He was not a strict vegetarian, though he said he preferred that diet and advocated it as a means of self-improvement. He wrote in Walden: "The practical objection to animal food in my case was its uncleanness; and besides, when I had caught and cleaned and cooked and eaten my fish, they seemed not to have fed me essentially. It was insignificant and unnecessary, and cost more than it came to. A little bread or a few potatoes would have done as well, with less trouble and filth."
Thoreau neither rejected civilization nor fully embraced wilderness. Instead he sought a middle ground, the pastoral realm that integrates both nature and culture. His philosophy required that he be a didactic arbitration between the wilderness he based so much on and the spreading mass of North American humanity. He decried the latter endlessly but felt the teachers need to be close to those who needed to hear what he wanted to tell them. He was in many ways a 'visible saint', a point of contact with the wilds, even if the land he lived on had been given to him by Emerson and was far from cut-off. The wildness he enjoyed was the nearby swamp or forest, and he preferred "partially cultivated country." His idea of being "far in the recesses of the wilderness" of Maine was to "travel the logger's path and the Indian trail," but he also hiked on pristine untouched land. In the essay "Henry David Thoreau, Philosopher" Roderick Nash writes: "Thoreau left Concord in 1846 for the first of three trips to northern Maine. His expectations were high because he hoped to find genuine, primeval America. But contact with real wilderness in Maine affected him far differently than had the idea of wilderness in Concord. Instead of coming out of the woods with a deepened appreciation of the wilds, Thoreau felt a greater respect for civilization and realized the necessity of balance." On alcohol, Thoreau wrote: "I would fain keep sober always... I believe that water is the only drink for a wise man; wine is not so noble a liquor... Of all ebriosity, who does not prefer to be intoxicated by the air he breathes?"
Social and political influence
"Thoreau's careful observations and devastating conclusions have rippled into time, becoming stronger as the weaknesses Thoreau noted have become more pronounced ... Events that seem to be completely unrelated to his stay at Walden Pond have been influenced by it, including the national park system, the British labor movement, the creation of India, the civil rights movement, the hippie revolution, the environmental movement, and the wilderness movement. Today, Thoreau's words are quoted with feeling by liberals, socialists, anarchists, libertarians, and conservatives alike."
Thoreau's political writings had little impact during his lifetime, as "his contemporaries did not see him as a theorist or as a radical, viewing him instead as a naturalist. They either dismissed or ignored his political essays, including Civil Disobedience. The only two complete books (as opposed to essays) published in his lifetime, Walden and A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849), both dealt with nature, in which he loved to wander."Nevertheless, Thoreau's writings went on to influence many public figures. Political leaders and reformers like Mahatma Gandhi, President John F. Kennedy, civil rights activist Martin Luther King, Jr., Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, and Russian author Leo Tolstoy all spoke of being strongly affected by Thoreau's work, particularly Civil Disobedience, as did "right-wing theorist Frank Chodorov devoted an entire issue of his monthly, Analysis, to an appreciation of Thoreau."Thoreau also influenced many artists and authors including Edward Abbey, Willa Cather, Marcel Proust, William Butler Yeats, Sinclair Lewis, Ernest Hemingway, Upton Sinclair, E. B. White, Lewis Mumford, Frank Lloyd Wright, Alexander Posey and Gustav Stickley.Thoreau also influenced naturalists like John Burroughs, John Muir, E. O. Wilson, Edwin Way Teale, Joseph Wood Krutch, B. F. Skinner, David Brower and Loren Eiseley, whom Publishers Weekly called "the modern Thoreau." English writer Henry Stephens Salt wrote a biography of Thoreau in 1890, which popularized Thoreau's ideas in Britain: George Bernard Shaw, Edward Carpenter and Robert Blatchford were among those who became Thoreau enthusiasts as a result of Salt's advocacy.
Mahatma Gandhi first read Walden in 1906 while working as a civil rights activist in Johannesburg, South Africa. He first read Civil Disobedience "while he sat in a South African prison for the crime of nonviolently protesting discrimination against the Indian population in the Transvaal. The essay galvanized Gandhi, who wrote and published a synopsis of Thoreau's argument, calling its 'incisive logic . . . unanswerable' and referring to Thoreau as 'one of the greatest and most moral men America has produced.'" He told American reporter Webb Miller, "[Thoreau's] ideas influenced me greatly. I adopted some of them and recommended the study of Thoreau to all of my friends who were helping me in the cause of Indian Independence. Why I actually took the name of my movement from Thoreau's essay 'On the Duty of Civil Disobedience,' written about 80 years ago."
Martin Luther King, Jr. noted in his autobiography that his first encounter with the idea of non-violent resistance was reading "On Civil Disobedience" in 1944 while attending Morehouse College. He wrote in his autobiography that it was
Here, in this courageous New Englander's refusal to pay his taxes and his choice of jail rather than support a war that would spread slavery's territory into Mexico, I made my first contact with the theory of nonviolent resistance. Fascinated by the idea of refusing to cooperate with an evil system, I was so deeply moved that I reread the work several times.
I became convinced that noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. No other person has been more eloquent and passionate in getting this idea across than Henry David Thoreau. As a result of his writings and personal witness, we are the heirs of a legacy of creative protest. The teachings of Thoreau came alive in our civil rights movement; indeed, they are more alive than ever before. Whether expressed in a sit-in at lunch counters, a freedom ride into Mississippi, a peaceful protest in Albany, Georgia, a bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, these are outgrowths of Thoreau's insistence that evil must be resisted and that no moral man can patiently adjust to injustice.
American psychologist B. F. Skinner wrote that he carried a copy of Thoreau's Walden with him in his youth. and, in 1945, wrote Walden Two, a fictional utopia about 1,000 members of a community living together inspired by the life of Thoreau. Thoreau and his fellow Transcendentalists from Concord were a major inspiration of the composer Charles Ives. The 4th movement of the Concord Sonata for piano (with a part for flute, Thoreau's instrument) is a character picture and he also set Thoreau's words.
Thoreau's ideas have impacted and resonated with various strains in the anarchist movement, with Emma Goldman referring to him as "the greatest American anarchist." Green anarchism and Anarcho-primitivism in particular have both derived inspiration and ecological points-of-view from the writings of Thoreau. John Zerzan included Thoreau's text "Excursions" (1863) in his edited compilation of works in the anarcho-primitivist tradition titled Against civilization: Readings and reflections. Additionally, Murray Rothbard, the founder of anarcho-capitalism, has opined that Thoreau was one of the "great intellectual heroes" of his movement. Thoreau was also an important influence on late 19th century anarchist naturism. While globally, Thoreau's concepts also held importance within individualist anarchist circles in Spain, France, and Portugal.
Although his writings would later receive widespread acclaim, Thoreau's ideas were not universally applauded by some of his contemporaries in literary circles. Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson judged Thoreau's endorsement of living alone and apart from modern society in natural simplicity to be a mark of "unmanly" effeminacy and "womanish solitude", while deeming him a self-indulgent "skulker." Nathaniel Hawthorne was also critical of Thoreau, writing that he "repudiated all regular modes of getting a living, and seems inclined to lead a sort of Indian life among civilized men." In a similar vein, poet John Greenleaf Whittier detested what he deemed to be the "wicked" and "heathenish" message of Walden, decreeing that Thoreau wanted man to "lower himself to the level of a woodchuck and walk on four legs."
In response to such criticisms, English novelist George Eliot, writing for the Westminster Review, characterized such critics as uninspired and narrow-minded:
People—very wise in their own eyes—who would have every man's life ordered according to a particular pattern, and who are intolerant of every existence the utility of which is not palpable to them, may pooh-pooh Mr. Thoreau and this episode in his history, as unpractical and dreamy.
Reform and the Reformers (1846–48)
Thomas Carlyle and His Works (1847)
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849)
A Yankee in Canada, with Anti-Slavery and Reform Papers (1866)
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Five years ago, I was making my living playing colleges throughout the U.S. as a Singer/Songwriter. I wrote songs because I had to.
During that time, I met with the Music Director of the local radio station for coffee at a shop in SE Portland near the Aladdin Theater. I remember being excited that he was taking time out of his day to sit down with me. He spoke about the power of a great song – how one great song can make a career. He had witnessed it many times over the course of his career in radio. That idea wrecked me in the best possible way.I started chasing great songs after that. I kept writing because I had to. I’ve been doing music full-time for 10 years now, and I’ve made plenty of mistakes building my career. Here are a few of the things I do my best to keep in mind:
Follow Up. Wait a couple weeks, and then follow up again. “No” is better than no response.
When someone takes the time to tell you “no”, say thank you. Be polite.
Get out and meet people. Go to shows, happy hours, workshops, conferences, whatever. Figure out who the players are, and say hi without being overly eager. Be kind. Work harder than you think you should have to. You’ll meet people further along in their careers than you, and hear things that are really, really great. You can either choose to be inspired, or let it get you down – choose to be inspired. Inspiration will help propel your creativity and drive, and push you to be better tomorrow than you are today.
Figure out what you do that makes you unique, and develop that every day. Consider this your craft. Approach your craft with a sacred dedication.
Don’t chase what’s hot at the time, and try to adapt what you’re doing to fit that mold. It’s already been done, and chances are, when you get to market, it’s not going to be hot anymore.
Take an organic approach to getting your name out there. Build relationships, not contacts, and recognize that a career in music is a marathon, not a sprint.
I don’t subscribe to the belief that you have one shot – there’s no “one big break” – it’s a succession of small successes that help you from one patch of concrete to the next. Don’t get too caught up in successes, or failures.
If you’re a songwriter, show up to the page. Don’t worry, a blank page is scary for most of us.
Set small goals, as well as lofty ones. Set goals that you can control. Be realistic in your timeline for reaching those goals.
Building a career in the music industry takes a lot of time. Put your head down, and do your best work every day.
Don’t be afraid to pivot. Find things that you enjoy that are non-music related to help you maintain perspective.
When someone takes the time to give you constructive feedback, do your best to listen objectively and consider their opinion. “That was really great” feeds your ego, but it doesn’t help you grow in your craft.There’s more to learn.
Justin Klump is an American singer-songwriter from Vancouver, Washington whose accessible folk-pop comes directly from the heart. This ability to craft catchy, sincere songs have garnered comparisons to James Taylor, Passenger and Damien Rice, and recently a nod as one of music’s “Top 8 Emerging Artists” (Kings of A&R). In less then five years, Justin independently released three albums, logged more than 100,000 miles performing across America and earned national media attention. In 2012, Justin released the album Sticks & Stones, which debuted in the top 10 on the iTunes Singer/Songwriter Chart. He has been featured by American Songwriter, SIRIUS XM’s The Coffeehouse, iTunes, among others. Justin's newest album, Justin Klump, was released this May.
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thank you
This was great advice
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Great Advice.
Permalink Submitted by R P on Wed, 07/20/2016 - 6:30pm
Thank you very much for sharing your experiences.
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“I always feel welcome when I walk in the door at NSAI and I have met most of my co-writers and best friends there. The... read more
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by Michele Horrigan
Memory is a tricky preoccupation. It can take the form of saccharine nostalgia, a little soft at the edges, and tinted yellow with age. It can emerge as clear and bright as the midday sun, or it can be ephemeral like snippets of a conversation or remembering something read in a newspaper or heard on a radio station. Like most people, my memories are a combination of all of the above. On occasion, I have to cross-reference with someone else or even several people to confirm or refute my remembered moments… Did that really happen?… How did that story go?
Stigma Damages is an archive and a body of artwork that I established from 2011 onwards, much of it stemming from my childhood experiences of having grown up on the periphery of an aluminium refinery. The artwork’s title is a legal term used to describe possible loss or suspected contamination due to heavy industry or activity that damages the environment and is inclusive of the collective stories and reminiscences in the locale of life before the refinery, the massive overhaul to the region’s infrastructure coinciding with the construction of this industry, and then the subsequent impact on the environment and animal and human health.
The site in question, Aughinish Alumina, is Ireland’s largest industrial complex, and Europe’s biggest bauxite refinery. Sitting on the Shannon Estuary that flows into the Atlantic Ocean, it began production in 1983. Currently owned by RUSAL, a Russian consortium, red rock bauxite mined and imported from Guinea is chemically altered onsite to become white powder alumina, before being exported to smelters worldwide and transformed into aluminium. In the mid-1990s, the refinery hit the headlines, with hundreds of animals dying on farms located in the shadow of the plant. A four-year investigation by Ireland’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) found no relationship between deformed agricultural livestock, local health, toxic deposits, and harmful caustic emissions emitted through large smokestacks—instead, it blamed management practices of local farmers leading to poor nutrition, resulting in infection and the death of animals. Independently-funded academic reports found otherwise and inevitably attributed causality to the refinery’s activities.
Nowadays, as a major economic driver and employer in the region, the plant has more or less carte blanche from the Irish state to do whatever it wants. An expansive storage area for red bauxite residue mud, a by-product of the manufacturing process continues to exponentially grow onsite to over 350 acres, with aggressive rock blasting to extend its size being completed in close proximity to the river estuary. The mud, full of chemicals, was classified as hazardous for years until the EPA began to describe and define it as ‘non-hazardous’ since 2003. On a recent visit there with an environmentalist friend trained in reading and analysing the technical information in the annual report that is only available at the reception area of the refinery, we learned that RUSAL is not required by Ireland’s EPA to survey the health of any marine wildlife in the vicinity of the complex and that legal requirements of making public real-time monitoring of emissions are currently not complied with. Such scenarios have driven activist groups such as Rescue the River Shannon and Limerick Against Pollution to lobby and raise awareness of these continuous problems, highlighting industrial disregard for the environment through agitation on local political platforms, social media, a documentary (https://www.eva.ie/littledidtheyknow/nival-archive-selection/), and a current search to seek out whistleblowers to come forward to help in their independent, ongoing investigations. These are by no means the acts of hopeless people, rather this is slow, steady, and deeply invested—a marathon and not a race—with every action hard-won.
Remnants of these experiences live forever in a community, raw and disturbing stains that, no matter how many ‘good news’ stories come through (usually generated through economic achievement or corporate spin), cannot conceal the ugly that remains on the surface and in the air. This is what eco-anxiety is, like Shakespeare’s well-known character Lady Macbeth, uttering the line “Out, damned spot!” in a play I studied for my Leaving Certificate examination in a school and in a community shadowed by an industrial demon. In Robert Allen’s 2004 essay “Askeaton: In the Shadow of the Dragon”, he lays out concerns about the impact such an industry has on the ecology of the area, seeping into all aspects from flora to fauna to human life, and evocatively quotes playwright Walter Macken,
In large communities, it is called rumour but in small communities, it is knowing. You cannot hide real events and call them by another name, because men are not fools and if you give them the evidence of their ears and eyes, and even with a minimum of intelligence, they can piece together all the facts.
I’ve worked closely in my studio with Niamh Moriarty, a fellow artist and adept researcher in finding newspaper articles on Aughinish. Intermittently over several months, Niamh would search, download and file a substantial amount of material yet, strangely, when we reviewed them there seemed to be very few reports appearing about animal deaths in the region, something I could remember as being covered in national and regional media. Niamh takes up the story in this explanatory note:
We used keywords, “Aughinish”, “ALCAN”, and “RUSAL” for initial searches, completed between November 2019 and June 2020 using the Irish Newspaper Archive and Irish Times archive online. The initial three searches came back with information directly relating to the business and planning at the Aughinish Alumina Refinery, as well as mentions of sports and community sponsorship, third level research initiatives, and on-site planning permissions. More content appeared on industrial labour action (1980, 2019), shipping accidents (1990, 2012), and economic growth, more recently with the threat of US tariffs.
After Michele stumbled across a news article posted on Facebook by Rescue the River Shannon relating to the EPA’s publication of an animal health report in Askeaton in August 2001, we conducted more searches, not using the name of the factory but rather terms such as “environmental protection agency askeaton”, and “health askeaton”. These came back with articles on animal health in the refinery’s environs, particularly the EPA’s 1996-1998 probe into sudden animal deaths around the town of Askeaton. There appears to be a dissociation between the reporting on the refinery’s activities and its effect on the local neighbourhoods, as many of these articles do not cite the refinery by name as a potential threat to human and animal health along the River Shannon or in the West Limerick region.
In an age where finding information has never been so easy, clearly, there are still ways to manipulate the search engine, to rewrite history to suit your own story. It can be no coincidence that the name of the company has been protected here, and perhaps something to do with potential libel action.
If we are going to deal with these monsters, it is our responsibility to know of their actual lineages, as with this knowledge we can have a more accurate autonomy over our memories. This ultimately makes us act in a particular way here and now, to stay vigilant and ask the hard questions.
Much of this text was influenced by Notes from the Belly of the Beast, a text I co-authored commissioned by Dundee Contemporary Arts in 2020. For this, I thank Stuart Whipps and Eoin Dara.
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Robin Cove has had enough of her boss, is over her boyfriend, and makes a split-second decision to leave it all behind. Too bad she didn?t check the weather forecast before she left. Stranded on the side of the road when her old car breaks down, Robin fears her impulsive action will be the death of her, as her body temperature steadily lowers to dangerous levels.
Matt Landry is slowly making his way home in the storm, when he finds an unconscious woman on the side of the road and rushes her home to his father Chris to save her.
When Robin wakes up, she finds herself in the kind of home that she has always dreamed of having, except for the handsome man with the surly attitude. As much as Robin wants to stay, she knows she?ll never win him over and needs to find the right future for herself.
Will Robin?s future bring her back to Chris and his kids? Or, will Chris lose the chance to have the love of a woman who will never leave him and the family he has always wanted?
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My voice is my passion.
After earning a Bachelor of Arts in Dramatic Arts from the University of
Nebraska, I’ve worked as an actor on stage and on the radio over the last 20 years. During this time, I studied voice extensively, and I sing jazz and other styles?of music professionally. I am the featured vocalist on the album ?The Road? by the band Under the Bus.?
To keep developing my acting skills, I studied improv at The Second City, Annoyance and Comedy Sports Theaters among others. Most recently, I graduated from the ACX Master Class for audiobook narrators and am now focused on my work as a professional voice actor. As an audiobook narrator, I?ve recorded dozens of books that are now available on
Audible, Amazon and iTunes. I discovered that narration provides the perfect outlet for my unique skills
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USA Bestselling Author, Stacy Eaton has bagged not one but multiple titles for her romance books. Stacy Eaton has always had an amazing use of words in her writing. With over 50 books, the author has delivered wonderful stories that take the readers on a roller-coaster ride. Her books are very intriguing and constantly keep the reader wanting to know what is coming next and give them surprises that they never saw coming. Read full interview...
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This is your vision and your home. It is our mission to understand your vision, bring it to life, and lead you to a home more beautiful and more personalized than you imagined.
If you are looking for high quality and excellent value for your investment, that is what we deliver. We intend for our clients and our homes to last a lifetime, which sets the tone for how we operate and how we build.
We bring Care and Attention first and foremost to our client’s interests, and it extends to our team, our planning process and our workmanship.
Our team swells with Character and Talent. A lot of material goes into a home, but it’s the People that make the difference.
We value Communication, collaboration and transparency and we’ve invested in the systems and technology to support it.
We lead a thorough Process from concept and feasibility, to detailed budgeting and value engineering, through to scheduling, execution and completion.
Our projects are well executed as a result of thorough planning.
We start every project by working through a 3-Stage Planning Process.
We collaborate with you and the home designer to develop the Design, the Specifications, and the Budget in unison.
Through each stage we listen, explore and advise on options, and present cost implications. In the latter stages we manage permit applications.
Essentially we want to completely build the house on paper before we start construction. This gives everyone a very good idea of what we will build, how great it will be, and how much it will cost, before we commit to construction.
Who We Are
Facet is a fully Licensed and Insured Residential Home Builder. We are a team of hard working, talented managers and craftsmen. We believe in doing a job right the first time. We are organized, reliable and accountable. We aim to deliver a premium product and a premium experience to our every client.
Our team leaders are:
Silas Straathof, Journeyman Carpenter, BSc, Owner, and Head of Operations. He is most inspired by his clients vision, collaboration, beautiful design, and by the talent of his team.
Drew Henderson, Journeyman Carpenter, Owner, Head of Production. He is most inspired by the opportunity to evolve building practices to improve our environmental impact in our local community, with a team I admire.
What We Do
Custom Homes, Additions, Renovations, Carriage Houses.
Contracting
We have a network of hand-picked sub-contractors and suppliers to meet all your construction needs.
Foundations, Framing, Timber work, Interior finishes, Siding, Exterior structures and finishes.
Where We Are Located
Cumberland British Columbia on Vancouver Island is the proud home of Facet Custom Builders. We serve the Comox Valley and surrounding areas.
Facets are the cut and polished faces of a precious stone. They cast light and catch the eye. Without facets a gem is but a rock. Facet Custom Builders cut and polish the many faces of our every work. We hope they catch your eye.
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History has introduced you to a collection of exceptional people from the most unexpected of backgrounds. International schools in Manila show the best coverage of the history of these people. These people are the epitome of living life to the fullest, no matter what odds they faced they continue to strive for what they believe in and work in that direction. If you’re looking for a role model you are in the right page because the following people will inspire you to get the best out of you.
Beethoven is a name that any musician is familiar with or have come across. Known for his classical and romantic compositions, Beethoven was born into a musically inclined family that developed his interests in the art. But as he grew older his hearing deteriorated until he was completely deaf. This challenge never stopped him from writing the most beautiful symphonies you could ever hear.
Born with a rare condition called Tetra-amelia syndrome, which is when you are born without all four of your limbs. As you can imagine it is hard for a child to live this way as it is, add on to that how society can be cruel at times. This all equals a childhood that is no walk in the park. He overcame all this and started his own NGO called ‘Life Without Limbs’. He then went on to graduate with a degree in Accounting and Financial Planning, became a motivational speaker and was an author of multiple books all about life, hope and overcoming disabilities.
Randy Pausch was a professor of computer science and was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He was given 3 months to live, but by God’s grace live much longer than that. Before dying 2 years after his diagnosis he gave a lecture titled: “The Last Lecture: Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams”
This lecture was centered about his journey of checking off his list of childhood dreams and accomplishing them all. This was a lecture that gained popularity in YouTube. He also co-authored the book called “The Last Lecture” that gives off the same feel and message.
Stephen Hawking is a known cosmologist, renowned for his work on black holes and gravitational singularities. Another thing he is known for is his condition called motor neuron disease, which basically paralyzes his arms, legs and voice. Even with this disability his numerous theories prove that he is one of the brightest minds to ever grace this earth. You can experience his brilliance displayed in a book he authored “A Brief History of Time.”
Jessica Cox was born with no arms yet this disability never stopped her from living a normal life. She graduated with a major in Psychology and is still able to write, drive a car or brush her hair just like anyone else would. She can also dance and has a black belt in taekwondo. What she does which not everyone can do is fly a plane, not only that she is also the first pilot to have no arms. Her whole life is a story worth telling and says that no disability can stop you from having a normal life.
The people on this list are examples of people that face their own personal challenges yet are still able to not just live regular lives but be excellent at it. You now have no excuse not to grab each opportunity and live life to the fullest.
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None of us like wasting food. We definitely don’t set out to do it. But, as hard as we try it inevitably seems to happen in one way or another. The Kitchn talks a lot about food waste, like, ways to avoid it, great habits to to help you prevent it, the useful tips to […]
With plenty of gardening comes plenty of produce, but what can you do with all of it? You certainly can’t eat it all at once, and canning everything is a pain in the neck. However, your freezer might give you another option. Saving produce by freezing it is often very efficient, fast and easy to […]
How to Freeze Peppers
If you like frozen peppers in the winter, just imagine how good it would taste if you had picked a bag yourself and then quickly froze it at home! It is also one of the simplest ways to put up a vegetable for the winter. Here’s how to do it, complete instructions in easy steps […]
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A few months ago JD, from I do Things So You Don’t Have To, was looking for ideas for posts. Like all good bloggers she had hit the wall and had simply run out of things to do for us so she decided to open her blog for requests. I jumped on the opportunity to have her do something that I am tired of doing myself. I asked her to find a man for me.
Don’t worry there is no money being exchanged so she isn’t actually pimping for me. What is JD doing to find a man for me? She has completely rewritten my lame ass profile on Match.com. And, I must say, it is better than I imagined it could be. You can read the reworked profile over on her blog. JD is also checking out profiles of potential ex husbands for me. If she thinks they are worthy she is “winking” at them or if they are especially fantastic she is going to send them an email for me.
Finding a mate has never been a problem for me. Finding one that is half way decent has been. I tend to fall for the bad boys. I figure if JD does the screening I can get past the bad boys that are out there and find one who is a real catch. Not that all bad boys are bad boys but… well they are. They are fun and exciting and all of that good stuff but they don’t often stay for as long as I would like them to. They also tend to have a lot of baggage I no longer want to deal with.
It isn’t enough for JD to pick my next ex husband. That’s all good, but we thought it would be even more fun if we had participation from our fellow bloggers. So, dear readers, it is up to you to search the nooks and crannies of Match.com and find the one you think might be a good match for me. You do not have to sign up to search the gazillions of lonely men out there all you have to do is go to Match.com and start searching based on the criteria JD has listed for me. Again you can find it on her blog. I live in the 55105 zip code and it would probably be a good thing to start the search in that area but I am not against a long distance relationship. I also have a weakness for a British accent. If you find one, or several, then copy the profile URL and paste it into either the comment section here or the one over at I Do Things.
This should be a lot of fun. Check back for updates.
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Grandy March 21, 2009 at 7:33 pm - Reply
OH MAN!! You had to send me on yet another ADD mission when I’m supposed to be doing my taxes. I will SO be searching the depths for a man for you. It may not be a perfect match…but it will be perfect fun!!
Chris Casey March 21, 2009 at 7:58 pm - Reply
I met my wife on Prodigy on my Birthday in 1995. I asked her to marry me three weeks later.
Miracles do happen. we are still married, and very happily. I better say that, or she will beat me and shave my ass again, but we are very happy. Really.
Jen March 21, 2009 at 8:02 pm - Reply
Grandy, go for it I have a feel we like the same kinds of things…er..men.
Chris, Prodigy, talk about blast from the past! Congratulations. I’ve been married twice so I’m not looking for miracles just someone who can put up with me.
Lola March 22, 2009 at 12:49 am - Reply
I’ve used quite a few of the online dating sites back in my single days. Match.com was one of them.
I met Anastasia on planetout.com. We will be celebrating our 5 year anniversary in May. I’m already starting to plan a post or series of posts around our anniversary on how we met.
Stephanie March 22, 2009 at 1:18 am - Reply
What a great idea
DH and I met on-line but not on a dating site. We used to play an on-line game together…
JD at I Do Things March 22, 2009 at 6:50 am - Reply
I’m sure there’s someone out there for you. And we WILL find him!
Don March 22, 2009 at 9:21 am - Reply
Hah! Good luck. I mean putting something like that into other’s hands. You’ve got guts…or maybe just desperate. Either way have fun. The best part is the chase…
Frog Nut March 22, 2009 at 11:39 am - Reply
Oh Lord you don’t need a man, their nothing but a big pain in the ass, lol! Sorry but I would much rather be by myself and do what I want when I want to and not worry about some man saying I can or can’t or just getting in my way. Think long and hard about this, lol!
Jodi March 22, 2009 at 11:47 am - Reply
You can have mine, lmao!
Natural March 22, 2009 at 5:50 pm - Reply
stopping over from JD’s blog. hope things workout for you Jen. finding a pot of gold sometimes would seem easier. all the best to you.
Chris Casey March 22, 2009 at 6:20 pm - Reply
Question: Does this make Jd the first
Kim March 22, 2009 at 6:54 pm - Reply
I met The Mister on Yahoo Personals back in 2003. It was late enough to be legitimate but early enough in the internet game that I still fibbed about how we met for the first year or so.
But there are so many people who have met online that I’m beginning to think it’s definitely the way to go. Of course, I have a bias.
Frogs in my formula March 22, 2009 at 7:01 pm - Reply
You are brave. But you could find The One, if there is such a thing. I like Frog Nut’s comment, but maybe I’m just biased.
Carl March 22, 2009 at 10:18 pm - Reply
Why? Isn’t single better? You get to do whatever you like and go anywhere you like at anytime you like. Why get a man so you have to rush home to cook him dinner and are forced to watch sports on Sunday all day long while you really want to watch Lifetime’s My Neighbor’s Handsome Husband?
Lin March 23, 2009 at 9:45 am - Reply
Oh, this is going to be fun! I have already read JD’s post and I’m anxious to read about all of the adventures to come!
Canucklehead March 23, 2009 at 12:13 pm - Reply
hey there, I just got this strange message from someone identifying themself as ‘JD’ sending me here with the suggestion that we should meet for coffee. I’m married, Canadian and extremely self-absorbed – is any of this going to be a problem?
Chaotically Calm March 23, 2009 at 1:24 pm - Reply
Jen, I came back even though I didn’t see Independence Day yet, believe me it’s on my Friday night schedule! In any event I totally think the new ad will bring some winners. And if you’re aiming for a short term deal hence the ex husband label maybe sticking with a bad boy isn’t so bad besides good guy conversation isn’t nearly as entertaining as bad boy antics.
Laura March 24, 2009 at 12:41 pm - Reply
Good luck with it. I wouldn’t even want to try picking someone for another woman. I can’t get one for me even.
Jen March 24, 2009 at 6:32 pm - Reply
Lola, Congratulations to you and Anasatasia! Five years is longer than both of my marriages combined which is actually a little intimidating.
Stephanie, so you two met over DND or some such game? How sweet!
JD, if anyone can you can.
Don, I do enjoy the chase but I need to be the one doing the chasing. If a guy starts chasing me I tend to loose interest. I’m not desperate yet, I actually like being alone to some degree but I know there are times I would really like to have someone around to share stuff with. Sex would be nice again too.
Frog nut, I must have reached the point where I have forgotten all the crap from my marriages and am willing to do it all again. I hope I don’t make the same mistakes however. Kinda like childbirth the bad memories begin to fade after a while.
Jodi, You are too funny.
Chris, I think it does.
Kim, Congratulations! I think it is the way to go actually. I don’t go to bars anymore unless I am out with a bunch of middle aged women. The men I have met in bars are men you meet in bars. I like the ability to shop online for a man. It’s very convenient.
Frogs In My Formula, I have had that kind of a man for a husband once and I assure you all that I will not hook up with a man who tells me what I can and cannot do.
Carl, see the above comment. You guys are all so cynical about love…that’s really sad. I don’t want to be alone but I also do not want to be with someone just to be with anyone. I want the magic, even briefly since I know it fades over time but I want to be with someone who is special to me and who I am special to. Maybe I’m not jaded enough yet.
Lin, if the first few “connections” are any indication it is going to be a lot of fun.
Canucklehead, I don’t do Canadians anymore. I had a really bad experience involving Labatts and hockey masks years ago and have not been able to get past it. Thanks anyway I’m sure your wife would be proud to know she has such a thoughtful husband who is willing to help out in such difficult times. You are a gem. Tell her I said so.
Chaotically Calm, I said I would stay away from the bad boy for this little experiment. I have a weakness and they are fun for the short run but with two kids it’s hard to fit in a bad boy right now. I’m supposed to be setting an example.
Laura, Welcome, and I have all the faith in the world that JD will be able to find me a better man than I could ever find.
Mike March 25, 2009 at 7:12 pm - Reply
This is an intriguing concept – employing headhunters to search for a man!! Your profile is quite aphoristic – a quality you usually don’t find.
It reminded me of a sardonic post
I wrote a while back along the same lines.
Anyhow, good luck with your endeavors. I subscribed to your feed – I look forward to your updates!!
Later
Anonymous March 29, 2009 at 4:51 pm - Reply
What about Spoony? He seems like he would be a good guy!
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Redhead Ranting is the rantings of a frazzled, twice divorced mother of two who freelances and cares for two stupid dogs while writing her memoir against incredible and unbelievable odds (but will make a wonderful book one day).
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You can learn much from quotes on success. Here is a list of five of my favorites and my comments. 1. Quotes on success from Oliver Wendell Holmes. “The great thing in this world is not so much where we are, but in what direction we are moving,” said Oliver Wendell Holmes. Without a sense of direction, we just drift through life. There are plenty of things to preoccupy us, leading us to believe that we have a purpose. Yet it is only a purpose if it goes beyond survival and coping. A purpose is a grand vision that enhances your experience of life, a vehicle to raise your sights and bring you a richer adventure. Another value to finding a purpose is to have peace of mind. This happens because drifting itself is depressing, filling the soul with a sense of emptiness, a touch of futility. 2. Quotes on success from Mary Shelley. “Nothing contributes so much to tranquilizing the mind as a steady purpose, a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye,” said Mary Shelley Your purpose is what your soul longs to do. Sometimes it means doing more of what you are currently doing, aligning it with your talents. Often, you may be in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong people doing the wrong thing. You feel out of place, out of tune, out of whack, out of line. You feel disconnected. You feel disoriented, confused and frustrated. The cure is finding a steady purpose. 3. Quotes on success from Andre Gide.
“One doesn’t discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shor
e for a very long time,” said Andre Gide. You may have to set sail to new lands and cut loose your attachment to the old land. As you set out to achieve new aims, you will find yourself adrift in an unfamiliar place, where the old has fallen away and the new has yet to be. Despite the discomfort of this new place, there is also a sense of renewed energy and love for life. You feel more yourself. Changing your life is not easy, but nothing could be more rewarding. All human beings long for a purpose, a mission, a sense of doing something special. It requires dedicated thought to define yourself and to stand up for what you believe in. It is much easier to follow a path outlined by society. 4. Quotes on success from William Shakespeare. “This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man,” said William Shakespeare. When you are true to yourself, then you will live in harmony with yourself and others as you move toward a life worth living. 5. Quotes on success from Arthur Schopenhauer: “We forfeit three-fourths of ourselves to be like other people,” said Arthur Schopenhauer. Although being ourselves is the obvious way to find happiness, few people give it much thought. The meaning of life is what you decide it is and no-one will stand in judgment of it. It is your adventure. It is up to you to decide your life purpose, to determine what your life stands for and where it is heading.
We can learn much from quotes on success and if you were to read one quote a day for a year, you would have 365 new ideas from the best minds throughout history.
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The letter J seems like an unlucky letter for most people. There’s not really a country that starts with the…
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I got an iPhone over the weekend, and I’ve been having great fun messing around with it the last few days. My iPhone has a camera on it, and it takes great pictures. I have an app called Hipstamatic that takes old-timey pictures, with nifty lighting effects and such. Here are a few glimpses of how this camera and its magic software can make my prosaic life look more interesting.
Soccer practice looks beautiful:
Even my morning commute becomes strangely compelling:
And when I turn the camera toward a subject that is beautiful in the first place, I get magic:
I have a bit of travel for work coming up, and I will try to snap some more pictures along the way.
Posted in Uncategorized
Wayback Machine: July 2010
Posted on 24 October 2011 by Mike
Gentle readers, your correspondent needs to take a week for a busman’s holiday of sorts. Work is very busy right now, and people in my house are under the weather. Blogging will resume next week on Halloween.
Meantime, I took this picture at a Riversharks game last year, and I’m still quite fond of it, even though none of my children are visible in the frame:
I realize every year around October that I actually like gray skies – just not 30 days in a row!
See you next week.
Posted in Uncategorized
Posted on 21 October 2011 by Mike
My tribe showed up at the cabin around 6:00 in the evening, and we sat together for a feast – barbecue chicken, baked potatoes, beans, salad, bread. My mouth is watering just recounting it. For dessert, of course, we would have marshmallows from the campfire.
Nick worked his long-exposure magic again, and so we have some lovely pictures of the night:
It’s a shame this last one is a little blurry, because you get both the night sky and the trees in their autumn colors, lit up by the campfire:
Happy weekend, campers! Stay warm out there.
Posted in Uncategorized
Apple picking at Hopewell
Posted on 20 October 2011 by Mike
After visiting Hopewell Furnace, Gramps and I agreed that I should go out apple picking. Hopewell has an apple orchard uphill from the visitor center and the village; a pound of apples (0.5 kg) costs $1, and every person in your group gets one for free.
Apple picking seemed to be pretty popular, and the visitor center had those wonderful extension poles available, meaning you could easily reach 20 feet (6.5 m) into the trees. As a result, the trees were largely picked bare, especially the better-known species like Red Delicious and Baldwin. I wandered down to the far end of the orchard, figuring fewer people would have bothered to go all the way out, and was intrigued to find a variety I’d never seen before:
The Internet tells me they’re especially good for pies… and I owe it to you, gentle reader, to test out that advice.
With all that visiting and apple picking, we were hungry, so we headed back to the cabin for yet another leisurely meal. (I should mention that before setting out on this adventure, we had fortified ourselves with Gramps’ famous Saturday morning pancakes. Yum.)
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Posted on 19 October 2011 by Mike
Saturday morning, Gramps and I decided to do a little sightseeing. Right next to French Creek State Park, the Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site preserves an ironmaking blast furnace from the days of the Revolutionary War. (Or, if you’re British, the American Rebellion.) The furnace itself operated from 1771 to 1883; the National Historic Site was established during the 1930s when the family that owned the land either sold or donated the property to the Federal government. A Civilian Conservation Corps detachment came in and stabilized most of the major buildings, which form the Historic Site today.
(Side note – I think this makes at least seven National Park Service facilities I’ve visited in the last year. Not bad, considering I’m not even retired yet….)
We started out with the dime tour of the visitor center:
Then it was on to the Village. We got VIP service – the rangers drove us down the hill in a golf cart. The other visitors all had to walk. People treat Gramps with respect.
The autumn weather was glorious – about 65F/18C and white puffy clouds above. It was a lovely day for a tour.
We took a stroll around the buildings, stopping to chat a while at the general store. The shopkeeper asked after my Carnegie Mellon sweatshirt, and we fell into conversation about Pittsburgh and eastern Ohio. Later, we came back to the shop for our VIP ride back up the hill, and the shopkeeper played some music for us. She had a stringed instrument from the era, a bowed psaltery. The music was mesmerizing. Sadly, I didn’t have the presence of mind to take pictures or video while she played. Once again, happily, the Internet delivers:
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Posted on 18 October 2011 by Mike
I’ve had the idea for a couple years now to take the Grandfolks out to a cabin for a weekend of camping. This year, I finally got around to booking the place and making it happen. We did so much camping this year, I thought one more capstone weekend would be nice.
Here’s a look at our cabin, which was nestled in the woods on the end of a row of cabins at French Creek State Park, about an hour west of our usual stomping grounds.
I think it’s well established here that my family’s schedule is crazy. So the way things worked out, I took a day off on Friday, and headed up to the cabin with the Grandfolks on Friday afternoon. My dear, sweet, long-suffering taxi driver wife got to come up with the kids Saturday evening, and then take off early Sunday morning for a soccer game and Nutcracker rehearsals.
As for the cabin, it was Spartan – no TV, no radio, no phone – but had all the essentials.
Since it was just the three of us Friday evening, we got to enjoy the rarest of treats – a two-hour dinner, preceded by cocktail hour. For once in my life, I had nowhere else to go, no kid to pick up. (Thanks again to Chelsea for keeping up with everything on the home front so I had this opportunity!)
I cooked dinner, and the Grandfolks were kind enough to do the dishes.
We sat together in the living room after dinner, and I started falling asleep mid-conversation. So at the ripe hour of 9:00 at night, I headed for bed, and proceeded to sleep about 10 hours. Glorious!
Posted in Uncategorized
Go to the woods
Posted on 17 October 2011 by Mike
It’s a busy week around here, but we had a great weekend – one for the ages. I’ll be posting more pictures in the days ahead. For now, here’s a look at Gramps watching over a campfire. A genuine, out in the woods, smoke-and-marshmallows campfire.
Stay tuned this week!
Posted in Uncategorized
First high school formal
Posted on 14 October 2011 by Mike
Time flies. Here at the Sperger Family Blog, we’re all too acquainted with the sensation of time roaring past us. While Maria was having her birthday party, Nick was embarked on his own milestone event – his first high school formal dance, with a date and everything. Here he is with an old friend, nervously heading out the door:
Don’t they look fabulous? I just don’t understand how I got old enough to have a kid in high school. As Nick was knocking on the door of his date’s house to pick her up, that was the thought rattling around in my mind.
Enjoy your weekend!
Posted in Uncategorized
Photo booth at Maria’s party
Posted on 13 October 2011 by Mike
Nick and Anna hijacked the photo booth at Maria’s party to take some goofy photos of themselves. Here are a few of the best ones.
My goodness, they are goofy. Where do they get it?
Posted in Uncategorized
Posted on 12 October 2011 by Mike
Maria had a dance party at the house two weekends ago. We had a nice turnout – about 35 kids – and the joint was jumping. We cleared out the living room to make a big dance floor:
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Hello friends! I seriously cannot believe that June is over and we are halfway through 2020. This is crazy!! Someone pinch me, am I dreaming? Well, I closed out the mid year with a bang and my biggest reading month yet in 2020. I am mighty proud of myself and had such a blast! I hope you were able to read a few books as well.
What constitutes as my biggest reading month, you ask? I’ll tell ya! I read 18 books in June! Yes, that’s right… you heard me. 18 BOOKS!! *gasp* *round of applause* I really have no idea how I managed that, but I’m quite pleased. To say the least, I’ve shed my slump and found my reading mojo again and am chomping at the bit for more books. I need my books more than ever right now, what with no end in sight with coronavirus. We are seeing many states spike drastically right now, so I’ll be continuing to stay home as much as possible and live vicariously through books. They truly are the best adventures!
I’m sure you’re all dying to know which books I’ve read, so please enjoy these shoddy graphics I created. LOL! You’ll have to forgive me, as I’m still learning the art of graphics and I promise I’ll get better. So, in no particular order here are the 18 books I read in June 2020!
Most surprising read – The Alice Network by Kate Quinn
Most disappointing read – The Mermaid by Christina Henry
Let me expound on the above statements a little.
The Alice Network was my most surprising read of June because I’m not big into the Historical Fiction genre. I truly loved this book! I listened to it on audio (Thanks Greece Public Library for having it available through Hoopla!!) and the narrator was fantastic. The characters were so vibrant, realistic and complex that I found myself quickly becoming attached. The dual storylines were very easy to follow, yet captivating and I just couldn’t get enough. I have already recommended this book to some friends and I highly recommend it to all.
As for my most disappointing read, The Mermaid by Christina Henry was a good story and I don’t really have any faults with it other than I was just expecting more from it. What that more is I’m not entirely sure, but the writing was beautiful and the characters were fun. Amelia was the perfect mermaid, and I loved that she wasn’t portrayed as some Disney perfect mermaid. I would definitely suggest this book to anyone who is looking for a fairytale type retelling, as this is very much a retelling of The Little Mermaid.
I equally enjoyed two books the most, and I’m rating them that way because they made me laugh and were really fun to read. Both of them are contemporary romance books, or rom-com as I like to call them, but with substance and relatable situations. She’s Faking It and My Favorite Half-Night Stand both make great summer reads or if you need a feel good pick me up.
What’s coming up?! Well, I have another great lineup of ARCs for the month of July and an overly ambitious TBR! You really wouldn’t expect anything less from me, right? If you’re on Instagram head over and check out my corresponding account, lots of great content goes up there almost daily. My handle is @booksnbites13. If you could give me a follow and like some of my posts, in return I’ll give you a shoutout in my story. My July TBR post will be going up in the next couple days, so stay tuned and if you’ve subscribed to follow my blog you’ll get the notification as soon as it’s live. I’ve got some coffee to drink and a book to read, so until next time friends!
Published by lkelsen13
I'm a book nerd with a love of food and I love to share both with the world. I also share lots of pictures of my dog. View all posts by lkelsen13
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“Well these seven seniors have done an incredible amount for this program, they’ve continued to build on the foundation, you know, kind of set the standard and expectation for our underclassmen,” said UVU head coach Greg Maas. “I couldn’t be more proud of our response today on senior day, traditionally we’ve struggled on this day.”
Luis Vargas, senior, midfielder passing the ball before the opponent has a chance for a steal. (Photo by Cameron Hunsinger)
It was senior day at Clyde field on Saturday, Nov. 9, as Utah Valley men’s soccer took on Air Force in the final regular season match. AF would net the first goal, but UVU was able to respond with four unanswered goals to win 4-1.
There were seven seniors that were honored before the match on Saturday, defender Aaron Caprio, midfielder Alec Felix, forward Blake Frischknecht, midfielder Luis Vargas, defender Jaiden Waggoner, goalkeeper Mitch Jensen and forward Luis Garza all met at midfield to be recognized.
“Well these seven seniors have done an incredible amount for this program, they’ve continued to build on the foundation, you know, kind of set the standard and expectation for our underclassmen,” said UVU head coach Greg Maas. “I couldn’t be more proud of our response today on senior day, traditionally we’ve struggled on this day.”
Heading into the match UVU led the all-time series against Air Force at 3-0-1. This was the first meeting since 2017 as last season’s match had to be cancelled due to weather.
The first goal of the afternoon was not scored until the 56th minute of the match. AF’s sophomore midfielder Tristan Trager slipped through the UVU defense to find the back of the net. The goal was Trager’s 13th, putting him in sole possession of the WAC lead for goals scored.
UVU would find the equalizer in the 69th minute when junior midfielder Zach Maas netted his sixth goal of the season, doubling his total from last year.
Only nine minutes later, Frischknecht found the back of the net off of a free kick, giving him what would be the game-winner. Just one minute later, Frischknecht added another giving him a brace and putting him in sole possession of second in the WAC for goals scored. He was assisted by Waggoner and Vargas on the goal.
“It’s [UVU] been everything, it’s been great. I wasn’t sure where I’d be going after my mission but it’s been the perfect place for me,” said Frischknecht.
Frischknecht would also end the regular season with 25 points, which is also a UVU single-season record.
The final goal of the afternoon came via a penalty kick taken by Caprio. He lined up to take the kick and fooled the keeper, scoring his first and potentially last career goal in Orem.
“It’s special because it’s my only home goal ever, the only time I’ve ever scored for UVU has been on the road,” said Caprio. “So for me, scoring here at home on senior day was super, super special.”
UVU will now have a few days to prepare for the opening round of the WAC tournament which will take place in Colorado hosted by AF. The Wolverines earned the second seed and will face seventh seeded University of Missouri-Kansas City on Wednesday, Nov. 13, at 6 p.m. MST.
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Welcome to this new mini-series of CMF’s 1st incision podcast, Junior Doctor Foundations. We kick-start this mini-series with six episodes focusing on how to thrive as a Christian junior doctor living and working in a culture described as a ‘Digital Babylon’. Life in the twenty-first century is accelerated and more complex than ever before. As Christians, especially junior doctors, it can feel like we are exiles living in a culture hostile to our faith. So how might we keep running the race of faith despite all the challenges? This podcast series is inspired by the book Faith for Exiles. Written by members of the Barna Research Group who have interviewed around 100,000 young adults, it focuses on what we can learn from the practices of those young people who have kept going with their faith. To introduce this mini-series are Lizzy Kennedy (a junior doctor based in Devon), John Greenall (a Paediatrician and CMF Associate CEO ) and Felicia Wong (a GP and CMF Head of Doctor’s Ministries). To find out more about the book Faith for Exiles, check out faithforexiles.com/ You can find more about the CMF research on this topic here at cmf.li/ResilientDisciple Find out more about CMF’s support for junior doctors at cmf.org.uk/juniors/Support the show
38 minutes | May 27, 2022
Joy and the grace of God
In his third and final talk for the 2022 CMF National Conference, Steve Midgley looks at what Paul says about being joyful in the midst of life's struggles.You can watch this and other talks from the 2022 CMF National Conference on the Official CMF TV YouTube channel.Support the show
41 minutes | May 20, 2022
In his second talk at the CMF National Conference in April 2022, Steve Midgley looks at Romans12:17-21 and what Paul tells us about dealing with anger, especially when things don't go our way.You can watch this and other talks from the 2022 CMF National Conference on the Official CMF TV YouTube channel.Support the show
35 minutes | May 13, 2022
Anxiety and the fatherhood of God
In a period of exceptional change, it is easy to feel disorientated. Usual ways of thinking don't seem to fit. Normal patterns of behaviour seem inappropriate. It can be unsettling. Of course, the way we each react to new situations will vary. Some feel fearful and anxious, while others get irritated and angry. But is there a gospel way to navigate our challenging world and deal with troubling emotions? In the first talk for the 2022 CMF National Conference, Steve Midgley looks at Jesus' command 'Do not worry' in Luke 12:22-34, and asks how we apply that in our uncertain world.You can watch this and other talks from the 2022 CMF National Conference on our YouTube channel.Support the show
24 minutes | May 4, 2022
Medical support to Ukraine from Christian medics worldwide
Chrisitan Medical Fellowship in the UK is part of a much larger international network of over 80 similar fellowships (and growing!) known as the International Christian Medical and Dental Association (ICMDA). In this episode, we talk to its CEO, Peter Saunders, about the work of ICMDA, and in particular how it has been able to marshall support to help get medical supplies to the embattled people of Ukraine.If you want to know more about ICMDA visit icmda.netICMDA has an extensive webinar programme covering a huge range of topics from world leaders in their fields at Webinars – ICMDAYou can find out more about the Ukraine appeal (and how you can volunteer in the UK) at Ukraine Appeal – ICMDASupport the show
In this episode, Steve Fouch chats with Paul Coulter and Giles Cattermole, two doctors who have recently had books published by CMF. Both books look at the difference Christian faith makes in everyday life and everyday clinical practice. Giles' book 'Whatever' explores a cross-centred approach to ethics, while Paul's book, 'Serving Two Masters?' looks at how science, medicine, and faith intersect and add to each other rather than being in conflict. In a wide-ranging conversation, they look at the importance of worldview and building strong faith foundations.Both books are available from the CMF Bookstore - cmf.org.uk/bookstore/Support the show
Introducing the new Chair of Christian Medical Fellowship
In our second episode of 2022, we're introducing the new Chair of CMF, Euan McRorie. We don't often talk about what we do at Christian Medical Fellowship on this podcast, nor a lot about the people behind the fellowship, so in this episode, I'll be chatting to Euan a bit about who he is, what his role as Chair means, and why he is excited about taking it on at this time.You can find out more about CMF at www.cmf.org.ukAnd you can read some of our blogs on current issues at www.cmfblog.org.ukYou can find out more about local CMF Catalyst Teams atwww.cmf.org.uk/catalyst-teams/Support the show
In our first episode of 2022, we're looking once again at Covid vaccines. On 31 January 2022, the British Government announced that it was suspending its policy of mandatory Covid vaccinations for all health and social care staff in England. Various professional bodies, from the Royal College of Nursing to the Royal College of GPs, had opposed this. CMF's Associate CEO, Dr John Greenall, launched an open letter in January to the Secretary of State for Health, Sajid Javid, asking for a pause and rethink. But not everyone agrees, and there has been debate among CMF members who take a variety of positions on the issue. Indeed, across society, almost anything to do with Covid vaccinations seems to lead to often ill-tempered debate, generating more heat than light!So, John and Steve decided to sit down, chat through the issues, and ask how we can better listen to and understand one another.CMF's blogs on Covid vaccines can be found at cmf.li/vaccinationCMF file #73 - Vaccines at cmf.li/3e2pCsaother CMF COVID-19 resources at cmf.li/covid19ResSupport the show (https://cmf.li/Give)
30 minutes | Dec 10, 2021
Leave your faith at the door. Don't bring your God to work. Religion is a private matter. We've all heard things similar to this, and maybe we've thought them ourselves. In the modern world, faith is not something that seems to have a natural space in the workplace or the public square. There is a definite sacred/secular divide in public thought, and, if we are honest, in much of the church.CMF has always been committed to what we call 'whole life faith', and at the heart of our mission is our strapline 'uniting and equipping Christian doctors and nurses to live and speak for Jesus Christ'. But what does this mean in practice? What is the sacred/secular divide? Should we bridge it, and if so, how?In this edition of 1st incision, I'll be talking to Sue Holcombe, who has just taken up a role as CMF's Associate for Whole Life Faith to find out the answers to all these questions, and more.To contact Sue, email her at sue.holcombe@cmf.org.ukTo find out more about our Saline Solution courses visit www.cmf.org.uk/doctors/saline-solution/You can watch talks from Mark Greene from the 2021 CMF National Conference on what 'whole life faith' is all about on the CMFtv YouTube channel.You can find out more about our national network of local Catalyst Teams here: www.cmf.org.uk/catalyst-teams/Support the show
55 minutes | Nov 26, 2021
Welcome to the first episode in the latest series of CMF's ist incision podcast. We've been away for quite a few months, but there is a lot to talk about, and we start with an issue that remains at the top of the news.Every few weeks we see another headline about assisted suicide. Someone with a serious illness has been to Zurich to die at the Dignitas clinic, complaining that they should be able to choose when and how they die in the UK, but the law won't allow it. Polls show that the majority of the British population would like people to have that option. And politicians and celebrities campaign for changes in the law to allow this. Why should this not happen? Why have changes to the law on helping someone to end their own life when they are already dying or suffering not happened yet in Britain? In today's first incision I am talking to Gordon McDonald, the CEO of Care Not Killing, a campaign group opposing a change to the law on assisted suicide and euthanasia, and Dr Mark Pickering, CEO of the Christian Medical Fellowship and a prison GP.For more details about Our Duty of Care (ODOC) see ourdutyofcare.org.ukCMF has run a number of blogs on end-of-life issues, as well as other resources on our website. Support the show (https://cmf.li/Give)
25 minutes | Jul 23, 2021
This is the last episode in our current season of 1st incision. And we thought it would be good to revisit some of the diverse range of issues we have discussed since we began our sixth season of the podcast in April.In the last four months, we have looked at everything from God's concerns for our everyday lives and how we can have a positive impact in the lives of colleagues and patients through God's work in and through us. We have considered the way the UK treats refugees and asylum seekers and how, as Christian health professionals we can stand for godly values and justice even when the law and society are going in the opposite direction.We have heard about Parish nursing as an ancient form of Christian ministry being restored to the church today, and about vaccines and vaccine hesitancy. And above all, about how we can find confidence in a God who is with us through all the storms and chaos that we face, especially in a time of global crisis such as we find ourselves today.We will be back in the autumn, so until then, thank you to all who have contributed to its season, thank you for listening, and thank God for making it all happen!See you in September!Support the show (https://cmf.li/Give)
As medical technology advances and the values at the heart of our society change, health professionals can often find their own values clashing with the demands of clinical specialties and employers. Whether that is being involved with abortions, new fertility technologies, or end of life care decisions, we may all, regardless of faith or other beliefs and values, find ourselves asking 'should I really be doing this?' Freedom of conscience has long been a cherished value in our culture and our health professions, but it is increasingly coming under attack. We are told we should do whatever the patient needs, whatever our personal ethical and conscience problems may be. Today, I am talking with Melody Redman and Mark Pickering about this increasingly fraught topic, and looking at why conscience matters, how we develop and inform our conscience and how we practically and thoughtfully live and work with our colleagues, patients and leaders in line with our values and without violating our consciences.Resources: CMF File 39 - the doctor's conscience CMF Blogs on conscience issues A Guide to Christianity for NHS employers Religion, morality, ethics, and war [for reflections on 'moral injury'] GMC - GMC Personal beliefs and medical practice NMC - Conscientious objection by nurses, midwives and nursing associates Support the show
31 minutes | Jun 25, 2021
Healthcare for refugees and asylum seekers
The treatment of people fleeing war, persecution and poverty has had a lot of coverage in the news and has been a major issue in referendums and elections in the UK and other nations for many years. Is this an issue that should concern us, both as Christians and health professionals? What are the issues, and how do we address them? In this episode, Steve Fouch will be talking with Dr Becky McFarlane about her work in providing healthcare to refugees and asylum seekers in Glasgow.Becky and Steve refer to several resources that can help you engage with the issues raised in the podcast: The No Accommodation Network (NACCOM) at https://naccom.org.uk/ The Doctors' of the World safe surgeries toolkit Welcome Churches - no refugee alone Jubilee-Plus CMF & Integritas Health + Justice Track CMF Refugee & Asylum Seekers Health course CMF Brief on healthcare charging in the UK for people with insecure immigration status Support the show (https://cmf.li/Give)
Heaven in healthcare
In this edition, Dr John Greenall discusses with Dr Pete Carter of Heaven in Healthcare a diverse range of topics about health, healing, and how our understanding of heaven and what it means to be whole in Christ affects our attitudes towards medicine, miracles and God's healing in our lives. We also talk about disappointment when fervent prayers for healing seem not to be answered, and about how prayer can be offered as a complementary therapy on the NHS!Support the show (https://cmf.li/Give)
31 minutes | May 28, 2021
Over the last three weeks, 1st incision has presented the main talks from the 2021 CMF National Conference on 24 April. In last week's episode, Mark Greene of the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity looked at how we can live as a whole-life disciples of Jesus, shaping the culture in the everyday world. In this, the final talk in the series, he asks why we so often think that what we do in our homes, workplaces, at the school gate, and in our neighbourhood does not matter to God? Why do we have a hierarchy of what counts 'spiritual' work in our minds? Drawing from Colossians 1:15-20 & 3:17, 23-24, Mark Greene explores what it means to be a disciple of Christ in the mundane, day-to-day aspects of our lives. You can learn more about the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity at licc.org.ukSupport the show
29 minutes | May 21, 2021
In this week's episode from the 2021 CMF National Conference on 24 April, Mark Green of the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity looks at how a whole life Christian discipleship may shape our life and practice in the every day. Looking at the story of Ruth (particularly chapter 2, v1-16), he explores how faithfulness to Christ leads us to simple steps and outworking Christlike values in our daily interactions. You learn more about the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity at licc.org.ukSupport the show (https://cmf.li/Give)
30 minutes | May 14, 2021
Over the next three weeks, 1st incision will be presenting the main talks from the 2021 CMF National Conference on 24 April. Last week's episode was the plenary address by Florence Muindi. This week, drawing from Acts 27, in the first of his talks, Mark Greene of the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity, looks at how our discipleship in Christ can have a very concrete impact on how we deal with crises and challenges in the real world.You learn more about the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity at licc.org.ukSupport the show
28 minutes | May 7, 2021
For such a time as this
At this year's CMF National Conference on 24 April, Florence Muindi of Life in Abundance International, based in Kenya, gave the plenary address. Looking at the past year, she explores how the church and the Christian medical community has, along with the rest of the world, been in a disaster response mode as the COVID-19 pandemic has affected every nation. Her inspiring address looks at what God is saying to us through this difficult time and at the challenges and opportunities for God's Kingdom that faces us globally.Support the show
46 minutes | Apr 23, 2021
Parish Nursing
In this episode we'll endeavour to answer the question, what is a Parish Nurse? You may have asked that question yourself in the past, or you may have never heard the term before. If you have never come across the term, I am speaking today with two Parish Nurses, Cath Carter, based in St Andrews, Scotland, and Gillian Fenner, based in Wolverhampton, England, about their two, very different parish nursing projects. If you want to find out more about Parish Nursing, how to train or how to set up a project in your church or local community, visit parishnursing.org.uk .Parish Nursing Sunday, where you can share more about Parish Nursing with your congregation, is on 16 May 2021. Support the show (https://cmf.li/Give)
30 minutes | Apr 9, 2021
Vaccines are very much in the news at the moment, but they have been around for over a hundred and fifty years. They may have done more to transform health than any other single measure other than access to clean water during that time. Yet there has always been a suspicion in part of the population that vaccines are not a good thing, varying from concern and hesitancy to outright opposition. And very often Christians have been at the forefront of this opposition. Why is that? What are the causes of vaccine hesitancy and scepticism, how have they manifested down the years, and what can we do to tackle them?In a conversation with Annika Wilder-Smith and Laurence Crutchlow, Steve Fouch explores these questions.Laurence has written a CMF File on Vaccines which can be downloaded from the CMF website, while Annika has published a paper on the resurgence of measles in Europe and the link to vaccine hesitancy in the Journal of Epidemiological and Global Health.Support the show
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Light box sign is used to illuminate graphic displays and are made out of an exterior frame, a graphic, usually a fabric or light transducer that allows light to pass through, and LED lighting mounted on a frame or back panel that illuminates the installed graphics. Light box signs have been shown to boost customer notice and attention, and research reveals that clear visuals can increase sales by up to 30% through direct and sub-advertising messages. We’re talking about light box signs right now.
To buy LED Channel Letters call numbers in website.
What is the meaning of a Light box sign?
We swiftly focused on the three primary components of a Light box sign LED, but there are a few other factors to consider when determining “What is a Light box sign LED” and how to use Light box sign LEDs in retail and commercial settings. We’ll go over each of the parts in detail below.
Light box sign LEDs come in a variety of sizes, ranging from 200 square millimeters to 50 meters. The strength of the frame to sustain the graphic display is affected by the final size of the graphics required. This can be accomplished by using aluminum profiles in a variety of depths that are designed to give strength while also allowing the graphic design to shine (similar to what you see in our stretch fabric system).
Ultra-thin profiles can be employed if the overall size of the Light box sign LED is less than 2 square meters, resulting in slim graphics displays between 18 and 34 mm. The outside profile utilized to construct strength grows as the size of the Lightbox sign LED increases (also combined with the use of the Lightbox sign LED), in addition to the appropriate distance between the graphic light and the LED, delivering uniform light coverage without any hotspots. Guarantees.
Custom light boxes can be made outside the traditional square and rectangle displays using manufacturing services. The sample above is from a recent project we did with River Island, and it follows the slope of the second-floor stairwell. Technical designers prepare the required plan, which is then delivered to a construction crew, who cut the aluminum and back panels to the exact proportions of the technical design.
Turning on a graphics display entails more than just turning on the light behind the graphic. A vast range of lighting approaches and LED specs result from various uses. Lighting an LED Lightbox sign can be done in three different ways: Backlight, sidelight, and edge brightness:
Acrylic light grade, which has a point pattern with a regulated algorithm on the surface, is used to generate edge brightness. When light passes through the acrylic, the engraved dots absorb it, resulting in an even distribution of light throughout the screen.
The most popular approach to add light to graphic displays is by backlighting. Backlit LED Lightbox signs are made using a number of LED options that are inserted in the back panel and are selected by parameters such as the desired output light and energy consumption.
Sidefire illumination comprises of appealing, high-power LEDs inserted in an optical lens that distributes light evenly over the graphics while allowing the entire screen to be flattened. Because there is no such thing as a back.
There are several factors to consider when choosing an LED light that will result in a high-quality visual display. When constructing LED light boxes, three of the most common customer requests are listed below.
Light flow or output: “Luminous flux” refers to the amount of light emitted by a light source. Estimates the amount of light emitted by the graphics display; a higher light-to-power ratio is more efficient.
Electricity Consumption: Retailers usually set energy consumption goals and keep an eye on light energy consumption to keep this number low. Because the performance of a graphical display is dependent on a number of aspects, including the LEDs’ output and the driver, it’s essential to talk to your supplier about your specific requirements so that they can test and manufacture prototypes or solutions.
Color temperature: LEDs are available in a variety of color temperatures, ranging from warm light (about 2700K) to cold light (approximately 2700K) (7000K). When (technical bit……) “a theoretical black body” emits the color temperature of the shadow of white light, it emits the color temperature of the shadow of white light (think of it as a metal string in a lamp, or more simply, an iron mass.) It’s heated to a specific temperature, measured in Kelvin. The light appears to be cooler as the temperature rises. The designs appear to be closer to their original artwork when the color temperatures are changed. If your graphics were a snowy scene, for example, the cool white LED color temperature allows you to keep the blue or white instead of red or white.
To buy LED POSTER call numbers in website.
Fabric graphics, designed specifically for lighting applications, are the most frequent graphics for use in Lightbox sign LEDs. These textiles come with stitched silicone edges, allowing for quick and easy installation in the light box frame. When light is supplied to the back of the graphics, these guarantee that the light is uniformly dispersed, preventing hotspots and increasing the brightness of the images rather than being washed away. However, there are two printing methods accessible.
The following are the two different procedures for printing cloth graphics:
UV printing is an inkjet process in which ink is transferred to a fabric and dries under ultraviolet light, guaranteeing that the top layer of the ink dries almost rapidly, resulting in high-resolution printing. It’s made because the ink isn’t working. This saves you time by eliminating the need to spread on the fabric. UV printing, in general, is said to produce a more vivid effect and allow for greater contrast, which means that darker colors are richer.
Color sublimation printing consists on a two-step technique. A graphic or image is first printed on the fabric, then pasted (or sublimated) onto it, resulting in a considerably more durable printed fabric that is ideal for high-use materials. For frequently used fabrics and all Magnetic light boxes, we propose Sublimated Dye printing to ensure that the image remains in place even when the shelves and hooks are continually shifting.
A lightbox sign LED is a transparent surface that illuminates from behind and is used in situations when the shape placed on the surface needs to be seen clearly.
Backlit devices come in a variety of shapes and sizes, depending on their intended use:
A lamp-filled jar with frosted glass on top. Professional photographers use it to see clear films such as slides. Originally, this mechanism was used to quickly arrange picture pages. It’s termed a light table when it’s laid flat. A Lightbox sign LED, in general, emits light that is similar to daylight (5000 to 6000 K (K)) and produces a consistent light output on the glass.
They can also be found on the walls of hospitals and medical offices in the shape of vertical panels for reviewing X-ray pictures (X-ray light). Lightbox sign LEDs are commonly employed in the scientific field to examine the growth of microorganisms and provide greater visualization for PCR screens.
A bright screen that is used for advertising. Fluorescent lights or LED lighting strips can be used to illuminate the panel. Since the introduction of LED technology, the efficiency of Lightbox sign LEDs has substantially improved. The user adds a graphic that can be altered easily. Some light boxes are made specifically for outdoor use and are thus more weather resistant.
“Light boxes” are fabric reflectors that are connected to the studio glow via an interface to create a soft light by scattering the flash. They are usually rectangular or octagonal in shape and come in a variety of sizes. To modify the temperature of light, interior reflectors can be white, silver, or gold.
A stock photography folder that allows the user to arrange digital photos. Photos can be saved in a thematically visible Lightbox sign LED folder for later use or to aggregate unrelated photos for a given project.
For many years, City has been selling LEDs and Lightbox sign LEDs in Toronto, and they can provide you with these items of the highest quality and at a reasonable price. If you want to buy Lightbox sign LEDs for advertising, we recommend that you get them from Citylight and give them a try. Graphic designers can also use lightbox sign LEDs to display clients project possibilities in a simple folder.
In this tutorial, we’ll look at several different types of Lightbox sign LEDs that are suited for a variety of applications, as well as some critical points to keep in mind before making a purchase.
AC light boxes, on the other hand, are known for delivering more constant, flicker-free results, making them suitable for professionals who will be using the light box for more than 8 hours each day.
A smooth workspace used to trace pictures or patterns from one source to another is referred to as a Lightbox sign, or Lightbox sign LED. Artists frequently sketch their main subject on a piece of paper, then transfer it to their selected art paper with a darker ink source (for example, watercolor paper). Many artists have discovered that they may save a significant amount of time when producing.
LED costs for lightbox sign in Toronto
You may get the Lightbox sign LED you desire at a fantastic price at Citylight. Citylight aims to cut rates in order to attract more consumers, so that those with limited financial resources can provide these Light products. You can also take advantage of City Light’s annual and monthly discounts. Citylight also offers you the option of making an installment purchase, which is done without profit, so you may have your shopping done right now at a wonderful price.
Animators and illustrators will benefit greatly from lightbox sign LEDs. They allow for precise pattern or theme repetition.
An illustrator, for example, might draw a duplicate of a room in a house and then use it as a background for a variety of scenes in his numerous occupations. Animators can track an original image with a Lightbox sign LED and then adjust its shape or position to produce various image cells. These individual cells can then be photographed to create the illusion of movement and motion.
Consider the following factors while selecting your LED Lightbox sign:
Price Theory: Lightbox sign LEDs are available in a wide range of prices, ranging from $30 to thousands of dollars for a high-end piece of art furniture. The Artograph Light Tracer II, which can be found here: Light Tracer II, is one of the most popular cost-effective models.
Consider where you’ll be using your Lightbox sign LED the most (and keep in mind that many Lightbox sign LEDs are portable), as well as the dimensions you desire for the design surface. Do you prefer to work on multiple paintings at once or do you want to make rather massive works of art?
To buy Indoor Full Color LED Display call numbers in website.
The significance of purchasing an LED Lightbox sign from Citylight
Citylight has always attempted to provide you with the highest quality Lightbox sign LEDs. If you do some research, you’ll discover that Citylight strives to deliver the best service possible, and that because customer happiness is at the forefront of our operations, you should always be satisfied with Citylight. Citlight provides installment purchases to its customers, allowing those who do not have a lot of money to pay the total amount in installments and on a monthly basis. You can also purchase high-quality Lightbox sign LEDs.
All of the bulbs heat up and eventually burn out. Energy-saving lighting are the finest to use. They are less prone to burn your desk or work surface and save you money.
Utility Space is a popular subject. Many painters appreciate having a spot to put their pencils and pens. This can take the form of a tray on top of the Lightbox sign LED or multiple holes in a convenient location.
Many creators, including artists, illustrators, designers, and architects, rely on the best Lightbox sign LED for tracking and drawing. Scrapbooking, calligraphy, tattoo design, and quilting all benefit from having a decent LED Lightbox sign.
It’s quite easy to use these essential tools. Simply set a chart, sketch, image, or photo on top of the box, and the device will illuminate it with a strong light. This enables you to follow the image on high-quality design paper.
LED Lightbox Sign can be purchased online.
Many people nowadays cannot trust and make purchases online; instead, they must make their purchases in person in the store, if Citylight has added this function to its store; nonetheless, you can make purchases in person in the store if Citylight has not included this feature to its store. You can also make your purchase online by registering your order on the internet, entering your address, and paying at home. We are confident that with only one purchase, you will be enthralled by Citylight.
Is it true that some Lightbox sign LEDs are superior to others? How do you pick the best LED Lightbox sign? It all depends on what you’re trying to track. There are a few things to think about. You must first determine the size of the billboard you wish to promote. The size of the paper can range from A4 to A2. In general, a larger design area is preferable because it allows you to deal with larger papers, but you must also consider your available space.
In Toronto, you may purchase Lightbox sign LEDs.
Maybe you’re an Iranian living in Toronto and you’re having trouble finding Lightbox sign LEDs. Don’t worry, this isn’t a big deal; you can simply solve the problem if you trust Citylight, which has a lot of friends in the city. There are certain Toronto residents who purchase their light box sign LEDs from us on a regular basis; rest confident that with only one purchase, you will become a frequent customer. Because we provide you with the highest quality, and because, as previously stated, Citylight places client happiness at the heart of its operations.
The thickness of the paper you use is another factor. The more light you need to trace, the thicker the paper is. The brightness of lightbox signs is usually measured in terms of luxury. Finally, there’s the problem of power. Do you prefer an AC (wall outlet) or USB (which you may get by connecting your Lightbox sign LED to a laptop) model? When you’re on the move, USB is convenient, but you’ll need an adapter to plug your Lightbox sign LED into the wall if it’s only a USB cable.
LED Dealer in Toronto for lightbox sign
Citylight is the greatest seller of Lightbox sign LED in Toronto, and it is the only Iranian company that has sold Lightbox sign LED in such an unusual country and city. You can also get these Lightbox sign LEDs from us for the best quality and lowest price, and you can be sure that once you buy from us, you will become a Citylight regular customer. In Citylight, you may also do online shopping and pay in installments. So get moving.
See our Light box sign LED FAQ at the end of the post for more information on what a Lightbox sign LED is, but if you already know, keep reading to choose the best Lightbox sign LED for your needs. Because brands and types differ on both sides of the Atlantic, we’ll begin with the finest Lightbox sign LED options for Toronto readers before moving on to the best Lightbox sign LEDs in Iran. In any case, you deserve the best and the greatest Light box sign LEDs, and you can rest assured that you will have the best shopping experience in Citylight.
Light box signs are a one-of-a-kind approach to brand and attract attention to your company. Ideal for use beneath awnings in high-traffic areas, where you’ll be easy to spot from the street or the highway. Inside, they can place your logo over counters and reception areas to draw attention to your business. Giving your company’s image a polished, professional appearance.
To buy LED Display Screen call numbers in website.
Light boxes, both outdoor and indoor, cast a spotlight on your signage, highlighting your logo and generating excitement about your message. You’ve already invested money on printing your signage, so do everything you can to make it stand out and get seen!
At many restaurants and pubs, light box signs are the star of the show, allowing passers-by to peruse menus and get enthusiastic about what’s on offer.
When compared to prior CCFL backlits, LED backlighting offers a number of advantages.
Wider color gamut and dimming range (with RGB-LED or QDEF)
Very thin (with edge-lit panels, some screens are as thin as 0.5 inches (13 mm))
Significantly lighter and cooler than a comparable CCFL, with up to half the overall chassis and system weight.
Typically consumes 20–30% less energy and has a longer lifespan.
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Another reason that LED-sign for businesses are so popular is because they’re incredibly sustainable and environmentally-friendly.programmable LED sign for businesses typically only use 10 watts of power – 80% less energy than a comparable neon system would require. If you’re looking to use less energy, and place minimal strain on your local environment, then an LED display screen sign is right for you. An electronic LED sign doesn’t use toxic materials like mercury, and it can be recycled without dangerous toxins potentially entering the environment. the cost savings that you’ll achieve with an LED scrolling sign will add up to hundreds, or even thousands of dollars per year.
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Video: Rio 2016 Olympics: Inbee Park Reacts to Hero’s Welcome Inbee Park reflects on her gold win at the Rio 2016 Olympics. She reacts to the hero’s welcome she received after the win.
Gold medal winner Inbee on her hero's welcome
August 25, 2016
Inbee Park reflects on her gold win at the Rio 2016 Olympics. She reacts to the hero’s welcome she received after the win.
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This week starts what is pretty much going to be the most exciting YA book release week that I can remember. We’ll have City of Fallen Angels by Cassandra Clare, the next book in Michael Grant’s Gone series, Plague, Where She Went, the follow-up to one of the best YA books I’ve ever read, Gayle Forman’s If I Stay…and many more. To start off the week of epicness, we’re talking about Holly Black’s Red Glove, the stunning second installment of her Curse Workers series.
Kate: The thing about Red Glove that made me so happy was that it was such a great addition to White Cat. So often second books have been abandoning the plot and characters from their first installments, and Red Glove just made me love Cassel more because it made him better. It grew the plot and all of the characters.
Caitlin: I liked that it was so action-packed. There was not a single dull moment in the book. I remember at one point, when Cassel was talking about school, I was thinking that there was no way all of THIS could be happening and there still be classes in the world. I couldn’t put the book the down for a second. There was too much I needed to know.
Kate: Well, I’ll say that was one thing I preferred in White Cat. I almost wish Red Glove had happened over summer break or something. Because no way does someone get to miss that much class. Ha.
Christine: At the beginning of the book, I was thrown. This wasn’t the Cassel I had loved in White Cat for the first couple of pages. But he came through and I agree with Kate. It was a great addition to White Cat.
Caitlin: I don’t even remember the first few pages. Too much happened!
Christine: I clearly wrote ‘WHHHHHHAAAAAA????’ in my notes after reading the first paragraph. It threw me.
Kate: 1) It is adorable that you took notes and 2) I was thrown in a good way.
Caitlin: Oh! I just remembered the first few pages! He’s with his mom. I hate his mom. I probably blocked that out on purpose. I wish the funeral in this book had been hers.
Christine: I think everyone hates his mom. It’s justified.
Kate: I love this book because family is so complicated. it’s hard to turn your back on them, even when they richly deserve it. Because you know, like Cassel does, that as much trouble as they are getting into with you (and getting you into) they’d be so much worse off on their own.
Caitlin: That’s another fantastic thing about this book. The family dynamic. It really shines through in the conversations Cassel has with his Grandfather, who was such an interesting character. I loved how he clearly wished he could’ve done better for his grandsons, but also clearly, didn’t know how to.
Christine: Who we only saw once, which I think is a crime. He needs to be around more in the next book. He’s the only stable family member Cassel has.
Kate: Right. And to me, that highlights how wonderful Cassel is. He clearly had no real role models except his grandfather, who, let’s face it, was still a hitman. And yet, he makes good choices. Or, at any rate, the best choices he can make.
Christine: Cassel’s strong. He is a strong character. He can somehow bring about a good thing from a mess. No, he may not always do it legally, but he’s doing his best. And that’s partly why I love him.
Caitlin: Awww, I love his affinity for breaking the law. I don’t know why but I think it’s cute.
Kate: It’s why I REALLY love him. Red Glove cemented Cassel as my favorite YA lead in a currently published series. Which, lemme say, was a mountain for him to climb with some of the great series out right now.
Caitlin: That is a high mountain. I don’t think I can go that far.
Christine: Didn’t I pick Cassel as the best male character last year? I think he might be a leading candidate for this year.
Kate: He’s so real, too. He’s such a boy. He’s one of the most authentic boy voices out there right now.
Christine: He is! Which is amazing since a girl writes him. Holly Black is one of the few authors I can trust to write a guy to actually be a guy.
The plot. We must talk about the plot. It was intricate (thus the notes). I didn’t guess the end. And I always guess the end.
Caitlin: Holly Black is pretty amazing. And so….intelligent. You can really tell with the writing of all of her books, that she’s thought everything through and makes it all come to a conclusion in a complicated yet perfect way.
Kate: The ending was superb, and so smart. There were enough clues so when it happened you thought OF COURSE. But not so many that the whole time you read you thought well, obviously it will be this.
Christine: Right. It made perfect sense after it happened.
Caitlin: Yes, all of her books are like this. I really admire that quality that she puts into her books.
Kate: It’s so hard to talk about the plot without spoiling it. And the plot is one of the best parts of the ride that is this book. So instead, I want to talk about how great the supporting cast is. Whether it’s Sam, who you want to cuddle, or Danica, who you kind of want to shake, or Lila, who had the most heartbreaking plot maybe of all in this book, every character makes you FEEL something.
Caitlin: I do so love Sam. He’s so sweet and normal. It’s nice to have a voice of normalcy in the middle of all the lies and tricks and cons. He’s kind of the voice of the reader.
Christine: I love Sam, too. And Lila’s story is like a sad heartbreak song. I can’t wait for the next book! I really hope Sam is in the next book. And Cassel’s grandfather.
Caitlin: I want Cassel and Lila to work out! Despite…you know…everything.
Kate: I just want more Cassel. And I hope to God he doesn’t get his heart broken, because then mine’s gonna be broken too. Do we know what the third book is going to be called? Isn’t it Black Heart?
Caitlin: Yes.
Caitlin: The first book had a white cat on the cover, the second a red glove…I fear for the third cover.
Kate: I fear for the third book. And yet, I don’t. Because Holly Black has written two amazing books that really connect, and I can’t help but trust that Black Heart is going to blow me (even further) away.
Caitlin: I feel the same. And, I trust her because she’s gotten two impossible love interests together before. I feel good about things.
Christine: I’m going to have to trust you, Caitlin, since I haven’t read her other series. So, here’s to trusting in Holly Black and Black Heart.
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On a recent family gathering I was able to steal away some time to have a chat with my mentor (and father) Henry Svec.
Over 40 years of investing experience, we get into how he got started in real estate investing and how someone new to the game can break into the market in today’s world.
On a recent family gathering I was able to steal away some time to have a chat with my mentor (and father) Henry Svec.
Over 40 years of investing experience, we get into how he got started in real estate investing and how someone new to the game can break into the market in today’s world.
00:00 You’re listening to the private sale podcast, your house, your commission.
Joshua: 00:05 Hey guys, how’s it going today? I got a pretty interesting episode. I’m talking to an experienced private investor and he also happens to be my old man. Taught me everything I know and he has just a vast knowledge of investing, uh, and get how to get different streams of income to add to your cashflow. So we’re going to get right into it talking to Henry Speck. And here we go.
00:35 You’re listening to the private sale podcast where we interview top industry members to keep you informed and prepared for the unexpected goal is for you to have a successful private sale.
Joshua: 00:51 All right, I’m here with Henry Svec and it’s going to be a great episode because he’s my mentor in all things real estate and my father. Hey, how you doing? Wonderful. How are you doing? I’m very excited because you’re the guru and we can get into everything. How long have you been doing investing and real estate?
Henry: 01:12 Probably about 40 years now almost. And how did it begin? Well, uh, started with a really needing money. Had a couple of kids. I’m limited with my jobs because most of my jobs were like salary, so you’re defined. So when I got out of school I had a bond. I think I had five jobs at one point I was doing, I won’t tell you all of them, but I was doing all kinds of things that I still didn’t have any money. And then, um, when I was, I’ll tell you a quick story. So before all this, I was uh, working as a teacher in London, Ontario, and back in those days you didn’t, you didn’t use your card at the bank? Huge cash. So I went to the bank, Bank of Commerce to the account that take up money for groceries and I had just gotten paid, I think it was forty seven cents in the account because everything was taken out for mortgages and insurance and all that.
Henry: 02:06 So I called my wife Mary at home and said, okay, we’re where’d all the money goes to the idea? And so actually bought a groceries on credit card. Then we have one credit card and so I bought groceries when, then I realized maybe I should do something else. Supplemental income. There you go. So then I, uh, one first property I bought was a farm that was connected to my dad’s farm and I went to a credit union and a very nice man. He said to me, I’ll loan you the money and I had no job. I had no income. Then I said to him later, why’d you loan me the money? Like this was later. And he said, well, I knew where you were from and I knew you were good for it. So I loaned you the money
Joshua: 02:48 and that doesn’t happen anymore. Today. Banks are not relationship based. No. And in that, what was sad is that credit?
Henry: 02:57 Yeah, credit union became like a bank. So I worked with them for awhile and then they just sort of took over the whole banking idea and then it was difficult to get any loans for any real estate purchases. So that was hard. And then I’ve had some fortune one, one seller, I had to take back mortgage. He took a take back at 100 percent when I bought an office building in Windsor and I had a lot of porridge and along the way where people helped me through that kind of experience, so I was lucky and all the good bankers I should tell you, we had good luck with some bankers at different banks and they would eventually either quit or get transferred. So the good people left and then you’re left with people who are. There’s a lot of it rely on building a relationship with a banker.
Henry: 03:36 No, because they all leave every time. My standard joke was, every time I took my banker for lunch or breakfast, they get transferred so there was no sense. So then I started telling her, I said, there’s no sense in getting. Because they would start that way. We need a relationship. I said, no we don’t because you’re going to be gone. You’re going to go to school. They don’t even want a relationship. Everything goes to Toronto. So when you. When I would ask for a loan, right? I asked for a loan on the east coast to Hennigan edition. They said, I got a call from someone in Toronto and she said to me, we can’t give you the loan. It was a small one, like 200 grand because it’s efficient village. I said, well, I said, have you ever been out east? No, but we are.
Henry: 04:11 People say it’s. I said, no, it’s a university town. It’s not on the ocean technically and there’s no fishing in the town of Anagen edge. We’re not giving you that long because it’s too far away and it’s too small. So that helps you go from a guy who gives you a loan on a farm when you have no income and by this time we probably had 10 properties and I’m told they can’t finance this ball. So what would you tell someone new, starting out, wanting to get into investing in real estate, real estate, investing in China, build a relationship with some kind of bank and I don’t think you got to treat it like soybeans and corn. There’s no such thing as a relationship. They will give you a low rate to get you in and then once they get you in, things changed. So just form a relationship and if you could just start, but we realized the relationship is superficial and fragile and it’s not really a friendship.
Henry: 04:58 It’s almost like being friends with someone on facebook. You think you’re a friend but you’re not because you don’t even know him. And that’s Kinda what it’s like. I think with banks it’s a commodity. It’s like soybeans and the old statement still goes, if you, if you have a small loan with the bank, they own you. If you have a large loan with a bank like multimillionaires, you own them. And that’s why the large corporations who have like hundreds of millions of dollars in lines of credit, they tell banks what they’re going to do. Basically. Small guys like us, we’re at where we’re at there hosel. Yeah. So what, what’s your investment goals now? Let’s shift a wallet. What do you, what kinds of things they looking for? What’s exciting? So I’m a lot older now. So obviously one of the things that we talk about is how do you preserve what you’ve created and how, what’s the best way to diversify?
Henry: 05:46 So the best way I like to look at is when you look at a farmer in Ontario, they’re probably going to grow corn, soybeans, wheat, because if it’s a bad year for wheat, you’ll have enough money from the corn to survive and so on. So in most people today haven’t been through 18 percent interest rates, we’ve had mortgages that I think 19 was the highest. So when I talk to people today and they say, well, interest rates won’t hit five percent. I’ll never hit 10 percent. I said, well, if you’ve lived through 18 percent, how do you make money? I bought my first real estate, I think with a 14 percent mortgage. So you’ve gotta have a plan for that, but you also have to have different streams. They call the streams of income today, whether it’s different jobs or different ways to, to make money so that you’re always protected just like that farmer because you don’t know what’s going to happen.
Henry: 06:30 You really don’t. And so, um, I think you need to have real estate. I think you need to hunt for properties that are going to provide you with cash flow. I think the biggest mistake people make is they think their house is an investment that they live in. What do you mean man? It’s not an. Well, unless you get to live under a bridge. You can never sell your house unless you pass away. You can never sell your house and move to another one and somehow make money because even if your downside. I know people who have sold their house and then they went to buy a condo because they thought it was cheaper and the Condo is actually more money than the house they sold because you always have to live somewhere. So if I were starting out today, I would probably buy a duplex if I had to live in something and run out the other half and keep the other half for myself until I build up the equity and with that you can kind of work some of the banks because you’re living there and look at all the possible lenders.
Henry: 07:22 Don’t just get nailed with one with one lender so that. That’s how I would start my real estate life if I was doing that today, but I was living in a place like Toronto. I would never buy anything because that’s crazy. Or Vancouver or even London, Ontario probably, unless I could find a really good deal. If you really dig, you can still find them for real estate. So then I would also look at some stocks because I believe in certain stocks. I would also look at other streams of income, like we do solar and other small businesses and then for fun we do some angel investing which is a lot of fun and just sort of spread it all around. That’s what I believe in today, but I think you can do just as we did it because even talking to a seller about a vendor takebacks.
Henry: 08:04 If I think back, my dad bought a farm when he was. I’m looking for different work. He didn’t have enough to buy a farm, so the person selling the farm gave him a vendor take back. So he did not have to go to a bank to buy the farm and that’s how he got around that problem because he would have never gotten a loan for this farm. Now is you got, you have, you have to just ask. You have to. So that to me, and then we talk about social lending, like lending loop. If you’re really hard up and you have a good product possibility, I think they’ll allow real estate loans or another platform like that. Something like that. Um, family and friends, uh, but banks are pretty much becoming. I heard someone say the other day that banks and some credit unions are very much like, they would rather, instead of giving you a loan, let’s say you needed 10 grand to buy an old pickup truck to keep your business going in, hire another person to, to paint windows.
Henry: 08:58 They would not give you that money, but they will take a million dollars invested in the stock market. And they’re becoming like, they consider themselves like financial experts. Yeah. One thing I’ve got to say is you really have to be sure of who’s giving you financial advice or anything you hear on this. You’re not going to do because what do I know? Right? You get to talk to your financial people. You have a disclaimer. It’s right now, but here’s the other, but here’s the other deal. I don’t get pitsa anymore because when these people used to sit me down, I get called up by the bank and say, Oh, we’ve got this expert coming from Toronto. They want to talk to you about investing. So I’d sit down and moment. I did this a couple times and I’d say to them, okay, before you start, do you have a credit card?
Henry: 09:37 Yes. See, do you have a balance? So ultimately your business. I go, all, I said, and you’re giving investment advice. Are you worth like four or five, $6,000,000? Oh, I don’t know. I don’t want to tell you what mindful. I said, well, we’re. This is over. I said, if you’re not successful and if you have a credit card balance, why are you giving me financial advice? And then they all get upset and they say, oh, well you’re not cooperating. And then I remember one bank sat me down and said, real estate, the worst investment you can do, you should not be investing in, really are probably pushing a product that mutual funds. And it was us, it was a bank of Montreal. And I said, well that’s funny because you just bought out a mortgage portfolio in Wisconsin. We did. The guy says, yeah. I said if you go on on the, it’s called the internet google email.
Henry: 10:22 Google who Globan mail and you’ll see they bought this huge portfolio of bankrupt and people who weren’t paying their mortgage because they thought they could make money. So they were investing in real estate. But they were telling me no, buy a mutual fund. So you gotta be really careful. I think the best thing to do is if you’re on a salary, you automatically live on a certain percentage, less of what you’re bringing in. So let’s say you bring in 3000 a month, live on 2,500, but that 500 isn’t for your retirement. Because that’s part of that $2,500, you’re going to have to be responsible for that $500 for your investment account and then you put that in an investment account and then you’re very carefully look at what you do with that. You might build it up until you have 10 or 15 and you buy a small building on where you live.
Henry: 11:05 You buy a very small property somewhere and that’s how you start, but you have to live on less than some people who live on 2000 or $3,000 income. Very difficult, but that’s what you have to do. That message has not changed over time. The biggest problem is when people make more money, they spend more, so I work with people who make a million dollars a year in cashflow and they spent a million two in the bank. Just keeps giving them more money and the more professional like doctors, sometimes lawyers, but mainly doctors, they can get loans on anything they want. They’re geniuses with anything. Genius. Real estate genius. This even though they’re really good at fixing a sore shoulder, they believed they’re geniuses at everything and that’s the biggest thing is realize what you don’t know and be careful. Yeah, it’s slowly build up the investment. And it’s a challenge though because see at different ages, so preservation of what you have is difficult if you don’t have anything.
Henry: 11:59 So what should you do if you’re 25 or 35 starting out and I think a big part of it is watch what you spend but you still have to enjoy life. So if you, if you suddenly have $500 a month coming off your $3,000 salary, you’ll adjust your 2,500 you will and you’ll probably even save on the 2,500, but it depends on your mentality and you have to separate needs from wants. The biggest problem we have today, you know, people say I need a new car. I drove beaders for a long time. People didn’t seem to want to buy beaders. They, they’ll buy a car and you know, $500 a month loan on the car. And that goes. The second goal is to, I mean if you’re not doing that, you’re not have a rainbow. The pot of gold there. Yeah, I mean, yeah, you gotta set goals and know what you want to do with that $500.
Henry: 12:48 So if we focus back to real estate long time to find the thing I don’t understand about real estate because I’ve never been able to do this. People buy properties and they think, okay, I will feed her every month because it’s costing me more than I’m bringing in cashflow, but someday it’s going to go up in value so I’m going to make all this money. I’ve never understood that because that may not happen first of all, and second of all, if you’re putting money in all the time, it’s not an investment. An investment by definition makes you money every month. Otherwise it’s a speculation. Now sometimes you’re lucky, like we were very lucky to have properties in cities that went up in value, even though we were going to keep them for life. The property values went up so much. We had to sell them. It was ridiculous.
Henry: 13:25 The cap rates went down to like two or one or less, right? You’ve got to soa but you don’t expect that you buy it with the cashflow, you know, initiative and that’s what’s going to happen. So sometimes you have to adjust, but just buying something in Toronto like an a minus cap rate or Vancouver is lunacy. I don’t understand how people and then they buy it to live in a one point $8,000,000 starter home. Like, are you crazy? What’s the, what’s the deal? So back to investing. That’s kind of what I think. You have to be careful with the money you have, but then you have to have a plan about what you’re going to do is what you can. And you’ve got a book coming out soon. Let’s get into that. So I’m just finishing it up. So 10 years ago I wrote a book about a fictional couple who lived in Toronto, hated their life and look to change their life and they ended up investing in real estate and some other things.
Henry: 14:18 And I tell the story and the question is, if you took their advice 10 years from now, where would you be in? What would you do with the money? So the title is shrink money advice 10 years later, what should you do now? So this couple, I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you what. So there’s couple is, uh, is living in. I’m in Toronto, he’s doing one job, she’s doing a job where she travels and she ends up going to Winnipeg and really she supposed to be in Montreal or someplace. So she’s, she’s really upset because she’s there and she doesn’t know. She started her. Life’s crazy and his life’s crazy and they’re spending more money than they’re making and they hate their life, but they live in Toronto and they think they need to get out of it. So the question is, what are they do?
Henry: 15:01 How do they get out of it? So they meet a nice couple, uh, in the country. They ended up buying a house in the country, still kind of struggling and not knowing what to do. And this old couple, which is typical for these kinds of books, take them out for coffees and stuff and try to teach them a lesson to teach them a lesson. Teach them how they got to where they were because they were like that when they were younger. So the story goes on and on and then, and then they do certain changes and I won’t tell you anything. But anyway, so then there’s all these messages of what, what the older couple couple tells them they should do and it’s, it’s fault you can follow it. So the question is, if you did that, um, what would have happened 10 years later, which is now because I wrote it 10 years ago and let’s just assume they made a lot of money, if they followed that advice, what should they do now with that money, which is kind of what you were talking about, about what I would do today.
Henry: 15:47 So it goes through and very specifically talks about how they diversify even what stocks they buy. Um, and there’s also a part on private lending because they actually become banks and loaning money out to people. And how do you know who to loan money to and what their life becomes after they leave this next stage of their life. And one not too surprising factors. They invest heavily in Nova Scotia. It’s one of their real estate things was a bit of a blueprint, like a 10 year plan. Yeah, it’s a plan and it’s very specific. But it’s also. I mean, people have to adjust it based on that reality of course. But um, you know, like let’s just say if they bought a condo 10 years ago in Toronto for 300, I think it was too 80 or something, was the price because we went with accurate numbers today.
Henry: 16:32 That condo is like seven something. So just on that one example, after they paid their capital gains tax and all of that, they had this cash leftover in. They pay their taxes. What do they do with that money? Because they can’t buy anything in Toronto. Right? Because it’s appreciated so much. Even though they had cashflow decide to sell it. And then they take that money and they go to Nova Scotia and then they also invest in other ways. Which is sort of the message of the book and the title, a shrink money advice 10 years later. What should you do now and where can you get it on? It’ll be on Amazon, but you get an a copy hopefully before Christmas and I’ll link it through you and you can tell people how to get it for free even. Alright. Is there anything else we should get into?
Henry: 17:13 This is great. This is like the new for new investors. I think you have to find a, a community, like there’s always a investment of possibilities available, but if you live in Toronto they’re probably aren’t, aren’t there? There isn’t a place where you can go and do that. So you need to find communities. And I, I’d say one of the most important things is property management. You start with property management. I mean if you don’t have property management, you can’t buy a property unless you live in, in the town where you’re doing it and then you should get involved in that yourself. And also do your numbers conservatively. People often buy real estate and they expect, you know, I’m going to make five more bedrooms, put it, you know, no ticket for worst case scenario and see how you’re going to do that and be really creative with how you finance these purchases because that’s one of your biggest expenses was a great points.
Joshua: 18:01 Thank you so much. Thank you. Great talking to you meant. All right. Thanks for checking out the private sale podcast. Remember, if you’re doing any investing, make sure you check in with your advisor to make sure you are making the right decisions and if you have questions about investing in real estate, you can always reach out to us at [inaudible] dot ca and we’ll try to get those answered for you. Take care.
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UPDATE: Chad, you bag-maniac, you've done it! This is The Jack Pack: Maxpedition MONSOON™ GEARSLINGER I also have a product link to the right of The REAL Jack Sack in case you're interested.
You've seen the episodes, you've heard the rumors and now you're wondering "What is that thing Jack is using for a manbag?" Thanks to a loyal reader (good work, Chad) we have an up close still of this sack-interloper- ladies and gentlemen I bring you The Jack Pack:
I'm going to try and track down the make and model of Bauer's new fashion accessory. It's a napsack, a schoolbag, something a weed dealer would carry around the University of Maryland. No, I'm not happy about it. Sure, it's less gender-bending, but that's why The Jack Sack was so brilliant! Jack Bauer made it cool for men to wear purses. And now, I fear our masculine dream of redefining what is acceptable male fashion is at risk. For years I've been promoting the idea that men should be allowed to wear skirts (we need the fresh air!) but alas we can't even succeed at handbags.
If anyone out there knows the details on Jack's new bag, please let us know.
Posted by TheJackSack at 8:05 AM
13 comments:
jay toby said...
The Pack can definitely not be better than the Sack. Long live the Jack Sack!
February 11, 2009 at 1:39:00 PM EST
TheJackSack said...
February 11, 2009 at 8:38:00 PM EST
Anonymous said...
I wouldn’t worry too much about the Jack Pack muscling out the Sack, Adam. It’s clearly just a work bag he uses, and under only the most extreme of circumstances.
February 13, 2009 at 8:54:00 AM EST
Ivan said...
hey, what about Scotland? men wear skirts over there...sort of
a time will come when we will be allowed to wear purses
February 14, 2009 at 5:23:00 PM EST
Peter said...
Why can't they just bring back the Jack Sack? I bought one, and use it to carry my books in high school. There's kind of no point now that he doesn't use it.
February 15, 2009 at 12:49:00 AM EST
TheJackSack said...
Peter- that's crazy talk! First, I believe The Jack Sack will return. But even if it doesn't make an appearance this season, the original man-bag is the Willie Mays of manpurses. We don't cast aside legends because they're no longer active. We honor their spirits through acts of loyalty- wear The Jack Sack- and by God man, wear it with PRIDE.
February 15, 2009 at 2:54:00 PM EST
Peter said...
I do use it with pride each and every day. I keep a picture inside of Jack with his to show people if they ask.
February 16, 2009 at 8:35:00 PM EST
Anonymous said...
Not to upset anybody, but am I the only one who noticed *Chloe* entering the FBI building with a Jack Sack? How do we feel about this, fellas?
February 17, 2009 at 7:41:00 PM EST
TheJackSack said...
TJ- I noticed it as well and will be writing about it later in the week. I think it's a great idea, to be honest.
February 18, 2009 at 7:06:00 AM EST
Anonymous said...
April 7, 2010 at 1:54:00 PM EDT
tony if u watch 24 like a real jack bauer fan u will c this is not the original jack sack from season 5 it's just an ordinary sack for laptops , g""""""s
i have got the MTM black hawk , jack sack ,ford expedition , replica of the H&K USP
it's all good
May 31, 2010 at 11:22:00 AM EDT
Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
August 30, 2011 at 10:02:00 AM EDT
Anonymous said...
I absolutely love the jack pack!! And I am a tremendous fan of the original jack Bauer man purse. I wore one every day for four years after. That is, until I found out about sling bags!
Long have I searched for a sling bag that catered to my every desire, it seems fitting that jack should be the one to bring it to me.
Have you seen the specs on this thing? Hydration compatible, hidden gun compartment, external storage, and with military accessory webbing for customization! Not to mention (I think I just came) what every sling bag is missing; a stow able waist support to stabilize the bag so it's easier to run or do anything without the bag sliding around the front!
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In this first run of Windows 8 devices, manufacturers are essentially throwing things against the wall to see what sticks. We've seen every size, every form factor, every direction and angle of rotation — companies are trying desperately to figure out the best way to take advantage of everything Windows 8 can do.
Even Lenovo's lineup is all over the place. There's the Lynx convertible, which transforms from laptop to tablet. The Twist rotates and folds, and looks like the X Series tablets we've seen for years. And then there's the IdeaPad Yoga, perhaps the most enticing of the bunch — we've been waiting for this device to come out ever since it was announced at CES back in January. The Yoga's crazy gimmick is its hinge, which allows the screen to fold all the way back over the keyboard, so you can hold your laptop like a tablet.
Carnival sideshow tricks aside, though, the IdeaPad is still a pretty appealing Windows 8 laptop. My review unit has a 1.7GHz Core i5 processor, 4GB of RAM, and a 128GB SSD in an attractive 3.5-pound package. It's more laptop than tablet, but it's trying to be both — and much more. Is this the Windows 8 ultrabook for you (and for me)?
Hardware and design
More than meets the eye
The Yoga's a fairly innocuous ultrabook. The matte gray machine's black sides, slightly rounded and sloped corners, and undecorated exterior definitely won't catch your eye on a store shelf, but that's not necessarily a bad thing — it's nice-looking in a simple sort of way. At three and a half pounds and two-thirds of an inch thick, it's just a middle-of-the-road ultrabook. It's noticeably heavier and larger than a MacBook Air or the ThinkPad X1 Carbon, but not so large to worsen my back problems as I carried it around.
The clamshell's gray exterior opens up to reveal entirely black insides — the keys, palmrest, bezel, and trackpad are all the same matte black. The understated look matches well with the ultra-colorful Windows 8 interface, taking no attention away from the display. The only problem is that the display's hard to get at: the Yoga's base isn't heavy enough to hold in place, so you need both hands to open the lid, and it's hard to get enough purchase underneath the tiny lip on the front to get the top open.
On the right side of the Yoga (if you're using it like a laptop — as you'll see, "sides" are all very fungible with this device) sit a full-size SD card slot, a USB 2.0 port, and the blocky yellow jack for the power adapter. The one and only USB 3.0 port rests on the left, next to an HDMI port and the headphone jack. The power button is on the front, and there are physical volume controls on the left side — both are very unlike a laptop's normal configuration, but make sense for all the ways you'll use the Yoga. And much though I worried about it, I never once accidentally pressed the power button in my lap.
Its leathery palmrest and soft-touch exterior give the Yoga a very comfortable feel unlike the cold slickness of, say, the MacBook Air. The matte exterior is a bit odd to the touch, though — one of my co-workers said "it kind of feels like touching a human." I definitely prefer the look of the ThinkPad X1 Carbon, which combines the comfortable feel with a more handsome design. The Yoga is well-made for sure, but it won't exactly get the oohs and ahhs the X1 Carbon did.
Its contortionist ways are great without causing any problems
If you never felt the desire to test the integrity of the Yoga's hinge, you might never know the device's most impressive trick and thus always wonder why in the world this thing is called the Yoga. But if you open the clamshell, and push the screen back, and back, and back, you'll figure it out. The screen can rotate a full 360 degrees (minus however many separate one side of the base from the other), creating a bunch of different ways to use this device. You can rotate it all the way around, flip the thing around and hold it like a tablet with the screen facing you and the keys underneath your fingers on the back. Some people might not like that your fingers touch the keyboard as you hold it in tablet mode, but I didn't mind it, and it actually makes the Yoga a little easier to grip. You can prop the Yoga up like a teepee — I did so constantly, since it's an ideal way to watch movies. You can also use the keyboard tray as a stand for the display, as if the screen were mounted to the front of the base rather than the back. The hinge is sturdy enough to hold in almost any position, so anything you can think of you can probably pull off.
On one hand, it's all a bit of a gimmick. Flipping it around so it's "closed" with the screen facing out does make the Yoga much more like a tablet — a huge, giant, unwieldy tablet — but in every other setup it's still a screen and a stand. But there's something different when you can't see the keyboard — the screen doesn't feel so far away, and I found myself somehow more immersed than I normally am watching things on my laptop.
This is the way I hope Windows 8 laptops go. Instead of trying to find some happy medium between laptop and tablet, I hope manufacturers build devices that just add new use cases or form factors to the equation — a keyboard and mouse for a tablet, or an ersatz tablet mode for a laptop. Microsoft's own Surface falls into the no-man's-land between the two form factors, and suffers as a result. Meanwhile the Yoga is every ounce a laptop, it just does a cool extra thing most laptops don't. I like the flipping hinge more than the swiveling actions of the ThinkPad Twist, but either way I think the approach is right: don't build one device to replace two. Just pick one, nail the core experience, and crib a couple of features from the other.
All its contortionist tendencies aside, the Yoga's screen is relatively uninteresting. It's a good display, to be sure — the 13.3-inch IPS panel's 1600 x 900 resolution is a notch above many ultrabooks, and its color reproduction and brightness are both as good as I'd expect. But it pales next to the 1080p screens on the Asus Zenbook Prime and a few others, especially when you use it as a tablet. 1600 x 900 is more than adequate at a typical laptop distance — and 1080p might even be too high in some cases, making everything on the screen seem tiny — but when you hold the screen closer to your face every pixel really counts. But still, It's neither the best nor the worst display I've seen on a device in this class, this size, or this price.
The only problem I had with the screen was its touch response: the Yoga seemed to miss a few more taps and swipes than I'd normally expect. It also occasionally registered taps when I meant to swipe, and swipes when I meant to tap. It didn't happen often, or reliably — I couldn't recreate problems, for instance — but I wound up swiping right and opening the New York Times app a few too many times.
Two speakers are hidden in the fan vents on the rear of the machine, and they're more or less bog standard — decent enough, and these actually have richer-than-average sound, but nothing special. I periodically get Stockholm Syndrome with computer speakers, thinking they're totally adequate, and then I plug my computer into my external speakers and my ears immediately rejoice and look upon my computer with disdain. That happened about thirty times with the Yoga.
Nice to look at, but not to touch
Keyboard and trackpad
Since this is an IdeaPad and not a ThinkPad, there are a couple of key accoutrements missing. There's no red TrackPoint nipple, and no separate, clickable mouse buttons — personally I don't miss either, but if you're a TrackPoint devotee that might be a dealbreaker. Instead you get a sleek, all-black tray with a clickpad and six rows of full-size keys.
Lenovo's good at this game
Both are more like a ThinkPad than not, and that's a great thing. The keyboard uses the same "smile" design we saw on the X1 Carbon and elsewhere — the slightly concave keys are comfortable to use, easy to get used to, and have just the right amount of travel and feedback. The only problem is the layout: the right-side Shift and Backspace keys are half their normal size, and I found myself accidentally hitting = and / a lot. The Home, End, PgUp / Dn keys take up the right-most column on the keyboard, and it throws off the alignment of the keyboard otherwise; I always had to set my hands where I thought home row was, and then move them one key to the left before I could type properly. But after a few hours of using the Yoga exclusively, I was fully up to speed, typing as fast and accurately as I can on any other machine. As long as it was light out, anyway — the keyboard isn't backlit, which is a really frustrating omission.
The trackpad's a mixed bag. Its surface is smooth and glassy, and my fingers glide over it easily, but what happens on the screen isn't quite on the same level. Two-finger scrolling works, but sometimes takes a couple of swipes to kick in — it's like it needs to warm up before it's ready to scroll. It does scroll both vertically and horizontally, though, which is great for moving around the Start screen and Windows 8 apps.
As a pure pointing device, it never failed me, but it misses on some of the more complex things. Edge gestures (key to navigating Windows 8) are maddeningly inconsistent — sometimes I was just moving my finger left and it swiped in the most recent app, and then when I'd try to switch apps it would just move the cursor a bit. It's like it was teasing me. These are certainly driver issues, and probably can and will be fixed, but I was frequently reminded how many bugs are left to work out in Windows 8.
Software and performance
I'm on the hunt for a new primary machine, so beyond our benchmark tests I've been subjecting every Windows 8 review unit to some rigorous testing to see how it holds up. On a normal day, that includes three different browsers running something like 25 tabs at a time, lots of multitasking and app use, and the occasional Photoshop job. The Yoga handles all of those things fine, though when I tried to do as many things as possible at once — all those tabs, a Netflix movie, the Hulu Windows 8 app, and Photoshop — it stumbled pretty hard. But that's not exactly a practical use case, and as an everyday machine for everyday uses it works just fine. The machine resumes from sleep in about three seconds, and boots in only seven — I'm still blown away by how fast Windows 8 starts up.
The Yoga's even a vaguely usable gaming machine, which is leaps and bounds better than I can say for most ultrabooks. Older games like Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X play relatively smoothly, and even newer games like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, which cripples most ultrabooks, was at least decently playable at native resolution and low settings — though by no means should you mistake this for a competitor to an actual gaming rig.
McAfee's been crippled, but it's not dead yet
There were some odd performance issues, though, which like the trackpad serve as all-too-frequent reminders that Microsoft has a lot of tweaking left to do with Windows 8. The Yoga sometimes wouldn't reconnect to a Wi-Fi network when it resumed from sleep, even though it saw a known network; otherwise-stable apps also crashed a few more times than I expected. These aren't deal-breakers, just minor annoyances, but they're always lurking in the background as you use the Yoga.
If the Yoga's bloatware is indicative of what's to come on Windows 8 devices, the world's about to become a much better place. Yes, the company adds plenty of its own software: Kindle, Ebay, Evernote, Skype, AccuWeather.com, and a handful of first-party utilities come preinstalled. But that's it! Yes, McAfee is installed on the Yoga, but not as a nagging pop-up telling you your computer is irreparably damaged and only McAfee can fix it — it's just an app. If manufacturers have decided to take a lesson from phones and only add new apps to the equation, the Windows experience is about to get a lot better.
Battery, heat, noise
Battery, heat, noise
Continuing the theme of "a pretty normal machine that does wacky things with its hinge," the Yoga's battery life is about what you'd expect from an ultrabook. It lasted five hours, eight minutes on the Verge Battery Test, which cycles through a series of popular websites and high-res images with the screen set to 65 percent brightness. In normal use — charge it fully, unplug it, work a regular day, and see how long it lasts – I got between five and five and a half hours depending on how many times I needed to use Photoshop. That's an acceptable result, but nothing to write home about.
The Yoga's fans kick in basically any time you touch the computer — it doesn't take much for them to start whirring. Most of the time it's really quiet, though, and you'll only notice it in a silent room — plus, the machine barely gets warm unless you're cranking through The Witcher 2, and if some slight fan noise is the tradeoff I'll take it. When you're gaming or using a heavy app like Photoshop, though, the fan blasts hot air out the back at a pretty high volume.
Lots of form factors in one device
A few software and performance bugs
A big step in the right direction, but I'd wait for step two or three
If you ignore its awesome transformational abilities — which are a pretty great addition to a laptop, and are implemented really well — the IdeaPad Yoga 13 is just an average, pretty good laptop. It has a good keyboard, a nice-looking screen, and competent performance. It also has a frustrating trackpad, though, and a touchscreen that doesn't work as well as it should. It's a perfectly good laptop, and that's about what I expect for a $1,000 ultrabook.
If you're buying a Windows 8 laptop right now, this is a really good option — it's definitely the best device I've tested since the new OS came out. But if you can wait, you should — there are many more cool devices coming soon, and even the Yoga should get better over time as the trackpad drivers and performance issues are fixed. What I want more than anything is the ThinkPad X1 Carbon with a Yoga hinge; this is a decent approximation, but not quite up to its level.
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The simplicity of bitcoin has also proven attractive to the Swiss city of Zag, which plans to initiate a 6-month pilot program in July under which local citizens may pay for public services in bitcoin. The Wall Street Journal (£) reported on Friday that US regulators were investigating potential price manipulation at four major cryptocurrency exchanges. The investigation comes six months after CME Group launched bitcoin futures. Coinbase, Bitstamp, itBit and Kraken have been asked to share trading data related to the futures contracts. You will be glad you did, you could point this post out to save you a lot of back and forts trying to ensure you are not some kid playing around… You will be glad you did, you could point this post out to save you a lot of back and forts trying to ensure you are not some kid playing around. Have you gotten yourself involved in a cryptocurrency scam or any scam at all? If yes, know that you you are not alone, there a a lot of people in this same situation.
With that said, cryptocurrencies remain controversial. At their simplest, they are merely the newest fintech fad; yet at the most complex level, they’re a revolutionary technology challenging the political, economic, and social underpinnings of society. The market cap of Bitcoin exceeded $70 billion, with peak trading volumes around $3 billion per day. The movie theater chain announced it will start accepting bitcoins by the end of the year for purchases such as tickets, popcorn, drinks and other concessions. The future of bitcoin and bitcoin’s price remains uncertain. It could go to a $1,000,000 or it could go to $0. Because bitcoin cash initially drew its value from bitcoin’s market cap, it caused bitcoin’s value to drop by an amount proportional to its adoption on launch. But while fraudulent credit-card purchases are reversible, bitcoin transactions are not. Each bitcoin has a complicated ID, known as a hexadecimal code, that is many times more difficult to steal than someone’s credit-card information. And since there is a finite number to be accounted for, there is less of a chance bitcoin or fractions of a bitcoin will go missing.
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Founder Michael Dell announces on Twitter that dell.com now accepts Bitcoin. Customers in the United States can purchase any product listed on Dell’s online marketplace using Bitcoin. All Bitcoin transactions are to be handled by Coinbase, a Bitcoin payment processor. At a yearly revenue of $56 billion, Dell becomes the largest company to accept Bitcoin. Unknown hackers were able to steal 18,866 bitcoins from Bitstamp’s operational hot wallet, worth roughly $5.2 million dollars. The attackers used social engineering against Bitstamp system administrator Luka Kodric to gain access to 2 of Bitstamp’s servers and subsequently the hot wallet’s private keys. The wallet was completely drained of all bitcoins shortly thereafter. The VC backed startup Coinbase Inc., a popular Bitcoin outlet and payment processor, announced the release of its own Bitcoin trading platform. The company founders stated they had worked for months to obtain various licenses from state financial regulators, allowing them to legally accept customers from 25 different US states.
What determines bitcoin’s price? The price of a bitcoin is determined by supply and demand. When demand for bitcoins increases, the price increases, and when demand falls, the price falls.
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ICOs help firms raise cash for the development of new blockchain and cryptocurrency technologies. Instead of issuing shares of ownership, they offer digital tokens, or “coins.” Investors gain early access to the technology, and are able to use it however they see fit. Startups are able to raise money without diluting from private investors or venture capitalists. Bankers are increasingly abandoning their lucrative positions for their slice of the ICO pie. Apart from pure speculation, many invest in cryptocurrencies as a geopolitical hedge. During times of political uncertainty, the price of Bitcoin tends to increase. As political and economic uncertainty in Brazil increased in 2015 and 2016, Bitcoin exchange trade increased by 322% while wallet adoption grew by 461%.
Satoshi Nakamoto, a pseudonymous person or group, published the Bitcoin white paper in 2008, laying out BTC’s concept. In 2009, Bitcoin’s first block, called its genesis block, went live and brought BTC officially into existence as an asset. Nakamoto ceased communication in Bitcoin’s early years, and their real identity remains a mystery. Using PayPal, NewLibertyStandard buys 5,050 BTC from Sirius for $5.02, equating to roughly one tenth of a cent per bitcoin. BitcoinTalk user laszlo pays 10,000 BTC for two pizzas delivered to their house (valued at about $25), ordered and paid for by another user, jercos. This assigns the first concrete valuation to bitcoin – about $0.0025 per coin. GHash.io responds by stating they “have and never will participate in any 51% attack”. Shrem had entered a plea bargain which involved surrendering $950,000 to the US government and pleading guilty to aiding and abetting the operation of an unlicensed money transmitting business.
He helped me raise my credit score from 520 to 820 golden score and He also erased all criminal records on my credit report within days. He also helped me apply for mortgage loan within few weeks. I would advise you to email him as well if you got any credit issues, He’s discreet and professional too. Contact him on W I Z A R D C R E D I T H A C K at C O N S U L T A N T dot COM. Still, given the volatility of this emerging phenomenon, there is a risk of a crash. Many experts have noted that in the event of a cryptocurrency market collapse, that retail investors would suffer the most.
Each and every trade of Bitcoin is tracked and publicly disclosed, with each participant’s digital signature attached to the Bitcoin blockchain as a confirmation. The first two parts are quite easy to understand. The third one is a bit complex – this is where a sophisticated digital signature is captured to confirm each and every transaction for that particular Bitcoin file. Each digital signature is unique to each individual user and his/her personal Bitcoin wallet. Only at the start of November 2017 did Bitcoin recover to its highs from earlier in the year, and this marked the beginning of one of Bitcoin’s most notable bull runs. By the end of the month, the price had quadrupled, although it stabilized around the $700 mark by the new year.
On the other side are the miners, who want to increase the size of blocks to make the network faster and more scalable. The views and opinions expressed by the author are for informational purposes only and do not constitute financial, investment, or other advice. Changed, however, is the perception of Bitcoin. Namely, both regular people and big corporations alike have begun to look at it as a way to protect their funds against devaluation. As powerful and influential players have openly acknowledged, “Bitcoin has therefore become the smart play of 2020 and beyond,” Deane added. Now recognized by both the general public and institutional investors around the world, Bitcoin might be primed for a bright future. This record has been surpassed today, revealing how much stronger the crypto got over the last three years, experts noted. That has pushed other commodities like gold, silver, platinum to multiyear highs. Because of bitcoin’s structure, few coins are being created anymore and there is relative scarcity. Learn all about finances in next to no time with our weekly newsletter.
On Sunday, one ether rose to as high as 0.086 bitcoin , its highest since May 2018. “This might explain why there was so much capitulation in bitcoin markets … as legacy institutions look to preserve annual gains heading into year-end,” he added. Compare the investment performance of Bitcoin vs Gold. Compares Bitcoin ROI, adjusted for its risk, to other assets. Get smarter with context and commentary on the week’s top blockchain & crypto trends in Asia. Because here’s the thing — 10 years ago, the United States and China had to make one big decision. They’re the two kinds of superpowers, and they had to make a decision.
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The Rothschilds, in their infinite wisdom, wrote a treaty a couple hundred years ago that says they, through two banks that they own a big piece of, have to get paid. Every dollar across international borders, they get paid. So, you might get 70 cents on the dollar, if I send it Western Union. You might get 90 cents on the dollar if I sent it through a bank SWIFT transfer.
Dealing with trading companies necessitates a high level of caution.
And that is part of the reason I like Avalanche and things like that.
The idea that solutions to computational puzzles could have some value was first proposed by cryptographers Cynthia Dwork and Moni Naor in 1992.
The rate is derived from the cost of electricity used by a computer to generate, or “mine” the currency.
This allows for faster confirmation times, which is how long it takes for the transaction to be confirmed by a miner. That’s why Ethereum is compared to the internet. It has more function and versatility than Bitcoin. And its most recent utility has come from the non-fungible token, or NFT, space.
A while back, people expected the price of bitcoin to be extremely bullish during the months of November and December, and many expected a $100K bitcoin price by the year’s end. However, during the last 13 years, more so than not, bitcoin prices are typically bearish in the last two months of the year. Benjamin M. Lawsky, Superintendent of New York’s Department of Financial Services, announces a proposed set of regulations for businesses that interact with Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. The goal of the new regulations, according to Lawsky, are to help “protect consumers and root out illegal activity – without stifling beneficial innovation”. Affected entities would be exchanges, mining pools, bulk Bitcoin sellers, and altcoin software creators based in New York state, or that have customers in New York state. News of these regulations are generally rebuked by the cryptocurrency community. CoinMarketCap removed prices from South Korean exchanges from its calculations of cryptocurrency rates without any warning, resulting in a steep drop in all prices. Additionally, Korea’s financial authorities on Jan. 8 launched an investigation into cryptocurrency-related services provided by local banks amid criticism that recent government measures are having little impact on cooling the markets. In July 2011, the operator of Bitomat, the third-largest bitcoin exchange, announced that he had lost access to his wallet.dat file with about 17,000 bitcoins (roughly equivalent to US$220,000 at that time). He announced that he would sell the service for the missing amount, aiming to use funds from the sale to refund his customers.
The order was dubbed the “BearWhale” by the Bitcoin community due to its unprecedented size. The theft represented “a small fraction of Bitstamp’s total bitcoin reserves” as the majority of the company’s Bitcoin funds remained untouched in offline “cold” storage. However, according to a leaked internal Bitstamp report on the incident, the damage to the company’s reputation and customer confidence far exceeded its monetary Bitcoin loss. The European Court of Justice ruled that the exchange of Bitcoin and “virtual currencies” is not subject to value-added-tax in the European Union. The ruling acts to classify Bitcoin and related alt-coins as currency, instead of goods or property.
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“Bitcoin exchange BitFloor suspends operations after $250,000 theft”. Archived from the original on 11 February 2014. “Bitcoin theft causes Bitfloor exchange to go offline”. Dotson, Kyt “Third Largest Bitcoin Exchange Bitomat Lost Their Wallet, Over 17,000 Bitcoins Missing”.
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American alt-metal band Papa Roach is from the small California, US town of Vacaville. The group consists of Jacoby Shaddix (vocals), Jerry Horton (guitar), Tobin Esperance (bass) and Dave Buckner (drums). Their major-label debut album, “Infest”, was released in April 2000, and it was certified triple-Platinum in 2001. “The Paramour Sessions” is the group’s latest album, which was released in September 2006. It includes the singles, “To Be Loved,” “Forever” and the current, “Time Is Running Out”. For more on Papa Roach, visit www.paparoach.com.
In the small Northern Califoria town of Vacaville, four high school friends, Jacoby Shaddix, Jerry Horton, Dave Buckner, and Will James, decided to start a band. In 1993, they became Papa Roach, a band whose influences included prominent Bay Area acts such as Faith No More and Primus. Papa Roach quickly rose to the top of the Vacaville music scene with their blending of hip-hop, groove-funk, and hardcore.
After a couple of years of playing coffeehouses, pizza joints, and keg-parties, they were headlining such places as the Cactus Club in San Jose, the Cattle Club in Sacramento, and the Berkeley Square in Berkeley. Due to the antics of unpredictable Shaddix, and the raw power supplied by the band in live performances, Papa Roach captured the attention of younger audiences. In turn, kids showed their appreciation for the band by faithfully attending all the band’s shows. In these early years, Papa Roach was able to support the Deftones on two shows, and have bands such as Incubus, Snot, Far, Human Waste Project,and Fu Manchu open for them.
In the summer of 1996, while realizing athat they had something special, Papa Roach decided to make changes necessary to reach the next level. First, the band replaced bass player Will James because his commitment to church summer camp that would have prevented the band from practicin and playing any shows over the summer. Papa Roach did not have to go far to find their new bass player. Tobin Esperance, who was only 16 years old and who had been a roadie for Papa Roach since age 13, readily became the new bass player. Second, the band hired a manager, Bret Bair, to hel them with bookings, promotions, and merchandising. With a new bass player and management in place, Papa Roach decided to enter the studio to record a full-length CD.
“Old Friends From Young Years” was recorded for $700 at E.S.P. Studios in Pittsburg, California, and was subsequently released in February of 1997. The CD contains 13 tracks, including the songs “Orange Drive Palms”, and “Liquid Diet”. Without any push from the band or management, many smaller independent and college radio stations in Chico, Davis, San Jose, Sacramento, and the Bay Area added Papa Roach to their playlists. To the bands’ surprise, Papa Roach charted number one as Cal-State Sacramento’s most requested band for five consecutive weeks. Papa Roach celebrated the release of their first album with several CD release shows. The Vacaville CD release show was attended by 700 kids, while CD release shows in Berkeley and Sacramento were attended by 400 and 300 kids, respectively.
Papa Roach’s emerging popularity did not escape the eyes and ears of promoters, who started booking the band as a support act on many larger national shows. In March of 1997, Papa Roach played main support to Suicidal Tendencies in front of 1,000 people in Sacramento. They also either headlined or supported many of today’s up and coming acts in the aggressive rock genre, including Incubus, Snot, Far, Human Waste Project, (hed) p.e., Sevendust, Will Haven and Powerman 5000. Papa Roach has also played Southern California on a frequent basis, and is now becoming a regular at such reknowned clubs as the Troubador in Hollywood, and Soma in San Diego.
In April 1998, Papa Roach released “5 Tracks Deep”, and E.P. containing five songs which sold 1,000 copies within the first month after its release. This CD exemplifies the natural growth in musicianship and song-writing ability within band since “Old Friends From Young Years” was recorded 18 months earlier. The songs “Revenge in Japanese” is a perfect example of the Papa Roach trademark sound where hip-hop verses lead to a catchy radio-friendly chorus. This results in a song with both energy and emotion that will attract diverse crowds of people.
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We live in times when political positions are becoming polarized and cultures are considered fenced-in entities that cannot be united. The world is often viewed through a faulty prism that divides “us” from “them.” That’s why it is such a tension-breaker when someone takes the time and uses their talent to remind us that we are all human beings. That the blood running through your veins ...
Who ever coined the phrase "never judge a book by its cover" must have had a premonition about 20-year old singer/songwriter/rapper/producer T-Pain when they thought it up. At a time when image is considered just as important as vocal capability, T-Pain is introduc...
We won’t attempt to write a book on the Yardbirds here; that’s already been done — three times (see the print and online bibliography at the end of this bio for further reading). We’ll simply reiterate that the Yardbirds, perhaps more than any other group, ...
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Time to get back in shape. Oh how I missed this, its been months!
Good morning. Look who's feeling much much better :-)
At icu now. Doctors trying to figure out why Nathans having these problems. He is awake and watching spider man. Every time we take off the oxygen he desats, so still have a ways to go. Thanks for your prayers!!!! Theyre definitely helping!
Seems the helium is working. A few minutes ago they were talking about intubation, now the doctor came in and said hes not sure he even needs to go to ICU. Hes awake and his breaths are much deeper Prayers are working! Wow this has been one of the scariest days of my life.
Still struggling to breathe, cant seem to keep his 02 sats. They are going to try giving him helium with oxygen.
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Posted by Atlantic Homes on Sunday, November 13, 2022 at 10:00 AM By Atlantic Homes / November 13, 2022 Comment
Like most homeowners over the past couple of years, you may have discovered that you can no longer write off your property taxes or claim the mortgage interest deduction.
That doesn’t necessarily mean your taxes went up. The change is because the standard deduction nearly doubled starting in 2018, negating many homeowners’ need to itemize their home-related expenses. Here’s a roundup of the rules affecting homeowners.
Related: Are Closing Costs Tax Deductible?
Standard Deduction
The standard deduction is the amount everyone gets to claim whether they have actual deductions or not. It skyrocketed after the 2017 tax law changes, and has gone up again, incrementally, for tax year 2022. It’s now $25,900 for married, joint-filing couples (up from $24,000 in tax year 2018). It’s $19,400 for heads of household (up from $18,000). And $12,950 for singles (up from $12,000).
Many more people now find the standard deduction is higher than their itemizable write-offs. In fact, the proportion of homeowners who now find it advantageous to itemize their deductions (including mortgage interest and property taxes) under the new rules has fallen from about one in three to around one in 10.
“This doesn’t necessarily mean that those who no longer itemize will pay more taxes,” says Evan Liddiard, a CPA and director of federal tax policy for the National Association of REALTORS® in Washington, D.C. “It just means that they’ll no longer get a tax incentive for buying or owning a home.”
So are you still itemizing, or are you now in standard deduction land? If the answer is standard deduction, you’ll find that your tax forms are slightly simpler when you don’t itemize, says Liddiard. But the trade-off is that our tax system no longer gives most homeowners a tax advantage over those who rent. Find instructions for IRS Form 1040 here.
The increase in the standard deduction for homeowners and nonhomeowners also has another downside: There’s no longer a personal exemption. You can no longer exempt from your income $4,150 for each member of your household. And that might temper the benefit of a higher standard deduction, depending on your particular situation.
For example, single filers and married couples without children might still come out ahead. This is because their increase in the standard deduction is more than the amount lost by the personal exemption repeal.
However, families with two or more dependent children over age 16 are likely to come out losers from the loss of the personal exemption. This is because the loss of the personal exemption is greater than the extra amount included in the increased standard deduction.
Families with children under age 17 received an additional $1,000 in child credits, which, depending on their tax bracket, is more valuable than the loss of the personal exemption.
The takeaway: Your household composition will probably affect whether you gained or lost under the 2017 tax law.
Mortgage Interest Deduction
The tax law caps the mortgage interest you can write off at loan amounts of no more than $750,000. However, if your loan was in place by Dec. 15, 2017, the loan is grandfathered, and the old $1 million maximum amount still applies. Since most people don’t have a mortgage larger than $750,000, they won’t be affected by the limit.
But if you live in a pricey place (like San Francisco, where the median housing price is well over a million bucks), or you just have a seriously expensive house, federal tax laws may mean you’re not going to be able to write off interest paid on debt over the $750,000 cap.
State and Local Tax Deduction
The state and local taxes (SALT in CPA lingo) you pay — including income (or sales in states without a state income tax), and property taxes — are itemizable write-offs. But, the tax rules say you can’t deduct more than $10,000 for all your state and local taxes combined, whether you’re single or married. (It’s $5,000 per person if you’re married but filing separately.)
The SALT cap is bad news for people in areas with high taxes. The majority of homeowners in around 20 states have been writing off more than $10,000 in SALT each year, so many will lose some of this deduction. “This is going to hurt people in high-tax areas like New York and California,” says Lisa Greene-Lewis, CPA and expert for TurboTax in California. Typical New Yorkers, for example, were taking SALT deductions around $22,000 a household.
If you’re a landlord, there are no limits on the amount of mortgage debt interest or state and local taxes you can write off for rental property. And you can write off operating expenses, like insurance, lawn care, and utilities on Schedule E.
Home Equity Loans
You can still write off the interest on a home equity or second mortgage loan (if you itemize). But you may do so only if you used the proceeds to substantially better your home and only if the total, combined with your first mortgage and any mortgages on a second home, doesn’t go over the $750,000 cap ($1 million for loans in existence by Dec. 15, 2017). If you used the equity loan to pay medical expenses, take a vacation, or anything other than major home improvements, that interest isn’t tax deductible.
Here’s a big FYI: If you took out an equity loan before the 2017 tax changes and used it to, say, pay your child’s college tuition, you can no longer write off that interest.
Mortgage Debt Forgiveness and Mortgage Insurance Premiums
Two deductions that have come and gone a number of times have been enacted yet again.
If you sold your primary residence short and had part of your mortgage debt forgiven by the lender, you don’t have to pay tax on the amount of debt discharged, at least through the end of 2025.
Also back through tax year 2021 is the deduction for private mortgage insurance. Keep in mind, however, that it’s only relevant to itemizers making not more than $109,000 per year.
4 Tax Tips for Homeowners
If the mortgage interest and other deductions elude you, these strategies might help reduce your tax obligation.
1. Single people may get more tax benefits from buying a house, Liddiard says. “They can often exceed the standard deduction more quickly than can married couples. This is because a house for one is not half the price of a house for two.” You can check how much you’re likely to owe or get back under the new law on this tax calculator.
2. Student loan debt is deductible, up to $2,500 if you’re repaying, whether you itemize or not. However, there are income limitations for this deduction.
3. Charitable deductions and some medical expenses are itemizable. If you’re generous or have had a big year for medical bills, these, added to your mortgage interest and state and local taxes, may be enough to bump you over the standard deduction hump and into the write-off zone. Keep in mind, however, that medical expenses are deductible only the the extent that they exceed 7.5% of your adjusted gross income.
4. If your mortgage is over the $750,000 cap, pay it down faster so you don’t eat the nondeductible interest. You can add a little to the principal each month, or make a 13th payment each year.
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Lou Lataif, former Dean of Questrom School of Business (previously the School of Management) at Boston University, has shared a few tips—which we have expanded upon relative to the field of fundraising. Be passionate! If you believe in a cause, it is easy to talk about it. Your prospects will be unlikely to give to …
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There are five core values every successful fundraiser embraces. Honesty Fundraisers shall at all times act honestly and truthfully so that the public trust is protected and donors and beneficiaries are not misled. Respect Fundraisers shall at all times act with respect for the dignity of their profession and their organization and with respect for …
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Six family members sharing a bedroom with no device to learn or work on, an autistic child shaking the windows to escape the noise of his family, a mum losing work and fighting depression as she struggles to support her children — this has been the reality of many lives in lockdown. Two young black brothers told us that the first time they left their house in weeks for a short walk they were stopped by the police. Covid-19 and the accompanying lockdown haven’t treated us all equally.
The Covid-19 pandemic has shown starkly the cost of accepting high levels of health and social inequality. Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) residents and poorer communities are more likely to catch Covid-19 and more likely to lose their lives when they do. This didn’t happen by chance. It is a result of long-term, structural social, economic and health inequalities. And the economic consequence looks no better — the jobs most at risk through the crisis are the most insecure and the lowest paid.
We are writing jointly as the Leader of Camden Council and the Director of the Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose at UCL, which is based in Camden, because we believe that we have a once in a generation moment to turn today’s pain and loss into a coalition for lasting change. The story of the crisis in Camden shows the real cost of an unequal society and economy but also the power of places and communities, and their ability to lead change and recovery.
Now is the time for locally driven, purposeful economic growth and renewal.
Camden is a Borough in the heart of London that, within 22 square kilometres, contains all the complexities, contradictions and challenges of the UK and urban life in the 21st century.
‘‘If there is anywhere in Britain that could serve as a petri dish for examining race, class and culture, Camden would be that place.’’
As Akala says in his book Natives
It’s home to the UK’s leading innovation district, world leading universities and cultural institutions like the British Museum, British Library, UCL and Central Saint Martins. Companies such as Google and Facebook, plus those around Kings Cross contribute in excess of £43bn Gross Value Added (GVA) per year (larger than Manchester and Birmingham combined). This rich cultural landscape is both a critical part of Camden’s (and Britain’s) economy, and also our social fabric.
Camden is also a place where next door to this enormous wealth, 40 percent of children grow up in poverty. We have some of the highest rates of homelessness in the country and, in the last year, five young people lost their lives to violence on our streets.
Most importantly, however, it is home to citizens who speak over 130 languages and has a radical history of civic action and people powered movements.
Camden 2025, which was written by a citizen’s assembly, sets out a community-led vision of a place where everyone has the chance to succeed, nobody gets left behind, and everybody has a voice.
Camden Council has been on a journey to unleash the power of our communities and ensure all who live here have a stake in the wealth and opportunity on their doorstep.
The Covid-19 pandemic has exacerbated inequality, and strengthened the community’s resolve to tackle it, based on these Camden values. In the early days of the Covid-19 crisis, the Council made a pledge to its community: it promised that no-one would go hungry, no-one would be evicted from their home, no care worker would lose money due to illness and all lives would be treated as valuable. These pledges reflect Camden Council’s ultimate purpose – to address the racial, health, educational, housing, digital and work inequalities that challenge our place and our community and prevent everyone from being able to succeed. To fulfil that promise, the Council mobilised a team of 2,000 volunteers and rolled out new services to combat hunger, support distressed businesses, address educational disparities and tackle other challenges triggered by Covid-19. Within seven weeks, it delivered more than 100,000 meals. It dispatched more than 80,000 pieces of PPE to frontline workers and care staff. It developed a £3 million hardship fund to support residents struggling with financial obligations. And it launched an enquiry into the disproportionate impact of Covid-19 on Black, Asian and Minority-Ethnic residents.
It did not do these things alone.
Although central government’s response has focused on centralised planning and relied on local authorities to deliver their interventions, the reality is that the support people have received through this time has come from many places. Camden’s rich and vibrant community and voluntary sector have rallied in remarkable ways. Neighbours are supporting neighbours, and grass root activism has knitted these neighbours together in Mutual Aid groups. Tenant halls and community centres have set up food hubs, graffiti has been replaced with rainbows and streets lit up with the sound of applause and bagpipes celebrating our NHS.
Camden Council has built on existing partnerships with voluntary organisations to go further and do more together than either could do alone. In partnership with Age UK Camden, for example, redeployed Council staff have packaged food alongside volunteers and delivered parcels from repairs vans. The strength of these partnerships is testament to the Council’s commitment not to retrench from these spaces in recent decades, despite ever-diminishing core funding.
Now, as we look towards a recovery from Covid-19, we sit at a crossroads locally and nationally. As a country, we could pour money into trying to go back to how things were. But the economic model was failing people, characterized as it was by inequality and precarity, and damaging our planet. Camden’s economy was dynamic and successful by any traditional measure but also struggled with in-work poverty and structural exclusion for too many – particularly for BAME communities, disabled residents and single parents. Centralisation and diminished local public services after years of austerity has left too many communities feeling powerless to change.
This is the moment to renew our democracy and economy. We can harness the unique strengths of local governments and the places they serve to build a better future. We must use this opportunity to actively renew our economy and society, building new systems and structures that are inclusive and sustainable, and deliver on Camden’s vision for a place in which everyone can succeed, and everyone has a voice.
Camden’s story in recent months makes clear that councils have the local knowledge to rapidly identify community challenges; the local relationships to organise people; and the speed and agility to test and implement solutions. When local places are resourced and empowered to take action, they are capable of responding to crises and enabling local places to thrive in ways that central government cannot. This is true of the acute phase of the public health crisis as we fight the virus but also of the economic crisis which follows it
In recognition of this moment, we are pleased to announce the creation of Camden’s Economic Renewal Commission, a new taskforce that aims to promote a place-based recovery from Covid-19, generate public value and elevate the role of the public sector.
Together, the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose and the London Borough of Camden will combine their knowledge of place, innovation and values-led economic growth to co-chair the Commission.
The Commission will bring together community members, organisational experts, academic leaders and policy thinkers for active learning, vision setting and practical implementation.
We know that from Plymouth to Manchester there are communities who are doing the same and we invite all who want to help build this new future to join us. Our work is about Camden but also seeks to build a coalition of partners that understand that empowered places, given the tools they need, can drive a different model of growth. Working at a grassroots level, we can turn this crisis into a coalition to remake an economy that invests in every person in every community.
Please join us.
Councillor Georgia Gould, Leader of Camden Council, and Professor Mariana Mazzucato, founder of the Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose at UCL
Read more about the work that’s happened so far:
Leveraging our Potential as a local authorityDownload
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With travel slowly becoming normalized, and the worst days of the pandemic surely behind us; we can finally start thinking about travelling again. For some, they may not have even travelled since 2019, or earlier. Fortunately, we can now start to get excited about prospective future travelling. The only downside however, is the financial aspect. With job changes, long times of not working; many people have taken a financial hit this year. With this being said, those extravagant trips to Japan, Australia may have to be on hold. Continue through this article to see which places you can visit, without losing an arm and a leg paying for it!
Prague, Czech Republic
Located in Central Europe, Prague is the capital of the Czech Republic and is an amazing, beautiful city. Depending on your location, you may be thinking, Europe? Impossible. The flights will bankrupt me. What you haven’t considered is that you may be spending slightly more on getting there, the money you save while there will surely make up for it. Prague is a super cheap city to explore. The average price of a beer in a pub will set you back 35 Czech Crowns. This equates to approximately $1.5. Prague has many free activities to attend; such as free walking tours beginning from the city’s historic old square. If you’re quite savvy with finding accommodation, you can very much find a nice hotel for a cheap price. The place really depends on your expectations, you can spend between $35-50 a day here depending on your choice of activity. A must-visit for the budget traveler.
Ljubljana? A city or did someone slam their fist down on the keyboard. Lo and behold, Ljubljana is actually the stunning capital city of Slovenia in central Europe. Having attractions such as the mesmerizing Lake Bled, various water-parks and an old town center full of historic buildings, and a great history. Slovenia is also, a very cheap place to visit. Live the life as you stay in top hotels and eat like a king for a nominal fee. Take a trip to the infamous castle hill, Tivoli Park among many interesting museums that will surely enlighten your knowledge of this quiet delight. Situated next to countries such as Italy, Croatia and Austria; Slovenia is surely a great stopover visit, for a budget multi-country trip.
Situated close to the US, flights are considerably cheap to get here. The home of numerous jungles and rainforests; Costa Rica is something like no other. A rugged country full of character, interesting culture and great food; it is also super cheap to visit and explore on the American dollar. Costa Rica is known for its beaches, volcanoes and biodiversity. Up to a quarter of its land mass is made up of protected jungle. These areas flow with wildlife. There are also insane ziplines, such as the Monteverde Zip Line, featuring a zipline of over 5220 feet in length! As well as interesting museums, and many cities outside of San José that are interesting, consider Costa Rica in your budget travel choices.
Though not directly exclusive to Athens, as we must consider the Greek islands also, Greece is a great option to consider. A super cheap country, with beautiful sights and activities, Greece has a culture of it’s own. The people are bubbly and full of character; the food is fantastic and travelling around and doing things won’t actually set you back so badly. Enrich yourself in the history of the ancient Greeks, party on a budget in the many cheap and fun bars. Full of ancient treasures and modern delights, Athens is definitely worth a visit.
USA…
The USA? Though not exactly extravagant or exotic, perhaps a staycation is actually the best budget option. Flights within the US are quite cheap, and with the amount of states that the US has, you can never really run out of options when trying to visit new ones. If you’re a New Yorker, try New Orleans. If you’re a west coaster, give Santa Barbara a try, it is stunning and perfect for a mini-break. Though the prices while in the US might be consistent with what you are already aware of, you will save money on flights. Especially if you choose to drive. Road tripping is the new flying! See the sights as you travel from A to B. Save that Paris trip for the year you are more financially stable; there is no rush, it isn’t going anywhere. The US is enormous, and full of culture in every single state. Give a staycation a thought.
Whether you decide on a cheap European adventure, a nearby flight or a staycation; you can now finally get your thinking caps on, and begin planning a budget-trip to a great place that won’t bankrupt you. The only way is up from here.
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Starting college can be intimidating, with the classes you need to sign up for and the dorms to set up, it seems like your task list never ends. While this whole process can be overwhelming, we’re here to help you in whichever way we can. From tips and tricks for studying to budget-friendly dorm décor, we’ve got you covered! So take it easy and enjoy these years!
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I didn’t find anything in the archives so I hope I’m not asking this when it’s been covered before. My boyfriend and I live together with his 11 y/o daughter, and I’m having some trouble figuring out how to be “dad’s girlfriend.” Quick background: My boyfriend (we’ll call him A) had his daughter (N) when he was 16, married and divorced N’s mom, moved two states away for work and when N’s mom was visited by CPS N was taken away. When A finally got a phone call about now N had been taken he was there as fast as he could be (18 hour drive one way) and has had N in his custody ever since (6 years now?)
One of the things I love most about A is how dedicated of a parent he is. Where the awkward happens is that I’ve only been out of my family’s home for 3 years (2 of which A and I have been dating) and I’m still struggling to figure out how to be the adult figure. A takes care of most discipline and dictates chores, rules, etc for N, and that’s great, but I don’t know what is acceptable as the girlfriend.
I don’t feel comfortable taking a motherly role, because N still has a mom even if she’s states away, and N is still at the age where EVERYTHING ABOUT ABSENT PARENT IS COOL. It breaks my heart, my (very basic) understanding of psychology makes me think that she misses having a mother regardless of all the crappy things mom did. Even after N had a telephone call where mom put the phone to her chest (or simply thought no one could hear over the phone) and said “Why doesn’t she just get over it already?” N talks about how much she loves mom and wishes to go visit.
That ball is totally in A’s court, but I’m stuck wondering what I’m supposed to be. I’ve had step parents myself, both of which took controlling/authoritative roles. I -hated- it. I’ve avoided doing that (out of my own fears of being “evil dad’s girlfriend”) but now I’m stuck in a limbo where when I’m alone with N I don’t know what might be out of line, so I turn into a wet noodle and clam up. It doesn’t help that I’m incredibly introverted and N isn’t so I have a hard time relating.
I just want some outside perspective on what I might do as Dad’s girlfriend. I’ve gone over the subject somewhat with A but he’ll usually give me a “You’re doing fine!” answer and I’m still stumped. Any awkwardeers have experiences to share?
You know what I like best about your question? That when you ask how to be “Dad’s Girlfriend,” it’s clear you don’t mean “how can I deal with the unfortunate fact that the guy I love has this pesky kid,” but “I think Kid and I could maybe be more to each other than we are, and I’d like that, but I want to get it right and I’m not sure what right is from Kid’s perspective.”
Which makes perfect sense to me. When you started dating A, you didn’t know how things were going to go with him, much less with Kid. And even if she was the coolest 9-year-old on the planet who wanted her dad to be happy and understood that having an awesome woman in his life would increase the chances of that, and even if she was prepared to accept that you might be an awesome woman, she’d have been wary, wondering if you were going to be around long enough for it to be worth letting you into her heart, and if you were going to be around how it would change things for her. And you’re an introvert, so not the kind of person who could’ve jumped in and been instant BFFs even if she’d been primed for that, which she probably wasn’t. So try not to feel bad that you’re not closer already.
But it doesn’t sound like N is seething with animosity towards you. And at this point you’ve been with A two years, and you’re all living together. My sense is that under the circumstances, the you-and-Kid-kind-of-holding-one-another-at-arm’s-length dynamic doesn’t feel right anymore. You’re ready for more. You realize that your triangle is missing a side, or at least that one side is weaker than it should be.
I think your instincts are right on about that, not just from your perspective, but from Kid’s (and maybe even A’s).
Years ago, a colleague of mine whose life-partner actively did not want a child (he already had grown ones) was planning to go ahead because her partner had given “permission,” on the terms that he would never be expected to change a diaper or give a bath, pick up the child when it (and clearly the guy thought “it”) was crying, take it to school or a doctor’s appointment, or be the one to adjust his schedule to stay home with it. The child was to be hers only, and he could absolutely ignore it. I’m sure my colleague thought he would fall in love with the child once he/she was born, but I found the fact that a man who had had any exposure at all to kids could even propose such a thing thoroughly chilling. What would it do to a kid to be absolutely invisible to his/her stone-cold parent on a face-to-face basis, every day of his/her life???? (The couple broke up, thank god, before anyone had to find out).
Need I say I like you a whole lot better than that guy? I think it can only be good for Kid to be told that although you’re quiet by nature and had bad step-parent experiences that have made you not want to tromp into her life like an elephant, and you know her relationship with her mother is important to her and you don’t want to edge her mom out or anything, she is such an irresistably awesome kid that the better you get to know her the harder you’re finding it to be just Dad’s Girlfriend. That she feels like family to you, and though no, you can’t swear it’s forever (because that’s dependent on what happens between A and you), you’d like to have a relationship directly with her — to build the third side of the triangle, without worrying too much about what label y’all put on that relationship. (Or if a non-motherly label would make either of you (or her mother) more comfortable, tell her you’d like to treat her like a much-loved niece, if that’s ok with her).
Yes, I know it’s important to be careful with prospective step-kids, given that you and the parent could break up. No, one doesn’t want to rush things. But given that you and A have been together two years and you are all living together, I don’t think now qualifies as rushing.
I think it is far, far better to risk loving each other and having that direct relationship than for her to think your reserve with her is because you don’t like her. Because that carries the message that she’s not all that powerfully lovable. Which is what she’ll think (at least sometimes) if that third side of the triangle is flimsy. Other times she’ll just think there’s something wrong with you. Sometimes she’ll wonder how her father could love someone who is apparently ambivalent to her, and what that says about his true feelings for her. (“Does he think it’s perfectly natural that she’s not that into me, because he wouldn’t be, either, if he wasn’t my dad?”)
Obviously, you’ll need to talk to A about this, but it sounds like he already trusts your instincts with his child. Unless your relationship with him is wobblier than it sounds, I think he’ll be pleased you want to give more of yourself to Kid, especially given your sensitivity to her perspective. I really don’t think you’re in danger of overreaching, given your natural diffidence.
On the contrary, I think you may need to work on the diffidence a bit. You may not be the adult in your household, but you are an adult. The ball is not entirely in A’s court. You get to raise the subject of what you need for the household’s relationships to feel healthy and happy. And you absolutely get to require that Kid treat you with courtesy and respect when it’s just the two of you. That is not a right reserved to parents; by insisting on it you won’t be usurping someone else’s rights or pretending to be someone you’re not. You may want to get some step-parenting books from the library to help you navigate those waters.
As for How To, do ordinary life stuff with her. Gradually be the one who drives her places more often (car rides when it’s just the two of you are great for connecting with kids). Encourage A to have you be the one who takes her on little errands; take her for haircuts or to the doctor; take her shopping for A’s birthday gift or a birthday-party gift or new sports gear when a season starts; if you and she like shopping, just take her shopping, period. Cook/bake. Do her nails. If you/she prefer less girly stuff, do that — just make it about the stuff; no “get to know you” lunches or awkward forced hang-out time around the house where you’re not doing something. And don’t force it; make things casual and occasional offers/invitations like “I’m in the mood for chocolate chip cookies, want to help make some?” and don’t act bummed if she says “nah.”
Basically, just eliminate the idea that you’re doing her a kindness by holding back, and do what comes naturally from there, and you’ll do fine.
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65 thoughts on “#441: Feeling my way as live-in girlfriend to father of an 11-year-old girl”
February 3, 2013 at 12:07 pm
Another piece of advice. Did you have non-kin grown women that you looked up to as a kid? Your parents’ good friend, a local librarian, or the mom of one of your friends? Use those women as role models for your own relationship with N.
I have several of those women in my life (an aunt, my next door neighbor, and several of my friends’ mothers) and while none of them even comes close to a replacement from my mom, they were all an important influence on my development. They taught me to knit and sew, they exposed me to fun new ways of doing things, and they were a counterbalance against my parents. But they also demanded a high level of respect, and I gave it to them. I’m sure that you can figure out a way to do the same!
February 3, 2013 at 12:08 pm
As the 72yo new husband of a 43yo mother of a 14yo girl, I appreciate your situation. You can’t be a parent or a girlfriend, but you can be an ally and a neutrally objective reflection for her to view the world in. Yes, do the car rides, insist on respect and give that respect in return. And keep her trust so she knows that you’re not just a conduit to her dad.
She’s eleven, so everything will be tested: trust, friendship, limits, authority, judgement, and even love. You have the opportunity to become a significant figure in her life, now and in the future. Enjoy! You’ve been given a wonderful gift.
teasugarsalt says:
February 3, 2013 at 12:28 pm
“I think it can only be good for Kid to be told that although you’re quiet by nature and had bad step-parent experiences that have made you not want to tromp into her life like an elephant, and you know her relationship with her mother is important to her and you don’t want to edge her mom out or anything, she is such an irresistably awesome kid that the better you get to know her the harder you’re finding it to be just Dad’s Girlfriend. That she feels like family to you, and though no, you can’t swear it’s forever (because that’s dependent on what happens between A and you), you’d like to have a relationship directly with her — to build the third side of the triangle, without worrying too much about what label y’all put on that relationship.”
Very much this. At 11, she’s capable of comprehending the difference between “I don’t like you” and “I’m a quiet person”…but only if she’s told.
February 3, 2013 at 12:39 pm
Speaking as the daughter of a single father, all of the this. Especially the last three paragraphs. My dad had five kids, and we had a rather absurdly traumatic end-of-childhood period that took some getting over, which definitely included the “Absent Parents are so cool” stage, at least for some of us.
His first girlfriend-turned-fiancee was something of a monster. Emotionally manipulative, vocally abusive once we were all living together, showed blatant favoritism to her own kids, the works. But prior to …all that, she did the stereotypical Get To Know You stuff, which mainly was “Do girly stuff together and teach you poor benighted weird kids how to be normal.” Which sucked, because we were emphatically Not Normal, and when you’re trying to get along with someone who’s obviously more interested in showing their work as a partner than you as a person… it shows.
You seem like you actually like and care about the girl’s needs as a human, which means you’ve already Not Fallen into that! Which is good. And I’m gonna go ahead and assume you’re not a vicious predator, because, c’mon.
My dad’s current fiancee is a total sweetheart; spending time together, for us, was “Doing Stuff All Parties Enjoy.” Cooking, talking books and movies, taking hikes with the dogs, and general bantering. My dad’s in much the same way with her kids, who still see their dad on a regular basis. Neither of them ever tried to Step In, but both of them took the time to see their partner’s kids as individuals, with individual needs and likes and dislikes.
If you see your boyfriend’s daughter as a person of her own, with whom you can have a unique relationship, you’re going the right direction. Kids can be jerks – my little sister went through a rather long phase where she Hated Dad So Much (with some justification – see above paragraph about proximity-to-abusers), and it took her quite some time to warm up to his fiancee now, not least because no matter how sweet Stepmom was, Sister was in the “No One Understands Me, And If You Try, It Is An Assault On My Individuality” stage of adolescence. So it’s quite possible that N will be standoffish for no reason or fault of your own – but most likely, she will get past that, if you make an effort to forge a meaningful relationship.
tl;dr – you’re doing great. Keep doing that, don’t force it – hanging out together in a casual fashion goes a thousand times farther than any Togetherness Initiative.
Eric says:
February 3, 2013 at 12:52 pm
I just wanted to chime in by saying that both sides of this exchange made me a little weepy with aspirational crushiness — I have no real relevant experience, but N seems to have lucked out in having the LW around.
February 3, 2013 at 1:01 pm
I think it is far, far better to risk loving each other and having that direct relationship than for her to think your reserve with her is because you don’t like her.
This seems to really be the key: That LW and the daughter have not yet taken the risk of loving one another. As always, whenever you love someone, you risk not being loved in return. So maybe that is why both the LW and the daughter have been holding back. As the adult, I think the LW is in a better position to take the risk and initiate the process.
February 3, 2013 at 1:27 pm
Agreed. I think there’s an unfortunate perception in situations like this that the person dating a parent should not be too loving or lovable, in case the relationship with the parent falls apart and the kid is hurt by the loss of someone they’ve grown to love. And yeah — that’s a good reason for not over-involving the kid with the newcomer at all until the adult relationship is reasonably stable and well-established.
But that ignores the hurt of being in sustained proximity but carefully, artificially not allowing love to develop. Why not teach the kid that just because a love might turn out not to be forever doesn’t mean it isn’t worth having, instead? Seems like a healthier model for life, anyway.
Mostly Lurking says:
February 3, 2013 at 5:05 pm
Also, if the parties involves are sensible, there’s no reason why the relationship with the kid should break just because the relationship with the father has drifted apart – there’s no reason why, if both parties are sensible adults, the relationship between LW and daughter can’t survive in ‘aunt’ mode (you get cards for birthdays and Christmas, maybe visit occasionally, and when daughter is older, decide what kind of relationship she keeps.
This will only work if you like each other… but there’s no reason to assume that a break in the relationship with N’s dad means completely ignoring N henceforth. That, in my eye, would *prove* that you liked her only as her father’s daughter, not for herself.
(If a relationship breakup goes badly, and you’re not on speaking terms with the dad… ok. But if it’s a reasonably amicable breakup, at least the occasional cards/email seem attainable.)
February 3, 2013 at 5:08 pm
Yes!
atma says:
February 4, 2013 at 1:48 am
Ali says:
February 4, 2013 at 2:34 am
My mom dated a man for 13 years, from when I was 12. He was effectively my stepdad in a lot of ways, and I really appreciate that while there was an obvious loss of contact immediately following the breakup (and I was living in another state), he never deliberately cut me (or my brother) out of his life. I was able to go to him with problems he could fix, and he always helped me out as much as possible. He was instrumental in getting my brother his current job, which he really loves.
LW, take the risk in being at least a good friend to N. No matter how your relationship with A goes–and I do sincerely hope it’s sunshine and kittens and rainbows and spontaneous songs where everyone knows the words–she can and should have a relationship with you as well.
Lalala says:
February 4, 2013 at 10:07 am
So much yes. We have family friends (son my age, his parents divorced, my parents remain friends with his mother, father, and ex-stepmother) who, when the father and stepmother divorced, she remained close enough to her stepson that she’s who he’s gone to first with some of his biggest life problems. It might be as much as 20 years since that divorce, in fact, and there’s just no question: they’re family.
Erika says:
February 4, 2013 at 8:11 am
I have never been in this position, but my father’s girlfriend has two grown sons, and one of them is the live-in boyfriend of a woman with two daughters, 7 and 9. Dad’s GF has thrown herself whole-heartedly into Grandma Mode and those little girls (whose dads are not the best of people) are blossoming. Part of the time it makes me nervous and a bit sad, because if Son and Son’s Girlfriend break up, then Grandma “loses” those grandchildren–and they “lose” her. But when you see how much love and affection she’s brought into those girls’ lives, and how much it means to them to have someone unreservedly loving in their lives, it’s amazing. Grandma has to take a step back from some things to not step on toes (esp. since the girls have two sets of biological grandparents) but they bake cookies and go to 4-H and have pet bunnies at Grandma’s house and do farm chores and have sleep overs…I’d like to believe that this relationship could survive a breakup of Son and Son’s Girlfriend.
(Son and Son’s Girlfriend have been together several years and have bought a house together, so I’m hopeful that this relationship will stay strong. Son seems to be acting as a very good father figure to the girls, too.)
PCSDevil says:
February 3, 2013 at 1:28 pm
“Do what comes naturally.” I love this advice. I have two little ones, and before the elder was born, I was very apprehensive about my ability to parent, mostly because of weird, unhealthy dynamics during my own childhood. I think I’m doing okay so far, though, mostly because I’ve worked on trusting myself to do what comes naturally–even though I had to work really hard to figure out what it means to be a “natural” parent. If I had to boil it down, there are really two guiding principles that you might be able to adapt to your situation.
First, my son’s needs are greater than mine. Whatever he needs, he needs it more than I need whatever I need. This was extremely helpful in getting me through the first few months of his life: he needed nourishment more than I needed sleep, for example, so he got fed and I sucked it up. Now that he’s older, this definitely has some nuance to it. If he and I are both hungry, he needs food more than I need food. But if I’m so hungry that my temper is short, I need to eat first because while he needs food, he *also* he needs not to be yelled at by a short-tempered giant. So I scarf something in the kitchen and then make him a sandwich. He needs to be read to, but he needs to be read to by a person who is not frazzled and overwhelmed, so on balance, it might be better for him to watch TV for a little while so his introverted mother can decompress and then enjoy reading to him. My point is that in my interactions with him, I try to keep in mind that his needs are so much greater than mine that my needs can be put aside for a little while (or a long while). I’m a grown-up, so moment-to-moment experiences are not as significant to me. He is still developing, so everything is significant to him. I try to make his moment-to-moment life as good and wholesome as I can.
Second, he is a person. He is a person with his own body, his own life, his own experiences and memories and opinions and desires and future. I am here to help him have the best life he can. I am a part of his life, but I am not his life. I want him to love me because I want him to have a life with a mother he loves. I want him to enjoy my company because I want him to have a life that includes a mother he can have fun with. I want him to trust me because I want for him a life that includes trustworthy parents. He is a person with his own life, and his life is about him. I’m always thinking about my own childhood memories, and imagining, “If he remembers this moment, what will that memory tell him about his life?” This really helps me keep my perspective about moment-to-moment stuff. If I’m about to lose my temper, I think, “Do I want him to remember me like this?” It helps.
So first, what does she need? Give her what you can, and find a way to get her as much of the rest as possible. Second, how do you want her to remember you from this time in her life? Make a picture in your head, and then get as close to that picture as you can. If the first picture you come up with is too much for you, scale it back. Get to the basic principle of who you want to be for her, and then live whose principles with whatever resources you’re willing and able to devote. I’m definitely not saying you need to give up your life–that would be a disaster. But maybe start with a list of adjectives. Generous? Supportive? Gentle? Consistent? Once you have two or three adjective, think of how you can best act in ways these words would describe.
February 3, 2013 at 1:30 pm
Excellent advice! You’ve clearly figured things out quite well for yourself.
Actually, what I think I like best is your way of prioritizing your son’s needs without delegitimizing your own. My kids are older than yours, and I’ve extended this principle to allow myself to be a full-fledged person by telling myself that it’s good for my kids to learn that other people besides them have wants and needs, to teach them empathy and so they can be in healthy relationships with give and take someday, and so my daughter in particular does not think she’s supposed to grow up into some self-erasing version of womanhood (nor my son to hold that up as his ideal of femininity).
I even forgive myself the occasional crankiness, provided it is not nastily expressed and is promptly acknowledged as not about them and apologized for, because people do get cranky and my kids will need to be able to deal with some of that in themselves and others, within reasonable bounds.
And when they really do push too far (being people) and I snap at them, well, I figure they may as well learn that there is such a thing as pushing too far, because peers and teachers and lovers and colleagues aren’t all going to be all zen and determined to suck up infuriating behavior no matter what (though yes, I make sure “snapping” is aimed at the behavior, not them as human beings). So they need to learn how to deal with legitimate anger, and to make apologies that show they know what they did wrong and will sincerely try to do better.
zweisatz says:
February 3, 2013 at 1:47 pm
Kaz says:
February 4, 2013 at 3:10 am
This is actually really helpful for me as someone who is kind of struggling with how to aunt. Thank you!
Erika says:
February 4, 2013 at 8:14 am
This is outstanding advice. I love your very balanced approach to parenting.
Note to self: It’s Ok to wait a bit and decompress before I read the book that Daughter is demanding… I would enjoy it more!
February 4, 2013 at 4:15 pm
This comment is full of awesome. As someone who is not a parent but has Strong Opinions, this is pretty much my feels.
NB: I am not a judgemental arsehole, I promise. But my mother had two more kids when I was 14 and 16 respectively and I’ve got to watch her fuck them up* much as she did me and now my 13yo little brother lives with my partner and I half the week.
Leonine says:
February 5, 2013 at 11:56 am
“If he remembers this moment, what will that memory tell him about his life?” – not sure exactly why, but this totally just made me tear up a little. Thank you.
part-time jedi says:
February 3, 2013 at 1:40 pm
If you think N is old enough (and at 11 years old, I think she probably is) you may just want to sit down with her and have a conversation about all this. Tell her straight-up that you had been holding back because you weren’t sure about how things would go with A, and because you didn’t want to be The Evil Stepmother, but that it looks like you’re going to be part of each other’s lives, and you want to be a good stepmom. Ask her what a good stepmom looks like to her. Ask her what she wants out of a relationship with you. And then tell her what your vision is, and what you need from her, and talk it out from there.
This has the added benefits of a) being super duper crystal clear, with little room for misinterpretation on either side, and b) is you treating her like an adult. Most pre-teens LOVE it when you actually sit down and talk, and listen, and give them a say negotiating how their own lives will run.
February 3, 2013 at 1:50 pm
I completely agree, with the exception of using the word stepmom. That could seem kind of presumptuous if there have been no marriage discussions, and “clarifying the relationship between LW and Kid” should not be the thing that pushes LW and A into marriage if their relationship has not gotten there on its own merits.
Better to stick with identifying common ground, in the form of “I like you, and I’m sure we’d both like to be not awkward in our own home, so whaddaya say we give some thought to what kind of relationship we want to have?” without saying stepmom.
part-time jedi says:
February 3, 2013 at 2:13 pm
You’re right, the word stepmom does imply a level of relationship with A that may not actually be there. Thanks for the correction!
Britt says:
February 3, 2013 at 3:11 pm
Agreed with this. Saying stepmom is going to make promises about the relationship that aren’t there yet. I also think there’s an advantage in not making it about LW’s relationship with A at all. I had a step-mom at the same age as the kid in question who I remember clearly feeling like only made an effort to like me because of my father, and it was shitty. It made me feel like a pawn or like I wasn’t interesting or lovable enough in my own right. The more you can present it as “now that we’ve met and gotten to know you a little, I’d like to get to know you more” and the less “because of your father I’m making an effort to get to know you”, the better. You definitely sound like you’re coming at this from the right angle, though, LW!
February 4, 2013 at 4:28 pm
I concur! But yeah, I think a discussion is a great idea. I also think that the OP’s doing great – you *are* an adult, and so long as the kid’s treating you respectfully and will listen to instructions you give where appropriate, I don’t think you need a force a particular model of relationship here.
Ramble about the label “step-parent” to come – note, marriage is not a legal necessity in NZ like the US (there are civil unions but also defacto partnerships that give you rights as a couple) so marriage itself is a moot point to me.
I think an *actual* step-parent occupies a very specific place in a child’s life. There from a young enough age that the idea of a 3rd or 4th parent isn’t just improbable (anywhere from 10-13 in my opinion, that dynamic is just not going to happen) but also with a natural and unforced close relationship that is absolutely not a given.
My father died when I was 11 months old. He is my father. My other father raised me, with my mother, from before I have memories. He is also my father – he is not my step-father.
Equally, when my mother and father-who-raised-me split up when I was 13, the man my mother got into a relationship with who I hated was not my step-father. He was my mother’s partner. But neither was the woman that my father got into a relationship with, who I loved. She was my father’s partner.
My siblings have known my partner since they were 4 and 2. He has always been there. He has always been a calm, caring part of their lives (in contrast with their parents). My brother now lives with us half the week. He can’t stand his father and has a love-hate relationship with our mother. He comes to me or my partner when he is scared or sad. My partner will still never be his step-father. He is his sister’s partner. He occupies a space more expected of a parent – support, emotional and practical but he’s not his parent.
This is a pet topic of mine. I fucking despise the idea children have no right to define their own relationships. That because you are in a relationship with someone your kid has to see them as a parent. Oh hell no. Kids have to treat adults they live with with respect, but parenting is more than that.
Chris Miller says:
February 4, 2013 at 11:33 pm
I sort of think it can be useful to learn even fairly shallowly about the ways other cultures construct family. Where you don’t just have two parents and their kids, but aunts and uncles and cousins and grandparents, all of which may or may not be related to you and who have different roles – I remember particularly reading something by an Aborigine woman explaining all the different aunties and uncles and grandparents they have in her tribe and how biological parents actually don’t do much of the child raising in comparison to Western/European cultures. It’s sort of reassuring to know that there’s basically infinite ways to construct a family to meet everyone’s needs.
(And of course, in Reo, whaea means both mother and aunt!)
February 5, 2013 at 3:44 am
This makes far more sense to me. Though that of course is also usually linked to rigid gender roles and family expectations, which also makes me sad.
But I’d definitely love to see more of a shift toward less nuclear and more family family in western countries. And/or just more chilled about how people construct their families.
February 3, 2013 at 2:42 pm
One thing to keep in mind with a continued relationship, that will likely come up. You met her at 9, and you are in the position to be a friend and ally. Which means if you’re strengthening your relationship, there very likely will be issues that come up where she wants you on her side, against your boyfriend. Partially because different people have different opinions, and partially because she’ll be testing you. So try to think it through and be prepared?
Say, N has decided she wants to buy a lime green tank top. A puts his foot down that lime green tank tops are FAR too mature for his widdle baby girl. N comes to you “Can’t you talk to dad? Come on, make him see reason! It’s just a tank top!” So try to work out a plan before you’re put on the spot? And part of that plan may be to take him aside and go “She is 11, not 3, her friends and many younger kids are wearing lime green. If you still don’t think she’s ready to handle such a bold color I will support you, but I think she may be ready. Will you think it over?”
She might also start coming to you for emotional validation. “Dad told me if I wanted to play NewSong over and over and over again I had to keep the volume down or wear headphones and that’s SO HORRIBLE and he’s SO MEAN and I’m SO ANGRY.” And you get to walk the tightrope of Validating Her Feelings, while avoiding demonizing him and egging her on in her anger.
My own father’s dating a lady who met me as an adult, and it’s so refreshing that for the first time in my life, I have an ally when dad starts acting like I’m a child. And our relationship has really improved for it.
February 3, 2013 at 3:14 pm
I really think the honesty tactic is just perfect- tell her WHY you struggle to relate a bit, that you don’t want to mess up… My daughter is 11 and despite sometimes seeming so innocent and naive, they are so damn smart! They know if you’re lying or holding back but they often don’t know why, and that is when feelings get hurt. Honesty tells her not only the whole story, but that you respect her enough to share it with her and care about her enough to put yourself out there.
Cheers to you, you are doing a bloody good job!
KM says:
February 3, 2013 at 3:37 pm
Aww to this letter. It sounds like LW is looking for a role between ‘stranger’ and ‘parent’, maybe more like an auntie? On a practical note it seemed like the LW wasn’t sure if she should discipline the kid when she’s doing something a bit naughtly, and what I’ve done in this situation is to say to the kid: “Hmm, I’m not sure your Dad would like that” or “Do you think your Dad would be OK with that?”
atma says:
February 4, 2013 at 1:59 am
Also, she’s a younger person in your home where you are one of the grown-ups. If you are able to show her basic respect, she is able to return it. I don’t get the sense form this letter that this would be the case, but IF she uses her position as your boyfriend’s daughter to bully you, you have the right to stand your ground. You can ask her to put the milk back in the fridge without encroaching on parent-territory or being subjected to “You are not my mother!”-tantrums
February 6, 2013 at 3:31 pm
Another tactic for the “put the milk back in the fridge” type stuff, and the one my mom used on me when I graduated from stereotypically-slobby-teenager to unacceptably-slobby-young-adult, is to make it a request from one housemate to another rather than a command from an adult authority figure. “Nope, I’m not your mother, but we are sharing the same house and I’d ask the exact same thing if we were roommates in college.”
February 3, 2013 at 6:13 pm
OK LW, I know this is going to sound corny but – Be Yourself. Let go of the desire to say and do everything right, because at the end of the day, you really can’t MAKE someone like you. 11-year olds don’t think things through and make a logical decision about whether you’re alright. They just like you or they don’t. I was a stepchild and I loved my stepmum and hated my stepdad, just because of the vibe they each gave out – even though they were both very nice people and both did similar things for me (helped me with homework etc.). But my feelings were my feelings and they never changed. There’s very little about that that you can actually control, and she’s probably already made up her mind about you (this can be a good or a bad thing depending on how she feels about you now!). Also, don’t worry about being an introvert, that might be exactly what she needs. The reason I got on so well with my stepmom was because I was extraverted and she was introverted, so she gave me my space and there weren’t any personality clashes. Win-win!
1) DON’T MESS with the stuff about the mum. Children are very sensitive to how the ‘absent’ parent is being treated or talked about. If you put down or disrespect mum in front of her, she’ll only side with the mother more to ‘even things out’. Who knows, she might even be talking up the mum in front of you to test the waters, and see what you’ll say. Make sure that the mum, for all her faults, is being acknowledged and her role as The Mother is respected. If you do this, chances are the daughter will eventually feel safe enough to voice her doubts about the “mum is perfect” fantasy, but she needs the space to do that when she’s ready.
2) Kid’s relationship with dad comes before your relationship with dad. Sorry, but they were there first. If the daughter feels like you or your relationship with dad is getting in the way of her relationship with him, you’ve got trouble. Make sure they’ve got their special daddy-daughter bonding time (and sometimes that will mean alone time, without you), and you’ll be right. Some step-parents get threatened by this because they feel excluded, but hopefully you’re not insecure enough to let that get to you.
I really hope things work out for all of you.
February 4, 2013 at 8:22 pm
“Some step-parents get threatened by this because they feel excluded” — one thing that I’d suggest to step-parents who feel threatened by this is that even in stereotypical two-biological-parents-and-their-mutual-offspring households, each parent needs one-on-one time with their children.
It’s not really “they were there first”, it’s “healthy parent-child relationships involve one-on-one time”. Heck, don’t all close relationships? Partners, siblings, friends?
February 5, 2013 at 9:11 am
Definitely seconding this advice! My father (the parent I was not living with) had a horrible, horrible gf/wife for all of my teens. She was toxic and she *hated* the fact that he had kids, behaving like a child and manipulating my dad. My father was (and is) oblivious to this (even though he is ultimately responsible for pushing her onto me and my sister).
She also egged my father on in mistreating my mother (financial stuff), reflecting his venting right back to him, and forming her own opinions without having met my mother. Obviously, this is a different situation, but please don’t do that.
Also, giving father and child enough time to bond one-on-one is really important. Especially if the father is in a We Are Such A Happy Family Let’s Spend All Of Our Time Together phase. I could image N would be very grateful if you actually encouraged them to spent time just the two of them.
I do think it is important to aknowledge that N’s reasonable needs will always come before your reasonable needs for your partner. That is just the way it is if someone has a child – they are responsible and it will be more important than any other person in their life (hopefully, anyway). But that shouldn’t keep you away from being an auntie/godmother type of person to this child.
Yan says:
February 3, 2013 at 6:31 pm
BTDT with a relationship that didn’t work out, but it sounds like the LW is in a much better position than I was to make it last.
I’ll quibble with only one bit of advice from above — there aren’t really good stepparenting books that provide useful advice of this level. Try online. I met some people in a stepparenting (let’s me be real — stepmom chat room. If there were stepdads on there, they didn’t speak out, and I never saw a separate board for them. The pressures are different). This all means that first, you have to admit that you’re in a step-parenting role, LW, which you are. Even if you don’t post, read. Most of the people posting are in more complicated, sometimes horrific, situations, but some of them (many) are just experiencing frustrations with the step — step removed from “normal” parenting, in which you have to navigate the role as though it’s re-inventing the wheel. Step-parents are not a new, late 20th century invention! Why is it so complicated?
It’s complicated because family is complicated, and the pressures put on any modern family seem even more so. It helps to know you’re not the only one confused or trying to figure it out.
You do need to find your inner adult and validate her. It’s there. There needs to be a tiny but important step of difference in your relationship with N that your partner supports — you are an adult in the household, and while you’ll never be the primary person in charge of N, occasionally you will need to have authority with her.
Marvel says:
February 3, 2013 at 8:21 pm
I want to add one thing to this, and I haven’t read the comments yet so sorry if this has already been stated by someone else:
Make sure you ask the kid, every step of the way, if it’s okay for you to be more involved in her life. Don’t just ask A about the relevant activities you might like to do with her, ask the KID. There is nothing worse than feeling like your parent has given another adult permission to do or feel something regarding you that you are not ready for. So, if you want to drive her to school, ask her: “Hey, I was thinking I’d drive you to school tomorrow. Is that okay?” And–this is the key step–if she says she’d rather not for whatever reason, LISTEN. Take it at face value and don’t try to talk her out of it. Ask again later or try something else.
In the end, it’s her decision whether she wants to have a relationship with you or not, and getting to say yes or no to those kinds of questions as she likes is her right. You can try but, as per the above advice, you can’t force it.
February 3, 2013 at 9:11 pm
This seems like very, very smart advice.
February 3, 2013 at 11:05 pm
I’ve been with my husband since his daughters were very young. Now they are in their 20s (!!!) and they are amazing young women and I have a good relationship with them. But I did have to learn a few lessons the hard way. Here is my advice to anyone starting out as a stepparent:
1. In terms of discipline, when you are alone with her it’s your responsibility to protect her safety and well-being, and you can’t always wait for her dad to come home in order to do that (“No, you can’t use the curling iron in the bathtub!”) You also have the right to protect your comfort and privacy in your own home. You can set limits like, “My bedside drawer is off-limits and you can’t go through it” or “I’m doing taxes right now so I need you to turn off the TV until I’m done.” If a misbehavior warrants further discipline (like grounding or taking away privileges), then wait until dad comes home, discuss it with him, and let him present the consequences to her.
2. Present a united front to the child. Unless he’s being genuinely abusive (which I’m assuming is not ever the case), don’t interfere with or argue with his discipline in front of her. If he grounds her for a week, don’t let her go out behind his back when you’re alone with her. If you have a problem with his decisions, bring it up to him in private. Even among two biological parents I think it’s important not to undermine each other in front of the kids.
3. Never, ever badmouth the other parent to the child. Children love their parents, even when those parents do awful things. And it’s important as a stepparent to respect that love, even if you don’t respect the other parent. She doesn’t need to learn the truth about her mother from you.
4. As others have said, be yourself. You don’t have to fit into some role that you think others expect of you. You have to be a responsible adult, keeping her safe when she’s in your care, but beyond that you have the opportunity to craft a relationship with this girl on the terms you two decide! If you aren’t a crafty person, don’t feel obligated to make scrapbooks with her because you think you should. But find something that you love with all your heart (a cheesy movie? Ice skating? baking your secret cookie recipe?) and share it with her. Learn from her (my stepdaughter introduced me to some awesome music). Let your goofy side show (I’ve had the best times dancing ridiculously down the street singing loudly with my stepdaughters). And yes, share with her that you’re introverted and quiet. Be honest about who you are and take the time to learn who she really is, too. Enjoying her may be the best gift you can ever give her.
5. Remember that you will never be this girl’s mother. But children have room to love and be loved by many more than just two adults. You *are* a caretaker and a role model. Don’t worry much about whether you’re being too “motherly.” As long as you don’t expect to replace her mother in her heart, she doesn’t have a quota for how much love, guidance and nurturing she can receive.
February 3, 2013 at 11:16 pm
Yes, this is such good advice from CA and all the commenters.
I don’t have much to add, but I just want to say just your willingness to really get involved and have your own relationship with her is awesome.
Growing up my mom was sick a lot of the time and we had a lot of nannies that, while they didn’t live with us, cared for us a lot of the time, sometimes for years. We had very close relationships with them and when they left I think it was always hard for us, but honestly I don’t really remember whether it was so it can’t have been that traumatizing. On the other hand, when my mom passed away when I was 12 and we went to live with my dad and my stepmom, her almost complete lack of interest in having a relationship with me was hurtful and traumatizing. She treated me like a roommate most of the time (I actually remember one time when I literally said to her at about 14 or 15, “I am a child. I am not your roommate.” She actually thanked me for reminding her. She needed to be reminded). She had never wanted kids (my dad didn’t have much of a relationship with us when they got together) and she made it clear that she didn’t have much of an interest in me. I remember once she tried to tell me I couldn’t go out and I had to do my homework a few years into living with her and at that point I was already sure she had no authority over me since she had shown no interest in my life and I wouldn’t listen to her. We ended up having an okay relationship and some mutual respect, but it was really hurtful at the time and definitely something I talk about in therapy now. So my opinion is that it is definitely worth the risk of showing her you care and want a relationship with her even if you may not be in her life forever.
I especially like CA’s suggestion that you spend some time with her. I know as an introvert I always feel really awkward “performing” in front of other people with kids and feeling like as a woman I have to show that I’m good with kids, but one on one I find it much easier to spend time with them and play and move at their pace, play and listen to them. As a sensitive introvert you are especially well-equipped to do this! I imagine this pressure is especially strong with your boyfriend watching, so try spending some time with her without it!
Twitchy says:
February 4, 2013 at 12:22 am
Both my parents remarried when I was a kid, and most of this advice sounds pretty good to me. I disagree completely with the advice about car rides, though. When a kid’s in a car, they’re trapped. There’s no safe way to leave, and it can feel really threatening if an adult’s trying to Relationship then.
I think my mom handled me and her boyfriend pretty well. After they’d been together for a while, and we’d had a chance to get used to each other, she asked for a home-made spice rack for her birthday, and suggested we make it together. So I got to go to her boyfriend’s favorite hardware store, and he taught me how to use his drill press, which I thought was pretty cool. It gave us a reason to be in each other’s company, and an activity to focus on instead of awkwardly trying to make conversation.
Do you have any hobbies or skills your boyfriend’s kid might think are cool? If you don’t, is there anything new you want to try that she could try with you?
It might also help if the idea comes from him, just because he’s the bridge between you two right now.
February 4, 2013 at 10:32 am
I saw the car ride advice as being offered in a “don’t attempt to have Big Serious conversations” context. Car rides in general, when treated as casual transportation from point A to point B, offer opportunities for low-key, low-pressure conversations.
“I’m trying to decide what to do for dinner tonight, and I can’t decide between chicken and spaghetti. Is there one you’d rather have?”
“I was planning to go to the library after I drop you off; anything I can pick up for you?”
And you can always fall back on the classic of music negotiation, where you
February 4, 2013 at 10:35 am
Ack! Clicked “post” mid-sentence!
Music negotiation can sometimes be fun — you take turns suggesting stuff, and each person gets X number of vetoes, so you can suggest ridiculous things as your first choice to get the other person to use a veto, and they can call your bluff and you end up listening to “Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer.” (It can also turn acrimonious if you criticize each other’s choices — “Nope, gonna veto that one!” being much preferable to “Ick, how can you like that?”)
February 4, 2013 at 11:21 am
Yeah, that’s how I meant it: don’t try to have intense, purposeful Getting to Know You sessions, as if getting to know Kid is something you put on a to do list with the goal of checking it off. Not in the house, not in a car, not in a boat… Just be together and talk about ordinary stuff.
Mostly Lurking says:
February 4, 2013 at 10:55 am
I like the idea of ‘I’d love it if we did something for your Dad’s birthday together’ (and if she says no, then that’s a no. But maybe there’s something she’d love to do/learn and can’t without an adult.)
February 5, 2013 at 9:19 am
Another sugggestion: Building a complicated Lego crane together. Remember having fun doing that with one of my mum’s bf. Achieving something as a team is great for bonding!
February 4, 2013 at 12:43 am
I agree with Marvel (above). Let her make actual decisions. Let her “no” and “yes” be enough in themselves – don’t push for a reason why if it seems she’s uncomfortable. For instance, she may be okay with you taking her to school, but not okay with the doctor. And the reasons for her not wanting you involved in the doctor visit may be quite personal. So, you can ask “why” from time to time, of course! Just don’t push.
Stay in a united front with A. This was really important to me when I was doing the stepmom thing. Even if he says you’re doing fine, check with him every time you’re going to start some new phase of the relationship. Going to be doing more driving? Check in with him. Want to start a family activity one night a week? Check in with him. 2 reasons for this: 1). It will help keep your romantic relationship healthy. Even if he seems mildly confused (as my then-husband did) as to why you are checking in with him, you and he both know that you’re not stepping on any toes. 2). You’re all on the same page. No surprises means you and A can back each other up on tough issues, and that you can’t be played off against each other.
Know your own boundaries. This goes along with taking care of yourself as a person. It might be establishing one night a week as a “you” night, and hiding out in the bathtub and your bedroom all evening. It might be clearly defining that you personally will not answer calls from N’s mother. (Communication with the other parent can be tricky. For me, staying out of it as much as humanly possible -even if I did the exchanges- made my life much, much easier.
Other than those bits of advice, from the tone of your letter I feel like you are doing a great job already! And that you will only do better in the future. You seem like you are giving this a lot of thought and are seeing clearly what you want and what your family needs. Congrats and best of luck!
February 4, 2013 at 12:19 pm
I agree that having an Actual Parent attend N’s doctor’s visits with her is probably the best for a host of reasons (and up to N to decide!), but it occurs to me that as far as Body Stuff 11-Year-Olds Deal With goes, N might appreciate having another woman in the house. I mean, it would be great if N always felt safe and unembarrassed about talking to her dad about puberty things (and sexuality things, too) and I don’t think LW should involve herself in any conversations that LW herself isn’t comfortable with. I just know I was mortified to ask my dad to buy me pads/tampons when I was 11-12 years old ever and almost certainly would have asked pretty much any other lady before I asked him about it. YMMV, of course.
February 5, 2013 at 10:59 pm
Absolutely!! I agree that N may welcome a female presence/advice, especially on body/gender issues! Was just trying to come up with an example for what I was saying, but you are very right here. N might appreciate LW in the Body Stuff department, and LW might want to be aware of that. Thanks!
Elodie Rose says:
February 4, 2013 at 3:18 am
I got a really lovely step dad when we were teenagers, and that poor man was in the worst possible position, because shortly after he came onto the scene and before he moved in, our biological father passed away very suddenly. That man deserves a medal for his step parenting!
I think he got it so right because he was very gentle, didn’t try and rush into anything and stayed away from the discipline and rule setting.
I think the best thing he did was become someone we could rely on in his own niche way. He found area where our mother lacked and stepped up. Where our (formerly single mother with a full time job) wasn’t much of a gourmet, Stepdad cooked new dishes, caught his own fish and cooked it for all of us, tempted us with creme brulees and showed us how to flame the sugar on the top.
He became our go-to for car problems and would volunteer to change the oil in mine when he was doing his own, offered to run mine up for a wheel alignment while I was away for the weekend. Sometimes I’d come out and find he’d cleaned it that morning without mentioning it. They were small gestures, but because he didn’t ever make a show of it, we slowly decided he was a decent guy. And eventually he became a go-to for certain things for us.
The captain is right, find some common ground and go from there. What were you good at in school? Offer to help her with that homework or assignment. Does she love reading?recommend some stuff she might like, or ask her about that series she’s reading. If you do a wicked braid, do her hair for a party sometime. If you can, think of things you have to offer that her dad maybe isn’t so good for and become a support person in those areas. Cool live-in aunt who is really good at explaining algebra and doesn’t roll her eyes when she talks about the Saddle Club is a good place to aim for.
Really important: let her know that you won’t disappear or draw back if she throws a tantrum or hurts your feelings. Just like a real parent, show her that your feelings towards her don’t change if she acts like a brat, that the next day you still care about her and aren’t sulking about it. She will realise that you’re someone she can trust, and it will show her she can open up to you about more serious things and she won’t regret it. Which will be super important when she’s a bit older, because you may find that if you have a decent relationship, she may turn to you that her than her dad for relationship, sex, friends etc advice and it can’t be a bad thing for her to have you (and your awkward army affiliation) on her side through that
Leonine says:
February 4, 2013 at 7:39 am
Chipping in as another person who was lucky enough to grow up with a great relationship with my stepmom. My dad started a serious relationship with someone when I was about 13, which lasted until he died about five years ago. (They weren’t married, but I consider her my stepmom and that’s the word I use when I describe her to other people). I’m now 30 and although we live in different countries and my dad is no longer around, we have kept in touch and always make a point of seeing each other when I go home. I want to second some of the points made above as things that really worked, in what I realise now must have been a pretty daunting situation for her (I was the most stereotypically stroppy, angstful 13-year-old on the planet and it would have been very easy for it all to go horribly wrong): the most important, I think, was that we had an individual relationship as human beings that had nothing to do with me being my dad’s daughter. She thought I was a smart, funny, interesting human being and treated me as such. And she never took on a full-on parenting/ disciplinarian role, so there was never the sense that she was trying to ‘replace’ my mom – although the situation was bit different to the LW’s as I lived with my mom and was very close to her, and only saw my dad and stepmom on weekends. I guess the point is that if there was serious-parenting stuff that needed to happen, she knew she could leave it up to my parents, so I never felt the need to push back against her.
The other thing was that it was clear to me that she and my dad had a very strong relationship, so although I did see her as an ally in some ways and knew I could trust her, I was also aware that trying to play her and my dad off against each other wouldn’t work. So I really second the advice above about presenting a united front.
The most awkward moments we had were the ones where my dad made a big deal of how we should have ‘getting-to-know-you’ time that involved a specific and planned activity – like ‘you’re both into art so I’m going to leave the house for two hours so you can draw together, won’t that be fun??’. Stepmom’s reaction was spot-on: as soon as my dad left the house, she said ‘Well that sounds like a totally awkward plan, doesn’t it?’ and instead we spent the afternoon quietly drinking tea and reading magazines. I think that was the exact moment that I decided I was ok with her being in the family
February 4, 2013 at 10:01 am
Mother of teens here, and one thing to keep in mind is that *all kids* have moments where they’re mean, or nasty, or in a bad mood and that sometimes they are just being eleven, or twelve, or whatever, and they’re not doing that *at you* They are doing it because they are in the midst of teenagerism. It doesn’t matter what your bond to them is, they’re mad at EVERYONE under the sun and you’re just the nearest target sometimes.
The teen years are very very hard until the teens figure out for themselves the best way to interact with other people. When those bad days happen, and they will happen, sometimes it is really not you at all, it is them dealing with stuff that has nothing to do with you. Sometimes asking what is wrong helps, but sometimes it just gets doors slammed in your face. I would definitely seek out other parents/adult in the life of teens if for no other reason you can hear that it’s not just you this is happening to – you are totally not alone.
It’s scary, how strong emotions/learning life/hormone changes impact a kid’s life. You can almost see them caught up in this whirlwind in front of you. If you can stay stable and calm through that, it helps a lot. It sounds very much like you’re trying to do that, and honestly, having at least one calm stable person available on a regular basis for conversation is way more than a lot of teens have – go you!
February 4, 2013 at 12:31 pm
I saw a cracked article that the opening gist was “Teenage years means these people’s bodies are going through tons of changes and they’re shooting up two inches overnight and weight redistributing and hair growing and all these other crazy visible changes, and we expect their brains to be continuing on the slow steady plod to Maturity? “
February 4, 2013 at 11:31 am
I think there’s been a lot of fantastic advice! I want to talk a bit about authority.
You have two different sources of authority in this situation, and they come with different kinds of responsibilities.
1: You are an adult, even if you don’t really feel like one all the time (pro tip: lots of adults don’t feel adult all the time. Lots of us fake it til we make it.) In this role, you have knowledge about how the world works; you have access to things like cars, money, and take-out pizza parlors; you know where hospitals are and how to call 911. When you apply that to the child in your proximity, that confers responsibilities like keeping the child alive and fed, more or less, which is pretty easy for an 11 year old. Use of any of your magic adult powers is generally negotiable. You also have the responsibility to acknowledge yourself as a Grown Up to the child, and maintain that boundary, even as you negotiate going out for pizza or whatever.
Example: “No, I won’t drive you to the mall today, I’m reading a book. Maybe tomorrow.”
2: You have authority sourced in the child’s father. You’re kind of deputized, as an adult representative of him. This is the stuff you really want to be explicit about for all of you, so you all understand the rules. Can you enforce bedtime? Can you take away the computer? I’ve never been in a stepparent or stepchild situation, but whenever I’ve been the Aunt or babysitter or something, I go with “Those are the rules” and refer the kid to the source of the authority. I never get to overrule the parent. The longer you stay with them, the more of this kind of authority you will probably get, unless you actively try to avoid it.
Example: “No, I won’t drive you to the mall today. You haven’t finished your homework. You know the rules.”
Boundaries related to your adulthood, your own authority, are things you really need to define for yourself. You can and should communicate about them with your partner and his daughter, but ultimately that’s about what you need. The rest, you figure out with your partner first, probably, and then talk with the daughter about how well that works.
The most important thing, I think, is consistency! Consistency in setting your own boundaries, consistency in your partner’s rules for the house, consistency in how they are developed and enforced, consistency in love and emotional support no matter what else is going on.
February 4, 2013 at 2:41 pm
I think that kind of authoritarianism is exactly what the LW as a woman who grew up with authoritarianism is trying to avoid. While it’s not her job to be a personal chauffeur it’s also not her job to dictate behavior to the kid.
February 4, 2013 at 3:50 pm
The point is more that she’s *not* the one making the rules.
I think it’s important for LW to understand the difference between her *own* boundaries, which LW mentioned working on developing and enforcing and feeling grownup about, and boundaries she’s enforcing for the child’s father.
I mean, she can phrase it any way she wants, but if the rule is no going to the mall before the homework is done, she’s got to uphold that rule for the kid even if she’s about to drive to the mall herself. LW can, and should, talk with both of them about her place in such things, so that the kid knows that LW is not *supposed* to bend the rules for her.
I’m trying to think of how LW can have space figure out her own adultness (which is important and hard and I’ve spent like fifteen years feeling bad at!) with having to handle boundaries with a child who’s awesome, but also about to be a teenager, and who is going to be pushing on those boundaries.
I think I personally would need that kind of framework in place in my head before I could comfortably take a more active role in a child’s life. Then, once that’s in place, I can use all my other ideas to connect and problem solve. I’d want laughter, I’d want to diffuse tension, I’d want good food. I’d want color and joy and silliness. It’s just that security and consistency make those things possible, and nobody else was really talking about a framework for LW to think about that.
February 4, 2013 at 4:08 pm
It is inconceivable that the LW can be an adult in Kid’s sphere — who presumably is sometimes the only adult home with Kid — and never have to set boundaries herself or enforce rules/expectations. “No, that would require me to drop everything, and it’s not a reasonable request;” “no, we both know that’s against your dad’s rules for you;” “no, that’s not safe,” “no, you’re acting like a brat and I’m not going to reward that type of behavior.” It makes perfect sense to think out the kinds of situations that might arise ahead of time — and I agree with Carbonated Wit that the expectation should not be that LW can only enforce standards expressly articulated by the dad ahead of time.
It’s kind of like statutes vs case law: statutes define the rules, but enforcement involves judgment calls, and the LW shouldn’t be hamstrung by “Daddy said I could go the mall” if it turns out her friend’s big sister with a brand-new driver’s license is driving, not the mom everyone had assumed… Or whatever. They do need to talk that kind of stuff out ahead of time: e.g., LW always has absolute authority if it’s a safety issue and Dad is not available to be checked in with.
February 4, 2013 at 5:25 pm
and I guess I just have a different philosophy. I am of the opinion that you enforce rules on children UNTIL they reach teenagehood, and then you slowly transition to treating them like adults. If there is homework to be done and she instead decides to go to the mall at 15 then guess what? It’s her who will suffer the consequences and then AFTER she makes a bad choice her FATHER NOT THE LW gets to bring about some discipline. When you make all the decisions for someone instead of allowing them to make their own they 1) never learn how to think for themselves and are going to end up hanging themselves with all the rope that you suddenly threw at them after attaching them to a leash for 18 years. and 2) end up resenting you for it because you never let them be responsible.
February 4, 2013 at 5:59 pm
Not really understanding your point here. Whether the rule is or isn’t overprotective in your personal opinion, LW should not be undermining the girl’s dad. If LW thinks a rule is silly or wrong, she can privately talk to her partner about it, but “oh, your dad is so strict, I’ll take you to the mall this one time” is a BAD IDEA.
February 4, 2013 at 6:32 pm
You do remember we’re talking about an 11-year-old, right?
Virginia says:
February 4, 2013 at 12:47 pm
LW, I think you sound as if you’re being really smart and loving about the whole situation. Lots of good advice on here, which I won’t rehash.
But I will say this: I have been where you are, except with 3 kids. Even 10 years later, it remains a sometimes not-easy road, but we are working it out, and I so value the presence of those young people in my life. They are so fun, and funny, and trying to be good to them has made me a better person.
One thing that has really worked out is that my husband has always been cool with the idea that I get to be “the fun one.” Sure, there have been times when I have had to be the disciplinarian (e.g., The Great Everything Got Taken Away Tragedy of aught-four), but mostly I get to be a sympathetic ear and instigator of craft projects. It’s a good dynamic for us.
I wish you fun times and happiness with Kid.
February 5, 2013 at 9:31 am
Another general tid-bit of advice on being the Fun One: Make sure you are doing fun stuff with her because you like to and you like her, not because you are trying to bribe her. Children can tell the difference and *hate* attempts at bribing them into not disturbing Dad and New Girlfriend’s happiness.
Virginia says:
February 5, 2013 at 1:33 pm
YES.
And I try to err on the side of the fun thing they want to do. Thus, I have learned that I do NOT like cake balls, but I have had some insanely cool manicures.
Bunny says:
February 10, 2013 at 7:50 am
A wee bit (way!) late to the party, but was somewhere without internets for a few days and this is one recent letter I think I can comment a little on.
To build a good relationship with your boyfriend’s daughter, the absolute best thing you can do is find some things the two of you have in common. If you can only find one, that’s cool, but if you have two or three mutual interests, all the better! When my mum met my Da when I was 14, it was our mutual love of science, fascination with conspiracy theories and ability to wax lyrical for several hours about Why The Pyramids that allowed us to bond. Oh, and he reads tarot, and taught me how to do it, too.
If you like to cook, cooking is a fantastic way to bond. There’s so much coordination, so much working together and learning to trust each other involved in preparing a decorated cake or a batch of jam or a dinner. From testing sauces and experimenting with seasoning, to the hilarious fun of a failed cooking experiment (don’t ask about the 3-hour session in the kitchen with my mum last week, that ended up with a bowl of “pasta” so dense the dog wouldn’t eat it and us unable to eat the chip butties we ended up with because our stomachs hurt from laughing). It’s also great if you’re shy or find it hard to strike up conversation, because 90% of the talking is instructing and discussing the food, and as you get better at it more and more of the work takes place with neither of you needing to say anything.
If in doubt, find out what the young lass is into and try to build some interest of your own.
February 21, 2013 at 9:51 am
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Seeing double? Following Greek Day on Monday, students expressed their creativity on Tuesday with the theme of Pair Day. On Pair Day, students dressed similarly with a partner or with a group of people.
The best dressed pairs or groups from each grade were represented during lunch. Daniel Dixon and Micah Banks represented the freshmen class as Cavalier fanatics because they covered themselves from head to toe in Christ Church apparel. The sophomore class was represented by Anna Hallman and Nell Gray Rasmussen who dressed as the inspirational football coaching Frost brothers. Alex Mahaffey and Jackson Weede represented the junior class as Lloyd and Harry from the early ‘90s movie Dumb and Dumber. The juniors were also represented by Isabel Pentaleri and Hannah Foster who dressed as Napoleon and Kip form the movie Napoleon Dynamite. Finally, the senior class was represented by Ellie Williams, Josh Rodgers and Isaiah Hogue as the Lion, the Scarecrow and the Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz. The teachers then voted on which grade they thought had the best costumes. The junior and senior class tied in the voting because as Radford Swent put it, “Their ideas were original and originality is most important to winning the costume contest.”
After school, students had a great time eating dinner at Firehouse Subs, where partial profits went to this year’s charities and then participating in Capture the Cones at school on the practice football field at seven.
All the events of Pair Day helped make it exciting and a great success for the entire Upper School. So far, homecoming has been great even though it isn’t even half way over.
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This year's National Signing Day Ceremony at Christ Church saw five Christ Church seniors announcing the continuation of their academic and athletic c...
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Harvard style offers a set of standard writing and referencing guidelines that need to be followed by all research students who are working on their UK dissertations. Basically, a professional writing style is always recommended by an academic institution so students may develop dissertations that can be better understood by their target readers. A professional writing or referencing style also provides standardization to an academic field, as all dissertations in that field follow the same style. Thus, their audience would know what to expect.
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If your work does not comply with Harvard style rules, then your work may not be accepted by your college or university. This is because your dissertation may not match the standards that have been followed in various other projects performed in your academic area. If your readers go through your work, then they might think of it to contain plagiarism. Thus, it is very important to write and cite your references according to a set system, which is the Harvard system for UK dissertations. A professional writing style is the backbone of a sound academic process. It is critical for every student to comply with this system and fulfill their accountability toward the entire academic community.
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3- Later, lay in the bowl half a kilogram, one cup of anise more or less and a little of cinnamon, and mix up other time.
4- One time mix up very good, knead it the mass until it is less sticky.
5- Now, it takes a little of mass, it leaves smooth and it is made strips.
6- Later, it curls up and join the mass for shape it.
7- For end, it fries the mass with oil and a little of
sesame seeds over high heat, in seconds it will ready for eat.
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Caring For the Land and Serving People
In an effort to restore and provide a genetic boost to the population of sharp-tailed grouse in the Moquah Barrens of the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest, 160 sharp-tailed grouse were translocated from NW Minnesota over a three-year period between 2016 and 2018. This translocation effort, on-going monitoring, and landscape restoration are made possible by funding through the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative and the USDA Lake Superior Landscape Restoration Partnership; with partners from the Wisconsin and Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, Bad River and Red Cliff Bands of Lake Superior Chippewa, Wisconsin and Minnesota Sharp-tailed Grouse Societies, Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission, US Fish and Wildlife Service, and numerous other volunteers.
Sharp-tailed grouse are native to Wisconsin and historically occupied a large portion of the state, using primarily, young, open pine and oak barrens or savanna ecosystems like the Moquah Barrens. Additionally, sharp-tailed grouse will use other open lands such as grasslands, and agricultural fields. Aagask, Ojibwe for sharp-tailed grouse, are nicknamed the “firebird” since they are a species that relies on large scale disturbance events, like fire, to renew and maintain their habitat. These disturbance events create the large open blocks of habitat they need to survive. The Moquah Barrens Management Area of the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest Washburn Ranger District is the most northern pine barrens within the Northwest Sands Ecological Corridor stretching from Bayfield County to Burnett County in northwestern Wisconsin. Roughly one percent of the original 2.3 million acres of Wisconsin savanna and pine barrens communities remain today. Management of the Moquah Barrens for sharp-tailed grouse has been ongoing since the early 1950’s with habitat management and restoration work, including prescribed fire, occurring at varying degrees and intensities since roughly that time as well. In 2009, the Forest Service Northwest Sands Project began implementation with a direct focus on large-scale landscape restoration of the barrens and savanna ecosystems. With nearly 23,000 acres of critical barrens habitat now being restored and maintained the situation was better than ever to begin looking at how best to help and protect one of the key barrens wildlife species, the sharp-tailed grouse.
Historically, within the Moquah Barrens, sharp-tailed grouse were found in nine locations (leks or dancing grounds) based on annual breeding season observations by the U.S. Forest Service and Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. However, in more recent years, sharp-tailed grouse have been experiencing statewide population declines, including those found at the Moquah Barrens. In fact, over the last decade or more, only one Moquah Barrens dancing ground has been active, and in 2015, only 2-6 males and 1-2 females were known to occur at this one location. Likely more birds existed on the Barrens, but due to the size of the area and personnel constraints, it is difficult to fully census a low density population. The declining populations in northwest Wisconsin have been attributed to habitat loss and genetic isolation in key areas.
To supplement the remaining grouse population, in 2013, the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest began planning a project to translocate sharp-tailed grouse from northwestern Minnesota to the Moquah Barrens. The Forest, in cooperation with its partners, implemented a plan to translocate approximately 150-200 sharp-tailed grouse over the course of 2-3 years. As a critical component of a functioning and healthy barrens community, the Forest hopes to establish a genetically diverse self-sustaining population of grouse that are connected with other populations in the Lake Superior grasslands and nearby northwest sands habitats. All translocation efforts followed recommendations established within the Wisconsin Sharp-tailed Grouse Management Plan, and provided by the Wisconsin Sharp-tailed Grouse Committee, Minnesota DNR, and through advisement with the Wisconsin and Minnesota Sharp-tailed Grouse Societies and other partners.
As previously stated, 160 sharp-tailed grouse have been moved to the Moquah Barrens since 2016. In 2018 alone, 64 sharp-tailed grouse (33 male and 31 female) were released, in 2017 67 birds (45 male, 22 female), and 2016 29 birds (16 male, 13 female). Of these birds, a small subset (35) have been fitted with radio transmitters to allow them to be tracked over a 1-2 year period to gain valuable insight into habitat use, nest location, and where they are disbursing to over time and between seasons. Successful translocation projects take time. Though 160 birds have been introduced to the Moquah Barrens over a three year period, a noticeable increase in the local population may not occur for an additional 3-5 years. The current Moquah sharp-tailed population is difficult to estimate at this time. Indications are that most birds from all three translocation efforts have survived. All birds received a unique combination of colored and numbered leg bands, and banded birds from all three release years have been observed in, around, and outside the Moquah Barrens and the National Forest. Dispersal of birds from the original release site have ranged from as little as 0.25 miles to as much as over 24 miles, based on radio-telemetry observations. Released birds have been found visiting active and historic dancing ground locations within the Moquah Barrens as well as on county and state managed lands, and private property. These birds are already potentially having a positive impact on the greater Lake Superior population!
The Forest Service and project partners are actively monitoring habitat use and movement patterns along with assessing the progress of the translocated birds. Monitoring occurs consistently through the year and is ongoing with road surveys, dancing ground surveys, telemetry tracking, winter tracking, and lek counts as part of the suite of methods used. One of the most exciting results of telemetry tracking efforts has been discovering evidence of reproductive success. In June of 2017 and 2018, multiple nest sites were found including the first documented sharp-tailed grouse nest within the Moquah Barrens since the 1980’s!
Although the trapping and translocation phase of the project is complete there is still much work to do in regard to monitoring and continuing the ongoing habitat restoration. With prescribed burning and mechanical treatments underway to continue expanding and improving barrens habitat, the sharp-tailed grouse at Moquah have a bright future. This project is not only a success because 160 sharp-tailed grouse were translocated to the Moquah Barrens, but also because it brought together numerous individuals with a similar interest and passion for seeing sharp-tailed grouse again thrive in NW Wisconsin. Individuals from within the Forest Service, other federal agencies, state and tribal agencies, non-profits, and members of the public worked together to see this project through and remain dedicated to see it continue into the next phase. A shared wildlife technician between the Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa and the US Forest Service was hired over the last three years to contribute to the telemetry tracking efforts of all ‘collared’ birds during the spring and summer seasons. Additionally, 2017 marked the first year that the Washburn Ranger District continued monitoring sharp-tailed grouse from spring through winter. A telemetry technician was hired through an agreement between the US Forest Service and the Wisconsin Sharp-tailed Grouse Society to conduct telemetry, lek, and winter tracking surveys from October 1, 2017 to May 26, 2018. Monitoring of sharp-tailed grouse has now occurred on a continual basis for over 18 months and plans are to continue focused efforts through 2020.
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Elon Musk says that Twitter is in “clear material breach” of their $44 billion acquisition deal and that he could “terminate” the agreement in response. In a letter sent to Twitter this morning, Musk’s legal team claims that Twitter has failed to provide him with information on the service’s spam bot problem and that he’s entitled to receive that information under the deal agreement.
“Mr. Musk believes the company is actively resisting and thwarting his information rights (and the company’s corresponding obligations) under the merger agreement,” the lawyers write. The letter says Musk could choose “not to consummate the transaction” because of the alleged breach of contract.
Musk has been complaining about bots since shortly after he signed the deal
Musk has spent weeks complaining about the spam bot problem on Twitter in what has appeared to be a strange effort to escape a deal he signed barely more than a month ago. Musk previously tweeted that the deal was “on hold” due to his concerns around bots and said the deal “cannot move forward” until Twitter proves the accuracy of its spam counts.
But it wasn’t until today that Musk made an official threat to back out of the acquisition, with most of his prior complaints being made in tweets and interviews. Wedbush Securities analyst Daniel Ives wrote this morning that the letter indicates Musk is “looking to walk away from [the] deal.”
Twitter spokesperson Brian Poliakoff said the company has been cooperating with Musk and will continue to share information. “We intend to close the transaction and enforce the merger agreement at the agreed price and terms,” Poliakoff wrote in a statement emailed to The Verge.
Twitter estimates that less than 5 percent of its daily users are spam accounts. Last month, Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal said the company had provided Musk with an explanation of how Twitter generates its spam estimates. “We shared an overview of the estimation process with Elon a week ago,” Agrawal wrote in mid-May, “and look forward to continuing the conversation with him, and all of you.”
Update June 6th, 12:45PM ET: This story has been updated with a statement from Twitter.
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Are you expecting or plan to become pregnant with the plus-size? You have located the appropriate location! With a recommendation from the National Institutes of Health, Plus Size Birth is the premier large-sized pregnancy source.
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Are you expecting or plan to become pregnant with the plus-size? You have located the appropriate location! With a recommendation from the National Institutes of Health, Plus Size Birth is the premier large-sized pregnancy source.
Here you will certainly discover favorable resources as well as aid in maternity sizing.
If you are a female of the size that is pregnant or attempting to develop, you might find yourself having even more questions concerning maternity in your scenario. As an older individual, what can you get out of your 9 months growing up? And what exactly is “extra-large maternity”?
There is no main definition of “plus-size”. Nevertheless, according to the Centers for Disease Control and also Prevention (CDC) Trusted Source, females with a body mass index (BMI) between 25.0 and 29.9 is considered overweight, and also those with only BMI numbers 30.0 or even more are overweight.
Definitely, being expecting while being overweight can make things a lot more complicated. But the good news is, your maternity does not require to be established whereby part of the clothing store you go shopping. We’ve obtained everything you need to know.
Regardless of being larger in dimension and also maternity comes with some raised threats, people of all sizes experience healthy and balanced outcomes!
Listed below, all your plus size maternity questions are addressed and we urge you to discover the web links provided in this source for even more helpful information.
When will I start to look pregnant?
I desire I could address this inquiry for you, yet the fact is, it’s various for everyone.
Some large-size individuals start revealing early in pregnancy (particularly if this isn’t their initial maternity) while others have tummies that might never ever “pop”.
It’s crucial to understand that even if you don’t show as very early or as high as you wish you would– your body is still expanding life within you, which’s fantastic!
Read this story as well as see a survey of 100 large-size women sharing when they started to look expectant– Where’s My Bump? Plus Size Pregnancy Woes
Health factors to consider for you
As you come close to pregnancy in a higher weight category, your emphasis (understandably) may be on the health and wellness of your growing baby However your health and wellness issues, as well, and can be detrimentally influenced by weight-related issues.
Perhaps the most widely known danger in higher-weight maternity is that of developing gestational diabetic issues. This preggo-specific condition triggers high blood sugar that needs to be regulated with a diet plan or drugs (and also normally disappears after the bun is launched from your typical oven).
The link between obese as well as gestational diabetic issues is real: ResearchTrusted Source from 2010 found that nearly fifty percent of all gestational diabetic issues instances could be attributed to overweight as well as excessive weight. According to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), having gestational diabetic issues likewise ups your risk of a cesarean shipment.
Rates of miscarriage and stillbirth likewise rise with higher maternal weight. The ACOG states that “The greater the lady’s BMI, the greater the threat of stillbirth” as well as keeps in mind that females with obesity have actually an increased danger of miscarriage.
ResearchTrusted Source has actually developed, as well, that extra weight makes you more likely to have preeclampsia– a fancy word for hypertension in maternity that can cause swelling and damages important body organs like the liver and also kidneys.
Finally, getting pregnant might just imply you’ll have much more pains and also pains, like the all-too-common neck and back pain that tends to appear as maternity advances.
Because these health and wellness risks aren’t insignificant, it’s crucial to discuss them with your medical professional before obtaining expecting, if possible.
Health considerations for the child.
Equally, as your weight can make a distinction to your wellness in maternity, it can influence an infant’s health, as well. Not surprisingly, one significant concern is the size of your infant in utero (and en route out).
Given that gestational diabetes commonly brings about higher birth weight, if you have this issue, you might wind up with a bigger infant. While chubbier babies are, of course, lovable, their size can make their leave extra precarious; high birth weight babies may actually get hurt throughout genital delivery.
An additional factor to consider for a baby’s health and wellness is the possibility of preterm birth. A big Swedish study trusted Source found that individuals with obesity and also weight problems went to greater risk of providing prematurely. Babies supplied preterm are more probable to have problems with a variety of organ systems, including (but not limited to) the heart, lungs, brain, and gastrointestinal system.
Taking steps to lower the dangers
Finding out the dangers of pregnancy on your own and baby might feel a bit overwhelming. Fortunately, there are actions females of dimension can require to reduce the opportunities of touchdown with weight-related problems.
Your very first– and best– a line of defense? Beginning early.
” It’s ideal to prepare at least 6 months ahead of in fact obtaining expectant so you can be your healthiest self prior to bringing your most vulnerable guest,” claims Sherry A. Ross, MD, an OB-GYN and also females’ wellness specialist at Providence St. John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, California.
Ross urges collaborating with your doctor and/or a dietitian to get involved in your ideal maternity shape through a diet regimen and also a workout.
If dropping weight pre-baby wasn’t in the cards as well as you’re currently “on the nest,” healthy food choices and boosted tasks are still best choices for preserving a healthy and balanced weight– as well as, therefore, a much healthier pregnancy.
” Well-controlled weight gain during pregnancy is crucial,” states Jamie Lipeles, DO, owner of Marina OB/GYN in Marina Del Rey, California. “The most vital actions a [female with extra weight] can take to avoid all the pointed out risks are diet and also exercise.”
As well as don’t neglect to stick to your prenatal vitamins. “In enhancement to a healthy diet regimen, I encourage my clients to begin taking prenatal vitamins and also extra folic acid before getting pregnant,” claims Lipeles. (Of training course, maintain taking them while you’re expecting, also!).
Where should I begin when it concerns nourishment during pregnancy?
While I have a couple of handy dietary articles, I extremely recommended you connect with a Registered Dietitian to represent your very own unique dietary needs. Figure out if your clinical group or insurance offers settlement assistance.
Even if you don’t have insurance coverage, purchasing your health (if you’re able to manage to do so) will repay over time. Below are 2 short articles that may be worth reading, depending upon your scenario– The Best Plus Size Pregnancy Diet and also Gestational Diabetes Nutrition Tips for Plus Size Women.
And also now for the million-dollar question: Just just how much weight should you get over 9 months if you’re an individual of size? According to the CDCTrusted Source, for single-child maternity, a woman who is overweight ought to aim to gain 15 to 25 pounds. Those with weight problems need to gain 11 to 20 pounds.
Ross highlights that a slow beginning is normally best when it concerns weight gain in your maternity. Over the course of your 3 trimesters, she discusses exactly how this could look: “You need to get about 2 to 4 pounds during your initial 3 months of maternity as well as a half-pound a week for the remainder of your pregnancy.”.
When will you see your infant bump?
The infant bump is one of the most evident visual indicators of maternity– anticipated by members of the family, photographed for Instagram, as well as declared by tabloids regarding celebrity pregnancies. But also for females of size, this certain external indicator of pregnancy might or may not be “a thing.”.
” A [woman that is overweight] may never show while pregnant,” states Ross. “There are many variables taken into account when she is expectant, specifically her starting weight as well as how much she obtains throughout the maternity.”.
Yet do not discourage! Ultimately your bump is most likely to stand out. “Usually by the last couple months of maternity, the abdominal area grows in such a way to expose the pregnancy, regardless of [size],” Ross notes.
According to Lipeles, the look of your baby bump might likewise rely on your physique– for example, whether you’re even more of a so-called “apple” or “pear.”.
” [Women of bigger size] with a pear-shaped body can expect to show only slightly later in the pregnancy than other women. Pear-shaped ladies [of larger size] will likely reveal in between 16 and 20 weeks,” he estimates.
” In comparison, some females will certainly have a various weight distribution and also physique, referred to as the apple-shaped body. The apple-shaped woman [of bigger dimension] can expect to reveal between 20 and also 24 weeks of pregnancy.”.
Dealing with aloof remarks.
In some cases, you might be feeling literally excellent as well as psychologically pumped regarding fulfilling your wonderful little bundle– just to have a family member or complete stranger at the grocery store make an aloof comment concerning your weight and your maternity. Ouch. (Or probably a remark comes when you were currently feeling low– double-ouch.).
When others talk unkind words, attempt to remember that your weight isn’t anybody else’s business. The only people that have a right to review your size are you, your medical professional, and also any person else you pick to admit the discussion.
If adverse remarks remain to bring you down, attempt a straightforward visualization for strength, such as visualizing on your own surrounded by a shield of shield that safeguards you against hurtful words.
While you’re at it, do not forget to document (as well as commemorate) your successes! Taking time to recognize your progress– whether mosting likely to the fitness center two times in a week or passing your gestational diabetes examination with flying shades– can construct the positive sense of self that will certainly assist you to brush off other individuals’ demeaning comments.
The takeaway.
We’ve covered a great deal of ground, but you may be entrusted with one concern: Can your maternity be a healthy and balanced pregnancy? Though overweight and also excessive weight do bring enhanced threats, ultimately, you have some control over the answer.
” Pregnancy is an excellent justification to live a healthy way of life,” states Lipeles. “Most usually, maternity encourages females to learn more about diet plan as well as workout and also live the healthiest way of life they have actually ever before lived! For a lady [that is overweight], this new healthy and balanced way of living will produce pleased, healthy maternity.”.
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Prayer has been especially at the forefront of many moments in my days recently. Family members suffering illness have called for more fervent prayers as have friends with similar needs. I often find myself asking for far more than I am giving thanks for….an all too familiar response.
It has brought to mind an event of many years ago now. Our grandson had been in a serious auto accident, necessitating his stay at a rehabilitation center following his time in the intensive care unit and hospital. I am grateful to say all his care, determination and hard work have provided a complete recovery and it has become a dim, but powerful, memory.
During his time at the rehabilitation facility, his treatment plan included finding his way in his wheelchair through a maze of hallways to the dining room for meals. Table heights accommodated the many wheelchairs that seated so many who were in varying stages of recovery, some with slower progress, some who were nearing discharge, regardless of progress.
John had always prayed often at our family gatherings. We kidded him about how well he prayed! He (and usually one of his strong buddies) rode along with me to deliver home furnishings here and there across town to people with few resources, people I had come to know and love. In other words, I needed their physical strength to load and unload! He was always willing as were his friends! Some of those days are favorite memories for me. As we would leave the longed for apartment, a goal realized by few of our friends who suffered financial poverty, I would always ask John to gather those present in a circle, hold hands and offer a prayer of thanks. I remember the first time he said, “Are you telling me we have to pray over a sofa”? And I would laugh and tell him “yes, indeed, because this lovely friend is thankful for this sofa! And now it is our job as we leave, to have her know God was present and is present in all the moments of our lives—–our names need not be remembered at all but God’s presence does need to be remembered by our friend.” He always prayed beautifully and those moments still make me smile.
So, when John pulled up to the table at the rehab place, I asked him what we do before we eat. He was sure in his response that we pray. So, I reminded him he always prayed for our meals and asked him to pray. There is not an adequate way to articulate here his beautiful words or their impact. This seemingly simple act provided a holy time in a place of great sadness and few joys for many. Everyone at the other tables stopped to listen. They bowed their heads, folded their hands, if able. After John finished, I remember family members of other patients coming to the table to thank him for praying. I especially remember one man in a wheel chair, still in his place, saying with wonder, “thank you, no one ever prays here.”
I knew he was speaking of meal time, of course. I had no doubt many, many silent prayers of supplication had graced the spaces in this place over very injured people, those with strokes and other medical issues that can render one immobile or mentally unclear.
But, that remark has stayed with me over the years. A theologian would shudder at my thinking, most likely! But, I think of the places we pray and the places we don’t. My “lessons from the road” have been grand teachers of theology! I have had a homeless man tell me he didn’t know how to pray, when asked by someone else to provide grace over a small lunch gathering. I remember his quizzical look when I told him he could just take my hands and have a personal conversation with God……anything he wanted to say. His relief was evident but it was clear his version of his own worth would make prayer difficult for him. Oh, my.
I have been present with Neelley Hicks on a bus bouncing across town to take people home after a worship service, people who society deems poor but whose words and actions speak otherwise. Her conversation as we drove along was a prayer in its very best form—–it was real, it was powerful. She was an answered prayer and yet she thanked God for his goodness and mercy by her words, her interactions, her authentic and sincere interest in the lives of our friends. They knew she cared about them. She has shown it over and over.
Rev. Neelley Hicks and friends
Since that experience with grandson John, my teenage (at the time) teacher, I have been more intentional about prayer in ways I never considered. It happens, and needs to happen more, in less planned, less contrived, less comfortable ways. Life happens in dark places, in streets without hope, in people judged by filters that exclusive conditioning breeds, in a country without clear direction, in a world where prayer is begging for clean water or medical care and on and on. Life happens to those unloved. Prayer can diminish fear, can build community, can offer a way forward, can be life changing—-but not as an event in response to ongoing tragedies, not only of death, but of behaviors, but as an integral part of experiences that we call day to day living. We honor God with our thanks, we trust him with our fears and we praise him by lives that live out those prayers…. that offer glimmers of light, hands reaching out, tears being shared, smiles being celebrated. It gives a whole new dimension to best practices and outcomes!
That man was correct; no one ever prays here. We can see it.
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Published by outoftheashes17
View all posts by outoftheashes17
July 6, 2017 at 6:15 pm
Thank you, Jackie, for the poignant reflection. I, too, was once asked how to pray by a homeless person. Religious people have often made prayer so difficult to understand. I just think God wants REAL. When the man beat his chest asking God for forgiveness…that was real (Luke 18:13). Whether seen or unseen, REAL gets us closer to God and neighbor!
July 7, 2017 at 12:19 am
Wow. I remember that time very well. I was learning (and still am) so much from you how to be present with the people you are with. I am still working on the praying. While I will pray for you and your family, it’s still hard for me to do in the situations you described with John. Keep reminding me Jackie! You are a great influence!
outoftheashes17 says:
July 7, 2017 at 12:21 am
Thankfully, we all learn from one another!
July 7, 2017 at 12:03 pm
Well, John was so blessed to have your example , your leadership to guide him!! You are a spiritual guide ,Jackie ,and these powerful words and heartening stories guide us all, Thank you!
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bloggers, Classroom, Education, High School, Humor, Middle School, Sarcasm, Secondary ELA, Secondary English, Teacher, Teacher Tribe, Teaching, Texas, Uncategorized
The Highs (& Lows) of the Holidays in Secondary
December 13, 2018 January 25, 2019 johnstonselagems
Merry Christmas! Happy Hanukkah! Blessed Kwanzaa! It’s the holiday season, a very strange time for most teachers. In elementary, I’m guessing they are making craft ornaments for parents to treasure and learning numbers by gluing cotton balls on Santa’s beard. I’ll bet there’s a lot of glitter happening right now. I mean A LOT. And probably a ton of holiday-themed clothing. The holidays bring as many strange happenings as the beginning of the school year. More on that here.
In secondary? Not so much.
We are a more dark and twisty bunch (hence the fact that I’m a secondary teacher), and we are more concerned with peeling teenagers off the wall that just got their first gift from their boyfriend or girlfriend. Or the girls have started drama because Sally got everyone a gift EXCEPT Allie (because they are fighting). Or Billy got Susie a teddy bear, but isn’t he talking to Jane?
Whatever they are thinking about, it’s most likely not our classes. And we have no crafts or glitter to distract them. We just have curriculum. And learning. And testing. And data.
Then there are the pictures I see of colleagues in elementary with the MOUNTAIN of gifts from their little treasures. Is that a Coach purse? A $50 gift card to Starbucks? Stationery from Harrod’s?
As a middle/high school teacher, we don’t get gifts from all our kids because our kids have 6-10 teachers and coaches. If you buy them even a $5 gift card, that’s $30-$50. That’s pricey! My favorite gifts are the small things: a card, a bag of homemade cookies (which I might eat, depending on the kid), a candy cane, or maybe my favorite drink from Starbucks. Anything that makes me know they (or their parents) went out of their way to get me something is a good thing in my book.
One of my 8th grade teammates had this to say:
“‘My child has always done well in X subject before…’ (Yeah, cuz they got to color pictures and use crazy glue… oh yeah, they weren’t strange hormonal monsters then either.
Also, my favorite gift is always a personal note from a student. I completely understand why we don’t get much and why some parents at least try to get us that $5 gift card or mug. But I’d rather have a heartfelt note from a student than any of that. Even the snarky ones I’ve gotten over the years, I still go back & read because I know they were being snarky with me because they felt comfortable and enjoyed having me as a teacher.”
A fellow ELA teacher sent me this gem:
“I alternate between the land of Snarkia and Schmaltzylvania at this time of year. I think one of our highs is the fact that it’s particularly special when a student does bring us a gift in middle school. We have a moment of connection, and for some of our students, a moment of great portent when they muster their courage to sidle up to us as inconspicuously as possible, and thrust a small token of appreciation into our hand. They are acutely vulnerable and hope their humble offering is as significant to us as their offerings of glittery pom-pom-and-popsicle-stick reindeer ornaments were to their primary teachers. So, I’ll happily raise one of my seventeen “World’s Best Teacher” mugs to the fact that we don’t have to wear a poncho to withstand the onslaught of glue and glitter, and give a toast to the students who take a social risk to show kindness to a teacher. Now that’s a gift!”
So, the takeaway is this: Secondary teachers, be excited that you too don’t have to wear a poncho to avoid glitter and glue. Be proud of that coffee mug and those Hershey’s kisses. Even better, remember why you chose to teach secondary in the first place- no wiping noses, tying shoes, or lining up. You also don’t have to eat lunch with them.
Those are the gifts that keep on giving, right?
Published by johnstonselagems
I've been a secondary English teacher for 19 years. This is a way for me to document the rest of my teaching career. View all posts by johnstonselagems
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LEGO Collectible Minifigures has been revealed online with Series 19 (71025). The new minifigures will be available starting from September 1, and you can collect all 16 of them. As the past series, we get a selection of diverse characters including costumed ones as well as some based on stories like the Monkey King.
Let’s see them together!
LEGO® is a trademark of The LEGO Group companies which does not sponsor, authorize, or endorse this site. When you make a purchase or, sometimes, carry out some other action as direct result of clicking on a link at Bertelego, we will receive a small commission. Bertelego is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
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Author Topic: A simple explanation of what routing is and why it affects your connection (Read 10152 times)
Chief Doraemon
Admiral
A simple explanation of what routing is and why it affects your connection
Routing is a bit like the path from your computer to your destination.
Imagine data as a car and routing as roads.
So let's just say you are trying to download a particular song which is located in Japan.
Your data has to go all the way from your country (for e.g. Malaysia) to Japan and takes a certain route.
However certain routes have problems due to incompetent management by the ISP, or congestion, or failed routers.
This is analogous to pot holes, road blocks, flooded roads, maintenance work on roads.
In an ideal world, you would find a new road to reach your destination and avoid these problematic roads.
However, in the internet world with incompetent ISPs, you are locked to the particular route until they decide to fix the road or reroute you through a different road. This is beyond our control.
However we note that with TMNet, different IP ranges have different roads/paths to destinations with certain IP ranges having much better routes and speeds than others.
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Usually hoarseness caused by GERD is worse in the morning and improves throughout the day. In some people, the stomach acid rises all the way up to the throat and larynx and irritates the vocal folds. This is called laryngopharyngeal reflux (LPR). LPR can happen during the day or night.
How do you wake your voice up?
How do you wake up without voice?
The best thing you can do if you wake up having lost your voice is to be gentle with your voice, talk less, talk quietly (but not whispered as this can also push your cords together) and drink plenty of water. Walk over to someone to talk to him or her rather than yell across a distance.
Is it normal to wake up with no voice?
Morning voice is a common problem for singers. After a night of sleep, your voice can sound raspy and deeper. Although we all experience a croaky voice in the morning, there are steps you can take to minimize and shorten the effects.
Why am I losing my voice but not sick?
Experiencing unexpected hoarseness or voice loss can indicate an underlying health condition. Other possible causes include: Acid reflux, known as heartburn or gastroesophageal reflux (GERD) Growths on your vocal cord tissue, also called vocal nodules, polyps, cysts, and contact ulcers.
Can thyroid problems cause voice changes?
Voice changes may occur even in the cases of mild thyroid failure since thyroid hormone receptors have been found in the larynx, which proves that the thyroid hormone acts on the laryngeal tissue [6]. Hypothyroidism can cause notable voice changes, such as low voice, roughness, reduced range, and vocal fatigue [7].
Can you lose your voice forever?
In some cases of laryngitis, your voice can become almost undetectable. Laryngitis may be short-lived (acute) or long lasting (chronic). Most cases of laryngitis are triggered by a temporary viral infection and aren’t serious. Persistent hoarseness can sometimes signal a more serious underlying medical condition.
Can you lose your voice due to stress?
The symptoms are perfectly real but may be occurring in response to emotional distress rather than related to infection, physical abnormality or disease. Voice loss associated with emotional distress is usually termed a ‘psychogenic’ voice disorder.
What causes no voice?
“Regardless of whether it’s caused by illness or excessive use, laryngitis occurs when your vocal cords become inflamed,” explains Dr. Yiu. “This inflammation, or swelling, prevents your vocal cords from vibrating properly — which can lead to hoarseness and, ultimately, voice loss.”
Can depression change your voice?
When someone is depressed, their range of pitch and volume drop, so they tend to speak lower, flatter and softer. Speech also sounds labored, with more pauses, starts and stops. Another key indicator is the tension or relaxation of the vocal cords, which can make speech sound strained or breathy.
What does a sad voice sound like?
When you are sad, your voice is small and weak, sometimes quiet like a whisper. A sad voice is not high-pitched but sometimes monotonous, having lost any energy or life from it. For those whose sadness manifested in tears, a sad voice sounds cracked and hoarse, often caught at the throat.
Does depression make you smell bad?
A new study shows depression can hamper a person’s sense of smell, making it harder to recognize and respond to common scents.
What age group has the highest rate of depression?
The percentage of adults who experienced any symptoms of depression was highest among those aged 18–29 (21.0%), followed by those aged 45–64 (18.4%) and 65 and over (18.4%), and lastly, by those aged 30–44 (16.8%).
What gender has the highest rate of depression?
After puberty, depression rates are higher in females than in males. Because girls typically reach puberty before boys do, they’re more likely to develop depression at an earlier age than boys are.
What age group does anxiety affect the most?
What age does anxiety affect the most? The age group most likely affected by anxiety is those from 30 to 44 years of age.
Who is more likely to get depression?
Depression is more than twice as prevalent in young women than men (ages 14–25 yr), but this ratio decreases with age. Indeed, starting at puberty, young women are at the greatest risk for major depression and mental disorders globally.
Which gender has more anxiety?
Women are twice as likely to be diagnosed with an anxiety disorder, and the prevalence of anxiety disorders is significantly higher for women (23.4 percent) than men (14.3 percent).
What is the #1 cause of depression?
Research suggests that depression doesn’t spring from simply having too much or too little of certain brain chemicals. Rather, there are many possible causes of depression, including faulty mood regulation by the brain, genetic vulnerability, stressful life events, medications, and medical problems.
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After plundering Ryzenir, the Palace Key from the Three-Eyed Serpent Palace, he was extremely wealthy that they didn’t even make an effort to determine the number of Peak-Point Nature Jewel Vein Fragments he had any more.
“You will be both slightly very similar with regards to considering and creating decisions. That’s why I feel that you really two will receive alongside…”
In contrast, Alia Silverwind’s mouth area curved in to a laugh after seeing and hearing all his ramblings.
Davis and Evelynn were definitely considering the other person at this moment. He relocated his go forward and touched her brow in reference to his while their noses also brushed against the other person carefully.
These folks were all awed by Alia Silverwind’s knowledge to setup formations as she soon have got to job, displaying her experience proper in the sun rays plus the moonlight since the daylight improved.
Davis moved into and packaged her voluptuous entire body together with his hands within an adapt to whilst Evelynn shot his mind and kissed. Their tongues golf shot out since they gathered each other’s taste for a good when.
Davis accessed and wrapped her voluptuous body system regarding his biceps and triceps inside an take hold of whilst Evelynn grabbed his travel and kissed. Their tongues photo out because they collected each other’s style for a significant although.
She acquired her vision tightly closed as though thinking about over the observations severely.
“Oh~”
“Experts like him don’t be given information. They gain it through lots of means using their very own sturdiness. You saw how he decided to go to the super s.p.a.ce that individuals thought to be a definite dying zone and came back in existence in conjunction with another man regardless of whether he had that Queen-Tier Black-Winged Twilight Wolf, perfect? He even made it through a divine tribulation. I can’t make that up as I noticed it with my very own eyeballs. I don’t understand how he have these materials, only one factor is for certainly.”
“Certainly, this earth-friendly gaseous cloud the thing is with your soul seas is what I obtained from an Emperor Get ranking Varieties Poison Feature Marvelous Beast, a Three-Eyed Bright Serpent, utilizing a exceptional strategy. This cloud is made up of its understanding of Poison Laws and regulations, so when you probe it with all your heart and soul feeling, In my opinion you will understand it merely like I comprehended off their clouds that I obtained from other awesome beasts.”
the squire of sandal-sides
Mival Silverwind blinked well before he chuckled, “What? Do you find him more inviting than me on account of his talent?”
“Of course not.” Alia Silverwind covered her hands around his neck area as she pressed her bosoms over his c.h.e.s.t, “Regardless of what height he could reach, you’re the one to me. Would you ignore our commitment of three lifetimes to arrive at immortality to ensure we could have several kids?”
After they separated, Evelynn’s encounter was all red-colored as she became delicate, though Davis appeared like he was raring to travel but recalled what he arrived for.
He traveled to go to Evelynn ahead of he could meet up with anybody else.
Insights abruptly overloaded her thoughts, producing her deeply astonished even if she knew her man couldn’t be bad or have lied to her, but the information were actually just about everywhere she couldn’t fully understand left or right without processing it.
With regards to checking products which have been in Ryzenir’s spatial engagement ring, he threw these away when he was on the give back, especially in the Poison Lord Villa Territory.
Evelynn was used aback just before she uncovered this situation extremely affectionate. The way in which he kept her h.i.p.s and investigated her view whilst smiling made her tingly inside of. She didn’t really know what he was going to do, but she eagerly anxiously waited.
Her remedy and visible well being set a large look on Davis’s mouth.
Davis picked up her up inside of a princess carry just before he summoned out a your bed on this cultivation room with just a spherical cus.h.i.+on. He sat go across-legged right before he inserted her on his l.a.p, also helping to make her stay go across-legged on him.
After some unfamiliar time period, which both didn’t trouble to hold message of, Evelynn started her eyeballs as her black color eyes flashed having a green lighting. Her crimson lips moved agape.
Zanna Silverwind became a member of in like she was obviously a bad brat, and in addition they helped her just like it was subsequently following mother nature to these people.
His standard of awareness on formations was merely at Top-Levels Earth Quality, and he more or less understood tips on how to maneuver to evade discovery of increased-standard formations because the foundation was related. To learn more, he believed which he would be required to take more time that he didn’t have right now.
Nonetheless, she experienced a p.r.i.c.kly sense at her forehead abruptly prior to she spotted an environmentally friendly gaseous force invade her spirit ocean.
“That’s perfect! I wish to check out a thing. Have you been happy to entertain me?’
“Absolutely not.” Alia Silverwind packaged her forearms around his throat as she pushed her bosoms over his c.h.e.s.t, “Regardless of altitudes this individual arrive at, you’re the person for me. Do you ignore our promise of three lifetimes to attain immortality so that you can have a lot of young children?”
On the other hand, Evelynn sensed awed by his capacity and didn’t feel any type of hesitation towards him but wholeheartedly considered what he shared with her she didn’t wait to impression the dangerous-looking toxic cloud together with her soul feel.
“Poison?”
His amount of knowledge on formations was merely at Optimum point-Point Entire world Grade, in which he approximately understood how to maneuver to evade finding of greater-level formations for the reason that base was similar. To read more, he recognized which he will have to take more time that he didn’t have at the present time.
They were all awed by Alia Silverwind’s abilities to arrange formations as she soon have got to operate, exhibiting her know-how correct below the sun rays along with the moonlight since the daylight improved.
Mival Silverwind elevated his fingers up.
He went along to go to Evelynn well before he could meet up with any individual more.
“You happen to be both a tad similar in terms of contemplating and helping to make choices. That’s why I feel that you really two could possibly get together…”
Her soul felt slightly off about this, almost like it was subsequently offering her warning information. However, she couldn’t determine if it was a negative or positive connotation, but she could inform this became…
—
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Thriven and thronovel Hellbound With You read – Chapter 489 What else she can do* squeeze hurry quote-p1
| 7,560 |
Financial Cryptography: Google and Finance 2.0? Nope, sorry. They lack the competency of demythicalisation.
« Timeline for an SSL protocol breach -- what's the size of your OODA loop? | Main | Breaches not as disclosed as much as we had hoped »
November 23, 2009
Google and Finance 2.0? Nope, sorry. They lack the competency of demythicalisation.
One of the interesting things about the financial system we built back in the late 1990s is that the design was pretty much spot on, and that keeps getting confirmed. I recently found out that the PKI infrastructure used the design in a CA-to-CA protocol, so they do know how to do it :)
Slowly, the knowledge inches its way up to the level needed to appreciate and duplicate the work of the early pioneers (insert long list of names here...). Over on the Harvard Business blog, Umair Haque muses on what "finance 2.0" would be like and looks at google.
Every day, you handle more searches than the NYSE handles trades — and that difference, I'm guessing, is about to hit an order of magnitude more. Every day, you connect people, businesses, and communities in deeper and tighter ways than besuited beancounters do. From my tiny perspective, it seems that you just might be in the best position of any organization in the world to take on Finance 2.0.
It's an inspirational question; and we know where the inspiration came from. But it is not exactly spot on. Google is a good fit for the market data side and search ("market"), as seen above. But not for the trade side, or more particularly the settlement side. If you know the difference, you're half way there. They *could be* a good fit because that side is just a matter of acquiring the right skills, the right mentality. But it takes a job of work and some tearing down of assumptions, because those things aren't easy to look up on wikipedia. Been there, spent the money, and only by luck and hard work did I figure it out. Not, I assure you, because "I'm smarter."
After money, the first great financial innovation was bills of exchange. What's interesting about bills of exchange is that they're just, well, information. Their example makes the point: money, debt, derivatives — all are just information.
Oh, big mistake, and this makes the point. Finance isn't "just information," it's information built on a foundation of transactions, which is built on a foundation of contracts, which is built on ... well, you get the point. And these many floors, each a foundation for the next, are widely and deeply misunderstood even, or especially in the building known as finance.
In my experience, when I talk to deep industry experts, they almost universally focus on the elevator ride and consequently bumble around with great authority in a 2 x 4m box within a huge edifice. I guess this point shouldn't be controversial, as we've now seen this great financial crisis, so we know that the industry is competitive with Hollywood when it comes to the mythology and starstruckedness.
Google Finance is nice. I like using it a lot. But if it created thick value — by really slashing search costs in finance — it would have prevented people, communities, and society from investing in toxic CDOs in the first place. It didn't. It's a pair of reading glasses, when what the world needs (to begin with) is the financial equivalent of an electron microscope.
What would a Googlier finance industry resemble? What would a more Googly set of capital markets look like? That's the $12 trillion dollar question. After all, markets are just search engines — remember?
See how people are getting closer? So much hope, still far from the solution, but getting closer. Given the amount of desire for solutions right now, there is an outside chance that the creativity needed could take off around 2015, where it didn't in 1995.
Let's get serious. Markets are just search engines, but only at one level of abstraction. This is where google fits, where information is searchable. At other abstractions they are exchanges of information, and this widely-studied topic is full of nuance, full of deception. Google doesn't fit here at all, and many have broken themselves on it.
What does it look like? It looks like financial cryptography; finance with a delicate touch of cryptography, but also larger doses of software, rights, accounting, governance stuffed in between. If you want to know what it looks like in more detail than a windmilling blog post, study Digicash for inspiration, AADS for the complications, Systemics for the transactions, the gold issuance business for the governance.
But beware; it's not about awesome, nor is it about marketing blah blah, nor is it about huge data capabilities. If anything, the core skill you need is demythologisation; the stripping away of fairy tales, until you can see the core.
What company is best for that? I have my views, but it ain't google.
Posted by iang at November 23, 2009 03:51 AM | TrackBack
Comments
Please deliver me from the evil of the Giant Banking Complex. I think the search is the answer.
Your so cool,
No, but seriously, Google has good data analytics and Google Checkout is a fine product. However, financial contracts need enforcement, identity work, etc - hard people problems, not web tech. Google's data sources and search might become a big part of how future financial services are bought and used. (Witness them muscling in on rate tables with Google Compare). But I can't see Google entering, say insurance or retail banking, even as a broker.
Amazon, on the other hand, do have the call centres and the experience.......
Posted by: Thomas Barker at November 23, 2009 05:01 PM
"Slowly, the knowledge inches its way up to the level needed to appreciate and duplicate the work of the early pioneers "...
Doesn't seem to be borne out by the rest of the post..
We should all just, like, let GHQ give us a 'unified' logon from our Google id to all our online banking accounts and, you know, just let THEM handle all the work from there... Search, find, buy anything, anywhere, anyhow dude!
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The entanglement of science with money and crime » « OK, National Gallery of Canada, what are you doing with MY sculpture?
Do you have an empty prison in your neighborhood? ICE will fill it up for you, no matter how dilapidated and horrid it might be.
When members of Congress reached a bipartisan deal to end the government shutdown in February, they gave Immigration and Customs Enforcement a simple instruction: Stop detaining so many people. Instead, ICE pushed its detention population to an all-time high of 54,000 people, up from about 34,000 on an average day in 2016 and well above the 40,520 target Congress set for ICE.
Now, just after Congress rejected another request for more detention money, ICE is continuing to spend money it hasn’t been given. Mother Jones has learned that ICE has started using three new for-profit immigration detention centers in the Deep South in recent weeks. One of them has seen the death of three inmates following poor medical treatment and a violent riot in 2012 that left a guard dead.
That one is the Adams County correctional facility in Mississippi, which was so awful and poorly run that the Justice Department shut it down…but nothing can be too bad for housing immigrants and immigrant children.
Don’t overlook the key phrase there: for-profit detention centers. The Adams County facility is run by CoreCivic, the largest such organization in the country, and which was founded by — hold on to your hats — a group of Republican politicians and lobbyists. These vermin need to make money somehow, so they’re happy to get government contracts to abuse people.
CoreCivic also owns the Prairie Correctional Center, a currently empty 1600 bed facility just down the road from me, in Appleton, MN. You can bet they’re drooling at the thought of turning it into a money mill once again for ICE.
You know, for-profit prisons of any kind are an abomination. They all ought to be closed. And the laws ought to change so they stop throwing hordes of people into any prison at all — one sign that we might be a nascent fascist nation is that we’ve got the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world.
The entanglement of science with money and crime » « OK, National Gallery of Canada, what are you doing with MY sculpture?
11 July 2019
Politics, History, and Law
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voidhawk says
11 July 2019 at 8:32 am
Is it a surprise that they’re For-Profit? The Nazi camps also used slaves to work factories to sell products.
whywhywhy says
11 July 2019 at 9:45 am
Can anyone explain to me why the area where ICE can actively abuse folks includes Chicago? ICE gets to operate anywhere within 100 miles of the border. How is Lake Michigan shore an international border? The other side of the lake is the US. Seems like if they can claim the entire shore of Lake Michigan as a border than they can also claim the entire length of the Mississippi river.
doubter says
11 July 2019 at 9:48 am
There’s a related scandal brewing here in Canada. A couple of our pension funds, including the massive Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, have been investing in US for-profit prison companies: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/teacher-pension-plan-invests-private-prison-company-1.5206796
The Canada Pension Plan, which will be providing part of my retirement income, divested itself of shares after being exposed by the Guardian last fall.
Dunc says
11 July 2019 at 10:01 am
How is Lake Michigan shore an international border?
(b) Because “fuck you, we can do what we like”.
Take your pick.
chigau () says
11 July 2019 at 10:01 am
The population of the Omelas dungeon is much larger than previously thought.
=8)-DX says
11 July 2019 at 10:15 am
one sign that we might be a nascent fascist nation is that we’ve got the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world.
Heh, the word “nascent” is doing a lot of heavy lifting there. The entire US “drug war”, “hard on crime” policies including extremely long minimum sentences and the treatment of minorities by the legal system in general is already fascist in its effects.
Pierce R. Butler says
11 July 2019 at 10:57 am
That Adams County, Mississippi, prison is an unconcealed scary eyesore along the highway leading eastward out of Natchez.
I know someone who worked there when it first opened. The money was pretty good, by local standards, but she left soon (even during the Bush Recession), expecting that the abusive conditions even at the start would lead to inmate riots and unending individual violence between prisoners and staff.
unclefrogy says
11 July 2019 at 12:50 pm
You know, for-profit prisons of any kind are an abomination.
when your values are “the market” and “making money” capitalism and competition above all it is not really so unexpected that it would tend to reduce people to things that can be used to make money and anything that gets in the way of making money is bad regardless of what it is.
christoph says
11 July 2019 at 12:54 pm
I recall news stories of judges being convicted of taking kickbacks from for-profit prisons in exchange for sending convicted prisoners their way. For-profit prisons go hand-in-hand with corruption.
So, basically human trafficking.
Brony, Social Justice Cenobite says
11 July 2019 at 3:52 pm
You haven’t posted any links directed to me, and my original comment said I didn’t see any good support as a general response to the previous 549 comments. From my perspective I don’t see anything good.
It doesn’t matter how many times you ask me to tell you what kind of evidence will satisfy me, I want to see what satisfies you now and that’s not dishonest, I’ll take a serious look at what convinces you NOW.
Supposedly right now you’ve got reasons that you believe are good enough for public expressions of concern about trans women in women’s sports right? It’s reasonable to want to see that, there’s no good reason for me to need to tell you things about something you should already be able to do.
In fact, it’s disturbing that you need to do research for your concerns about trans women after expressing concerns about them as a group.
Be as mad as you want but when someone(s) are acting like trans women are a potential problem as a group I’m going to start questioning the feelings and claims they’re attached to. That’s a good thing even though it will make some people feel bad.
And when there is no support outside of someone’s opinions, that’s lack of reason. I get to point that out. Irrational doesn’t just mean presence of irrationality it also means lack of reason and it’s fair to say that from my perspective you haven’t offered any reason. Just your numbered opinions on things you’ve heard or read. I don’t have to accept that without the support for those things.
I’ll accept no cost to putting pressure on people whose public expressions of fear about trans women lack reason. The damage done to trans people through unreasoned fear makes that worth while.
Brony, Social Justice Cenobite says
11 July 2019 at 3:55 pm
No one gets to demand that I tell them what evidence justifies their preexisting concerns. I’ll accept no cost in requesting reasons for fear about trans women in women’s sports. That bears no resemblance to dishonesty that I can see and I refuse to respect the accusation.
I’ll just keep pointing out the lack of reason for the fear of trans women. In this society that’s a good thing.
Brony, Social Justice Cenobite says
11 July 2019 at 3:55 pm
Goodness no. Your analogy is terrible. First this doesn’t look like talking about a math equation for trans women. Second it’s more like I’m pointing out no one has actually shown they can do the work, people can posture about subtracting 21 from 50 all they want but until they do the claims lack reason and won’t like a simple equation result.
Now if one of you finally scrapes up enough courage to put your actions where your feelings are instead of proposing…
In the abstract I’d accept and accommodate it if someone had a tendency to give more wrong answers because of general negative feeling, like anxiety, about math from having been taught through negative reinforcement. It’s not that they’re afraid of 23, it’s that the fear affects motivation and makes it harder to do the memtal actions associated with math and more errors result.
Brony, Social Justice Cenobite says
11 July 2019 at 3:57 pm
I have to log in through pharyngula to post at the atheist experience blog. I got a bit impulsive and didn’t switch windows before posting.
ridana says
11 July 2019 at 6:57 pm
CoreCivic, the largest such organization in the country, and which was founded by — hold on to your hats — a group of Republican politicians and lobbyists.
Lobbyists aside, how is this not a conflict of interest for the lawmaking politicians? I mean, we know it is, but why has no one tested this in court?
DanDare says
11 July 2019 at 8:18 pm
Best wY to create more criminals is to give law enforcement and the judiciary incentives to declare people as criminals.
jack16 says
11 July 2019 at 11:34 pm
zenlike says
12 July 2019 at 4:22 am
Yup. Even slightly worse, it was about minors:
https://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/13/us/13judge.html
The article opens with a minor who was sent to jail for 3 months “for building a spoof MySpace page mocking the assistant principal at her high school.”
Horrendous, but should not come as a surprise for anyone paying attention. The systems practically invites this kind of abuses.
| 9,715 |
The Irish Red and White Setter is believed to be the oldest of the two Irish Setter Breeds. His origins go back to the 16th Century and old prints of this time often feature a red and white setter not unlike those seen today. When his fellow countryman, the Irish or RED setter, started to appear in litters (often with white feet and a white blaze on the chest), they quickly became popular, so much so that the IRWS almost died out. After the Second World War there were as few as twenty of this breed registered in the UK. It is currently the most endangered dog breed in the United Kingdom.
When considering a dog, please realise that you are taking it on for its lifetime.
The average life span is 12 to15 years.
The Irish Red and White Setter is described as “happy, good natured and affectionate.” A streak of stubbornness and a mischievous sense of humour is also apparent.
This is a strong, powerful dog, with an athletic build. High spirited and highly intelligent, they are generally willing to please. They are good workers in the field, in obedience, or any other canine endeavour. However, they do need to be occupied as a bored dog will quickly become a naughty dog. Not a breed for the faint hearted, they need constant training from a very young age, without which they will train you! They can be stubborn, mischievous, and totally loving and, when well trained, make wonderful, loyal and devoted companions. They are white in colour, with solid red patches, which are clear islands of colour. Flecking (like freckles) around the muzzle, feet and forelegs and rear pasterns is often present. The white is a lustrous, pearl white, not a stark, flat white and the red is that of a freshly opened chestnut, tending towards neither orange nor liver.
Irish Red and White Setters do moult, and regular brushing is necessary during this time. They do not have masses of coat or feathering as seen on the other setter breeds, as they are still very much a working breed. Bathing is only occasionally required as necessary.
There is no specific size or weight standard for an Irish Red and White Setter. However, they are shorter and heavier than their cousin the Irish Setter.
Health
All breeds have individual health issues. When speaking to breeders it is recommended you enquire about the breed’s health and what health testing the breeder does. The Irish Red and White Setter is generally a healthy breed however health conditions do occur occasionally. These may include Hip Dysplasia (HD) Canine Leukocyte Adhesion Deficiency (CLAD) and Post Polar Cataracts (PPC)
Suitability
Irish Red and White Setters make wonderful, loyal companions. As they are a gundog bred to work with other dogs, they do get on with other dogs. They are also great with cats if brought up together. Irish Red and White Setters do need socialising when puppies, as they can be shy when young.
Irish Red and White Setters need exercise and owners must be able to access areas where dogs can run freely. They must be taught to come to recall at an early age.
In Conclusion
Now you know a little more about this breed. If you have decided this is the dog for you and wish to investigate further, please contact the Breed Club or Dogs Victoria. They will be able to give you information about available puppies and also suggest dog events where you can see the breed and speak to breeders. In this way you will gain a better perspective of the breed and its needs. With any breed of dog, it is important to research and determine suitability for your lifestyle before committing to a puppy which will be a part of your family for many years to come.
Whilst many breeds are recommended for families, it is imperative that when children are with dogs they are supervised at all times. Basic obedience training is a vital part of dog ownership.
Dogs Victoria is about the responsible ownership of all dogs and in particular the preservation of pure breeds.
| 4,028 |
A series of multimedia pieces by Peninsula Press staff documenting what life is like under the stay-at-home order.
On March 16, 2020, seven Bay Area counties announced a shelter in place to stem the coronavirus outbreak. It was the most restrictive rules in the nation. Days later, two more counties, cities and states followed suit. Below are a series of multimedia pieces by Peninsula Press staff documenting what life is like under the stay-at-home orders. By mid-May, California businesses have started to re-open, but certain counties make the call on how the process happens.
Artists of varying mediums have been faced with the unique challenge of adapting their work to be suitable for current times. Going into 2020, Blasfemmeous (Stanford University ’19) and Mo McKynzie (Texas State University ’21) had projects planned and were ready execute them. But COVID-19 presented challenges and restrictions. Both artists managed to adapt, create, and release art to the masses during the pandemic. Blasfemmeous, a New York City based electronic DJ and producer, consistently released mixes and brilliant sounds, including their debut single, Half of Me (feat. Mayuka). McKynzie transformed her theatrical practice and continues to work on plays suited for the digital landscape.
Around 600 students stayed on the Stanford University campus during spring quarter of the 2019-2020 school year. Campus life was different: dorms were empty, the Row was silent on the weekends, students were sequestered in their rooms for the majority of the day, and the dining hall provided pre-packaged, take-home food only.
This may very well be the reality of what students will experience come fall.
Many students who left campus before Santa Clara County’s shelter-in-place policy have no concept of what it is like to live and be a student at Stanford under the regulations. Some students hope to come back and resume their lives at Stanford as they left them, when it is increasingly clear that this will not be the case.
This fall, students will be subject to a vastly different Stanford experience. There will be no frat parties on the weekends — the Row will not be populated at all this year. Every residence on the row has been reserved for isolation beds in case students contract COVID-19. Sports events may be limited to watching a live recording. Almost all classes will be taught online. Guidelines set by the university, such as mandatory face masks in public, ensuring that every student has their own room, and prohibiting social gatherings and activities, will fundamentally change Stanford academically and socially.
While students who left campus may have quarantined with friends in an AirBnb, or gone home to states with looser social distancing enforcement, Stanford students who lived on campus lived under very strict policy regulations.
This “vlog” that represents the experience and opinion of a student – me – who has remained on campus for spring quarter (and is still here for summer). The video provides insight on what Stanford may look like when students arrive on campus come fall, and more generally gives a perspective of what campus is like during the coronavirus pandemic.
Note: This video reflects my personal experience, and may not be representative of every student who has remained on campus for spring quarter.
Reframe: [Un]muted
Along Highway 1, the small coastal town of Moss Beach found itself with 11 new residents. Ten are first-year design students in Stanford’s Design Impact Master’s Program (the 11th person is someone’s fiancé). They’ve all decided to shelter in place together amidst the pandemic. The students roam the grounds of three houses, one of which boasts a sliver of an ocean view. They’ve found themselves in a perpetual cycle of Zoom calls, filling their breaks with livestream-led group workouts, late night gastronomical gatherings in the kitchen and breathtakingly windy ocean sunsets.
Each year, the Design Impact Program hosts an exhibition called “Reframe” to feature individual projects from students in the program. Formerly called the Joint Program in Design, this tradition dates back nearly 60 years. The idea behind the exhibition is that it presents a chance for students, who typically work in group settings, to express their individual “maker” chops. All program alumni, as well as family and friends, are typically invited to join in person. However, when the pandemic struck California in March, the exhibition was put on hold. But the program and its students decided that Reframe will not be lost to the pandemic, and instead held the event online. The Zoom-based venue has presented new challenges for the students, many of whom are creating physical pieces that need to be translated to an onscreen format. The theme this year: Reframe [Un]muted, is a playful reference to a well-known jargon in the virtual world. The video below documents how students created and supported each other in the last 48 hours leading up to the event, all while juggling classes, CA-ships and a rapidly changing world.
Celebrating Eid during a pandemic
Due to the coronavirus pandemic and state-wide state-at-home orders, a mosque in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, set a “Drive-Thru Eid” to celebrate the end of the fasting month, Ramadan on May 24th, 2020. The Muslim Unity Center announced the Eid al-Fitr event on their Facebook page, with a sign-up sheet that was completely filled out by the next day.
The masjid set up a pathway spiraling through their parking lot, allowing cars to drive through and stop by “stations” along the way, picking up food, candy, and drinks. Throughout the visit, passengers would roll down their windows to yell “Eid Mubarak!” to the mosque’s volunteers. With over a hundred families showing up, music was playing and spirits were high.
Mosques across the country have also participated in “Drive-Thru” celebrations, from New York to Florida to New Jersey, allowing the community to get together in a safe way.
Despite the pandemic halting the holidays, music was playing and spirits were high. (Peninsula Press/Nisa Khan)
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Small business owners in San Antonio, Texas discuss their thoughts on health vs. wealth amid the pandemic
Rachel Conaway, operator of a hair salon, and Ray Caldwell, who runs basketball events for girls, both halted their businesses during Texas’ coronavirus shutdown.
Note: The author is a customer of Conway’s and has played basketball for Caldwell.
Ray Caldwell pictured four of his then club basketball players in August 2014. Three of the four still play for him today and have committed to universities on full athletic scholarships. (@SAFinestbball/Twitter)
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San Mateo County deputy on shelter-in-place order enforcement
San Mateo County in northern California has had a shelter-in-place order for nearly two months and it has been some of the strictest regulations in the country. Sgt. Ron Albertson, who works for the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office, is stationed at the Moss Beach Substation along Highway 1. He shares how the sheriff’s office is enforcing the rules and the reaction from community members and visitors.
Children and their families have left out chalk drawings and encouraging messages to essential workers throughout the Historic District in Sunnyvale. In neighborhoods throughout the US, chalk art and homemade signs have become ubiquitous during shelter-in-place orders.
Chalk drawing 2
Chalk drawings line the walkway of a home in Sunnyvale, Calif. May 6, 2020. (Vanessa Ochavillo/Peninsula Press)
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Texas musician, student continues to thrive while quarantining
In the world absent of COVID-19, award winning artist, Damoyee Janai, could be found working on new music in a recording studio, performing at one of the country’s many music venues, or studying in Boston at Berklee College of Music.
With colleges and universities shifting to virtual learning and the closing of venues, Janai returned to the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, where she has continued to release her magical sounds to the world through a number of virtual music festivals and Instagram live sessions.
In this interview, Damoyee discussed how she is using this unique time to further develop her sound, study new musical genres, and grow as an individual.
Public parks during the shelter-in-place
With California’s statewide stay-at-home order still in full effect, parents must find other ways to entertain their children. Most play areas at public parks are closed, cautioned off like a crime scenes. Attention signs warn that violators of the counties orders will result in a misdemeanor for offenders.
A sign informs the public that the park is closed on Tuesday, April, 21, 2020 in Stanford, Calif. (Tylar Campbell /Peninsula Press)
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About 600 undergraduate students have been permitted to remain on Stanford’s campus during the 2020 spring quarter because of the coronavirus crisis. Santa Clara County has imposed a mandatory shelter-in-place policy that severely limits the ability to go outside except for essential outings. The following set of photos is a collection of a day in the life of an undergraduate remaining on campus during COVID-19.
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Amy Xiong, a first year Master’s Student in Design Impact at Stanford University, captures the following photos. She is currently sheltering in place in Moss Beach with nine other members of her cohort. This photo series documents her experience living in a small and fairly isolated community during the COVID-19 crisis, as well as, her and her classmates’ educational experience during the spring quarter.
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Sunnyvale farmers market
The Sunnyvale farmers market happens every Saturday — even during the pandemic. The farmers and the other vendors selling baked goods and hot meals are essential businesses according to the state shelter-in-place mandate. But operations are not unchanged. Some vendors have elected to prepackage their goods. Others are simply relying on buyers to temper their handling of fresh produce. All are careful to maintain a six-foot distance from those around them.
Farmers market vendors
Mo Yang leaves her farm in Sanger, Calif., about a three-hour drive away, every Saturday at 2:30 a.m. to get to the Sunnyvale farmers market in time to sell her mix of Western and Asian produce. April 11, 2020. (Vanessa Ochavillo/Peninsula Press)
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Emptiness on Caltrain and California Avenue
This notebook explores how people are navigating the world around them in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Photos taken on April 16, 2020 of California Avenue reveals the emptiness and lack of people riding public transportation. Although many people are abiding by the stay-at-home order put in place by Gov. Gavin Newsom, the same rules do not apply for those deemed as essential workers.
An empty platform at the California Avenue Caltrain stop on Thursday, April 16, 2020. (Tylar Campbell/Peninsula Press)
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Posted on August 4, 2021 by sangraney322510
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FILE – In this Friday, Oct. 13, 2017 file photo, Sonia Osorio, president of NOW-NY, National Organization for Women, speaks to journalists as women gather…
FILE – In this Friday, Oct. 13, 2017 file photo, Sonia Osorio, president of NOW-NY, National Organization for Women, speaks to journalists as women gather outside the Manhattan District Attorney’s office in New York protesting the D.A.’s decision not to prosecute Harvey Weinstein in connection with a 2015 incident involving a model. According to a 2021 The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll, more Americans under 30 said they’re more likely to speak out if they are a victim of sexual misconduct, compared with older adults, 63% vs. 51%. And 67% of adults under 30 said they were they are more likely to speak out if they witness sexual misconduct, compared with 56% of those older. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki, File)
Cuomo accuser on #MeToo, 4 years in
Posted: Oct 15, 2021 / 12:35 PM EDT
Updated: Oct 15, 2021 / 12:49 PM EDT
FILE – In this Friday, Oct. 13, 2017 file photo, Sonia Osorio, president of NOW-NY, National Organization for Women, speaks to journalists as women gather…
FILE – In this Friday, Oct. 13, 2017 file photo, Sonia Osorio, president of NOW-NY, National Organization for Women, speaks to journalists as women gather outside the Manhattan District Attorney’s office in New York protesting the D.A.’s decision not to prosecute Harvey Weinstein in connection with a 2015 incident involving a model. According to a 2021 The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll, more Americans under 30 said they’re more likely to speak out if they are a victim of sexual misconduct, compared with older adults, 63% vs. 51%. And 67% of adults under 30 said they were they are more likely to speak out if they witness sexual misconduct, compared with 56% of those older. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki, File)
‘I’d like to think now, we are believed’
Posted: Oct 15, 2021 / 12:35 PM EDT
Updated: Oct 15, 2021 / 12:49 PM EDT
NEW YORK (AP) — To Charlotte Bennett, the new book that arrived at her Manhattan apartment this week—Anita Hill’s “Believing”—was more than just a look at gender violence. It was a dispatch from a fellow member of a very specific sisterhood—women who have come forward to describe misconduct they suffered at the hands of powerful men.
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Bennett’s story of harassment by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo helped lead to his resignation after an investigation found he’d harassed at least 11 women. And 30 years ago this month, Hill testified before a skeptical Senate Judiciary Committee that Clarence Thomas had sexually harassed her. “I can’t imagine what it was like doing that in 1991,” said Bennett, 26. “I’ve thought about that a lot.”
FILE – In this Nov. 1, 2017 file photo, participants march against sexual assault and harassment during the #MeToo March in the Hollywood section of Los Angeles. At center is Tarana Burke, founder of the #MeToo movement. According to a 2021 The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll, just over half of Americans – 54% – say they personally are more likely to speak out if they’re a victim of sexual misconduct. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes, File)
FILE – In this Oct. 11, 1991 file photo, Anita Hill testifies in the Russell Caucus room on Capitol Hill in Washington where the Senate Judiciary Committee was hearing testimony on the nomination of Clarence Thomas for the Supreme Court. Hill alleged Thomas made unwanted sexual advances and lewd remarks while he was her employer. (AP Photo/Greg Gibson, File)
Charlotte Bennett, a former health policy aide to former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, speaks during an interview in New York on Tuesday, Oct. 12, 2021. Bennett, whose harassment allegations against Cuomo helped lead to his resignation earlier in the year, says, “I was really scared to come forward. … But something that reassured me even in that moment of fear was that there were women before me … (it wasn’t) Charlotte versus the governor, but a movement, moving forward. And I am one small event and one small piece of reckoning with sexual misconduct, in workplaces and elsewhere.” (AP Photo/John Minchillo)
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Hill’s history obviously predates the #MeToo movement, the broad social reckoning against sexual misconduct that reaches its four-year mark this week. But Bennett’s moment is very much a part of it, and she believes #MeToo is largely responsible for a fundamental change in the landscape since 1991, when Hill came forward.
“I’d like to think that now, we are believed,” Bennett said in an interview. “That the difference is, we are not convincing our audience that something happened and trying to persuade them that it impacted us. I would really like to think we’re in a place now where it’s not about believability—and that we don’t have to apologize.”
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But for Bennett, a former health policy aide in the Cuomo administration, what emboldened her to come forward—and bolster the claims of an earlier accuser—was also the feeling that she was part of a community of survivors who had each other’s back.
“I was really scared to come forward,” Bennett said. “But something that reassured me even in that moment of fear was that there were women before me … (it wasn’t) Charlotte versus the governor, but a movement, moving forward. And I am one small event and one small piece of reckoning with sexual misconduct, in workplaces and elsewhere.”
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There’s evidence Bennett is not alone in feeling a shift. Four years after actor Alyssa Milano sent her viral tweet asking those who’d been harassed or assaulted to share stories or just reply “Me too,” following the stunning revelations about mogul Harvey Weinstein, most Americans think the movement has inspired more people to speak out about misconduct, according to a new poll.
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About half of Americans—54%—say they personally are more likely to speak out if they’re a victim of sexual misconduct, according to the poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. And slightly more, 58%, say they would speak out if they witnessed it.
Sixty-two percent of women said they are more likely to speak out if they are a victim of sexual misconduct as a result of recent attention to the issue, compared to 44% of men. Women also are more likely than men to say they would speak out if they are a witness, 63% compared to 53%.
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Sonia Montoya, 65, of Albuquerque, used to take the sexist chatter in stride at the truck repair shop where she’s worked as the office manager—the only woman—for 17 years. But as news broke in 2016 about the crude way presidential candidate Donald Trump spoke about women, she realized she’d had enough. She demanded respect, prompting changes from her colleagues that stuck as the #MeToo movement took hold.
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“It used to be brutal, the way people talked (at work). It was raw,” said Montoya, a poll participant who describes herself as an independent voter and political moderate. “Ever since this movement and awareness has come out, the guys are a lot more respectful and they think twice before they say certain things.”
Justin Horton, a 20-year-old EMT in Colorado Springs who attends a local community college, said he saw attitudes start to change as the #MeToo movement exploded during his senior year of high school. He thinks it’s now easier for men like him to treat women with respect, despite a culture that too often objectifies them. And he hopes people realize that men can be sexually harassed as well. “I feel like it’s had a lasting impact,” he said. “I feel like people have been more self-aware.”
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Close to half of Americans say the recent attention to sexual misconduct has had a positive impact on the country overall — roughly twice the number that say it’s been negative, 45% vs. 24%, the poll shows. As recently as January 2020, Americans were roughly split over the impact of the movement on the country.
Still, there are signs the impact has been unequal, with fewer Americans seeing positive change for women of color than for women in general. That dovetails with frequent criticism that the #MeToo movement has been less inclusive of women of color. “We haven’t moved nearly enough” in that area, #MeToo founder Tarana Burke told The Associated Press in an interview last month.
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FILE – In this Oct. 27, 2017 file photo, actress Rose McGowan, left, waves after being introduced by Tarana Burke, right, founder of the #MeToo movement, at the inaugural Women’s Convention in Detroit. According to a 2021 The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll, close to half of Americans say the recent attention to sexual misconduct has had a positive impact on the country overall – roughly twice the number that say it’s been negative, 45% vs. 24%. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya, File)
Charlotte Bennett, a former health policy aide to former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, pauses during an interview in New York on Tuesday, Oct. 12, 2021. As the #MeToo movement reaches its four-year mark, Bennett says, “I’d like to think that now, we are believed. … That the difference is, we are not convincing our audience that something happened and trying to persuade them that it impacted us. I would really like to think we’re in a place now where it’s not about believability – and that we don’t have to apologize.” (AP Photo/John Minchillo)
FILE – In this Sept. 27, 2018 file photo, actress and activist Alyssa Milano listens as Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington. In 2021, four years after Milano sent her viral tweet asking those who’d been harassed or assaulted to reply “Me too,” following the stunning revelations about mogul Harvey Weinstein, most Americans think the movement has inspired more people to speak out about misconduct, according to a 2021 poll conducted by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. (Saul Loeb/Pool Photo via AP, File)
The AP-NORC Poll also showed generational differences: More Americans under 30 said they’re more likely to speak out if they are a victim, compared with older adults, 63% vs. 51%. And 67% of adults under 30 said they were they are more likely to speak out if they witness sexual misconduct, compared with 56% of those older.
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There is a price for speaking out. Bennett said Cuomo, despite having resigned, is still not taking true responsibility for his actions, and so her struggle goes on. “He’s still willing to try and discredit us,” she said. “And I am at a point where I’m exhausted. This has been a horrible experience.”
Bennett has said the 63-year-old Cuomo, among other comments, asked if her experience with sexual assault in college had affected her sex life, asked about her sexual relationships, and said he was comfortable dating women in their 20s. Cuomo denies making sexual advances and says his questions were an attempt to be friendly and sympathetic to her background as a survivor. He’s denied other women’s allegations of inappropriate touching, including an aide who accused him of groping her breast.
How is Bennett doing, two months after the resignation? She replies haltingly: “I’m doing OK. Every day is hard. It’s sad. It takes a piece of you a little bit. But … I would make the same decision every single time. The reason I was in public service was to be a good citizen and give back and do the right thing and contribute. I didn’t see my role like this, but that’s what it turned into. And that’s OK. I’m proud of myself for coming forward, and I will get through it.”
She muses about where the country might be in three more decades. “Reflecting on Anita Hill’s experience is a great way to understand how long 30 years is,” she said. “What do I feel like the next big change will be? I think it’s just not apologizing for being inconvenient. I could sit here and apologize. But I want to get to a place … where we’re not apologizing, where it’s our job to come forward if we have the means and ability to do so.”
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And the #MeToo movement, she said, should be not only a community, not only “a soft landing place” for women who come forward. “It should be where leaders come from,” Bennett said. “We know how institutions act. We know the underbelly of these institutions better than anyone. We have a lot of solutions to fix it and we should be at the table.”
“It should be OUR table.”
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The AP-NORC poll of 1,099 adults was conducted Sept. 23-27 using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 4.2 percentage points.
Copyright 2022 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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"Once you’ve slept in the shadow of the San Jacinto Mountains you are bound to return." — Cahuilla Indian saying
Posted: December 7, 2022 | Author: Mike Christie | Filed under: Books | Leave a comment
purchased on sale for $2.99
I have loved improvisational theater since I was a freshman at Pitzer College. At the Claremont Colleges there was a four-college improv troupe called Karma Pie. I loved attending their weekend performances. Living in Claremont after graduation in 1975, Saturday Night was appointment television from its first episode that fall, long before appointment TV was a thing. So it’s no surprise that this book got my attention.
When Sam Wasson documents show business he does not do so in a small way. Perhaps best known for his 2013 biography Fosse, coming in at 757 pages, his chronicle Improv Nation hits page 452 before the backmatter begins. It’s everything you ever wanted to know about the history of improvisational theater in America.
Wasson begins his story in the 1920s when Viola Spolin, working with multiethnic young people, gave them a safe place to interact. In 1940 Spolin introduced the idea of audience suggestions in a local theater, which Wasson marks as the beginning of improv in America. From there he covers the development of improv through the decades, all the way to 2001 and the reaction of the improv community to 9/11.
The author writes about the development of improv in New York City. He describes how Mike Nichols and Elaine May hit it off and became that legendary comedy team (until May lost interest). But before they were headliners in their own right they opened for Mort Sahl, who sometimes bumped their act when he was ready to go on early.
The book covers the development of Second City, beginning as a struggling comedy troupe in Chicago and developing into a popular entertainment venue. Wasson recounts the decision to add a theater in Toronto. He discusses how many well-known names in the field got their start in Toronto, including Gilda Radner, John Belushi, and Dan Aykroyd. As everyone knows, when Lorne Michaels created Saturday Night he recruited heavily from Second City, including those three. It was Saturday Night’s popularity that prompted Second City to create the television show SCTV.
Wasson discusses the movies as well. While one would expect movies like Caddyshack and Groundhog Day to have an improv influence, it also showed up in other genres. The author describes how Mike Nichols used improv techniques in rehearsals with Dustin Hoffman and Anne Bancroft for The Graduate.
Nichols and May both went into movie directing, each independent of the other. While Nichols was tight and disciplined, and could deliver a movie efficiently, May would not let go of the editing process and deliver her final product, getting her into trouble with the studio more than once. Wasson delves into this in detail.
There are a few odd omissions in the book. Steve Allen isn’t mentioned at all, and he was a master of his own brand of improv, using audience questions to great effect in his own act. But for the Chicago/Toronto/New York cluster of the improv world and the associated movie-making endeavors, Improv Nation offers a definitive history.
Posted: December 5, 2022 | Author: Mike Christie | Filed under: Books, Language, Writing | Leave a comment
One would think that it would be a simple thing to order and receive a copy of the new fifth edition of Bryan Garner’s Modern English Usage, wouldn’t one? Guess not.
I was looking forward to the release of the book, which I had preordered. It was published on November 17, and as an Amazon Prime member I expected it within a day or two of publication. I had wanted the Kindle edition, but Amazon did not show it available in that format. November 14 arrived and Amazon told me I could expect the book on November 29. Say what? At that point it also showed a Kindle edition. I tried to cancel my hardcover order, but Amazon responded by telling me, “Unfortunately, we weren’t able to cancel the items you requested and these items will soon be shipped.”
Their claim of “will soon be shipped” notwithstanding, Amazon took its time getting the book into the pipeline. Eventually it made its way from Chambersburg, PA and Baltimore, MD on the East Coast to San Bernardino and then San Diego, CA here on the West Coast, where Amazon handed it over to the United States Postal Service, and thence to my local Hemet post office.
From here the post office took its time. Tracking showed that it was “Out for Delivery” on Saturday, November 26, but the postman never delivered it; it ended up back at the post office that same day with a status of “Ready for Pickup.” Again, say what? I completed the provided online redelivery request and the book showed up in my mailbox on Monday, after our regular mail delivery.
I have it now, though, and I’m happy to have the latest edition of Garner there on my shelf. I look forward to making good use of it, both for reference and for browsing.
Posted: December 1, 2022 | Author: Mike Christie | Filed under: Audiobooks, Books | Leave a comment
read by L.J. Ganser
print edition published by University of Massachusetts Press (May 27, 2022)
$15.30 for Audible members, more for nonmembers
purchased with an Audible credit
The California Days of Ralph Waldo Emerson, documenting a railroad trip that the Sage of Concord took to California late in his life, shows us that Emerson was not as New England-centric as we might believe.
Emerson had been slated to give a series of talks at Harvard, but aging as he was, he struggled with preparing those lectures. Emerson’s friend, railroad magnate and philanthropist John Murray Forbes suggested a railroad trip to California for which Forbes would make the arrangements. Those making the trip included Emerson’s daughter Edith and her husband, Forbes’s son. Fortunately, Emerson’s friend, James Bradley Thayer was in that group as well because it is to him we owe much of our knowledge of the expedition. Few of Emerson’s letters home to his wife Lidian survive, but we have Thayer’s (puzzlingly unsuccessful) book A Western Journey with Mr. Emerson along with letters to his wife Sophie to document the events.
Forbes was not one to do things in a small way. For the trip he arranged for the party to travel in a private Pullman car which would meet them in Chicago. The car had a sitting space which was converted into a dining room for meals, a separate sleeping space, and a full kitchen. The car was fully staffed with employees of the Pullman company.
Author Brian C. Wilson goes into detail about the trip and describes the travelers’ daily routines and the operation of their private car. In Utah, the group made a detour to Salt Lake City so Emerson could meet Mormon leader Brigham Young. Wilson makes a long diversion into the history of the Mormon religion and Young’s establishment of Salt Lake City as the center for the religion. Odd, as all this is somewhat tangential to Emerson’s thought and interests and to the trip as a whole.
Wilson’s detail about the group’s journey across the continent and through the Sierra Nevada is such that that their arrival in San Francisco seems almost anti-climactic. Once there, the men in the group make an odd choice for entertainment. They visit some rather sleazy venues in Chinatown. But it wasn’t all about slumming. Although Emerson gave up his role as a Unitarian minister early in his career, the Unitarians still claimed him, and when San Francisco Unitarians learned of his arrival they insisted he offer lectures. Anticipating this, daughter Edith had made sure several lectures made their way into Emerson’s trunk.
The travelers split up their San Francisco time with a visit to Yosemite, a journey that the time took four days. Wilson writes the trip would be difficult, “requiring travel by ferry, railroad, stagecoach, wagon, and finally horseback.” (Terry and I would drive to Yosemite from the South Bay in five hours or so.) Not only did they enjoy the beauty of the region, but a young John Muir wanted to meet Emerson and took the group on a trip through the region.
The author tells us that there is little record of the journey home and concludes the book with an account of Emerson’s final years. He also recounts the lives of his traveling companions after the trip.
When a book is produced in its audio format by Tantor you know it will be a quality production. This is no exception. L.J. Ganser’s narration is superb. I could quibble about his pronunciation of the term “placer mining” and of Kearney Street in San Francisco, but his work is so listenable and so professional that these lapses are insignificant.
Posted: November 28, 2022 | Author: Mike Christie | Filed under: Books, Science | Leave a comment
In this short but thoroughly enjoyable book Bill François shares his love of the sea and the creatures that live in it. He writes about the science, legend, and mythology of sea life.
The author opens the book by describing an encounter at the seashore as a child. He discovers a sardine in a tidepool, far away from where it should be. The sardine somehow communicates to him that it wants to be back in the ocean, and François obliges. This transforms him from a youngster with a fear of the ocean to an avid snorkeler. He describes doing line drawings of sea life in school when he should have been paying attention to a boring lecture on geometry, and how his teacher doled out detention for such subversive behavior. François has no love for the French school system.
Each chapter takes on a different aspect of ocean life and he prefaces every chapter with a series of “in which…” statements, just as you might find in a nineteenth-century British novel. (“In which distant galaxies glitter in the black eyes of prawns.”)
François describes how fish communicate with each other and work together. He discusses how they protect themselves from predators and how they find their food. He delves into how sea creatures perhaps communicate with humans.
The author devotes some space to the sexuality of fish. Several species of fish can change gender as appropriate. Others are truly hermaphrodite. He tells us the rockfish carries its young for more than two years, the longest gestation of any animal on the planet. (And he mentions that a rockfish can live more than a hundred years.)
One enjoyable section discusses how there are legends and accounts from around the world regarding how remora (that parasitical fish that attaches itself to larger sea life) communicate with humans and help them catch the sea life they were hunting. These stories seem to be similar while coming from disparate cultures. A modern researcher was not able to replicate this behavior, however.
François tells us that the sea serpent is more than a legend. It’s a fish called the giant oarfish, and he notes that it is shaped like a serpent and can grow up to thirty-five feet. The giant oarfish seems to be sensitive to earthquakes. Humans rarely see them, but they show up on occasion.
Eloquence of the Sardine is a translation of the French, so I have no way of telling how much of François’s voice is preserved, but translator Antony Shugaar’s light, conversational English is delightful to read.
If you enjoy reading about sea life and the oceans you won’t be disappointed with this title.
Posted: November 22, 2022 | Author: Mike Christie | Filed under: Books | Leave a comment
I enjoyed the previous book I read from the small Canadian publisher Biblioasis, A Factotum of the Book Trade, so I was looking forward to reading On Browsing. I was disappointed.
I’m very much a high-tech guy. I read all my books on my Kindle app (iPhone and iPad) these days. I listen to audiobooks using the Audible app on my iPhone. But I remember an earlier era, and I remember it fondly.
I spent seven years of my life in the book business. Physical books. Hardcover and paperback. I worked for B. Dalton Bookseller, opening one new store and managing two others. I even returned for a penitential stint a few years later. I was a regular customer at various used bookstores in the different places I lived. I even learned the routine of the mail order used book business: you gave them the title of the book you wanted and if they were able to find it for you, you sent them a check.
So I expected On Browsing to be a pleasant return to that world. And indeed author Jason Guriel writes about browsing now defunct bookstores in his native Canada. He describes wandering the aisles at Blockbuster Video (yes, Canada had the chain too), first for VHS and then DVD. He writes about stores that sold and bought music CDs. All of that was marvelous.
But there is a big chunk in the middle of the book in which the author digresses into a science fiction view of cyberspace, decades before the advent of the internet. That segued into a discussion of the internet as we know it.
Guriel ends the book with a reflection of browsing Netflix. Not the same as browsing your local Blockbuster, or better, your neighborhood independently owned video store.
I was looking for a throwback, for some memories. I got some of that, but I got too much of today’s technology. That’s not what I came to this book for.
Posted: November 17, 2022 | Author: Mike Christie | Filed under: Books | Leave a comment
originally published in 1997
purchased during an Early Bird Books sale for $4.99
I am always happy to turn to a travelogue for a pleasant diversion, and North Country was no exception. Author Howard Mosher felt the need to make a sojourn westward along the US-Canada border from his home in Vermont. This book documents his trip.
Although he describes the geography he encounters, what is central to North Country is the conversations he has. Mosher talks with hunting guides, merchants, customs agents, truckers, and others on both sides of the border. He spoke with a young woman about to enter college who was an amateur stock car racer and the best in her part of Canada. Some locals are more and some less reluctant to speak with Mosher, but they all have something interesting to say about life along the rural border. He is not afraid to ask questions or to get referrals. If the waitress says, “You should go talk to Joe up the road. He knows all about our local history,” Mosher does so. And Joe will usually talk to him.
Mosher is also happy to relate stories about incidents along the way. He describes coming back into the United States from Canada and checking in at the first motel he encounters. He was in room five. In room six was a newlywed couple, based on the signs on their car. They had a boom box blasting, and it was hard to tell from all the shouting whether they were fighting celebrating. In room four was a trucker who was trying to sleep because he needed to get an early start in the morning. Our author was not happy about being caught in the middle.
Throughout the book Mosher interweaves stories from his past. He describes working summers for a door-to-door brush salesman. (He doesn’t name the company, but it must have been Fuller Brush. I did that one summer in college.) He talks about his time as a teacher and social worker, and he describes trying to work with one unruly epileptic young man whose life came to a tragic end. He describes working for a local logger when he had no other prospects. He was doing fine in the job until he was summarily fired one day when the logger told him that if he wanted to write he should go write.
The author is not one to hesitate or mull over decisions. He had enrolled in the MFA program at the University of California, Irvine. He had just arrived in town and met his classmates when a phone company employee saw the Vermont plates on his car, pulled up beside him, and shouted, “I saw your green license plate. I’m from Vermont, too. Go back home where you belong while you still can.” Mosher did just that.
Mosher begins each chapter with an epigraph, and it turns out that he read some of the same authors who have been favorites of mine in the past: William Least Heat-Moon and Kathleen Norris, for example. He is also a big Hemingway fan, and loves the Nick Adams story, “Big Two-Hearted River,” something he references multiple times in the early part of the book. I hate Hemingway and I hated having to read that story in high school. But I’ll forgive him for that.
Posted: November 15, 2022 | Author: Mike Christie | Filed under: Books | Leave a comment
This is not the book I was expecting. Nevertheless, I found it entertaining and it provided some insight into a slice of life with which I was not familiar.
The book’s subtitle is misleading. Growing Up Underground focuses strictly on author Steven Heller’s childhood and his early career with underground newspapers in New York City. He is refreshingly honest with his approach, however. Heller writes, “My manuscript is as redacted as an FBI file.” Coming from a perspective unlike the unreliable narrator in Still No Word from You, he goes on to say:
I promise everything that follows is like Ivory soap, at least 97 percent pure, 2 percent minor embellishment, and 1 percent memory lapse.
Heller writes about his childhood and the fact that his mother (apparently) had labor induced so his birth would fit into her schedule. His parents would go off on long vacations, leaving him with relatives in Sweden, something that strongly influenced his view of the world. Based on a psychologist’s interpretation of a battery of tests his parents paid for, they put him in a military-like all-boys high school. That was something of a disaster, and his father ended up pulling strings to get him into a more liberal private school.
Always something of a rebel, Heller began drawing and got some of his work published in New York underground publications. That evolved into the role of art director, and he took on that position during two separate stints at Screw, the underground sex publication. He also held similar positions at the East Village Other and at the New York Review of Sex & Politics, which he co-founded. He even did some design work for Andy Warhol’s Interview magazine, work of which he was not proud. Heller was arrested twice on pornography charges, once before he was eighteen, but in neither case did the charges stick.
Heller is just three years older than me, and given that I worked for one suburban weekly newspaper and two alternative news weeklies during the eighties when I was in my thirties, his descriptions of layout and paste-up were familiar to me, even though the world of underground New York City newspapers was not. Newspaper layout and production has obviously changed significantly in recent years.
Heller left behind his somewhat tawdry early years for a far more respectable career at the New York Times, where he spent many years as art director at the Book Review. But he only touches on those days in passing, as he keeps the focus of the present volume quite narrow.
Growing Up Underground is not for everyone, but the book is a valuable contribution in its documentation of one aspect of the New York underground newspaper business of the sixties.
our home improvements continue
Posted: November 11, 2022 | Author: Mike Christie | Filed under: SoCal Life | Leave a comment
As part of our home improvement process we decided we wanted to replace our unwieldy sliding glass door (pictured here) with a French door. We did that in Gilroy and we really loved it. What we thought would be a straightforward process, however, turned out to be more complicated than we expected.
We started with our go-to general contractor, who took care of the artificial turf in the front yard, our kitchen and bathroom counters, and, most recently, our kitchen track lighting. It turned out that it was not a straightforward task for him, and that he would be using an off-the-shelf unit from Home Depot. That wouldn’t work.
Renewal by Andersen does some heavy advertising in the area, so we called them and made an appointment. We spent two hours getting details we didn’t need to have and watching videos we didn’t want to see. The meeting ended with sticker shock.
We called a (more-or-less) local company which places ads in an advertising magazine that arrives in the mail. The guy came out, took some measurements, and promised to get back to us with a quote. We didn’t hear from him.
We then called a company that advertises in the Four Seasons monthly magazine. Again, we got far more detail than we needed and a somewhat high-pressure sales approach. The price was better than Andersen, but we thought it best to do some checking. We looked at their reviews on Yelp and the Better Business Bureau web site. Yikes! Deal breaker.
So I called the previous company and asked about the status of the quote. They were back to me in twenty-four hours with a price that was entirely reasonable. The Yelp and BBB reviews were excellent. The rep was here the next day, took final measurements, had us sign the paperwork, and he was on his way.
The lead time is perhaps six weeks, so it will be after the holidays and into the new year before we see our new French door, but the process has begun. We’re pleased and looking forward to seeing it installed.
Posted: November 8, 2022 | Author: Mike Christie | Filed under: Books | Leave a comment
Catapult (October 11, 2022), 320 pages
I’m always delighted to come across a book in which the writing shines. Peter Orner offers that in Still No Word from You. The title is taken from a letter of his grandfather’s written to his wife while he was overseas in World War II. She was apparently not very good at responding to his correspondence.
There are two kinds of essays in this book. In one Orner reflects on the writing of others and calls out passages he admires. The remaining essays, the majority of the book, are autobiographical.
There is no chronology here, but we learn Orner lived a complicated and multifaceted life in the period these essays cover. He had one brother. His mother left his father when he and his brother were still youngsters and she eventually remarried. Orner seems to have not gotten on well with his birth father, but his wife’s second husband welcomed him. He was married at least once in what seemed like a rocky relationship. (At one point he appears to be in the process of moving out of their home when his partner (wife?) announces, “Well, here’s something. I’m pregnant. What? Let me put it another way. Pregnant I’m. Something here’s— You don’t look— It takes a while. It’s not like making a sandwich.”) And his wife’s family did not like their future son-in-law much, or so Orner felt. He’s Jewish, which is central to many of the essays. We learn the author has lived in Illinois, Vermont, and Bolinas, and we know he taught college.
We get all of this in no particular order, even though the book is divided into six sections: Morning, Mid-morning, Noon, 3 P.M., Dusk, and Night. There is no forward momentum or flow in the book. What Orner offers is a series of vignettes. The essays are short, the longest being five or six pages.
One needs to appreciate Orner’s writing without assuming every word he writes is literally true. After all, he reports a conversation that happened when he was not in the room. And he recounts a person’s thoughts when he had no way of knowing those thoughts. But it is the writing for which we came. For example, of the author Gina Berriault he writes, “There’s a patience in Berriault’s sentences that could only be the result of a refusal to rush any one of them into existence.” So it is with Orner’s writing. He tells us, “The monkey would watch us, too, like a hawk.”
Orner’s skill with words is apparent when he writes about his future wife’s family:
Naomi and I would eat tomatoes like apples, juice sweating down our faces. The fact that we still weren’t married wasn’t merely an offense against the honor of the family, it mocked God’s infinite mercy in broad daylight.
Naomi slept in her mother’s old room. I slept on a bunk in the storage closet. It wasn’t a storage closet, it was a fairly large room just off the kitchen that they used for storage, but everybody called it the storage closet. Put the fiancé in the storage closet.
Reading Still No Word from You delivers a delightful immersion in the craft of writing.
Weavers, Scribes, and Kings
Posted: November 3, 2022 | Author: Mike Christie | Filed under: Books | Leave a comment
Weavers, Scribes, and Kings: A New History of the Ancient Near East
I was having some difficulty finding my next book to read. I went through multiple Kindle samples on my iPad and nothing caught my interest. Books that I thought I would enjoy turned out to be unappealing. Then I was going through one of the daily emails from the Literary Hub and clicked on a link for Oxford University Press. There I found a listing for this book. I almost always download a sample of a book before buying it, but in this case a sample was not available. A couple of considerations prompted me to buy the book anyway. First, the subject interested me. Second, the author is professor emeritus at Cal Poly Pomona, just a short drive west on Interstate 10 from where I attended college, Pitzer College in Claremont.
When I was at Pitzer in the 1970s studying classics (the Latin and Greek languages along with Greek and Roman history, literature, and culture), the study of the ancient Near East came into play because of the proximity in geography and chronology. At the time ancient Near Eastern studies seemed complete and circumscribed. Forty-plus years later we know that assumption was incorrect, as Amanda Podany proves in Weavers, Scribes, and Kings. She writes about documents that have been discovered in the intervening years, including the first two decades of the twenty-first century.
Podany takes a very specific approach. She focuses strictly on documents written on cuneiform clay tablets found in the Near East and on related archaeological discoveries. The only exception is that at the outset of her investigation she discusses some pre-cuneiform documents that predated actual written language. Although her focus is narrow, the time span she covers is immense. Her discussion begins in 3500 BCE and takes us all the way through to 323 BCE. Her story ends when writing in cuneiform on clay tablets gave way to other scripts written on other materials. Podany covers the era thoroughly. Although Amazon lists the print length of the book as 672 pages, my Kindle edition took me well past page 700 before the back matter began.
One of Podany’s goals is to go beyond just the kings. She does a good job of this. Obviously there is a lot about kings because a lot of the material we have is by kings or about kings. But Podany also writes about merchants, mid-level government functionaries, and brewers. Beer was the beverage of choice in the ancient Near East and keeping track of the inventories of the ingredients that went into beer was important.
The author gives plenty of attention to women, righting an old wrong. She writes about queens, princesses, mothers of kings, and priestesses. Sometimes it was the princess who became the priestess. Given the culture we have few records of common women, but Podany is diligent in writing about the women for whom we do have records.
The publisher is not wrong in using the words “new history” in the subtitle. There is a lot of new material here. It is interesting stuff, and it is all very readable. Despite the book’s length I never felt bogged down; I was always ready to continue on to the next chapter.
If you enjoy ancient history you will find Weavers, Scribes, and Kings well worth your time.
I live with my wife Terry in Hemet, CA, which is in the San Jacinto Valley, on the eastern edge of Southern California's Inland Empire. We both terribly miss Tasha, our beagle-border terrier mix whom we had for fifteen years and who lived to the ripe old age of sixteen.
I am actively engaged in freelance writing along with web development and management. Details are on my web site: http://mikecwebandwriting.com/.
This blog is about the personal side of my life. I love my Kindle iPad app, working in the kitchen, watching cooking shows, and writing this blog. I am an Episcopalian and am happy to be a member of Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd here in Hemet.
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Today my caseworker called me into his office before lunch. He wanted me to know my parole hearing has been rescheduled for January 30th of 2017. We're going to try this again.
I'm excited. Hopeful.
I don't think they would move my parole consideration date again. Who could be that unlucky?
This update is long overdue. My friends, I've been on an emotional rollercoaster ride since July 14th, which I can now share with you.
On July 14th of this past summer, the ride took off when my correctional caseworker called me into his office and told me that I had a parole consideration hearing scheduled for December 13th of this year. My mind reeled with the good news and the fact that I had a little less than four months (120 days) to get completely ready for a hearing that could change the rest of my life.
The ride sped up as I made haste to write essays on accountability, line up support letters, and type up parole plans. It was exciting. My family was happy.
On August 16th I was given a Comprehensive Psychological Evaluation to determine whether I would be classified as a low, moderate, or high risk for parole. I thought the psych evaluation was the final piece needed before my upcoming parole hearing, so after it was over and the psychologist said I did well, I took a big sigh of relief.
Then the rollercoaster took a sharp and unexpected turn. Seemingly out of the blue, on August 23rd my attorney notified me that my parole consideration date had been snatched; he was told that it would be rescheduled for April or May of 2018. I was shocked by that news. My exciting rollercoaster ride ended in a cold splash. I'm still shocked.
Since receiving that news, I pulled out my copy of SB261, the Youth Offender Parole Law, to see if it could give me any clarity. I think it says it gave me a right to a Yough Offender Parole Hearing by January 1st of 2018. Maybe the person who had my parole consideration date snatched has a different understanding.
With that said, all I can do is ask politely for clarification and patiently wait, while taking care to reassure my family that I'm okay. Together we're praying.
While we're waiting for the Board of Parole Hearings to schedule a new parole consideration hearing, I still go to work and try to help people every day. On my spare time I still work on Sudoku. I get out to the prison library and I read books. The latest one I started is The Biology of Belief, by Bruce Lipton, Ph.D.
Please note that I have updated my updated mailing address in the "Join the Team" page of my website: I'm no longer at Solano State Prison, I was transferred to Wasco where my skills and training are most needed right now. I'd still love to hear from you. Leave a comment for me and my webmaster will print and mail it to me. You'll hear back from me soon(ish).
Pray for our brother Happy
There is a small Caribbean community at Solano State Prison. It is comprised of three Belizeans and three Jamaicans. I've known one of the Belizeans since he was six years old (and I was eight). I met the other Belizean about five years ago in another prison. I met the rest of the men when I came to Solano. Now one of the three Jamaicans is dying. His name is Happy. He has pancreatic cancer, and doctors say he has maybe four more months to live.
Happy is about fifty-five years old and he's spent the last twenty-eight of those years in prison. Just two months ago he had some good news when the Board of Parole Hearings found him suitable for release. This last minute cancer diagnosis is robbing him of that final victory. The brother is rejecting treatment and isolating himself inside his dorm, not even letting his brethren in to see him.
OMG. Stephen Colbert is really funny. This year, political satire will reach a new level of funny.
Protecting the Inner Sanctuary
Saw a great sermon by Joel Osteen today. It was about the need to have an inner sanctuary and protect it. I agreed with Joel when he said that in life we will experience trouble, but we must keep the troubles on the outside, not allowing them into our inner sanctuary. He summarized: don't allow the turmoil, worry, and discouragement on the outside to get in.
No matter what comes, if we don't let it move us, it can't bring us down. We can operate from a position of peace and hope every day. Those who do can produce amazing results.
Some people say that Joel Osteen isn't their type of preacher, but I like him. His message is always positive.
Big Day: The Rocket Pitch Competition and a certificate from Baylor
I'm exhausted. The Rocket Pitch Competition was big. You know how you feel drained after the end of a long day full of excitement and pressure? That's how I feel. The event was huge. The press and the Secretary of the Department of Corrections showed up. The reporter from KCRA filmed everything, interviewed the winners and told us the highlights will air tonight at 10pm and 11pm. I'll ask my mom to go online and watch that segment.
She'll be able to see me receive the Career Readiness Certificate from Baylor which was presented at the end of the day's events.
Careful craftsmanship before the big day
Had an eventful day. Spent the morning trying to memorize the 3-minute pitch that I'm supposed to deliver at the big event tomorrow. After dinner, the CEO of Defy Ventures, Catherine Hoke, stopped by the Level III gym to speak to all the men who will be pitching tomorrow, to give us last-minute tips.
Preparing for my first Rocket Pitch Competition. The RPC is a chance for Defy EITs (Entrepreneurs In Training) to present themselves and their product in a Sharktank-style competition. Hundreds of people will be there. Judges, investors, well-wishers and other EITs. I'm a little nervous, Fortunately, I'm also a little cocky.
Gave a practice pitch today which exposed some areas I need to work on.
Another significant exam
4/20/2016
Took a Defy Ventures Employment Readiness Exam. It's a big deal because if I pass I'll earn a certificate from Baylor University, the one in Texas. That's a big deal. Baylor has a top-notch entrepreneurship program and a partnership with Defy Ventures.
Call me "Mr. Certified Addiction Treatment Counselor" from now on
I was finally told the outcome of my CATC exam. Drumroll please... I passed! My actual score was 84 out of 100. All of the studying paid off. Now I am a Certified Addiction Treatment Counselor (CATC). I will be going to work for a prison Substance Abuse Treatment Program full time.
Author
Paul Pommells has been an inmate of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation for more than twenty years, and has learned much about himself, his fellow inmates, and where one can find the hope and power to change.
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Exploring the inner workings of the brain and the body with the brightest minds in wellness, medicine, and mindset.
Exploring the inner workings of the brain and the body with the brightest minds in wellness, medicine, and mindset.
The Top Habits and Superfoods that Help Slow Aging and Reverse Disease with Dr. Jeff Bland
This episode is brought to you by Bioptimizers and InsideTracker.Today on The Dhru Purohit Podcast, Dhru sits down with Dr. Jeff Bland to discuss the importance of immune resilience and the many different factors that impact it. They talk about the gut-brain connection and how dysbiosis and leaky gut drive diseases of inflammaging. They also discuss how we can slow, and in many cases reverse, the aging process through the use of powerful superfoods, hormetic stressors, and diet and lifestyle tools. Jeffrey Bland, PhD, is the founder of Big Bold Health, a company that’s on a mission to transform the way people think about the immune system. At Big Bold Health, Dr. Bland advocates for the power of immunorejuvenation to enhance immunity through the rediscovery of ancient food crops and superfoods.In 1991, he and his wife, founded the Institute for Functional Medicine, and he has traveled the world many times in his role as the “father of Functional Medicine.” Dr. Bland is the author of The Disease Delusion: Conquering the Causes of Chronic Illness for a Healthier, Longer, and Happier Life and countless other books and research papers.In this episode, we dive into: - The top things that cause people to age prematurely (3:02)- How leaky gut and dysbiosis are connected to premature aging (14:35)- How toxic thoughts and experiences can accelerate the aging process (22:36)- The top foods that prematurely age us (27:10)- Tests and biomarkers to understand and track your metabolic health (30:08)- What is immunorejuvation and why is it important? (41:35)- Different ways to prevent inflammaging using diet and lifestyle (45:03)- The role of phytochemicals and polyphenols in healthy aging (48:20)- Hormetic vs episodic stressors and how they can benefit immunity and aging (1:07:33)- How Dr. Bland reversed his biological age by 20 years (1:13:28)- Final thoughts and how to follow Dr. Bland’s work (1:36:30) Also mentioned in this episode:-Big Bold Health-Study on microplastic in Teflon pans-Try This: Optimal Metabolic Health Reference RangesFor more on Dr. Bland, follow him on Instagram @drjeffreybland, YouTube @bigboldhealth, and through his website, jeffreybland.com.From now until November 28, you can get not only Magnesium Breakthrough but all of Bioptimizers’ products at 25% off. Just go to Bioptimizers.com/dhru and use code DHRU10.InsideTracker provides detailed nutrition and lifestyle guidance based on your individual needs. Right now, they’re offering my podcast community $200 off their Ultimate Plan, or 34% off any other plan, until the end of the month. Just go to insidetracker.com/DHRU to get your discount and try it out for yourself.
The Top Habits and Superfoods that Help Slow Aging and Reverse Disease with Dr. Jeff Bland
This episode is brought to you by Bioptimizers and InsideTracker.Today on The Dhru Purohit Podcast, Dhru sits down with Dr. Jeff Bland to discuss the importance of immune resilience and the many different factors that impact it. They talk about the gut-brain connection and how dysbiosis and leaky gut drive diseases of inflammaging. They also discuss how we can slow, and in many cases reverse, the aging process through the use of powerful superfoods, hormetic stressors, and diet and lifestyle tools. Jeffrey Bland, PhD, is the founder of Big Bold Health, a company that’s on a mission to transform the way people think about the immune system. At Big Bold Health, Dr. Bland advocates for the power of immunorejuvenation to enhance immunity through the rediscovery of ancient food crops and superfoods.In 1991, he and his wife, founded the Institute for Functional Medicine, and he has traveled the world many times in his role as the “father of Functional Medicine.” Dr. Bland is the author of The Disease Delusion: Conquering the Causes of Chronic Illness for a Healthier, Longer, and Happier Life and countless other books and research papers.In this episode, we dive into: - The top things that cause people to age prematurely (3:02)- How leaky gut and dysbiosis are connected to premature aging (14:35)- How toxic thoughts and experiences can accelerate the aging process (22:36)- The top foods that prematurely age us (27:10)- Tests and biomarkers to understand and track your metabolic health (30:08)- What is immunorejuvation and why is it important? (41:35)- Different ways to prevent inflammaging using diet and lifestyle (45:03)- The role of phytochemicals and polyphenols in healthy aging (48:20)- Hormetic vs episodic stressors and how they can benefit immunity and aging (1:07:33)- How Dr. Bland reversed his biological age by 20 years (1:13:28)- Final thoughts and how to follow Dr. Bland’s work (1:36:30) Also mentioned in this episode:-Big Bold Health-Study on microplastic in Teflon pans-Try This: Optimal Metabolic Health Reference RangesFor more on Dr. Bland, follow him on Instagram @drjeffreybland, YouTube @bigboldhealth, and through his website, jeffreybland.com.From now until November 28, you can get not only Magnesium Breakthrough but all of Bioptimizers’ products at 25% off. Just go to Bioptimizers.com/dhru and use code DHRU10.InsideTracker provides detailed nutrition and lifestyle guidance based on your individual needs. Right now, they’re offering my podcast community $200 off their Ultimate Plan, or 34% off any other plan, until the end of the month. Just go to insidetracker.com/DHRU to get your discount and try it out for yourself.
The Hidden Root Causes of Anxiety and What You Can Do to Beat it Today with Dr. Ellen Vora
This episode is brought to you by Birch Living and InsideTracker.Blood sugar is starting to get more of the attention it deserves in terms of optimizing metabolic health, but there’s one issue that often gets left out of the equation—anxiety. The way our blood sugar, insulin, and other hormones respond to sugar and starch wreaks havoc on our mental and emotional wellness. Yet most people struggling with anxiety and depression are given medications without any consideration of their diet and lifestyle choices.On today’s mini-episode, Dhru sits down with Dr. Ellen Vora to talk about the hidden root causes of anxiety and what you can do to beat it today.Dr. Vora is a board-certified psychiatrist, acupuncturist, yoga teacher, and author of The Anatomy of Anxiety. She takes a Functional Medicine approach to mental health—considering the whole person and addressing imbalance at the root. Dr. Vora received her BA from Yale University and her MD from Columbia University. In this episode we dive into:-The hidden root causes of anxiety -The connection between blood sugar dysregulation and anxiety -Women, intermittent fasting, and anxiety -Caffeine consumption and anxiety -Understanding psychiatric medication in treating anxiety -Tools to help mitigate anxiety Also mentioned in this episode:-4-7-8 Breathing Technique-Amma (Extended Mix) by James Asher Listen to the full episode here. For more on Dr. Ellen Vora, follow her on Instagram @ellenvoramd, Facebook @ellenvoramd, TikTok @ellenvoramd, YouTube @ellenvoramd, and through her website, ellenvora.com. Get her book, The Anatomy of Anxiety: Understanding and Overcoming the Body’s Fear Response, here.This episode is brought to you by Birch Living and InsideTracker.Birch mattress by Helix is made out of organic latex, organic cotton, New Zealand wool, and American steel springs. To get $200 off your Birch Living mattress plus two free eco-rest pillows, head over to birchliving.com/dhru today.InsideTracker provides detailed nutrition and lifestyle guidance based on your individual needs. Right now, they’re offering my podcast community $200 off Ultimate or 34% off at insidetracker.com/DHRU until the end of the month.
Sugar Is Breaking Our Brains and Poisoning Our Mitochondria with Dr. Chris Palmer of Harvard Medical School
This episode is brought to you by ButcherBox, InsideTracker, and Colima Salt. We are in the midst of a global mental health crisis, and mental illnesses are on the rise. But what causes mental illness? And why are mental health problems so hard to treat?Today on The Dhru Purohit Podcast, Dhru sits down with Dr. Chris Palmer to discuss a revolutionary new way of understanding and treating mental illness, specifically with a ketogenic diet and mitochondrial repair. Dr. Palmer shares some truly amazing stories about patients struggling with severe psychiatric illnesses who have been able to regain their health and independence along with a greater quality of life.Dr. Palmer is a psychiatrist and researcher working at the interface of metabolism and mental health. He is the Director of the Department of Postgraduate and Continuing Education at McLean Hospital and an assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. For over 25 years, he has held leadership roles in psychiatric education, conducted research, and worked with people who have treatment-resistant mental illnesses. In this episode, we dive into: -The number-one driver of mental health disorders today (1:48)-The role metabolism plays when it comes to mental health disorders (2:42)-The patient who changed the way Dr. Palmer treats mental illness (8:10)-The long-term outcomes of using medical interventions for depression (18:32)-Dr. Palmer’s personal history with mental illness and what he noticed after making changes to his diet (23:44)-The role mitochondria play in mental disorders (53:11)-The causes of mitochondrial dysfunction (1:01:26)-Pharmaceutical drugs and mitochondrial dysfunction (1:14:23)-Understanding the current treatment model of mental health disorders (1:21:30)-How to address metabolic health to improve mental disorders (1:30:17)For more on Dr. Chris Palmer, visit his websites, chrispalmermd.com and brainenergy.com. Get his book, Brain Energy, here. This episode is brought to you by ButcherBox, InsideTracker, and Colima Salt.ButcherBox has a variety of different boxes, and you can choose your box and frequency. For a limited time, you can sign up and get two pounds of ground beef free for a whole year PLUS $10 off by going to butcherbox.com/dhru.InsideTracker provides detailed nutrition and lifestyle guidance based on your individual needs. Right now, they’re offering my podcast community 20% off. Just go to insidetracker.com/DHRU to get your discount and try it out for yourself.Right now, you can get a bag of Ava Jane’s Kitchen Colima Sea Salt for free and just pay for shipping and handling. Head on over to dhrusalt.com and try Colima Sea Salt for free today!
This episode is brought to you by Cozy Earth and InsideTracker.In an ideal world where soils are rich and the air and water are pure, we would be able to get the vitamins and nutrients we need to optimally support and sustain a disease-free life through diet alone. However, that’s just not practical for most of us in our toxic, modern world.On today’s mini-episode, Dhru sits down with Chris Kresser to talk about the increasing issue of nutritional deficiencies, how we got here, and how to add back in what the modern world squeezed out. Chris Kresser is the co-founder of the California Center for Functional Medicine, the founder of Kresser Institute, the host of the top-ranked health podcast Revolution Health Radio, the creator of ChrisKresser.com, and the New York Times bestselling author of The Paleo Cure and Unconventional Medicine. He is one of the most respected clinicians and educators in the fields of Functional Medicine and ancestral health and has trained over 2,000 clinicians and health coaches with his unique approach. He has recently launched Adapt Naturals, a supplement line designed to add back into your diet what the modern world has crowded out and help people perform and feel their best. In this episode we dive into: -The top three nutrient deficiencies -Signs of nutrient deficiencies-Nutrients people can get too much of-Optimal vitamin D levels -Nutrients people should people be careful supplementing with -The importance of vitamin K2 and choline -Understanding calcium and vitamin A deficiencies-Why phytonutrients are so important-Chris’s new supplement line, Adapt Naturals Listen to the full episode here. For more on Chris Kresser, follow him on Instagram @chriskresser, Facebook @chriskresslac, Twitter @chriskresser, YouTube @chriskresser, and through his website, chriskresser.com.This episode is brought to you by Cozy Earth and InsideTracker.Cozy Earth are the most comfortable, temperature-regulating, and nontoxic sheets on the market. Right now, get 40% off your Cozy Earth sheets. Just head over to cozyearth.com and use code DHRU.InsideTracker provides detailed nutrition and lifestyle guidance based on your individual needs. Right now, they’re offering my podcast community 20% off. Just go to insidetracker.com/DHRU to get your discount and try it out for yourself.
How to Use Intermittent Fasting to Improve Your Weight and Metabolic Health with Cynthia Thurlow
This episode is brought to you by BiOptimizers and WHOOP.Intermittent fasting has become all the rage for weight loss and better health. It is a free tool that activates all the systems in your body to protect and heal itself and help you live longer. Fasting can help reduce inflammation, brain fog, and insulin resistance. It can also increase energy and bone density and activate autophagy, which is the process of cleaning out damaged cells. But intermittent fasting affects men and women differently.Today on The Dhru Purohit Podcast, Dhru sits down with Cynthia Thurlow to discuss the unique challenges women face with intermittent fasting and how to customize an approach to intermittent fasting that recognizes menstrual cycles and life circumstances. Cynthia Thurlow is a nurse practitioner, CEO and founder of the Everyday Wellness Project. She is an international speaker with over 13 million views for her second TEDx talk and a globally recognized expert in intermittent fasting and nutritional health.In this episode, we dive into: -How eating less contributes to having more energy (9:57)-Indications that you are not metabolically flexible (12:42)-Optimal fasting insulin level (18:23)-How a high fasting insulin level makes it difficult to lose weight (21:16)-The connection between fasting and optimal metabolic health (25:08)-The importance of being flexible when it comes to fasting (32:48)-The benefits of ending your feeding window earlier (43:22)-How fasting improves gut health (53:02)-How to know if fasting is causing harm (55:44)-Adequate protein consumption and why maintaining muscle mass is so important as we age (1:16:46)-The impact of alcohol consumption on women’s health (1:35:06)-The benefits of infrared sauna and cryotherapy (1:38:45) Also mentioned in this episode: -Intermittent Fasting: Transformational Technique TEDx Talk -Everyday Wellness PodcastFor more on Cynthia Thurlow, follow her on Instagram @cynthia_thurlow_, on YouTube @cynthiathurlow, and through her website, cynthiathurlow.com. Get her book, Intermittent Fasting Transformation, here. This episode is brought to you by BiOptimizers and WHOOP.Magnesium Breakthrough really stands out from the other magnesium supplements out there. BiOptimizers is offering my community 10% off, so just head over to magbreakthrough.com/dhru with code DHRU10.WHOOP is a personalized digital fitness tracker and health coaching platform that monitors your physiology 24/7 and provides personalized recommendations based on what your body needs. To get yours, go to join.whoop.com and get 15% off your membership with code DHRU15.
The Top Causes of Colon Cancer and How to Reduce Your Risk Today with Dr. Elizabeth Boham
This episode is brought to you by InsideTracker and Pendulum.Did you know that colon cancer is the second-most common cause of cancer-related deaths among men and women combined in the United States? While traditionally a disease of older adults, it has crept into younger and younger age groups. There are also racial and ethnic groups that see its devastating consequences at a higher rate. On today’s mini-episode, Dhru sits down with Dr. Elizabeth Boham to talk about why we are seeing an increase in colon-cancer incidence and mortality in young people. They discuss the risk factors and the importance of screening and early detection. They also talk about how to create a terrain in the body where cancer is less likely to grow through specific diet and lifestyle modifications. Dr. Boham is a physician and nutritionist who practices Functional Medicine at The Ultrawellness Center in Lenox, MA. She is part of the faculty of the Institute for Functional Medicine and has been featured on the Dr. Oz show and in a variety of publications and media, including Huffington Post, The Chalkboard Magazine, and Experience Life. Her DVD Breast Wellness: Tools to Prevent and Heal from Breast Cancer explores the Functional Medicine approach to keeping your breasts and whole body well. In this episode we dive into: -What causes colon cancer -Why we are seeing higher rates of colon cancer in younger people -Testing and screening for colon cancer -How to create an environment in the body where cancer is less likely to grow -The important role physical activity plays in cancer prevention -The connection between gut health and colon cancer -Foods that support our microbiome and can lower our risk for colon cancer Listen to the full episode here. For more on Dr. Boham, follow her on Instagram @elizabethbohammd, Facebook @elizabethbohammd, on Twitter @drboham, and through her websites, drboham.com and ultrawellnesscenter.com.This episode is brought to you by InsideTracker and Pendulum.InsideTracker provides detailed nutrition and lifestyle guidance based on your individual needs. Right now, they’re offering my podcast community 20% off. Just go to insidetracker.com/DHRU to get your discount and try it out for yourself.Pendulum is the first company to figure out how to harness the amazing benefits of Akkermansia in a probiotic capsule. To receive 20% off your first purchase of Pendulum’s Akkermansia probiotic supplement, go to Pendulumlife.com and use code DHRU20.
How to Help the Men in Your Life Get Healthy, Level Up, and Find Purpose
This episode is brought to you by InsideTracker and WHOOP.Surrounding ourselves with people who elevate us not only leads to a more fulfilling life, it leads to a healthier and longer one too. In fact, loneliness poses the same risks as smoking and can even manifest as physical illness, including chronic pain. Today on The Dhru Purohit Podcast, Dhru leads us through a fun conversation on practical ways to cultivate your own community with his friends Antonio Neves, Mark Meyuhas, and Junaid Kalmadi, who are all part of a weekly men’s group called Man Morning. They share about things going on in their life—from health to business to family to relationships. In this episode, we dive into: -Simple tips for adding more joy to your life (6:27)-What is Man Morning? (30:19)-The crisis men are facing (34:28)-The importance of having mentors (56:06)-The earliest indicators that you are giving leftovers in your relationships (1:07:44)-The power of presence in relationships (1:15:49)-How softening the start-up of your arguments is crucial to resolving relationship conflicts (1:27:44)-The written rules of Man Morning that allow for vulnerable sharing (1:35:09)-A better question to ask instead of “what’s new?” (1:47:15)Sign-up for the Man Morning newsletter here.For more on Antonio Neves, follow him on Instagram @theantonioneves, and through his website, theantonioneves.com. Get his book, Stop Living on Autopilot, here. For more on Mark Meyuhas, follow him on Instagram @the.tasting.kitchen and @ghisallo.la and through his websites, thetastingkitchen.com and ghisallo.la. Check out his meditation app, Evenflow, here.For more on Junaid Kalmadi, follow him on Instagram @thefarmersjuice, and through his website, farmersjuice.com. This episode is brought to you by InsideTracker and WHOOP.InsideTracker is a personalized health and wellness platform like no other. Right now they’re offering my community 20% off at insidetracker.com/dhru.WHOOP is a personalized digital fitness tracker and health-coaching platform that monitors your physiology 24/7 and provides personalized recommendations based on what your body needs. For me, it's been a game-changer to optimize my sleep and improve my fitness, performance, and overall health. To get yours, go to join.whoop.com and get 15% off your membership with code DHRU15.
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Quinlynn Jones, 7, is fighting for her life after being struck by a tree limb.(Submitted/ Jenna Jones)
By Sarah Motter, Chris Fisher and Jordan Gartner
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ST. MARYS, Kan. (WIBW/Gray News) - A Kansas girl remains in a medically induced coma after her mother said a tree limb fell on her daughter’s head while they were walking to a park.
Jenna Jones told WIBW that her daughter Quinlynn was walking to the park with her two brothers in the morning hours on Saturday when a 4-inch branch fell about 30 feet from an elm tree.
Jones said the falling branch fractured Quinn’s skull in two places; one was near a major blood vessel in the brain.
The second-grader was rushed to Children’s Mercy Hospital, and her mother said the doctors were initially optimistic about her recovery.
On Tuesday, Jones said her daughter’s recovery was a waiting game as doctors continue to wait for swelling near the fractures to go down. Quinlynn also remained in a medically induced coma.
There were high wind gusts that morning in northeast Kansas, with reported gusts exceeding 50 mph.
A Facebook Group, Quinlynn’s Climb, has been created to update friends and family on her condition. A GoFundMe has been created to help the family cover medical expenses.
According to the online fundraiser, doctors told the family that the amount of brain damage Quinlynn will have is currently unknown. However, the bulk of the damage is in the language and processing area of her brain.
Jones said she doesn’t blame anyone for what happened to her daughter, calling it a freak accident. She said she appreciated how the community has rallied around Quinnlynn and her family.
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I woke up at 3 am which happens sometimes, but this time I had a bad feeling. The kind of bad feeling that doesn't go away with prayer. It's an up and down the spine bad feeling. We saw weather reports that there were tropical storms brewing and possibly heading towards Florida. Every day it changed, it's shifting towards Tampa, it's going to miss Florida, now it's heading towards Panama, then it's shifting again. Each day the feeling got worse....I got more anxious and then I finally told Nate. We were out to dinner and I told him it's so strong, and I feel it's going to hit Fort Myers. He said, "I didn't know you were having these, let's start calling and prepping." We talked to our connections and then just started calling churches all over Fort Myers, a few people laughed, "it's a little early to tell". They don't know me or these feelings I seldom get but when I do, it means something. I've ignored it in the past, but now I know it's a gift so I don't now. So I said , "we are just prepping as a mission and being prepared to leave if we have to." I gave them all our number and website. As it was hitting, I'll never forget, we were evacuated from St Augustine, being in a flood zone, at a hotel that was completely full. Electricity was going off and on and then off for at least two days. I was sick inside, knowing what was happening to not only people I have grown to love but an area I have loved for ten years now. I was hurting for them. I lost contact with my close friends in Fort Myers...I warned them when I was first feeling it and they told me"It's going to miss us."
Some didn't evacuate. The last text I received when our power was out was, "I guess you were right". I didn't hear from her for three days". Then I was getting a ton of SOS messages on our platform, website and my phone. We got a call from Life Church that day and they were so kind. They wanted us to join their team when they got generators to run the church and apologized for a cold shower and water boil. I told her that soinded amazing! We had a place to rest our heads at night, a microwave, fridge and a shower. On some missions we use wipes or sink showers! We had a ton of names to add to their board and we started doing house calls and resourcing people we couldn't get to due to road closings and bridges out to people who could. I also connected with amazing people from the South Shore Church who sent trucks of supplies which was so amazing. For two days, that's what our days looked like. Helping cut, rake and move trees and sticks, helping people and churches and distribution sites get the supplies they needed and praying ALOT and using God as our light in some very dark moments. He gave us strength every day. I will end this story on an amazing "God wink" or God driven story. They sent us to a house with the wrong address. We sat outside of this yard that clearly needed work but we needed consent to do anything. As we knocked and knocked and waited for the call back with the correct address, we saw this elderly woman who had osteoporosis across the street with a rake and a very large yard filled with broken down palms, palm trees and oak tree limbs and sticks. I said to Nate, there is no way I am letting her do that!!!! I got out to the car and asked her if she would let us do her yard and she said, "How much will it cost?" I said, "nothing". We explained who we were and why we were there and she told us she was Jewish and "today is a very important day, I am going to church." "Today is the day of atonement". She allowed us to finish her yard, it took two days of hard work and I was grateful that God placed us there at that exact time. We did eventually get the correct address and helped her too! We prayed with them and ended the day feeling exhausted but filled with Gods peace that we were where we were suppose to be, doing what he wanted us to do.
And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up. So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith.
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God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea. PSALM 46:1-2
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The United Nations estimates that two-thirds of the world's population will live in cities by 2050. How will this affect traffic? And what needs to be done to ensure that the growing metropolitan areas are liveable for people? We asked three experts about how mobility is set to change in 10 to 15 years.
Transport for tomorrow
The United Nations estimates that two-thirds of the world's population will live in cities by 2050. How will this affect traffic? And what needs to be done to ensure that the growing metropolitan areas are liveable for people? We asked three experts about how mobility is set to change in 10 to 15 years.
Mr. Dasbach, how do you see mobility developing over the next 10 years?
It is likely that the space currently dedicated to cars will be freed up more for other road users. Cities are increasingly realigning themselves according to environmentally friendly principles. This includes more sharing services and electric vehicles, which, together with public transport, offer greater scope for intermodal travel. The bicycle in particular is taking a more central role.
What makes you so sure of this?
During the pandemic, it became obvious that work and private life are increasingly merging. The increasing trend of working from home means that long commutes are no longer necessary. As a consequence, people increasingly associate travel with leisure time. You might take your bike to a meeting first thing and then head into the woods to clear your mind. Mobility is not just a means to an end, but increasingly part of an individual lifestyle.
What role does the eBike play in this?
It is relevant because it combines both: In the city, it is often the faster mode of transport, and it enhances your quality of life. A few years ago, the eBike was primarily a kind of mobility aid for people who didn't want the effort of riding a bike or who believed that they were too old to do so. But the truth is, everyone is familiar with situations where you don't use your bike because it's stressful or inconvenient in some way. eBikes increase people's motivation to ride a bike. The eCargo bike reinforces this trend. More and more people are beginning to wonder: do I really need a car in the city? Couldn't I drop my two children to daycare with a cargo bike? What else is possible? Shopping at the farmer's market, a trip to the hardware store? This is where opportunities arise that will get a huge boost from electrification.
As a manufacturer of eBike components, how are you preparing for future developments?
We are constantly asking ourselves about the challenges that cyclists face. We provide innovative answers to these questions. For example, we have introduced Help Connect, a service that calls for help if an eBiker has an accident. We were the first to introduce an assistance system for eBikes with the ABS anti-lock braking system. Another focus is on products for theft protection and other digital functions. Connecting the eBike with digital services is an elementary stepping stone on the way to future mobility. By introducing the smart system, we are expanding the ways to connect the cyclist and the environment with the eBike. For example, eBikers can regularly look forward to new functions that are conveniently transferred to the eBike via the app.
How digital will the eBike of the future be?
As soon as you combine the eBike and smartphone, you have a connected riding experience, so, for the most part, this is already possible right now. In the future, eBikers will not only be connected while cycling, but also when their eBike is parked. The rider might want to make sure that their bike is still there when they return to it. This can only work if the bike is connected to the internet to give the owner this information. Another advantage of a connected eBike is the ability to communicate with other road users.
Gregor Dasbach, Vice President of Digital Business for Bosch eBike Systems sees the eBike as the driving force behind new mobility. For the future, he foresees new digital services that will enrich the riding experience.
What advantages do you mean?
We know from accident studies that many of the accidents involving bikes in the city are turning accidents where cyclists were overlooked. In future, by connecting road users, drivers and vehicles will be warned to avoid such accidents. I believe there is enormous potential to be tapped through communication with other road users.
How are digital services changing the eBiking experience?
Rather quite decisively. eBiking is becoming an increasingly individual experience. This begins right from the start. It doesn't really matter whether I unlock the eBike with a touch of the finger or by smartphone. The eBike will suggest a route that fits my riding profile. It handles gear shifting, making the most of my battery for the trip - and effortlessly making my favourite apps part of my eBike experience.
What products will be under development at Bosch eBike Systems in the coming years?
We are pursuing two strategies in developing new products and services. Our first concern is rider safety, from the further development of ABS to assistance in the event of an accident. The second major topic is digital services that will make eBiking an even more enjoyable and individual experience in the future. This requires seamless connectivity. After all, the many new functions are only truly fun if the hardware and digital components are perfectly matched. We will continue to expand our innovation leadership in this area.
Gregor Dasbach, Vice President of Digital Business for Bosch eBike Systems sees the eBike as the driving force behind new mobility. For the future, he foresees new digital services that will enrich the riding experience.
Mr. Dasbach, how do you see mobility developing over the next 10 years?
It is likely that the space currently dedicated to cars will be freed up more for other road users. Cities are increasingly realigning themselves according to environmentally friendly principles. This includes more sharing services and electric vehicles, which, together with public transport, offer greater scope for intermodal travel. The bicycle in particular is taking a more central role.
What makes you so sure of this?
During the pandemic, it became obvious that work and private life are increasingly merging. The increasing trend of working from home means that long commutes are no longer necessary. As a consequence, people increasingly associate travel with leisure time. You might take your bike to a meeting first thing and then head into the woods to clear your mind. Mobility is not just a means to an end, but increasingly part of an individual lifestyle.
What role does the eBike play in this?
It is relevant because it combines both: In the city, it is often the faster mode of transport, and it enhances your quality of life. A few years ago, the eBike was primarily a kind of mobility aid for people who didn't want the effort of riding a bike or who believed that they were too old to do so. But the truth is, everyone is familiar with situations where you don't use your bike because it's stressful or inconvenient in some way. eBikes increase people's motivation to ride a bike. The eCargo bike reinforces this trend. More and more people are beginning to wonder: do I really need a car in the city? Couldn't I drop my two children to daycare with a cargo bike? What else is possible? Shopping at the farmer's market, a trip to the hardware store? This is where opportunities arise that will get a huge boost from electrification.
As a manufacturer of eBike components, how are you preparing for future developments?
We are constantly asking ourselves about the challenges that cyclists face. We provide innovative answers to these questions. For example, we have introduced Help Connect, a service that calls for help if an eBiker has an accident. We were the first to introduce an assistance system for eBikes with the ABS anti-lock braking system. Another focus is on products for theft protection and other digital functions. Connecting the eBike with digital services is an elementary stepping stone on the way to future mobility. By introducing the smart system, we are expanding the ways to connect the cyclist and the environment with the eBike. For example, eBikers can regularly look forward to new functions that are conveniently transferred to the eBike via the app.
How digital will the eBike of the future be?
As soon as you combine the eBike and smartphone, you have a connected riding experience, so, for the most part, this is already possible right now. In the future, eBikers will not only be connected while cycling, but also when their eBike is parked. The rider might want to make sure that their bike is still there when they return to it. This can only work if the bike is connected to the internet to give the owner this information. Another advantage of a connected eBike is the ability to communicate with other road users.
What advantages do you mean?
We know from accident studies that many of the accidents involving bikes in the city are turning accidents where cyclists were overlooked. In future, by connecting road users, drivers and vehicles will be warned to avoid such accidents. I believe there is enormous potential to be tapped through communication with other road users.
How are digital services changing the eBiking experience?
Rather quite decisively. eBiking is becoming an increasingly individual experience. This begins right from the start. It doesn't really matter whether I unlock the eBike with a touch of the finger or by smartphone. The eBike will suggest a route that fits my riding profile. It handles gear shifting, making the most of my battery for the trip - and effortlessly making my favourite apps part of my eBike experience.
What products will be under development at Bosch eBike Systems in the coming years?
We are pursuing two strategies in developing new products and services. Our first concern is rider safety, from the further development of ABS to assistance in the event of an accident. The second major topic is digital services that will make eBiking an even more enjoyable and individual experience in the future. This requires seamless connectivity. After all, the many new functions are only truly fun if the hardware and digital components are perfectly matched. We will continue to expand our innovation leadership in this area.
"Digital services are significantly enhancing the eBike experience"
Stephan Rammler, sociologist and founder of the Institute for Transportation Design, predicts a fundamental transformation in cities that will only succeed with sustainable mobility.
Mr. Rammler, how will cities be different in the future?
As more and more people move to urban areas, the demand for living space, cultural and leisure facilities and mobility will also increase. The question is how to reconcile future expectations with the available urban space.
What's your solution?
The increasing density of the population in cities will give rise to a central demand for greater sustainability, as otherwise we will simply run out of air to breathe in cities due to climate change. This affects many areas, but first and foremost mobility. Individual ownership of the classic combustion engine car with its significant ecological footprint cannot continue. As is evident in younger generations, usage patterns are shifting towards sharing - from car and ride sharing to electric scooter and bike sharing services.
I wouldn't quite go that far. In the future, however, there will certainly be more electrified vehicles on the road. Politicians will have to incentivise more sustainable mobility, for example by introducing a toll for motorists in the city. Because one thing is clear: The transformation can no longer be put on the long finger.
"Individual ownership of the classic combustion engine car with its significant ecological footprint cannot continue."
Stephan Rammler, sociologist and founder of the Institute for Transportation Design
Ralph Buehler, professor and transportation researcher at the Virginia Tech Research Center in the U.S., discusses ways to create a bike-friendly city and the Copenhagen model. Researcher Ralph Buehler is the author of "City Cycling" (2012) and "Cycling for Sustainable Cities" (2021) – and commutes to work by bike himself.
Mr. Buehler, Copenhagen is universally regarded as a model for bike-friendly traffic management – what can other cities learn from it?
Like many smaller cities in the Netherlands, the statistics for the Danish capital are the stuff of dreams. 49 percent of the population cycle to school, university or work. However, this did not happen overnight, as Copenhagen is a traditionally bike-friendly city that has stepped up its measures over the last 30 years. The reason why the city has become a model for the world at large can best be summed up with a formula for success: separate, protected cycle paths along the main traffic routes. These allow everyone to get around quickly and safely.
Do you see signs that other cities are following suit?
Yes, there is already a trend in many cities around the world to create protected bike lanes to allow cyclists to get from A to B safely and quickly - often in combination with more car-free zones in downtown areas and streets with speed limits. This is part of a transport policy that gives more space to pedestrians, cyclists and public transport, while restricting car traffic and making it less attractive. This can be seen in Montreal in Canada or Portland in the USA, as well as in the European cities of Paris, Vienna and Barcelona.
What is driving this development?
Municipal authorities around the world face the challenge of reducing CO2 emissions, minimising traffic congestion and combating local air pollution. This is the only way to maintain quality of life. We're talking about values like health, safety and recreational opportunities. For this, the traffic space needs to be reallocated.
How important is the role of the bicycle in the mobility revolution?
Cycling will play a major role in sustainable transport. In cities in particular, it is the perfect means of transport for many people when it comes to distances of up to ten kilometres. The increased popularity of eBikes is giving this development a further boost. They allow longer distances to be covered and appeal to new target groups. For example, commuters who no longer get into a sweat, even on long and steep routes to the office. This requires an expansion of the cycle path network so that people from outlying areas can commute quickly to the city and back home again. Many cities still have some catching up to do here.
"It is important to have separate, fast bike lanes for commuters"
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I kept this ongoing journal for our entire three-day odyssey through the world of quick potty training - I wanted to chronicle our experience for the benefit of other interested moms. Unfortunately, I didn't find this detailed article until I was on day three; if I had read it at the beginning, it would have helped, so check it out first if you're considering the 3-day training!
8:45 AM: It's go time ... literally! I take Cameron's diaper off and watch him like a hawk, my eyes zeroed in on his nether regions, waiting for the first dribble of pee. When it happens, I snatch him up like a madwoman and plop him on his potty chair ... where he sits. And sits. And sits. And nothing happens. I know that little droplet wasn't all the pee in his bladder, so where is it?
10:20 AM: He goes behind the recliner and my super Mommy-senses start going crazy - I know he's about to do something. Sure enough, he squats, and before he can do anything on the floor I use my catlike reflexes to whisk him back onto his potty. Success: two little turds drop into the receptacle! It's like the potty training jackpot! (Okay, so maybe they just fell in there as I sat him on, but still. It was poop and it was in the right place - so I'm counting it.) I excitedly text Curtis at work. He texts back, "Yay!!!!!!" I am envious that he doesn't have to deal with all this; I'm almost positive I'd rather be in his position right now. Colin is excited because he gets to help me dump it into the toilet ... you've gotta love the small amusements in life!
10:31 AM: Cameron pees on the floor the second I turn my back (to sneak a few bites of pie). Grrrr ....
10:57 AM: Guess he wasn't done pooping - 'cause there's the rest of it on the floor. I was staring right at him and didn't even notice until the smell hit me. For crying out loud! Am I seriously deluding myself into thinking he's ready for this???
11:13 AM: He dismantles his potty chair - and starts peeing while I'm frantically putting it back together, so I don't catch it. Oh. My. Lord. I'm considering having the carpet cleaner and paper towels surgically grafted onto my hands.
12:15 PM: Nap time, so the diaper goes on - 'cause I draw the line at a urine-soaked mattress! I'm sooo glad to be off pee-watch for a little while!
1:40 PM: Cameron stays dry through naptime, and then pees in his potty!!! I am elated ... until he finishes on the floor. Again. *sigh*
2:38 PM: Poops on the floor ... and in the potty! Then promptly drops a rubber ball into the poo as I'm getting a baby wipe. Gross.
3:05 PM: Have the good fortune to walk (barefoot) into a surprise puddle of pee on the kitchen floor. I'm pretty sure I know who it came from, but I have no idea when. Thank goodness it's on the tile this time!
4:04 PM: Cameron starts peeing on the floor (isn't that sentence getting rather redundant?) and, as usual, I put him on the potty. To my surprise, he resumes peeing in his potty chair - and looks down to watch it happen. Breakthrough! It's like I can see the light going on in his head! He finishes peeing and actually strains, trying to push out the last droplets. I'm so encouraged!!!!Feel like calling everyone I know ... but I'll refrain.
4:15 PM: Since he's just relieved himself, I figure it's safe to get something done (other than staring at his bottom half, which is what I've spent the best part of the day doing). He's playing in the lazy Susan where our canned goods are stored. When he climbs out to play elsewhere, I notice ... what's this? ... a lone turd on top of a box of chicken broth. WTF? I took a picture because I couldn't believe it - but I won't post it here. You're welcome.
4:54 PM: I put him on the potty again for good measure, AND HE PEES RIGHT AWAY - ON PURPOSE - AND THEN CLAPS HIS HANDS!!! Ahhhhhhh! Makes a mommy proud!
8:15 PM: The peeing in the potty continues all throughout the evening ... except for once, when he's in the bathroom with Curtis and pees on the floor. While I'm cleaning that up, he (Cameron, not Curtis) comes into the kitchen and poops under the table ... and then proceeds to crawl through it. OMG. At bedtime, around 8:15, I'm relieved to put a diaper on him for the night. It's been a long day.
DAY ONE RECAP: Ten accidents, but also several successes - especially as the day progresses; by bedtime, he pees every single time he's put on the potty, and he seems to have realized that's what he's supposed to do.
7:45 AM: Immediately upon waking, I take his diaper off (which he has wet during the night) and put him on his potty. He pees and poops, deliberately! I couldn't be more thrilled!
8:30 AM: He pees on the floor while I'm checking Facebook (damn it!) - but then immediately sits on his potty. Coincidence? I'm not sure.
9:17 AM: Poop on the floor. And one piece that accidentally falls into the potty. Sigh.
10:53 AM: I have watched him relentlessly, NONSTOP, for over an hour now, putting him on the potty every five or ten minutes ... and nothing. I saw him guzzle down his entire sippy cup of milk a long time ago, so what gives? Where's the pee? I can almost guarantee you he'll go on the floor while I'm typing this. Wahh.
10:54 AM: WHAT did I TELL you??? In the less-than-two-minutes that I had my eyes only half on him, he peed on the living room floor. I swear, I can't go to the bathroom, fix something to eat, let the dog out, or do anything else without having to clean up a mess afterward - yet when I keep an eagle eye on him and put him on the potty at regular intervals, nothing seems to happen. I am feeling seriously frazzled, and am honestly on the verge of tears. I don't know what I expected, but this is soooooo frustrating! Ready to throw in the towel ... but I won't ... I promised to see this through, and I'm going to!
12:00 PM: No more accidents. Have managed to avoid a complete meltdown, but am still so glad it's nap time. Wish I could just leave this diaper on him for the rest of the day.
2:15 PM: Cameron wakes up from his nap and his diaper is still dry, so I put him on the potty immediately. He wants to sit on my lap instead, so I cuddle him for a few minutes (praying the whole time he won't pee on me) until he wakes up a little bit, then try putting him on the chair again. He just sits there, but instead of hovering over him, I let him alone. To my surprise, he completely empties his bladder in the potty before getting up - even without me sitting beside him! Hooray!
4:01 PM: One thing I've noticed today is that he's holding his pee for longer stretches of time, which is good. The bad thing is, it makes it trickier to tell when he needs to go. I take the dog out and am "rewarded" when I come in with not one, but two puddles of pee ... thank goodness they're both on the tile floor!
8:20 PM: Bedtime. Whew. Only a couple of minor accidents, and we've made it through another day.
DAY TWO RECAP: Substantially fewer accidents today - only five or so, which is HALF the puddles and piles I cleaned up yesterday. He's holding it in for longer, though, so it's harder to tell when he needs to go. He's getting more resistant to sitting there if he doesn't have to go; yesterday he sat compliantly every time, whether he needed to pee or not, but today if he isn't peeing he's not sitting there for any length of time. I don't know if that's a good thing or not!
7:15 AM: Cameron wakes up and I put him directly on the potty. He pees, but doesn't poop. I'm kinda worried, because he almost always poops right when he wakes up, so I follow him around veeeeery closely for a while.
8:30 AM: He poops ... on the potty! He still isn't going by himself - I have to take him there - but still, he's getting somewhere.
10:27 AM: He pees on the floor. Doesn't even try to use his potty. I am frustrated.
12:00 PM: Nap time, and though I put him on the potty beforehand, he doesn't go. He hasn't peed in like an hour and a half, and has had a lot to drink, so I'm pretty sure he's going to pee in his diaper while he sleeps.
2:45 PM: He has taken a long nap, so I'm totally surprised to find that his diaper is dry. And when I put him on the potty, he goes and goes and goes!
5:00 PM: Supper time. What's that dripping sound? Oh gross - there's a puddle under his high chair. I should have taken him to pee before we ate, I guess. I take him (drips and all) to his potty, but he refuses to even sit on it. Fantastic.
6:45 PM: He pees ... on top of the potty chair. I don't notice that the lid is closed until too late, and he just stands there and pees on the lid. I'm not sure if he meant to go to the potty to pee, or if that's just where he happened to be at the time. Either way, I've got yet another mess to sop up.
DAY THREE RECAP: Scroll up and read the "Day Two Recap." It's pretty much the same.
SUMMARY: I don't know if it's his age - just 18 months - or not, but my final thoughts on the three-day potty training program are this: complete potty training, at least for Cameron, is going to take substantially longer than three days! I think it might work for older kids - and keep in mind I didn't take the seminar, I only read a short article on the topic, so I may be missing some major component. (Like I said in the beginning of this post, I found a much more comprehensive article, but it was kinda too late by then.)
It's been a really taxing three days. Mucho messes to attend to ... my poor carpet, time for a cleaning! Being completely confined to the house kind of really sucks, but I don't want to put a diaper on him and confuse the poor kid - nor do I really want to fool with putting undies on him in public when I KNOW he isn't ready. It's all fine and dandy when we're at home and I can plop him on the potty chair at regular intervals, but it's definitely going to take a while to get him to the point where he knows when he needs to go, holds it long enough to alert me, and gets successfully to the nearest toilet. And that, to me, is true potty training.
I'm going to stick with it for as long as it takes to get him finished. I mean, we've come this far - it may not have been 100% successful, but he has made remarkable progress. I may have to make a few improvisations (like maybe a Pull-Up on outings instead of a diaper or underwear), but I think it's worth it. And hopefully, by the time the new baby gets here in September, I'll only have one kid in diapers.
Post-potty-training notes: This is NOT for the uncommitted. I cannot stress that enough! You've got to stay on guard every minute and be absolutely diligent about taking him to the potty chair - and if they're anything like Cameron, they'll pee or poop every.time.your.back.is.turned. Make sure your agenda is free of anything pressing, and that you don't mind ordering takeout or eating cold-cut sandwiches for supper, because you're not going to have a lot of time to cook. You've also got to be well-equipped with cleanup supplies, because it's not a neat job, either. And be prepared to have your house fall apart around you: dishes you don't have time to wash, toys you don't have time to pick up. It would work best for kids who hold their pee for a long time and then go, rather than dribble a little here and there throughout the day.
If you have any questions or want to know more about our potty training experiment, you can e-mail me at ritatempleton@gmail.com.
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Daniel Marshall: This isn’t the first time coastal BC has been severed from the rest of Canada by road and rail – but there’s one important difference between 2021 and the floods of 1894 and 1948.
It has been a calamitous year for British Columbians.
The Heat Dome brought destruction with the wildfire infernos just a few months ago, and now the great British Columbia deluge of 2021 – and all this through a pandemic!
We prayed for rain and received it in massive abundance, much of our transportation infrastructure has been destroyed, supply lines further stressed and this last “atmospheric river” that so inundated BC (with apparently more to follow) is responsible for yet another declaration of emergency.
While we have been severed from the rest of Canada by both road and rail – this is not the first time this has happened.
As I sit here writing, after a self-imposed exile to the family farm since the disastrous wildfire season I reported on last summer, I have become something of a backwoods historian, hiding out in nature, with much time to reflect on the loss and hardship I witnessed the last time the Coquihalla Highway was shut down.
Just three months ago. two massive fires merged to engulf this essential transportation corridor. I remember it well; I was in Merritt, and the only escape route was via Princeton. Look at these two towns now, drenched and submerged, in desperate need of help. After the summer inferno reduced Lytton to ashes, the massive floods and slides we have just experienced throughout southern BC has left me quite gobsmacked, spurring me to investigate, especially as my writing shack here on Vancouver Island was almost swept away.
A view shows the damaged Coquihalla Highway 5 after mudslides near Coldwater River Provincial Park, B.C. Courtesy of B.C. Ministry of Transportation/Reuters
British Columbia is a province not particularly advantaged when it comes to agriculture. Its mountainous geography encompasses over 900,000 square kilometers, but only a miniscule three percent is potentially arable.
While Interior BC endures harsh winters and the effects of increasing drought, comparatively, the Lower Fraser Valley has a much gentler climate and plenty of rain – particularly in 2021. At the same time, historically, the single greatest disadvantage of the lower Fraser has been the annual flooding that occurred normally each summer. Early gold seekers soon discovered how the Fraser River can climb in height, their early gold claims submerged.
As early as 1860, Governor James Douglas encouraged the expansion of farm settlement in the Lower Fraser Valley, but apparently few were interested due to the unpredictable threat of flooding. Of course, the original attraction of those who came was for gold – not land.
Governor James Douglas
Douglas was well aware that the fertile lands of the Lower Fraser River were “exposed to overflow during the periodical inundations of the Fraser.” Douglas, with his usual foresight, recorded further observations just as applicable to our current state of emergency – especially with regard to supply chains and food self-sufficiency.
Douglas wrote that “the durable prosperity and substantial wealth of states is . . . derived from the soil. Without the farmer’s aid British Columbia must remain forever a desert, to be drained of its wealth and dependent on other countries for its daily food.”
With the farms of the Sumas Prairie having been inundated (a region that apparently accounts for about half of the province’s production in poultry and eggs, among other foodstuffs), the first BC governor’s words from over 160 years ago still have relevance to today.
Small-scale diking was apparently first tried in 1864 by a farmer in Delta. That success led others to dyke their own farms along the lower Fraser River, including “Honest” John Oliver, later BC Premier, 1918-1927. From Douglas’s time, the threat of flooding essentially precluded serious large-scale land reclamation for the next 30 or so years, until larger-scale dikes, drainage channels, pumps, and gates provided the infrastructure that reclaimed some of the province’s most fertile agricultural land.
Canadian National Railway train no. 1 leaving Port Mann Station during a flood of the Fraser River. BC Archives
With the coming of the Canadian Pacific Railway and rapid growth of the new City of Vancouver (1886), local food production was essential. In fact, since the 1858 gold rush, BC always had to contend with importing California produce to meet shortages, compounded by the great paucity of land suitable for agriculture. Vancouver was largely hemmed in by steep rocky slopes and great forest lands – not great land for farming. Hence, draining and diking in the Lower Fraser Valley was deemed an obvious and essential solution.
In the history of our province there have been two earlier great floods that wreaked similar damage to what we are witnessing today: both were during the period of greater land reclamation in 1894 and 1948.
Flooding of the Canadian Pacific Railway, 1894. Courtesy of BC Archives
In one of the great tragedies of BC engineering, the first large-scale dikes of the late 19th century, employing coal-fired steam engine pumps, were constructed and completed by 1894 – only to be hit hard by a devastating flood.
They had been built two feet higher than the previous record water height of 1882, but this was simply not enough; they were soon breached. Devastation was quick. But perhaps more importantly, the level of debt incurred to build, and subsequently rebuild, these early land reclamation works, though substantial, was never enough to fully counter the unpredictable flooding of the Fraser River.
Flooding at Chilliwack, c. 1894. Courtesy of BC Archives.
And so it was in 1948 when the Fraser eclipsed the water level of 1894, broke the dikes once more, flooding the Lower Fraser Valley again, and prompting – for the first time ever – the intervention of the federal government, which offered substantial financial aid to BC to invest in better diking and drainage.
After 1894, dikes had been again heightened by a further two feet. I wonder, with climate change, will this be our solution again: keep building taller dikes?
Like today, in 1948, all road and rail transportation to the rest of Canada was halted due to submerged highways and damaged train tracks. But unlike 1894, Vancouver was now a significantly larger port, Canada’s Western entrepot on the Pacific. Canada could simply not afford to have their communication with BC remain broken.
Boats and barge assisting flood victims remove themselves and their belongings; Fraser River, 1948. Courtesy of BC Archives
The Royal Canadian Navy was given command of the Lower Fraser River, with the power to requisition boats to rescue those stranded. By March 31st, the provincial government announced a state of emergency and the Army took charge of all dikes. From that point on, the federal government became involved in all future land reclamation projects in the province. The federal government of Prime Minister Mackenzie King also pledged $5 million in disaster relief, in addition to agreeing to pay 75 percent of all reconstruction of the dikes and drainage channels that had been destroyed: “Dikes are not the concern of the people living behind them alone, but are also of vital interest to the nation.”
Work crews reinforce railway dykes in South Westminster against the rising Fraser River during the flood of 1948. (Photo by Roy LeBlanc, Croton Studios, courtesy of the New Westminster Public Library, accession number 3083)
Just as in 2021, the great deluge of 1948 had broken all links with the rest of Canada. More than 2,300 homes were destroyed, and the number of evacuees exceeded 16,000 people, along with extensive crops and livestock lost.
Perhaps this time Canada, in securing its national interest, might go one further. Let’s not just secure and improve existing dikes. Canada should reasonably pay for a new one that will effectively impede the rising waters of the Nooksack River (north of Bellingham) in neighbouring Washington State. The spilling of additional waters from across the border has been a major contributing factor in the flooding of Sumas Prairie. A dike along the 49th parallel? Now that would be something!
Fraser River flooding at Hatzic, c. 1948. Courtesy of BC Archives
And there is perhaps greater incentive to do so if the projections of climate change are taken seriously. Because the one main difference between the great floods of 1894 and 1948 and the great deluge of 2021 is this: previously, floods have occurred with the usual Spring melt. In our case, the great British Columbian deluge of 2021 has occurred in November, winter has just begun, and the immense flooding is squarely attributable to massive rainfall – one month’s worth of rainfall in just two days, which we now know is called an atmospheric river.
A flood at the Port Mann and the Canadian National Railway shops. Courtesy of the City of Surrey Archives.
“Cariboo Road Bridge, Flood of 1894”; Alexandra suspension bridge on the Fraser River, built 1863, Yale.
Esmee (Betty) McCallum on right, with two women being towed on a barge by boat through the flooded Fraser River, 1948. B.C Archives
Author’s note: Invaluable historical information for this article comes from “The Reclamation of Pitt Meadows” by John Eric Collins, MA Thesis (1975)
A fifth-generation British Columbian, Daniel Marshall is an author, professor, curator, documentarian, and researcher focusing on British Columbia’s relatively untold but rich history. He is a recognized leader and award-winning researcher on historic Native-Newcomer relations, and their evolution and implications on Aboriginal rights today.
His award-winning documentary, Canyon War: The Untold Story, has aired on Knowledge Network, APTN, and PBS. His latest book, Claiming the Land: British Columbia and the Making of a New El Dorado, is available in bookstores across B.C.
Claiming the Land has achieved a rare and possibly unique feat in BC History by winning three major book awards: the Canadian Historical Association’s 2019 CLIO PRIZE for best book on B.C.; the 2019 Basil-Stuart-Stubbs Prize for outstanding scholarly book on British Columbia, administered by UBC Library; and the 2019 New York-based Independent Publishers’ Book Award (Gold Medal for Western Canada).
In late 2021, Research Co. and Glacier Media reviewed the...
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VICE meets up with Joe Nickell, a longtime paranormal investigator who’s been called the real-life Scully. We travel with him to Roswell, NM on the called the real-life Scully. We travel with him to Roswell, NM on the anniversary of the 1947 UFO Crash to...
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VICE meets up with Joe Nickell, a longtime paranormal investigator who’s been called the real-life Scully. We travel with him to Roswell, NM on the called the real-life Scully. We travel with him to Roswell, NM on the anniversary of the 1947 UFO Crash to...
Posted at 09:38h in Photography, Uncategorized by Polychromette 2 Comments
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VICE meets up with Joe Nickell, a longtime paranormal investigator who’s been called the real-life Scully. We travel with him to Roswell, NM on the called the real-life Scully. We travel with him to Roswell, NM on the anniversary of the 1947 UFO Crash to...
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For My glory shall be seen over all the earth and My people will be radiant. But My glory is so much more than shine for those who love Me. It is the force that breaks the yoke–the anointing. It is lavished upon all who commune with Me.
Time spent together
Studying My Word
Obliterates the residue of sin in your life–the old nature; that of the past that clings; old habits that mar and hinder…
Sin no longer has dominion over you–Your past has passed!
Commune with Me and shine in My glory. For if My people, would wear My anointing, the whole world would be aglow
and
All the world would see–
“The true light that enlightens every man was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world knew him not. He came to his own home, and his own people received him not. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God; who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father.” Jn. 1:9-14
“Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, ‘I am the light of the world; he who follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life'” Jn. 8:12
“And we all, with unveiled faces, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being changed into his likeness from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.” II Cor. 3:18
“And it shall come to pass in that day, that his burden shall be taken away from off thy shoulder, and his yoke from off thy neck, and the yoke shall be destroyed because of the anointing.” Is. 10:27 KJV
“–God chose you from the beginning to be saved, through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth. To this he called you through our gospel, so that you may obtain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.” II Thess. 2:13b-14
“Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.” Matt. 5:16
“Surely his salvation is at hand for those who fear him, that glory may dwell in our land.” Ps. 85:9
This entry was posted on March 11, 2013 and tagged aglow, anointing, body of Christ, breaks the yoke, christianity, Father, glory, God, Jesus, Lord, My Glory, shine, spiritual, truth, Word. 2 Comments
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Most agree that giving to others is a good idea however giving to others has a knock on effect on ourselves by improving the givers mental wellbeing.
Most agree that giving to others is a good idea however giving to others has a knock on effect on ourselves by improving the givers mental wellbeing. From small acts of kindness to volunteering, giving can give you a sense of purpose, community and connectedness. Sometimes we think of our wellbeing in terms of what we have; our income, car, home or job. Evidence shows that what we do and the way we think has the biggest impact on mental wellbeing. Positive mental wellbeing means feeling good about yourself and the world around you and being able to get on with your life. Helping and supporting others and working with others towards a shared goal is good for our mental wellbeing. A 2003 study in 373 older adults found that some aspect of wellbeing were higher in those who did volunteer projects compared with those who did not. Scientists have shown that giving to others can stimulate the reward areas in the brain helping to create positive feelings. Helping others also gives a sense of purpose and feelings of self-worth.
Evidence show that good relationships with family, friends, colleagues and the wider community are important for mental wellbeing.
Many of us would like to spend more time with the people who are most important to us but sometimes life just gets in the way of that. We must make time to connect with the people that matter to us. By nurturing these relationships we feel happier and more secure, giving a better sense of purpose. A 2002 study of 222 students in the US found that the happiest amongst the group had stronger social relationships than those who were less happy. Some tips to stay connected:
Make time each day to connect with your family, friends and colleagues. This could include ‘family time’ that is a fixed time to connect each day.
Arrange a day out with friends you may not have connected with recently. Most people connect on social media sites like Facebook but a face to face contact spending your time with your friends is so much more meaningful and beneficial than a “like” or “comment” on Facebook.
Reduce your screen time when you are in company. Put the phone away, close your laptop, turn off the TV and have a chat.
Try connecting with someone new today. Talk to the person beside you on the train or in the shop. This conversation may mean even more to the person you connect with than you realise.
Leave your desk for your lunch and sit with a colleague catching up on non-work matters.
It can be as simple as a smile at a passer-by.
Learning new skills is both useful and it can also positively affect our mental wellbeing. Learning means different things to everyone. To some it will be a new qualification and to others it will be learning a new recipe in the kitchen.
Learning new skills is both useful and it can also positively affect our mental wellbeing. Learning means different things to everyone. To some it will be a new qualification and to others it will be learning a new recipe in the kitchen. Evidence shows that continuing to learn throughout life can help improve and maintain our mental wellbeing. Mental Wellbeing means feeling good about yourself and the world around you and being able to get on with your life the way you choose. In 2004 a study interviewed 145 adults about learning throughout life and various aspects of their health and wellbeing. It found that people who involved themselves in more learning reported feeling higher self-esteem, a greater ability to cope with stress, and more feelings of self-confidence, hope and purpose. Setting goals and working towards them plays an important part in the way learning influences wellbeing. Many forms of learning involve contact with others which connects us to our communities and peers.
It is easy to rush through daily life without stopping to notice much. Paying attention to the present moment – to our own thoughts, feelings and to the world around you can improve your mental wellbeing.
Taking Notice is also called Mindfulness. It is easy to incorporate mindfulness into your life and can be a very powerful tool if learnt and practiced daily. Mental wellbeing means being feeling good about life and yourself and having the ability to get on with life in the way you want. Many think about wellbeing in terms of what you have; your income, car, house or job. Evidence shows that what we do and the way we think have the biggest impact on wellbeing. To Take Notice is to notice the sights, smells, sounds and tastes you experience as well as your thoughts and feelings that occur from one moment to the next. It’s easy to lose touch with the way our bodies are feeling and to end up living in our heads. An important part of Taking Notice is to reconnect with our bodies and the sensations they are experiencing. It can be something as simple as the feel of your knife and fork in your hands. Most of us have issues we find hard to let go of and mindfulness can help us deal with them more productively. Awareness of this kind also helps us notice signs of stress or anxiety earlier and helps us deal with them better.
Being active is great for your physical and mental wellbeing. Evidence proves there is a link between being active physically and good mental wellbeing.
Mental wellbeing means feeling good about yourself, about the world around you and having the ability to get on with life in the way you want.
Being active doesn’t mean you need to train for a marathon. You need to find physical activity that you enjoy and can fit into your daily/ weekly routine. This may be a daily walk to the shops instead of taking the car, a weekly gardening session, some yoga, swimming or a weekend walk.
Scientists confirm physical activity can help maintain wellbeing and good mental health in a number of ways:
Physical activity helps with mild depression. Evidence shows it can protect people against the onset of depression and anxiety.
Physical activity causes a chemical change in the brain which can help change our mood.
Physical activity brings about a sense of greater self-esteem, self-control and the ability to rise to a challenge – all of which help improve wellbeing.
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Planning a family cruise can be a hassle, but that doesn’t mean you should leave the kids out of the loop. Consider having your children help with your itinerary and packing decisions to get them involved in the excitement of the trip. This is a great way for the whole family to bond and have fun while preparing for the cruise. Here are 8 ways to involve your kids in planning your family cruise.
When you’re planning a family cruise, everyone’s going to want to have a say in when you go, how long, and what to do when you get there. But you, as the parent, are the sole decision-maker. The best way to involve your kids in the process is to use their natural enthusiasm to your advantage. Here are a few tips:
Planning a cruise for your family can be a real challenge. Between making sure everyone is paired up with a compatible roommate to navigating the ship’s many activities, it’s hard to know where to start. No matter what kind of cruise you’re planning, there are sure to be a few things you can do to make it a vacation your kids will remember for years to come.
Want your kids to be excited about a family cruise? Let them help you make a plan! Children are told what to do for the rest of their lives, which can make them cranky and irritable, even if you offer them fun activities. A small contribution to ensure the anticipation of the next family holiday by the sea. Here are some ways to get the whole family involved in planning your cruise.
List of What You Read
1. Ask the children where they want to go.
2. Let them choose their own boat or cruise line.
3. Give your opinion about the threshold.
4. Make a countdown for the duration of the trip.
5. Make selection of shore excursions a family affair.
6. Choose speciality restaurants together.
7. Let them design family t-shirts or caps.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I plan a family cruise?
How do you cruise with kids?
How do I start planning a cruise?
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1. Ask the children where they want to go.
Aerial photograph of Trunk Bay in St. John’s St. John, U.S. Virgin Islands. If you have to choose between the Eastern and Western Caribbean, or between a cruise to Bermuda and a cruise to the Bahamas, ask your kids for their opinion. Don’t give them the entire cruise brochure or they’ll demand to be taken on a 14-day odyssey through South America. Instead, ask them to explore two or even three possible paths and weigh the pros and cons of each. Just make it clear that if your kids can’t agree, the parents have the final say.
2. Let them choose their own boat or cruise line.
You think all the bells and whistles on a modern Royal Caribbean ship are worth it, but your spouse insists on a Free at Sea package from Norwegian. Call the children to break the deadlock. You can have an opinion on the options on the upper deck (surfing or go-karting) or the location of the kids club. Not only will they be happy to give you feedback, but they can also give you new insight into the choices that will help you make a final decision.
3. Give your opinion about the threshold.
Family Port Cabin (Photo courtesy of Carnival) When planning a cruise, the first thing you do is choose a ship and an itinerary. Next, you must choose your cabin(s). Families have several options when it comes to standard cabins. As well as regular beds that can be separated or pushed together to form a double bed, there are other options for children: pull-out sofas that turn into beds, and beds that can be detached from the wall or ceiling to look like bunk beds. Some cabins have both. If you can’t imagine you and two kids fitting into a regular cabin, there are other considerations. You can buy a specially designed family cabin with a separate room for each, adjoining cabins with a shared interior door for extra space (remember that an adult must be booked in each cabin, although no one controls the sleeping areas), or you can treat yourself to a suite for even more space. MORE: Carnival Cruise Line’s family port cabins Staterooms specifically designed for families are Family Harbor Suites on Carnival’s Vista Class ships, which have two dressing rooms, a privacy curtain and a breakfast and snack area just for families. Many Disney Cruise Line cabins are also designed for families – with the concept of separate bathrooms and privacy curtains. It will be easier to make a decision if you ask the whole family about the different options. Whatever category you’re in, discuss the best place for everyone, etc. If you have older kids traveling alone, choose a memorable cabin number so they’re less likely to forget….. Take a look at the A111 versus the R217. Seeing where you’re going to live during your trip can make the trip even more real, and everyone will love it!
4. Make a countdown for the duration of the trip.
If you search on Pinterest or Google for something like holiday countdowns or kids holiday countdown crafts, you’ll find plenty of ideas, from prints to craft projects. You can start the countdown right after you tell your family about the trip, or wait a month or two to create a real buzz. You can even give your kids an object to use during the trip for certain stages of the countdown (e.g. the three, two or one-week mark). B. a new pair of sunglasses or a chic outfit for a formal evening. And let’s face it… the countdown won’t just be for the kids. Adults also like the countdown…. Even the Shipmate app has a countdown timer to count down the days (and hours!) until your deposit. READ MORE: 11 theme parks for families near cruise ports
5. Make selection of shore excursions a family affair.
Macaws in Ocho Rios, Jamaica (Photo courtesy of Princess) One of the best ways to get kids involved is to choose shore excursions together. If your family members have different ideas of what a day on the dock should look like (like a day at the beach, a zip line, or a historical tour), work together to make sure everyone gets a little of what they want and make the trip all the better. A good way to do this is to look for shore excursions that include a variety of activities. Many tours also offer time on the beach, for example. Mountain bike tours in a nature reserve may also include a lesson on the local culture and wildlife. You can also have each family member take one of the port days during the cruise, so everyone can do what they really want to do. Finally, for families with very different interests, it may be the best solution not to participate in the visit. Instead, plan a route for yourself and explore the port on your own. Shuttles, taxis and other transportation are generally available to take you to all the attractions you want to see, and many ports are easily accessible on foot.
6. Choose speciality restaurants together.
Jiji Asian Kitchen (Photo courtesy of Carnival) If you want to expand your horizons and try some specialty restaurants in addition to all the amenities on your ship, consider including your children in that decision. It is assumed that you visit these places as a family, although you can of course take the children to the youth club for an evening and treat yourself to a special dinner. If you plan to visit a certain place together, discuss what each of you likes to eat and plan your meals accordingly. If your family likes steak and potatoes, reserve a table at the Steakhouse. The choice is huge on some ships these days, from Mexican and Asian fusion to Italian, Brazilian and good old American barbecue. The best part? Special meals on cruise ships usually have a fixed price and are almost always considerably cheaper for children than for adults.
7. Let them design family t-shirts or caps.
A fun cruise tradition is to have matching T-shirts or caps printed for your family on embarkation day (or any other day of the cruise), perhaps in honor of an important holiday or group theme. Kids can be picky about dressing to their parents’ taste, but you’ll get more acclaim if you let your little artists help design. You can sketch ideas together and create and print a design based on those ideas, or you can design the set yourself using fabric paint and other materials to create your own masterpiece. If you want all the shirts to be the same, we recommend printing a fun design. If you don’t mind them being different, let them do their own thing! In addition to decorations, many families put their last name on t-shirts, followed by the family’s holiday or cruise and the year (or month and year if you cruise more often). No matter how much help children give, they are more likely to dress appropriately if they have a say in what they wear. Don’t forget to take a family photo on the day you wear them!
Does your family like to decorate their door or cabin during a cruise? It’s a great way to put kids in charge. Give them a budget on Etsy or Amazon or have them design signs and posters to hang. If you opt for DIY, there are plenty of ideas online to get you started, or you can let the kids’ imaginations run wild and see what they come up with. But before you do, check your cruise line’s rules regarding door decorations. In general, they are still allowed, but in recent years the rules have become stricter regarding the materials from which they may be made. If you don’t like restrictions, buy some cute door magnets – they’re metal! The beauty of door decorations is that they are not only beautiful, but they are also a way to help your family identify your cottage. It’s easy to get lost in the long, wide hallways, and it’s easy to forget your cabin number – especially since it’s not printed on your cruise card for security reasons. If you know the hallway, you can at least find your cabin by the door decorations – which is also much easier on the kids. We hope you can use some of these ideas to get the whole family excited about your next cruise vacation! [READ MORE : The 7 best cruise lines for kids and toddlers Save it for later! Sarah Bretz and Erica SilversteinIf you are considering taking a family cruise, you have probably noticed that the cruise line websites are designed to appeal to adults and ask you to decide where you want to go, how long you want to go, and what you want to do on your trip. The idea of planning a vacation for the whole family may appear daunting at first, but with a little bit of preparation, a little bit of organization, and a lot of patience you will be able to find a trip that is fun for the whole family.. Read more about cruising with toddlers and let us know what you think.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I plan a family cruise?
The process of planning a family cruise is not a simple one. From booking a cruise, to choosing a resort, to managing your expenses, there is a lot to consider. Although, it’s not impossible and with a little work you can plan a great family cruise and have a vacation you will always remember. Traveling with young children can be a lot of fun, but it can also be a challenge. Planning activities for your kids that you all can enjoy as a family can be hard enough, but adding in the logistics of packing for a cruise and planning where to eat every night can be overwhelming. So, how do you plan a family cruise? Start by making sure you plan a cruise with activities your children will be interested in. You might want to bring them along when you pick out your cruise, or you might want to look online at sites like incredibletraveling.com to find the right cruise for your family.
How do you cruise with kids?
After the kids are fed and bathed, the staterooms are bedecked with stuffed animals, and the suitcases are zipped up with clothes and toys, it is time to head to the cruise ship. The fun is just beginning, and you’re almost ready for the trip of a lifetime. But did you know that there are ways to make your cruise even more enjoyable for the kids? Planning a family cruise isn’t easy, even if you’re traveling with seasoned cruisers. But what about if you’re cruising with kids for the first time? The following tips will help you make the transition go as smoothly as possible. (2) Making the Most of Your First Family Cruise: (3) 10 Tips for Making Your First Family Cruise the Best One Yet: (4) 5 Tips to Make a Luxury Family Cruise Even More Luxurious: (5) 10 Tips to Make a Family Cruise More Fun: (6) 3 Tips for Making the Most of a Family Cruise: (7) 5 Things to Consider Before Planning a Family Cruise (8) 5 Things to
How do I start planning a cruise?
If you’re considering a cruise for your next vacation, you’re not alone. Cruise vacations are among the most popular family vacation choices today. In fact, more than 20 million Americans took a cruise in 2015 alone. But if you’ve never been on a cruise, the prospect can be a little overwhelming – where do you even begin to plan your trip? Planning a cruise is much like any other vacation. There are a few key steps you should take to ensure your family’s vacation is one that you’ll all want to remember for years to come. The cruise ship industry is booming. One of the main reasons that cruise vacations are becoming so popular is that they are an affordable way to travel. However, with so many cruise lines to choose from and so many different cruise styles to choose from, it can be overwhelming to try to plan your first cruise vacation. (Incredibletraveling) is a travel blog with lots of information about planning family cruises. We have collected useful information on our site that will help you plan your first cruise vacation.
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Kyle Skinner is a seasoned social media veteran and currently the social media engagement manager at Patreon, a company that helps creators to get paid for their work. Having spent his early career helping to build the social media program at the Oakland Athletics baseball club, Kyle made the jump to Patreon to be a part of the company’s mission to get creators paid. There, Kyle focuses on engaging with artists, musicians, writers — creators of all kinds — to keep doing what they love and find ways to support them, whether they’re on the Patreon platform or not. He is known for his work building communities, advocating for creators, and having fun along the way.
Patreon x Kyle Skinner: Creativity in community
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Episode Summary
Communities are built through little moments, genuine connections between people and the world around them. Building a community from a brand perspective means removing the self-promotion and putting the moment ahead of the message. That’s just a glimpse of what Kyle Skinner, social media engagement manager at Patreon, talks about with us. Tune in to hear how he goes above and beyond, not to win points for the brand, but just to show support for fellow creators.
First and foremost: why community management? We’ll explain why building a community beyond the brand matters
We dive into what it means to be at the intersection of art and commerce
Kyle explains the power of empowering communities through creation
The team discusses why it’s so important support your community without requiring something in return
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My goal is to create a healing space for my patients. I work with people on an ongoing basis-with a minimum of six months. Healing takes time, and an occasional visit or check in does not cut it to reverse long-term health problems. I am here to help and support you on every step of your health journey. Using specialized medicine lab testing, we will get to the root cause of your health problems. The lab tests I most often recommend are food sensitivity, nutrient, hair mineral, and microbiome testing. Together, we will make a plan to get your body back into balance. This can include dietary and lifestyle changes, acupuncture, herbs, short-term supplementation, and referrals for other modalities. I also may recommend prescription medications or seeing a physician specialist. Science and modern medicine are not the enemies here-I just don't think they are the only option. I believe the combination of modern medicine with more natural practices is the best approach to health.
This can be done virtually for patients in Colorado or Michigan.
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My medical training was in Osteopathic Medicine, making me a DO. As part of this, I learned Osteopathic Manipulative Treatment (OMT). These are hands on techniques that include stretching, gentle pressure, and resistance. It can be compared to some of the techniques that chiropractors learn. My preference is for the gentler soft tissue techniques, as I find that they work the best. I have also been trained in dry needling and acupuncture as part of a physician acupuncture course.
I combine these different techniques in whatever way your body needs to treat physical pain-whether that is neck, back, or extremity.
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This is one service I'm excited to offer, as I've found it to be personally very effective. ASP needles are small 24K gold studs that are inserted into your ear. They last 1-3 weeks and fall off on their own.
The entire body is represented on the ear according to Chinese Medicine, so any condition can be treated using this. I have found it works exceptionally well for pain-whether it is acute or chronic. I once treated my own broken rib with these and didn't require any prescription or over the counter pain medications! These can be done in a quick 15 minute appointment, so it is perfect if you need a pick-me-up but are short on time.
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Struggling with pain and swelling after an injury? I can relate, which is why I decided to start offering this service. It includes ASP ear acupuncture (my secret weapon for pain control), body acupuncture, and recommendations for herbal and natural treatments for healing and pain for your specific injury.
Great for minor injuries where you are able to get back to sports quickly, or major injuries-broken bones, pre or post op, and to complement physical therapy. Living in Colorado, the main goal for most people is to return to their sports as soon as possible. This will help aid your body's natural healing ability-decreasing pain and increasing function.
*This is not a sports medicine evaluation. I will not be diagnosing or evaluating your injury.
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I am a certified meditation teacher in the REST technique by Jill Wener MD. This technique is based on Vedic Meditation, for which she is a certified teacher. I can teach in private sessions, small groups, or even large groups. Please email valerie@drvalerielecomte.com for availability and any questions.
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Monday morning is my favorite day of the week. I have tried to understand why this is so because almost everybody I know hate Monday morning. Hell, most people l know don’t look forward to Monday, not just the morning.
I guess for me, it is this freshness about Monday morning that kind of seduces me. Like a freshly perfumed beauty determined to have a go a me.
Everything about Monday morning smacks of newness and promise for a better week. After all, over the weekend, I got myself a new hair cut. I did my laundry so my clothes are all clean. Only an Arsenal loss over the weekend can spoil the day for me, because I get to face a lot of teasing from my colleagues on such on days following the weekend loss.
I guess some would envy my love for Monday morning. Generally though, people have a hate-hate relationship with Monday mornings. Imagine having to wake up from bed to face work after a night of partying.
It is even worse if one has a disagreeable boss to look forward to all week. You just bury your head in the pillow and wish the alarm would just stop singing. These are the times you wished you could just stretch out your arm and fling the damn alarm at the wall.
Only thing stopping you is that the alarm is coming from your expensive smartphone. Oh, for the good old days of a real clock. When you could just reach out from under your pillow and slam the clock with your fist to stop that jarring ringing.
So the question a smart guy would ask is, if I don’t have the Monday morning blues, how come I know a way around them? What makes me such an expert when I never experience them? Isn’t it like bachelor advising a couple over the problems they are facing in their marriage?
Hmm..good points though. Taking the marriage analogy a bit further, though I’m yet to have that grand wedding I have being planning for the last 10 years, I could give a married couple good advise based on the simple logic that a wedding is just like a very long, very committed relationship.
And I am a veteran in long committed relationships. Just like I am an veteran in how to make adrenaline pump through your body and make you chirpy the whole day. So do these things and watch your Monday morning blues disappear.
Sunday Night is the key
Write a Monday Morning ‘Things to do’ List
Get that Extra Boost with a Cup of Coffee
Sunday Night is the key
You can have as much ball as you wish on Fridays evenings and all day Saturday. However, try as much as possible to make sure all weekend social activities end well before Sunday night.
Use Sunday night to relax in front of the TV watching a boring program. Or better still, just grab hold of a book and get to it. The key here is to go to bed early and sleep off the weekend excitement.
Write a Monday Morning ‘Things to do’ List
This should also be part of your Sunday night routine. Write out a list of things you need to do for the week. Starting from a Monday morning to-do list.
Make sure you put the easiest tasks first. With a well prepared list, you won’t wake up in the morning wondering what you have to do on a boring day like this.
With your list, you have a well articulated mission that has to be accomplished. Of course, you must prioritize your list according to the things you love doing.
Not many buy into this idea. But I tell you, a little work out like jogging early in the morning would energize you for the whole day.
If jogging is out of the question you can do any low impact exercise indoors. There are so many of them. The point is to get your heart racing and pumping oxygen around the body.
Get that Extra Boost with a Cup of Coffee
Consuming caffeine Monday morning or any other morning might not be the best idea. But a cup would do you a lot of good. Like we always say about coffee, it is taking too much of it that harms the body.
This is especially good for folks who can’t be bothered to hit the gym on Monday morning. You can get your energy boost from a good cup of coffee.
Are you already at work or school and reading this? Tell us how you manage your Monday morning blues. You can as well tell us how much you hate Mondays. Use the comments box below or click the social media icons to take you to our Facebook page or Twitter handle where you can say a thing or two about Monday mornings.
About The Author
I read. I brood. I write. In between all that, I ponder one of the biggest existential questions of the modern era: would Arsenal ever win the league again?
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We’re excited to welcome Erica to our AGY community! For Erica, Yoga is an infinite path of self-discovery. Inspired by the Dalai Lama, Erica posits a simple tenet for that path: Don’t try to use what you learn from Yoga to be a great Yogi; use it to be a better whatever-you-already-are. By challenging the physical and mental body, asking deep questions about our own misunderstandings, and welcoming how we may better serve in compassion and love, we can harness the power of yoga to bring a brighter, more fulfilled existence to this life.
Erica aims to create a space that harnesses the unique growth of many different individuals into one supportive Sangha (spiritual community) so that Yoga becomes something universal that you carry with you between classes and serves you in your daily life. You can now catch Erica’s Vinyasa yoga classes here a AGY every Tuesday and Thursday from 9:00 – 10:00 a.m. To learn more about her check out her interview below…
AGY: What is your Astrology Sign and how do you relate to it?
Erica: I am a Taurus born in the year of the Ox. While I’m not someone who knows a lot about astrology, my personal sign has always been a source of inspiration for me. The visual of having the humble strength, loyalty, steadiness and gentle tenacity of both beasts of burden in my corner have always brought me joy and somehow made my load feel lighter. I’m also particularly drawn to any Govinda chants and feel they spark deep in my heart.
AGY: What is your favorite mantra?
Erica: Satchitananda – I have it tattooed on my wrist
AGY: Favorite asana and why?
Erica: I love Eka Pada Koundinyasana II. I remember trying this pose in a class early in my yoga practice and being flabbergasted. What? How is that even possible?? It seemed to defy the laws of physics. Cut to me in another class five years later in my practice and without drills or intense focused effort (obsession) over the pose… it just happened. It was like magic.
AGY: What is random fact about you?
Erica: I was born on a small hobby farm in rural Montana. We raised sheep. I know how to groom and show a sheep at the fair. That hasn’t really served me much in my adult life in LA.
AGY: What is your favorite inspirational quote?
AGY: Describe yourself in three words?
Erica: sat chit ananda (see what I did there??)
AGY: What brings you most joy and why?
Erica: Making a meaningful contribution, whether that’s in a conversation with a stranger, in my personal home life or in the broad scope of the world. I hope people feel even a tiny amount brighter or more at ease because I was there. I hope the work I do in yoga class or on-screen helps ease suffering in the world by even one ounce. I’m probably not going win a Nobel prize or anything, but I hope my colleagues and friends feel supported, better able to do their work because I’m over here doing mine to the best of my ability too.
AGY: What’s your biggest fear and why?
Erica: In all honesty, my biggest fear is that I’ll never get over the fears that put me in my own way. But then I try to remember the three definitions of Ganesha… Most yogis understand that Ganesha is known as the remover of obstacles, but deeper in yogic tradition he’s also the one who places the obstacle in your path in the first place. Take another step deeper into yoga… Ganesha is the obstacle itself. …Smoke that in your pipe for a bit.
AGY: If you live in LA, when and why did you move here?
AGY: Like many, I moved to Los Angeles to be an actor over a decade ago. While I’ve had some success, the extreme highs and lows of that career path are ultimately what lead me to discover yoga, without which I probably would have headed back to Montana long ago. Like any pursuit in life, yoga is the calming counterbalance for all the other stuff that happens on this road of life.
AGY: What is your favorite hobby, aside from yoga?
Erica: Outside of yoga, I love to cook and play in the kitchen while listening to audiobooks. I devour audiobooks faster than popcorn at the movie theatre. Like, for real… you got any recommendations??
AGY: What is your favorite food?
AGY: Pick a favorite? I love all different types of food! If you forced me to settle on one thing, I’d cheat and say anything cooked with whole, high-quality ingredients. I love how delicious and nutritious high-quality, locally grown food tastes, and more importantly, how well it serves my body. I feel it on my yoga mat, at work all day and even when I sleep. Perhaps more importantly, I definitely feel it when I don’t feed my body well. But as Oscar Wilde said, “Everything in moderation, especially moderation,” so I’d also have to admit… I love ice cream.
You can pre-book Erica’s Vinyasa yoga classes on a Tuesday and Thursday at 9:00 a.m. here or by calling the studio on (323) 433-7108.
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Purity has been a sacred matter throughout the generations. It seems that almost every culture has some ritual declaring or making participants clean or pure; we tend to value pure, clean things. Insistence on cleanliness and sanitation is perhaps the greatest accomplishment of the medical and public health fields. In general, we associate good, positive things with purity and cleanliness, and negative, evil things we portray in dirtier, filthier ways. Purity is good.
In order to communicate the value of purity in a physical way, God established many commands regarding cleanliness for Israel in the Old Testament. Certain foods were reckoned as clean, and others unclean and defiling (Leviticus 11:1-47). Many bodily discharges rendered a person ritually unclean, needing purification (cf. Leviticus 12:1-8, 15:1-32). Various skin diseases also rendered a person unclean (Leviticus 13:1-14:57). Many of these cleanliness laws were established to limit contagion and the spread of disease; others were designed to mark out Israel as a special people. All of the cleanliness laws, at some level, were designed to instruct Israel about God’s sanctity and the need for cleanliness before Him.
By the first century, the Israelites were quite faithful when it came to ritual cleansings. Many small pools used for such ritual cleansing, known as mikva’ot, have been discovered through archaeological digs; some are mentioned in John 5:1-4 and John 9:7. The Israelites understood the concept of ritual cleansing; they placed a high priority on remaining ritually clean and pure.
External cleansing is great, well, and good, but Jesus’ radical message in Matthew 5:8 is that it is not enough. External cleansing can only remove the symptoms of defilement, not the cause.
Jesus considers those who are pure in heart to be blessed, or happy. It is the internal purity which allows for external purity and righteousness; despite whatever pretense people may try to maintain, as long as there is impurity and defilement within, impurity and defilement must come to the surface some day. True defilement is not something a person can ingest; defilement comes out from what is within, which is Jesus’ powerful message in Mark 7:14-23.
This “beatitude” is as much a challenge as it is a declaration of blessedness. None of us can be fully pure in heart; we all fall short of God’s glory and sin (Romans 3:23, 7:14-25, 1 John 1:8). There is always a strong temptation to foster and harbor impure thoughts and attitudes within ourselves; we easily deceive ourselves into thinking that since no other human can perceive our thoughts, no one else knows what we are thinking. To this day people face strong societal pressures to make sure that their outward actions conform to societal norms; this is why we rarely tell others how we really feel about them, and very few of us feel comfortable admitting the darkness that is often present deep within us. Thus, we keep things inside.
But God does see and know; all things in darkness will be revealed by light at some point (Ephesians 5:7-13). Meanwhile we labor under significant burdens, trying to save face and keeping up a false exterior. It never works out; it always collapses somehow.
This is why God throughout the New Testament insists on a complete cleansing and renewal of the individual. It is not as if people are generally good and just need a little help here or there; we must come to terms with our sad reality. Sin has corrupted and defiled not just our deeds but also our thoughts and feelings, and we must fully repent, changing our minds so that our attitudes and actions will follow (Acts 2:38). This is why we must capture every thought unto obedience in Christ (2 Corinthians 10:5); this is why we must mentally dwell on that which is good, holy, and profitable (Philippians 4:8). We must in every way seek to remove all that which is unholy, impure, and defiled from our thoughts and feelings; then we can live without hypocrisy, allowing our exterior to shine with the interior light which comes from Christ (Matthew 5:13-16).
Those who are pure in heart shall see God. We are not intended to understand this verse on a physical, concrete level: after all, the heart is merely an muscle pumping blood, and no man can see God (John 1:18). Purity in heart involves purity of mind and emotion, and none of this is possible without purity in soul. Little wonder, then, that the Risen Jesus speaks of the saved as those who have not soiled their garments and who walk with Him dressed in white (Revelation 2:4-5), and Paul speaks of Jesus presenting a church to Himself which is pure and unblemished (Ephesians 5:25-27). Those who are pure shall be with God forever and will stand in His presence in the resurrection (cf. Revelation 21:1-22:6).
Such purity cannot come from our own futile efforts; we can try to cleanse ourselves all we want, but the stain of sin remains. None of us will walk in white because we, by our own power, have kept from defilement. We all need cleansing, and continuous cleansing at that, from Jesus through the blood shed for the forgiveness of our sins (Romans 5:6-11, Ephesians 5:25-27). We must seek after purity in Christ; we must seek to align our will to His so that we can be conformed into His image (Romans 8:29), and thus maintain our cleansing. Let us seek to be pure in heart so that we may see God!
Spiritual Manna is a weekly devotional published by Ethan Longhenry to encourage you in your spiritual life.
So the crowds were asking him, “What then should we do?”
John answered them, “The person who has two tunics must share with the person who has none, and the person who has food must do likewise” (Luke 3:10-11).
Isaiah and Malachi had told Israel to look for the one who would come and prepare the way of YHWH, the Elijah who would tell Israel how to be reconciled to God and to one another before He would return. He had finally come (Isaiah 40:2-4, Malachi 3:1-5, Luke 3:4-6). And he came with a warning and an exhortation.
John lived in the desert wastes of the Jordan River valley around the year 27 CE (Luke 3:1-2). He preached a baptism of repentance, exhorting Israelites to be ritually immersed in water to demonstrate how they were no longer going to walk in the ways of their ancestors but would change their hearts and minds to dedicate themselves to YHWH and His purposes in light of the coming Messiah (Luke 3:3).
When the crowds went out to be baptized by him, John did not mince words. He called them all a brood of vipers and asked who warned them to flee from the wrath that was coming (Luke 3:7)! He was less concerned about ingratiating himself with his audience than with the sincerity of their repentance. They should not assume their standing before God was assured by their genealogical relationship with Abraham (Luke 3:8). John solemnly warned the Israelites: if YHWH was coming, that meant the day of YHWH, or a time of judgment, was at hand, which John explained by stating the ax was laid at the root of the tree, and every tree that did not produce good fruit would become firewood (Luke 3:9). The Israelites should repent and bear good fruit if they would be preserved; otherwise they would be cut down like so many of their ancestors!
The crowds heard John and accepted his warning; they wanted to know what they should do (Luke 3:10). How were they supposed to bear the good fruit of repentance? What would be John’s primary message for the Israelites so they would escape YHWH’s condemnation and be prepared to welcome Him when He came?
John told Israel to share. A person who had two tunics must share with the one who has none, and the person who had food must share with those who did not have food (Luke 3:11).
Yes, John would go on to give specific exhortations to specific groups who asked. Tax collectors should collect nothing beyond what was required; soldiers should not take money by violence or false testimony and should be content with their pay (Luke 3:12-14). Such would well demonstrate the repentance of members of those groups.
Luke would go on to speak about John’s confession he was not the Christ, but the Christ was coming and would be the Judge; Jesus was baptized by John; John was imprisoned, and at a later time, would be executed, by Herod Antipas (Luke 3:13-23, 9:7-9). Luke 3:7-14, therefore, represents what we know of the preaching of John the Baptist as he prophesied and exhorted Israel to repentance before the great and terrible day of YHWH would arrive.
And John the Baptist, whom Jesus confessed as the Elijah to come, the greatest among those who had been born of human parentage at the time, and literally the ultimate messenger of the Law and the Prophets (cf. Matthew 11:11-14), told Israel to share.
The people of God throughout time have been tempted to complicate the faith and the relationship with God and with one another they ought to have. It is tempting to make religion all about various ideas and perspectives divorced from real life experience. It is tempting to focus on defining who has standing before God and who does not. It is tempting to try to answer all the possible questions and objections and dig deeply into various scenarios and possibilities.
Yet John’s message to the people of his time was simple: YHWH was coming. That meant judgment was coming. Those who did not change would be condemned. Thus, God’s people needed to change. They couldn’t trust in their ancestry for their standing. They needed to act as if God was coming soon. And to do that they needed to share what they had.
When they shared what they had, they demonstrated they trusted in God to provide for their necessities. They demonstrated their obedience to His command and directive. They displayed love for one another in providing for what they needed. In sharing they confessed their light hold on the things of this world and the higher priority of one another than in material comfort.
Jesus also confessed, however, that the least in the Kingdom of God was greater than John (Matthew 11:11). All John had promised came to pass: YHWH came to His people as Jesus, dwelt among them, prophetically declared judgment, died, was raised in power, ascended to heaven, was made Lord and Christ, and rendered judgment against Judah and Jerusalem.
But John’s prophetic message endures. Jesus will return again soon (Acts 17:30-31). We must live in repentance lest we find ourselves condemned on that day, for God will not show partiality (Romans 2:5-11, 2 Thessalonians 1:6-11). And how can we display the fruit of repentance? By sharing what we have with our fellow people with God and with everyone. Jesus framed the whole judgment scene according to whether or not we do so in Matthew 25:31-46. James asked how a Christian could tell someone in need to be warmed and filled without giving what was necessary and then think their faith without works could save them (James 2:14-26). John wondered how Christians could really say they loved one another and would even die for one another if they did not prove willing to provide material goods to one another in need (1 John 3:16-18, 4:7-21). Paul continually exhorted Christians to give to those in need, especially to those of the household of faith; the Hebrews author affirmed the same (Galatians 2:10, 6:10, Hebrews 13:16).
As then, so now: it is not just about the act of sharing. We share because we trust that God provides our necessities and we confess our light hold on the possessions and material wealth we have, recognizing all of it comes from God, it cannot be taken with us, and it is always better used to assist others in the present than in the vain hope of future yield. When we share, we prioritize people over comfort.
Our faith in Christ, therefore, ought to be manifest in sharing. Let us consider well John’s prophetic message of sharing and embody it fully to the glory of God in Christ!
John the Baptist proclaimed the way of YHWH before the great day of His arrival. Judgment was coming. What should Israel do? Share.
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You are my hiding place; you protect me from distress. You surround me with shouts of joy from those celebrating deliverance (Psalm 32:7).
Who can protect us?
Protection is a quite salient matter in a world full of dangers. Many want to speak of “the universe” as if it has some kind of specific will for us or will grant us certain things if we intend or behave in certain ways; yet scientifically it is beyond doubt that the universe is actively trying to kill us. Bacteria and viruses continually beset us. And we have all sorts of dangers in between: weather conditions and natural disasters, let alone what fellow human beings might do to us. It’s dangerous out there!
Some might want to think they live in greater danger today than those who came before us, but upon any level of investigation it would be difficult to sustain that kind of argument. If anything, our ancestors lived in greater dangers: various illnesses, wild animals and hostile weather conditions, natural disasters, and fewer ways to ameliorate the danger. Yet such kinds of comparisons ultimately prove futile: in truth, people have always been in danger; people will never run out of things regarding which they can be afraid and which they believe is dangerous; and therefore people have always looked to find some kind of protector.
As we have become ever more secular and skeptical of authority, many have come to suggest themselves as their own protector, or the protector of others. There is a whole American culture dedicated to the proposition of maintaining and upholding the honor and integrity of the family and friends through protection by any means necessary. It has deep roots in Americana; one easily identifiable source would be a particular Scots Irish frontier libertarian culture and mentality that elevated one’s ability to provide for oneself and one’s family without interference from authorities and protected with vigilance. Such types of perspectives easily meld protection within provision so that when many read, for example, that one who does not provide for one’s family is worse than an unbeliever (as in 1 Timothy 5:8), they understand it to mean not just to provide material and emotional resources but also protection, with violence if need be. We are now at the point when many profess the name of the Lord Jesus and will maintain weapons for violence on their person to be ready, at a moment’s notice, to harm or take the lives of others in the name of protecting those they love. Such is even done within the assembly of the Lord’s people, and is often commended as reasonable and sensible!
We understand the impulse; the desire to protect one’s own life and the lives of those we love and to whom we are dedicated is very strong. But is this the explicit will of the Lord Jesus? And who can really protect us?
The Lord Jesus spoke a word about protection through violence in Matthew 26:52: those who take hold of the sword will die by the sword. It was a message powerfully imprinted upon His disciples: Jesus had said as much to Peter when Peter had taken out a sword in an attempt to protect Jesus, and we never hear of Peter or any other Apostle using or encouraging the use of violence to protect themselves afterward. Such a posture only makes sense in light of what Jesus was about to do: He willingly gave Himself to suffer and die even though He had not done anything wrong. Peter himself would reflect upon this and declare that Jesus entrusted Himself to the God who judges justly and did not retaliate when harmed (1 Peter 2:22-23). Peter understood what Jesus had done as marching orders for those who would follow Him: they should go about doing good for others, even if they suffered for doing so, while entrusting themselves to a faithful Creator (1 Peter 4:19). What would motivate anyone to do such a thing? The testimony of deep, abiding love of God displayed in Jesus for those who sinned and were alienated from God (cf. Romans 5:6-11). As God has loved us even though we have sinned and fallen short of His glory, so we are called to love others in the same way. We are to love those who would hurt us and pray for those who would persecute us (Luke 6:35). Jesus loves the criminal as much as He loves you, me, small children, and everyone else. Jesus wants them all to be saved: even the person who wants to hurt you (1 Timothy 2:4).
So who can protect us? In the days of old few men proved as mighty in battle as David son of Jesse. Yet after he confessed his sins before YHWH because they laid upon him grievously and commended this for others, he confessed YHWH was his hiding place, and that YHWH would protect him from trouble (Psalm 32:1-7). David was surrounded by those shouting for joy because God delivered them (Psalm 32:7).
Throughout the Psalms, in fact, David and other writers reckon YHWH as their refuge, strong rock, strong tower, and place of hiding and protection. They praise YHWH for deliverance. They also warn Israel against trusting in military might for their protection (cf. Psalms 20:7, 146:3). The prophets would utter a similar warning, exemplified in Isaiah 7:1-17: if God’s people trust in military maneuvering and foreign policy and not in their God, they will be humiliated, fail, and incur judgment. They were better off trusting in YHWH as their King and Protector, and YHWH would provide deliverance for them. They did not trust; they sought protection in chariots and foreign policy; and they were overrun and destroyed by chariots and foreign policy.
The faithful and wise people of God have always understood that God, and God alone, can truly protect them. How God has protected His people has manifested itself differently at different times and in different circumstances, and sometimes through very strange means. It is not as if there is no place for violence; God has established civil government to establish justice in the land and to punish evil; God’s people are to let them take vengeance and wield the sword (Romans 13:1-7). The rulers of old were held to that standard as well (cf. Isaiah 1:10-17). God helped Israel fight its battles time and again (cf. Exodus 15:1-19). Isaiah envisioned judgment on Aram and Israel to deliver Judah by the hands of the bloodthirsty Assyrians (Isaiah 7:1-17). The same kind of Roman soldiers and guards who helped to execute Jesus protected Paul from death at the hand of the Jewish people almost thirty years later (cf. Acts 21:32-26:32). God will hold all such authorities responsible for how they used and abused their authority; God does not hold responsible those who live, or those who suffer, under it.
It is not difficult to imagine circumstances in which it did not look like God protected His people. Plenty of God’s people have died at the hands of raging persecutors. Many others have died at the hands of violent men. Many have suffered exploitation in a thousand different ways. Untold thousands have died of disease or because of natural disasters. That’s a lot of suffering.
But what have we come to expect, and to what end? It is futile to imagine that we can truly protect ourselves or anyone else from every danger. We are not as powerful, and often not in control, as much as we would like to think we are. If protecting others through intimidation or force were as important to faithful Christian witness as many would imagine, why has God not spoken about it? Why did Jesus or the Apostles not model it, and just as importantly, why did Jesus denounce it when one of His disciples actually tried it? When we must speak frequently when God has not spoken it should give us great pause regarding what we are saying. Perhaps we have imported something that was never there in the first place. Perhaps we are not listening to what is being said.
It is a particularly modern delusion to think we are in control and can control our environment. Those who came before us lived by time and chance (Ecclesiastes 9:11); and if we would hear it, so do we. If we will be protected from dangers, it is because God is protecting us. If for whatever reason in God’s economy, be it the freewill decisions of others, the work of the powers and principalities, or perhaps even just unfortunate circumstance, we are called upon to suffer and die, it is not as if God has proven unfaithful. We brought nothing into this world; we cannot take anything out of it (1 Timothy 6:7). We are weak and frail; our strength should have always been entrusted in the Lord and His might (Ephesians 6:10-13). If we would truly want to see our families, friends, and loved ones protected, we do best to entrust them into the hands of God our Protector. If a mighty warrior like David thus trusted in God, perhaps we should also.
In the end, we will all be held accountable for what we have done in the body when we stand before the Lord Jesus (Acts 17:30-31, Romans 2:5-11). We do best to stand there having entrusted ourselves to our faithful Creator, even through tremendous suffering, humiliation, and degradation, than to stand before a faithful Creator with the weight of the pain, distress, and perhaps even the blood of human beings on our souls and our hands. We should stand before Jesus having followed His ways of humiliation and suffering so we might be exalted through the unimaginably fantastic glory of God, praising God as the Protector and Deliverer of our souls unto eternal life!
Much is made of the need to protect others. But who can protect us? What are we really supposed to do?
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Your destruction is like an incurable wound; your demise is like a fatal injury! All who hear what has happened to you will clap their hands for joy, for no one ever escaped your endless cruelty! (Nahum 3:19)
Who could have seen it coming?
The Neo-Assyrian Empire was the great superpower of the day, featuring effective leadership and dominance in strength and power to a degree never before seen in the ancient Near Eastern world. Nineveh seemed to be the capital of the world, full of the wealth and the goods of nations from Europe to Africa and deep into Asia. The Assyrian army was notorious for its cruelty, but it had been the catalyst for the end of nation after nation. The Assyrians had leveled and rebuilt Babylon; they had humiliated Egypt and had sacked Thebes. King Ashurbanipal had just finished eliminating Elam and the Elamites, a nation which had been around for as long as anyone could remember, as a going concern. He would be remembered forever as one of the greatest of the kings of Assyria, overseeing the Assyrian Empire at its strongest, the “King of the Universe,” a great patron of the arts, and the collector of a great library of Mesopotamian literature.
At the same time, a prophet from the rarely faithful vassal Kingdom of Judah pronounced the doom of Assyria. YHWH declared through Nahum that Nineveh and the Assyrians had acted like wanton prostitutes practicing sorcery, seducing and enslaving the nations in their economy and ways, and thus He was against them. They had terrorized the world; the time would soon come when they would become terrified of their enemies. They thought they were superior to the nations they conquered, but would soon learn they were no better. They would be devastated and no one would lament; in fact, everyone who would hear about their demise would rejoice, having remembered the cruelty they had suffered from the Assyrians.
We can easily imagine how such a message might have been heard by Ninevites in Ashurbanipal’s day. Such sounded like wishful thinking from a bunch of restive nobodies in the middle of nowhere. As if the great and mighty Assyrians would be thus humbled! As if Nineveh, the center of the world, would be so easily overthrown! Many may have even laughed at the prospect or the possibility. Assyria’s enemies may have enjoyed the prospect but would have good reason to doubt its possibility.
But then Ashurbanipal died, likely in 631 BCE; his son Ashur-etil-ilani, likely a weak and ineffective king, would only reign for four years, and then another son, Sinsharishkun, took over the throne. Sinsharishkun was almost immediately confronted by a civil war against a general who aspired to the throne; in the meantime, the Chaldean Nabopolassar was able to take over Babylon, which was never controlled by the Assyrians again. Sinsharishkun was able to put down the revolt against his rule, and successfully recaptured some lost territory in Mesopotamia, but suffered another revolt in 622. Nabopolassar pressed his advantage and pushed north, entering Assyrian territory, and defeated the Assyrian army many times. If it had just been a conflict against the Chaldean Babylonians, Sinsharishkun and the Assyrians might have been able to hold firm if not prevail; but when Cyaxares and the Medes invaded from the east in 615, the doom of Assyria was at hand. Sinsharishkun had been able to successfully defend Assur, the ancient heart of their land, from the Chaldeans in 615; in 614 it fell to the Medes. Nabopolassar and Cyaxares made an anti-Assyrian pact, and in 612 their combined armies marched on Nineveh. Two months later the town was taken, ravaged, and burned to the ground. Sinsharishkun is presumed to have died in the fighting. We have some records of one Ashur-uballit II, likely Sinsharishkun’s son, who was proclaimed king at Harran but fled three years later and vanished from the record; the Egyptians would try to help prop up the rump state of Assyria for awhile but to no avail. Thus, for all intents and purposes, Sinsharishkun was the last king of Assyria.
Twenty years. It had only taken twenty years for Assyria to go from its greatest extent to complete destruction and devastation. Thus Nineveh and Assyria were exactly what Nahum had prophesied they were. They were no better than those they had defeated. They had generated intense dislike and hostility because of the cruelty they had inflicted; when their enemies obtained an advantage, there would be no mercy. As the Assyrians had destroyed Babylon, so the Babylonians destroyed Nineveh. There would be no renaissance or renewal for Assyria; this was the end. A nation which had existed since around 2500 BCE fell completely in half a generation.
There are many who remain skeptical about many of the messages of the prophets and the way they would be fulfilled. All of those messages would find their fulfillment, but often would take much longer than many expected. No such ambiguity exists about Nahum’s message: he prophesied it at some point after 671 BCE, and it was finished by 609. The world it imagined would have been unthinkable until it took place; but then it happened. Who could have seen it coming? Those to whom YHWH had spoken.
Those of us who live long after such events took place should still give heed. God would indict Babylon for the same kind of whoredom and sorcery for which He had indicted Assyria; Rome would also fall under the same condemnation.
We can therefore see a trend at work. Powerful rulers over prosperous and successful empires frequently boast of their great exploits and endurance. Their cities glisten with wealth and the fruit of power and prosperity. Everything looks stable; people expect things to continue as they have in the past.
But then, all of a sudden, disaster strikes. Difficulties which have been manifest for those who had eyes to see now undermine the presumed strength of the nation. Collapse, destruction, and devastation may come quickly and thoroughly; it may be drawn out for years, decades, or even centuries. But the end would indeed come.
Who could have seen it coming? Those who would heed what God has spoken. Power and prosperity remain ephemeral; everything seems to go on as it always has until it no longer does. We should not trust in princes or the powers of this world; instead, we should put our trust in the God who sees all things and who will judge. May we trust in God in Christ and obtain life in Him!
Assyria was grand and glorious. 20 years later, it was entirely gone. Who could have seen it coming? Those who listened to God.
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The Elijah, the One who would prepare the way of YHWH to come to His people, had come. He was preaching in the Wilderness.
What is this embodiment of the Law and Prophets telling the people of God to do?
Danger is always present. So who can protect us?
Who gave us the impression we are in control and should be the ones who provide the protection?
Assyria was on top of the world…until they were utterly destroyed. Who could have seen it coming? The people of God.
Faith without works is dead. James’ statement has a lot of doctrinal force and power, but doctrine wasn’t his primary purpose in speaking thus to the Christians of his day.
He wanted them to do something about it.
A time of increasing sin; the righteous can only stay quiet; false prophets abound; no one knows who to trust; love grew cold.
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It’s been a while, so I thought I should post some thoughts and updates. In terms of the latter, this has been a very quiet year, not just from Sam Parnia, but in general on the subject of NDEs. Of course everything has been overshadowed by COVID. Most conventions or scientific meetings have either been cancelled or held virtually.
I recently attended a virtual European convention on sleep science, and it was an illuminating experience. In some ways it was better – no airport security queues, or late night rides in a smelly taxi to soulless hotels where I would be away from my family for days on end. I found I was able to interact with other researchers quite well when they were presenting data, and I was able to look at the things I was interested in at my leisure – while wearing very casual attire. However, in general it was vastly inferior to an in person convention, and while my job was already one that was done partly from home, and in future things will be a hybrid, I cannot wait till I am able to get back into the hospitals and universities to meet with physicians and scientific researchers face to face.
As a result of this year, many of the meetings where someone like Dr Parnia would present have not occurred in the normal way, and when you google him, or the AWARE study, most of the links come from previous years. The truly awful Daily Express seems to create recent links to a rehashed story on Dr Parnia explaining NDEs in terms of something that can be explained by physiological means, but I have never heard him say that in a meeting or in a written article. However, he did just publish a paper exploring the link between cerebral oxygen levels and neurological outcomes after Cardiac Arrest (CA). The abstract published in last month’s Resuscitation does not hint at any data on consciousness, so I am going to withhold my $36 to buy the full text, although if we continue to experience this NDE news drought, I may well go ahead and buy it! There was data he presented at AHA last year that did seem to hint at a possible link between conscious brain activity during CA and oxygen levels, so I suspect this new data may have come from his AWARE research group – hence the teaser of data from AWARE II in the title! (I know, somewhat tenuous, but these are desperate times for an NDE research blogger!). The link is here:
The association between post-cardiac arrest cerebral oxygenation and survival with favorable neurological outcomes: A multicenter study
So other than this, we have been left with Sam Parnia’s very quiet Twitter feed and the Parnia lab website which has been updated as the year has gone by. The most significant thing to come out of that has been the announcement of the commencement of the study on awareness during deep hypothermic circulatory arrest. This is in essence the COOL study mark II.
The COOL study was set up in Montreal at the beginning of the last decade and designed to investigate reports of NDEs and OBEs during deep hypothermic cardio circulatory arrest. Out of 33 returned questionnaires, 3 reported conscious mental activity (very much in line with the 10% reported from CA NDEs) one veridical OBE report was made from this study in which a young pregnant woman reported seeing various instruments that were behind her head, and was later verified by hospital staff (VOLUME 83, ISSUE 1, E19 2012. Conscious mental activity during a deep hypothermic cardio circulatory arrest? Mario Beauregard). The study was retrospective and did not have the kinds of experiments built into it that could prove an OBE. This is where Dr Parnia’s study is different since it is prospective and uses the same equipment that is used in the AWARE II study. I am dubbing this new study the AWARE III study, since it falls under the same AWARE research umbrella. As I have mentioned in previous posts, this study has a lot more chance of eventually getting “a hit” than AWARE II due to the controlled conditions (vs a random CA in an ER unit), prior patient awareness of the presence of the iPad and most importantly, the chance of surviving long enough to be interviewed. Dr Parnia tweeted that the first patient had been recruited in July of this year.
For a while there was a bit of confusion over whether AWARE II had wrapped up, partly due to one of the research portals saying recruitment had closed. However, on the Parnia Lab website it states that recruitment is still ongoing, and indeed they are looking to expand the number of research centers over the next two years.
So one day we will hear more from AWARE II or III. It may not be till next year now due to all the delays in everyone’s lives, especially someone like Dr Parnia who would have been in the thick of things earlier this year (although if he is anything like ICU and ER physicians I know in the UK, he will have had the quietest summer of his career!).
In the meantime, I have been focusing on my work in Neuroscience and on writing books. My non-fiction book on NDEs is now complete and has been copy edited. I will be publishing it imminently, maybe through extracts on here first. I have also found myself in the fortunate position of having 7 weeks gardening leave as I switch from one Biotech Neuroscience medical scientist role to another, and I have decided to devote this time to rewriting my second novel, which is based on a more outlandish extrapolation of NDE possibilities (think of Flatliners on steroids and you will be getting close). An idea along these lines has been knocking around my hard drive in various forms for over 20 years now, so it’ll be good to finally finish it!
Anyway, I continue to browse the web and pubmed a couple of times a week for news on Sam Parnia and NDEs, and I know others who come here do the same, so please get in touch with me if you see something. Rest assured, when things finally do get interesting again…which I have no doubt they will, I will be here starting a discussion on it!.
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23 thoughts on “More data from AWARE II(maybe), news on AWARE III and my book.”
blijruud on October 17, 2020 at 9:45 pm said:
I think you have a big chance of having a OBE if you do
a hypothermicc cardio circulatory arrest study in 25 hospital, then you have with the aware 1 and 2 study. More than 700 operated people.
blijruud on October 17, 2020 at 9:56 pm said:
Ben Williams on October 18, 2020 at 6:59 pm said:
Yes, I wonder how many hospitals are in this study.
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Anna on October 20, 2020 at 3:20 am said:
Thanks for the update. Glad to hear your book is going well.
I’m excited about the COOL study results. It has been a long wait this year but hopefully we’ll get some updates from Sam soon. Thanks again for keeping us updated!
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Ben Williams on October 23, 2020 at 6:46 am said:
Daniel Caldeira on October 21, 2020 at 6:01 pm said:
Hello everyone! I am here to share a recommendation of a book written by a French teacher in the the 19th century. It contains very interesting ideas that have a huge ressonance with the philosophical ideas obtained by NDE’ers. It is a very interesting work about the true nature of the counsciuousness. However it is not a strictly scientific work and I belive it was influenced by christian dogmas. Still, I believe it’s worth reading. Here is the link for the book in Amazon:
Ben Williams on October 23, 2020 at 6:47 am said:
Looks interesting, may have to get me a copy!
RegenKingReprise (@Galaxyvoyager11) on October 24, 2020 at 4:47 am said:
Very interesting. I think these studies will yield positive results. The nature of consciousness is a mystery that has baffled humanity for the longest time. Parnia and doctors like him are essentially opening Pandora’s Box but you know it’s best to have knowledge of things rather then be left in the dark.
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Ben Williams on October 24, 2020 at 6:43 am said:
AWARE I and II have already yielded positive results, albeit very limited. I am surprised that Parnia hasn’t written up the posters from AHA last year in a journal article, they were very interesting.
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Mery on October 24, 2020 at 8:33 am said:
I am new writing here but been following this blog for a few months now. I am a doctor and researcher (although not the same field of research as Parnia). About Parnia writing an article about the posters from AHA, I believe that the one on EEG findings should be very interesting. However, it may be that their results are limited here too to make correlations with the other poster. That meaning, in May 2019 (posters already written cause that was about the Congress deadline) he mentioned they did not have data to correlate EEG and NDEs/awareness. The 2016 article on EEG findings (no alpha waves then) could not stablish any correlation cause all the 16 patients died in hospital. The New sample was 60something patients (some may have been overlaps with the 2016 paper) but maybe they don’t have EEG data (or was artifacted) from the 4 accounts on conciousness during CPR, or maybe they reported hearing but not an OBE/NDE…research can be tricky and disappointing, What I would like to know is Parnia’s mind on this. Did the patient/s with alpha waves report any experience? Was it a visual full NDE? Maybe he really doesn’t have the data?
I am looking also for Greyson’s new book, or any comments from Fenwick on his YouTube channel (maybe we got some information from Sam?), No new information is coming from anywhere. Do you think Greyson’s book will include Parnia’s new results?
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Ben Williams on October 24, 2020 at 8:58 am said:
Hi Mery, welcome to the chat. You make some very relevant points, and ask the big question that has not yet been answered…namely did any of the EEG results overlap with NDE reports. Parnia has been very illusive on this. I have tried multiple ways of getting to this data, including contacting all the authors on the poster etc.
Personally I don’t think he will have the results published in Greyson’s book first. I think Parnia is more likely to publish in a clinical journal first, but it may well be that he is in the process of writing something up and submitting, knowing that the data will have been published before Greyson’s book, and sharing the data with Greyson with an NDA before Parnia has published. This way he gets a win win. If he doesn’t put it in a peer reviewed medical journal first, then the results will not be held in such high regard.
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Mery on October 24, 2020 at 2:42 pm said:
What really intrigues me is, if Parnia has the information on the hearing + what EEG was happening at that moment, something that nobody seems allowed to discuss, what was really his position towards the NDE and conciousness during the November 2019 talks? He mentioned this theory on conciousness not being really produced by the brain that he likes, he mentions these experiences are not like ketamine experiences or drugs, or anoxia etc, but he mentioned is is brain modulated and that brain function is not completely lost even after one hour of CPR…(maybe here he was only referring to “you still can have some electrical activity at times and no permanent brain silence and damage”)
Like in your old post New era for Parnia, I don’t really get his position now. if he had something that demonstrated that there were brain waves responsible for these experiences (or at least the hearing) why such silence on it? Or the contrary, if he could demonstrate there was no brain function, why not mentioning it? And if the had nothing…why not acknowledging it? “Nope, we don’t have any data on that patient, sorry guys”.
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Mery on October 24, 2020 at 3:28 pm said:
From my own experience with articles and abstracts, I believe if he had something (positive or negative) he would first go for an abstract for a Congress (and only after that you publish, not the other way round since it is against the normative). These data we are talking about are from 2019 and they already had the hearing hit in the AHA Congress in November (and probably May). So my educated guess is that unfortunately they don’t have more information about that patient. Maybe they had EEG readings but not from that very moment (they collected fragmented images from pauses in CPR, some were artifacted)…if he had more information I believe they would have included it in any of both abstracts, or at least comment on the hearing hit in the November meeting and the media would have been commenting on it.
I believe he might be trying to stay neutral to data, he mentioned the alpha waves (but not linked it to NDE or hearing or even conciousness) and he did not mention the hearing hit. To get an abstract admitted you have to “sell” it well, so maybe their data besides the hit were not so much more interesting than that, even if the abstract looked promising…
This is just my opinion, I whish there was a positive visual hit. I also wonder, if he is continuing with the COOL study might be cause he believes it is worth it, that something really is going on. Otherwise, if he was clear about being a product of quasy normal brain function, why bothering with the COOL study??
Sorry my long post, I don’t usually talk about this things with anybody, never in a forum/comment section before. It felt nice sharing my thoughts…
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Ben Williams on October 24, 2020 at 3:42 pm said:
NDE anonymous! Yes, my real name is not Ben Williams, that is a pseudonym based on the main protagonist in a novel I published. The COOL study is very interesting indeed. I am glad he picked up the torch from Montreal as I always felt that this created the best conditions for a controlled experiment with the iPad. The original COOL study was retrospective, and they only got 33 questionnaires, and 3 NDEs, with one veridical OBE, which does tally well with the NDE statistics. The whole thing with a prospective COOL study is that they can tell the patient in advance to look for the iPad and listen out for stuff. The key for me is how many centres are involved, and how many patients a week. Once they get north of 100 patients they should have a visual hit if the OBE is a real phenomenon. Since the patients should be living after the procedure, it is all dependent on how many procedures.
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KatieMarie on November 5, 2020 at 7:56 pm said:
Who was running the original COOL study? Is there a way to read their results? I’m interested in the veridical OBE
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Ben Williams on November 10, 2020 at 9:40 am said:
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leonardo on November 12, 2020 at 1:29 am said:
Hello I have been following this blog for a long time, I wanted to ask you a question if possible. but Sam says that the brain has nothing to do with consciousness and that after a cardiac arrest the brain shuts down , or not , I do not understand , in the post in May you wrote that says this, but from this you do not understand
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Salo on January 13, 2021 at 3:29 am said:
Hi In NDEs, did the patients succeed in identifying the signs that were placed on top of the shelves to prove the reliability of the experiment??!
Ben Williams on January 13, 2021 at 7:46 am said:
Not in AWARE I, and in AWARE II the study is not yet complete.
Pingback: Course Notes on Life and Death/The Soul for Edexcel students - Course notes and revision materials for students of A Level Religious Studies/Philosophy.
Ben Williams on April 11, 2021 at 8:54 am said:
Thanks for the comments. I do spend a lot of time describing Parnia’s studies, that is kind of the point.
Ben Williams on April 11, 2021 at 9:03 am said:
Not sure why only the pingback appears. Can’t see the original comment. Interesting site. Some of the types of thinking mentioned, certainly appear in the book that I first published in January, withdrew and about to republish. For me the big question is around whether we need what I describe as “technologically validated” evidence to make a decision. That has been at the heart of my internal debate.
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Of Mice and Men (or rats and humans) November 22, 2022
Thank you Jordan for letting me know that the Parnia lab has added a video of the AHA presentation to their YouTube channel. Here is the link below: First of all, the slides were ever so slightly different from the ones that I posted a couple of weeks ago, but there was nothing fundamentally different […]
Key points from AWARE II presentation at AHA 2022 November 8, 2022
Someone very kindly provided me with a copy of the slides from Sunday’s presentation. They sent them to me because I have a Ph.D. and I work in research therefore I will respect the sender’s request that they only be presented in an academic context and I will not post any of the actual slides […]
AWARE II (interim?) results presented at AHA 2022 November 7, 2022
Thank you to Cobra for being quick off the mark and seeing this. It appears that Sam Parnia presented the results from AWARE II at AHA yesterday in Chicago. This is a press release which has appeared on various websites, but it does not contain any specific details about observations that were made or about […]
What are the chances? October 29, 2022
This article was posted by Maria in the comments of my last post. Thank you. Link to article on how to capture visual OBEs The original article is over 30 years old, and this fact alone highlights just how long we have been waiting for a scientifically verified visual OBE in a research setting. When […]
NDE, RED, REX – is it all just a case of Timantics? August 30, 2022
Apologies for the pun, but couldn’t help myself. As some of you may be aware one of the more valued members of this site, Tim, and I had a somewhat acrimonious discussion yesterday that became personal and resulted in Tim saying his goodbyes. Goodbyes, unlike death, can be reversible, so hopefully we will see him […]
Silence is golden August 1, 2022
Firstly, thank you to all those who downloaded the first 3 chapters of my attempt at a novel (over 300 so far). However, bar a few positive comments, the silence has been deafening, which leads me to conclude that the book is not really going to be worth pursuing further. While disappointing, this is valuable […]
Free Summer Vacation Reading July 27, 2022
The Parnia lab has gone very very quiet. I am hoping this is the calm before the fall storm. In the meantime I have a little “gift” of free reading for you. As I mentioned in a previous post, I was recently laid off due to an Alzheimer’s drug I was working on not being […]
Life review – just the brain closing down…really? May 19, 2022
I love this clip, which I think is from the video of the discussion from a month back, which has now been posted on YouTube, but I just want to focus on this as these accounts are a huge lesson for all humanity: This is one of the researchers from Parnia’s lab who describes a […]
Thanks again to the eternally vigilant “Z” for spotting this paper which begs the oft repeated question – are NDEs/REDs just another form of CPRIC (CPR induced consciousness)? It is a question that we have answered at length in many past posts but it is important to revisit this due to the context in which […]
AWARE II: 15% of people had REDs May 8, 2022
This is the first time I think that Dr. Parnia has mentioned any specific numbers from the forthcoming and much anticipated publication of data from AWARE II. A nice teaser quote from the UK Telegraph this weekend: “Dr Parnia said soon-to-be published research will show that around 15 per cent of people who have been […]
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As many of you know, my friend and colleague Linda Sanders-Wells passed away three weeks ago. I've mentioned her on the blog before - as she was a real influence in my life over the past couple of years. Her story is a tragic one, as she left behind a devoted partner and a high-school aged daughter that together formed one of the most beautiful families you can imagine.
Linda's death has formed the subtext for much of our lives in the past several months. We knew the end was coming and it was so difficult to watch her deteriorate - powerless like so many to cancer's final, hostile push. Linda was brilliant, and she faced everything with a straight-forward boldness that many of us recognized as true courage. I've lost people close to me before, but this was the closest I have ever been to participating in the end of someone's life in a meaningful way - and doing so has been a life-altering experience.
In everything that we have been through over the past several years, we have come to rely on a couple of simple truths. Of them, there's a lesson in everything. As I have searched and searched for the lesson in Linda's death, last night as a large group of her community gathered under the full moon to honor and celebrate her, that lesson has begun to reveal itself. It's a lesson that the universe keeps bringing me back to again and again...
Be present. Be grateful.
As I walked into the memorial at Grailville last night (in lieu of the standard viewing/burial format), the first image I saw was of a young Linda holding her newborn daughter in what appeared to be the first days of her life. That image, that so many of us have of ourselves with our children, moved me deeply. Those early days of their lives together - so filled with the imagination of a long life, watching her child grow, move into adulthood and maybe one day have her own children - the imagining we all do in assuming somehow that it's guaranteed. I wept at the thought. All the beautiful moments captured of Linda with her friends and family - and hidden behind all of those images - the reality now that we now know how this story ends. It was too much to bear. Last night as Louie and I talked after the memorial, I shared how my heart goes to those moments I've had with my family and how my heart aches for knowing one day it too will all end. One day all these moments will be hanging on a wall for grief-stricken friends and family to view through their tears. Lou, in the way that only he can, pulled me up out of my despair and brought me back to the importance of gratitude and presence, because in the end that is all that we have.
This thought connects me back to Linda's partner, a talented writer himself, who has this collection of essays online. Linda shared this link with me before she passed and I began reading through his essays in the final days of Linda's life. This one really resonated with me and the lesson inside of it is one I will carry with me always. Howard, in recently overcoming cancer himself and in facing Linda's terminal diagnosis, shares his frustration with the phrase "it is what it is." (A phrase I will add that has become synonymous with "F it" in our house.) He says: "I'm not sure it should be applied, as it sometimes is, to things or situations under human control. The danger is that if you repeat it enough you may apply it inappropriately and it may forestall positive acts of change...sometimes the 'what is' can be changed for the better and must be."
He shares a section of "Finding Balance" by Eckert Tolle: "When something drastic happens, if you can learn to accept it, a little bit of spaciousness comes into your life. You say, "this is what is." A little bit of space just opened up, and you're no longer just a resisting entity." Howard reflects, "The difference between saying 'this is what is' and 'it is what it is' is remarkable. If I utter the former I feel an expansion, and opening not the contraction and resigned finality of the latter." He goes on to share the rest of Tolle's passage: "Then you realize that you are essentially formless space. In other words, you find inner peace. At first it is very gentle in the background, in the midst of any situation. That peace is powerful. It can become so powerful, that it obliterates almost anything. Peace is the formless in you. Be accepting the form, the formless within you opens up. This is how something seemingly bad - a limitation - becomes an opening for realization of who you truly are."
When Howard called me the morning after Linda's passing, we talked some more about this phrase - "this is what is" and the peace that rises up within you when you face life in this way. What an enormous gift Linda gave us in her passing - a route to finding peace through acceptance. Is there any greater gift?
As I continue to process, it occurs to me that if the route to peace is acceptance and presence, this acceptance must be cultivated by gratitude to prevent acceptance from slipping into hopelessness (which is exactly where I started to head last night before Lou brought me back). And this is where the real learning happens.
For us, this goes back to one of our wedding vows 10 years ago..."to build our dreams together in a common search for the pure and the beautiful." We have been given the enormous blessing of two daughters and don't take that for granted. We spend a great deal of time talking about the house in which we want them to be raised, the people we want to surround them with, the example we want to set in our own relationships. We are deliberate about seeking purity and beauty together, and try to create opportunities to our children to discover those things themselves. The discovery for me through Linda's death is that purity and beauty don't necessarily mean joy. (This lesson first revealed itself in witnessing Josie's passage through loss with our little spider friend Charlotte.)
As we often do when someone dies, we ask ourselves how Linda will live on. As was very evident last night, she will live on through the many lessons she taught so many of us - both directly through her mentorship and indirectly through her example.
Last night I shared the following piece with Linda's community at her memorial service. I'd like to share them again here in hoping that there's something each of you can take away from Linda's words.
Linda and I began working together about five years ago at KnowledgeWorks. Over the years we worked more and more together, although to call her a “colleague” doesn’t seem quite right.
Those of us who had the opportunity to work with her over the years know that the line between a professional and personal relationship with Linda was hard to discern. To so many, Linda wasn’t a colleague, she was a friend.
My relationship with Linda was one that deepened as we both faced the realities of life and death over the last couple of years. Linda’s gift of writing worked miracles on the job, but also saved me in some of my life’s darkest moments. I’d like to share some of her words with all of you this evening.
When we lost our third baby in 2010, Linda sent me this note and I wanted to wrap myself in it. We always wanted to have another child to give our daughter Josie a sibling, but we finally gave up. We were so grateful for Linda’s words about just how special a family of three could be. But Linda’s words don’t just shed light on my experience. They shed light on how much her family meant to her.
She wrote:
“It's all pretty complicated, isn't it, this business of trying to figure out if our lives are going the way they're meant to… I'm sure your sorrow will always be with you too, and the question about what your lives would have been like if you had had another baby. Like you, I think about Abbie having a sibling and what a great sister she would be. I wish I could tell you that would go away, but I think you already know it won't…
What I can tell you is that our family life is incredibly rich and full -- and complete. We are very, very close and each of the three relationships that make up this little triangle have their own nuances and strengths (and oddities)…
Could Abbie have turned into the same wonderful young adult she is in a bigger family? Of course. But is our family somehow lacking? No way. Ten thousand times no.
You are a thoughtful parent who has good instincts and great values. I'm sad for the whole world's sake that you aren't going to be raising another child. We could use more Josie's and Abbie's. But I can promise you that your life as a parent will always be full and rich.”
As unbelievable fortune would have it, just a few months after we lost our baby Camille in March, we discovered we were pregnant again. Linda’s sincere, exuberant joy showed just how committed she was as a friend. Complications with the pregnancy left me on full-time bedrest. It was about this time that Linda received the cancer diagnosis, and we became a support system for one another as we both faced heart-breaking odds.
We all knew Linda, so this won’t come as a surprise – but even with all that she was facing, she still had so much to give in the name of friendship. So when everything ended happily for us and our second daughter Beatrice was born healthy in March, Linda’s cheers were among the loudest.
She shared these words…
“If it's not an intrusion, I wanted to let you know how connected I've felt to your family through this time...and how important that connection has been for me. Beatrice is your own private miracle, but she's been a lifeline for me in some ways as well.
I was moved last year by how you and family handled the loss of Camille and how you've since incorporated your losses into your life. The entire time that you were pregnant and dealing with so much, your strength and hopefulness were inspiring. Then, as your due date neared, I enjoyed thinking about how soon your family would be together and what these first days would be like. Abbie was born at Good Sam in March, and it was of course the sweetest and happiest time of my life.
So your story has been kind of a beacon for me as I've dealt with my illness. Then, ironically, I ended up admitted to Good Sam on an emergency basis when an MRI showed a blood clot in my brain. It was an awful time, another dip of the roller coaster that has been our lives the last few weeks…When I was in the same hospital, I was checking Facebook and following Beatrice's arrival. It was so heartening to me to think of the joy she is and that she represents in the world. I always try to let the good things about each day soak in where I can, but I don't always manage to be open to hopefulness. She was a doorway when I needed one.
The love and support and help -- even from strangers on occasion -- that we've experienced have been unbelievable and evidence of how much good there is in the world. And I, too, am lucky to have the best family anyone could hope for."
So when I say Linda was a mentor – I don’t just mean professionally. Like so many of us, I looked to Linda as a model example of the kind of mother, partner, and friend I strive to be. I joked with her often that writing children’s books was wonderful, but a break from writing for kids to write a parenting manual for us would be much appreciated. So unless there’s a hidden manuscript for that parenting manual hiding somewhere, we are left instead with the little snippets of wisdom Linda shared with each of us during our time with her. And that’s what I want to end by sharing tonight.
She wrote -
“There's nothing I like more than talking about my experience with Abbie, as you can tell. But I don't pretend to be any kind of expert. I know that what works for one family doesn't necessarily work for another.
Mostly, though, I think it comes down to walking the walk. I don't think you can teach your child to be or do anything that's not already part of you and your life. That should be reassuring for you. You're a strong, independent woman and you are building a family that sets its own rules.
My experience with Abbie has been that the best thing I can do for her is stay out of the way. She came to us already wise and sure of herself, so we just try not to screw that up. Let her instincts for herself lead us. If we've been successful in any way so far, it's because of her.
What I didn't get to a chance to tell Linda is this: if I've been successful in any way as a mother so far, much of that is because of her.
So thank you Linda – for your mentorship – on everything from PowerPoint to Parenting. Thank you for your generosity of spirit and thank you for your example.
I hope that someday with Josie & Bea read back through our family's blog they will discover this piece and be reminded of how special they both are. I hope that they, like all of you, will remember to always come back to presence, acceptance and gratitude and be purposeful about creating the kind of life that you want to have for yourself and your family right now. Because in the end, right now is all that is guaranteed.
Here is a link to Linda's obituary,
and an article in the Cincinnati Enquirer
that I was honored to participate in
for her feature in their "A Life Remembered" section.
Her first published children's book
(and I hope there will be many more) is "Maggie's Monkeys"
and is available on Amazon and elsewhere.
I hope you will consider buying it
for a child in your life or to donate to a school or library.
A captivated little Josie at Linda's book-signing for Maggie's Monkeys in 2009
And for one more reminder about the importance of gratitude, acceptance and presence, please read "A Dragon Mom on Living in the Moment" if you haven't already (or read it again and again and again).
Posted by Unknown at November 11, 2011 1 comment:
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The first ever National Award given for “Best Background Score” in a separate category went to Ilaiyaraaja for his score in a Malayalam film “Keralavarma Pazhassi Raja”. By giving the award to Ilaiyaraaja, whose symphonic score for the film was indeed the best in 2009, Jury had it easier the first time. In the future, if the Jury members are going to take a decision to award anyone else other than Ilaiyaraaja in this category, they have to be extremely careful. There are many questions to be asked and answered before taking a decision on a winner in this category.
Was the score originally written for this film?
Nowadays, we have sound and music libraries like Sonoton, where there are music pieces readily available for all varieties of situations in a film. Indian film fraternity’s integrity is well known. They would never reveal that they bought cues from a music library and used them in the background score of their film. And there is “Plagiarism”. Ram Gopal Varma openly admitted in his blog (rgvzoomin.com) about using favourite music themes from Hollywood films in the background score of his films. There have been many instances in which Indian composers have used popular Hollywood film themes for Indian films, and they continue to do so. Who is going to do all the research and verify if the background score is entirely original? To nominate a non-feature film for National Award, producer must furnish an affidavit with the declaration of Originality for the music score. Likewise, the producers of feature films should also be asked to submit an affidavit with the declaration of Originality for the background music score. In the application form, the National Film Awards regulation puts a note that says, “Please state if the music score is Original, in case of non-feature films”. It can be modified as “in case of both feature and non-feature films”.
Did the jury members listen to the film score?
At least if the original score is separately available on a CD, the music can be heard without the visuals and its quality can be judged, but National Film Awards Jury will not have that luxury. Original Scores of Indian films seldom get a legitimate release in India. The jury members have to observe the background score of a film carefully while watching the film. They can also ask the applicants, who want the jury to consider the film’s score for the award, to submit an exclusive compilation CD of the background score. If the score leaves any impact and if they find it worthy of an award, then there are many further doubts that have to be clarified before they can judge a film’s background score as the best.
How and how much of film’s background score is composed by the composer credited for the film’s background score?
In most of Hindi films, two different composers work independently, one on the songs and the other on the background score. The score composer of the film uses the melodies of the songs composed by the composer of the song in his background score throughout the film. In “Love Aaj Kal”, Salim-Suleiman has used the motif from Yeh Dooriyaan (Composed by Pritam) in the background score throughout the film. In Ishqiya, Hitesh Sonik (background score composer) has used the seducing flute piece from Dil to Bachchaa Hai Ji song (composed by Vishal Bharadwaj) in all those moments where Krishna (Vidya Balan) seduces Babban (Arshad Warsi) and Khalujan (Naseeruddin Shah). In 13B, Tubby-Parik has used the melody of Aasman Odh Kar – composed by Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy, in the moment, when Madhavan is relieved to know that his wife will be safe. There is more to a background score than just the melody that is played, but if the impact of the score is because of the melody, who should take credit for it - Composer of the song for composing the melody? Or, background score composer, who used it wisely in the right moment in the film?
Not all composers who do background score are like Amit Trivedi, who for “Wake up Sid” has not used any of the melodies of the songs composed by Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy for the film, in the background score. Furthermore, Amit Trivedi has added songs as part of the background score, and such song-filled background scores further add to the confusion. Will these songs with vocals and lyrics in it be considered as part of the background score? Amit Trivedi won the National Award for Best Music for his songs in Dev.D, whereas juries of regular Bollywood Awards were not quite sure of which category Dev.D music falls into. Most of them recognized Amit Trivedi’s music in Dev.D as Best Background score in 2009. That raises another fundamental question. If a song is not lip-synched by the characters in the film, is it a background score? How will a jury know whether a song was composed before or after shooting the film? If a composer composes a song with lyrics and voices, for already shot visuals, is it a background score or is it a song?
Ilaiyaraaja does not use commercial loops or samples or already available music pieces in his background score. Ilaiyaraaja always composes background score of all the films he composes the songs for (Except a few in which his son Karthik Raaja did the score and was duly credited for the same). Even if he agrees to do only the background score (Lajja) he will use not the melodies of the songs composed by another composer. I dare not use the words - Ilaiyaraaja and Plagiarism in the same sentence. Awarding Ilaiyaraaja in “Best Background Score” category is the safest, easiest and quickest decision a National Film Award jury can take anytime.
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17 comments:
Aakarsh said...
Interesting topic that deserves to be debated on a bigger platform, consisting of artists as well as Government representatives who finally woke up.
Also, I dont exactly remember since when did this practice of "Songs Composer" and "Background score composer" start in Hindi Film Industry.All along till 70s/80s, composers used to handle both.As far as i can recall, till R.D.Burman, all the composers did both. Only sometimes, due to some genuine reason, another composer was asked to step in, for background score.
i think having only 1 composer to do both is the best practice and it solves lot of issues. Firstly, it gives the composer the whole idea of the film, so that he can form/build his own thoughtware, for songs and music and can use themes/concepts from each to create pieces. Secondly, it would be easy for the film-maker to express what he wants, in songs and background score.The interaction (which is sadly missing these days) is very vital.And i am sure it would be financially beneficial for film-maker to have just 1 composer for everything.And Lastly, this credits sharing issue wouldnt be there.
I am curious about the panel of judges, in this category. I would be hugely disappointed if the panel consists of ad-film-makers or people occupying high positions in National Films Division or FTII etc.The panel should have a combination of musically knowledgeable film-makers as well as composers.and both, veterans as well as new-breed ones.
August 25, 2010 at 1:12 AM
P.S. Suresh Kumar said...
Aakarsh - Agree. And I heard there will be at least one from every film-making department in the Jury panel. The documents that I read related to National Film Awards says, if the Jury members are not sure of something, they can seek help from experts in the respective fields, to decide a winner in that category. I guess they have been doing that for Sound mixing, Editing categories all this while. I hope they do that for this category.
August 25, 2010 at 1:28 AM
Unknown said...
I didn't know that so many Hindi movies had different Song composer and Background Score composer.
Hopefully this award category will open up the possibilities of people releasing the background score along with the songs or separately.
And the other composer, is it A.R.Rahman for Vinnaithandi Varuvaaya ?
August 25, 2010 at 4:24 AM
P.S. Suresh Kumar said...
Vinod - //Hopefully this award category will open up the possibilities of people releasing the background score along with the songs or separately.// - That is exactly what I am also hoping for.
ARR for VTV - No. I am talking about movies released in 2009.
August 25, 2010 at 4:29 AM
ramesh said...
August 25, 2010 at 7:21 AM
P.S. Suresh Kumar said...
Ramesh - Dev.D - Songs and background score are by Amit Trivedi. And though the film is full of songs, he won some Bollywood awards in 'Best Background Score' category for Dev.D. I am still not sure, whether one can call Amit's music for Dev.D a background score. This is another topic to contemplate on.
But No. The other composer in contention, in my opinion, is not Amit Trivedi.
August 25, 2010 at 8:10 AM
Anonymous said...
Wow! interesting. For the past 18 years, i have been listening to film scores. My first purchase was Jurassic Park by John Williams (my all time favorite composer). Its very rare to find people who are talking about original scores. I am quite glad to see a person from my country who beautifully analyzes the original score from various part of the world.
I wish you a good luck.
August 26, 2010 at 3:20 AM
Hathim J said...
I dont know which movie you are referring to?? But i think delhi 6 had some amazing background score that was not appreciated by the bollywood juries. I am not jumping onto any favourite, either one of Delhi 6 ,Paa or Pazhassi raja wins, i'd be happy.
August 26, 2010 at 4:22 AM
P.S. Suresh Kumar said...
Anonymous - Thank you.
Shuffle Head - I am not referring to Delhi-6. Delhi-6 definitely has nice ideas in background scores.
August 26, 2010 at 4:37 AM
Hathim J said...
Suresh,
I remember you posted about writing a detail write up about VTV Bacground score, after you watched VTV. When are you writing it? Pls do it soon. Will Ya?? There is nothing more pleasurable than reading your posts. And am glad you are writing regularly these days
August 26, 2010 at 11:34 PM
P.S. Suresh Kumar said...
Shuffle Head - I am hoping to write on VTV again, after Sony Music releases Collector's Edition of VTV soundtrack with background score.
August 27, 2010 at 12:04 AM
Dhin said...
Is other composer Shruthi for Unnai Pol Oruvan?
August 28, 2010 at 8:19 AM
P.S. Suresh Kumar said...
Dhin - Not in my opinion. A clue - It is not a Tamil film.
August 28, 2010 at 10:58 PM
Aakarsh said...
August 28, 2010 at 11:10 PM
P.S. Suresh Kumar said...
Aakarsh - Well done. Yes.
August 29, 2010 at 10:22 AM
Anonymous said...
What a Foresight :) Amit Trivedi & Raaja have won the awards!
September 15, 2010 at 7:20 AM
P S Arjun said...
Ilayaraja Had Won the National Award for Background Score. I thought this is his 5th, but in many websites its written as This is the First National Award for Background Score. Yes, in my List of Movie Data Base many movies in Tamil, Hindi and Malayalam have Different Music Directors for Songs and BGM.
Pravin Mani used compose the Background score for many Tamil films which he didn't actually was the Song Composer even in Few Malayalam Movies.
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"..the most important book of the decade." — Richard Boyatzis, co-author of best seller Primal Leadership
Relationships, in all their varied forms, have been the lifetime study of Robert Hall. He brings a rare combination of experience as a researcher, consultant, writer, teacher and CEO in dealing with the real-world relationship challenges of modern organizations. When coupled with a decade of hands-on experience in the gritty world of inner-city homeless families it translates into a tapestry of vivid stories, well-researched and oft startling facts, and strategic insights that weave together the yet untold narrative of society's gravest risk and most stellar opportunity.
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Robert has published more than 150 columns, articles, white papers, and research studies on relationship. In addition to being a regular contributor at Huffington Post, his work has been published and discussed in Forbes, American Banker, Sales & Marketing Management magazine, The CEO Magazine, ABA Bank Marketing magazine, Computerworld, The Daily Beast, Business Week, The Dallas Morning News, Los Angeles Times, The Detroit News, The Indianapolis Star and in international publications including Sydney Morning News (Australia), European Financial Management Association (London) and Relational Thinking Network (Cambridge, UK).
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“Southwest has grabbed nearly $1 billion in annual market share – thanks in large part to people avoiding bag fees.” – Southwest Airlines CEO Gary Kelly
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Don’t you just love it when a company lives up to its brand? When you truly know who you are the marketplace, competitors, and events sooner or later will provide special windows to reveal and reaffirm your identity. Southwest Airlines recently discerned just such an opening. Yet as is often the case, it would […]
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What the hell are we doing there? Black youth in Watts. Black youth in Vietnam. Mothers Fathers Organize To Save Your Children L.B. Johnson says that war in Vietnam may last up to ten or more years! Do We Fully Understand What This Man Is Talking About? 1. He is saying that if we have sons that are 8 years or older now that he will take them into the racist U.S. Army to fight in the wars that the U.S. government is waging against colored peoples in Asia, Africa and Latin America. 2. Black children receive inferior education so they cannot go to college and stay out of the Army. So, as soon as they are forced out of High School (they call them "drop-outs") they go right into the "man's" Army. 3. White middle- and upper-class children have better schools and teachers who gear them to college so they are able to stay out of the Army. Also, white parents rightly protest, march, picket and do everything else possible to keep their children out of the Army and Vietnam. 4. Defense Secretary McNamara, who along with Johnson is responsible for the murder of tens of thousands of Vietnamese, black Congolese and Dominicans, said recently that he is going to draft 100,00 young men in the next year. He says that these youngsters have "poverty- encrusted" backgrounds. (N.Y. Times, 8/24/66). 5. The N.Y. Times of 8/25/66 said that "possible 30 per cent" of these young men that the Army would "salvage" would be black men! Now, What Else Do These Murderers Say? They Say That This Is Part Of The "Anti-Poverty Program"! How About That? The Way To Solve The Poverty Of The Black People Is To Get Them Killed In Foreign Wars! Wake Up Black People President Johnson has made it clear what he wants to do. He wants to use the black people to fight in wars against our colored brothers. He wants us to help en- slave them just like we are enslaved. Join Our Demonstration Against the War in Vietnam April 15, 1967 March to start at 11 a.m. At 135th St. & Lenox Ave. Rally at U.N. at 3 p.m. The Black United Action Front, composed of many grass-roots organizations, meets to plan and carry out action every Monday night at 8 p.m. at 139 West 125 Street, Room 4, 666-0787. U.S. Get Out of Vietnam Now!
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Supporters of former Pakistani prime minister Imran Khan chant slogans during a protest condemning the shooting that wounded him Thursday. (Fareed Khan/AP)
The attempted assassination this week of former Pakistani leader Imran Khan came just days after an intruder broke into the San Francisco home of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) in what prosecutors say was a failed bid to harm or kidnap her. Weeks before that, a man approached former Argentine president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner in Buenos Aires and tried to shoot her in the face at close range.
That attack followed the July assassination of former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe by a man wielding a homemade gun in Nara city. And Abe was slain almost exactly a year after gunmen killed Haitian President Jovenel Moïse in a raid on his home in Port-au-Prince.
Together, these high-profile acts of violence potentially point to a new, volatile era in global politics, experts say. After years in which terrorist bombings dominated the headlines, this new spate of attacks is reminiscent of the 1960s and 1970s, when major U.S. figures such as President John F. Kennedy and civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. were killed in pivotal moments.
“There’s never going to be an end to individuals who want to assassinate public individuals,” said Colin P. Clarke, director of research and policy at the Soufan Group, an intelligence and security consultancy. But Clarke also said there were several factors that could lead to a rise in assassinations, including the “decline, at least in some parts of the world, of jihadi organizations” that favored different tactics.
In their place, “you’ve got the rise of far-right extremists who are far more decentralized,” he said. “And then you’ve got what people are calling ‘salad bar terrorism,’ which is when they kind of pick and choose different aspects of what motivates them to engage in these types of acts.”
Data from the University of Maryland’s Global Terrorism Database (GTD), which includes figures up to 2020, shows a sharp increase in assassination attempts on government figures around the world starting in 2014. The number of assassinations has stayed consistently high since then — even as the number of terrorist attacks has fallen.
It’s a trend that may have been overlooked in recent years. Erin Miller, program manager at GTD, noted that most of the attacks targeted low- to mid-level officials — and not prominent political leaders such as Khan or Pelosi. The most recent statistics, she said, were dominated by insurgent-led attacks in Afghanistan before the Taliban takeover in 2021.
GTD’s data suggests that the late 1980s was another period when assassinations spiked. Miller said terrorist attacks such as suicide bombings that often kill indiscriminately were used much less then.
“Targeting political leadership was a tactic used to get attention for a cause with less risk of alienating the civilian population,” Miller said. “In more recent years, assailants adopt both targeted assassinations and mass-casualty strategies.”
Part of the shift may be structural. As groups like the Islamic State lost their territory, Clarke said, there was a rise in violence committed by people working alone, some of whom had been radicalized online to hate or target specific individuals.
To some extent, there may also be a tactical logic to the shift. Assassination attempts on individuals can often prompt significant political changes. Some attacks have changed the course of history, though not always in precisely the way their perpetrators intended: The killing of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Austria-Hungary in 1914, for example, is considered the spark for World War I.
Views of assassinations can also change over time. In India, the assassin who killed beloved independence leader Mohandas K. Gandhi has retroactively been branded a “patriot” by some supporters of the country’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.
Some historians consider the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin by a far-right extremist in 1995 a disastrous moment for the Middle East peace process. But almost three decades later, the far right has emerged as kingmaker in the country’s most recent election.
Even in Japan, the shocking assassination of Abe in July sparked a surprising turn: The country took the alleged assassin’s motives seriously.
The alleged killer, Tetsuya Yamagami, told police he wanted to carry out the assassination because his mother had made large donations to the Unification Church, a religious group with which Abe apparently had close ties. After the killing, Abe’s former party pledged to end its relationship with the church, though it later backtracked.
Nara police direct pedestrians and traffic near the spot where former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe was shot while delivering a campaign speech on July 8. (Hiro Komae/AP)
Japan, while generally nonviolent, has a significant history of political assassinations. But some countries that had long avoided attacks on senior officials have seen assassinations in recent years: Two British lawmakers have been killed in separate politically motivated attacks since 2016.
In Brazil, where there has long been political violence around election periods, the number of violent incidents involving political party representatives and supporters in the lead-up to the 2022 vote “eclipsed” that in the election four years before, according to data from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project.
At least some of the apparent rise in assassinations may be due to technological changes. Abe was shot with a “craft-made” gun created with readily available materials. Designs for similar weapons, which can be bought without a background trace and sometimes produced in a way that avoids metal detectors, can be found easily online.
There have been reported assassinations attempts via drone in recent years, such as the 2018 attack on Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro during an event in Caracas. Maduro survived the alleged attempt, a low-tech echo of U.S. drone attacks like the one that killed Iranian military leader Qasem Soleimani in 2020.
“Cruder technology lowers the barriers to entry for attackers, allowing even untrained or unprepared extremists … to attempt serious plots,” Bruce Hoffman and Jacob Ware, two experts in counterterrorism at the Council on Foreign Relations, recently wrote for the War on the Rocks website.
Experts have also noted an increase in assassinations committed with state backing, including the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, the killing of Kim Jong Nam by North Korean agents, and numerous deaths linked back to the Russian state.
But the ever-widening political polarization around the world, aided by online echo chambers that can radicalize potential perpetrators and demonize potential victims, has only added to the risk of assassination — as in the attack at Pelosi’s home that left her husband, Paul, wounded.
Clarke noted that figures on both the left and the right in the United States have been targeted in politically motivated attacks. In some ways, the spate of attempted killings felt worse than what came before.
“We’ve been here before. We’ve survived it,” Clarke said of U.S. political violence. “But there are people I speak to who say this feels fundamentally different. It feels like nothing’s beyond the pale, at least in terms of the rhetoric.”
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Countries engaged in local vaccine manufacturing tend to outperform their peers on COVID-19 vaccine coverage
Does local vaccine manufacturing help boost vaccine coverage? This post compares the evolution of vaccine coverage in nations that manufacture and export COVID-19 vaccines. Focusing on six of them (China, Cuba, India, Russia, United Kingdom and United States), it compares their performance over the course of the pandemic with that of non-manufacturing peers. As it turns out, there is a home bias advantage among most vaccine manufacturers: local vaccine manufacturing pays off.
We explore the evolution in total vaccine coverage ratio across countries. “Total” because we account for the 13.0 billion primary doses and the 2.6 billion boosters that have been administered to date. The total vaccine coverage ratio adds primary and booster doses and expresses this sum as a ratio to population.
But to make such comparisons across countries accurately, there are two issues that we need to take into account: the variety of vaccine protocols and the diversity in the development level of countries.
The global vaccine landscape includes vaccines that require the administration of 1, 2 and 3 doses to complete the primary protocol. If we do not make any adjustment when calculating the total doses administered, progress in countries that rely mainly on 3-dose vaccines (such as Cuba) is easily overestimated. Conversely, for those countries relying disproportionately on 1-dose vaccines, progress is easily underestimated.
To fix this, we bring all primary shots on a level playing field by converting them into double-dose equivalents. That amounts to multiplying shots of 1-dose vaccines by 2 and shots of 3-dose vaccines by 2/3. As a result, primary vaccine coverage reaches a maximum of 200 adjusted primary shots per 100 people, irrespective of the particulars of the vaccine mix a country uses.
Diversity of development levels
We will be looking at the performance of six COVID-19 vaccine manufacturing nations: China, Cuba, India, Russia, United Kingdom and United States. The selection is motivated by the fact that these manufacturers not only produce vaccines for the domestic market but also export them overseas. Our interest is to figure out whether the orientation of such manufacturers to the home markets has helped the progress made on the local vaccination front.
The six countries differ in so many dimensions, including their overall level of development. When making comparisons across countries, it makes sense to compare performance relative to peers of similar development as this will help control for a number of variables relating to production, allocation, affordability and deployment.
We will now compare the performance of the six local vaccine manufacturing nations with their peers. First, we will compare them with group averages of the World Bank income group they belong to. This uses the World Bank income classification, which divides the world into high, upper-middle, lower-middle and low income countries (HIC, UMIC, LMIC and LIC). Next we will compare them to all individual countries within the income group they belong to.
Compared to group averages
In the chart below, we plot the total vaccine coverage ratio against time and we facet the chart by World Bank income group. Within each panel, we compare the selected manufacturers engaged in local vaccine manufacturing with their peers, where we show a population-weighted average for all non-manufacturers within that income group. The group of low income countries, unfortunately, does not include a local vaccine manufacturing country, so we just represent the low income group as such: the population-weighted average of all low income countries.
The main take-aways from the chart are as follows:
All major local vaccine manufacturers except Russia have enjoyed a home bias advantage at some point over the course of the pandemic. This result can be seen by comparing the colored lines with the dashed ones, which capture the progress in the income aggregates without the manufacturers. Russia appears to have been the exception here as its vaccine coverage ratio is persistently below that of the group of the other UMICs (as well as that of the group of HICs, to which Russia belonged from July 2014 through July 2016).
The local vaccine manufacturing advantage in the UK and the US took the form of an earlier start. Both countries performed vastly better than their high income peers up until the summer of 2021. After that, the group of other HICs caught up and performed in line with the UK. The US however started to lag, reflecting the increasing weight of limiting demand-side factors.
Cuba, China and India maintained a consistent advantage throughout the entire pandemic period. Unlike Cuba, China and India had an early start. Soon, however, Cuba managed to dramatically accelerate vaccine coverage. As of today, Cuba is the most vaccinated country among its peers as well as the #5 worldwide, which is the result of being #3 on primary vaccine coverage and #15 on booster coverage (see here for more details on the Cuban vaccine landscape).
Compared to country peers
For further granularity, we can unpack the peer groups into individual countries. The chart below shows how the selected local vaccine manufacturing countries compare with the full range of countries within their peer group (these are represented by the light gray lines).
The chart shows the same result as before: the selected countries engaged in local vaccine manufacturing did indeed perform better than “most” peers over some part of the pandemic period (with exception again of Russia). But now we have additional insights about the dispersion of non-manufacturing countries around the earlier group average.
This shows us that the result of the home bias advantage of local vaccine manufacturing is not absolute. There are several and, indeed, many other non-manufacturing countries within each peer group that are doing better, even though the previous result shows that this is not true on a population-weighted basis. The exception here, again, is Cuba, which performs as the absolute best among its UMIC peers and is surpassed by only few countries worldwide.
The patterns of vaccine coverage are of course explained by many variables other than whether a country manufactures. The control by income group is but a rudimentary way to account for them as there are important variations within income groups that are not explained across. A key element here are the various factors that drive hesitancy in vaccine uptake, which is credited to explain the low vaccine coverage rates in Russia (see here and here) but also the United States (see here).
The above charts seem to support the home bias advantage of local vaccine manufacturing. The example of Russia and also later the US however shows that being a major vaccine manufacturer is no guarantee for high up-take eventually. Other factors are clearly at work, such as hesitancy on the demand side. Yet, the examples shown here, including those of China, Cuba and India among developing countries, show that a local manufacturing base can lead to much better vaccination outcomes than observed in peers.
That is an important conclusion in light of the regressive nature of the global vaccination campaign. Having more decentralized nodes of vaccine production does contribute to the more rapid distribution and administration of vaccine doses, which – all else equal – may result in higher and/or faster vaccine up-take. Of course, all else is not equal and countries need to get other ducks in a row. But it is a good start.
Related insights
The unfinished business of COVID-19 vaccination
Vaccine equity needs a boost
Local vaccine manufacturing pays off
Pandem-ic tracks inequality across countries in COVID mortality, infection and vaccination. It provides data-driven insights into pandemic severity, the Omicron escalation and global vaccine equity.
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Five Ways an MSP Solution Reduces Corporate Recruitment Costs and Improves Access to Talent - Volt Blog
Five Ways an MSP Solution Reduces Corporate Recruitment Costs and Improves Access to Talent
Over the past year, organizations have had to become more adaptive and open to change, especially when it comes to talent management. With this new outlook has come a whole new swathe of opportunities for businesses to be more agile and competitive, improve cost efficiency and better manage risk. By working with a managed service provider (MSP), any enterprise can start taking steps to capitalize on the opportunities that now exist through the better handling of recruitment processes, including when it comes to costs and accessing new talent. So where, specifically, does the MSP add value?
Time saving: From working through initial resumes to carrying out interviews and creating the right paperwork; the recruitment timeline can be a long one. The longer this process takes, the more it is going to cost, both in terms of cash flow and resources. Working with an MSP solution can significantly reduce time to hire by improving efficiency at every stage, whether that’s real time reporting or streamlining previously time-consuming processes.
A consistent and reliable structure: A standardized process not only ensures fairness during the recruitment timeline, but also helps to improve efficiency. From pre-employment screening to developing training structures, it’s not unusual for every department within a business to take a different approach when it comes to procuring new talent. Working with an MSP creates a standard structure everyone can use, helping to avoid an inconsistent candidate experience and cost spikes from unexpected challenges.
A custom solution: An MSP provider can deliver a custom designed solution derived from an objective and expert assessment of what type of talent your organization needs. Implementing an MSP solution within your business’ recruitment strategy means the responsibility for avoiding overstaffing or under-resourcing passes to the provider, meaning your enterprise is no longer burdened with these responsibilities and can focus these freed up resources elsewhere.
Cost savings: If your recruitment team chooses to utilize an MSP, then there are many ways in which your business will be able to generate savings when it comes to current expenditure. This can include elements such as fixed costs, like salaries and benefits, or having access to cost saving tools such as a CV database. As a result, performance metrics are improved by implementing time and cost saving technology as well as regular reporting and insights into the current status.
Measurable ROI on recruitment spend: An MSP offers many measurable opportunities to reduce cost while improving access to talent. Overall ROI will be affected by many beneficial factors, including reduced hiring time, improved quality of candidates, a better employer value proposition and differentiated sourcing strategies.
Working with a MSP solution provides a unique opportunity to reduce the costs that are involved in the corporate recruitment process, whilst also improving overall access to talent across the business. To find out how the team here at Volt can help your company with the integration of an MSP, please email: info@voltconsultinggroup.com for more information.
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WHO WE ARE
At OGW we offer a diversity of food plants and their companions from around the world. We offer unique and rare fruit and nut trees, shrubs, and vines. We've been sharing our passion for edible plants and organic gardening since 1994. We are a family owned and operated nursery in Portland Oregon. We ship our seeds & plants to all 50 states. At our retail garden center we offer seasonal fruit tasting, preservation and plant care classes as well as hold events in the community. We support local food sovereignty- grow your own One Green World!
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When a pet goes missing, it can be tremendously strange to cope with. The lack of answers can often prevent you from either knowing that they’re safe and not to worry, or that something more insidious might have taken place. Of course, we’re always going to assume the worst, because going missing is not a normal occurrence, despite the fact that pets and dogs, in particular, can be quite unpredictable. However, it’s not always death or foul play that might have contributed to your dog’s absence. Sometimes, it might have simply been a set of unfortunate circumstances that made this take place, with no one to blame.
This is all very testing and trying for someone who cares about that animal. It’s likely your entire family feels this way in that situation. You might say bringing them home is the first and foremost priority. This is because a pet is more than a pet, but a family member.
This emotional turbulence can prevent you from taking the action you might really desire to take. It’s essential in that instance to understand that while maybe explained away, a pet going missing is always due to some form of failure in your care or the planning you once held. These are issues you might sort out after the safe return of your pet. Of course, finding them is the first priority, and of course time-sensitive from the moment you notice their absence. It might have been a few hours that turned into days and now you’re beginning to get extremely worried.
The moment you feel that your loved animal friend might be missing, you need to contact the local pet warden or authority. This means if they pick up the animal, they will not regard it as a stray. This is why having a suitable pet collar can work effectively for you, especially if it holds your contact information.
From here it will also be essential to find any photographs you own of the pet, and to print them around town with your contact information. List any distinguishing features that your pet might have, as they might not show up fully in the photographs. Ensure you also list the name that your pet most responds to, as well as any health requirements they might have. You might also consider adding even more information that is pertinent to your pet. For example, if your dog was suffering from lice beforehand, it might be worth mentioning, so that the authority or neighbor that finds them might understand to remove it from your dog. Finally, of course list a reward. This is of course going to be worthwhile to you, and might help you find the dog more quickly. After all, sometimes people need a little motivation, and they might look just a little harder when working from work if a monetary value is included.
Now, it’s horrendous to think about, but you might have to scale this reward based on the breed. There is, unfortunately, a pedigree black market for rare or high-quality breeds, and so ensuring that you reward whoever brings you dog back well can deter people from perhaps looking for illegitimate places to pass the pet along. It sounds horrendous, and it is, but it’s worth thinking about.
Local Area
Many cases of missing pets are simply found in the local area. Many times, dogs find their way home back to you. It can help to leave some fresh food and water outside your home, as well as their favorite toy. It might be that you complete online searches to look for anyone posting on local Facebook pages or online message boards in your area. It could also be that you simply conduct patrol to walk around and visit places where you and your dog used to walk.
A few things to keep in mind are that almost half of pets lost are found by owners in their local neighborhood. For the most part, ID tags and microchips allow for the local animal authority to return them to you immediately. Only two percent of missing pets are found at a shelter however.
All of this can contribute to helping you find your pet more quickly, and in the end, bring them home where they deserve to be.
With these tips, you are much more likely to find your pet in the local environment. Not only will it help you develop future methods of keeping them safe, but for the moment enjoy their return and appreciate them all the more.
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Please say a prayer for my dad*******
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Welcome to my blog! A lifestyle and fur baby (pets) themed site.
My name is Colleen & I'm a huge animal lover/activist. I'm so glad you're here! Stay a while, enter some giveaways and comment with others on relative posts!
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Fundraising efforts at The Crown in Ramsgate for chemo units and boxing club – The Isle Of Thanet News
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HomeCommunityFundraising efforts at The Crown in Ramsgate for chemo units and boxing club
Fundraising efforts at The Crown in Ramsgate for chemo units and boxing club
October 7, 2022 Kathy Bailes Community 3
The Crown in Ramsgate, part of the Craft Union Pub Company, has been fundraising for Ramsgate Amateur Boxing Club and East Kent Hospitals Charity.
Pub boss Kim Morgan, the pub team and customers recently welcomed former customer and now landlord of The Red Lion in Sittingbourne, Carl Bentley to host and participate in a head and beard shave as part of the fundraising initiative for hospital charity’s chemotherapy units. The charity raises funds to support wards across East Kent Hospitals, including the staff, patients and families as well as aiming to make their hospitals the best they can be.
Carl had been growing his hair for two years and agreed to shave it all off to raise money to help care for people suffering from cancer. The head and beard shave raised a total of £3,700.
Kim said: “It was great to welcome Carl and The Red Lion customers to the pub for his head shave. Cancer is something that is very close to both Carl and me, so it was great to be able to play a part in supporting the fundraising for the local cancer wards.”
Carl added: “There are always fundraising initiatives going on at the pub, but this one was very special to myself and Kim. Both of us have connections with loved ones suffering from cancer and losing them to the disease, and it is great to be able to give back to those living with cancer and those caring for these individuals in our local area.
“It was also nice to return to The Crown to carry out my shave, as it was my local pub, and it always brings back so many memories every time I am there. Thank you to all that came along and donated.”
As well as hosting Carl’s head shave, Kim and The Crown have been carrying out their annual fundraising for Ramsgate Amateur Boxing Club. The pub recently held a fundraising weekend, which included raffles and small, fun competitive games.. So far Kim and the pub have raised £1,200 and will confirm their total after the last event takes place tomorrow (October 8) from 8.30pm. This is described as a “fish eating challenge.”
Kim said: “Our fundraising weekend was lovely, the pub team, local customers and I had lots of fun participating in and watching the activities going on. I would like to thank everyone who came along over the weekend and for all the donations we have received as well as all the support, it means so much. The pub is a real part of the Ramsgate community, and it was nice to be able to bring everyone together to have some fun this great local cause.”
Kim is celebrating five years at The Crown this month and Carl are keen to continue their fundraising efforts at the pubs and support the local community of Ramsgate and those in Sittingbourne.
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In elementary school while in 4th grade, I met a girl named Marika. Her name was pronounced like the name Marie, but with a -ka on the end. Some boys called her “America” as a joke, but I couldn’t bring myself to make fun of her name because it was unique, unlike mine – Chris.
We remained friends throughout middle school and high school, but we were never really close. I’d been to her house multiple times for parties, but that was about it.
College changed everything, though. From our small town, we were the only 2 people that went to a particular university 2 states away. I don’t know why she picked that university, but it had a good biological science program, and that’s why I went.
We started talking and hanging out more often during the last couple of months of high school when we realized that besides each other, there was probably not a single person that either of us knew that would be going that that school.
That summer was one of the most important summers of my life. We got a lot closer, or, at least, close enough to decide to rent an apartment together, which I guess is pretty close. I never expected her to become my best friend, especially not so quickly, but by the 3rd week of school, I was sure of it.
We clicked in a very unique way, but maybe it was only unique to me because my best friends had always been guys. She’d drag me off with her to the mall, and suddenly, even though I’d always hated shopping, it wasn’t so bad anymore. I’d make her go see stupid guy movies with me, and she’d laugh her ass off the entire time.
Toward the middle of our sophomore year, Marika started dating a guy named Dillon. She always brought her boyfriends by the apartment to get my opinion on them, and he seemed like a pretty decent guy. Usually, I was a pretty decent judge of character, but with Dillon, I was way off the mark.
A couple of weeks later, Marika came home crying at 1 in the morning with a black eye.
“What happened?” I asked.
“Dillon…hit me,” she timidly responded.
I was furious.
“It’s not the first time,” she bawled. “I didn’t know what to do!”
She turned around and lifted up the back of of her shirt. There were three other bruises spread across the upper and lower part of her back.
I couldn’t see straight – could hardly breathe.
“Why didn’t you say anything?” I asked. I tried my best to not let my anger affect my tone of voice toward her, though. She was scared and hurt, and screaming at her wouldn’t help that. “I would’ve helped you.”
“I know, I know,” she cried. “But I was scared. He said he’d hurt me worse. I thought I would just keep waiting to wake up from this nightmare.”
“It’s over,” I said, holding her in my arms and stroking her hair with my hand as gently as I could. “I will never let that monster hurt you ever again.”
It took everything I had to not throw on some clothes, drive to that bastard’s house, and beat the living daylights out of him. Marika needed a friend though, and I was certainly not abandoning her to cause even more violence.
She cried herself to sleep that night on the sofa. I threw a blanket on her and sat across from her thinking. I tried to sleep, but my head was spinning with thoughts that wouldn’t give way to slumber. Dillon might as well have punched my own mother in the face, and I don’t think I could’ve been more infuriated.
I finally nodded off sometime around 3 or 4. I actually had a pretty good dream that night, but I still woke up in a foul mood at around 10 the next morning. Marika was awake, but she hadn’t moved from her spot on the sofa.
“Hey, how you holdin’ up?” I said.
I”‘m okay,” she said.
“What do you want for breakfast? I’ll make whatever you want.”
“Anything?” she asked.
“Yes, anything.”
“Will you make French toast with strawberries and cream on top?”
“Coming right up!” I smiled, adding under my breath, “As long as it’ll cheer you up.”
I went in the kitchen and made breakfast, the entire time with Marika commenting on how good it smelled.
“Breakfast is served!” I said as I finished the last piece.
Watching her savor her breakfast made me feel a little better. If she could forget about what had happened for a little while, then all the work of preparing a nice breakfast was worth it.
“A visitor at 10:30?” I said.
“Wonder who that could be?” Marika said.
“Someone that’s very impatient, apparently,” I said, getting up to answer the door.
“OPEN THE DAMN DOOR, MARIKA,” a voice screamed from outside.
“Oh no…” Marika timidly whispered from behind me.
I flung the door open, didn’t say a word. Didn’t need to. I swung my fist back and clocked that son of a bitch square between the eyes. He staggered back, fazed but still upright.
“Stay the HELL away from Marika,” I gritted through my teeth, eyes fierce with rage. “If you come anywhere near her or this apartment again, I will call the police so fast your ass wont even know what happened. And don’t you even DARE threaten her through ANY means EVER again.”
“Look man, I was just coming to apologize, you don’t have to…” he started.
“Stop. I don’t care. You are a miserable little boy, and I wont give you the chance to try to rid yourself of the guilt. Now get out of here you giant, insufferable douchebag.”
I didn’t think he’d actually leave, but he turned and spit on the ground, and then walked away.
I slammed the door and only then did I feel my hand throbbing from hitting Dillon so hard. Marika stared at me for a few seconds until silent tears started to fall down her cheeks. There was no sobbing, no noise to indicate she was crying. Just tears.
“He isn’t worth crying over,” I said, breaking the tension of the silence.
“I’m not crying over him,” she said, her voice quivering.
“What are they teardrops for, then?”
“I never thought I’d have a friend that cared about me as much as you do,” she said.
Silence enveloped the room. I wasn’t expecting that response at all. I was touched, yet I couldn’t respond. She had been so sad, yet her tears were those of happiness? Tears because I was in her life?
“T-thanks,” I finally mustered. She smiled, though still crying, and got up out of the chair.
She didn’t speak, she didn’t even make noise as she walked. Inches from me, she stopped, wrapped her arms around me, and locked them there. I could feel the moisture from her cheeks soaking into my shirt as she buried her face into my chest.
“Don’t make me let go,” she said, her voice muffled, though still intelligible.
Then, there was silence. I could hear her breathing and nothing else for at least 10 minutes. She just stood there, holding me, and I held her. I wasn’t sure what was running through her head, but if this was what she needed, then I’d gladly give it to her.
She’d finally woken up from her nightmare.
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Amanda got fed up with a relationship real life guys. Hence she partnered a 300-year-old soul as an alternative. – Texas Home Buyers Club
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Amanda got fed up with a relationship real life guys. Hence she partnered a 300-year-old soul as an alternative.
Amanda got fed up with a relationship real life guys. Hence she partnered a 300-year-old soul as an alternative.
Post published:February 5, 2022
Amanda got fed up with a relationship real life guys. Hence she partnered a 300-year-old soul as an alternative.
Thus, you have swiped directly on precisely what looks like every available person on Tinder.
Whether appears like you have depleted every available path in the hunt for the one, fulfill 45-year-old Amanda Teague from Ireland.
Amanda is literally a knowledgeable Jack Sparrow impersonator.
She in addition is literally attached toward the ghost of a Haitian pirate named port whom died inside the 1700s. Very she claims.
Talking to constant celebrity, Amanda claimed she looked to the afterlife to acquire the woman kindred heart (pun certainly recommended) after she started to be fed upwards on your actual, dwelling guy which were offered.
She mentioned this lady union with Jack were only available in 2014, when this bimbo felt an energy laying beside the whilst in bed. At the beginning she isnt looking for generating touching the soul due to the fact, well, that assumed frightening. But she stated she eventually was captivated when this tart taught the pair had the ability to speak verbally.
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One of the things she knew? Jack are black and has jet-black hair and ended up being completed for his or her exploits throughout the large seas. He was when also engaged for married, but ended up being jilted by his or her bride-to-be.
PAY ATTENTION: Holly Wainwright speaks about the psychic mommy and sister-in-law proclaiming that this lady child possess the gift.
One night this individual considered me personally We can actually be along you already know but there was never heard of an intimate commitment between a soul and an individual before, Amanda stated.
I did a bit of research and located out it really is a true thing so there are numerous individuals spiritual associations.
Quickly enough, Amanda got ready to have attached. There clearly was just one problem: wedding parties between individuals and tones usually are not officially legitimate.
Therefore, remaining genuine to Jacks roots, Amanda employed a registrar, compiled this model nearby friends and relations and sailed into worldwide oceans towards ritual.
a spiritual medium has also been available guaranteeing Jack was exclaiming i actually do.
he can be my soulmate. Really very pleased, Amanda explained of this lady romance together new undetectable spouse.
Whatever you does, do not try to suspect this model race on your initial time specially as it will sound disrespectful and it will surely get out of a terrible 1st idea. Think about techniques it is possible to determine wherein this woman is from, sort that ignite discussions. Inquire about exactly what customs she gets, exactly how their indigenous nation isn’t the same as the methods the woman is dealing with currently, not to mention how to find some practices that them parents pursue. These are typically all good talk starters by asking some or each of these query, it’s possible for more information regarding the girl.
Billie was born and known as Billie Eilish Pirate Baird OConnell in l . a ., California, regarding 18th of December, 2001. She grew up by the moms and dads during the L.A. neighboorhood of Highland parkland. Allow the to go after the girl profession hitch-free, she was homeschooled. She possesses Irish and Scottish ethnical experiences while the woman is of American nationality.
From a pretty early age, Eilish got a style for singing which in the end directed the girl to enlist the Los Angeles Childrens Chorus by the time she was actually simply 8 yrs old. By time she converted eleven, she surely could begin composing and sugar-daddies uk vocal her own records. As prior hinted, at the end of 2016, Billie fallen the girl first appearance individual, Ocean Eyes on SoundCloud, which she observed up with a music and dance clip. By November that year, seashore focus is re-released in the world via Darkroom and Interscope lists to chiefly reviews that are positive. Another individual, Six Feet Under was subsequently introduced by specialist.
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USTL provides full scholarships to outstanding students from Timor-Leste for two to four years of study at high-quality undergraduate degree institutions in the United States. Scholarship awards include full tuition toward either a bachelor’s degree or associate degree, travel, living stipends, medical insurance in the U.S., and visa costs. USTL is a program of the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA), U.S. Department of State.
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As I transferred to West Virginia University during second summer term, everything is doing great so far to both my study and some social activities that I involved. As WVU is way bigger than West Liberty University, there are few things that make both universities different from each other. The class or lecture theater is way bigger here in WVU which has more than 100 students in each classes, the professor quite distant from students to get interacted with. However, there are more advantages that I see from being here in West Virginia University. There are more opportunities that offer by university to students, things such as student’s organization/clubs with varieties of organization, there are more international students to interact with, the courses or classes are vary which enable myself to experience and gain more knowledge and skills. As I love music, the university has a singing competition which I am currently competing on and made it to finale which will be held next week. West Virginia football game, the students are offered to go watch the game for free on the weekend. Aside from what university has to offer, the location of university also very convenience which allows myself to do some shopping and offer different choices for foods.
In the beginning of the semester on August 25 to 27, I and few other Timorese flew to Minneapolis to attend a fundraising event to help raise some fund for Bairo Pite Clinic. During the event, we did few different activities. From listening to Doctor Daniel Murphy talking about Health issue in Timor Leste, Safe sex education to share our own perspective and thoughts about the health and education in Timor which are very essential points to consider for the Development of Timor.
I enrolled in 16 credit hours for this semester, all the courses I took for this semester are all interesting. From learning, the global politics, history of political thought to public policy analysis and to Macroeconomics, which all of them have offered so many new knowledge to me so far. However, among these courses I liked Global politics class better as the professor is very smart and knows what he taught. And the class has a solid relation to macroeconomic class as we mostly discussed about Globalization and capitalism. However, this class also has its difficulties. The question that designed by professor for the quizzes are quite challenging in the beginning of the semester, however as the professor offer a discussion tutorial once I week which helps reduce the challenge I face.
For this semester, I compete on the Mountaineer Idol which is a singing competition that organized by university. I am now on the finale week and hoping to do great next week during the show. I also got selected to be a National Anthem Singer for university athletic game. I will start to sing the national anthem for few games starting next month.
2019 August
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USTL is a program of the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, U.S. Department of State; it is administered by the American Councils for International Education (American Councils) in collaboration with the U.S Embassy in Dili, Timor-Leste
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McLane was born and raised in Victoria, Texas. The son of a cattle rancher, McLane learned early on the value of hard work. In high school, McLane was selected to study abroad in Argentina for six months. It was there he discovered his passion for travel and learning. McLane went on to earn his Bachelor of the Arts in Anthropology, minoring in Sociology.
After college, he spent some time trying to figure out what to do with his life, working on the family ranch in the meantime. Shortly after that, McLane applied to and was accepted into Baylor University School of Law. As a first year law student, McLane discovered his passion for criminal law, earning top marks in his Criminal Procedure courses. In his last year of law school, McLane participated in the rigorous practice court program at Baylor. Despite the incredibly demanding course load heaped onto practice court students, McLane excelled, actually making the Dean’s List during the second, critical stage of the program. After law school, McLane took the Bar Exam, passing on his first attempt. Once licensed, McLane moved to west Texas to begin working with Tommy Hull.
When he’s not working, McLane enjoys reading, visiting family, trying to curry favor with his nephew, and floating down a cold river on a hot day.
Notable Results
Client indicted for burglary of a habitation to commit sexual assault. Complaining witness was found having relations with client by family friend in said friend’s trailer. She accused client of sexually assaulting her. She also claimed she thought it was her husband rather than our client. During cross examination the family friend testified that he did not hear any struggling while he sat alone just outside the trailer. Further, client was huge and bearded, while the complaining witness’s husband was short and clean shaven. Statements given by the complaining witness, her husband, and the family friends were inconsistent as to the sequence of events. Law enforcement testimony attempted to claim the statements were consistent, but ultimately had to admit under cross exam that they were not. A jury found the client not guilty.
Another client was indicted for assault by strangulation, family violence.
He and his ex wife got into an argument regarding their child. Client’s new girlfriend and his ex wife’s mother were present. The Ex and her mother claimed that he slapped the ex wife and held the mother down by her throat. Both parties called the police, who decided to arrest our client. Testimony from law enforcement revealed not only that the ex wife was also investigated for instigating the assault, but that the case was not closed, making their “victim” a suspect in the same crime. Testimony from the new girlfriend revealed also that the ex wife had initiated the physical fight, that our client was acting in self defense, and that all he did was try to hold them down so they would stop hitting them. “They” being the ex and her mother. Yes, my client was assaulted by his ex wife and ex mother in law in a school parking lot. As mentioned, the ex claimed he hit her first. The jury was not convinced though, as the “victims” had a few red marks to show their injuries, whereas my client had gashes on his face and arm and was bleeding profusely, and his girlfriend’s shirt was almost ripped completely off of her. Jury returned a not guilty verdict.
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It is not easy to be the best. It requires hard work and a boldness of action that defies normal practice. Too many architecture and engineering firms are struggling to thrive and grow in today's economy simply because they haven't given enough attention to developing best practices.
PSMJ has discovered something that is both profound and apparent—that the most successful firms, those firms with the best practices, are fundamentally different from the average performers.
Every year, at least half of the top 10 percent of firms in our surveys were also top performers in preceding years. This gives us the opportunity to study them and identify what makes them so successful, and size is not a criterion.
The following are the characteristics we see in the best firms, which we call our “benchmark firms.” While no firm does all the things we describe, our benchmark firms do many of them. These firms:
1. Have a purpose with a vengeance. The best firms have strong and visionary leadership, sometimes even dictatorial leadership. Although innovative and creative, these firms don’t place a particularly high value on design awards. They let their clients define quality. And they exceed promises made to clients. These firms have flat organizations with lean project teams and highly billable principals.
2. Use guerrilla marketing. The top firms are proactive in their marketing: They don’t wait for RFPs. They identify the clients they want to work for and develop tough strategies to capture them. Once they have clients, they don’t let them go. Principals stay very close to their clients and endeavor to know their business better than the clients themselves. Their goal is to establish such a strong relationship with clients that they get 100 percent of their clients’ work wherever in the world it occurs.
3. Build kick-butt project managers. The best firms push authority down to the lowest level. The project manager’s job is to make sure the client is ecstatic—and the firm makes at least the expected profit. These PMs stay on top of their jobs’ financials. The PMs that rise to leadership positions at benchmark firms are not just very good at managing projects—they also excel at selling all the services the firm
has to offer to the client. They know their clients and exceed promises all along the way. When problems arise, these project managers don’t hide behind their desks. They take responsibility and communicate with their clients. They do not allow for surprises later on in the project.
4. Value their people. Firms that deliver services live or die by their people. Benchmark firms recruit only the best people to work for them. And they keep these best people motivated by giving them room to grow—these firms’ leaders are most often developed from within. These firms have lower than average turnover, though not the lowest. These firms invest in their top people—they really understand that people are their most important asset, and they act like it. And they don’t tolerate non-performance.
5. Are highly profitable. Benchmark firms know that nothing else matters if the firm is not financially successful. Lump-sum contracts and incentive clauses are the way they do business. They manage cash. They keep on top of their receivables. They charge according to value provided, not cost incurred. They control costs, sacrificing neither the long term for the short, nor the short term for the long.
6. Embrace technology. Before these firms decide to implement new technology, they make sure there is buyin from all of the management and commitment to see it through. Management understands that adjusting to new technology can be a great frustration for many employees,and they make it their job to build support for the transition. These firms make sure that there is a short implementation
period to set up the technology and train users. This swift transition allows for immediate payback on the technology.
7. Have an ownership transition plan in place. Benchmark firms always think about the future and have ownership transition plans in place that reward performance over loyalty. They understand that a solid plan can take up to ten years to carry out. At the same time, all employees understand what is expected of them before, during, and after the transition. When it comes to choosing new leaders, these firms define criteria for leader selection leading to the top position. When clearly stated, the leadership selection plan lets junior employees know where they stand and what it takes to get to the next rung.
8. Consistently benchmark. The top firms constantly benchmark their performance against well established business performance measures. They don’t just look at industry data, but also dig out the benchmarks within their firm’s size, type of service, geographic location, marketplace, and type of clients served. They don’t just find themselves as part of an elite group of firms; they work at getting there. Also, these firms tie their reward systems directly to the achievement of these goals. They don’t reward their staff for “median” performance.
9. Lead others to accomplish strategic plans and business plans. The planning process in top firms includes all key people. Staff is allowed to offer input on how to reach measurable business goals, and they believe in the vision and purpose of the firm. These firms allow for flexibility in their plans, as they know that unforeseen changes naturally occur. They also return to repeat the planning process by assigning smaller goals, such as six-month strategies and action plans or one-year objectives. Finally, even when these firms find themselves at the top of their field, they don’t rest—the best firms find ways to do great things even better.
This article is an excerpt from PSMJ's complimentary ebook, Five Must-Have Skills for Future A/E Firm Leaders, a clear and concise overview, direct from PSMJ’s architecture and engineering industry experts, of the ever popular subject of developing emerging leaders. This complimentary e-book gives an overview of the skills needed to develop your firm's top-performing employees.
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I am very on board with the SSiW attitude towards mistakes… however, I am at level 1, challenge 13 at the moment and finding it so hard!! I feel like I just about get something and then something else is introduced.
Do I need to replay any lessons?
siaronjames January 21, 2020, 2:16pm #2
No, you don’t really need to replay lessons - things will be repeated later on and it’s this spaced repetition that is the magic - however, there is no harm in repeating a lesson once or twice if you really feel you need to AS LONG AS you don’t do so to the point where it becomes discouraging because you think you’re not getting anywhere.
What has been suggested to some who need more repeats than others is to repeat in blocks of 5. i.e. don’t keep going over and over a single lesson, but go back over the last 5 once and then move on.
One more thing, the ‘teen’ lessons do tend to move towards a ‘higher gear’, but that is because tootling along in 1st gear won’t get you very far very fast! If you can, just go with the flow, and as I said, the spaced repetition will do its thing in time
AnthonyCusack January 21, 2020, 3:30pm #3
Siaron is spot on, just to add 13 is a particularly challenging point to reach. My advice is to push on, if you get to 15 and still feel like you’re struggling MORE than progressing, nip back to 10 and build back up again. You’ll be amazed how much the formally “impossible” flows so nicely and, almost feels normal.
You’re doing so well to get to 13, so “dal ati”
gareth-mitchell January 21, 2020, 3:43pm #4
I’m just at the end of level 1. I’ve paused a half dozen times along the way. The first 5 to 10 challenges passed really easily for me. I know we all differ but after that there were a few weeks where i didn’t understand some things which I thought I should’ve understood or where I’d been unable to study enough. However, i think there is so much common ground and so much gentle introduction of variance and new words I probably would’ve been ok just ploughing on most of the time. I decided about half way through that I’d move on even if I wasn’t entirely convinced I’d understood enough of the last lesson and if the next challenge was too scary or intimidating I’d pause and go back to the last one for another week. I’d give everyone the same advice: work at a rate that you enjoy and that enthuses you. Don’t put yourself under stress to meet a schedule. The language was here long before any of us and I’d love it to be there long after, which means people need to want to use it. Don’t be disillusioned. Keep moving on when you can understand about 80% of a challenge. There are a few stinkers in the 20s but we all survive!
Camilla_Walker January 21, 2020, 7:39pm #5
You’re doing great to get to Challenge 13
I’ve just finished Challenge 15 and can relate to your feeling of “just about to get something and then something else is introduced” very well indeed.
What’s working best for me is to split up the Challenges in nice and short parts of about 6 minutes a day, so everything has time to settle down.
If I’ve got a good day and I’m up to more I’m adding a few more minutes and enjoy the happy feelings.
If I’ve got a bad day and the 6 minutes felt like an endless struggle, I let it rest and repeat it on the next day; usually more successful
The spaced repetition really does the trick for me - so even if I feel like I won’t ever be able to remember a certain word or expression I just get on with the Challenges and I find myself using them more and more surely by and by.
I don’t think you need to replay any lessons, except if you think it would help you and you’re in no danger to get caught in the “perfection trap”.
Good luck and keep having fun!
3 Likes
gisella-albertini January 21, 2020, 8:08pm #6
Those lessons were a shock for many learners! Don’t worry, it gets better!
Level 1 Challenge 13 to 15. (was: Confused about how to go on) General / Questions
In the last few days I had tried to speed up a bit, and it was going quite well, until I came across challenge 13. A complete disaster. At some point I felt my brain melting, and I was only able to utter one or two words in each sentence, and a bunch of unintelligible random sort-of-Welsh-sounding syllables. I searched for tips on the Forum and saw that a few other people felt stuck at this point (that was already a bit reassuring, by the way). A few even repeated the same challenge over and…
lucy-bradburn January 21, 2020, 8:51pm #7
Wow thanks guys! It still amazes me how lovely and welcoming this forum is
aran January 22, 2020, 11:57am #8
Um, yeah, 13 and 14 are a bit too brutal - sorry about that! But it doesn’t stay that tough, so plough on through and you’ll get there…
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Greetings, Kaijudo duelists! If you were able to make it past the absolutely horrible title that I decided to use, you will now be rewarded with an article about my drafting experience at League!
I'm sure most of you know how booster drafts work, but for those who may not, each of the entrants paid $20 entry fee for 5 packs of 3RIS. After that, we all sat around a table, opened one of our packs each, took one card to keep, and then passed the rest, either clockwise or counter-clockwise. Once all the cards in each pack had been taken and each player had 9 cards, we moved to the next pack, passed it the opposite way, and continued until each player had received 45 cards. Then, we narrowed down our selection to create decks with a 30 card minimum. Since we kept the cards we drafted, taking the rares out of each pack was a priority, but in general, we were able to also create some very diverse and unique strategies using cards that might never be able to shine in constructed play; one of the main reasons I enjoy booster drafts so much.
Unfortunately, though we thought we'd have about 8 to 10 entrants, only 5 showed up, as conflicts with work and other things prevented some people from making it to the shop. Even so, I personally had a lot of fun, getting 2nd place to EarthP0w3R, and I'd like to use the rest of this article to share some general tips and ideas I've found to be important when drafting.
The Biggest Question: What to Draft?
Ah, yes, THAT feeling. Opening up the first booster pack and having a few solid choices staring back at you out of the nine cards in your hand. They're all different civilizations, of course, and often require entirely different strategies to be of use. If one just takes the "best" card out of every pack passed to them, there is a strong possibility that he or she might end up with a mismatched 45 cards with an almost equal number of each of the civilizations, or as I like to call it, "the Pile".
To avoid drafting the Pile, and finding myself in a rough position when creating my deck, I try to have a general idea of the kind of deck I want to draft before the first pack is even opened. Of course, you can't always act on that idea, especially since 3RIS is such an expansive set and pulls are unpredictable, but I find it always helps to stick to my strengths. For example, I'm a control player. Given the opportunity, I'll always try to draft a deck with a control-type theme, usually including Water and Darkness. This was my goal going into this draft. I ended up with a rather versatile Water/Darkness/Light deck that had elements of control and some aggression to it as well. Here's the list:
(9)
1 Stalker Sphere
The deck came to a total of 32 cards. My original intention was to draft Water/Darkness/Fire, and I picked up one or two Fire cards before the first pack was done being passed, but upon opening my second pack I came face to face with the Radiant, the Lawbringer. Besides basically having to take it because of its rarity, it also convinced me to start stocking up on Light support so I could run that civilization, which brings me to my next point.
The general rule is that most cards become much better in Limited play, such as a booster draft, than they are in regular Constructed play. In regard to creatures, this includes everything from the standard Double Breaker with no other effect to the lower-cost "vanilla" cards which have no effect whatsoever. When I saw the Radiant, I knew I should play it because having strong Double Breakers can really make a draft deck come together.
Almost nothing in the set can beat Radiant in raw power, and the ability to run otherwise standard removal spells is limited. In a Constructed tournament, almost every deck running Darkness will include three copies of Terror Pit, yet only one was pulled in our entire draft (which unfortunately did not go to me). Cards like Terror Pit become that much more important in drafts, but their scarcity makes cards like Radiant incredibly playable. One of the main problems I discovered with my deck was actually the overall lack of finishers. After I took the Radiant, no Double Breakers from any of the civilizations I chose to run found their way into my hands, which was disappointing. Even a King Bullfang would have been much appreciated!
Limited matches generally end much faster than Constructed matches, as players are forced to build more aggressive decks. The cards just usually don't come together to build a focused control deck, so even decks like the one I drafted have to have the ability to put some early presence in the battle zone. This is why I took the early blockers I could, as well as cards like Grave Scrounger, which can recycle those early cards as well as break shields when the situation calls for it.
Building a dedicated rush deck is about as hard as building a dedicated control deck, but aggressive decks thrive in Limited. I lost a game to Kevin, who was running Fire/Nature/Light, in our match because of a very rush-esque opening on his part. He went first, had a first turn Blaze Belcher, a second turn Vorg I believe, a third turn Super Bazooka, and the fourth turn Comet Missile and Blaze Belcher to answer the Jade Monitor I had put on the board. This is an extreme example of course, but it shows the power that aggression can have in these games.
There comes a time in every Limited deck's life when it's forced to behave like an aggro deck. The worst thing a deck can do is lose its momentum and start top-decking with a small field, so I always take cards that work against that. The only dedicated draw that I drafted was the 2 copies of Logos Scan, though I made up for it through the 2 copies of Teleport, Voidwing, Black Feather of Shadow Abyss, Argus, and the Grave Scroungers. Black Feather was definitely one of the best cards in the deck, being able to combo well with a ton of other cards, like the slayers, tap abilities, and pure destruction.
Going hand-in-hand with the necessity of finishers and a selection of powerful creatures in general is the necessity of ways to deal with your opponent's cards with the same function. I was able to draft the Bone Blades and Ice Blade to help against early aggression, along with the generic bounce of the 2 copies of Teleport. The problem was that the only ways I could deal with opposing finishers on a permanent level were the two slayers I ran along with the lone Death Smoke, which isn't always effective. This was ultimately my demise in the finals, as I was beat down by a Moorna, Gatling Dragon that EarthP0w3R was lucky enough to pull. Though I held the Death Smoke for it, he was able to Dark Return it back at a very crucial time and take the win, proving how powerful big creatures like that really are in the draft. My Radiant was sadly nowhere to be found!
Speaking of the final match in our draft, it's on YouTube! Please check out EarthP0w3R's channel if you want to see how decks like these played out, as the matches were very fun indeed. Also, there's another video on his channel which contains our draft deck profiles. My list is above of course, but to see the decks Kevin and EarthP0w3R drafted, be sure to check that one out as well!
And that wraps it up for our booster draft! It was super fun, and I encourage you all to try it out at your local stores if you have players willing to do it. It really helps open your mind up to new strategies and card combinations. Until next time, leave a comment down below and let me know what you thought of the article and what you'd like to see in the future. Thanks for reading everybody, and I'll see you next week!
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At Philadelphia Protestant Home (PPH), we’re proud of the long list of amenities that come together to create our active, engaging lifestyle. You’ll find all of the offerings you’d expect to see at a community, as well as many you wouldn’t. And we’re especially proud of some unusual amenities you might be surprised to learn that we offer.
Bowling alley — No, we’re not talking about Wii bowling (although we have that, too!) PPH offers an actual two-lane bowling alley, and it’s quite the popular gathering spot! The alley is especially inviting in cold or rainy weather when you feel like bowling a game or two but don’t want to venture out in frigid conditions and wait in a long line to do so. When you come for a visit, we invite you to lace up your shoes and join our residents in bowling — the regulars in our bowling club are always glad to have some friendly competition! Haven’t picked up a bowling ball in a while? Click here for our list of bowling tips for seniors.
Stained glass workshop — Part of our fabulous Arts, Cultural and Education Center, our Epicurean Glass Works studio gives our artistically inclined residents the tools and techniques to express themselves in a way they may never have tried before. Whether you’re a skilled craftsman like talented, longtime stained glass resident artist Ron Hugo or you’ve never created in the rewarding medium of stained glass before, the possibilities are only limited by your imagination!
Greenhouse — Dedicated gardeners and even casual green thumbs will want to put down roots in the greenhouse, where one can enjoy gardening in all seasons. Here, lush blooms are coaxed from cuttings, and fragile plants requiring regulated climactic conditions are protected in all weather.
Resident garden — Our resident garden is a beautifully landscaped setting that includes a gazebo for private meditation, a pond with colorful koi that all ages will enjoy, a fountain for relaxation and a remembrance walkway where friends and loved ones can be memorialized and honored. The garden is the perfect place for reflection, healing and just enjoying the serene beauty of nature.
Ice cream parlor — At PPH, we’re proud to offer a wide range of culinary experiences, from our formal dining room, Main at Martin’s Mill, to The Bistro @ 6500 for lighter gourmet fare, as well as our casual café. We even have our own little grocery store, the Tabor Market, which is open six days a week for those last-minute items you might need to pick up. But one of our most popular venues is Scoops, which as you can tell by the name serves up delicious ice cream of all varieties that residents and guests of all ages can enjoy. Along with cones and sundaes, Scoops also offers sandwiches, soups, hot dogs, hamburgers and a daily entrée special.
There are many more special PPH offerings that we didn’t have space to list here, so please schedule a tour to see some of the other favorite spots that grace our beautiful campus.
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November 2022 REACH
Posted on: Oct 31, 2022 by Daniel Ortiz
Please enjoy the November 2022 edition of REACH!
"In my two years at PPH, I’ve grown to like it very much. At first, I felt like a stranger and then as I began to talk to people, we increasingly became good friends. A way to meet people is to join clubs. I’m now part of the PPH Auxiliary. I love helping with their flea markets because you never know what you can find. Recently, I’ve joined an evening quilting class. I love that I can continue to enjoy my life outside of PPH while experiencing the offers here.….especially the pool! Everything is just so convenient.
"My mom is sooo happy at PPH, I can’t even describe it in strong enough words. She’s met so many new friends and these ladies do EVERYTHING together! She sees Dad every day in Pathways, but can have her life too. She’s gone to so many activities and I think I’ve already been to Scoops with her at least 15 times. She loves the dining room and Bistro too. My sister, Ilene, and I are so delighted that Mom is happy.......Wow, it feels like Mom’s been there about 2 years—but it’s only 2 months!! That’s how comfortable and natural it feels for her – and for all of us.
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Yes, I want to put my membership on hold at this time. The match with A is unbelievably perfect. We are compatible in so many ways. At our very first date we talked for an hour and a half at the restaurant before we even ordered food. The waitress kept coming by to see if we were ready and we had not even looked at the menu yet because we were so engaged with one another. He is handsome, we share the same morals and values. I absolutely love who he is as a person all his character traits such as kindness, work ethic, how he treats others with such respect and care, and no one has ever treated me the way that he treats me. I feel like I am the only woman in the world in his eyes… And I’m pretty sure he would say that is true too!
This was totally unexpected – I have never in my wildest dreams thought that I would meet such a wonderful man – he’s incredibly more than I could ever have dreamed of in a man.
Thank you,
by Matchmaking Team
What Are Happy Holds?
When our matchmaking clients put their membership on hold, because they want to exclusively date someone we introduced them to, we call it a “Happy Hold”. These letters are just some of those we have received from our clients over the years.
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This week's crush is actress Julia Stiles. Aside from the Bourne movies, I'm not really a fan of her work. But she's a cutie, nonetheless.
Julia in winter clothes.
There's plenty more pictures here.
Posted by Micah at 8:18 PM
Labels: Crushes, movies, women
5 comments:
I'm going to have to go ahead and kind of agree with you there.
March 2, 2005 at 8:56 PM
KPMD said...
I think Julia Stiles is very pretty, very classy looking. Not your typical hollywood chippy. I also must say I think she may be the celebrity my sister "most resembles" (Don and Mike 1998). It sure as hell beats Mo Rocca.
March 2, 2005 at 9:16 PM
I like her for the simple reason she actually owns "winter clothes." She's one of the few, it seems, who gets that wearing a halter top in February doesn't make you hot, it makes you dumb.
March 3, 2005 at 10:25 AM
I'm so glad your taste has improved since... oh, never mind. ;)
I like her AND she has a very sexy voice.
March 3, 2005 at 2:20 PM
Micah said...
KPMD - Yes, she seems very classy. And Mo Rocca is sexy in his own way. I just wish "Things I Hate About You" was still on the air. But I guess Bravo had to make room for another hour of "Queer Eye" reruns.
kristen - Alluding to my classy comment above, I don't think I've ever seen her hoochied out like Britney, et al. Nothing wrong with winter clothes. They can be sexy in their own way.
panthergirl - Let it go! :) I like her voice, too. Hopefully, she won't sound like latter period Lucille Ball when she gets older.
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