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Such a proud momma...I NEVER imagined we would get here!
To those of you who know me, either personally or through my blog, you will know that my husband, Martin, and I struggled for years with our adopted son, E, who just turned 15. When I say "struggle," that is one helluva understatement. Our beautiful house that we bought just 5 short years ago looks like...I don't even know what word to use. There is duct tape and a lot of it...holding the bathroom tiles on the wall after the bathroom door was slammed so hard that the tiles became loose. There are several holes in the drywall in the basement. We have had to kick in more than one door to drag E out of a locked room. I'm sure you get the picture.
But, this post is not about how bad it is, but about how well things are going now. E decided that he wanted to get out of being in a special education school after spending almost his entire elementary school life there. He got up at the crack of dawn, not once but thrice...and this boy is a big time night owl. The fact that he got up at 6am in order to take the entrance tests in order to be able to apply to the selective enrollment high schools was a miracle in itself.
Also, E is and always has been lucky...getting accepted to schools, winning raffles, it's uncanny, really. So, when the testing was over and the application process complete, he was accepted into 4 high schools. Mind you, the fact that he is mixed race with an IEP (Individual Education Program), was a factor, I'm sure. He chose Roosevelt High School which is a very interesting school. Located in the Albany Park neighborhood, it has been around for almost 100 years. It started out in 1922 as William G. Hibbard High School, but was moved into a new building and renamed in honor of the 26th president of the United States in 1927. Who knew? Not me, until I just this minute looked it up.
It has had several notable alumni including Nelson Algren, George Gobel, Shel Silverstein and Bob Sirott. Also, my aunt and 2 uncles attended it in the 50s and it seems I meet someone every few months who attended the school at some point in its long history. It is one of those huge schools with wood everywhere, a large auditorium and a gorgeous, inviting library. It's a hike to get from one classroom to another, so E gets a workout everyday. The other cool thing about Roosevelt is that it is a Magnet School now, after being a neighborhood school for a long time. It even went through a period where it was considered "rough and not very good."
Roosevelt currently has a CTE program which stands for Career and Technical Education to which E was accepted. He had a choice of the Information Technology Gaming Program or Culinary Arts. Guess which one he chose? So, if all goes as planned, by the time Martin and I are too decrepit to work anymore, E will be making a 6 figure income, designing video games and he will be supporting us in the manner to which we have never been accustomed.
Anywho, the good news is that school isn't very far from our house and there is a bus that stops right across the street from us and with one connection, drops him directly outside the school. After years of driving him here, there and everywhere, to school and back, we made it clear that E was expected to take public transportation. However, the bad news is that school starts at 7:45am....what the hell is up with that after every study about teenager and sleep suggests that they can't fall asleep until the wee hours due to teenage circadian rhythms and so school should start at 10am???? Martin and I were EXTREMELY concerned that E would NOT get up and make it to school on time...especially after he was consistently late to his elementary school, which started at 8:45am, located 6 blocks away.
But, then, we thought our prayers were answered when last summer, CPS, in an effort to save money on buses, changed all the high school times to 9am. We were overjoyed...for about a week...when we discovered that his school start time was pushed back to its original 7:45am. Apparently, enough parents complained about it...if I ever find out who... But, here we are at the end of the first term. E has made it to school every day but one, and there have only been a handful of days when I had to drive him to school or to his connecting bus a mile away. Not only that, he is doing incredibly well at school....all As and Bs...and thankfully, the tide has turned when it comes to homework. Administrators have finally believed the research that indicates that several hours of nightly homework does not improve school or testing performance; it makes for very unhappy students and their families. As long as E works hard in the classroom, which he is doing, then there is no homework. He only gets homework if he doesn't finish his work. Here's a link to my homework rant.
Martin and I attended "Report Card Pick-up/Teachers Conferences" in mid-November. Every single teacher "sang his praises;" he was respectful, hard working, with no behavior problems and he worked well with his classmates as they often work in pairs. His Biology teacher told us "a child like E only comes around once a year." We looked at each other in disbelief. Our new theory is that E was abducted by aliens and a pod person who looks identical to E was sent down to earth in his place. LOL! We couldn't be prouder of him....now if only he would pick up his room!!!!!
I would love to hear your stories of situations that turned out well...beyond your wildest dreams.
Iran and Russia are preparing to hold joint naval exercises in the Caspian Sea, including rescue and anti-piracy drills, according to the commander of the Iranian navy.
The two countries held naval drills in the Caspian Sea before, including in 2015 and 2017. Iran and Russia are already close allies, particularly in Syria where they both back President Bashar Al Assad in the country’s civil war.
“Tactical, rescue and anti-piracy war games between Iranian and Russian naval forces are being planned and will be implemented in the near future,” Rear Admiral Hossein Khanzadi told Iran’s Mehr News Agency.
“The co-operation between the naval forces of Iran and Russia ... has been strengthened in recent years,” he said.
He offered no timetable for the drills.
He said that countries bordering the landlocked sea between Asia and Europe would counter the presence of any “transregional states”.
The opposition to the military presence of outside states in the Caspian is part of a convention signed last year by the countries bordering the sea.
This agreement between Russia, Iran, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan was meant to define the legal status of the Caspian but some issues, such as marking territorial waters, remained unresolved.
Besides calling for more talks to resolve the division of the Caspian, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani demanded that the exclusion of any foreign military presence should also apply to the shipment of military cargoes. Although he did not offer any examples, he was thought to be referring to a US arrangement for shipping cargo between Azerbaijan and Kazakh ports.
Russia said last year it was committed to deepening ties with Iran despite a US decision to quit an international nuclear deal and reimpose sanctions on Tehran.
The new drills mean that Moscow and Tehran will boost their co-operation at sea. They are already closely connected through co-operation in Syria. Iranian and Russian officials have shuttled between Tehran and Moscow in recent years, boosting a relationship that previously had little history.
Beyond the judging, schmoozing and general bacchanalia of the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity is a significant amount of wheeling and dealing, be it to acquire an agency or poach a creative chief.
But also top of mind this year is the tsunami of media reviews—18 currently, including Mondelez, Sony, Volkswagen, Johnson & Johnson and Coca-Cola.
"If there's any brokering going on, it's going to be around" the major media reviews, said Andrew Benett, CEO of Havas Worldwide.
The heads of holding companies and media shops, Benett said, will angle to "get extra meetings in and more dialogue with people running those reviews because $18 billion at whatever percentage you want to take—just take 5 percent—is a lot of money to move around."
"That's going to be a [big opportunity]," added Tim Andree, executive chairman of the Dentsu Aegis Network. "Mondelez always has a presence—they're up on the stage. Coca-Cola always has a presence—they're up on the stage. … A lot of interesting discussions happen along the Croisette."
That's not to say that a sale won't go through or that a top job won't be filled. After all, Horizon Media, a big independent player, remains available, and its CEO Bill Koenigsberg is attending the festival. Also, Benett and others are searching for top talent.
"You've got so many hitters in such a small footprint, how can you not [talk deals]?" said Droga5 vice chairman Andrew Essex.
Past years have yielded a wide variety of deals, in fact. In 2013 alone, Publicis Groupe CEO Maurice Lévy forged a mega-merger with Omnicom Group CEO John Wren that ultimately imploded; then-Deutsch L.A. CEO Mike Sheldon convinced Arnold's Pete Favat to become his CCO; and 72andSunny met with Diageo to lay the groundwork for entering a global Smirnoff review that the shop later won. And while WME's investment in Droga5 was brokered before the 2013 festival, word of a pending deal surfaced as David Droga told clients at Cannes that year that a strategic alliance was imminent. Three weeks later, WME said it would buy 49 percent of the shop.
In 2012, WPP Group CEO Martin Sorrell completed and unveiled his acquisition of AKQA on the same day.
"Sir Martin Sorrell and I shook hands on the deal at Cannes," recalled AKQA chairman Tom Bedecarré. "In fact, immediately upon shaking hands together, Sir Martin marched me into a WPP-Facebook partnership meeting with all of the senior WPP and Facebook executives attending Cannes Lions—and announced it."
So, clearly Cannes is not only fertile ground for negotiations but also a glittering stage for the reveal. As one top holding company executive explained, "People come with pretty baked deals, claim that they ironed them out there and announce them because they figure everybody is there and they're going to get max bang for buck."
Facebook is making its biggest bet to date to take on YouTube for video dollars. Ad agencies aren't convinced.
Facebook is starting to offer advertisers preferential access to Facebook Watch advertising in exchange for year-long deals — similar to how TV networks have sold big ad packages for decades.
Facebook claims that ads in premium content reach 100 million monthly viewers.
Google has also offered a similar buying option for YouTube since 2014 through its Google Preferred program, and Facebook will compete with Google to secure ad commitments from big TV buyers.
Buyers say that Facebook likely won't make a dent in TV advertising because it's unclear how big Facebook's audience is and how much quality content is within Watch.
Facebook's taking another crack at winning TV dollars by taking a page from Google's playbook.
Facebook launched a program dubbed Showcase, an upfront-like way of purchasing ads within Facebook Watch through year-long commitments, during a media event in New York on Tuesday. The announcement follows a move in September to open up an ad-buying option called in-stream reserve inventory that allows brands to purchase guaranteed packages of genre-related Watch content.
Instead of buying through auctions where advertisers bid on ad prices, guaranteed deals are negotiated as a larger package — similar to upfront deals where the major TV networks secure big, year-long deals with advertisers every year. Up until now, Facebook said that advertisers have been purchasing such ad space quarterly and by expanding to yearly commitments, it's looking to secure bigger investments from advertisers.
Facebook will not hold events during the weeks of the upfronts or NewFront presentations in New York when publishers and networks put on glitzy events for ad buyers. Instead, the company will meet individually with buyers during the upfront selling cycle.
Facebook is working with Nielsen's Target Rating Points (or TRPs) system to make sure that ads only appear within premium video content. Ad packages are designed around genres of content bucketed into categories like "fashion," "sports," "beauty" and "entertainment," and Facebook is rolling out the categories of "news" and "food" as new genres to advertisers.
"It's a very different way for Facebook to do it but it's not a new way for the marketplace to do it — it's how the marketplace transacts," said Eric Geisler, director of North America agency sales at Facebook.
Geisler declined to comment on pricing but said that prices on rate cards distributed to agencies the past two quarters are "competitive." During the first-quarter, the cost-per-impression (or CPM) prices were around $23 to $25, he said.
In theory, ad prices for Watch will become more predictable through Showcase, Geisler said.
Showcase will compete with Google Preferred, YouTube's premium ad program that's aimed at big video ad spenders that helps advertisers buy video space on the most popular channels.
Last week, brands like AT&T and McDonald's pulled their ads because they were running alongside YouTube videos with questionable content. Those videos were not part of Google's top-tier Google Preferred program that vets individual videos before they are eligible to run ads. Nonetheless, Facebook execs stressed that brand safety will not be a problem with Showcase.
"Every single piece of content, every program is human reviewed before it is eligible for monetization," Geisler said. "Brand safety isn't an attribute; brand safety is the product."
Jon Stimmel, chief investment officer at Universal McCann, said that purchasing Facebook video inventory through upfront deals removes some of the volatility of Facebook's algorithm and brand-safety concerns.
"We accept that there's some level of risk in the digital marketplace — I think what's changing is the weaponization of it," he said. "You can't anticipate the bad actors out there."
The amount of Watch inventory considered premium and eligible for advertising represents a small part of Watch's overall content. According to Facebook, 100 million people in the US view Watch content eligible for the ad program every month compared to the 400 million people who spend at least one minute per month viewing any Watch content. 43% of people who watch ad-eligible content are 18 to 34 years old, the company said.
The small number of Watch videos eligible for ads could be helpful for Facebook in mitigating brand-safety issues, said Andrew Sandoval, director of biddable media at The Media Kitchen.
"You don't have to worry about the long-tail when you're only dealing with a small amount of inventory," he said. "It's putting a video platform on a hugely successful and big ad investment that most brands are making, and it's a different experience than the newsfeed."
That said, Sandoval said that Facebook's reporting on the number of people engaging with Watch each month makes him nervous because it's unclear how Facebook calculates the one minute of time spent per month.
"Is that the combination of scrolling through newsfeed for 20 seconds today and 30 seconds tomorrow?" he said. "That sort of stuff gets a little bit scary."
One way Facebook is wooing advertisers is by pumping up the amount of its original content.
Over the past couple of years, Facebook's strategy for Watch has taken several twists and focused on content from both entertainment and news publishers.
Matthew Henick, head of content planning and strategy, explained Facebook's strategy as fitting into three buckets during the media event: Programming focused on community, interactivity and co-watching.
One program that fits the bill of those guidelines is MTV's upcoming "Real World" series t hat is co-produced with Viacom's MTV Studios and Bunim/Murray Productions.
In conjunction with three new seasons of the show, Facebook is also licensing old seasons of the show to distribute on Watch. Viewers will decide which old seasons of the show are distributed on Watch through a poll featured in the new seasons of the show.
Facebook has also green-lit an animated comedy called "Human Discoveries" with Zac Efron and Anna Kendrick that will debut on Watch later this year.
On Tuesday morning, Digiday reported that Facebook doesn't plan to renew two-thirds of existing Watch shows from news publishers. Henick pushed back on the number — though he did say that Facebook is changing how it funds news programs.
"We're not cutting two-thirds of what our final output would be — we're just examining the previous investments," he said.
In addition to YouTube, Facebook is also competing for content alongside Amazon, and some agencies said that it's not clear how Watch differentiates itself.
"It'll be interesting to see what moves they make to elevate Facebook Watch's reputation as a premium, long-format content partner to both consumers and advertisers and get ahead of the impending competition Amazon will bring to the space amongst others," said Tom Buontempo, president of Attention.
Buontempo said that while Facebook Watch doesn't cut into TV investments, it does "provide another wave of commitments from advertisers."
Another agency source said that it's hard to pinpoint Facebook's video strategy with reserved Watch ads because it sits between TV and digital advertising. Facebook is seeking big commitments from brands but the company isn't playing in the streaming TV race, the exec said.
"It's a weird hybrid product because it's mostly delivered in-stream and assuming that you're on a mobile device," the exec said. "I think of that as a different bucket than OTT; I think of OTT as video delivered typically on a TV set, maybe on a laptop."
And the Media Kitchen's Sandoval said that Facebook's upfront pitch isn't compelling because of the muddied content strategy.
"The upfronts may make a lot of sense if there's content that we need to be on top of — I don't think we've seen that yet," he said. "I could see Facebook leveraging their whole ecosystem to start making those deals happen."
Dec. 5, 2018 12:00 a.m.
The Bank of Canada left its interest rate unchanged today and says the timing of future hikes will depend on factors such as how long the oil-price slump lasts, how well business investment picks up its pace and how much room the economy still has left to grow.
The central bank is holding its trend-setting rate at 1.75 per cent in a decision that follows a quarter-point increase at its previous policy meeting in October.
The bank has been on a gradual rate-hiking path for more than a year thanks to a strengthening economy and has already raised the benchmark five times since the summer of 2017.
The bank says it will keep a close eye on the evolution of several recent developments as it considers the timing of its next rate hike — including a steep slide in oil prices that it predicts will reduce activity in Canada’s energy sector.
It also says recent data show that the economy has less momentum heading into the final quarter of 2018 related to factors such as a drop in business investment that the bank largely connects to trade uncertainty last summer.
The bank also notes it will be watching for positive developments such as signs the economy can still expand without stoking inflation.
The central bank can raise the interest rate to prevent inflation from climbing too high. Many market watchers had expected governor Stephen Poloz to wait until at least January before his next rate increase.
The Bank of Canada has estimated it will no longer need to increase the interest rate once it reaches a level of between 2.5 per cent and 3.5 per cent, but Poloz has said this destination range remains “sufficiently uncertain” and could move up or down.
The Bank of Canada is widely expected to leave its benchmark interest rate unchanged at 1.75 per cent today after a 25-basis-point increase at its last setting in October.
This morning’s announcement comes in the wake of a move by the Alberta government to curtail oil production in the province after Jan. 1 to try to clear a crude storage glut that has driven western Canadian oil prices to multi-year lows.
Meanwhile, the recently announced plan to close the General Motors of Canada car plant in Oshawa, Ont., similarly offers a downside risk to future growth.
Bank economists say an unexpected dip in monthly gross domestic product figures in September and lower-than-expected oil prices so far in the fourth quarter have dampened growth expectations and placed in doubt forecasts for a January bank rate increase.
Lower growth prospects are expected to reinforce Bank of Canada Governor Stephen Poloz’s strategy of moving very gradually on increases to its overnight rate.
Economists say they will be closely watching Poloz’s speech on Thursday for signs of how events are affecting his view of the path forward.
Cambridge's recycling director recently spent a day at a conference in Framingham, along with other municipal leaders and recycling advocates, to talk about the future of recycling.
Michael Orr attended the 21st MassRecycle Summit on March 25 to listen to recycling industry experts discuss the ongoing crisis that has sent the industry into overdrive.
In January 2018, Cambridge, along with thousands of cities around the globe, was affected by a decision made by China’s recycling business, National Sword, to enact stricter recycling regulations.
A year ago, recycling disposal costs were $35 per ton for the City of Cambridge. Now, they are double, about $70 per ton, according to Orr. It is unlikely that costs will ever be as low as they once were, he said.
Orr heard the same concerns from other officials and industry experts.
“Last January, National Sword dramatically changed the landscape for dealing with mixed paper and plastics. Forty percent of our recycling used to go overseas; that market closed abruptly,” Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner Martin Suuberg told the audience.
In order to combat contamination, sustainability experts within Massachusetts’s municipalities have taken steps to provide residents with the do’s and don’ts of recycling.
Among them are MassDEP’s “Recycle Smart Recyclopedia” and the City of Cambridge’s “Zero Waste Cambridge” app.
“In it you can search any item and where to get rid of it and how to get rid of it,” said Orr, about the Cambridge app.
The Recyclopedia, found on the Recycle Smart MA website, allows users to search by word, and provides images of items and states whether or not it is recyclable.
During her presentation, Brooke Nash, branch chief of the municipal waste reduction program at MassDEP, encouraged audience members to take advantage of these free resources.
Nash also answered the question that has caused many in the industry to lose faith in recycling in the wake of the National Sword: Where does the recycling go now?
“What you don’t know is that this material is going to market. It’s just going to other markets in other parts of the globe at a much greater expense,” said Nash.
Those other markets are located in Korea, Italy, Turkey, India, Vietnam, and Indonesia, according to Nash. Domestic markets are also likely to increase as investors are now buying and refurbishing old recycling mills around the country.
Recycled materials from Cambridge are first sent to Casella Recyling in Charlestown where they are sorted before being sent to either an international or domestic factory. Which market materials are sent to is dependent on the country’s demand for each material.

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