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Top 10 Private University in Bangladesh
top10bd February 24, 2019 no Comments
After we pass the HSC exam we put a huge effort to get ourselves admitted into a good university. There are very limited amount of seat in public universities. So usually if we don’t get the chance to study any of the desired public university then we look towards the options we have in the private universities. Today we will be looking at the top 10 private universities in Bangladesh.
1. BRAC University
BRAC University was founded by BRAC organization in 2001 and it is considered one of the best private university right now. It is located in Mohakhali, Dhaka. This private university has a large range of subjects to choose from. Although it is a touch expensive to study here but you will get what you pay for. It is acknowledged by IEB and many other universities around the world. It quickly built a solid reputation and now it is the 1st choice among the students who want to read in a private university. The one unique feature that only BRAC has is that it will take you to its Savar campus to do one 3 months semester. It will be more like an adventure for sure.
2. North South University
It is the 1st private university that was established in Bangladesh. It is situated in Bashundhara residential area, Dhaka. I must mention NSU has one of the best campus amongst all the private universities of Bangladesh. It is gorgeous with full of facilities. North South University is among the best private university because of its academic success. This private university is accredited by IEB, UGC and many more universities around the world. Around 25000 students study here. It is very known for Its BBA department but you can choose from many other subjects. North South Universities tuition fees are among the highest compared to other private universities.
3. Independent University of Bangladesh
Independent University of Bangladesh shortly known as IUB was established in 1993 making it one of the 1st private university in Bangladesh. There are more than 7500 undergraduate students reading in IUB currently. It is also located In Bashundhara R/A like NSU and has a beautiful Campus. This private university has very renowned faculties and it is also accredited by IEB. It offers students a variety of scholarships hence this private university is very famous among the students.
4. East West University
East West University also knows as EWU is situated in Aftabnagar, Dhaka. EWU was established in 1996. This private university has a very nice campus as well as amazing faculties. EWU offers students scholarships and has a variety of subjects to choose from that is why it is among one of the top private university students want to get admitted to. Currently, this university has more than ten thousand students. You can complete both undergraduate and postgraduate here.
5. Ahsanullah University of Science & Technology
Also known as AUST is established in the year of 1995. AUST is very famous for its engineering departments. It has a very beautiful campus situated in Tejgaon industrial area which is in the center of Dhaka. It is considered as the BUET of private universities. You have to get GPA 5 just to apply in AUST. They have the best faculties in the engineering departments.
6. American International University of Bangladesh
American International University of Bangladesh was established in 1994 and it is one of the most renowned private university of Bangladesh. Also known as AIUB it is very known for its engineering departments. AIUB also offers various degree program at graduate and undergraduate level. Its permanent campus is located in Bashundhara R/A. AIUB is also known for its extra-curricular activities. AIUB is one the very few University of Bangladesh who participated in the highest level of ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest in 2001. AIUB is member of some prestigious bodies like IEB, UGC, IAB etc.
7. United International University
United international university is also known as UIU is located in Madani Avenue, Satarkul, Dhaka. It is a newly established university if you compare it with some of the other universities on the list. It was established in 2003. It was located in Dhanmondi, Dhaka just a few years back but now it is moved to its permanent campus. This private university has grown tremendously over the years. From a newly established university now it is one of the most desired university that students want themselves get admitted into. Their permanent campus is amazing with a huge field right in front where a student can relax and play sports of various kind. It is known for its BBA and engineering faculties. It provides a huge variety of scholarship who has a good CGPA score so it helps and encourages students to get good academic scores.
8. University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh
University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh also known as ULAB is located in Dhanmondi. ULAB was established in 2002. If you are living in old Dhaka, Mohammadpur, Dhanmondi than ULAB is the go to university because it will not give you any traveling hustle. ULAB is well known for its BBA and Media Journalism departments. It offers students many scholarship opportunities where students can get up to 100% scholarship.
9. Daffodil International University
Daffodil groups founded Daffodil International University in 2002. DIU is situated in Dhanmondi, Dhaka. It also has a permanent campus is Ashulia. Its parament campus is one of the biggest with almost 150 acres of land which contains playing field, basketball ground, golf court, swimming pool, hostel etc. Recent up to date facilities and very good teaching method makes it one the leading private university in Bangladesh.
10. University of Asia Pasific
Commonly known as UAP is established in 1996. UAP has a beautiful and spacious campus in Farmgate, Dhaka. UAP offers various kinds of subjects to study in but they are known for their pharmaceutical department. Normally UAP tend to push their students really hard to achieve their CGPA hence only the best students come out of the university as graduates.
Top 10 Public University in Bangladesh
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Now Endangered: Hedgehog, House Sparrow
Jasmin Malik Chua
Photo credit: purple key
"'Beyond the Wild Wood comes the Wide World,' said the Rat. 'And that's something that doesn't matter, either to you or me. I've never been there, and I'm never going, nor you either, if you've got any sense at all.'"—Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows
Pity the legacies of Enid Blyton, Beatrix Potter, and Kenneth Grahame; we can almost hear them rolling over in their graves (which scares the beejeezus out of us): Once-familiar animals in Britain, including the hedgehog, water vole, and house sparrow, have been added to the U.K. Biodiversity Action plan for threatened species, mostly because of habitat destruction.
The cuckoo, harvest mouse, and other frolicking creatures central to English literature, music, and nursery rhymes, will receive extra protection, as well as an increase in the number of wild habitats. (See BBC News' slide show of the U.K.'s endangered species.)
The action plan, which is reviewed every decade, has doubled the number of species listed from 577 in 1997 to 1,149, despite the more than 100 previously protected species which have flourished or stabilized during that time.The hedgehog has taken such a hit in population size that continuing trends would lead to its extinction by 2025. The spiny mammal has to brave traffic, pollution, pesticides, and garden chemicals in its struggle for survival.
The house sparrow has declined by around 50 percent in the last 25 years, along with the starling, once a common sight in the skies.
Announcing the list was Joan Ruddock, the minister with special responsibility for biodiversity, who remains optimistic that species and habitat loss would be curtailed within three years, adding that the increase in the list was partly due to more-rigorous scientific analysis.
"Through the Biodiversity Action Plan, we have shown that we can be very successful when we target our resources at conserving particular species and habitats," she said. "We have increased the population of the rare cirl bunting and also areas of lowland heathland."
She continued: "We have even been able to remove some species from the list such as the Killarney fern and the prickly sedge, because we have already met all our action plan objectives for them. But our climate is changing and it is more important than ever that we help wildlife habitats to adapt." ::Guardian Unlimited
"'Beyond the Wild Wood comes the Wide World,' said the Rat. 'And that's something that doesn't matter, either to you or me. I've never been there, and I'm never going, nor you either, if you've got any sense at all.'"—Kenneth
Kroger to create and adopt a no-deforestation policy
Insects could be gone in a century; catastrophic collapse to ensue
Make your garden irresistible to butterflies with these plants and ...
We are witnessing the collapse of nature
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Tracy Chapman Announces First Solo Tour in a Decade
New album on the way too from the legendary singer songwriter
Tracy Chapman has confirmed details of her first solo tour in a decade, with a series of 21 European dates announced today (August 14).
The celebrated singer songwriter will play four dates in the UK and Ireland, starting on December 8.
Chapman’s European tour dates which kick off in Brussels on November 12, and coincide with the release of her eighth studio album ‘Our Bright Future.’
The eleven track album (the follow-up to 2005’s ‘Where You Live’) of new songs was recorded in Los Angeles and has been co-produced by Larry Klein.
More information is available from Tracy Chapman’s website here:www.tracychapman.com
The full tour dates and venues are:
Brussels, Palais des Beaux Arts (November 12)
Oslo, Sentrum Scene (15)
Stockholm, Cirkus (16)
Copenhagen, Royal Theatre (17)
Berlin, Tempodrom (19)
Dresden, Kulturpalast (20)
Paris, Folies Bergeres (22)
Amsterdam Paradiso (23)
Hamburg, CCH1 (25)
Munich, Postpalast (26)
Milan, Teatro degli Arcimboldi (28)
Rome, Auditorium di Via della Conciliazione (29)
Florence, Teatro Verdi (December 1)
Zurich, Kongreshaus (2)
Marseilles, Le Dome (4)
Lyon, Ampitheatre (5)
Dublin, Olympia Theatre (8)
Bristol, Colston Hall (12)
Manchester, Apollo (14)
London, Hammersmith Apollo (15)
Strasbourg, Zenith (18)
For more music and film news click here
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Low Turnout in Macedonia Name-Change Referendum
People look for their name on a list as they come to cast their ballot for the referendum in Macedonia on changing the country's name that would open the way for it to join NATO and the European Union in Skopje, Macedonia, Sept. 30, 2018.
Few Macedonians turned out to vote in a referendum on whether to change the name of their country – a move that could pave the way for it to join NATO and the European Union.
According to election officials, only about a third of eligible voters cast ballots Sunday. But more than 90 percent of those voting cast a ballot in favor of changing the country's name to North Macedonia.
Macedonia's electoral commission said two days ago the referendum results would be declared invalid if less than 50 percent of the eligible voting population went to the polls.
Macedonian Prime Minister Zoran Zaev, who had said he would resign if a vast majority of eligible voters did not approve the referendum, described the vote as a clear success, despite the low turnout.
Zaev said he would not resign because a "vast majority" of those who turned out Sunday approved the measure.
He urged lawmakers to ratify the necessary changes to the constitution, which would finalize the deal.
In a statement Sunday, however, the Greek Foreign Ministry said the "contradictory" vote – overwhelming approval, yet low turnout – would require Macedonia to move carefully to "preserve the positive potential of the deal."
The U.S. State Department on Sunday welcomed the results of the referendum. In a statement, the department said the U.S. "strongly supports the Agreement's full implementation, which will allow Macedonia to take its rightful place in NATO and the EU, contributing to regional stability, security and prosperity."
However, nationalists, including Macedonian President Gjorge Ivanov, had urged a boycott of the vote.
Macedonians are being asked to change the name of their country to end a decades-old dispute with neighboring Greece and pave the way for the country's admission into NATO and the European Union.
Athens has argued that the name "Macedonia" belongs exclusively to its northern province of Macedonia and using the name implies Skopje's intentions to claim the Greek province.
Greece has for years pressured Skopje into renouncing the country's name, forcing it to use the more formal moniker Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia in the United Nations. Greece has consistently blocked its smaller neighbor from gaining membership in NATO and the EU as long it retains its name.
President Ivanov said giving in to Athens' demand would be a "flagrant violation of sovereignty.''
He steadfastly refused to back the deal reached between Macedonian Prime Minister Zoran Zaev and his Greek counterpart, Alexis Tsipras, that put the name change to a vote.
"This referendum could lead us to become a subordinate state, dependent on another country," Ivanov said. "We will become a state in name only, not in substance."
Macedonians Vote on NATO, EU, Changing Country’s Name
Macedonians go to polls Sunday to vote on whether to change their country’s name to Republic of North Macedonia, urged by a pro-Western government to pave the way for NATO and EU membership by resolving a decades-old name dispute with Greece. The referendum is one of the last hurdles for a deal reached between Macedonia and Greece in June to settle their quarrel, which has prevented Macedonia from joining major Western institutions since it broke away from then…
Macedonia's President Calls Name Change 'Historical Suicide'
Macedonia’s President Gjorge Ivanov on Thursday called a national referendum on changing his country's name “historical suicide” and is urging Macedonians to boycott to vote. Macedonians are being asked to change the name of their country to North Macedonia to end a decades-old dispute with neighboring Greece and pave the way for the country's admission into the European Union and NATO. Ivanov's comments came in his speech…
Macedonia's President Says He Won't Vote in Referendum
Macedonia's president says he won't vote in a Sept. 30 referendum on whether to change the Balkan country's name to "North Macedonia." Macedonians will vote next weekend on a proposal to change the country's name, ending a long-running dispute with neighboring Greece, which sees the use of the term "Macedonia " as a claim on its own province of the same name. President Gjorge Ivanov was speaking to members of the Macedonian…
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Leaders Express Admiration, Sadness for Billy Graham
** FILE ** In this May 31, 2007 file photo, Billy Graham listens during a dedication ceremony for the Billy Graham Library in Charlotte, N.C. Graham was released from the hospital Saturday Oct. 11, 2008 , sore and bruised but not seriously injured,
Leaders expressed admiration and respect for evangelist Billy Graham, who died at his North Carolina home Wednesday morning.
In a tweet, President Donald Trump said: "The GREAT Billy Graham is dead. There was nobody like him! He will be missed by Christians and all religions. A very special man."
"Billy Graham's ministry for the gospel of Jesus Christ and his matchless voice changed the lives of millions," Pence tweeted. "We mourn his passing but I know with absolute certainty that today he heard those words, 'well done good and faithful servant.'"
Former President Jimmy Carter
"Rosalynn and I are deeply saddened to learn of the death of The Reverend Billy Graham," Carter said in a statement. "Tirelessly spreading a message of fellowship and hope, he shaped the spiritual lives of tens of millions of people worldwide. Broad-minded, forgiving, and humble in his treatment of others, he exemplified the life of Jesus Christ by constantly reaching out for opportunities to serve."
Former President George H.W. Bush
"Billy Graham was America's pastor. His faith in Christ and his totally honest evangelical spirit inspired people across the country and around the world. I think Billy touched the hearts of not only Christians, but people of all faiths, because he was such a good man. I was privileged to have him as a personal friend. He would come to Maine to visit with Barbara and me, and he was a great sport. He loved going really fast in my boat. I guess you could say we had that in common. Then we would come home and talk about life. He was a mentor to several of my children, including the former president of the United States. We will miss our good friend forever.
North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper
"Billy Graham was a strong, humble, positive and passionate North Carolina man of faith who made a difference in the lives of so many. Rest with God, Reverend Graham," Gov. Cooper said in a statement.
Sen. Lindsey Graham
"One of the greatest messengers of Christ has gone to his heavenly reward," Sen. Graham wrote in a tweet. "Dr. Graham spread the good news to millions across the world and led a life beyond reproach."
South Carolina Gov. Henry Mcmaster
"Rev. Billy Graham dedicated his life to preaching the Gospel, touching the lives of millions across the world," Gov. McMaster said on Twitter. "It is bittersweet to hear of his homegoing this morning, as he will be missed, but we know he is rejoicing with his Savior right now."
In an online post titled "Daddy is at Home," Graham's daughter Anne Graham Lotz said she did not think of him as a public figure. "I think of my Daddy. The one who was always a farmer at heart," she wrote. "Who loved his dogs and his cat. Who followed the weather patterns almost as closely as he did world events. Who wore old blue jeans, comfortable sweaters, and a baseball cap. Who loved lukewarm coffee, sweet ice tea, one scoop of ice cream, and a plain hamburger from McDonald's. Who was interested in everything and everyone, from the small to the great."
Mike Huckabee, Former Arkansas Governor and Presidential Candidate
"When the news broke that Billy Graham had died, my first reaction was 'there's a real example of "Fake News.'" Billy Graham has passed from this life for sure at the age of 99, but he is anything but dead. He is more alive now than ever before, and living a life that will never end."
North Carolina Sen. Richard Burr
"I was incredibly saddened to hear of the passing of Reverend Billy Graham this morning. America's Pastor was an inspiration to millions of Christians in our country and across the world. While his humility, faith, and booming voice will be sorely missed, today, he is at peace with God."
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Beauty > Health & Fitness
Does Baby Powder Contain Asbestos? What Women Need to Know About Johnson & Johnson’s Ovarian Cancer Lawsuit
by Elizabeth Inglese
Photo: Alamy
This week, The New York Times reported that Johnson & Johnson executives debated the safety of the company’s best-selling baby powder in a series of internal memos spanning decades, expressing concern over the possibility of asbestos contamination of its main ingredient, talc.
Shared in thousands of pages of documents released by Johnson & Johnson under court order, findings included positive test results for small amounts of the carcinogenic substance in some of its raw talc and finished powders between at least 1971 and the early 2000s, according to Reuters, which examined many of the documents and reported their contents for the first time. Ultimately, company executives and experts chose to not disclose their findings, to regulators or the public.
Representatives of Johnson & Johnson denied the claims in an email response to Reuters, claiming that thousands of independent tests prove that their talc does not contain asbestos and that any suggestions that the company hid information about the safety of the ingredient is false. The alarming debate arrives on the heels of several lawsuits against the baby powder company, as well as this summer’s verdict against them, which ordered Johnson & Johnson to pay a record $4.69 billion to a group of 22 women and their families. The plaintiffs in that case argued that asbestos in some of the brand’s baby and body powders led them to develop ovarian cancer. Several of the women have died.
In a country that is often decades behind Europe in regulating commonplace ingredients in cosmetics, the questions raised in court were what Johnson & Johnson knew and when. And while those facts are still the subject of debate, pressing questions remain about what lurks in the medicine cabinet. How dangerous is talcum powder—one of America’s most ubiquitous personal-care products? And what do we need to do to be safe?
The world’s softest mineral, talc is used in a host of cosmetics, like eyeshadow and blush, as well as body dusting powders. In its natural form, some talc contains asbestos, a known carcinogen, but according to the American Cancer Society, commercial talcum powders used in homes have been manufactured and tested to be asbestos-free since the 1970s. Still, studies conducted to assess their safety in consumer products have yielded contradictory findings. Questions remain as to whether airborne talc in its unpurified form could cause lung cancer in miners who extract the mineral from quarries, but no increased risk of lung cancer has been reported in cosmetic use—meaning there’s no reason to believe your talc-based setting powder or dry shampoo is unsafe. Additional research has focused on the potential connection between talc’s use as a feminine hygiene powder and ovarian cancer. According to the American Cancer Society, one prevailing theory is that small mineral particles could travel up through the fallopian tubes and ovaries, inflaming the tissue, which can encourage cancer growth. But no major study has examined how talc might cause cancer, only if there is an elevated risk associated with its use.
“The evidence is really sort of poor,” explains Sarah Temkin, M.D., a gynecologic oncologist specializing in ovarian cancer at Johns Hopkins University. Though talc is on the National Cancer Institute’s list as an unclear risk factor for ovarian cancer, alongside alcohol and diet, Temkin is not convinced talc is dangerous, and here’s why. A study published in 1982 by ob-gyn Daniel W. Cramer, M.D., to assess talc’s safety relied on patients diagnosed with ovarian cancer recalling their own use of the product—a less reliable way to collect data than studies based on controlled scientific observation. That study found that women who used talc as a feminine hygiene product were three times more likely to develop ovarian cancer as women who did not.
But in later research, no link between talc use and endometrial or ovarian cancer was found. That indicates to Temkin that the original linkage may have been the result of inaccurate data. “They are just old studies that have left doubt in people’s minds as to whether or not it’s a risk factor,” she says.
The debate over talc’s safety will continue, as the company is purportedly facing more than 11,700 plaintiffs now claiming that the Johnson & Johnson ingredient caused their cancers. So what should consumers do in the meantime? While certainty about talc’s real risks remains evasive, Temkin reminds her patients that “ovarian cancer is still a very rare event,” and that it’s best to speak to your physician about your individual risk factors. Ob-gyn Dr. Carmit Archibald, M.D., co-owner of Upper East Side Gynecology and affiliated with Mount Sinai School of Medicine, says that for a safer alternative to talc, “cornstarch would be great.” She adds, however, that powders should really only be used in preventing or treating specific conditions if directed by a doctor; they are not otherwise recommended as part of a daily hygiene routine.
The takeaway? If you’re concerned, try starch-based, talc-free products, available at stores like Whole Foods for a noncontroversial alternative, or simply skip the powder—and the stress—altogether.
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Loving that Sports Talk Wednesday, May 11, 2011 Wednesday, May 11, 2011
Loving that Sports Talk Wednesday, May 11, 2011
Hosted by James Loving
This week we will talk about how the progress of the NFL lockout is going and we will also talk about the NBA third rounds of the playoff games.
Loving that Sports Talk
Wednesday at 12 Noon Pacific Time on VoiceAmerica Variety Channel
“Loving” that Sports Talk will be about sports of all kind. The show will keep you up to date on what is going on in the world of sports. We will cover the NFL training camp and what players are holding out. We’ll talk about the veteran players that were released and why. Find out what teams are favored to go to the Superbowl, who the new starting Quarterbacks are and what is expected of them. We’ll talk weekly key injuries. Our weekly guests will include former NFL Players and sports enthusiasts, guest co-hosts, and much, much more. Call in or e-mail your comments and questions. “Loving” that Sports Talk is broadcast live every Wednesday at 12 Noon Pacific Time on the VoiceAmerica Sports Channel.
James Loving
James Loving is a Former Professional American Football Player who played receiver for the Philadelphia Eagles. After graduating from Alan B. Shepard High School in 1984, Loving had a stellar collegiate career playing 2 years at Santa Rosa Jr. College (84-86) in California then at the University of Wyoming (86-88). He was drafted in 1988 to the Canadian League (British Columbia team) before being asked to sign with the Eagles that same year. He played 2 years with the Eagles before ending his NFL playing career due to a major knee injury. In 1994 he and some of his fellow former NFL buddies put on a football camp in Wyoming called “The Double Bay Football Camp.” It was a huge success. He has dedicated his life to empowering the Inner City Youths by motivating them and giving them hope for a better future. Loving assures them that there are so many avenues that they can use to achieve their life goals. He does this by working hard to develop and implement programs such as football camps and other educational and social events designed to teach the fundamentals and build self confidence. Besides his camps and other Philanthropy work he also gives back by volunteering and donating money to “The Right Star Outreach Center” run by his mother in Robbins, IL. Loving currently resides in Litchfield Park, Arizona where he has gone back to school for his masters in Communications.
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crazysexycool Oct. 23, 2013
CrazySexyCool: The TLC Story Did Extremely Well
By Halle Kiefer
Take that, Jodi Arias: Dirty Little Secret. Vh1’s CrazySexyCool: The TLC Story pulled in 4.5 million viewers Monday night, making it both the highest-rated original cable movie of this year and Vh1’s highest-rated movie of all time. It just goes to show you: If you combine the intoxicating power of nostalgia with the charisma of Lil’ Mama, all things truly are possible.
5 Things That Better Be in VH1’s TLC Movie Tonight
choo choo Yesterday at 10:00 p.m.
Gordon’s Magnificent Big Little Lies Train Set Cost $30,000 This custom-built beauty was gone too soon.
overnights Yesterday at 10:00 p.m.
Big Little Lies Recap: That’s One Secret I’ll Never Tell The slut-shaming, victim-blaming fest that is Celeste’s custody battle is nightmarish without relief.
at the movies Yesterday at 8:41 p.m.
The Farewell Says Hello to Year’s Highest Per-Theater Average Over Endgame With a blackout and everything.
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Barry-Wehmiller to aquire W+D GmbH and POEM GmbH from Körber AG
ST. LOUIS — October 9, 2015 — Barry-Wehmiller Companies, Inc. has executed a definitive agreement to acquire the operations of Winkler+Dünnebier GmbH, including POEM (W+D). The acquisition includes W+D’s operations in Neuwied and Löhne, Germany, along with the U.S. subsidiary, W+D North America and the Malaysian subsidiary, W+D Asia Pacific.
The parties anticipate closing of the transaction to take place end of December 2015 after fulfillment of all closing conditions. Upon completion of the transaction, W+D, a recognized leader in integrated mail, folded tissue and hygiene solutions will continue its strategic mission to bring leading engineered solutions to its customers.
W+D stands to benefit from Barry-Wehmiller’s strategic and operational resources as well as its ongoing commitment to the mailing, tissue and hygiene industry sectors. W+D will operate as an independent business unit within Barry-Wehmiller’s Converting Solutions platform alongside Paper Converting Machine Company (PCMC).
W+D joins Barry-Wehmiller’s family of almost 80 companies as part of an organic and acquisition growth strategy that, since 1987, has propelled the company from a $20 million U.S.-based supplier to a $2+ billion global supplier of diversified industrial solutions.
“We are proud to carry forward the W+D legacy and truly excited to partner with the great people of W+D to serve mailing solutions and tissue companies around the world,” said Tim Sullivan, Barry-Wehmiller Group President. “W+D has established itself as a meaningful player in the global markets in which it operates and has benefitted greatly from the guidance of Körber AG. We intend to build upon W+D’s solid foundation in partnership with the company’s existing leadership and its 359 associates worldwide.”
“Barry-Wehmiller’s commitment to purpose-driven growth and people-centric values, along with our considerable financial strength and, very importantly, our interest in the mailing solutions sector, will allow for continued growth and investment in W+D and its team members worldwide,” said Bob Chapman, Chairman and CEO of Barry-Wehmiller. “Likewise, Barry-Wehmiller will benefit from the significant technology and operational expertise that W+D offers.”
“Körber is pleased to have reached an agreement with a long-term oriented shareholder for W+D. The ownership of Barry-Wehmiller will allow W+D to continue and strengthen its strategic development,” underlined Körber CFO Stephan Seifert.
“We are looking forward to joining Barry-Wehmiller and enhancing our long-term potential as a company while continuing our outstanding customer service approach,” said Frank Eichhorn, Managing Director of W+D. Upon completion of the transaction, W+D will continue to serve its customers from Neuwied and Löhne, Germany and Lenexa, Kansas (USA).
July 2016 (1 entry)
January 2016 (1 entry)
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CHURCH OF BIRDS
by Dimana Trankova; photography by Anthony Georgieff
A peacock from the narthex of the Bishop's Basilica
Peacocks, parrots, guineafowls cover the floor of Bulgaria's largest Antiquity church, the Bishop's Basilica of Philippopolis
A mosaic peacock, its majestic tail opened in full display, used to greet believers entering one of the most formidable buildings in the Late Antiquity Balkans: the Bishop's Basilica of Philippopolis. In 2019, the 1,500-year-old bird, restored to its former glory, will meet visitors again, after centuries of oblivion caused by earthquakes, invasions, wars, changes of population and history itself.
The Bishop's Basilica of Philippopolis, the ancient predecessor of modern Plovdiv, is the largest early Christian church in Bulgaria. It was probably built soon after the Roman Empire recognised Christianity as an official religion, in 313. The basilica was abandoned in the 6th century, possibly after a massive earthquake severely damaged it. Ravaged by an economic crisis and the continuing Barbarian invasions, the local community was unable to restore the majestic church, and abandoned it for good.
Now we are slowly rediscovering it.
The Bishop's Basilica is 36m wide and over 90m long, with an impressive architecture featuring three naves with marble-topped columns and a marble-covered platform for the bishop and the clergy. Before entering it, believers used to pass through an atrium with water fountains and a marble colonnade.
The most stunning part of the Bishop's Basilica is its mosaic floors. Built in two layers, they cover an area of 2,000sq.m. Beautiful and rich in symbolism, they are an important source of information on early Christian art.
Dating from the 4th century, the elaborate geometrical patterns in the first layer of mosaics in the southern nave borrow heavily from the symbolism and artistic language of the pagan period. However, the ultimate symbol of Christianity, the cross, is already present
The mosaics of the earlier layer, from the 4th century, are geometrical and form elaborate "running wave" and eternal knots patterns, meanders and crosses, rosettas and rhombs. Most of these patterns were borrowed from the pre-Christian period, as back in the 4th century Christian art was still searching for its own artistic language.
Peacocks and parrots, helmeted guineafowls and hens: the mosaics of the second layer, from the 5th century, feature not only geometrical patterns but also a rich array of birds. In the central nave only, there are more than 70. Their central position is not a coincidence or the result of freewheeling artistic imagination. For the early Christians, birds symbolised Heaven.
Peacocks hold even more significance in the mosaics of the Bishop's Basilica of Philippopolis, again for symbolical reasons – they were associated with the immortality of the soul. Peacocks are present also in the other significant scene from the basilica, the Fountain of Life. In it, the water source symbolises Jesus and the idea that whoever drinks from it will attain eternal life.
The Bishop's Basilica was the centre of life of early Christian Plovdiv. It was probably the place where a council of bishops supporting the teachings of Arius met in a response of a previous ecclesiastical council held in Serdica (today's Sofia) in 342-343 which condemned the man as a heretic.
Naturally for a city with millennia-long history like Plovdiv, the Bishop's Basilica did not appear out of nowhere – and its location did not evaporate when the church was abandoned. The basilica was built over the remains of an earlier building, probably a 1st century AD pagan temple. In the 10th-12th centuries, the site of the long forgotten basilica became a large Christian necropolis with a church. In the mid-19th century, the St Ludwig Catholic Cathedral was built in close proximity to the place where the Bishop's Basilica used to stand, as if a halo of spirituality hovers at it and inspires generations of people to erect temples and houses of prayer.
A donor inscription in the southern nave of the basilica has partially preserved the name of the bishop who commissioned the mosaic. His name ended in "-kian"
However, until construction works in the early 1980s brought to light its remains, the Bishop's Basilica of Philippopolis was utterly forgotten. Even after its discovery and the initial archaeological research, the basilica was abandoned again. By the late 1990s, its mosaics were already on the verge of destruction. This lasted until 2016, when a project initiated and sponsored by America for Bulgaria Foundation and the Municipality of Plovdiv undertook to bring this ancient structure back to life.
Archaeologists surveyed the site, and a team of restorers carefully cleaned the basilica's magnificent mosaics. In 2019, when Plovdiv will be the European Capital of Culture, the ancient Bishop's Basilica of Philippopolis will greet visitors again, this time as a modern exhibition space dedicated to its 12 centuries of history.
Two layers of mosaics are clearly visible in the basilica's northern nave
Over 70 birds cover the central nave of the church
High Beam is a series of articles, initiated by Vagabond Magazine, with the generous support of the America for Bulgaria Foundation, that aims to provide details and background of places, cultural entities, events, personalities and facts of life that are sometimes difficult to understand for the outsider in the Balkans. The ultimate aim is the preservation of Bulgaria's cultural heritage – including but not limited to archaeological, cultural and ethnic diversity. The statements and opinionsexpressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the America for Bulgaria Foundation and its partners.
Read 15403 times Last modified on Tuesday, 31 October 2017 14:50
Published in High Beam
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Home » News » News » Politicians take advantage of ignorance: 2019 is the opportunity to show we aren’t all fools
Politicians take advantage of ignorance: 2019 is the opportunity to show we aren’t all fools
On August 22, 2018 7:25 amIn News, Tip of a New Dawnby Tony
By Tabia Princewill
Personal interest in Nigerian politics always seems to supersede the interest of any group. Nowhere has this been more evident than in the National Assembly in recent years. With the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, budget hanging in the balance, Nigerians must be wary of any attempt to sabotage the upcoming elections, as present difficulties are all too reminiscent of the electoral postponement in 2015 and of the last-ditch antics of the now infamous “Orubebe outburst”. Sabotage is a near constant of our politics, so is flouting the rules of decency, morals, ethics and quite frankly, common sense.
APC-PDP
I won’t bother going over the Senate President’s refusal to step down from his position, although it is difficult, in the interest of truth, not to point out that it is more than curious to find an APC-dominated (in terms of numbers) Senate led by two members of the opposition party. Nigeria is always the ring leader of “unfortunate firsts” and some of our people whose senses have been deadened by wrong-doing for so long, don’t see anything wrong with this.
You might think this is all about politics and that it has nothing to do with you the average Nigerian; think again, politics has everything to do with you because the settings or environments within which politicians operate influence the final state of affairs in the country at large. Every wrong, big or small, which is allowed to go unchecked has consequences for us all and also determines government’s future ability to keep its promises to the people.
Can any real work go on in the Senate if the two principal officers are serving the opposition party’s interests or beliefs? At least now Nigerians know where everyone’s heart truly lies. Some people are going to court to stop the Senate President from being impeached, as if the position were any individual’s birth right. It is the same calibre of people who seek “perpetual injunctions” to stop corruption investigations and prosecution by the EFCC; that is, people who want to use the law which exists to serve all Nigerians, to serve only their own interests. Nigerians must recognise them for who they are.
These are the people who personalise the law and customise judgements to suit them; the sort of people, for example, who would support an understanding of Shariah law with harsh punishments for the poor and ignore the transgressions of the rich who defraud the state of billions. These are the same people who claim their defections are a result of their not being “carried along” by the Federal Government. These are the people who take advantage of many Nigerians’ ignorance of politics and public administration, especially as it is practiced in other climes.
They take advantage of the fact that the intelligentsia, pauperised by poor salaries and a bad economy, sides with them to survive and therefore does not do its duty of explaining issues, of breaking them down in the simplest way possible for the instruction of the masses. Some defectors illogically claim they weren’t carried along by the government: they were members of the APC and know its manifesto, they know the founding principles of the party etc. If they were real progressives, they would know what that means or therefore what sort of ideas and policies the Buhari administration intended to pursue once in office.
So why are they writing letters to the public claiming they were not happy with being asked to simply “deliberate” and “approve” policies submitted by the Federal Government? That is what legislatures all over the world do! The executive is the primary emanator or originator of public policy: nobody in the National Assembly can replace the President. If they wish to be President, so be it, let them admit they had their sights set on that office all along and stop saying they were not “carried along” by the executive. Nigerians need to read up on the role of the legislature in a democracy which is primarily to make and pass laws, create spending bills (pass the budget which has always so far been done atrociously late).
The legislature in Nigeria is constantly behind its global counterparts in terms of the passage of bills: how many bills have our senators drafted for the benefit of Nigerians beyond attempting to reorder the election sequence to favour themselves? Nigerians must prove they are not fooled; it’s now or never.
Defectors keep saying “they are not consulted” in government decisions, yet they are not members of the executive. Inadvertently, what they are revealing is the dysfunctional way things are usually done in Nigeria whereby all arms of government get involved in whatever they like and pursue their own agenda with no regard for established procedure or global best practice. Nothing is ever enough in political circles: trading power and influence, sharing “juicy” committees etc. is the name of the game but with no impact for Nigerians. Some people con Nigerians into taking their side, acting as if their lofty positions don’t give them de facto influence on public policy.
The number three citizen in a country like America can’t claim to be unable to influence policy. In fact, the success of a sitting government largely depends on the occupant of the Senate Presidency and House speakership because they are supposed to galvanise support in the legislature for the swift passage of bills to aid the executive in delivering its promises. So, if the Senate President, Bukola Saraki, believes the APC has failed, he must accept part of the blame and cannot remove himself from any analysis on how or why things went wrong. Let the truth set us free in Nigeria.
Nigerians didn’t hear much about any laws being passed to aid the various crises rocking the nation or to alleviate poverty and suffering. Instead, what trended was opposition to direct primaries because it appears some people favour the old way of doing things which presents individuals with unearned automatic tickets to contest for elections therefore barring the way for qualified candidates by preferring select “anointed” people with little interest in local development.
Excuses will continue, and more than likely so will lies and misinformation; it is up to Nigerians to decide what they want: a progressive future with ordinary people at the heart of politics or what we’ve always known, elitism in service of the interests of a few.
Tambuwal
Around 200 government officials resigned (or were sacked according to conflicting reports) in Sokoto State due to their unwillingness to defect to PDP with their erstwhile principal, Governor Aminu Tambuwal. The aides released a statement declaring they owed their fortunes to the APC of which they were members before their appointment to public office; their resignation, they said, was thus necessary. Although in short supply, there is some honour left in politics.
Osinbajo
The Vice-President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo, is possibly one of young Nigerians’ favourite politicians. He was nominated for this role by Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu during a meeting with the Lagos State Secretary to the State Government, SSG, Tunji Bello and some notable core progressives in the South West. His performance so far is proof that politics in Nigeria is neither all bad nor always self-serving.
The VP has been praised for his swift actions on behalf of his principal (e.g. his recent decision to overhaul the Special Anti-Robbery Squad, SARS, and his handling of the foreign exchange crisis in 2017 when he was Acting President). Unlike the corruption allegations, power machinations and conspiracies which surrounded past Vice-Presidents during their tenures, Professor Osinbajo remains scandal free, a rarity for one who occupies such an office in Nigeria.
Gradually, we’ll separate the wheat from the chaff; in the coming season young people, especially, must be mature in their judgements and side with people who’ve proven their worth, shown their loyalty to the ideal of progress for all and empower such people to do more.
Tabia Princewill is a strategic communications consultant and public policy analyst. She is also the co-host and executive producer of a talk show, WALK THE TALK which airs on Channels TV.
Anambra monarch inaugurates high calibre professionals in new royal cabinet list
Lagos bizman sues bank over N177.5m he paid into fictitious account
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BRO TIME
Pharma Bro Martin Shkreli Wants to Be a Rap Mogul, Bail Out Rapper Bobby Shmurda
The C.E.O. further cements his reputation.
Emily Jane Fox
Left, by Richard Perry/The New York Times; Right, by Bennett Raglin/BET/Getty Images
Martin Shkreli, the pharmaceuticals C.E.O. who sledgehammered his way into public consciousness when he raised the price of a life-saving drug by 5,000 percent overnight earlier this fall, and then swung again last week when news broke that he was the mysterious buyer who spent an estimated $2 million on a Wu-Tang Clan album at auction, has struck a third time.
The self-proclaimed hip-hop aficionado and aspiring mixtape dropper now wants to be the one to bail out jailed Brooklyn rapper Bobby Shmurda, according to an interview with the rap Web site Hip Hop DX published Wednesday.
“We’re actually in discussion to try to bail out Bobby Shmurda. Forget whether you think he’s guilty or not, the guy should not be sitting in jail right now,” he said in the interview. “He deserves a fair trial. He deserves good lawyers. He doesn’t have good lawyers. His label is hanging him out to dry and so I have a conference call tomorrow morning with them (December 15). I’ll show up with $2 million bail money no fucking problem.”
Shmurda, whose real name is Ackquille Pollard, was arrested on gun charges and gang conspiracy in December of 2014. His bail was set at $2 million, a fee his record label, Epic, a subsidiary of Sony, has not paid, though it signed Pollard to a seven-figure multi-album deal just months before his arrest.
Reached by V.F. on Wednesday, Shkreli would not confirm whether the conference call took place or, if it did, whether anything came out of it. He did tell V.F.com, “I stand ready to support Ackquille Pollard at his request.”
Though he is a professed fan, Shkreli’s support wouldn't come without strings.
“The guy’s going to have to record for me if he comes out. I’ll just come out and say it,” he told Hip Hop DX. “If I’m gonna post his bail, pay for his trial, get him a ‘Not Guilty’ verdict. . . . With the right lawyer it’s just a matter of money. I see opportunity.
“The guy’s going to be more popular when he’s out. The guy probably didn’t do shit. . . . He’s New York’s best chance for rap since 50 Cent. It’s not a lot of money for me. Spend a couple million on his defense, a couple million on bail and I’ll get the bail money back real quick. So a million or two for his defense, which is probably $4 million in total, I’m willing to put towards his defense.”
Shkreli sees a lot of himself in Bobby Shmurda. They’re both from Brooklyn for starters. Plus, Shkreli said, “The guy’s totally irreverent. He doesn’t give a damn what people think. Totally irreverent. Totally I don’t give a fuck.”
Shmurda wasn’t the only thing on Shkreli’s mind. He used the wide-ranging Hip Hop DX interview to escalate a spat with Robert “RZA” Diggs, the Wu-Tang mastermind and producer that began last week after Bloomberg revealed Shkreli to be the mysterious buyer of the sole copy of the group's album Once upon a Time in Shaolin. Shkreli told the business news outlet that after the meeting, he found that he and Diggs had little in common. In his own statement to Bloomberg, RZA said that the sale of the album to Shkreli was agreed to long before the group learned of his business practices. As a result, he said Wu-Tang “decided to give a significant portion of the proceeds to charity.”
Shkreli, who referred to himself as “the most successful Albanian to ever walk the face of this Earth,” did not take kindly to that perceived slight, and referred to the situation as an “emerging war” between the two of them as part of an expletive-laden challenge: “I bought the most expensive album in the history of mankind and fucking RZA is talking shit behind my back and online in plain sight. That’s not the way I do business. If I hand you $2 million, fucking show me some respect."
As for sharing the Wu-Tang album, he has thought about it, but again, nothing comes without strings for Shkreli.
DX: Have you thought about sharing the album?
Martin Shkreli: I’m not going to play it for no reason. If Taylor Swift wants to come over and suck my dick, I’ll play it for her. [Laughs]
And so, having cemented his reputation as a stock-market heavy, it seems as though Shkreli is seeking to earn a similar rep in the hip-hop industry, a world that knows from voluntary bad guys. He said he’s reached out to a few producers and a few artists to “test the waters,” but he wouldn’t put anything less than golden out for fear of embarrassing himself. He’s willing to pay up to avoid such shame.
“The budget for the album can be fucking $5 million,” he said. “I’ll pay fucking Drake. I’ll pay fucking Lil Wayne. I’ll pay Timbaland to make a beat. I don’t care.”
Also, he said, he’s talking with DJ Khaled to see if he can help him expand his restaurant.
The Beginner’s Guide to Taylor Swift’s Girl Squad
By Charles Sykes/A.P. Photo.
Taylor Swift and Selena Gomez onstage at Madison Square Garden, 2011.
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Iran releases Christian prisoner
July 4, 2015 By World Watch Monitor Iran House churches, Iran, Proselytism, Shiraz
A Christian imprisoned in Iran for 40 months has been released, according to MEC
Homayoun Shekohi was arrested on 8 February 2012 in Shiraz as part of a raid on a house church. He and three others were sentenced to three years, eight months in prison for participating in house-church meetings, evangelism, contact with foreign Christian ministries, propaganda against the Islamic regime and disrupting national security say Mohabat News.
Homayoun was released on bail on 10th November 2014, but in January this year his bail conditions were cancelled and he was recalled to serve the remainder of his sentence, which was due to be completed in October 2015. The three other prisoners were released in December 2014 and January 2015.
In April Homayoun’s family were unable to visit him or make contact as he had been transferred to what MEC refer to as a “notorious punishment ward” in Adelabad Prison in Shiraz, possibly on account of his evangelistic activity in prison.
Homayoun was transferred back to the general prison ward on 1 June and released on Sunday 28 June.
Archbishop of Canterbury raises profile of Nigeria…
On trial for terrorism and espionage in a Turkish court
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9 – 5, the musical Cast and Crew
Call the Box Office at 740.455.6487 to reserve or order on-line
Cindy Houpt (Judy Bernley) – Cindy lives in Newark with her husband Ron and youngest daughter Sarah. She always enjoys another opportunity to perform here at ZCT. She has had the good fortune of performing in several productions, namely Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, and Young Frankenstein. Cindy would like to thank the cast and crew for such a fun Summer. Cindy hopes you enjoy the show as much as she enjoyed rehearsing it!
Jodi L. Wolfe (Violet Newstead) – I’ve been involved in theater since the age of 5, but my parents will tell you I’ve been performing for them since birth. I studied Musical Theater and Vocal Music Education at Kent State University, I was a singer in the rock band Mad Shadows, and I also sing for weddings. I’ve been active in local theater for many years, including playing Gilmer in “Godspell”, Ronette in “Little Shop of Horrors” and Tosha/Ensemble in “Young Frankenstein” here at ZCT. My husband Bill and I met during a production of “Oliver!” back in 1996, (I played Nancy) and we live here in Zanesville with our 8-year-old son Liam. My performance is dedicated to my Dad Jeff, in honor of his recent retirement from the New Bakery Co. after 35 years, and to my Nephew Kyle, who graduated from John Glenn H.S. this year and will be starting at West Liberty College this fall. Congratulations, and I love you both!
Tahnee Kay (Doralee Rhodes) – Tahnee Kay is thrilled to be portraying Doralee in ZCT’s production of 9 To 5! Dolly Parton is a big inspiration to Tahnee and she is so proud to be a part of such an amazing musical.
Originally from Perry County, Tahnee now lives with her newlywed husband and three cats in Zanesville. She has been in productions with New Lexington High School and Community Theatre, Hocking College and Havering College, and Zane Trace Players. This will be her fourth show with ZCT.
Tahnee feels blessed to be surrounded by this amazing community of truly talented people and she can’t wait for another show! She hopes that the audience has as much fun watching the show as she has had being in it!
Rob Cook (Franklin Hart) – Originally from Illinois, I moved to the area in 2000 and have been doing shows in Zanesville since that time. I attended grad school for theatre and worked throughout Illinois in several companies. Some of my favorite shows here have been Godspell, Doubt, and 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. I love it at ZCT. Try out for a show here and you’ll love it too. Big love to my partner Matt and our son Evan and mild love to our spoiled cats.
Amber Winland (Roz Keith) – Amber Maree Winland is really not a killjoy in the office setting! Amber most recently played melancholy “Martha” in ZCT’s Spring Awakening. Before moving to Zanesville 4 yrs. ago, she directed and performed with Center Stage Players in Columbus for 6 yrs. Memorable parts include Rose in Bye Bye Birdie and Sarah Jane Moore in Assassins. From age 7 to 18 she performed with The Ashtabula Arts Center and D’Itri Productions. Thank you to the crew, who have shown so much confidence in her. Amber would also like to thank her mother, brother, and step-father for making the long journey to see the show!
Sean McClure (Joe) – Sean Adam McClure is a vivacious and active participant of the theater community in Zanesville. At ZCT, favorite productions have been Young Frankenstein, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, and The Lion in Winter. At The Renner theater, Sean has enjoyed being a part of A Streetcar Named Desire and A Little Night Music. Sean appreciates you attending 9 to 5, and supporting the arts in our community.
Phil Palmer (Dick Bernley) – I have been honored to be onstage this season in Harmony Romances, Anne Frank and this show. I have worked backstage and as production staff for Young Frankenstein, Little Princess and Spring Awakening.I have had so much fun doing this show with the entire cast and crew. I hope you enjoy watching it as much as we have enjoyed doing it. This is the last show of ZCT’s 51st season and I can’t think of a better way to end it. We appreciate your support of the arts in Zanesville.
Matt Swingle (Dwayne Rhodes) – Sit back and enjoy a blast from the past. I’ve done several shows with ZCT most recently Young Frankenstein and Spring Awakening and this has been another fun experience. In my spare time, I do have a real job, I’m a Sr. Data Architect in Columbus. I love working with these people and ZCT has become a big part of my life.I live in Philo with my partner Rob Cook, our son and two spoiled cats.
Michelle Robison (Maria Delgado) – Michelle Robison is proud to be part of such a diverse cast. After living in Las Vegas with her husband Scott for nearly ten years she was glad to get back on stage and do what she loves most; Shine. “Break a leg” to cast and crew plus a big thanks to the Dir’s… “You guys Rock!”
Lura Brannon (Kathy) – Lura is thrilled to be in her fourth show here at ZCT. Her journey began here in August: Osage County last April. In 2013, she also sang and danced with the monster cast of Young Frankenstein and became an ornery pastor’s wife in Harmony Romances. This summer, she has enjoyed portraying a singing 70’s secretary in 9 to 5 the Musical. She feels blessed to have the opportunity to be on stage once again with her theater family and friends. Look for her in future productions both onstage, and behind the scenes.Mrs. Brannon currently works in secondary education and resides in Philo, Ohio with her husband and teenage son, Romeo (who despite his name, has no interest in drama of any kind.)
Sally Goins (Margaret) – Sally Goins is thrilled to be part of the outstanding cast for this exciting show. Since renewing her interest in theatre after a long absence, she has been in “Ladies of Harmony” at ZCT and “The Music Man” and “A Little Night Music” at the Renner. Since one part had no singing, one required her to sing loudly off-key, and the third confined her to a wheelchair, her goal for this show was to walk and sing on-key at the same time. Unfortunately, since this part requires her to be drunk, we’ll just have to see if the goal is met. Thanks for coming to the show — enjoy!
Sarah Gantzer (Missy Hart) – Sarah is so excited to be a part of this show and has had a fabulous time in her first performance at Zanesville Community Theater! Favorite roles for Sarah include portraying Elizabeth Proctor in The Crucible, and Marian the Librarian in The Music Man both at The Renner Theater. Sarah is a first grade teacher, soccer coach, Girl Scout Leader, and busy mom of 3. She thanks you for supporting the arts in Zanesville!
Cory Roush (Bob Entright) – Cory began acting as a student at Maysville High School, playing roles in Annie, Into the Woods, The Music Man, Annie Get Your Gun, Big, Back to the 80s, and Beauty and the Beast. Cory is a 2012 graduate of Ohio University and has taught Elementary Language Arts. He is currently working with the school outreach program through the Muskingum County Library System. Cory most recently appeared as Otto in ZCT’s production of Spring Awakening.
David J Kerr (Mr. Tinsworthy) – Sometimes I think I’m the luckiest man in Zanesville for having the opportunity to perform here at ZCT. Other times I think I’m a glutton for punishment. This is my fifth year as part of the ZCT company and I’ve performed in five of the six shows this season. Why do I keep coming back? The people. I’m continually amazed by the talent and drive of all the people who volunteer here; not only the actors, but the directors, techies, band, and stage crew. It takes a lot of hard work to put on a show like this, but when we know that we’ve done the best job that we can do and that you, the audience, have enjoyed our efforts; it makes it all worthwhile.
For my real life, I’m a retired US Air Force Master Sergeant, and I currently work for the City of Zanesville in the Engineering Department as a construction inspector. I’ve been married for 31 years and have four children ranging in age from 27 to 16 and a one year old grandson.
Jack McLendon (Josh Newstead) – Jack McLendon is a sophomore at Tri-Valley High School. Jack is playing the role of Josh and has been in many other ZCT productions, including You’re A Good Man Charlie Brown and A Little Princess.
Sierrah Archibald – Sierrah has been a long time member of ZCT, participating in a number of shows over the years. Her favorites include “Singin’ in the Rain”, “Suessical the Musical”, and many, many Angel Tree Benefits. She hopes you enjoy “9 to 5.”
Stephanie Anderson – Stephanie Anderson is a busy wife and mom of four wonderfully theatrical children! In fact, her daughter Miriam is responsible for reintroducing her to the magical world of theater when she saw Charlotte’s Web at The Renner Theater in downtown Zanesville. She has enjoyed being a part of several productions, including: The Music Man, A Little Night Music, and The Crucible. Stephanie was thrilled to be cast in 9 to 5, and has really enjoyed being a part of her first show at ZCT! She thanks you for attending the production, and for supporting her theater family in Zanesville. –
Katelyn Baughman – Katelyn Baughman is 13 years old and attends Crooksville Schools. She fell in love with theatre at age 5, when she 1st appeared at ZCT as a member of the chorus in Fiddler on the Roof. Other productions she has participated in since then include the title roles in Annie (ZCT) and Charlotte’s Web (Renner), A Little Princess (ZCT), A Little Night Music (Renner), HONK (ZCT), M*A*S*H (ZCT), eight Angel Tree Benefits (ZCT/Renner), Back to the Garden (Shadowbox Live) and more. Katelyn runs Cross Country, and is a student of Kachido Aikijitsu. Katelyn is extremely grateful to all those who have helped her learn and grow in theatre and performance and sends special thanks to Jillian Von Gunten and Sheryl Wise for providing her the opportunity to play the role of the Candy Striper and appear in the Chorus of 9 to 5!
William Harris – William Harris, an Ohio native, received his B.A. in Liberal Arts from Wright St. University in Dayton, Ohio. From there, he obtained his Master of Divinity from Grace Theological Seminary in Winona Lake, IN. Upon graduation, he and the family moved to Michigan where his wife embarked upon a teaching career, and he later enrolled at Calvin Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids, MI in pursuit of his Master of Theology degree. He subsequently enrolled into a summer unit of Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE – chaplaincy ministries) at Pine Rest Christian Mental Health Center, also in Grand Rapids and the following year, he completed a yearlong chaplaincy residency at Bronson Methodist Hospital in Kalamazoo Michigan.At the completion of his residency, William enrolled in the Ecclesiastical Program for Ministerial Candidacy at Calvin with the intent of pursuing ordination within the Christian Reformed Church and at the conclusion of his program, had received a call to serve as pastor at New Hope Community Church in Kincheloe, MI, located in the Upper Peninsula, where he served just shy of three years. Currently, William is employed with Genesis Healthcare, serving as a Hospice Chaplain.
Kara K. Kelly – I started theater at Maysville High School with roles in Bye, Bye Birdie and The Very Very Great Grandson of Sherlock Holmes. After high school, I became involved in Zanesville Community Theater in 1982. In 1985, I went to Wright State University where I studied acting, music and dance. I’ve enjoyed roles in Finian’s Rainbow, Anything Goes, Carousel, Annie, Show Boat, I Remember Mama, Music Man, Babes in Toyland, South Pacific, Cinderella, The Sound of Music, A Little Night Music, Barnum, Harvey, MASH, The Odd Couple- Female Version, The Ladies of Harmony and Subject to Change. I’m just as comfortable working behind the scenes while stage managing, working on sets, sound and lighting.
In my personal life, I work for Tri-Valley School District as a Special Education Assistant. I’m training my rescued Min Pin, Cubby, to become a therapy dog. I want him to have a life occupation helping struggling readers. Plus, he’ll get to come to work with me. I have a cat, Little Bit, but she has an attitude. Maybe I need to fix her up with a behavior plan. I added a new member to my family; Buster, the cat, showed up one day.
My favorite quote is from Shakespeare; “If music be the food of love, play on”.
Bambi McConaha – I was told I had to write a bio, “OR ELSE,” so here goes. Hi, my name is Bambi. Yes, Bambi. And yes, my mom LOVED the movie. No, this is NOT my true hair color, close, but not quite natural. And yes, I am notoriously ORNERY!! Fair warning. Well, there it is. Not much of a bio, but for an “OR ELSE” it’ll have to do.
Terri Oakley
Terri Oakley – Terri Oakley is a Special Education teacher at Frazeysburg Elementary. She has danced and sang in The Zaney Follies and The Follies Family productions for the past 14 years. She was part of the cast of “Singin’ In the Rain” for The Community Theater. She also played Diana in the Genesis Dinner Theater production of “Lend Me a Tenor“.” I am proud to be a part of such a funny, talented cast and can‘t wait to share “9 to 5“ with the audience!”
Scott Robison – Scott Robison is enjoying his time In The Sun. What does he love most about being involved in the theater? The Attention! The adrenaline rush of performing is definitely his drug of choice. He’s been in several productions both here @ ZCT and @ The Renner and would like to continue doing so for a very long time. Thanks to everyone involved in 9 to 5, it’s been fun. Have a great time and enjoy the show!
Kari Scott – Kari Scott is the mother of two lovely boys Cameron and Nathan and wife of Ian. Kari is the assistant band director of Philo high school.Kari has also participated in Annie,Oliver and several Angel tree productions. Kari aspire frequently plays F Horn in the pit band.
Pam Smith – Pam Smith wears many hats at ZCT! Pam enjoys acting,costuming, and has even directed a production here (which she says she will not attempt again). She has enjoyed very much being a part of this fun cast, and has had a blast costuming this colorful bunch. She also loves spending time with her husband, daughters, son-in-law, and soon to be son-in-law.
Jillian B. Von Gunten (Director and Choreographer) – Jillian has participated in local theater all of her life and currently serves as the President of the Board of Directors for Zanesville Community Theatre. Some of her favorite roles include: Maggie in “A Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” Alais in “The Lion in Winter,” Nancy in “OLIVER!” and Barbara Fordham in “August: Osage County,” all at Zanesville Community Theatre, and Stella Kowalski in “A Streetcar Named Desire,” at The Renner. Some of her favorite shows to direct were: “The Mystery of Irma Vep,” “HONK,” “The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged),” and “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee.” Jillian currently serves as the Coach for Powerhouse’s SPARKS!! Improv Troupe and works in Zanesville as an attorney at Allen, Baughman, & Martin, Attorneys at Law.
Director’s Notes: This is usually the place where the Director talks about why they wanted to direct this particular show, etc. This is also one of the things folks who arrive early to the show read to pass the time before the “curtain rises.” So, I’ll try to make this just long enough to pass the time (without boring you) and (marginally) entertaining. No promises, though…
Two admissions are necessary before we go much farther. First, I loved the movie “Nine to Five.” Loved it. Still do. I may be guilty of speaking only in quotes from the movie with one dear friend. Second, I love Dolly Parton. While not a huge fan of modern country music, I do love the “Classics” and I have a special place in my heart for Dolly, not only for her music, but also for her abilities – talk about one smart lady who has more brains and business sense than anyone gave her credit for when she started out. She sure showed them. So, these two things alone should explain why I had to direct this show. But like the ladies say in the show, “there’s more than that.”
On one hand, “9 to 5” is a “women’s story” – as one person called it, a “girl power show.” And, yes, it certainly is. (There is absolutely nothing wrong with that, in my opinion.) The show is set in 1979, a mere 35 years ago, but tells a story with which many of my contemporaries are unfamiliar: women earned less, succeeded less, and were less respected than their male colleagues. Certain career avenues were unilaterally closed to women. Flash forward 33 years to me graduating from law school with a class composed of 60% women and being sworn into the practice of law by an Ohio Supreme Court on which sat more women than men and whose Chief Justice was (and still is) a woman. Pretty awesome changes, but they hide the history for many young women. So, in that sense, “9 to 5” is a reality check that the advances women of my age have gained were hard fought for not all that long ago. (I’m putting my gender soapbox away, I promise.)
More than that, though, “9 to 5” is the story of every person who has been belittled or made to feel small by a jerk (boss or not). The journey made by each of the ladies, Violet, Doralee, and Judy, is one with which we can all identify – learning to be independent and stand up to the people who makes us feel less than valuable. We want the “underdogs” to win, for the “sexist, egotistical, lying, hypocritical bigot” to get his in the end. We’ve all got that one jerk we wish we could accidentally poison with rat poison that looks disarmingly like coffee sweetener. (Just buy into the theory, ok?) So, the show serves the purpose of a kind of group therapy – time for the bad guy to get his just desserts, the hard working employees to be rewarded, and order to be restored to a world of chaos. An overly dramatic generalization? Well, yes. But I am a theater person and its probably only a slight generalization anyway.
To avoid any additional tangents, time to wrap this up, I think. The show is very funny. The cast and crew have worked exceedingly hard all summer long. This is one of the largest shows we’ve ever done at ZCT . We hit the ground running 3 months ago and never looked back. It was a challenge embraced. Everyone involved had enthusiasm from day one and I couldn’t be more grateful; you’ll see why. I hope you leave the show humming a tune and with a smile on your face. I’ve had a marvelous time with my dear friends putting this show together and I sincerely hope that carries over to you. As always, thank you for supporting the arts in Southeastern Ohio and Zanesville Community Theatre. Time to get to work! Enjoy the show.
Sheryl Wise (Music Director) – Sheryl has been involved in Zanesville Community Theatre for over thirty years onstage, backstage, and on the board of directors. She has also worked with several other community theaters in central and southeastern Ohio. Some of her favorite shows to direct have been “Noises Off”, “Little Shop of Horrors”, “Seussical”, and “The Odd Couple”. Some of her favorite shows to be in have been “Sweeney Todd”, “The Mystery of Edwin Drood”, “Nunsense”, and “Steel Magnolias”. Currently Sheryl is a Fine Arts teacher for Franklin Local Schools where she teaches theater and music. She is also church organist for Market Street Baptist Church. Sheryl shares her home with her Mom and their three cats. She is preparing for shoulder replacement immediately after this show closes so there will be lots of time to rest and read. Time to keep dreaming big!
Musical Director Notes – I am excited about the opportunity to bring the music of “9 to 5” to our stage. For those of you that don’t know— Dolly Parton wrote all of the music. So many people only associate her with country or bluegrass styles, but the music from this show encompasses everything from Broadway to Latin to the blues. I have always enjoyed her as a performer, but was especially impressed when I heard her speak at an educational conference I attended in Nashville. She has such a passion for giving back to her own community and for always improving. She spoke that day about her project to promote reading in her home county called Imagination Library. The project provides high quality books at no charge to pre-school students by mailing them directly to their families. Since its inception in 1996 over 50 million books have been delivered! She is an amazing performer, business woman, and philanthropist. In a recent article in “Guidepost Magazine” Dolly wrote “Dreams are never gonna come true if you don’t put wings on ‘em. Not only wings—they need feet, hands, and a brain. You’ve got to work really hard to make a dream come true. That’s the difference between a wish and dream.”Our dream here at Zanesville Community Theatre is to continue to bring quality productions to our stage. It takes hours of hard work by a dedicated group of volunteers to make it come true. We thank you, our audience, for being part of the dream.
Jan Kiikka (Producer) – has been involved in one aspect of production or another at ZCT for over 20 years. Jan just retired in May 2012 from Franklin Local Schools, though she will still be the drama producer at Philo High School. Jan and her husband, Niel, live in the McIntire Terrace with their five dogs and one cat (and turtles and fish).
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Zendesk to Present at the Credit Suisse 18th Annual Technology Conference
SAN FRANCISCO, CA–Zendesk Inc. (NYSE:ZEN) today announced that its Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Mikkel Svane will present at the Credit Suisse 18th Annual Technology Conference at the Phoenician Hotel in Scottsdale, Arizona.
Zendesk’s presentation is scheduled for Tuesday, December 2, 2014 at 3:30 p.m., Mountain Standard Time. A live webcast and an archive version will be available for six months. Both will be accessible by visiting Zendesk’s Investor website at investor.zendesk.com.
About Zendesk:
Zendesk provides a customer service platform designed to bring organizations and their customers closer together. With more than 48,000 customer accounts, Zendesk is used by organizations in 150 countries and territories to provide support in more than 40 languages. Founded in 2007 and headquartered in San Francisco, Zendesk has operations in the United States, Europe, Asia, Australia and South America. Learn more at www.zendesk.com
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WEST, Benjamin
(b. 1738, Springfield, d. 1820, London)
American-born painter of historical, religious, and mythological subjects who had a profound influence on the development of historical painting in Britain. He was historical painter to George III (1772-1801), a founder of the Royal Academy (1768), and in 1792 he succeeded Sir Joshua Reynolds as its president.
As a young man, West showed precocious artistic talent and was sent to Philadelphia in 1756 to study painting. At 20 years of age he was a successful portraitist in New York City and in 1760, through the assistance of friends, he sailed for Italy, where Neoclassicism was rapidly gaining ground. West visited most of the leading art cities of Italy and in 1763 went to London, where he set up as a portrait painter. His subsequent patronage by George III and the assurance of financial support from the crown absolved him of the necessity to continue to earn a living through portraiture.
In London he soon became intimate with Sir Joshua Reynolds and gained widespread popularity. The Death of General Wolfe (c. 1771; several versions exist), one of his best-known and - at the time - most controversial works, made a noteworthy concession to realism in its use of modern dress rather than antique drapery to depict a contemporary historical event within a classical composition. It was considered by many academicians to be an affront to the art of history painting, but ultimately it was a popular success and won Reynolds' approval.
Though loyal to America, West retained the king's friendship and patronage until 1801. In 1802 he visited Paris and exhibited his final sketch for Death on the Pale Horse (c. 1802; several versions exist), which anticipated developments in French Romantic painting. He never returned to the United States, but through such pupils as Washington Allston, Gilbert Stuart, Charles Willson Peale, and John Singleton Copley, he exerted considerable influence on the development of art in that country during the first decades of the 19th century.
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Yes on Prop. 54 for legislative transparency:…
Yes on Prop. 54 for legislative transparency: Endorsement
By The Editorial Board | opinion@scng.com |
PUBLISHED: October 10, 2016 at 8:20 pm | UPDATED: August 29, 2017 at 4:09 am
Among a number of highly controversial measures on the Nov. 8 ballot, Proposition 54 is pretty straightforward. Prop. 54 would require a minimum 72-hour “cooling-off” period between the time a new or amended bill is posted online and distributed to legislators and the time a branch of the Legislature votes on the bill. An exception is made for public emergencies.
Prop. 54 would also require audiovisual recordings of legislative proceedings (other than closed session proceedings) to be posted on the internet — most, but not all, committee meetings are currently live streamed and archived for several years — and would allow anyone to make their own recordings of public proceedings.
The centerpiece of the measure, the three-day waiting period, is intended to allow for public information and debate, particularly on lengthy, complex legislation. It also combats the insidious practice of adopting last-minute “gut-and-amend” bills, in which the amendment process is used to swap out most or all of the substance of an existing bill, oftentimes just a placeholder bill never really intended for passage, with completely new language which may cover a different topic altogether.
Prop. 54 is supported by a broad coalition spanning the political spectrum, including the California Chamber of Commerce, Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, League of Women Voters of California, California Forward and California Common Cause.
Prop. 54’s common-sense provisions will offer legislators, the media and the general public a greater opportunity to expose and debate the results of deals made behind closed doors, discussed only in obscure committee meetings or rushed through at the end of legislative sessions. It brings more transparency and accountability to the legislative process, which is particularly important since trust in government has deteriorated to such low levels.
The Editorial Board recommends a yes vote on Proposition 54.
Who are ‘The Singing Frogs’? Feds detail Canta Ranas operation in Santa Fe Springs
UC Irvine’s Keston Hiura no average ballplayer
The editorial board and opinion section staff are independent of the news-gathering side of our organization. Through our staff-written editorials, we take positions on important issues affecting our readership, from pension reform to protecting our region’s unique natural resources to transportation. The editorials are unsigned because, while written by one or more members of our staff, they represent the point of view of our news organization’s management. In order to take informed positions, we meet frequently with government, community and business leaders on important issues affecting our cities, region and state. During elections, we meet with candidates for office and the proponents and opponents of ballot initiatives and then make recommendations to voters.
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Shop All Amana
Willamette Valley Appliance in Salem, OR is an authorized dealer of Amana Products. The Amana Corporation is an American brand of household appliances. It was founded in 1934 by George Foerstner as The Electrical Equipment Co. in Middle Amana, Iowa, to manufacture commercial walk-in coolers. The business was later owned by the Amana Society and became known as Amana Refrigeration, Inc. It is now owned by Whirlpool Corporation.
In 1947, Amana manufactured the first upright freezer for the home, and in 1949 it added a side-by-side refrigerator/freezer. In 1950 the company was sold to a group of investors, including its founder, and became Amana Refrigeration, Inc. In 1954 it began making air conditioners. Amana was acquired in 1965 by Raytheon, which had invented the microwave oven in 1947, and introduced the commercial Radarange Model 1611 in 1954. In 1967 Amana introduced a consumer model of the Radarange, the first popular microwave designed for home use. Amana has since expanded into manufacturing a variety of other appliances, including furnaces, ovens, countertop ranges, dishwashers, and clothes washers and dryers. In 1997 the company was purchased by Goodman Global, a heating-and-cooling manufacturer who sold it to Maytag (now part of Whirlpool) in 2002. Goodman still owns Amana's air conditioners and heater division, and Amana home appliances are now owned and manufactured by Whirlpool Corporation. Amana Under Counter Wine was spun off and is now marketed under the Aficionado marquee. Amana continues to be innovative, having introduced curved fronts to its refrigerators in 2000, and in 2009 collaborating with Thom Filicia on a series of colorful designs which debuted at the International Builders' Show in Las Vegas.
So if you are looking for Amana products in Salem, Keizer, Sherwood, Canby, Stayton, Silverton, Monmouth, Independence, Dallas, Woodburn and Albany, or if you have any questions about Amana products, please feel free to call us at (503) 390-0161 or simply stop by Willamette Valley Appliance at any time and we would be glad to help you.
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Kevin Watches The Entire MCU - Daredevil Season One
The first Netflix original MCU series focuses on the blind hero, Daredevil
Invite Kevin to write
Daredevil Season One
4/10/15 | Creator: Drew Goddard | Rotten Tomatoes: 99% | Episodes: 13 | Platform: Netflix
We’ve officially reached the point of the Marvel Cinematic Universe where Netflix gets involved. Daredevil was the first MCU show exclusive to the streaming platform. It featured 13 episodes and looked to get the hero back on track after the disappointing Ben Affleck led film in 2003. It also had to succeed if the rest of the Netflix heroes could get an opportunity, similar to the way Iron Man had to work for the rest of the MCU to come together.
Honestly, with all that pressure on this show, Daredevil still managed to knock it out of the park. There are plenty of reasons for that, which I’ll lay out. However, it all starts with Charlie Cox. He plays a great Matt Murdock. He’s given a lot to work with and nails it each time. Murdock is a complex character. He’s not just a blind ass kicker. His backstory is explained in interesting fashion, but it’s the current struggle he deals with that is most gripping. He doesn’t kill people, but is okay with leaving them to die and admits he enjoys the violence that comes with what he does. Throw in some of the surprisingly strong religious talk with his priest and you’ve got a complicated protagonist.
Of course, a great good guy needs an equally compelling villain. Daredevil doesn’t just have a great antagonist. It has the best one in the MCU so far. Wilson Fisk is incredible. Vincent D’Onofrio is outstanding in the role. He gets all the mannerisms right and carries himself with a demeanor that is chilling. He speaks softly, yet is commanding. I love how he’s the opposite of Matt, yet similar. They both love their city and want to make it better, but Fisk wants to do so in a ruthless manner. The show did a wonderful job in introducing him. Before we ever see him do anything criminal or face off against the hero, he’s wooing Vanessa. It allows us to get invested in him. He’s an isolated guy and we learn a lot about his relationships through flashbacks. His history perfectly shapes why he lashes out when things happen to Vanessa or to his friend Wesley. There was also the fact that he felt dangerous and like a true threat to the hero. He's magnificent.
Another positive for this show was the supporting characters. When talking about these members of a series, I point to Showtime’s Dexter. That was mostly a great show, but it had one glaring issue. The supporting characters were useless. If the story didn’t involve Dexter or Debra, most viewers didn’t care. Thankfully, Daredevil was great in that department. Elden Henson was delightful as Foggy Nelson. His scenes with Cox were great and they had a natural chemistry. Deborah Ann Woll (Karen Page) was the best she’s ever been and the character was a strong one. She goes off on her own side adventure and it never feels boring. Though they’re the main two supporting characters, I also really enjoyed Ben Urich and Claire Temple. The show is loaded with well developed characters.
Speaking of Claire, while I did enjoy her being on the show, there were a few things that were kind of weird. For one, she was a major focus of the first handful of episodes, yet disappeared in the back half of the show. I understand that she wasn’t needed, but it was still a jarring change. The other oddness came from her romance with Matt. An attraction is understandable. However, within just a few episodes, she’s confessing that she could be falling in love with him and that was too far fetched for me. When Fisk and Vanessa declared their love for each other, it felt earned. Not with these two, though.
With character stuff out of the way, it’s time to look at the other aspects of the show. The first thing I want to commend is the gritty style. Similar to the way Guardians of the Galaxy felt like nothing else in the MCU, this show benefitted from a change of pace. It was darker, more grounded, and violent. There’s a scene where Fisk murders a man by slamming a car door into him with incredible force over and over. It’s something different and different is good. The fight scenes were almost all great. It wasn’t the fun comic book style we've become accustomed to, either. Each hit looks and sounds vicious. You can almost feel them. Matt takes as much of a beating as he dishes out and it gives him a vulnerability that is missing from other heroes. Of course, some mention has to go to the unbelievable hallway fight scene in episode two. If you haven’t seen it, go out and do so. It’s a three minute, single shot fight that might be the best in the MCU so far.
It was interesting to see how they strayed from giving us the famous Daredevil costume for most of the season. To be fair, it does look kind of funny and is hard to take serious at times. Even when we do finally get it, Foggy makes a joke about how the horns are too much. I get it. I liked Matt’s basic outfit he used for most of the season. The all black color worked for the dark scenes, fit the tone, and looked cool. They waited until the finale and the big fight with Fisk to give us the suit and it looked cool. Certainly worth the wait.
One of the biggest criticisms thrown at the Netflix properties in the MCU is that they ultimately don’t feel like they’re connected to the rest of the films and shows. There’s only one real mention of the rest of the world here and it’s when they bring up the alien invasion from The Avengers. However, there are TV connections. For one, Roxxon is part of a case Nelson and Murdock work and they’re in all sorts of MCU properties, while playing a major role in Cloak and Dagger. It’s actually being unhappy with Roxxon as a client that causes Nelson and Murdock to go out on their own. There's also the story of Matt’s father, who was murdered after a boxing fight he refused to throw. His opponent was Carl “Crusher” Creel, who appeared in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. as the Absorbing Man.
My biggest gripe with this show was the length. Thirteen episodes is usually a good number for a series and it mostly worked here. That being said, the show seems to reach a boiling point around the ninth episode. Following that, things slow down a fair amount before picking up for the final few episodes. Maybe even shortening things by just one episode would’ve helped the pace. Either way, this was a tremendous start for the Netflix run of shows. Daredevil ruled.
Next up – Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Season Two Episodes 11-19
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The bulletproof man from Harlem gets our next spotlight
We return to Hell's Kitchen for a new season of Daredevil
Following season two's cliffhanger ending, what's up with our favorite agents?
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Court declines to intervene in case of Indian bishop accused of raping nun
An Indian court has declined to intervene in the case of a Catholic nun who says she was raped multiple time...
Posted: Sep 13, 2018 11:57 AM
Updated: Sep 13, 2018 11:57 AM
Posted By: CNN Wire
An Indian court has declined to intervene in the case of a Catholic nun who says she was raped multiple times over a two year period by a bishop, charges he denies.
The case has attracted significant media attention in India, where it remains extremely rare for members of the church to publicly accuse a superior of wrongdoing.
Belief, religion and spirituality
Catholics and catholicism
Crime, law enforcement and corrections
Sex and gender issues
Decisions and rulings
Law and legal system
Trial and procedure
Policing and police forces
Law courts and tribunals
The ruling comes after an advocacy group filed a petition on behalf of the victim in the Kerala High Court Monday, asking for the immediate arrest of Bishop Franco Mulakkal.
The group, the Kerala Catholic Church Reformation Movement (KCCRM), which is part of an umbrella body of independent groups called the Joint Christian Council, as well as some of the nun's sisters, have accused police of dragging their feet in the investigation due to pressure from local politicians and church leaders. Police deny those allegations and say the investigation is moving ahead.
The court will now review the investigation on September 24.
This is the second time in two months the nun's supporters have petitioned the Kerala High Court to intervene in the case, and both requests have been denied.
The court said Thursday it's understandable that the investigation has taken so long given that two years have passed since the alleged sexual assaults, according to Sandhya Raju, a lawyer working on behalf of the victim for KCCRM.
The 44-year-old nun, who has not been named, first filed a police report in June in Kochi in Kerala, accusing Mulakkal of raping her 13 times from 2014 and 2016. The incidents purportedly occurred while Mulakkal was staying in Kerala in a guest house belonging to the St. Francis Mission Home.
Mulakkal currently serves as the bishop of Jalandhar, a city in India's northern Punjab state.
Representatives for Mulakkal told CNN earlier this week that the Bishop is innocent.
"It is a fake allegation. We are all with the bishop," Father Peter Kavumpuram, a spokesperson for Mulakkal's diocese told CNN on Tuesday.
"We are very clear regarding the conspiracy behind this. Nuns are parading outside when the investigation is going on. There is an anti-Christian movement, people are trying to manipulate the truth," he said.
Christianity is a minority religion in India, practiced by just 2.3% of the total population, but Kerala is home to a sizable Christian community that dates back hundreds of years.
According to recent government figures, the southern state is home to more than 6 million Christians, or 19% of the total population.
Ongoing case
Police have said they are looking for more evidence before making an arrest, as it is only the victim's word against the accused.
But because the purported incidents happened more than two years ago, police will have trouble finding any hard evidence, said Jayna Kothari, an attorney and the director of the Center for Law and Policy Research in Bangalore.
"In a rape case, the Supreme Court has repeatedly held that the testimony of the victim should be enough. The problem is that although the criminal procedure court does not give any time limit to file a case, the general practice is that the police become very reluctant to take a criminal complaint if it's filed after a long time," Kothari said.
"Her testimony should be enough, but in practice, if it happened a long time ago, the police try to use that to say we don't know if this person is lying or telling the truth, we want to do more investigations."
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Walmart customer intervenes in carjacking and fatally shoots armed suspect
French navy ready to intervene in 'scallop war' with UK
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Thomas Rhett Debuts Two New Songs on ‘Saturday Night Live’ [WATCH]
Thomas Rhett promised new music during his time as Saturday Night Live's musical guest on March 2, and he delivered. The country star performed two new tracks -- including an unreleased one!
Rhett's first SNL performance was of his newest single, "Look What God Gave Her," which readers can watch below. He co-wrote the song with producer Julian Bunetta, his dad Rhett Akins, J Cash and John Ryan, after hearing a track that the four were already writing. "I was just completely hooked and addicted to the melody, what the song said, the beat, the tempo," Rhett recalls, but he asked to add a bridge and adjust some of the second verse to make the song more personal.
"Look What God Gave Her," which Rhett co-produced with Bunetta and Dann Huff, is the first single from Rhett's forthcoming fourth studio album, Center Point Road. The project, he announced on Friday (March 1), is due out on May 31.
Center Point Road contains 16 songs, including a collaboration with Little Big Town, "Don't Threaten Me With a Good Time." Rhett debuted that track during his second Saturday Night Live performance slot; press play above to hear it.
"Watch me set this night on fire," Rhett sings in the new track's chorus. "Baby, you know I love a party / Don't threaten me with a good time."
Rhett is the latest in a long string of country artists who have performed on Saturday Night Live. Most recently, folk-rock band Mumford & Sons were the musical guests during a December episode, though Chris Stapleton, Margo Price and more have all appeared on the show as well. Comedian and actor John Mulaney, formerly an SNL writer, hosted Saturday night's episode.
Thomas Rhett Debuts "Look What God Gave Her" on Saturday Night Live
Thomas Rhett's Best Live Shots
NEXT: Top 5 Thomas Rhett Songs
Source: Thomas Rhett Debuts Two New Songs on ‘Saturday Night Live’ [WATCH]
Categories: Arts & Culture, Celebrity News, Daily Distraction, Music, TV
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@laur_akins
A post shared by ThomasRhettAkins (@thomasrhettakins) on Mar 2, 2019 at 7:11pm PST
Thomas Rhett Gets a Little Help From His Wife on ‘Saturday Night Live’
Wendy Hermanson
When Thomas Rhett made his debut on Saturday Night Live March 2, he not only performed a song written about his wife, Lauren (his new single "Look What God Gave Her"), he also enlisted her to help him out with the performance.
As the singer charmingly alluded on social media, Lauren was right there with him in New York City, and apparently was tasked with the important job of holding his cue card—as evidenced by the photo he shared on Instagram. The young pair are one of country music's most beloved and tight-knit couples, and the photo was met with many adoring comments from fans.
Rhett, who belied any nervousness at taking the famed stage for the first time, was introduced by SNL's host for the evening John Mulaney, and treated the audience to a rendition of both the single and a brand-new song, "Don't Threaten Me With a Good Time."
Rhett's upcoming fourth studio album, Center Point Road, is set for release on May 31. He'll head out on the road that same month for his U.S. 2019 Very Hot Summer Tour, kicking off May 17 and featuring special guests Rhett Akins (aka his dad!), Dustin Lynch and Russell Dickerson. It's probably a safe bet his cue-card-rockin' better half, along with their two young daughters, will be accompanying him on at least some of the dates. The tour will run through October.
Country Tours Hitting the Road in 2019
Source: Thomas Rhett Gets a Little Help From His Wife on ‘Saturday Night Live’
Categories: Arts & Culture, Celebrity News, Daily Distraction, Taste Of Country, TV
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Home > 100 Most-Expensive Sales
100 Newest Listings | 100 Recent Sales | 100 Pending Sales | 100 Most-Expensive Listings | 100 Most-Expensive Sales
Most Expensive Condo and Home Sales
What Are Miami's Highest Condo and Home Sales? We've put a list together of the most expensive condo sales in and around Miami and South Beach.
Source: Southeast Florida MLS
Show me property listings between
Aventura/Sunny Isles
Hallandale/Hollywood
Mid-Beach
Sold $/m²
Bd/Bth
Sold,By,BHS Faena House PHB $50,000,000 $60,000,000 $51,601 8/5/2 12516 sf/1,162.8 m² 9/21/2015
Palazzo Del Sol New Const PH 2 $35,000,000 $31,261,544 $34,637 7/7/1 9715 sf/902.6 m² 5/4/2017
Continuum 3603/4 $29,900,000 $27,500,000 $35,971 7/6/1 8229 sf/764.5 m² 12/17/2014
Sold,By,BHS Setai PHV-B $36,000,000 $27,000,000 $40,893 4/4/2 7107 sf/660.3 m² 1/14/2013
321 Ocean Condominium PH $35,000,000 $26,000,000 $41,114 5/5/2 6807 sf/632.4 m² 5/11/2018
Porsche Design Tower 5601 $32,500,000 $25,000,000 n/a 5/7/1 n/a 3/31/2017
Continuum South Tower PH-1 $25,000,000 $25,000,000 $36,493 5/7/1 7374 sf/685.1 m² 5/17/2012
Sold,By,BHS Setai PH-A $27,000,000 $21,500,000 $37,272 3/2/1 6209 sf/576.8 m² 12/8/2011
Palazzo Del Sol New Const PH 3 $27,189,200 $21,500,000 $34,832 4/4/1 6644 sf/617.2 m² 5/10/2016
L'atelier PH $25,000,000 $21,000,000 $28,451 6/7/1 7945 sf/738.1 m² 2/7/2019
Icon South Beach PH2 $19,000,000 $20,963,054 $28,230 4/6/1 7993 sf/742.6 m² 12/31/2012
Jade Signature 5503 $22,320,000 $18,500,000 $21,685 5/7/1 9183 sf/853.1 m² 1/25/2019
Fendi Chateau PH-02 $25,000,000 $18,500,000 $26,590 4/7/1 7489 sf/695.8 m² 3/12/2018
Edition Residences PH-1 $17,500,000 $17,500,000 $40,976 4/4/2 4597 sf/427.1 m² 12/3/2014
Mansions At Acqualina PH45 $18,000,000 $17,000,000 n/a 4/6/1 n/a 2/28/2018
Edition Residences PH2 $16,500,000 $16,500,000 $33,855 4/4/2 5246 sf/487.4 m² 12/3/2014
Palazzo Del Sol New Const 7053 $19,700,000 $16,500,000 $18,075 7/7/1 9826 sf/912.9 m² 12/1/2017
Apogee PH-04 $16,500,000 $16,500,000 $25,725 4/5/1 6904 sf/641.4 m² 9/6/2008
Continuum On South Beach PH 1 $17,000,000 $16,200,000 $27,418 5/5/1 6360 sf/590.9 m² 2/10/2012
The Setai 3307 $22,500,000 $16,150,000 $32,192 4/4/2 5400 sf/501.7 m² 4/13/2015
Continuum PH-3 $19,500,000 $15,750,000 $36,372 3/3/2 4661 sf/433.0 m² 6/1/2012
Continuum On South Beach 801 $19,800,000 $15,300,000 $22,760 6/7/2 7236 sf/672.2 m² 11/30/2016
Icon South Beach PH1 $16,000,000 $15,000,000 $16,413 6/10/0 9837 sf/913.9 m² 6/7/2013
Setai B $20,000,000 $15,000,000 $26,008 4/4/0 6208 sf/576.7 m² 6/4/2010
Oceana Key Biscayne PH01N $21,000,000 $15,000,000 $19,566 5/7/2 8252 sf/766.6 m² 5/14/2018
Ocean House PH 702 $16,900,000 $15,000,000 $38,663 4/5/1 4176 sf/388.0 m² 5/30/2013
Apogee PH-01 $15,000,000 $15,000,000 $23,853 4/5/1 6769 sf/628.9 m² 2/28/2008
Apogee Condo 2104 $17,900,000 $14,800,000 $38,350 3/4/1 4154 sf/385.9 m² 3/1/2018
Bayview One 4811 & $15,000,000 $14,556,611 $19,537 5/5/2 8020 sf/745.1 m² 8/6/2018
Palazzo Del Sol 7091 $16,500,000 $14,500,000 $20,456 5/5/1 7630 sf/708.9 m² 4/18/2019
Oceana Bal Harbour UPH02E $14,490,000 $14,490,000 n/a 3/6/1 n/a 3/3/2017
Edition Residences 1407 $14,000,000 $14,000,000 $34,210 3/3/3 4405 sf/409.2 m² 12/3/2014
Beach House 8 . $14,400,000 $14,000,000 $28,748 4/4/0 5242 sf/487.0 m² 6/3/2016
Bristol Tower 4000 $16,900,000 $13,950,000 $16,537 5/6/1 9080 sf/843.6 m² 3/21/2007
Bay View 5161 $14,750,000 $13,750,000 $22,572 5/5/1 6557 sf/609.2 m² 4/9/2015
Continuum On South Beach 3803 $15,500,000 $13,750,000 $29,313 4/4/1 5049 sf/469.1 m² 1/16/2018
Faena House 11-BD $10,700,000 $13,503,500 $26,563 5/7/1 5472 sf/508.4 m² 9/18/2015
Sold,By,BHS 1 Hotel & Homes PH-161 $16,000,000 $13,500,000 n/a 4/5/1 n/a 11/1/2018
Sold,By,BHS Oceana Bal Harbour UPH-W $13,136,000 $13,136,000 $27,280 3/4/1 5183 sf/481.5 m² 2/28/2017
Beach House 400/50 $13,125,000 $13,125,000 $18,673 4/4/0 7566 sf/702.9 m² 6/22/2016
Continuum North Tower 3301-3 $14,500,000 $13,000,000 $28,366 3/3/1 4933 sf/458.3 m² 6/20/2013
Faena House 6-A $14,500,000 $13,000,000 $29,646 5/6/1 4720 sf/438.5 m² 12/28/2017
Continuum South Tower 1106/7 $15,975,000 $13,000,000 $31,962 5/5/1 4378 sf/406.7 m² 5/29/2019
Oceana Key Biscayne PH02N $16,990,000 $13,000,000 $18,373 5/7/2 7616 sf/707.5 m² 5/7/2018
Palazzo Del Sol New Const 7085 $14,634,950 $13,000,000 $18,340 5/5/2 7630 sf/708.9 m² 5/14/2018
Fontainebleau PH-S $12,500,000 $12,500,000 $29,900 4/5/1 4500 sf/418.1 m² 4/14/2008
Oceanside 7612 $14,500,000 $12,500,000 $19,221 7/7/0 7000 sf/650.3 m² 1/28/2014
Faena House 9A $16,500,000 $12,500,000 $28,446 5/6/1 4730 sf/439.4 m² 1/12/2017
Apogee South Beach 2104 $13,950,000 $12,400,000 $32,131 3/4/1 4154 sf/385.9 m² 6/28/2013
Villa Del Mare 7274 $15,500,000 $12,360,000 $14,949 5/6/0 8900 sf/826.8 m² 2/15/2008
One Bal Harbour 2604 $14,500,000 $12,275,000 $16,985 6/6/1 7779 sf/722.7 m² 6/29/2016
Sold,By,BHS Ocean House BH203 $15,000,000 $12,150,000 $19,815 5/7/1 6600 sf/613.2 m² 3/6/2015
Apogee Condominium 1004 $13,995,000 $12,000,000 $31,095 3/3/1 4154 sf/385.9 m² 2/28/2018
Sold,By,BHS Setai 3509 $15,000,000 $12,000,000 $51,236 3/3/0 2521 sf/234.2 m² 5/21/2014
Oceanside Fisher Island 7882 $16,600,000 $12,000,000 $20,935 5/5/1 6170 sf/573.2 m² 6/29/2018
Sold,By,BHS 1500 Ocean Drive T8 $18,500,000 $12,000,000 $10,818 6/9/0 11940 sf/1,109.3 m² 9/10/2007
Acqualina PH4501 $12,500,000 $11,600,000 $19,632 5/6/1 6360 sf/590.9 m² 7/15/2013
Apogee PHA $14,000,000 $11,500,000 $18,063 6/7/1 6853 sf/636.7 m² 4/14/2011
1 Hotel & Homes PH-160 $14,000,000 $11,500,000 $34,800 3/3/1 3557 sf/330.5 m² 9/6/2018
Oceanside Fisher Island 7214 $11,750,000 $11,325,000 $21,768 4/4/1 5600 sf/520.3 m² 7/9/2015
Apogee South Beach 1201 $11,990,000 $11,300,000 $29,281 4/3/1 4154 sf/385.9 m² 2/8/2019
Bayview At Fisher Island 5282 $12,999,000 $11,290,000 $17,884 5/5/1 6795 sf/631.3 m² 7/7/2016
Continuum On South Beach 3007 $11,600,000 $11,200,000 $30,109 3/3/1 4004 sf/372.0 m² 1/4/2019
Continuum On South Beach PH 2 $14,515,000 $11,000,000 $17,005 5/5/1 6963 sf/646.9 m² 12/28/2012
Oceana Key Biscayne LPH4N $12,500,000 $11,000,000 $29,832 5/6/1 3969 sf/368.7 m² 11/16/2018
Continuum South Tower 1804/5 $12,700,000 $11,000,000 $22,942 4/5/1 5161 sf/479.5 m² 1/9/2015
Portofino Tower PH-3 $13,750,000 $11,000,000 $20,846 4/5/1 5680 sf/527.7 m² 12/29/2015
Sold,By,BHS Santamaria 4901 $12,900,000 $11,000,000 $11,840 3/5/0 10000 sf/929.0 m² 5/21/2010
Bayview 5162 $11,400,000 $10,950,000 $17,975 5/6/0 6557 sf/609.2 m² 10/7/2014
St. Regis 270203 $12,000,000 $10,800,000 $16,976 6/6/2 6848 sf/636.2 m² 5/10/2013
Setai Resort & Residences 3601 $11,900,000 $10,800,000 $32,728 5/5/0 3552 sf/330.0 m² 3/13/2014
Palazzo Del Sol New Const 7064 $11,250,000 $10,704,944 $23,250 4/4/1 4956 sf/460.4 m² 4/8/2016
Regalia 23 $11,500,000 $10,700,000 $20,884 4/5/1 5515 sf/512.4 m² 5/30/2014
Continuum South Tower 3604-3 $13,500,000 $10,576,000 $17,682 4/4/1 6438 sf/598.1 m² 5/10/2011
Apogee South Beach 1504 $12,900,000 $10,500,000 $27,208 3/3/1 4154 sf/385.9 m² 12/21/2012
Continuum South 1606/0 $14,000,000 $10,500,000 $25,816 4/4/1 4378 sf/406.7 m² 10/27/2016
Fisher Island 7192 $12,500,000 $10,260,000 $15,721 6/5/1 7025 sf/652.6 m² 4/13/2018
W South Beach PH $13,000,000 $10,200,000 $37,703 3/3/0 2912 sf/270.5 m² 6/12/2017
Regalia 37 $10,950,000 $10,100,000 $19,713 4/5/1 5515 sf/512.4 m² 2/7/2017
Bayview 5261 $11,499,000 $10,000,000 $16,637 5/6/1 6470 sf/601.1 m² 7/19/2018
Porsche Design Tower 5205 $13,975,000 $10,000,000 $17,585 4/5/1 6121 sf/568.7 m² 5/6/2019
Surf Club S-309 $10,950,000 $9,950,000 $21,403 4/5/1 5004 sf/464.9 m² 6/28/2019
Continumm On South Beach PH-1 $14,950,000 $9,900,000 $14,451 5/7/1 7374 sf/685.1 m² 5/15/2009
Bayview 5171 $12,900,000 $9,850,000 $13,380 6/6/1 7924 sf/736.2 m² 5/1/2013
Regalia 31 $10,500,000 $9,800,000 $19,127 4/5/1 5515 sf/512.4 m² 5/5/2017
Regalia 40 $10,200,000 $9,700,000 $18,932 4/5/1 5515 sf/512.4 m² 11/11/2015
Continuum South Beach 2904 $9,995,000 $9,600,000 $34,618 3/3/1 2985 sf/277.3 m² 12/31/2014
Apogee 1101 $9,800,000 $9,550,000 $24,746 4/3/1 4154 sf/385.9 m² 9/9/2013
Setai Condo PH-VC $11,000,000 $9,525,000 $28,711 3/3/1 3571 sf/331.8 m² 5/25/2018
Sold,By,BHS Continuum On South Beach 2601 $9,051,000 $9,500,000 $29,580 3/4/1 3457 sf/321.2 m² 3/28/2014
Fisher Island 7832 $9,200,000 $9,500,000 $22,278 3/3/1 4590 sf/426.4 m² 5/15/2014
Sold,By,BHS Oceana Bal Harbour 1801S $9,400,000 $9,400,000 $24,177 3/4/1 4185 sf/388.8 m² 1/31/2017
S Short Sales Properties for sale for less than what is owed to the bank. Learn More
F Foreclosures Properties foreclosed and now bank-owned. Learn More
The MLS data provided above represents properties in the following zip codes: 33139, 33140, 33154, 33133, 33141. Source: Southeast Florida MLS. Data updated 7/15/2019. Information is deemed reliable but not guaranteed. Copyright ©2019. The listing data on this page comes in part from the Internet Data Exchange (IDX), a collaboration between the following REALTOR(R) associations in the South Florida Multiple Listing Service (MLS): Realtor Association of Greater Miami and the Beaches, Realtor Association of Greater Ft. Lauderdale, Realtor Association of Miami-Dade County, Northwestern Dade Association of Realtors, South Broward Board of Realtors. All rights reserved. The information being provided is for consumers' personal, non-commercial use and may not be used for any purpose other than to identify prospective properties consumers may be interested in purchasing. Use of search facilities of data on the site, other than a consumer looking to purchase real estate, is prohibited. Federal law prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, handicap, familial status or national origin in the sale, rental or financing of housing.
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Cristina VeeBecky2018-10-13T17:29:29+00:00
CRISTINA VEE
Cristina “Vee” Valenzuela is an American voice over actor, singer, producer, and director. She’s known for her work in anime as Homura Akemi in Madoka Magica, Sailor Mars in Sailor Moon, Mio Akiyama in K-ON!, Kotori Minami in Love Live!, Hawk in The Seven Deadly Sins, Meiko Mochizuki in Digimon Adventure Tri, Riruka Dokugamine in Bleach, Velvet Crowe in Tales of Zestiria the X, Killua Zoldyck in Hunter x Hunter, Morgiana in Magi, various Pokemon and trainers in Pokemon Black and White, Pokemon Origins, and Pokemon Generations. She can also be heard in Naruto, One Piece, Kill la Kill, One-Punch Man, Tiger & Bunny, Durarara x2!!, AJIN, Knights of Sidonia, among others.
She is the voice of Sakura Matou across the Fate series and is the central character in the Fate/stay night [Heaven’s Feel] movies.
She is currently voicing Ladybug in Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Cat Noir airing on Nickelodeon and Disney Channel, Jay Ten and Little Voice in Steven Universe, and – in the past – provided the English speaking voice for Disney’s Violetta.
In video games, she voiced Velvet Crowe in Tales of Berseria, Noel Vermillion and her clones in the Blazblue series, Z0-0M in Star Wars: The Old Republic, Kamala Khan/Ms. Marvel in Marvel Pinball: Women of Power, Enero in Street Fighter V, Cinque in Final Fantasy Type-0, Riven in League of Legends, Compa in the Hyperdimension Neptunia series, Nova in Tales of Xillia 2, Cerebella in Skullgirls, and Shantae in the Shantae series.
She is also known for her YouTube channel where her videos have amassed over 20 million views and for casting and directing Skullgirls. You can hear her narrate Disney’s Zootopia books and podcasts and as the female narrator in the Kizumonogatari audiobook. She cast the English language version of Skip Beat and is producing the voice over for Lab Zero’s upcoming game, Indivisible.
Cristina will appear on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. She will conduct free and paid autograph sessions each day and appear on select panels. Cristina will be part of the Fate/stay night [Heaven’s Feel] Special Event featuring Aimer and free Fate cast autograph signing. Her full schedule will appear here closer to Anime NYC.
Twitter | Instagram | YouTube
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THE AMERICAN LEGION PREAMBLE
"For God and Country, we associate ourselves together for the following purposes: To uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States of America; to maintain law and order; to foster and perpetuate a 100-percent Americanism; to preserve the memories and incidents of our associations in the great wars; to inculcate a sense of individual obligation to the community, state and nation; to combat the autocracy of both the classes and the masses; to make right the master of might; to promote peace and good will on earth; to safeguard and transmit to posterity the principles of justice, freedom and democracy; to consecrate and sanctify our comradeship by our devotion to mutual helpfulness."
Each of the 10 clauses of the Preamble, though brief, has a world of meaning.
FOR GOD AND COUNTRY, WE ASSOCIATE OURSELVES TOGETHER...
This is the introduction. It declares that The American Legion recognizes the influence of Almighty God in all worthwhile endeavors-and declares the allegiance of Legionnaires to both God and Nation. First things have been put first. All that follows is in conformity.
TO UPHOLD AND DEFEND THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA...
The Constitution of the United States is the written bulwark of our free way of life and representative government. It is our guarantee of liberty, freedom, justice and democracy. Members of The American Legion bore arms-went to wars-to defend and uphold this document of freedom.
TO MAINTAIN LAW AND ORDER...
Without law and order, liberty would become license. Law and order protect our pursuit of happiness, one of our God-given rights. Members of The American Legion served in wars to uphold law and order among nations. It is just as important to maintain the due processes of law in our domestic affairs. It binds Legionnaires to obey the laws of the land and to support the constituted authorities in enforcing those laws. It means the citizen must never take the law into his own hands!
TO FOSTER AND PERPETUATE A 100 PERCENT AMERICANISM...
Americanism is the gist of the American ideals of freedom, justice, individual rights and unfenced-in opportunities. It embraces all the freedoms we cherish and all the rights that are guaranteed to us. It is the very opposite of hatred, bigotry and intolerance. Americanism is the creed that has blazed the world-wide trail for justice, fair play, decency, belief in God, private enterprise, universal education, and progress in all human endeavors. It puts a premium on the virtues of loyalty, patriotism, hard work and thrift.
TO PRESERVE THE MEMORIES AND INCIDENTS OF OUR ASSOCIATIONS IN THE GREAT WARS...
Service in defense of America is the greatest experience in the lifetimes of all veterans. Recalling the highlights of that service means more than flashbacks to tense moments of excitement and danger in battle, the grime of muddy trenches, the perils of sub-infested oceans, the combats in the wild blue yonder. It means also the un-erasable recollection of the comradeship, the bravery of pals, the teamwork, the sacrifices, the miseries and hardships of military campaigns shared in common. It means the bond that binds all ex-servicemen and women together in mutual affection, respect and gratitude. It also means keeping green forever the memories of the supreme sacrifices of gallant American patriots, sacrifices necessary to the winnings of wars. It means faithful annual observance of Memorial Day and Veterans Day.
TO INCULCATE A SENSE OF INDIVIDUAL OBLIGATION TO THE COMMUNITY, STATE AND NATION...
Always interested in building a better nation, the founders of The American Legion believed that such building must start first with the individual in his own community. So they made it one of the cardinal principles of The American legion to inculcate that sense of personal obligation to the community, state and nation into the individual citizen. That means educating the citizen-young, old and future-in his and her responsibility to be active in making the hometown a better place in which to live, in discharging the duty of voting in elections, in paying taxes promptly, in contributing to community chest funds and to blood banks. The word "inculcate" means "to impress by frequent admonitions" and "to enforce by frequent repetitions." Like the duties themselves, the reminders that they remain to be carried forward, are never finished.
TO COMBAT THE AUTOCRACY OF CLASSES AND MASSES...
This clause places the Legionnaire on the side of right in opposing autocracy by either class or mass when this threatens. In a democracy such as ours, composed as it is of all nationalities, races, creeds and economic groups, there are bound to both classes and masses. Indeed, the masses are composed of classes-but all groups within the mass must feel assured that in this nation, reason and fairness will prevail in all human activities and relations. There must be no hyphenated Americans-just Americans all.
TO MAKE RIGHT THE MASTER OF MIGHT...
All wars from the veterans of which The American Legion draws its membership were started by dictators who wanted their might to be the right. If human freedom is not to perish from the earth, right must always be master of might. The rights of small nations must be protected against the tyranny that powerful neighbors may seek to impose on them-just as the rights of minorities in our society must be protected and respected. Our belief in enthroning right over might is the main essence of our ideological conflict with Communism today. Legionnaires are pledged by this clause always to stand with the right, protect the weak and preserve the liberties of the individual. This concept is the basis of The American Legion's continued advocacy of a strong national preparedness so as to achieve the ideal situation that right will be backed by adequate might.
TO PROMOTE PEACE AND GOOD WILL ON EARTH...
Until all the world becomes a good neighborhood, Legionnaires must continue the effort to promote peace and good will on earth. It is in pursuance of this founding ideal that The American Legion has supported from the beginning and seek to strengthen the United Nations organization. Obliquely, The American Legion also contributes to this ideal by firmly supporting a strong national defense to discourage breaking of the peace by aggressor.
TO SAFEGUARD AND TRANSMIT TO POSTERITY THE PRINCIPLES OF JUSTICE, FREEDOM AND DEMOCRACY...
On this ideal of safeguarding and transmitting to posterity the principles of justice, freedom and democracy, all of the youth-training programs of The American Legion are built. All Americans can be proud that in our international relations we have tried to live by the golden rule, the mark of justice. We have granted to others, as we prize it ourselves, the great boon of freedom. Through the Monroe Doctrine, we call a halt to foreign imperialism in the Western Hemisphere. We gave freedom to the Philippines. These principles are part of the American heritage. Legionnaires are pledged to protect and preserve that heritage.
TO CONSECRATE AND SANCTIFY OUR COMRADESHIP BY OUR DEVOTION TO MUTUAL HELPFULNESS...
The last or 10th clause of our Preamble is the most important ideal expressed in our Preamble. It marked a new concept in America-a concept that made The American Legion the greatest force for social betterment in all the history of the United States. Let us be factual and examine this.
At the close of World War I, America was just emerging from its lusty era of rugged individualism. It was an era when the individual hammered out his own destiny and progress with little or no help from the government. An honest facing of the facts brings out that American society was then a cold society insofar as any organized public hands of helpfulness were concerned. The individual who fell upon evil times was left to private charity which meant mostly the churches and the Salvation Army. There were no public resources or services to help the unfortunates.
When the veterans of World War I came marching home, they found the nation utterly unprepared to care for the combat casualties of the war. The wounded, the shell-shocked and the sick were lodged in poor houses, jails, asylums or what-have-you.
Veterans of World War I were much more closely knit than those of World War II. They trained in the same camps, fought on the one great front. Those who came home unscarred were appalled by the plight of their less fortunate comrades. They felt a concern for them and their dependents which was a new and dramatic action aspect to what the country had known as friendship. This concern formed the bond among the charter members of The American Legion and gave them a great and noble cause to fight for-the adequate care and protection of their disabled comrades and dependents, the war widows and orphans.
They faced a monumental task. Laws had to be drafted and enacted by the Congress to provide compensation for the war-handicapped, to build hospitals and to get protection for the widows and orphans upon whom the war has laid its heaviest and cruelest hand. The American Legion wrote such laws, had them introduced in the Congress, went out over the land to arouse the conscience of the people of America and mobilize support for its legislative aims. It did both with a sacrificial fervor that overcame all obstacles.
The Congress enacted the laws, it provided the administrative machinery, it appropriated the funds, it built hospitals. Then to bring about a single responsibility for the carrying out of all veteran laws and to achieve a unification of these government services, The American Legion put through Congress the legislation to create the Veterans Bureau which has become the Veterans Administration of today.
Over the years, a great network of government hospitals was built and a great structure of veteran legislation enacted which made the American veterans the best cared for on earth. The rehabilitation program of The American Legion for the World War I veteran brought about in its successful development a great awakening of social responsibility in America. When the New Deal Program was being developed, the government planners took a look at what The American Legion, through its vast rehabilitation program, had done for the veteran of World War I and they decided to do the same thing for all American people.
So out of the rehabilitation brain child of The American Legion, there came the Social Security System with its retirement benefits and old age assistance programs for all the people. The planners took a look at The American Legion program of temporary emergency aid to needy children of veterans and there was born-with the support of Legionnaires-the state and federal program of aid to dependent children-all children. This is how we can hail The American Legion today as an unparalleled force in these United States for social betterment. American Legion concepts and its ideal of devotion to mutual helpfulness warmed up the whole social climate of America. Today, America is extending its helpful hands all over the world through our assistance programs of foreign aid. It all came about because the veterans of World War I came home enriched with wonderful ties of friendship and gave those ties a meaning by consecrating them to the ideal of mutual helpfulness. The American Legion Preamble has been the beacon light of The American Legion for more than 90 years. It has been amended only once in all that time. That amendment consisted of adding the letter "S" to the word "war." It makes the Preamble read today "Great Wars," so as to embrace all wars.
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Garcia joins illustrious list of Spanish winners at Omega Dubai Desert Classic
By egor Tuesday, 21 March 2017 5:35 PM
Sergio Garcia added another glorious chapter to an already rich history of Spanish winners at the Omega Dubai Desert Classic with a commanding wire-to-wire victory at victory at Emirates Golf Club on a sunny Sunday. Starting the final round three shots in front, Garcia barely took his foot off the pedal all day, closing with a 69 for an impressive total of 19-under to beat his nearest challenger and The Open champion Henrik Stenson by a good three shots.
With back-to-back birdies on the 13th and 14th Stenson applied some pressure, but the 37-year-old held his nerve, producing a stunning tee-shot on the 15th and a brilliant up-and-down on the next to ease to victory.
With this victory, his 12th on the European Tour and first in two years, Garcia continued a great Spanish run of success in the ‘Major of the Middle East,’ inscribing his name on the iconic Dallah alongside the great Seve Ballesteroes (1992), Jose Maria Olazabal (1998), Miguel Angel Jimenez (2010), Alvaro Quiros (2011) and Rafa Cabrera Bello in 2012.
“I'm very happy to play the way I played. The way I handled some of the key moments and to beat Henrik, we all now how great a player he is,” said Garcia after receiving the winner’s trophy from His Highness Shaikh Ahmed bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, President of the UAE National Olympic Committee.
"Even on the 18th with a four-shot lead I knew that I needed to hit a good third shot because you can mess it up a little bit there if you're not careful,” said Garcia, who is also an OMEGA brand ambassador.
"Henrik is always there so you've got to stay calm and collected with him. It's a great start to the year so we're going to try to keep going the same way," said Garcia who was making his eighth appearance in Dubai.
Stenson felt event though he didn’t quite play to his best, he still managed to narrow the gap.
"I was three shots back at the start of the day and Sergio made an early birdie so I was trailing all day, I was expecting that. I still managed to sneak a couple of birdies in there in the middle of the back nine and move closer,” said Swede, who finished tied eighth in Abu Dhabi two weeks ago.
“You've got to push when you're behind and we got the wind slightly wrong there on 15. I over-hit it a little bit at the same time. That's obviously where it all kind of finished.
“At the same time, Sergio hit a lovely shot to about two and a half feet and it was pretty much game, set and match on the 15th green. I'm just working away on my game, trying to move all the positions forward and the time when we want to be peaking is obviously early April. So that's what we're working towards and it's good, steady progress."
Denmark’s Jensen Lasse, who missed his first four cuts of the season, carded a final round 65 to share third with England’s Tyrrell Hatton, who made it seven top 25s in a row with a closing 67 that contained six birdies and a bogey.
Fellow Englishman Fitzpatrick also signed for a 67 despite a double-bogey on the eighth, while American Uihlein carded a closing 69.
South African duo George Coetzee and Brandon Stone were at 11 under, a shot clear of two-time champion Stephen Gallacher and Swede Magnus A Carlsson.
Meanwhile, MENA Golf Tour prodigy Rayhan Thomas finished in a tie for 60th place on three over after closing with a 74, but retuned home richer in experience despite forgoing € 7,014 in winnings because of his amateur status.
The Omega Dubai Desert Classic is backed by OMEGA as the title sponsor and Emirates Global Aluminium PJSC as sponsor. The co-sponsors are: CNN, Drydocks World, Emirates NBD, Gulf News, JA Resorts & Hotels, Mercedes-Benz and wasl, while Dubai Duty Free, Neocasa Interiors and Motivate Publishing are the Patrons in golf in DUBAi's drive to showcase the emirate's vibrant golfing scene to a worldwide audience.
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Shyanne Beatty – Raven Whirlwind
July 8, 2013 August 20, 2015 Angela Gonzalez
Shyanne Beatty. Photo courtesy of Koahnic Broadcast Corporation
Shyanne Beatty is Hän Gwich’in Athabascan who grew up in Eagle, Alaska. Her Dena’ina Athabascan friend, Steve Hobson of Nondalton, gave her the name of Chulyin Ch’ivaya. It means Raven Whirlwind. She laughs and says he gave her the name because she likes shiny things, is mischief like a raven and she comes in and out of a room like a whirlwind.
I worked with Shyanne at Koahnic Broadcast Corporation for a number of years and she certainly has a larger than life personality. She is currently the Network Manager for NV1 (Native Voice One) which is a national distribution of Native American radio programs. Shyanne believes her subsistence lifestyle growing up in the village made her a well-rounded person and made her appreciate the small things in life, like running water, electricity and not having to get up in the middle of night to put wood in the fire.
Shyanne Beatty in front of her gel acrylic art piece at the Alaska Native Arts Foundation. It is entitled “Weneydey” – Han Gwich’in Athabascan for “I Remember Her”. It is in memory of Helen Simeonoff, and you can see Helen’s work portrayed in Shyanne’s piece. Photo by Angela Gonzalez
I am always struck by her talents, including being an on-air personality, producer, emcee, singer, cultural ambassador, leader and an artist. I often wonder how she manages to be all of those things. Shyanne lives her passions of music, culture, language and tradition. Her talents, mixed with her passions, take many different forms and she is constantly evolving.
I’ve always admired Shyanne’s voice and how she uses it. If you know or have ever met Shyanne, she has a very vivacious and outgoing personality, which was perfect for radio. Many KNBA and Native radio station listeners across the US have come to know Shyanne when she was the host and producer of Earthsongs, which was the first national radio show to be broadcast out of Alaska. It is a one hour program that features contemporary Indigenous music with artist interviews.
Shyanne’s biggest challenge when producing Earthsongs was being based in Alaska. It was difficult to make connections with Indigenous musicians in the Lower 48. Being isolated in Alaska made it difficult to keep up with musicians and to market the show. There were very few national Indigenous artists who were coming to Alaska on a regular basis, but she managed to make it work through her networking skills and making the most of every opportunity she had to network at industry events. Shyanne made friends with other producers from other National Federation of Community Broadcasters stations. She relied on advice from them, plus her mentors, including Lori Townsend of the Alaska Public Media and Dixie Hutchinson who is the former News Director of KNBA. She would learn how to make her show better by asking what listeners liked about Earthsongs and what they’d like to see in the future.
Shyanne has also been heavily involved in the Alaska Native Heritage Month Committee, and currently serves as the President of the ANHM Board. She helped to start the Alaska Native Visionary Awards in hopes of recognizing people who perpetuate their culture and traditions in new and innovative ways. Shyanne says that she wanted to show young adults that instead of learning about their culture, traditions and language in the commonly known traditional methods, which sometimes is not appealing to the younger generation, they could use new methods like video, audio, and other digital formats to perpetuate their Alaska Native culture, traditions and language. The Alaska Native Visionary Awards aims to recognize and honor Alaskan Natives who are perpetuating and preserving culture through artistic and visionary ventures such as film, photography, music, visual and literary art, performance art and so much more.
Shyanne as a young child. Courtesy photo
At a conference one year, Shyanne was asking American Indian students who were attending a Johnson O’Malley conference if they would ever pursue a career in media and was shocked to hear that they would not. She asked why, and one young lady said, “Because I don’t’ see anyone on TV who looks like me or hear anyone on the radio who sounds like me.” That was a huge blow for Shyanne and that incident pushed her to do the work she has done throughout her career. According to Shyanne, American Indian and Alaska Native media professionals make up less than 1% of all of the media professionals in the US. She encourages and mentors others to get involved in the media and spread their Indigenous voices across not only the country but the world.
Although Shyanne pushes young people toward media careers, she says they have opportunities right at their fingertips, including:
Using your iPad or iPod to do digital storytelling
Volunteering at your local radio station
People can start by simply telling their own stories in the many different ways mentioned above. Shyanne says, “Be yourself and talk about things that you are interested in.” Shyanne always infuses culture in radio in whatever she does. Shyanne tells people they can tell stories about their culture, traditions and language without a radio or TV station. Using social media tools these days, you have your own form of broadcasting right at your fingertips.
When speaking about confidence, Shyanne says that it is all a process. Your confidence grows as your education grows. You learn different things through the process and that’s how you build your confidence and how you become more focused. When you first start out it can all seem overwhelming. You might not know where you want to go but as you start learning you can see a more clearly defined path that you want to take. Shyanne’s advice is to find things you love and it will help you focus more on the things your passionate about.
Shyanne says Native people who live and share their own experiences can make a bigger impact. She says that is one of the reasons why Koahnic Broadcast Corporation started in the first place. Media often portrayed Alaska Native people in a very negative way. It was very disheartening that people only saw these negative stereotypes and it made it very difficult for Alaska Natives to have pride in themselves. Koahnic wanted to change that by celebrating and showcasing the positive and amazing things that were happening in various Alaska Native communities, especially the biggest village – Anchorage.
“That’s why we have our own Native voice. Who is going to tell the stories that impact us better than us? Nobody can tell our stories like we can.” – Shyanne Beatty
Shyanne’s professional and volunteer work has to align with her personal passions. According to Shyanne, the Alaska Native Heritage Month (ANHM) would like to be a clearing house to help anyone be able to educate, promote, and perpetuate their cultures, traditions and language. She also volunteers for the Athabascan Cultural Advisory Committee and Salmonstock.
“Music, culture, language and tradition – that’s my passion, my life, what’s important to me. If money was important to me, I wouldn’t volunteer for anything. That’s not my focus.” – Shyanne Beatty
Shyanne sees many people who are struggling with their identity partially because their parents were discouraged to practice their culture, language and traditions when they were growing up. Shyanne has made it her personal mission to carry on her own culture but also to encourage others to do the same.
In the past year, Shyanne has focused more on being healthy and fit. In her younger years, she wasn’t educated on the importance of living a healthy lifestyle. Since she got married, health became more important to her. She has lost 40 pounds since beginning and has learned that a healthy mind, body and spirit radiates to your passions. She says, “You are more powerful to attain the goals you are pursuing.” Some people don’t recognize her and some tell her, “Marriage looks good on you.”
Shyanne married Aaron Leggett in 2011 in Eagle, Alaska. Courtesy photo
Shyanne is happily married to Aaron Leggett who is Dena’ina Athabascan. According to Shyanne, his passions align with her own. Aaron’s passion for researching culture and language complements and enhances her endeavors in many ways. Shyanne recently expressed an interest in learning more about Athabascan porcupine quill work and Aaron got her a book on different aspects of quill work. Shyanne wants to learn more about her Hän Gwich’in Athabascan language but to her it seemed so overwhelming. She didn’t know where or how to start and Aaron helped her see that she can take small steps in learning her language. Aaron encouraged her to transfer existing audio tape in Hän Gwich’in from analog to digital format. He broke it down into a digestible step that she could take now, that will help her to reach her goal.
Shyanne has already made a stamp in the world through her pursuit of carrying on traditions, language and culture. I am looking forward for the future in what she will be able to accomplish next. It takes people like her to preserve our cultures and other people can do the same.
ABOUT SHYANNE BEATTY VIA KOAHNIC BROADCAST CORPORATION
Shyanne Beatty is the Network Manager for NV1 (Native Voice One) which distributes Native radio programming to radio stations throughout North America. Listeners in Southcentral Alaska also knew Shyanne as a popular local on-air personality for KNBA 90.3. Based in Anchorage, she maintains ties to her home village while coordinating urban events such as the Alaska Native Visionary Awards and the many events throughout Alaska Native Heritage Month.
Shyanne first came to Koahnic Broadcast Corporation when she won a coveted spot as a Koahnic Media Fellow in 1999, and learned the basics of news gathering and audio production. After completing the one-year Fellowship, Shyanne went on to pursue an Associate’s Degree in Audio Production from the Art Institute of Seattle.
Shyanne’s work for Koahnic has included directing the 2004 Native Media Empowerment Project. For this, she designed and constructed media training sessions for Alaska Native participants in rural locations including Barrow, Bethel, Kotzebue, St. Paul Island, Unalaska and Sitka. Shyanne also co-produced the award-winning oral history/Native language programs “Native Word of the Day” and “Stories of Our People” and the award-winning 2008 radio documentary “Coming Home: The Return of the Alutiiq Masks.”
Tagged Alaska Native, Athabascan, Hän Gwich'in, Native Radio
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War and Peace in Christian Tradition
Erik Johnson | MIT et Spiritus | Fall 2016
Image: Bon Jin Koo - UCBerkeley TAUG, Spring 2015
Peace: the hope of nations. War: the age-old destroyer. What to do and where to start? These questions tugged at my heart anew as I caught a smile from a small child in the evening markets of east Amman, Jordan, an area overflowing with refugees. My mind raced back to my baby niece, equating the due love and hopes given to both of them by their respective parents. Shouldn’t the sight of such little ones and the realization of our shared hopes and prayers push us back on a course towards peace? How can we prevent our love for those close to us from also driving us to fear the “other” and anything that might threaten what we want for them? What will it take so that the narrative of the world they come to know is not of untrust, militarization and sectarianism? Pop culture has determined that “all you need is love,”[1] and that we should “practice what we preach and turn the other cheek.”[2] As I stood there, I couldn’t help but agree. My mind blocked out all of the complexities in the struggle for peace in our world. Unfortunately, life moves past such moments and reality sets in. Violence, hatred and tribalism have been an unfortunate reality for as long as history remembers. The history of the Church is no exception. At the same time the Christian faith has at its core a message of reconciliation and peace, even and especially when confronted with suffering. So how should we as followers of Jesus think about violence, war and peace? What are some wise insights and necessary points of reflection that we, Christian or not, should take heed of when confronted with violence, war and the question of justice? As someone who is blessed to have never experienced war firsthand, I have often let my thoughts be based either on sympathetic emotions or a form of lazy cynicism that presupposes that my actions and thoughts won’t stop wars, so why bother thinking about it? Against these positions I hope to offer to the reader a historical summary of Christian thought on war, the strengths and weaknesses of modern positions towards fighting and finally some inspirational movements towards “Just Peacemaking” in the 21st century.
The New Testament Epistles
It is a commonly held belief, among Christians at least, that the Church in full was pacifist until Emperor Constantine’s conversion in 313, at which point it became helplessly infected with politics, power and violence. Along the lines of this belief, multiple pacifist and sometimes “escapist” Churches emerged in the wake of the Protestant Reformation. In reality, the early Christians, though mainly pacifist in theory and practice, still felt the tension between the hope to which they had been called to as citizens of the Kingdom of God and the reality of their ties to this sinful and hurting world, specifically the Roman empire.
It is generally accepted by historians that many Jews in the first century were steeped in apocalyptic frenzy and longings. A Jewish style apocalypse was not a set of beliefs regarding the world’s near demise, but a belief that the current world order of evil and suffering would be undone and overthrown by God’s Kingdom of peace and justice. Instead of thinking of falling rocks and flowing lava, one should think of Frodo delivering Sauron’s ring back to Mount Doom and Aragorn taking his place as King in the great city that has been freed from the shadows of Mordor. One of the most common beliefs of secular scholars about Jesus is that he, among others of his time, was a failed apocalyptic prophet— he did not overthrow the evil powers that be, the lion was still devouring the lamb, and the little child was still in danger.[3] Yet against such a reality, the early followers of Jesus stubbornly left the tomb that Sunday morning believing and preaching that death had been defeated, Evil had been subverted and God’s Kingdom of justice and peace had found its root in the mystical root of Jesse.[4]
Following the mainly oral preaching of the early Church, St. Paul is appropriately heralded as the first known man to theologize in writing what the life, death and resurrection of Jesus meant for the world. St. Paul in his letter to the Church in Colosse confidently asserts that “God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.”[5] In his letter to the Church in Rome he reminds the early believers that “the kingdom of God is not food and drink but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.”[6] Recasting the words of Jesus’s call to nonviolence he mandates:
“Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceited.
“Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord. On the contrary: “If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”[7]
In the writings of St. Peter, the first Bishop of Rome (i.e. Pope), we find a similar command to follow Jesus in the path of suffering at the expense of retaliation, with hope for peace.
“If you suffer for doing good and you endure it, this is commendable before God. To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example…When they hurled insults at him, he did not retaliate, when he suffered, he made no threats. Instead, he entrusted himself to him who judges justly….Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult, but with blessing, because to this you were called…”[8]
Apostolic and Early Church Fathers
The period after St. Paul and his fellow New Testament writers is largely known to us by the Apostolic Fathers (~70-150) and the Church Fathers (~150-700). Until the time of Constantine, it was rare, and before 170 probably never, that Christians served in the Roman legions. This should not be too surprising given that they were often an oppressed minority and their reluctance to serve could be similar to the modern day reluctance of underrepresented minorities to serve in the military of a country whose domestic and foreign policies they do not agree with. In reviewing the writings of the pre-Constantine Fathers what should stand out is “how little the subject of Christians and military service surfaces…Characteristically, they reinforce what one might expect: Christians as a social subset are known for their peaceable, contented, and conciliatory nature.”[9]
Notably, the Didache, a compilation of Christian teachings dated to about 100, opens by creating a dichotomy between “two ways, one of life and one of death,” by first stressing the words of Jesus to “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”
Justin Martyr, born in 100, interprets the going forth of the gospel from Jerusalem as the fulfillment of the Messianic vision of Isaiah 2 and the associated promise that “they shall beat their swords into plowshares…nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more,” by insisting that “we who formerly murdered one another now refrain from making war even upon our enemies, but for the sake of not telling lies or deceiving those examining us we gladly die confessing Christ.”[10]
Tatian, born in 120, emphasizes the freedom, including from the military, that he had in Christ: “I do not wish to be a king. I am not anxious to be rich. I decline military command…I am free from a mad thirst for fame.”[11]
Athenagoras, born in 133, affirms Jesus’s teaching on non-retaliation: “We have learned not to return blow for blow, nor to go to law with those who plunder and rob us, but to those who smite us on one side of the face, to offer the other side also, and to those who take away our coat to give likewise our cloak.”[12]
Irenaeus, born in 130, writes with similar convictions that pacifism is the result of Christ’s reign. “The new covenant that brings back peace and the law that gives life have gone forth over the whole earth, as the prophets said: ‘For out of Zion will go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem; and he will instruct many people; and they will break down their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks, and they will no longer learn to make war.” Irenaeus insists further that the Christian “counts no man his enemy, but all his neighbors, and therefore cannot even put forth his hand to revenge.”[13]
According to Hippolytus, born 170, no baptized believer can enter the military service without denying God.[14]
Clearly there is a unity within the early Father’s writings of their depiction of a lifestyle that is biased towards peace. Tertullian, born in 145, and Origen, born in 185, were two of the most prolific Fathers and are commonly used to argue that the early church was pacifist because of their similar arguments that Christians, being dedicated to peace, do not learn to make war.[15] Yet, they are adamant, sometimes in response to criticism, that Christians do participate in society, and that notably, they play a most important role by interceding for the army and giving their support via prayers to God. For example Tertullian asserts:
“We pray for life prolonged; for security to the empire; for protection to the imperial house; for brave armies, a faithful senate, a virtuous people, the world at rest, whatever, as man or Caesar, an emperor would wish….We pray, too, for the emperors, for their ministers and for all in authority, for the welfare of the world, for the prevalence of peace.”[16]
Origen even goes so far as to say that Christians are more effective by interceding than fighting. “And none fight better for the king than we do. We do not indeed fight under him, although he require it; but we fight on his behalf, forming a special army— an army of piety—by offering our prayers to God.”[17]
Even Clement, the bishop of Rome between 88 and his death in 99, prays
“You, Lord and Master, have given them the power of sovereignty through your excellent and unspeakable might…. Grant unto them O Lord, health, peace, concord, stability, that they may administer the government which you have given them without failure…For you, O heavenly Master, King of the ages, give to the sons of men glory and honor and power over all things that are upon the earth. Do, Lord, direct their counsel according to that which is good and well pleasing in your sight, that, administering in peace and gentleness with Godliness the power which you have given them, they may obtain your favor.”[18]
Similar petitions for the civil rulers are commonplace in the 2nd and 3rd century and are an echo of the commands of Paul and Peter to pray for the authorities.[19]
Importantly, both Tertullian and Origen acknowledge the presence of Christians in the Roman legions. In defending against criticism that Christians are a private community, separated from society because of their refusal to take part in the Roman religion, Tertullian responds saying that they renounce “neither forum, nor shambles, nor bath, nor booth, nor workshop, nor inn, nor weekly market, nor any other places of commerce. We sail with you, and fight with you, and till the ground with you…unite with you in your traffickings—even in the various arts we make public property of our works for your benefit.”[20]
Tertullian recounts a tale of a victory given to the legions of Marcus Aurelius (emperor 161-180) as they were defending against the invading Germanic tribes in the 170s. Upon seeing the enemy approaching, the Christian soldiers knelt in prayer, being answered by a great thunderbolt and rain that both drove away the enemy and brought welcomed relief to the thirsty legions. Although this is the earliest reference to Christian soldiers, according to a most likely forged account in the conclusion of Justin Martyr’s apology, Aurelius recounted that the Christians “began the battle, not by preparing weapons, nor arms, nor bugles; for such preparation is hateful to them, on account of the God they bear about in their conscience”.[21] Regardless of the veracity of the story, we gain insight on how Christian writers viewed their relation to warfare.
It must be noted that one major deterrence to Christians joining the army was the apparently mandatory sacrifices to the Roman gods and oaths of unconditional allegiance to the emperor. Along such lines Tertullian later in life argued “There is no agreement between the divine and the human sacrament, the standard of Christ and the standard of the devil, the camp of light and the camp of darkness. One soul cannot be due to two masters—God and Caesar.”[22]
Notice the change between Tertullian’s earlier stance that “[we] fight with you” to the complete incompatibility between “God and Caesar.” Tertullian became increasingly anxious of potential idolatry and his later view towards Christian soldiering should not therefore be authoritative on its own. “Because of his wholesale condemnation of civil service, literature, art, forms of dress, and signing of contracts, his opposition to military service is properly understood as part of the logic of apostasy.”[23]
Tertullian does acknowledge the important point that neither John the Baptist or Jesus explicitly called soldiers away from their position, yet he argues that Jesus did set the rule by disarming Peter in the garden and that unless “there is an immediate abandonment” of soldiering then there will be “all sorts of quibbling…in order to avoid offending God”.[24] Importantly, neither Origen nor Tertullian denied the government the moral duty of self-defense nor denied that Christians actually served in the military.
Post Constantine
The legend tells that Constantine won a major victory after having a vision of a cross and the words “In this sign, [you shall] conquer”. The Church’s role in the empire would seemingly change overnight. With vivid imagery Eusebius recounts the role reversal as the motley group of some 300 priests arrived to Nicea in 325 for the first state-sanctioned ecumenical council, some severely maimed and many injured from the great persecution under Diocletian just two decades prior.[25]
Near the end of the 4th century St. Ambrose, the bishop of Milan, excommunicated Emperor Theodosius for commanding the ruthless slaying of the guilty and potentially innocent alike in response to a rebellion in Thessaloniki. Ambrose told Theodosius to imitate David in his repentance as he had imitated him in guilt and only readmitted the emperor to the Eucharist after several months of penance. St. Augustine, building on the shoulders of his spiritual mentor St. Ambrose, is thought to be the first since the empire’s acceptance of Christianity to seriously contemplate how Christians should view and take part in the empire’s wars. Certainly St. Augustine is known as the Father of the Just War Tradition but it is appropriate to acknowledge its Greco-Roman origins in Cicero, the Melian Dialogue, and most certainly others in the past who had contemplated the justice of wars.
Augustine confidently points to the related section of the aforementioned passage of St. Paul’s letter to the Romans:
“Let every person be subject to the governing authorities; for there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists authority resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Do you wish to have no fear of the authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive its approval; for it is God’s servant for your good. But if you do what is wrong, you should be afraid, for the authority does not bear the sword in vain! It is the servant of God to execute wrath on the wrongdoer. Therefore one must be subject, not only because of wrath but also because of conscience.”[26]
Augustine exegetes that Christians should be obedient subjects to the emperor and that the government has the God-given authority to violently punish in order to keep the peace and stability. By creating a dichotomy between a Christian’s allegiance to the “city of God” and “city of Man”, Augustine thought it legitimate for a Christian to serve in the Roman legions and help defend the empire against the barbarians. As a foundation to later generations of thought, Augustine argued that potential wars must be evaluated for their justice and that Christian soldiers must fight out of love. In response to Jesus’s call to be a peacemaker, Augustine instructs: “Be a peacemaker, then, even by fighting… For War is waged in order to attain peace; [and] through your victory you must bring those whom you defeat to the advantage of peace.”[27]
The necessity of a just cause, patience forbearance and prudence before starting a war would become staple parts of the Just War Tradition known as “jus ad bellum”, or the necessary conditions before beginning a war. Although not as explicitly defined, his second criterion of fighting the enemy out of love, or with charity, is a Christianized way of understanding the second pillar of the Just War Tradition, jus in bellum, or the necessity to fight a war with justice. Although the UN has drafted rules for fighting wars, I believe more emphasis, especially for Christian soldiers and citizen contemplation, needs to be given to the status of one’s heart towards the enemy. Instead of seeing only pure evil or being driven by vengeful passions, one should practice “benevolent harshness” as Augustine would have it, patiently exercising discipline on the belligerent as a good parent reluctantly would. Such benevolent harshness must have the welfare of the victims as well as the victims be the principal concern. Finally, “Augustine never allows his readers to take satisfaction in a victorious war over the unjust, no matter how spotless the war; for to him, war is evil from the start, and to celebrate the victory of good over evil is to fail to regret the evil that gave rise to the necessity of war in the first place.”[28]
Between the end of the 10th century and the 14th century, the Peace of God and Truce of God movements spread throughout most of Western Europe in an effort to limit the permissible targets of violence and occasions for conflict. During the Medieval period, Gratian (ca 1150) and Aquinas (born 1225) stand out in their extensive writings, especially in dealing with war. Both saw the legitimacy of “holy war” or the Church’s blessing for fighting aggressors in the name of God. Because of the political power held by the Church, they deemed it necessary that the Church both protect the borders from invaders on the outside and protect from heresy within. This most famously took the form of the Crusades and the Inquisition.
According to the Just War criteria, it is certainly true that the Crusades were wrong and awful in their slaughtering of innocent Jews and Muslims. Indeed there were contemporary voices that condemned the abuses committed by the crusaders.[29] Yet, though I wholeheartedly desire peaceful Muslim-Jewish- Christian relations, the Crusades, according to Just War criteria, simply do not deserve the blanketed condemnation that took root following the enlightenment’s general abhorrence of religious authority. As a whole they span a period of more than 300 years and the personal motives of the crusaders varied between piety, wealth, adventure, political allegiance, the rescue and defense of fellow Christians and the reconquest of formerly Christian lands. Contextually, the launch of the first crusade by Pope Urban II in 1095 was in the immediate prompted by the request for help from the Byzantine Emperor after the recent conquest of Nicaea (the place of the Constantine’s Church council) by the Seljuq Turks. More generally it was a response to the Muslim conquest of fully two-thirds of the Christian world that had started in the mid 600s.[30]
Gratian is noteworthy for permitting the overthrow of tyrants by reasoning that although they had temporal authority, as unjust rulers, they were usurping the greater authority of God. But before raising the revolutionary flag, there must be both a legitimate hope and desire that the situation will be better and more peaceful after the revolution attempt. Both Aquinas’s and Gratian’s stance on limited obedience to a secular authority broke from Augustine’s more vaguely and seemingly unlimited obedience to authority. Though not precedence for an armed revolution, Aquinas and Gratian could find examples of civil disobedience in Daniel’s disobedience to King Darius in Daniel 6 and the apostles’ disobedience to the Sanhedrin in Acts 5:17-42.
Within Aquinas’s formulation of natural law, in which rational thought ultimately finds its home in Christ, the wisdom of God, he did find self-defense to be permitted for the sake of preserving life. Aquinas wrestled in his Summa Theologica over war being both a categorical vice in opposition to the virtue of peace and its potential role as the virtue of justice in action. Similarly to Augustine, Aquinas strongly emphasizes that in addition to the requirements of a just cause and a legitimate authority, the intention must be for securing peace and of charity, or “benevolent harshness” towards both the belligerents and those under attack.
The Protestant Reformation brought diverse strands of thought to the question of war.
In his treatise, Whether Soldiers, Too, Can Be Saved, Luther affirms the legitimacy of the military profession as a “legitimate and godly calling and occupation,” because soldiers are a function of the temporal sword and temporal government which, according to Romans 13 and 1 Peter, has been instituted by God for the punishment of wrong, the protection of right, and for the preservation of temporal peace. Luther confirmed that war must be purely for defense and the “only miserable way left of defending ourselves”. Luther, among other reformers, condemned any version of holy war altogether because it confused the two Kingdoms, that of man and God, and spiritual battles were to be fought with spiritual weapons. He also necessitated that soldiers could and should conscientiously object to any war or military command that they deemed to be unjust. Although Luther’s theological assertions would rupture the rule of multiple sovereigns, he, particularly distraught by the Great Peasant’s Revolt, strongly condemned the overthrow of rulers, even tyrants, unless they were mentally insane.
John Calvin (1530) shared with Luther a high view of civil society and the authority of the state. Although he acknowledged the just cause of some revolutions, he was against any foreign intervention because of the likelihood of selfish ulterior motives, favoring instead the sovereignty of states. Overall he believed it more proper for Christians to suffer in disobedience than to overthrow a tyrant and risk the instability that could follow. In the opposite direction of the other reformers, Calvin held that the magistrate and the church should be much more intimately related than in the medieval scene where regnum and sacerdotium were competing and sometimes overlapping. In this regard, Calvin deemed it an obligation of the state to defend the faith.
John Locke famously developed his ethical judgements, including on war, in two strands by using both Scripture and natural rights. Locke, in agreement with Luther, objected to Calvin’s thinking that rulers should defend a particular religious conviction because such resolve would undeniably bring persecution and war, especially in the age of the Reformation. It was during Locke’s time in 1648 that the famous Westphalia Treaty was signed, ending the Thirty Years’ War and giving emphasis to the sovereignty of nation states and a renewed precedence for diplomatic means of negotiating peace.[31]
Other reformers such as the Quakers, Amish, Mennonites and Church of the Brethren became apolitical and pacifist.
The Age of Discovery and Colonization
During the same time period, the European powers, often with the blessing of Church leaders for the sake of spreading the Gospel, were competing to explore and capitalize on the resources of distant lands, often to the detriment of the native populations. Francisco de Vitoria (born 1492) was a Spanish theologian, philosopher and jurist who in response to the Spanish conquests of the new world argued that rights necessarily extended past one’s own borders and to all people. Because of his reflections on a “republic for the whole world”, he has been labeled the “founder of global political philosophy”. Following in his footsteps, Francisco Suarez, a Jesuit professor of philosophy, drew on the concept of Charity from the works of Augustine and Aquinas to further the argument that humanity has a moral and political unity. Though his works would influence a diverse number of later philosophers, his direct influence on Grotius has earned him the title of godfather of International Law.
Hugo Grotius (born 1583), often called the father of international law, brought together both Christian and pre- Christian thought to expand the concepts of the Just War Tradition to the international level. In the concluding chapter of his famous book On the Law of War and Peace, Grotius admonishes his reader to “preserve faith” and “seek peace”, for “by faith…not only is every state preserved, but that grand society of all nations is maintained. If this be taken away, says Aristotle rightly, all human correspondence ceases.” Moreover, “War is so horrible, that nothing but necessity, or true charity, can make it lawful.” And, “It is impossible that we should have a quiet conscience, and a just confidence in the protection of heaven, unless we aim at peace in everything we do throughout the whole course of a war.”[32]
The Geneva Convention and the Formation of the UN
In the sorrowful aftermath of WWII, 196 countries came together to sign the Geneva Convention treaties to delineate the protection and rights of wartime prisoners, the sick and wounded, and civilians. These famous treaties were an affirmation and expansion of 3 previous Geneva conventions dating back to 1864 when the first convention was formed based on the powerful proposition of Henry Dunant for internationally recognized relief agencies in the time of war. Dunant, himself a socially minded Christian, would become the founder of the International Red Cross and become the recipient of the first Nobel Peace Prize. Whereas the Geneva conventions focused exclusively on people during wartime, the Hague Conventions between 1899 and 1925 were negotiated at International Peace Conferences and focused on the elimination of chemical and biological weapons.
The UN was formed initially in 1941 as a united front against the axis powers with its founding four members (US, UK, China, Soviet Union) viewing themselves as “four policemen”. The UN Security Council was designated the lofty task of maintaining peace and security among nations with its membership permanently composed of the four founding countries, France and 10 temporary countries. Although the effectiveness, moral purity and legitimacy of the UN Security Council has rightfully been called into question, its declared purpose and potential make it an important player when discussing the options for war and the hopes for peace.
Contrasting The Just War Tradition, Pacifism and Realism
Today there remains among Christians the option to either identify with the Just War Tradition or to adhere to a form of pacifism. Admittedly some Christians have both permanently and more often temporarily, held more realist views towards war and peace. Debating the moral legitimacy and consequential effectiveness of each position is both valuable for personal ethical development and for international hopes for a just and peaceful society. I am no expert on any position but I hope to in what follows give a basic overview of each position’s claims, strengths and weaknesses, especially in their responsibility as citizens and their fidelity to the life and teachings of Jesus.[33]
Starting with shared foundations, all Christians aim to love and serve God and their neighbor before themselves. They believe that all humans, even the most vile, bear the image of God. They are challenged by the call, and critically the example of Jesus, to love their enemy, even if it results in rejection or death. They trust that God’s promises of peace, justice and new creation will be vindicated in the fullness of God’s reign. Christians further believe that the Church should be a place to critically think through ethical questions together. But because reflection must be both personal and communal, some notable differences in theological interpretations divide Just War from pacifist perspectives—namely the way Christians view the fall, eschatology, and ecclesiology are key indicators of what position is held.
If one emphasizes the inherent goodness of God’s creation of humanity despite the fall, that is our sinfulness, then they are likely to be either a Just War adherent or a pacifist. If however they place more weight on the dichotomy of humans who are still “dead in their sin” and those who have been “redeemed by grace”, then they will likely be more suspect of either aligning with or trusting secular or non-Christian authorities and governments. Pacifists of this type have historically separated themselves completely from any worldly ties to violence and power, while realists argue that in some situations, unjust war decisions and violent government coercion is needed to defend the good from what is bad. It is sadly this latter position, which though perhaps admirable for loving and defending what is good, has let fear drive Christians to make unjust and non-Christ-like decisions.
Eschatology invokes the present state of the world and where it is going in regards to the consummation of all things. Pacifists emphasize that the reign of God is truly existing among Christians and therefore Christians should live by values that are in accord with God’s reign, particularly nonviolence and peace. Yet grasping the reality of our depraved world, many Christians have interpreted the eschatological situation to mean that though the church certainly should always try to transform the present reality and follow Jesus’s commands to be peacemakers, at times the church will have to tolerate some evil in order to avoid greater evils. This position insists that because the reign of God is not fully realized, living by the values of Jesus is not completely possible or even best for the world (e.g. always turning the other cheek). Realists in particular, guided by their strong sense of sin, emphasize the not yet portion of God’s reign and recognize war as a necessary evil to restrain sin. The Just War Tradition has tried to minimize the tension of the already, but not yet full, reign of God by seeing the ordering of a just society as both required under the reign of God and as a God-given, disciple-of-Jesus, task for the present. Just War theorists argue that pacifists do not give practical answers for dealing with evil in the world while pacifists charge Just War thinkers for renouncing the very practices that Jesus commanded that would make the reign of God more evident in our midst.
Ecclesiology and Secular Government
Although the separation of Church and State is a hallmark of the enlightenment, historically the two have been one and the same and even today bridges are both abundant and varied. Consider Angela Merkel and the host of Christian democratic parties across Europe and South America or the vibrant role of religion in African public life. More close to home in the US, the religious right have an enduring, albeit waning, presence.
Having a “smaller” view of the Church’s direct role in political society is common among Christians who see themselves in step with the Christians of the first few centuries as a community of disciples who are trying to faithfully follow Jesus in a communist-like way, requiring at least some distancing of themselves from the trappings of secular society, particularly violence. Similarly to Augustine, they would argue that humans did not originally need government, and the state, though necessary for the world, is flawed and in itself is more evil than good.
Christians who have a “big” view of the Church would agree with Aquinas who saw political authority as good in of itself and a place where Christians and non-Christians could come together for the common good of society. Accordingly the Church should be actively involved in secular society and though it might teach pacifism, the Church can contain a diversity of members including politicians and soldiers and its goal is to instruct and teach each for their personal context.
The Just War Tradition and its Critiques of Pacifism and Realism
The Just War Tradition has been the dominant method of Christian reflection on war for the past 1600 years, but does it deserve to retain this privileged position today? It is broadly claimed to be the most ethical approach to war by Christians and non-Christians alike. Its proponents would argue that from the outset it correctly recognizes the reality of war and the fallen world that we live in, and tries to bring some good out of a bad situation. Although there is certainly a diversity of thought in the centuries-old tradition, upon which I have barely scratched the surface, the broadly unanimous ethical judgments and necessary lines of thought regarding war have been filtered and enshrined in international law. Though one cannot certainly prove that the Just War Tradition has prevented and ameliorated many wars, there is evidence to make a sensible argument that it has.
“For the Christian, the Just War Tradition provides a path from their basic faith commitments to responsible participation in worldly affairs. “The Just War tradition was initially and still is for many Christians an attempt to come to terms with what it means to love their neighbor, protect the widow and orphan, and recognize God’s providential ordering of human affairs through political authority.”[34]
The modern and mainstream perspective on Just War is founded on ethical and political assumptions such as natural law developed mainly by Aquinas and secularized by Locke, the centrality of human rights and the notion of the common good. Just War theorists would affirm some wars as a last resort for humanitarian reasons, in particular when it is backed by a UN decision because it clearly satisfies all of the Just War criteria.
Going to war to maintain justice and defend the innocent where no other means is sufficient is not something that is morally ambivalent but must be open to question by tender consciences. In response to pacifist critics, they would argue that Just War “policing” is continuous with what love and justice require in other relationships such as parenting and policing where wise judgments require decisions that are sometimes hard and costly. A shortcoming of pacifism is the potential of abandoning instead of loving one’s neighbor, either domestically or internationally, when they are in need, such as the essential example of preventing a genocide.
During WWI, WWII and the Cold War, Just War thinkers often charged pacifists as being irrelevant at best, and dangerous at worst for potentially lulling political leaders and nations to passive stances towards totalitarian regimes. They also rightfully point out that neither Jesus, John the Baptist or St. Paul ever condemned Roman soldiers for being soldiers but rather commanded them not to abuse their power. In summary, it is argued that Just War thinking is the best alternative to abandoning public reasoning about war to pacifistic, realist and nationalist rhetoric.
Pacifism and its Criticism of the Just War Tradition and Realism
“The strongest reason that Christian pacifism remains an attractive option at the beginning of the twenty first century is the same one that made it attractive at the beginning of the second century: It points to a kind of faithful Christian discipleship that witnesses to the new ordering of the reign of God.”[35] Now as then, many Christians experience God’s call to a life that suggests there is an alternative to the continuous warring and competition among nations and subnational groups. Pacifists are generally wary that by recognizing war as a sometimes legitimate action, Christians since the time of Constantine have been duped into rationalizing tribal or nationalistic self interests, “baptizing wars” and legitimizing the killing of innocent civilians. After all, historical realizations of these fears are admitted even by Just War theorists as a shortcoming of Just War reasoning.
Has the Just War reasoning of Christians really been effective? Couldn’t the pragmatics of nations and the natural law of humans have had the same effects in stemming indiscriminate killing and adventure wars? What would the world look like today if for 2,000 years Christians collectively had remained faithful to following Jesus in nonviolence?
Modern arguments in support of pacifism and its number of adherents appear to be growing due to the destructive nature of modern weaponry whereby it is less plausible that a war will lead to a net improvement of any given situation. Although Just War thinkers are also against the use of nuclear weapons because of their indiscriminate nature, pacifists argue that even the use of smart weapons cannot be fully trusted to discriminate between soldiers and civilians, noting that between 1997 and 2002, about 3 million people were killed by war with 75% of those being civilians.[36] In the wake of modern terrorism, pacifism is arguably much more effective at addressing the grievances that fuel most non-state sponsored terrorist groups.
Further, there is hope that recent advances in communication can increase the potential for international initiatives to resolve conflicts peacefully. Although the UN and especially the Security Council, has proven to be not without bias in its judgments and initiatives, it does in theory have the ability to adjudicate between nations, to decide when international law has been breached, to deploy troops in peacekeeping roles and to act to enforce judgments. In order for the UN to be a realizable international authority it needs an increased level of endorsement and commitment from the world’s most power nationals, which as of right now are weary of accepting constraints on their freedom to act.
Although the changing realities of the 21st century point to the strategic merits of pacifism, the truth of pacifism for Christian adherents is its faithfulness to following Jesus and resolving to not use violence even in cases where it seems to promise better results in combating evil or protecting the vulnerable.
But isn’t the real threat of totalitarian regimes like in WWII an exception? I grew up watching and glorifying the heroes of WWII, including my own grandfathers. I had two grandfathers in the Pacific and a great uncle who braved the infamous beaches of Normandy, all of whom were God-fearing Christian men. I am thankful to both them and the current soldiers for their courage and sacrifice. Although the horrors and failures of Vietnam provide some balance, the enshrinement of its WWII heroes has also made the US prone to glorifying its own position in wars, making it susceptible to dichotomizing the enemy as pure evil and the US as the intervening hero. Pacifists would argue that many civilians were killed by the allies in WWII, e.g. the fire bombing of Germany, and to the critical point of preventing genocide, that many of the Jews, Roma, homosexuals and disabled who were rescued were done through nonviolent means.[37] They further insist that genocidal thought and action would be much more avertable if people and nations took a more proactive step in creative and determined peacemaking initiatives.
Recently as I walked the famous road from Concord to Lexington upon which the colonials famously opened fire on the British troops who were coming to destroy a stockpile of weapons, I started to doubt the righteousness of the American Revolution. Later as I read through the New Testament epistles I was struck with the multifold call to peaceful living and prayer even and especially under oppressive regimes. Although I, like any Christian, should plead for the cause of the oppressed, I have come to understand that there are about as many definitions of justice in the world as there are people, and much too often one crosses over even one’s own definition when trying to compensate for past injustice. Accordingly I am becoming more wary of violent means of asserting justice, recognizing instead that choosing the way of the cross, by accepting a portion of the world’s injustice and pain, is quite possibly the only way to peace. Yet, I admit that I am still unresolved given that movies such as Braveheart and The Patriot still tug my heart towards violent revolution.
But what about the Old Testament? Can its violent passages be completely dismissed? Alongside the Old Testament’s vision of peace as the fulfillment of God’s purposes, and the New Testament’s witness to faithful nonviolence, we find the characters of the Bible wrestling with a world that is anything but peaceful. The most disturbing texts relating to warfare in the Bible are the parts of the Mosaic law documenting how the Israelites are to conquer the land of Canaan and the exaggerated stories[38] of the ensuing slaughter of the neighboring tribes at the command of God. Deuteronomy 20 sets the standard of expected conduct. Distant nations that do not accept an offer of peace and forced labor are to have their males killed and their women and children taken as bondservants. Even more frighteningly, the peoples that inhabited the immediate area of Israel’s future possession were to be completely slaughtered and the cities burned wholly to the ground.
While it is true that the political context for Israel as a theocratic nation with explicit boundaries was very different to the position of the early Church, that being a marginal community under the powerful authority of Rome, after Constantine why did the Church not recognize the political and conquesting example of Israel?[39]
The books of Exodus, Leviticus and Deuteronomy place a large emphasis on purity. The rationale for primarily pushing out[40] and if need be slaughtering whole peoples and their livestocks is specified in Deut 20: “So that they do not teach you to do all the detestable things…and so you do not sin against the Lord your God.” The mandated violence is not commanded out of cruelty, unbridled aggression or unlimited conquest, but in a struggle to keep a people holy and separate from the evil practices of those around them. Further there is a strong emphasis that it is God who would fight for and protect Israel and that they should not rely on a building a military machine.[41] Christians in general believe that the Hebrew purity laws and territorial boundaries have found their fulfillment in Christ[42] and therefore the descriptive passages of the conquest of Canaan cannot be used as an authoritative basis or prescription for right conduct in war. Most conclusively, Christians find themselves under the reign of Jesus in the Kingdom of God. The life, death and resurrection of Jesus ushered in the beginnings of the great vision of peace in the Old Testament, whereby the nations would be united under the banner of the Prince of Peace.
The Middle Way: Just Peacemaking in the 21st Century
Perhaps one position is more closely tied to the reign of Jesus, trusting God and being a responsible citizen. I am honestly not able to make that judgement. I would however like to finally present a middle way forward, contemporarily called Just Peacemaking that has its roots in the kingdom vision transformative initiatives laid out in the Sermon on the Mount.[43]
The strength of the Just Peacemaking movement is that it combines the fundamental goals and methods of pacifists and Just War thinkers to encourage and challenge one another to be more proactive in the peacemaking goals of their positions, even or especially in daily life. “The foundation of just peacemaking must be a culture of reconciliation, a process of “overcoming past alienation, enmity and hurt and of relating to the ‘other’ in the roots of conflict, one of which being fear and anxiety. Preemptive Love Coalition, an encouraging example working mainly in Iraq, states it this way: “We fear loss. We fear shame. We fear ideologies and religions. We fear vulnerability….So we fight, first with attitudes and words, then with fists and bombs….We must confront polarizing conflicts with love instead of fear.”[45]
Further, we must see the dignity in each other, recognizing that we all have hopes, dreams, grievances and life experiences while understanding that our enemy does not attack us without a reason. We must try to understand that reason and proactively create shared identities and dreams for the common good. Yes it is absolutely true that dreams and worldviews do not always fit neatly together, but this is where transparent, face-to-face discussion is most critical. Instead of building fences, talking in echo chambers and then bitterly tossing polemic bombs over the fence, we need to both respectfully listen and candidly talk and challenge based on our understanding of the current state of a situation, ideologies and social or political changes. Hopefully such discussion will bring new understanding or at least the ability to agree to disagree without resorting to violence.
While forgiveness is absolutely essential in building peace, securing some level of retributive justice is necessary for both healing and breaking cycles of strife and violence. Economic justice and reducing the imbalance of power is a significant component in a culture of reconciliation. We must heed Scripture’s plea for justice and the plight of the poor, calling us to a faithful and compassionate response.[46]
We should find motivation to forgive and find common ground by recognizing our own failures and involvement in injustice. Instead of letting a Facebook mentality of judgement and criticism direct our thoughts, we should determine to make self reflection and repentance integral to our daily life and the way we approach conflict of any kind.
Finally as followers of Jesus, we can be confident and at peace with the future as one of my favorite hymn says:
“Be still, my soul: the Lord is on thy side. Bear patiently the cross of grief or pain…
[For] the waves and winds still know,
His voice who ruled them while He dwelt below.
When change and tears are past,
All safe and blessed we shall meet at last.”[47]
While we have this hope in the future, in the present we must live out our identity as the body of Christ by being agents of reconciliation and peace. The glorious truth about Christianity is that God is working to make all things new by first entering into humanity, proclaiming the good news of the Kingdom, dying for us, his enemies, and then calling us to be part of the Missio Dei, the Loving Mission of God.
Yes the coherent ethical answers are important, the riches of historical theology can be incredibly insightful and practical steps are essential. Yet, the long and complicated answer can easily be twisted and wrongly interpreted. Thankfully, as I was reminded in Jordan, the answer is both simple, generally accepted, and at the heart of the gospel. Trust God and love even when it’s difficult.
1 The Beatles, “All you need is Love”, 1967
2 Black Eyed Peas, “Where Is the Love?”, 2003
3 Isaiah 11 (emphasis on vs 6)
4 See the Isaiah 11 reference to the root of Jesse and Acts 2-4 for the preaching in Jerusalem that followed the Resurrection. See also Micah 2, 4-5, 7; Zechariah 2:10-13, 8:20-23, 9:9-10, 13- 14; Isaiah 2, 9, 12, 14, 25, 34-35, 42, 45, 49, 52, 54-56, 50-62, 65-66; Hosea 1-3, 6-7, 10, 13-14; Psalm 46, 22 etc. for prophetic discourses on the future renewal and expansion of the Kingdom of God.
5 Colossians 1:20
6 Romans 14:17
7 Romans 12:14-21
8 1 Peter 2:20-21,23, 3:9.
9 David D. Corey and J. Daryl Charles, The Just War Tradition, An Introduction, pg 28
10 Justin Martyr, First Apology, section 39
11 Tatian’s Address to the Greeks, Chapter 11. I personally do not think this quote suggests that Christians today should completely decline military service. I do respect and humbly honor soldiers that serve in love for the sake of peace and protection.
12 Athenagoras, A Plea for the Christians, Chapter 1
13 Irenaeus, Against Heresies, Book 4” and Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching, pg 96.
14 Hippolytus, Apostolic Tradition, 16.17
15 See for example Tertullian, Against the Jews, 3.154, Origen, Contra Celsus, 5:33, 3:7
16 Tertullian, Apology, 30 and 39
17 Origen, Contra Celsus, Ch 73
18 Clement of Rome, The Apostolic Fathers
19 1 Tim 2:1-2, 1 Peter 2:13-17
20 Tertullian, Apology, 42
21 Tertullian, Apology, Ch 5 and Letter to Scapula, Justin Martyr, Apology, 68,
22 Tertullian, On Idolatry, 19
23 David D. Corey and J. Daryl Charles, The Just War Tradition, An Introduction, pg 34
24 Tertullian, On Idolatry, 19, and De Corona
25 Eusebius, Life of Constantine and Ecclesiastical History and Socrates Scholasticus.
26 Romans 13:1-5
27 Augustine, “Letter 189, To Boniface”
29 The Archbishop Ruthard of Mainz and the Bishops of Speyer and Worms tried to shelter and protect the Jews. Condemnation of the Crusades or the abuses committed by the crusaders was voiced among others by Peter the Venerable in 1122 and the Franciscan philosopher Roger Bacon in 1271.
30 Although the Crusades are a significant historical phenomenon with enduring cultural and relational consequences, their legacy has been often misappropriated within post-colonial narratives. The historical caricature that the crusaders destroyed the existent peace in the holy lands is betrayed by the disunity and civil wars of the contemporary Seljuq, Fatimid, and Abbasid dynasties. With the crusaders being largely defeated by the celebrated Saladin in 1187, and the long pursued Muslim conquest of Constantinople in 1453, the Muslims were by most regards the contemporary victor. The tide of Islamic expansion would only be finally halted at the gates of Venice in 1683 by King Sobieski of Poland with European colonialism following shortly thereafter. For a more complete history of the Crusades see The Real History of the Crusades, or The New Concise History of the Crusades, by Thomas F. Madden or Holy Warriors: A Modern History of the Crusades by Jonathan Phillips or The Crusades: The Authoritative History of the War for the Holy Land by Thomas Asbridge or Arab Historians of the Crusades, translated and edited by Francesco Gabrieli. Alternatively see some articles by these authors online:
http://www.historytoday.com/jonathan-phillips/crusades-complete-history, http:// www.catholiceducation.org/en/controversy/the-crusades/the-real-history-of-the-crusades.html
https://www.firstthings.com/article/2005/06/crusaders-and-historians
31 Interestingly “the Catholic Church adamantly opposed the Westphalia Treaty and its recognition of the spiritual sovereignty of modern nations. In 1650, Pope Innocent X issued a bull condemning it as “null, void, invalid, iniquitous, unjust, damnable, reprobate, inane, empty of meaning and effect for all time.” For the Roman Church, the rise of state sovereignty was not simply an affront to the Church’s temporal influence. It also challenged Western Christianity’s historic conception of a unitary global order, one that went back to Constantine and the fusion of religious and imperial authority in the fourth century. As a result, throughout the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, the Catholic Church continued to judge the Westphalian primacy of state sovereignty contrary to the natural order established by God. As late as the nineteenth century, the Church still banned the writings of Hugo Grotius, an early defender of the sovereign state and the father of modern international law.” (source: https:// www.firstthings.com/article/2015/12/two-theories-of-immigration) The idea of one human family that transcends national borders is still pushed today by Pope Francis.
32 David D. Corey and J. Daryl Charles, The Just War Tradition, An Introduction, pg 144
33 See Faith and Force: A Christian Debate about War, by Brian Stiltner and David Clough for a great introductory book written as a debate over contemporary issues between adherents to pacifism and Just War Theory.
34 Faith and Force: A Christian Debate about War, by Brian Stiltner and David Clough, pg 222-223
35 Faith and Force: A Christian Debate about War, by Brian Stiltner and David Clough, pg 224
36 Dan Smith, The Penguin Atlas of War and Peace, rev. Ed, pgs 38-40.
37 See the debate on pages 100-107 in Faith and Force: A Christian Debate about War, by Brian Stiltner and David Clough, that is specifically centered around the Humanitarian crisis in Kosovo. Using nonviolent methods, the people of Bulgaria, Denmark and Finland were able to save almost all of their Jewish populations. See also https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article. php?ModuleId=10005185 and https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article. php?ModuleId=10005131 for some history on both the nonviolent rescue of Jews and the liberation of the concentration camps.
38 Though passages such as Joshua 10:40-12:24 indicate that the Israelites conquered the entire land, destroying everything that had breath, following passages reveal that Israel did not, in fact, kill everything that had breath for all the groups that are said to be destroyed appear later in the text. See Joshua 13, 16:10; 17:12; 23:7,12-14. In the very next book (1 Chronicles), the first verse after the book of Joshua, they ask who will fight the Canaanites. As another example, in 1 Sam 15:3 Saul is ordered to utterly destroy and kill all of the Amalekites. After all but executing this command because he spared the King, later in the same book (1 Sam 27:8-9) David and his men are said to have gone up and raided the Amalekites. The Amalekites appear yet again in 1 Sam 30 and even centuries later during the reign of King Hezekiah in 1 Chron 4 and in the descendent Hamman who tried to exterminate the Jews in the story of Esther. Apparently the genocidal words of “completely destroying everything that breathes” are not literal unless you think the authors are completely insane. Upon comparison with other Ancient Near East sources, scholars have determined that this is a literary device used at the time called Hagiographic Hyperbole. When one army would defeat another army they would brag of complete annihilation to intimidate and glorify their strength. Modern day parallels are heard often in the sporting context: “We massacred [slaughtered, butchered, destroyed, etc..] them!”
39 I am sure some Christians at some point in history used the conquests of Canaan to support conquering but I do not know of any examples. Even the modern state of Israel was and still is largely a secular Jewish effort, and though they argue for their historical ties to the land, they do not justify the displacement of the Palestinian people with the conquering narrative of the Old Testament. Rather, as right or wrong as it may be, they first justified using force in order to secure a safe place for Jewish people and now as a means to protect against local Arab threats. In Ezekiel 47 the recreation of Israel after the exile is foretold and it is stated that “you shall divide this land among you according to the tribes of Israel. You shall allot it as an inheritance for yourselves and for the aliens who reside among you and have begotten children among you. They shall be to you as citizens of Israel; with you they shall be allotted an inheritance among the tribes of Israel.” (v21-22). Religious Jews today have varying theological views about the state of Israel but Christians see this foretold renewing of Israel after exile to have already come true in Jesus and His Kingdom.
40 Rather than pure slaughter, there is an emphasis on driving out the people inhabiting the land. (See Lev 18:24-28, Num 21:32, 33:51-56; Deut 9:1; 11:23; 18:14; 19:1; 23:27-30, 2 Kgs 16:3. For example, according to Exodus 23:23, the angel would go before Israel and would completely destroy the Canaanites. Later in the same chapter (vs 28-29) God says he would not drive out the Canaanites all at once but would do so little by little. (see also Deut 6:22) According to the narrative God gave the Canaanites plenty of time to leave before judgement came. It is even stated in Joshua 5:1 that the people of the land knew that Israel was coming and were afraid because of what had happened in Egypt. There is also the example of Rahab, the prostitute of Jericho, who places her faith in the God of Israel and she saves herself and her family from the destruction of Jericho. Remarkably she is even in the lineage of Jesus. Finally, God promised to the Israelites that it was not because of their righteousness that they would take possession of the land but because of the inhabitants’ wickedness and if (and when) they fell to the same level of wickedness they would get destroyed and be driven out of the land. (see Deut 6, 8, 9, 12;, Lev 18:24, 20:22)
41 See the example of God’s power in the exodus out of Egypt along with Deut 7:17-26, Deut 20:1, Joshua 23:9-10, Isaiah 30:15-16, 31:1.
42 See Matthew 5-7 and in general Jesus’s multi-fold call of association to himself and the Kingdom of God as the formation of the new Israel over and against traditional purity laws, family ties and territorial boundaries.
43 See https://www.sbl-site.org/assets/pdfs/Stassen_Transforming.pdf for a paper by Glen Harold Stassen, one of the leading developers of Just Peacemaking.
44 Raymond Helmick, Rodney Petersen, and Tom Porter, Boston University School of Theology, “Components of Just Peace Declaration”.
45 http://www.preemptivelove.org/
46 Jeremiah 22:3, Isaiah 1:17, Psalm 146:7-9, Malachi 6:8, 3:5, Amos 5:24, Luke
4:18-19, James 2:15-16 etc.
47 Be still my Soul, Kathrina von Schlegel, 1752
Erik Johnson graduated in 2016 with his Masters in Electrical Engineering and is working locally. He enjoys sports, reading, building things and spending time with friends and family.
Love Your Enemies: A Radical Call to…
Historicity & Holy War: Putting the
Justice and Authority
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Home news 18-Year-Old Girl Explains What It Is Like To Date Her Biological Father
18-Year-Old Girl Explains What It Is Like To Date Her Biological Father
From a very young age most young girls begin to plan their wedding day. Inspired by fairytales and Disney princesses, we fantasize about a magical day in which we will marry our young and handsome Prince Charming, and gallop off into the sunset on the back of his noble steed to live happily ever after.
For many, this dream comes true. But for others, it stays wildly out of reach. However, for one young girl, that dream was warped when her biological father became her one true love.
The anonymous 18-year-old girl, from the Great Lakes region of America, fell in love with her father when they reunited after a 12 year estrangement. Speaking to Science of Us for the New York Magazine, the girl explained how she was conceived on prom night when her parents were just 18-years-old.
“They were serious for about six months, but broke up while my mom was still pregnant with me. My dad wasn’t there when I was born. I think my mom’s psychological problems meant the relationship never really worked out.
She has bipolar disorder and some other mental health issues.”
Shortly after the girl was born, her mother suffered a mental breakdown.
Unable to cope with a two-year-old child, the girl was sent to live with her grandparents, which is where she began to see her father at the weekends. However, this stopped suddenly when she was five, after her controlling mother ended the meetings.
Barely able to recall the time she spent with her father, the girl can vaguely remember that he “spoilt her rotten” with Barbie Dolls and other toys. “It was a little girl’s dream,” she said. “We’d sit in the yard blowing bubbles together, and he took me to the zoo where he bought me a stuffed animal that I kept until I was 16.”
Throughout her childhood, the girl was exposed to many failed marriages of her mother’s. “My mom’s always picked the wrong guy out of the crowd and she’s had a couple of divorces,” she said, before going on to detail one of the marriages in which her mother’s “schizophrenic” husband “went crazy and tried to kill her.”
Over the years, her mother had two more children who were nine and 12 years younger than the girl. “I think of them as my brother and sister, and I also think of them as my babies because I helped raise them. ” But, despite the focus of her young siblings, the girl was craving a father figure.
It was this feeling that pushed her into the arms of her biological father…
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Entries in Babysitter (4)
Detroit Babysitter Flees Cops with Baby in Arms
Courtesy Ferndale Police Department(DETROIT) -- A Detroit man caught driving a stolen car while babysitting a 21-month-old infant led cops on a high-speed chase, crashed the vehicle and then fled on foot with the baby, which he handed to a woman bystander before police caught him.
Vilary Reed, 23, was driving a stolen Ford Crown Victoria on Detroit’s 8 Mile Road when he was stopped by police shortly before 6 p.m. Tuesday. Though initially he stopped and complied with officers, he decided at the last moment to take off in the car, leading cops through the side streets of the city with the tot in tow, according to a police report.
“Reed ran through stop signs, sped, and lost control and crashed at Pennington and Pembroke,” police said in a report. “When Reed emerged from the car, he was carrying a 21-month-old baby boy in his arms. Reed ran from police while carrying the baby.”
As Reed darted from the enclosing officers, he must have decided that the baby was slowing him down. So, he handed the baby to a woman who was standing in her yard, then ran on.
“He handed her the baby. The baby was crying. He just told her to hide me! Hide me!” John Abner, the husband of the woman to whom he handed the baby, told ABC News' Detroit affiliate WXYZ-TV.
Officers were soon able to apprehend Reed following a chase through several other yards.
After Reed was captured, the baby was examined by Ferndale Fire Department paramedics and finally returned to his mother. The baby is the son of the suspect’s live-in girlfriend, and he’s now back with his mother while Child Protective Services is investigating the incident, WXYZ reported.
Reed is a parolee, previously convicted of fleeing and eluding police. He also has previous convictions for receiving and concealing stolen vehicles, according to police.
The case had now been turned over to the prosecutor’s office for a determination of charges, police said.
Thursday, August 23, 2012 at 4:23AM by Jeanette Torres Permalink
tagged Baby, Babysitter, Detroit, cops in National News General
Indiana Mother Abandons Baby with Craigslist Sitter
Hemera/Thinkstock(INDIANAPOLIS) -- The Department of Child Services is investigating an Indiana mother who abandoned her 13-month-old son with a babysitter she found on Craigslist.
Cecilia Long, 28, told Indianapolis police that she had responded to a Craigslist ad posted by a woman identified as “Jen,” requesting overnight care for her 13-month old son, Kameron.
Long had been caring for Kameron regularly since Thanksgiving before she decided her agreement with Jen didn’t make a lot of sense.
Long said Jen had promised her $75 a day to care for Kameron, but the money never materialized. Jen gave Long only $10, she told Fox59, which she said she used to buy milk for the baby.
The situation came to a head when Long had to go out of town due to a family emergency. She texted Jen and asked her to come pick up her child, but Kameron’s mother refused and responded that “it wasn’t her problem,” according to Indianapolis police records.
Robert Hatch, the police officer who responded to a call from Long on Dec. 6, tried to talk to Jen on the phone. But when Hatch identified himself, the police report said, Jen told him to “Quit f—ing calling my phone.” “Loud music and partying” were also audible in the background during Hatch’s brief conversation with Jen.
Police also looked for Kameron’s mother at local nightclubs without results -- she had told Long she worked as a dancer at a nearby venue, but employees there didn’t know of any dancers named Jen.
Kameron is now in the custody of Child Protective Services, which is investigating the case, Officer Anthony Weiner of the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department said.
But Long told Fox59 that her contact with Jen hasn’t ended: Jen has sent Long aggressive messages since Child Protective Services took over the case.
“I want to know why the (expletive) you called CPS on me (expletive). I didn’t (expletive) do (expletive) to you. I owe you money yes, but I didn’t do (expletive) to you,” Jen said in one voicemail message left on Long’s phone.
Jen may be driving a maroon Jeep or SUV vehicle, according to the Indianapolis police report.
Ann Houseworth, director of communications at the Department of Child Services, said Kameron is in good health and in protective custody. The investigation is still open; Houseworth noted that “the department makes every effort to locate the parents of a child once we’ve become involved.”
“We’re grateful for the actions of the babysitter,” Houseworth said. “It does take everyone in the community to keep children safe.”
Friday, December 9, 2011 at 7:13PM by Carmen Cox Permalink
tagged Babysitter, Craigslist, Department of Child Services, Indiana in National News General
Conn. Babysitter Charged with Sexually Assaulting Second Boy
Jupiterimages/Thinkstock(CLINTON, Conn.) -- A 20-year-old Connecticut babysitter already facing charges of sexual assault on a minor is accused of having a sexual relationship with another 14-year-old boy, according to new information released Monday.
Loni Bouchard, of Clinton, Conn., was arrested Monday morning on charges of sexually assaulting a teenage boy from Southington, Conn., in November 2010. Bouchard is already facing charges of sexual assault on a different 14-year-old whom she was hired to babysit in Clinton in early 2011.
Southington police announced that they arrested Bouchard early Monday morning on the new charges, and that she is being held on $25,000 bail. Police did not return calls for comment.
Bouchard’s attorney said Bouchard is in counseling and hopes people will not pre-judge her, and that this second arrest strengthens the family’s resolve to have her placed in a supervisory diversionary program.
In July, Bouchard was arrested following a three-month investigation into her relationship with a Clinton, Conn., boy she babysat regularly. According to police records, Bouchard repeatedly stayed over at the home of the boy, and offered him alcohol and marijuana in addition to having sex with him. When the boy’s mother discovered their relationship through Facebook messages, she notified police.
Bouchard’s journals detailing the relationship with the Clinton boy were released earlier this month.
“I know there is a 5-year age difference, but why does it have to matter?” she wrote in the journal. “I don’t care about the law. I just want to be with him and not have to hide it.”
Bouchard’s mother, Kimmy Bouchard, is also charged in providing alcohol and marijuana to the Clinton teen.
Monday, September 19, 2011 at 2:11PM by Carmen Cox Permalink
tagged Babysitter, Connecticut, Loni Bouchard, Sexual Assault in National News General
Connecticut Babysitter’s Journals Detail Sexual Relationship with Teen
Jupiterimages/Thinkstock(SOUTHINGTON, Conn.) -- Journal entries written by Loni Bouchard, the 20-year-old Connecticut babysitter facing sexual assault charges, reveal more details of the sexual relationship she told police she had with a 14-year-old boy she was hired to babysit.
In the entries, quoted in an arrest warrant released earlier this week and obtained by ABC News, Bouchard chronicled how her friendship with the unnamed victim, who lives in Southington, Conn., evolved into a romance in the early months of 2011.
She writes explicitly about alleged sexual encounters with the teen, calling one instance “the best I’ve ever had,” and professes her love for him, despite the potential consequences.
“I know there is a 5-year age difference, but why does it have to matter?” she writes. “I don’t care about the law. I just want to be with him and not have to hide it.”
Bouchard appeared in court on Monday following her arrest on July 12 after a three-month investigation by the Clinton, Conn., Police Department. She was charged with second-degree sexual assault, risk of injury to a minor and illegal purchase of liquor.
According to the warrant, the victim’s mother hired Bouchard in December 2010 to babysit for her children, and would frequently let her stay at their home overnight.
But in April 2011, the victim’s mother discovered Facebook messages between Bouchard and her son, who admitted to the sexual relationship and told her he had been given alcohol and marijuana by Bouchard and her mother, Kimmy, while he was at their home in nearby Clinton. The mother then told Bouchard she was no longer allowed to contact her son, and filed a restraining order against her.
Bouchard provided a statement to police admitting to the relationship with the victim and acknowledging its illegality. She also admitted to having sexual relations with another teenage boy, according to the warrant. That boy’s parents would not allow him to speak with investigators.
Kimmy Bouchard was also arrested and charged with providing marijuana and alcohol to the teen.
Both women are scheduled to be back in court on Oct. 3.
Wednesday, September 14, 2011 at 11:03PM by Carmen Cox Permalink
tagged Adult, Babysitter, Connecticut, Minor, Sexual Assault, Teen in Crime, National News General
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A Secret Life
From college school girl to first lady
A woman defamed. The first photograph published of Maria Halpin.
An unauthorized ad using the image of the First Lady, and a campaign poster from Cleveland’s re-election bid.
The Lion in Winter. Last known photo of Grover Cleveland.
The Halpin affidavit – “I did not believe it possible that even Grover Cleveland could attempt to further blacken me in the eyes of the world…”
First Lady Frances Folsom Cleveland in a medicine ad – the unauthorized use of her image infuriated the president.
Photo left, former First Lady Rose Cleveland. On right, Frances Folsom Cleveland at age 22. She became the youngest First Lady in American history.
Francis Cleveland in 1886, the year she married Grover Cleveland and became First Lady.
Grover Cleveland on board the private yacht Oneida, site of his secret cancer operation during his second term as president.
Grover Cleveland as a young man.
Helen Fairchild Smith, the dean at Wells College. It was said she took it as her mission to prepare Folsom for the White House.
Maria’s brother-in-law, Simeon Talbott. On the right, Maria’s daughter, Ada.
Maria Halpin’s son, Frederick. To right, his sister Ada.
Maria Halpin’s son, Frederick. The back of the photo read, “Sick and expected to die.” He survived and lived to come to the defense of his mother’s honor.
Obituary of James E. King, Jr – the son of Grover Cleveland and Maria Halpin.
Evangeline Marrs Simpson Whipple and Rose Elizabeth Cleveland, who served as her brother’s First Lady from March 4, 1885 to June 2, 1886.
The boys of the Buffalo Orphan Asylum, where Grover Cleveland’s illegitimate son, Oscar, was taken.
Rose Elizabeth Cleveland in a studio portrait taken in Rome, Italy.
The Cleveland Family. From left, Marion, Francis, Esther and Richard.
The Cleveland siblings. Grover is at far left. Rose is second row, far left. Cecil and Fred, seated in front row, were lost at sea in 1872.
The Goddess – Frances Folsom Cleveland, America’s youngest First Lady.
The famous “I want my Pa!” cartoon from the Sept. 27, 1884 cover of “Judge” magazine.
Cancerous growth removed during a secret operation on President Cleveland, now preserved at the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia.
Cleveland became the first and, so far, only president to get married in the White House.
The Wells College Class of 1885. Frances Folsom is seen on second row.
The Providence Lunatic Asylum, later renamed the Providence Retreat, where Maria Halpin was taken by force.
The story that started it all – the July 21, 1884 edition of the Buffalo Evening Telegraph, with the famous headline, “A Terrible Tale.”
Emma Folsom and her daughter Frances. When it was reported that he was marrying Emma, Cleveland said, “I don’t see why the papers keep marrying me to old ladies.”
© 2011 Charles Lachman
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Statement of H. E. Dr. Zalmai Rassoul Minister of Foreign Affairs of Afghanistan Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) 22 June 2012
By Afghan Mission on June 22, 2012 Focus, Rio Conference, Spotlight
Afghanistan’s Position Paper
Outcome Document
Madam President,
I wish to begin by thanking the Government of Brazil for hosting this historic conference. It is a distinct pleasure to be here today in this beautiful city.
We have come together in Rio for a common goal: ensuring a better future for the 7 billion people sharing this earth, and committing ourselves to a healthy, secure and prosperous world. Afghanistan is convinced that through effective and result-oriented cooperation and collaboration, we can realize our shared objective for sustainable development.
Two decades of strife and conflict have brought untold suffering upon the Afghan people. Poverty, hunger, dismal socio-economic and environmental degredation have regrettably become part of daily life for many. Roughly one third of our people live below the national poverty line. Gender gaps in both literacy and education, and meager opportunities for employment remain a challenge, and have yet to be fully addressed. Terrorism that has its roots and support systems outside our country, environmental and geographic vulnerabilities have complicated our efforts to overcome these challenges and unleash our human, resource, trade and transit potential.
Despite the obstacles at hand, Afghanistan has made considerable, historic progress in improving the lives of our citizens over the past decade, better enabling them to live in safety and prosperity.
Over the past ten years, with support from the international community friends, Â we have made many improvements: More than 8 million children are currently attending schools throughout the country and 50,000 students are enrolled in universities; close to 90 percent of our population has access to primary health services; and the rate of child and maternal mortality has decreased significantly.
Thousands of kilometers of roads have been constructed or repaired, and extensive work has been done in the area of rural development with a special focus on local community empowerment, agriculture and irrigation. Afghan women are playing an increasingly visible and tangible role in politics, culture and the economy. Together, these advances are helping to improve human capital, trade, transit, and food security. Above all, we’ve restored the foundations of democratic governance: Afghanistan today is a young democracy with an elected parliament, elected provincial councils and a free and independent media that allow our citizens a direct say in their country’s governance.
To further our development goals, we are also working diligently to make use of our untapped natural resources. We consider our natural treasures to be a catalyst for enriching our country, attracting foreign investment, increasing the rate of employment, and contributing to our overall stability and prosperity.
Having come so far, we are now focusing on making our progress irreversible and sustainable. We acknowledge that national ownership and international partnerships are key for sustainability of all three pillars of development.
Therefore, Madam President, full transition to Afghan ownership and leadership is a top priority for my Government.
Currently, we are in the process of building an Afghanistan in which the needs of the Afghan people are met by the Afghan people themselves. In this regard, we are on track to assume full responsibility for security in Afghanistan by end 2014. We will continue to work closely with the international community during the Transition Decade of 2014-2025 to address our long-term social, economic, and developmental challenges.
Continued and sustained support of the international community will be particularly important in these years to come. Despite the aspirations for sustainable growth and development, the task will be impossible for Afghanistan without sufficient means of implementation. In this regard, and as a Least Developed Country (LDC), we strongly support the implementation of the Istanbul Programme of Action of LDCs 2011-2020 and emphasize the fulfillment of past pledges of Official Development Assistance (ODA) and an increase in the level of financial support.
We have come together at this historic conference to cooperate on a global level. However, the success of Rio+20 depends on the extent to which the agreements we make here are concrete and will help improve the lives of people around the world. In this context we support global efforts to come closer together, to share experiences, technology and resources.
And from the Afghan perspective, we need these concrete agreements so that we can integrate them into our national sustainable development planning during our transformation decade between 2014 and 2025.
As a land-locked developing country, we support the Almaty Programme of Action and an increased level of regional cooperation. Through various processes, including the promising Istanbul Process for building confidence and strengthening cooperation in the Heart of Asia region whose second successful ministerial meeting we hosted in Kabul just last week, we are working to restore Afghanistan’s historic role as a land-bridge connecting South Asia, Central Asia and Eurasia and the Middle East. Invoking our historical roots as a crossroads of trade routes, we hope to be at the center of regional connectivity. Opening these paths will not only help Afghans but improve the lives of people around the region. It is in this context that we see the importance of South-South cooperation, which will also complement North-South cooperation. Therefore, we support an acceleration of this process.
The building of infrastructure and capacity is of the utmost importance to achieving sustainable development. Only by building up our human and physical capital can we combat endemic unemployment and poverty.
The sharing of knowledge and experience is critical to our success. This is what we have come to realize over the past ten years. Now, during our transformation decade, it is important that the sharing of technology and experience helps to create a sustainable Afghanistan.
We are pleased to see the progress that has been made on this front here at Rio and we hope to see the implementation of these transfers soon.
It is my fervent hope that Rio+20 will prove to be a historic success in launching the entire world—including the least developed countries—into a future of sustainable development. I wish to reiterate my Government’s resolute commitment to helping advance cooperation for sustainable development at the international level.
Afghanistan’s Position Paper Presented by Afghan Delegation
The Future We Want “Outcome Document of the Rio Conference”
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Getting with the Program
AIM's African Mobilization Hub
–by Tony Swanson
Chemistry 101 defines a catalyst as a substance that causes change to happen at a greater rate, without being consumed by that change. I remember in school when I once introduced magnesium to water; the result was quite explosive! In a sense, we in Africa Inland Mission are all acting as spiritual catalysts as we seek to see eternal change among the unreached African peoples, and especially as we seek to see the Church across Africa mobilised to mission.
The AIM African Mobilization Hub plays a small part in this catalytic process. We long to see our African partner churches understand and respond to the call to send missionaries with the gospel message across borders to the least of these and to the lost. If we go by numbers, (Somewhere in the region of 350 million evangelical Christians on the continent of Africa) then there is great potential within Africa’s churches to take the gospel to the unreached areas of Africa and beyond.
This requires a change of mindset, a change of thinking which leads to action. As we know, such change seldom happens overnight and is often part of a wider process. What we are convinced of, however, is that we are not alone in this venture. The Holy Spirit is awakening the Church to His call. We are, in a sense, getting with the program: God’s program, that is.
The Mobilization Hub is made up of a team of people from different countries, cultures, and backgrounds – all of whom have a desire to see at least four hundred new African missionaries mobilised by 2020. There are members of the Hub who have experience in running Kairos, which is a nine-session, interactive course on world Christian mission, designed to educate, inspire and challenge Christians to active and meaningful participation. There are other teachers whose main focus is ‘Business as Mission’ – the strategy of gospel witness through life and relationships in closed countries where access has been gained through legitimate business ventures. Others are involved in mission training through some of AIM’s short term mission programs. Some have experience in running ‘Global Discipleship courses’ with their distinctive emphasis on mobilising clusters of churches to reach proximate unreached peoples. The Hub provides a forum where all this expertise and experience can be shared in one place, and hopefully, African missionaries can find encouragement.
Our aim is to mobilise individuals, denominations, local churches, para-church organisations, and Christian institutions to cross-cultural mission. Achieving this requires multiple strategies, therefore we treat each person or entity separately, depending upon where they are in the mobilization process.
A typical scenario is an individual who has a desire to serve God in missions but has no home church to recognise the call, support them, or send them out. In that case, we may encourage them by having them attend a Kairos course or its equivalent. Then they receive training to become catalysts in their own church communities, showing their congregations the importance of the words, “How can they preach unless they are sent?”
At the appropriate time, we may then point interested Africans to already-established organisations that are seeking to send cross-cultural workers: CAPRO in Nigeria, the East Africa Sending Office in Ethiopia, the newly-established Gen 12 in Kenya, or our own AIM office in Cape Town South Africa.
Because of the complexity of mobilisation, the hub is also engaged in researching new culturally appropriate models of mission, as well as helping to build capacity within new and inexperienced African missions organisations. One example would be that of Gen 12, which is built upon the vision and hard work of Mission Campaign Network. By December of this year, they will have twelve couples and seven singles in the field, including personnel in the Horn of Africa. AIM helped in the initial stages of thinking through the structure and emphasis of this organisation. It is a work in progress, learning little by little what it takes to be an interdenominational African sending agency, but they are not alone as they seek God’s leading and begin to act on it.
As the task of catalysing the Churches in Africa to mission is so large, the Hub is a partnership rather than a single structure, whereby we draw on the expertise, resources, and personnel from a wide range of partner organisations. This means that we in AIM do not necessarily do all the training or sending ourselves, but we cooperate and collaborate with others who have capacity in these areas. This provides for greater synergy and hopefully an increased number of Africans being catalysed to mission.
At the very centre of the hub are Regional Mobilisers and 18 members, who engage in the eight mobilizing areas in the second ring. In the outer rim of the hub, are the beneficiaries for whom these activities seek to change.
Visit the Hub website at aimint.org/africanmobilization
You can also contact the hub directly via amc.io@aimint.org
More stories in this series on African Mobilization:
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Home Veterans History Project oral history recordings Oral history interview of Joseph Alfred Burton
Oral history interview of Joseph Alfred Burton
Link to Web File - url
Title Oral history interview of Joseph Alfred Burton
Creator-Interviewer Jackson, Charles
Creator-Interviewee Burton, Joseph Alfred, 1923-2009
Description In this interview, Joe Burton describes his service in the Army Air Corps during World War II. He remembers his childhood and the various schools he attended. At the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor, his older brother was in the National Guard and Joe was a civilian working at Fort McPherson while Major Berry and Colonel Spencer were there. He enlisted in the Army and was assigned to the Army Air Corps. During pilot training he flipped his plane over and was reassigned as a navigator. He discusses (without naming) his commanding officer, who was given his pilot's license by Orville Wright, and who was a personal friend of Billy Mitchell. His plane, "Poopsie" still stands in front of the Officers Club at Maxwell Air Force Base. He reports that most of the planes lost during the war were due to flak. In 1945 his only brother was killed and Joe had completed sixty-seven combat missions, earning enough points to return home. He sailed from Naples to New York on the SS Athos II and took a train to Fort McPherson. He was later diagnosed with a hemorrhage in his spine and was sent to an Army hospital in Smyrna, Tennessee. After the war, he used the GI Bill to go to Georgia Tech, but was recalled during the Korean War. After the war, he served in both the Georgia House and Senate and on the boards of several charitable organizations.
Fort McPherson (Ga.)
Maxwell Field (Ala.)
Nashville (Tenn.)
Selman Field (Monroe, La.)
Greenville (S.C.)
Skikdah (Algeria)
Porto Santo Stefano (Italy)
Subject Prisoners of war--Romania
Prisoners of war--Germany
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Personal Name Burton, Lillian Stroupe, 1901-1974
Burton, Lewis Albert, Sr., 1894-1953
LeCraw, Roy, 1895-1985
Burton, Lewis Albert, Jr., 1919-1945
Burton, Bessie Lucille Walraven
Corporate Name Avon Park Air Force Range (U.S.)
United States. Army Air Forces. Air Force, 12th. Bomber Wing, 57th. Bombardment Group, 310th
Keywords GI Bill; Phillipville (Algeria)
Date Original 2003 Jul 23
Type MovingImage
Analog Format MiniDV
Digital format mov
Extent 59:35
Catalogue Number VIS 201.0062
Collection Veterans History Project oral history recordings
Related Collections Veterans History Project collection, MSS 1010, Kenan Research Center, Atlanta History Center
Publisher Kenan Research Center, Atlanta History Center, 130 West Paces Ferry Rd., Atlanta, GA 30305
Rights This material is protected by copyright law. (Title 17, U.S. Code) Permission for use must be cleared through the Kenan Research Center at the Atlanta History Center. Licensing agreement may be required.
Notes Joe Burton was a U.S. Army Air Corps navigator in Europe during World War II.
Source https://www.youtube.com/embed/wxo-TnvB-vs
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Here are all the paintings of Tack Augustus Vincent 01
The Artist is not available!
Tack Augustus Vincent
A painter of portraits, murals and abstractions. American, 1870-1949 American, 1870-1949, was an American painter of portraits, landscapes and abstractions. He was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1870 and moved with his family to New York in 1883. After graduating from St. Francis Xavier College in New York City in 1890, Tack studied at the Art Students League of New York until 1895. He is believed to have frequented the studio of painter and stained glass designer John La Farge, whose portrait he painted around 1900. He had his first solo exhibition at the Kraushaar Galleries in New York City in 1896. The following year he moved to an artists?? colony in Deerfield, Massachusetts, where he met and later married Agnes Gordon Fuller, daughter of artist George Fuller. Tack maintained a studio in New York from 1894 until the end of his life. He had frequent exhibitions at New York City galleries. From 1900 until the 1920s his work was shown regularly at the Worcester Art Museum, at the Carnegie International exhibitions in Pittsburgh, and at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia. He taught at the Art Students League of New York between 1906 and 1910 and at Yale University from 1910 to 1913. About 1914 to 1915 his work attracted the notice of Duncan Phillips, who became his close friend and chief patron. Phillips and Tack also collaborated on the organization of the Allied War Salon of 1918. Tack died in 1949 in New York City.
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Alma Tadema
A Difference of Opinion
Related Paintings of Alma Tadema :. | The Year is at the Spring | Silver Favourites | Advantageous Position | Vain Courtship | Her Eyes are with Her Thoughts |
Jose Joaquim da Rocha
painted Coronation of Our Lady in 1790
Hans Vredeman de Vries
(1527 - c. 1607) was a Dutch Renaissance architect, painter, and engineer. Vredeman de Vries is known for his publication in 1583 on garden design and his books with many examples on ornaments (1565) and perspective (1604). Born in Leeuwarden and raised in Friesland, in 1546 Vredeman de Vries went to Amsterdam and Kampen. In 1549 he moved to Mechelen where the Superior Court was seating. Sebastian, his brother, was the organist in the local church. Vredeman de Vries designed ornaments for merry parades of Charles V and Philip II. Studying Vitruvius and Sebastiano Serlio, (translated by his teacher Pieter Coecke van Aelst), he became an internationally known specialist in perspective. He continued his career in Antwerp, where he was appointed city architect and fortification engineer. After 1585 he fled the city because of the Spanish occupation by Alessandro Farnese. Then the Protestants had to leave the city within two years. Vredeman de Vries moved to Frankfurt and worked in Wolfenbettel, designing a fortification and a new lay-out of the city for Julius, Duke of Brunswick-Leneburg. After his death the project was cancelled and Hans worked in Hamburg, Danzig (1592), Prague (1596) and Amsterdam (1600). On his trips Vredeman was accompanied by his son Paul and Hendrick Aerts. Vredeman de Vries tried to get an appointment at the University of Leiden in 1604. It is not known when and where Hans Vredeman de Vries died, however, it is recorded that his son Paul was living in Hamburg when he inherited.
Garofalo
1481-1559 Italian Garofalo Gallery Italian painter. Active mainly in Ferrara and the district around the Po delta, he was one of the most outstanding figures in Emilian classicism during the first half of the 16th century. In 1497 Garofalo father paid Boccaccio Boccaccino to teach his son the rudiments of painting. Garofalo first works were directly influenced by the Cremonese painter, to whom they were formerly even attributed. They consist of a series of small paintings depicting the Virgin and Child. The example in the Ca d Oro in Venice must have been Garofalo first painting and reveals not only the lessons learned from Boccaccino, but also signs of the influence of Domenico Panetti (c. 1460-before 1513), traditionally recorded as his first master. Another Virgin and Child (Assisi, Perkins priv. col.) shows signs of the early influence of Lorenzo Costa the elder, while the example in the Nationalmuseum, Copenhagen, shows a similarity with the early works of his contemporary, Lodovico Mazzolino. A particularly important project in Ferrara during the earliest years of the 16th century, involving numerous highly skilled artists, was the fresco decoration of the oratory of the Concezione. The frescoes (Ferrara, Pin. N.) represent a significant development in the city art. Garofalo hand has been identified in the Presentation in the Temple, in which he reveals a familiarity not only with local art, but also with the high points of Bolognese classicism, whose greatest exponents were Francesco Francia and Lorenzo Costa the elder. Around 1505, Garofalo works show a close familiarity with artistic developments in Bologna, in particular the mature style of Costa and the decoration in 1505-6, by Francesco Francia, Costa, Aspertini and others, of the oratory of S Cecilia in S Giacomo Maggiore. Garofalo Virgin Enthroned between SS Martin and Rosalia (Florence, Uffizi), created for Codigoro Cathedral, should be seen within this context, whereas the small altarpiece for the Arcivescovado, Ferrara, although executed at the same time, shows early, if faint, signs of the influence of Venetian painting of the period.
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Angel Studio
Tibetan Mandals
Galleries – archive
Mandalas are today the most popular Buddhist icons in the world and their popularity is emphasized with the use of the word mandala as a synonym for a sacred space, as explained in Western dictionaries. Mandala is compassion, a form, an endless wisdom and eternal love, that spreads to those that are caught between finity and infinity, opens them the door to deliverance, a passage to freedom, a door to eternity.
Mandala is a matrix of embodiment, unification. It is the architecture of enlightenment in its blissful and compassionate created emanation. At the same time, mandalas are frequently said to be as cosmos plains, the maps of the world in an outer sense, as diagrams of the perfect universe and internally, as guides to practitioners in their psycho-physical practice. As such, mandalas are seen as sacred places, which with their presence in the world, remind the viewers of the vastness of sacredness in the universe and its potential in themselves. In this way they support the viewers’ progress to enlightenment. In Tibetan Buddhism, each mandala represents a holy space and a pure expression of a certain Buddhas enlightenment, together with the states of consciousness, which are close to the displayed Buddha, such as compassion, bliss, or wisdom.
The making of a mandala is seen as a sacred procedure and demands years of training. A wide pallet of sacred geometry and symbols is used in the making of mandalas.
Philosophy for the sacred geometry is symmetry, balance and relations among basic geometric forms that picture the cosmology of the universe.
We have been meditating and spiritually growing at the Angel studio for a few years before we could begin a multi annual project of Tibetan mandala painting with the fullest respect and dedication. The mandalas we have created were first on display at an exhibition at Cankarjev dom, which were took place together with a photographic exhibition of Mrs. Benka Pulko.
The mandalas we constructed were exhibited in Cankarjev dom in Ljubljana, from November 18 to December 20, 2009, together with the photos of Tibetan children taken by Ms Benka Pulko.The keynote speakers Ms Benka Pulko and Ms Snežana Divjak opened the Black-and-White Rainbow photo exhibition. The small gallery where the exhibition was held was full of positive energy and packed with emotion. The atmosphere created by the invited guests, sponsors, journalists, photographers, and schoolchildren was indeed rainbow-like.
The film premiere of the Black-and-White Rainbow was particularly emotional and moving.
We feel inspired and encouraged by the big response the exhibition received, as well as even greater responsibility for our cause, and are grateful for all the support and kind words.
The Exhibition Black-and-White Rainbow’s Journey:
from January 6, 2010 to January 30, 2010 in Maribor, at the Photo gallery Stolp
from February 10, 2010 to March 10, 2010 in Europark Center, Maribor
from March 17, 2010 to March 30, 2010 in Regional Museum Murska Sobota
From April 2, 2010 to April 30, 2010 in Exhibition grounds of Lenart Municipality.
From February 4, 2011 to February 28, 2011 in Slovenian Cultural Cente, Szentgotthard, Hungary
From November 30, 2011 to December 31, 2011 in Galery Magistrat, Ptuj, Slovenia.
From January 4, 2012 to January 25, 2012 in Primary School Dobrna, Dobrna, Slovenia
From January 30, 2012 to February 29, 2012 in Gallery of Velenje Castle, Velenje, Slovenia.
From February 15, 2012 to March 25, 2012 in First Commercial Bank, Farmington, MO, USA
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Behind the Red Light District
A real-life Romanian prostitute working in the Red Light District in Amsterdam. Blogging the truth about prostitution, human trafficking, pimps and politics.
The prostitution entry program
Felicia Anna
All these women want to work, but how do you get in?
We have a lot of exit programs for sex workers these days, but nobody's ever thought about a entry program for prostitution. Which is really weird, since with an entry program for prostitution you can achieve much more than with an exit program. After all, an exit program doesn't fight human trafficking itself, it just helps people that have already become a victim, so it's already happened. It's sort of mopping up the floor, while the water tap is still running. It doesn't create one less victim, it doesn't stop trafficking and it certainly doesn't prevent it.
The minister of Justice and Safety also claimed that sex workers need exit program because of the stigma (or taboo as he called it) on sex work, but the exit program doesn't fight the stigma itself, it only helps women exiting this industry deal with the stigma, while leaving the women who want to keep working in this industry with no help at all. In short, the exit program doesn't solve human trafficking or the stigma sex workers face. It helps a little bit with both, but it doesn't target the sources, meaning it never really does anything to change the situation. It doesn't stop trafficking, it doesn't prevent it, and it doesn't stop the stigma or prevent that either.
An entry program for prostitution however can achieve much more. After all, the entry point is where human trafficking first begins in prostitution, and thus the most logical place to attack it. So, in stead of mopping up the floor with an exit program with the water tap still running, we're gonna turn down the water tap, making sure human trafficking is being prevented before it ever takes place.
Because when dealing with crimes you can do two things. You can try to fight it, but than it's already too late, since it already happened. Or you can try to prevent them from ever happening, in which case you only need to mop up the water that spilled, making it much easier to get that floor dry and clean.
So in order to prevent human trafficking, we need to attack the source. And fact is that the source of most human trafficking cases, is the vulnerability of sex workers. The more vulnerable a sex worker is, the easier it is for a trafficker to get control over her and exploit her for money. So the question is: how do we make sex workers less vulnerable? How do we prevent women from falling into the hands of traffickers? And to understand this, you first need to understand the reasons why women got in touch with traffickers in the first place, and why they fall for their tricks, and what those tricks exactly are.
And this is where there's a huge misconception. Because most people believe that most victims are coerced into prostitution, while in reality this is only a small portion of the trafficking victims. This is a misconception brought forward by people and organisations who are either against prostitution itself, or because they benefit from telling these stories in one way or another. After all, if you can claim that most women didn't want to do a certain job because they were forced into it, you could claim that it shouldn't be legal, because nobody wants to do it. And this is exactly the claim they've been trying to make for years.
But reality is that victims of coercion are just a very small part of all the human trafficking cases that occur in the prostitution industry. In other words, most human trafficking cases that occur, are cases in which the sex worker herself agreed on working in prostitution, but after that gets stuck in a position in which she becomes exploited by traffickers. And this does not just come from my personal observations, but more importantly from attorneys specialized in human trafficking cases. They also claim that by far, the most cases they get, revolve around exploitation and not coercion. And this just confirmed my personal experiences. But more importantly, it also explains why victims often don't see themselves as victims, since they are not coerced into anything, which is how often the media portrays victims of trafficking.
So a small portion of the victims is being coerced, while a much larger group is not being coerced, but simply being exploited, despite the fact that they choose themselves to do this job. Nobody is forcing these women to work in prostitution, in fact, they choose it to do themselves, often because it simply pays good money. So how do these women end up being exploited? Well, because entering the prostitution industry in Holland, especially coming from another country, is so difficult (because policy makers believe it helps to fight trafficking), so they require assistance, which is exactly the point where the traffickers come into the story.
These traffickers basically play the role of the helping hand. Acting almost as an unemployment agency, helping sex workers out with paperwork, travelling arrangements, finances and housing. Sometimes the victims don't know the traffickers are really interested in exploiting them and are being deceived, but interestingly more often the sex workers themselves agree with it.
And this sounds kind of strange to outsiders. After all, why would a sex worker agree with being exploited? Who would want that? Well, fact is that nobody wants that, but they don't have much of a choice, since there isn't an alternative. After all, there is no legal organisation in Holland which helps these women with the problems they're facing when entering the prostitution business. In fact, the Dutch law even made it illegal and punishable to help anyone cross a border that wants to become a sex worker, under the human trafficking law. Under article 273f 1.3 it states that being guilty of human trafficking is:
"The person who recruits, takes along or abducts another person with the intention to make that person available in another country to carry out sexual acts with another person in exchange for payment;"
This means that anyone helping a (future) prostitute, knowing she wants to work here in prostitution, is a criminal and a human trafficker. It doesn't state anything about being coerced or exploited, simply taking someone with you is enough to be labeled a criminal when it regards a (future) sex worker.
So, we have a problem. These women need help, because they need paperwork, they don't know where to get it, how to get it. They need travel arrangements. They need a place to live, which is even difficult for Dutch sex workers, let alone if you come from another country. They need financial help before things are set up (since banks refuse sex workers loans, mortgages and even business accounts), and they can finally start with their own business (sex workers behind the windows are independent business owners). So a lot of help is needed.
But since the Dutch government thought they would fight human trafficking better if they would make it more difficult to enter prostitution as a whole, with the assumption that no right minded woman would want to do this job, they created a huge problem. And this problem is right now being solved by human traffickers. After all, these women need help to get into the prostitution, where they want to work to make a lot of money. But nobody wants to help them, because they would be considered a criminal by the Dutch human trafficking law.
And this is where the traffickers come into play. They gladly take on the role of an unemployment agency, in exchange for a big cut of the salary of sex workers. The sex workers are glad that someone is helping them, and the traffickers demand for that a portion of their income. And since the sex workers don't receive any help from others or the government, they are willing to give these people a portion of their income, with as a result that the sex workers is agreeing on her own exploitation. Often these deals are for a large percentage of the income, usually a 50/50 deal, meaning the sex worker gets to keep 50% of her income, while the trafficker gets the other 50%. Now sometimes these percentages may vary, but this is the most used construction by traffickers. It's easier than having to force someone into doing a job they don't want to do, which creates a lot more work to keep someone under control. Plus the sex worker herself will never give you in as a trafficker, since the trafficker helped her, and not the police or the government,
Just a short note here, outside of the sex industry similar constructions exist, with people getting a percentage of what they earn for their work, and the another percentage going to someone else. These constructions are called unemployment agencies, and there are many in Holland, who legally take in a large cut of what a company pays to have someone working for them. But then all of the sudden it's legal, while in prostitution it's all of the sudden called human trafficking. Talking about using double standards! And this is simply because of the false assumption that prostitution is done something not by choice. So where the Dutch government sees these women as victims, the victims themselves do not see themselves that way. After all, they agreed on it themselves. And what else do you expect when you don't receive any help from anyone else?
And this is precisely where an entry program for prostitution would be not just very useful, but could be a powerful tool in the fight against human trafficking. The entry program for prostitution is supposed to help sex workers who want to enter the industry, and helps them doing this in a safe and legal way, thus avoiding shady people who are trying to take advantage of them and turning them into trafficking victims. But more importantly, it gives sex workers an alternative from having to agree on a deal with traffickers who are only interested in profiting from it, asking way too high prices and percentages.
The entry program should focus on giving out good information about how to safely enter the industry. It should provide good information about addresses where you have to go, papers you need to have, and where you can get these papers. It is not by accident that I wrote a while back a blog post on how to get started in window prostitution in Amsterdam. I did this after I kept getting e-mails from girls, mostly from Romania, asking how to get started. It's one of the biggest problems for women from Eastern Europe who want to do this job. There's no information!
But it's not just for women from Eastern Europe. I even got repeatedly e-mails from Dutch women, asking how to get started to work behind the windows. This only proves how difficult it is to get started, and how little information is out there!
Besides providing good information, the entry program should also offer help with finances, since often sex workers from abroad need an advance in their finances before they can finally start to make money. After all, there's a big difference in living standards between Eastern Europe and Holland. This has nothing to do with poverty, which for sure is also a reason for some women to enter this industry, but by far most of the Eastern European girls don't come here because of poverty, but simply because the huge difference in living standards. Where in Romania for example you'll get 250 euro paid for an avarage job, and you can live fine for that amount of money. In Holland this is ten times more. And thus also the prices are much higher in Holland than in Romania, making it extremely expensive for Eastern European girls to come and live here.
But this is also what attracts them. After all, the costs may be much higher over here, so is the salary of a sex worker, and much more than any other job. So it's very interesting for women from Eastern Europe to come to Holland, and do this job, since averagely they get 100 times more the salary here with this job, than they would get doing any other job in their home country.
And besides the financial part, the entry program should also help sex workers find a place to live, preferably on very short notice, so that sex workers won't have to accept help from traffickers for this who want to take advantage of them.
In short, the entry program for prostitution should play the role of an unemployment agency, just like how they do this in many other industries as well. An agency which helps foreign workers to come to this country, help them finding a place to live, giving them an advance so they have some money before they can go to work, and helping them with all the paperwork required.
Basically this entry program would take over many of the tasks a lot of human traffickers do at this moment, but of course with the difference that they don't exploit these women, but help these women. In this way, we can take away the demand that sex workers have for help, which attract human traffickers, thus resulting in fewer women becoming a victim of these traffickers. And at the same time you're helping these women enter the industry in a safe and legal way, making sure they have all the information and resources available making them less vulnerable.
But now of course we are still stuck with one problem. After all, this entry program focuses on women that do want to entry the prostitution industry, but require help. So it would take a huge bite out of the trafficking victims which are being exploited right now in the sex industry. But, it doesn't directly deal with the (much smaller) group of trafficking victims which are coerced into prostitution.
And that is indeed a valid point. However, if the amount of victims are being reduced heavily, targeting the largest vulnerable group of potential victims, it leaves a much smaller group of victims to target for the police. After all, the women that used to be exploited because they needed help for a large part don't exist anymore, leaving only the severe cases of coerced trafficking victims.
At this moment the police and other authorities are having huge difficulties to tell apart victims from non-victims in the sex industry. And this is because many of the women they see as victims, do not regard themselves as victims, since they choose to share a part of their income with the trafficker. While at the other hand there are also victims who are being coerced, and are in desperate need for help. But since these two different types of victims, the coerced ones and the exploited ones, look so much alike in behavior and circumstances, it's often difficult to tell for the police which is which, thus resulting in police reports with estimations that make no sense at all. They often think they're dealing with a victim of coercion, while in reality not dealing with a victim of coercion but with a sex worker that agreed on her own exploitation. For outsiders it's impossible to tell them apart, since they send out many of the same signals, while when asking an exploited sex worker if she's forced, she'll give you a very convincing answer that she's not. Which is not so weird, because she isn't being coerced.
But when the entry program for prostitution is in place, most of these exploited victims will disappear since they will be using the entry program, leaving only the heavy coerced victims. And since the contrast between coerced victims and free willing sex workers is so big, in behaviour and circumstances, it will become much easier to spot the victims. After all, the victims that were only being exploited before, have dropped out thanks to the entry program, leaving only the really severe cases of human trafficking, the coerced victims. And with less victims of exploitation to confuse them with coerced victims, it will become much easier for the police and authorities to spot these victims and help them.
The biggest problem however lies within the acceptance of sex work as work. After all, this entry program for prostitution could solve a huge portion of the human trafficking that exists in the prostitution industry. But it is because politicians and policy makers are reluctant to facilitate women entering this industry, that this problem still hasn't been solved. It is their moral opinions, which stands between accepting sex work as work, and providing good and safe way to do this, versus rejecting it and not solving the real problems of trafficking.
In one beat, we could cut human trafficking in half, taking out a large portion of the victims that are being exploited, by offering them an alternative besides having to give a portion of their salary in exchange for help. We could make it easier for the police to distinguish the difference between someone that's coerced or someone that's exploited, by preventing most of the exploitation, leaving only the coercion. But in that case politicians and policy makers would have to accept sex work as work and offer women a way into prostitution, and the real question is if they are willing to do that, in order to save lives.
So, the real question is: does the government rather want to keep buying more mops to clean the floor, or are they willing to turn down the water tap? Because in the end, the water will keep spilling over, as long as you don't close that tap, no matter how hard you mop the floor. But in the end it will never clean up until you stop the water tap. So are they prepared to set aside their judgement on sex work, to really fight human trafficking? Or are they gonna keep avoiding attacking the real problem, with fake solutions which doesn't help anyone? Sex workers need help, but not the help you'd expect, they want, but help to enter this industry, not just to exit it.
Dutch version
Frans Says:
You raise an issue that is long overdue and must become part of the general debate on the normalization and quality of the Dutch sex work sector.
Such an agency would be in demand with people from many foreign countries who are attracted to doing sex work in Holland, not just from East-European countries.
But the daily reality of such an entry agency would be complex and labor intensive. Besides helping with all the things you mention (housing, papers, etc.) it should not be only for window work or other forms of organized sex work but for all forms of licensed sex work. It would probably require people who understand the local situation of these people and speak their language fluently (which makes it expensive), it must have the trust of the normal (sex workers community (PROUD), and know the legal and illegal ins-and-outs nationwide (For instance: if you want to work at an Amsterdam window, there is a long waiting list, but there are possibilities in Alkmaar or Groningen). It should not be a free service but - ideally - a not-for profit.organisation.
This could provide substantial work to sex workers after they stop sex work, hence another meaningful option in one of the many exit programs!
It would be one more thing that PROUD could begin discussing and organizing, and one thing the government would be wise to support AND sponsor (but without control).
John Flavin Says:
Felicia, what do you say to those who claim attempts to regulate prostitution in Amsterdam were a disaster e.g.:
http://www.spectator.co.uk/features/8835071/flesh-for-sale/
I don't know enough about it but I'm guessing the link above is full of the usual lies from those in favour of abolition. I have heard this argument many times from abolitionists i.e. that attempts to regulate the industry in countries like the Netherlands and Germany have been a total disaster resulting in MORE trafficking. That argument of course makes no sense at all to me. I would like to hear your views as obviously you have direct knowledge of what really happened. Thank you.
Felicia Anna Says:
@John Flavin
This http://behindtheredlightdistrict.blogspot.nl/2015/04/julie-bindels-bullshit-about-amsterdam.html
Thanks Felicia, I'll have a read of that.
xdwitt Says:
You are so right again in this post. We have discussed this before on twitter and I believe this really can help.
Petre Pan Says:
This is a great idea in theory, but until the studies back it up it just doesn't work. Making prostitution easier and more accessible (helping with entry programs) does NOT lower human trafficking. I don't know why--your arguments are reasonable, and should work, but in the real world they just don't.
You're clearly an educated woman who enjoys her job and chose it freely--human trafficking victims, as you've noted, tend to be poorer women with a history of sexual vulnerability, and while in your situation, as your logic shows, making entry easier would theoretically provide a good option to keep you out of the hands of a trafficker, that simply isn't what happens to actual vulnerable women in the real world when prostitution is made easier, or even legal. In the real world, making prostitution easier makes life easier only for the customers--including the abusive ones.
Here are some references and facts--tons of sources listed below.
"In the one year since lifting the ban on brothels in the Netherlands, NGOs report that there has been an increase of victims of trafficking or, at best, that the number of victims from other countries has remained the same (Bureau NRM, 2002 : 75)." Netherlands
In Australia,
Noted of the State of Victoria which legalized prostitution in the 1980s, "Trafficking in East Asian women for the sex trade is a growing problem" in Australia…lax laws - including legalized prostitution in parts of the country - make [anti-trafficking] enforcement difficult at the working level." (U.S. State Department’s 1999 Country Report on Human Rights Practices, released by the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor)
Back to the Netherlands, child prostitution increased dramatically as soon as prostitution was legalized. "The Amsterdam-based ChildRight organization estimates that the number has gone from 4,000 children in 1996 to 15,000 in 2001. The group estimates that at least 5,000 of the children in prostitution are from other countries, with a large segment being Nigerian girls (Tiggeloven : 2001)."
In Victoria, when prostitution was legal there and not in other Australian states, child prostitution rose dramatically. Highest number of reported incidences of child prostitution always came from Victoria, after legalization. (Based on increased evidence of exploitation from a 1998 study undertaken by ECPAT (End Child Prostitution and Trafficking) who conducted research for the Australian National Inquiry on Child Prostitution)
In Germany,
"In January, 2002, prostitution in Germany was fully established as a legitimate job after years of being legalized in so-called eros or tolerance zones…As early as 1993, after the first steps towards legalization had been taken, it was recognized (even by pro-prostitution advocates) that 75 per cent of the women in Germany’s prostitution industry were foreigners from Uruguay, Argentina, Paraguay and other countries in South America (Altink, 1993 : 33). After the fall of the Berlin wall, brothel owners reported that 9 out of every 10 women in the German sex industry were from eastern Europe (Altink, 1993 : 43) and other former Soviet countries. The sheer volume of foreign women who are in the prostitution industry in Germany - by some NGO estimates now up to 85 per cent - casts further doubt on the fact that these numbers of women could have entered Germany without facilitation. As in the Netherlands, NGOs report that most of the foreign women have been trafficked into the country since it is almost impossible for poor women to facilitate their own migration, underwrite the costs of travel and travel documents, and set themselves up in "business" without outside help."
Prt 2:
In Switzerland,
"Brothels in Switzerland have doubled several years after partial legalization of prostitution. Most of these brothels go untaxed, and many are illegal. In 1999, the Zurich newspaper, Blick, claimed that Switzerland had the highest brothel density of any country in Europe, with residents feeling overrun with prostitution venues, as well as experiencing constant encroachment into areas not zoned for prostitution activities (South China Morning Post : 1999)."
"The Coalition Against Trafficking in Women International (CATW) has conducted 2 major studies on sex trafficking and prostitution, interviewing almost 200 victims of commercial sexual exploitation. In these studies, women in prostitution indicated that prostitution establishments did little to protect them, REGARDLESS of whether they were in legal or illegal establishments. "The only time they protect anyone is to protect the customers." In a CATW 5-country study that interviewed 146 victims of international trafficking and local prostitution, 80% of all women interviewed suffered physical violence from pimps and buyers) and endured similar and multiple health effects from the violence and sexual exploitation (Raymond et al : 2002)." The study found that EVEN surveillance cameras in prostitution establishments had a negligible (statistically insignificant) result on safety during sex work.
On the other hand, laws against prostitution DO help drive down trafficking. *The NationalRapporteur on Trafficking at the National Swedish Police has stated that in the 6 months following the implementation of the Swedish law in January 1999, the number of trafficked women to Sweden has declined. She also stated that according to police colleagues in the European Union that traffickers are choosing other destination countries where they are not constrained by similar laws. Thus the law serves as a deterrent to traffickers. Quoted in Karl Vicktor Olsson, "Sexkopslagen minkar handeln med kvinnor," Metro, January 27, 2001:2
I don't know why it works that way. I don't know why educated women like you are in the minority, and I know your experience feels different than what the worldwide studies and statistics demonstrate. But world-wide, you ARE in the minority, and the majority of women in prostitution did NOT choose sex work as their First Choice job. Given equal pay with men, equal treatment in a society that doesn't see us only as sex objects, and given the true opportunity to pursue our dreams, most sex workers do not even want to be IN the sex industry, and making sex work easier via legalization or entry programs only makes it easier for the men behind the industry to exploit these women who via poverty find themselves with "the next best" option. Those not-you women--the women I work with (in another country, though). Basically, if you're going to be a happy prostitute, you need to have control over your own business, period, end of sentence--(although ironically I'm not ending the sentence here)--and any entry program is only going to put women in the hands of existing businesses and inept government officials, creating additional vulnerability and dependence on the MEN who benefit from the industry. That's simply the reality that we see in any nation where prostitution is made easier.
Simply put, if making prostitution easier really did end human trafficking slavery (and I'm using the UN definition so we're all on the same page), the Netherlands, Australia, and the majority of Europe wouldn't be such a hotbed of child prostitution and international immigrant exploitation--those numbers should have gone DOWN ten years ago. They didn't. Prostituted women are not criminals, you're people: legalizing or facilitating prostitution doesn't legitimize you as humans, and fighting against easy-access prostitution doesn't make your decisions less valid--it's only there to protect women who never really had a decision in the first place.
It's funny you should say that my theory is nice, but they wouldn't work in the real world, since I work in this real world, and I don't think you do. In fact, the reason why I write these things, is because I come from the real world and this is how reality is like, so I also know what would work best to fix it, and not just some medical student sitting behind a desk reading a bunch of papers.
Secondly, studies do back it up, you just haven't read them. To get things straight before we begin. The official organization which has all the correct numbers is the NRM in Holland. NRM stands for Nationaal Rapporteur Mensenhandel (National Rapporteur Human Trafficking), and is the only official organization which receives all the date regarding trafficking, including those about court cases etc.
Your first source from the NRM in 2002 but is taken out of context. Since the NRM report clearly states: "Whether shifts noted are related to the abolition of the general ban on brothels on 1 October 2000 cannot be stated."
Furthermore the NRM stated in a report from 2013 that states: "It is not (yet) possible to give an answer, on the basis of statistics, to the question of the extent
to which legalisation of prostitution leads to more human trafficking." Source (p.5): http://www.dutchrapporteur.nl/Images/national-rapporteur-on-trafficking-in-human-beings-and-sexual-violence-against-children.ninth-report-of-the-dutch-national-rapporteur.2014_tcm64-564024.pdf
Also recent research from the Dutch government states that 'if any abuses occur, they are more likely to occur in the illegal part rather than the legalized prostitution' (WODC 2015).
In short, you took a quote out of context to prove a point. But fact is that we don't know, since the NRM 2001 report was the first report they ever made. So there is no data about the period before this time, thus making it impossible to conclude this.
What happens in Australia is nice, but something from over 30 years ago is not really reliable. Beyond that, I'm talking about Holland, not Australia, and there's a big difference between these two countries.
You source from Tiggelhoven from 2001 is yet again an estimation. But looking at the facts about child prostitution, they point in the opposite direction.
Recent research from the Dutch government states that minors working in prostitution in the legalized sector hardly to never happens at all (WODC 2015 and 2006).
The amount of child prostitutes according to your statistics would be larger than the total amount of 'presumed' victims by the NRM, which makes these numbers completely ridiculous.
The total amount of 'presumed' trafficking victims in 2013 was 1437. The total amount of presumed minors that are trafficked according the the NRM are 258, not even close 1000, let alone the 4000 or 15.000 mentioned in those reports.
In short, these estimations are nonsense.
Again a study from Australia, while I just proved it's nonsense that child prostitution is as huge as you stated above.
Your report from Germany actually states exactly what I'm saying here, and what I present a solution for:
"As in the Netherlands, NGOs report that most of the foreign women have been trafficked into the country since it is almost impossible for poor women to facilitate their own migration, underwrite the costs of travel and travel documents, and set themselves up in "business" without outside help"
So what where you saying again? No studies back it up, while your own sources even state the same issues.
A Chinese paper about Switzerland? Are you serious? This isn't a study, it's a fucking newspaper! Anyone can report it, it doesn't make it true.
Your CATW study is nice, but what does that prove? That trafficking happens both with legalized prostitution and with illegal prostitution? Yeah, we know!
LOL, seriously? You are taking something from Sweden? The most violating form of surpressing women in sex work ever? From a country of which every sex work organization can tell you it absolutely doesn't help.
And what do you expect? Surprised that if you criminalize something, they can't find any victims? Come on!
Your sources are so biased or taken out of context, or sometimes just complete lies, the only advize I would give you is to read a book by prof. Ronald Weitzer, expert in human trafficking and sex work, called Legalizing Prostitution: From Illicit Vice to Lawful Business.
Furthermore I would suggest you would read the last two NRM reports, and than also read my blogpost about what 'presumed victims' mean, and all the studies and reports made about human trafficking in Holland: http://behindtheredlightdistrict.blogspot.nl/2015/01/what-do-rapports-say-about-forced.html
I think I know a bit more about the realities of prostitution and trafficking in Holland than a student from another country.
P.s. Petre Pan
For a medical student you should know that criminalizing prostitution only leads to an increase in HIV. The AIDS congress in Melbourne a year ago called out to legalize prostitution in favor of fighting HIV's.
Perhaps you should look it up, may be usefull since you're a medical student, you may want to know what;s going on in your own field.
DA Gentos Gabana Says:
As a liberitarian in a conservative society, I feel relieved reading your piece. Keep it up! We need more of you out there, making a difference by standing out and doing what you believe is right!
How to become a prostitute
Triodos Bank refuses PROUD but accepts brothel
Tours & Guides
Prostitutes occupy closed window brothels
Red Light United - Union for Red Light District window workers
PROUD - Dutch Union for Sexworkers
PIC Amsterdam (Prostitution Information Center)
Prostitution in The Netherlands
Zondares - Blog of a Dutch prostitute (Dutch)
Utrecht Krijgt Spijt - Blog about prostitution in Utrecht (Dutch)
Tweets by @feliciaanna27
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Meet an Author: A Yi and his unflinching portraits of modern China
A Yi (real name Ai Guozhu) is “one of the most gifted Chinese authors in recent times,” according to Nobel-nominated poet Bei Dao. His star has been rising in the global literary scene as well: he’s been published in Granta and The Guardian, and A Perfect Crime, his first novel translated into English, was published in June 2015. He is the author of two other novels in Chinese, Now, What Shall I Do Next? and Where Is Spring, and the short story collections Grey Stories and The Bird Saw Me. Before settling down at age 32 to write fiction, A Yi worked as a police officer, secretary, and editor, with a brief stint as editor-in-chief of the edgy literary magazine Chutzpah.
Book available at The Bookworm:
A Perfect Crime (2015)
Events at The Bookworm Beijing:
Friday, March 11, 8 pm: A Celebration of Literature and Ideas: The 10th Bookworm Literary Festival Opening Ceremony, with Bidisha, Robert Drewe, Xiao Meili, Richard Blanco
Sunday, March 13, 6 pm: New Chinese Writing, with Shuang Xuetao, moderated by Eric Abrahamsen
Opening Paragraph of A Perfect Crime
I went to buy glasses today. I reached for a pair of sunglasses first, but the more you try to disguise yourself, the more you stick out, so I chose a pair of normal ones instead. Much better for diverting people’s attention. They’d think I was short-sighted, and short-sighted people seem trustworthy.
A Perfect Crime review, by Laurie O’Donnell
A Yi has not written a crime novel. We know who did the crime. We know what he did. What we cannot understand is why.
A Perfect Crime is China’s heart of darkness. It is the breathing despair and rage that captures the rural poor.
With exceptional control, A Yi gradually reveals the mindscape of the anonymous narrator who commits a motiveless murder and feels no guilt. He sees himself surrounded by pointless activity. “The meaning of life: Boredom. Repetition. Order. Entrapment. Imprisonment.”
We struggle to make sense of the story’s violence as A Yi provides disturbing insights into the psychology behind a murder committed simply to relieve the daily monotony; the existential mind. A Yi draws on his experience as a rural policeman. It is tight, written with an insider’s view of dark motives. It is the voice of senseless cruelty.
Kong Jie does not deserve to be murdered and the narrator deserves our contempt for his act, even if his judgment of society is accurate. A Yi never lets his narrator off the hook; we never lose sight of the fact that the bloody murder of a young girl is a vile crime.
For the narrator explains that he chose Kong Jie precisely because she was the only good person he knew. “Because she was beautiful, kind, clever,” he tells the court. “A pretty vase like her gets smashed? I knew you’d be rushing to express unparalleled anger and emotion.”
A Yi positions the sick crime of the narrator against the sordid bargaining between the narrator’s mother and the mother of Kong Jie, in return for the latter asking the court for clemency.
“The loneliness was like a slaughter,” he thinks. In prison, he cares nothing for losing his freedom. Instead, the weight of time oppresses him just as before. Time is “the dirt always crushed, the waves always crashing, it forced itself into every space, drowned you, dismembered you… There was no resisting it.” He cannot make a human connection at this late stage, even with his mother. “I tried to push my fingers through the small holes of our conversation, but I couldn’t.”
How do you punish a killer who wants to be killed for his crime?
A Yi has crafted a masterful strategy for speaking about his society: the perfect crime.
Praise for A Perfect Crime:
“A terrifying, technically flawless account or moral darkness within the contemporary People’s Republic, by one of mainland China’s most accomplished and promising young novelists.” —Julia Lovell, The Opium War: Drugs, Dreams and the Making of China
“A former police officer who writes from experience, A Yi excels in his vivid, sordid portrait of contemporary China. It’s a heartbreaking tale of a rotten, alienated society fuelled by greed — a nation in moral crisis.” —South China Morning Post
“Beijing-based author A Yi’s new novella A Perfect Crime achieves something we haven’t seen in Chinese fiction for a while — a refreshingly non-verbose, verb-driven, first-person narrative of taut tension (reflected brilliantly in Anna Holmwood’s translation). It’s a great contrast to much current Chinese literature, which tends to be overlong and riddled with tangential ramblings and philosophical musings. A Yi has gone the other way: his writing is pared back, short, driven by pace, and very to the point.” —Paul French, Los Angeles Review of Books
A Yi is an author participating at the 2016 Bookworm Literary Festival. To read about other participating authors, please see our Meet an Author series.
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[september_eleven_vreeland] Digest Number 1317
There are 8 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1. Leprosy treatment / Why Milosevic Was Murdered
From: "norgesen" <norgeson@hotmail.com>
2. Life and Life Only
3. On the demonization of Milosevic (Part 1 of 2)
4. Jackson 5.0
5. Was Milosevic Poisoned?
6. Inoculations
7. How American Elections Became a Criminal Enterprise
From: ranger116@webtv.net
8. The End
From: "a4est4me" <a4est4me@yahoo.com>
Message: 1
Date: Wed, 15 Mar 2006 15:08:40 -0500
Subject: Leprosy treatment / Why Milosevic Was Murdered
Leprosy treatment
Wild as any freedom loving racist
I applaud the actions of the chief - Leonard Cohen
The latest spin on the poisoning of Slobodan Milosovic is that it was likely self-administered. Well, we're getting there.
Initial reports that Milosovic had recently expressed fear for his life and that his blood contained traces of Rifampicin, a drug used to treat leprosy and tuberculosis, were greeted with skepticism and even hostility on the part of the stubbornly incurious, who are inclined to type "Not everything is a conspiracy" when in fact they admit to none.
Rifampicin would have inhibited the effectiveness of Milosovic's blood pressure medication, possibly precipitating his fatal heart attack. Hague toxicologist Donald Uges says he is "sure he took the medicine himself because he wanted a one-way ticket to Moscow" for treatment. Earlier the UN's chief prosecutor Carla Del Ponte said it could have been a suicide, just as Croatian Serb leader Milan Babic's death in the same prison was said to be only a week before. Milosovic had been under constant suicide watch, so perhaps now his passing will be rulled "death by misadventure."
Some people kill themselves, and some others die natural deaths. Others still are murdered. This is something which those who twitch at every suggestion of conspiracy tend to forget. That assassins carry the whole black bag of statecraft means justice is almost never done, except for the victor's justice of a belligerant state that daubs itself in the innocents' blood.
Milosovic sought the testimony of Bill Clinton, and he would have seized the moment to expose the deep politics that saw al Qaeda operate as an overt strategic ally of American interests in the Balkans war. Bin Laden himself visited Albania in 1994 and sent units to fight in Kosovo alongside the KLA. The convergence of interest in the Balkans for al Qaeda and the United States was only superficially religious and poltical. It was narco-criminal. Frank Ciluffo, Deputy Director of the Globalized Organized Crime Program, alluded to this in his testimony before the Congressional Judicial Committee on December 13, 2000 (as quoted in Michel Chossudovsky's War and Globalization):
What was largely hidden from public view was the fact that the KLA raise part of their funds from the sale of narcotics. Albania and Kosovo lie at the heart of the "Balkan Route" that links the "Golden Crescent" of Afghanistan and Pakistan to the drug markets of Europe. This route is worth an estimated $400 billion a year and handles 80 percent of heroin destined for Europe.
In the opening statement of his trial, Milosovic said
In 1998 when Holbrooke visited us in Belgrade, we told him the information we had at our disposal, that in Northern Albania the KLA is being aided by Osama bin Laden, that he was arming, training, and preparing the members of this terrorist organization in Albania. However, they decided to cooperate with the KLA and indirectly, therefore, with bin Laden, although before that he had bombed the embassies in Kenya and Tanzania [and] had already declared war.
He concluded "one day all this will have to come to light, these links." Jeremy Scahill notes today, "That, however, is unlikely, and more so now that Milosevic is dead."
"The man dubbed the Butcher of the Balkans [was] responsible for the deaths of at least 250,000 people," says Britain's Sun tabloid in memorium. That's a lot of death. Coincidently last week, the Lancet Medical Journal now estimates that the US invasion and three-year occupation of Iraq has killed more than 250,000 Iraqi civilians. That's a full one percent of the country's pre-war population: the equivalent of three million Americans, to convert the blood to a currency the West better appreciates.
But then the United States doesn't recognize the Hague, except for others. And it doesn't do body counts, unless the bodies can be laid at the feet of its enemies. At whose feet will Milosovic lie? Those of another butcher, still plying his trade.
By the way, have you seen this: "The Pakistan foreign office had paid tens of thousands of dollars to lobbyists in the US to get anti-Pakistan references dropped from the 9/11 inquiry commission report, The Friday Times has claimed. The Pakistani weekly said its story is based on disclosures made by foreign service officials to the Public Accounts Committee at a secret meeting in Islamabad on Tuesday."
http://rigorousintuition.blogspot.com/2006/03/leprosy-treatment.html
According to intelligence analyst John Whitley, covert support to the Kosovo "Liberation Army" was established as a joint endeavor between the CIA and Germany's Bundes Nachrichten Dienst- the BND. You may remember the BND from Elohim City, and its "Security Chief" Andreas Stassmier. Jeff has previously looked into the BND and OKC Here.
As you can probably guess, the Balkans puppet show is not just about drugs, it's also about oil reserves, weapons, and minerals...
(British intelligence and the SAS is also implicated in this "statecraft", particularly involving the transport of Turkish heroin and the training of KLA and Kurdish killer kids...)
http://www.historyofmacedonia.org/AlbanianTerrorism/KLA.html
Let's be very clear about one thing - western governments and corporate business interests have no objection to states with repressive totalitarian regimes, provided they play the global game, allowing Trans-national Corporations (TNCs) to invest in and exploit their resources - and provided these regimes take out loans from the big commercial banks, the World Bank or the IMF etc. - for example Indonesia, the Phillipines and numerous tin pot dictatorships in sub Saharan Africa. Indeed western governments will help bring dictators and human rights abusers to power and support them, as the US did with General Pinochet in Chile and Suharto in Indonesia.
However if they do not play the game, instead seeking to be independent for the benefit of their own people, then, if they happen to have a dubious human rights record towards minorities, it will be seized upon to provide the excuse for armed intervention. Such states are now termed rogue states, and the old federal republic of Yugoslavia became a perfect example. It was a socialist country with state and co-operative ownership of business interests. It was unwilling to allow foreign companies to invest in or take over its industries and was not interested in joining the European Union or NATO. Economic collapse occurred in the late 80's when international bankers called in Yugoslavia's loans, which had the effect of rekindling old ethnic tensions as people began to squabble over increasingly scarce jobs and resources, and the ethnic groups blamed each other for the resulting economic collapse. (Against this backdrop, Milosevic was elected to power by a Serb majority.) Subsequent events produced favourable results for western finance and industry. The newly created states of Bosnia, Croatia etc. are all now open to "foreign investment", but Serbia, Montenegro and Kosovo still made up Yugoslavia. [14]
http://www.bilderberg.org/whorunstheworld8.doc
Great article by Lisa Pease on her Real History Blog: Was Milosevic Poisoned?
Why Milosevic Was Murdered
Tinpot dictator blew the whistle on the New World Order
Paul Joseph Watson/ March 13 2006
Slobodan Milosevic was a distasteful man with authoritarian Communist ideals. But the reasons for his obvious murder revolve around his evergreen willingness to blow the whistle on the global criminal masterminds who had made the mistake of giving 'Slobo' a speaking platform in the first place.
Just two days after Milosevic's death the evidence indicating murder has poured in.
- Milosevic wrote a letter one day before his death claiming he was being poisoned to death in jail. The lawyer who advised Milosevic during his trial, Azdenko Tomanovic (pictured below) , showed journalists a handwritten letter in which Milosevic wrote: "They would like to poison me. I'm seriously concerned and worried."
- Blood tests show that Milosevic's body contained a drug that rendered his usual medication for high blood pressure and his heart condition ineffective, causing the heart attack that led to his death.
- The media has spun this to make out as if Milosevic deliberately took the wrong drug so he could seek specialist treatment in Moscow and delay his trial. This is frankly absurd. Milosevic only had access to the drugs provided to him by UN appointed doctors and took them under close surveillance. Are we to believe that Milosevic had managed to set up a secret drugs lab in his closely watched prison prison cell and then substituted the drugs while under constant monitoring?
- Milan Babic, a former Croatian Serb leader who testified against Milosevic was "suicided" just six days before Milosevic's death. According to the BBC, tribunal spokeswoman Alexandra Milenov said he had given no indication that he was contemplating suicide. "There was nothing unusual in his demeanor," she said. Another Hague detainee, Slavko Dokmanovic, supposedly killed himself in 1998.
- Allegations of suicide were dismissed by British lawyer, Steven Kay QC, who said Milosevic had told him before he was found dead: "I have not come all this way not to see it to the end."
- The Globalists have wanted to eliminate Milosevic for a long time. Former MI6 agent Richard Tomlinson said he saw documents in 1992 that discussed assassinating Milosevic by means of a staged car accident, where the driver would be blinded by a flash of light and remote controlled brake failure enacted to cause the crash. This exact same technique was utilized for real in the murder of Princess Diana.
Milosevic was a loose cannon with intimate knowledge of the criminality of the Globalists after the IMF/Bilderberg coup de 'tat in Serbia in the 1990's.
In March 2002, Milosevic presented the Hague tribunal with FBI documents proving that the United States government and NATO provided financial and military support for Al-Qaeda to aid the Kosovo Liberation Army in its war against Serbia.
This didn't go down too well at the Pentagon and the White House, who at the time were trying to sell a war on terror and gearing up to justify invading Iraq.
Milosevic made several speeches in which he discussed how a group of shadowy internationalists had caused the chaos in the Balkans because it was the next step on the road to a "new world order."
During a February 2000 Serbian Congressional speech, Milosevic stated,
"Small Serbia and people in it have demonstrated that resistance is possible. Applied at a broader level, it was organized primarily as a moral and political rebellion against tyranny, hegemony, monopolism, generating hatred, fear and new forms of violence and revenge against champions of freedom among nations and people, such a resistance would stop the escalation of modern time inquisition. Uranium bombs, computer manipulations, drug-addicted young assassins and bribed of blackmailed domestic thugs, promoted to the allies of the new world order, these are the instruments of inquisition which have surpassed, in their cruelty and cynicism, all previous forms of revengeful violence committed against the mankind in the past."
Milosevic was far from an angel, but evidence linking him to genocides like Srebrenica, in which 7,000 Muslims died, was continually proven to be fraudulent. In fact, Srebrenica was supposedly a 'UN safe zone', yet just like Rwanda, UN peacekeepers deliberately withdrew and allowed the massacre to unfold, then blamed Milosevic.
Milosevic's exposure of UN involvement in the Srebrenica massacre was another reason why tribunal transcripts were heavily edited and censored, and another contributing factor towards his murder.
First Reaction to the Death of Slobodan Milosevic
by Jared Israel
In the aftermath of the death of Milosevic, the media is rehashing all the old charges against him - which in effect means, against the Serbian people. Emperor's Clothes has published many articles refuting media misinformation about the Serbs and Yugoslavia. Some of the most important are collected in:
The Break-up of Yugoslavia: Who did what, and to whom?
Regarding the death of Milosevic, here are my immediate comments: Milosevic's death while incarcerated at The Hague - like the deaths of other Serbs before him - is at minimum an outrage. He asked for, and Russia agreed to provide, first rate care for his serious heart condition. The Hague Tribunal demanded special guarantees; the Russian government provided them. Nevertheless, the request was denied, apparently without explanation. Milosevic's lawyer, Mr. Tomanovic, states that Milosevic wrote to the Russian Embassy in The Hague, charging that he was being given dangerous medicines. Even apart from this charge, the denial of medical care constitutes in itself foul play. And The Hague has also denied Milosevic's family's demand that an autopsy be conducted in Russia. Why?
How can a UN organization justify denying medical care to a prisoner, indeed to an elected head of state? Not to mention to the accused in what was billed as the trial of the century? How, even if he had been guilty as charged? But he was not guilty of war crimes. Despite the media hype, Milosevic was not a war criminal. And despite some of his rhetoric at The Hague, he was also not a heroic opponent of NATO. In truth, he was an appeaser who tried to curry favor with the West while sometimes talking tough, to the despair of the ordinary people whom he regularly setup and betrayed. The fact that, despite this, The Hague Tribunal, the proclaimed tool of NATO, seized him without concern for mere legality, put him on trial in its bizarrely biased 'court,' and finally killed him, at the very least through criminal negligence, says much about the character of the leaders of the International Community who sponsored the resurgent Croatian, Moslem and Albanian fascists who wrecked havoc on Yugoslavia, followed by massive NATO bombing.
-- Jared Israel
Emperor's Clothes
http://emperors-clothes.com/milo/death.htm
On the Demonization of the 'Media Milosevic': How and why it has been done and why it's Nonsense
[This message contained attachments]
Subject: Life and Life Only
Life and Life Only
People they come together
People they fall apart
No one can stop us now
'Cause we are all made of stars - Moby
I'm still chewing over the implications of "Grave Mysteries" and expect to for quite a while. Because I haven't the time today for greater coherence but want to post something, here are a few notes about where my thoughts are heading.
Let's start with the unlikely figure of Troy Hurtubise. He's a self-taught inventor led by his intuition known for his "bizarre, yet functional" creations. (Much like fellow Canadian John Hutchison and his physics-bending "Hutchison Effect".) Hurtubise makes things work that people who know better believe shouldn't, and can't really explain why they do. "Firepaste," for instance: an astonishingly effective fire retardant he's repeatedly demonstrated by the protracted application of a blowtorch to a half-inch thick smear of dried paste atop his head. The underside of the paste, and Troy's head, show no appreciable heating. (Video of a demonstration can be found on this page under the heading "Fighting Fire with Fact.") How does it work? Hurtubise guards the formula, but he's admitted one ingredient is Diet Coke.
A later invention of Troy's is "Angel Light": a device which, he claims, can see through walls and into flesh, detect stealth objects and disable electronic devices. He says the design came to him in "a series of three dreams," and he constructed it from memory. He later dismantled it when he found exposure to be harmful. (Characteristic of Hurtubise's work is his pursuit of protective applications.) Most recently, Hurtubise has announced "God Light": an array of "67 lenses and five gases to produce 80,000 lux of full-spectrum light" which he says has reversed symptoms of Parkinson's Disease and shrunk the cancerous tumors of mice.
It should be no surprise Hurturbise is called, charitably, an eccentric "mad scientist" by apologists of a scientific paradigm he disrespects by creatively violating. Yet "God Light" sounds very similar to the 1970 discovery of biophysicist Fritz-Albert Popp that carcinogens were light scramblers on the specific wavelength of 380 nanometres. Popp further learned that the still little-understood phenomenon of "photo-repair" - the rapid repair of a cell 99% destroyed by UV light with a weaker emission at the same wavelength - was most effective at the same 380 nanometres.
As Lynne McTaggart writes in The Field, "this was where Popp made his logical leap":
Nature was too perfect for this to be simple coincidence. If the carcinogens only react to this wavelength, it must somehow be linked to photo-repair. If so, this would mean that there must be some light in the body responsible for photo-repair. A cancerous compound must cause cancer because it permanently blocks this light and scrambles it, so photo-repair can't work anymore.
This was the theory which led to the discovery of DNA as a coherent emitter of biophotons. He found the frequencies of healthy subjects followed dramatic set patterns, and exhibited correlations between parts of the body and the wider world. The emissions of cancer patients, however, were markedly different: rhythm and coherence were lost; communication scrambled. "They had lost their connection with the world."
Illumination is a difficult word for its being weighed down with the uncollected baggage of Adam Weishaupt. I won't use the word "Illuminati" for today's occult elite because it says too much and not enough. Still, as a metaphor for a high and hidden order of adepts initiated into secret knowledge, it's difficult to do better.
Are you illuminated? Perhaps the answer is Pelagian. Perhaps the answer is yes, we all are; and the radiant light is the Divine Spark that bonds us soul to body, self to self and world to world. Perhaps that's the true secret that's meant to be kept from us who are outside the Temple and the Tomb: that God also indwells the "useless eater." That seems to be what the Ayahuasca wants to tell us. That appears to be the lesson of shamanism, and also, perhaps, of all partisans of the Life-Force within every tradition.
(Also, let's note, it's an electric light, which must remind us of the ubiquity of the buzzing of bees. Tesla, as Reich, was its apostle.)
Something else, and something darker, out on the borderline of speculation. If our code is the Great Secret, then this casts another shadow upon abduction accounts of reproduction and genetic manipulation involving both human agents and trans-human entities.
In The Search for the Manchurian Candidate, author John Marks quotes a scientist who worked on a secret genetic project for the CIA's Office of Research and Development in 1965:
We looked at the manipulation of genes. We were interested in gene splintering. The rest of the world didn't ask until 1976 the type of questions we were facing in 1965.... Everybody was afraid of building a super-soldier who would take orders without questioning, like the kamikaze pilot.
On January 6, 1998, physicist Richard Seed launched his cloning project with the words "the reprogramming of DNA is the first serious step in becoming one with God." Soon after, the Clinton White House banned federal funds for such experiments. A decision Dr Helmut Lammer believes worthless as most "black projects" have been offloaded to the private sector. I'll return to this later, but for now: would you expect covert DNA manipulation, by human or trans-human abductors, to enhance or inhibit access to our higher selves?
I resist the trippy impulse to say "everything is an illusion" (that includes the icky corollary, "everything but love"). It strikes me as an adolescent retreat from mundane affairs and a surrender of the world to the forces of death and darkness. Rather, I find myself preferring everything is real. Even our apparent illusions. I think maybe that's the ground upon which we can pitch our battle. And Life hasn't lost yet.
We may not even need to travel to Peru and projectile vomit in the jungle to know this.
http://rigorousintuition.blogspot.com/2006/03/life-and-life-only_08.html
Speaking of carcinogens affecting wavelenths:
Perchlorate, the explosive ingredient in solid rocket fuel, has contaminated drinking water and soil in at least 35 states, with most of the known contamination coming from military bases and defense contractors...
..found in milk, produce and many other foods and animal feed crops from coast to coast, Perchlorate is a thyroid toxin, and animal tests show that even small amounts can disrupt normal growth and development in fetuses, infants and children.
http://www.ewg.org
Jeff asks: "would you expect covert DNA manipulation, by human or trans-human abductors, to enhance or inhibit access to our higher selves?"
This led me to consider GM (genetically modified) foods, and I wondered if humans could ingest this modified DNA. Sure enough, I found this-
..the risk of gut bacteria scavenging antibiotic resistance genes from GM food is no longer theoretical... it has been proven that bacteria in the human gut can take up DNA from genetically modified food.
Dugoboy said...
Strategic Communication Laboratories
my 1st link.
Jeremiah Cornelius said...
Dugoboy's link to SCL is fascinating. Look at their list of "Key Management" and the Board of Advisors. Some, such as Peter Varnish, OBE are beyond belief - are you guys catching the message on this link?
The Truth is Out There, Earthling.
Subject: On the demonization of Milosevic (Part 1 of 2)
On the demonization of Milosevic: How and why it's done; why it's nonsense
Part 1 of 2 parts
(Posted 3 March 2001, revised 15 March 2006)
** This article was written five years ago, when the KLA terrorists were attacking southern Serbia and Macedonia, and somehow this was being blamed on Milosevic.
Now, in March 2006, with the death of Milosevic, and with the media rehashing all the attacks on him, which means, in effect, on the Serbs, the points made here are, alas, timely.
-- Jared Israel, 15 March 2006 **
====================================================
The Western media is preparing us for yet another terrorist war which NATO claims it is helpless to prevent, although NATO is training the terrorists.
"Western special forces were still training the guerrillas, as a result of decisions taken before the change of government in Yugoslavia." (BBC, Jan. 29, 2001) (1)
The 'guerrillas' in question are members of the terrorist Kosovo Liberation Army, or KLA. You remember the KLA, don't you? They're the people NATO installed in power in Kosovo in June 1999 after which they dutifully drove out almost all Serbs, 'Gypsies', Jews, non-Albanian Muslims (known as 'Gorani'), and Albanians who opposed the KLA. Or just killed them. (2)
The KLA has, we are told, been dissolved, yet under new names it continues to start new terrorist wars. (3)
Aside from an invasion of southern Serbia, which it started a year ago, the KLA is also attacking Macedonia.
The KLA, by whatever name, has supposedly been fully disarmed except that somehow it has heavy weapons and somehow there are NATO combat helicopters providing air cover. (4)
** Mass Media Prepares Us for War **
The way the mass media gets us ready for new terrorist wars is by marinating our heads in lies.
Consider an article that appeared in the February 24th London 'Telegraph'. The body of the article concerns the KLA's latest terrorist attacks. But the headline reads:
"NATO Forces Face New Threat In Balkans"
Huh? Is somebody threatening NATO? No, nobody is threatening NATO.
The point of the title is to give readers the proper attitude prior to breaking the news that NATO's prize pet, the KLA, is again attacking Serbia and Macedonia.
Readers must be directed away from unacceptable (if perfectly logical) speculations such as that maybe the UN, which renamed the KLA the 'Kosovo Protection Corp,' and NATO, which has been training the terrorists attacking Serbia and Macedonia, are behind these attacks. Oh no no no, says the title, these attacks threaten NATO, and gently nudges us away from treacherous waters.
Now for your consideration, here is the article's first sentence:
"The Kosovo war was fought to defeat Slobodan Milosevic and his dream of a 'Greater Serbia.'"
Amazing. This article is supposedly about recent terrorist attacks. News reports are supposed to start by telling us who did it, what happened, where it happened, when and why.
Did Milosevic go out last night and launch terrorist attacks on Macedonia and southern Serbia?
By starting with this sentence, the 'Telegraph' dredges up our memories of anti-Serb media stories past. It gives us the impression that whatever happens now stems from Milosevic.
This is important for two reasons.
First, this suggests that the Serbian people are violently nationalist. Why? Because Milosevic was an elected leader, so if this characterization were true, it would mean that most Serbs supported a violently expansionist policy. Thus while the sentence focuses on Milosevic, he is really just a symbol. The real attack is on the Serbs as a whole.
Second, NATO and the pro-NATO leaders, who took over in Belgrade after the coup a year ago, are trying to build public support for arresting Milosevic. They want to stage a show trial to convince the world that NATO is innocent and the Serbs are guilty for the breakup of Yugoslavia.
At the same time, the opening sentence:
"The Kosovo war was fought to defeat Slobodan Milosevic and his dream of a 'Greater Serbia'"
tells readers that NATO is supposedly innocent of wrongdoing. The implication is that if NATO had not bombed Yugoslavia and occupied Kosovo it would have failed to:
"defeat Slobodan Milosevic and his dream of a 'Greater Serbia'"
Thus, like the headline,
"NATO Forces Face New Threat In Balkans,"
the first sentence puts us in the proper mental state for a constructive news experience: pro-NATO and on the lookout for Serbian dreams of expansion.
But wait a minute. Is the 'Telegraph' seriously saying NATO bombed Yugoslavia to stop a Milosevic dream?
Or did this dream take some earthly form? Was Milosevic trying to expand Serbia into Kosovo?
That must be the idea, but there is a wee glitch. In spring of 1999, when NATO attacked Yugoslavia, Kosovo was a province of Serbia.
In fact Kosovo has been an internationally recognized province of Serbia since before World War I.
The border between Kosovo (that is, Serbia) and the country known as Albania is one of the oldest internationally recognized borders in Europe.
Moreover, Kosovo is the heart of Serbia. It's where Serbia started. Saying that Serbia is expanding into Kosovo is similar to saying New York City is expanding into Manhattan.
This 'Greater Serbia' stuff was invented by the Austro-Hungarian Empire as war propaganda to justify its attack on little Serbia, an attack that turned into World War I. It was black humor then - this elephant whining that it was threatened by the expansionism of a mouse.
And it has not gained intellectual stature with time, but so what? It is not brains but money, might and media that count in the new, Euro/American order. Lucky for them.
The "Greater Serbia" nonsense was reissued in the early 1990s. Since then it has been foisted on us continuously by Western journalists, politicians and professors. It is the stock explanation for every conflict in Yugoslavia.
But despite all of Milosevic's expansionist dreaming, Serbia has never annexed any land. Not an acre. And even now, after the destruction of Yugoslavia, about 40% of the people living in Serbia are *not* Orthodox Christian Serbs. That is the same percentage as before the breakup of Yugoslavia. In other words, the Serbs have not "ethnically cleaned" the place where it would have been easiest: inner Serbia, where ethnic Serbs are a majority.
By way of contrast, Croatia and Slovenia, the Yugoslav Republics that launched the wars of secession, are virtually Serb-free.
A million Serbs and non-Serb Yugoslav loyalists have been driven from their lands and/or homes in other parts of Yugoslavia (e.g., the Serbian farmers who owned most of the land in Bosnia for the very good reason that they farmed it). Those refugees, mostly but not all ethnic Serbs, now live in Serbia.
"To Defend the Union"
Yugoslavia, led by Serbia, fought defensively throughout the 1990s, resisting secessionists who launched armed attacks on Yugoslav forces and who depopulated vast areas of Serbs and other people whom the secessionists considered undesirable, for example, "Gypsies".
The two most extreme examples are the Krajina section of Yugoslavia (over 250,00 Serbs were driven out by Croatian fascist troops under U.S. leadership in August, 1995; during the whole period from 1990 to 1995, nearly 500,000 Serbs were driven out) and Kosovo (about 350,000 Serbs and other Yugoslav loyalists were driven out following NATO takeover in June, 1999).
The goal of the secessionists - the neo-fascists in Croatia and Kosovo and the Bosnian Islamists - was to rip off parts of Yugoslavia and form mini-states under US and West European sponsorship. Serbs were the main targets because they are the cement of Yugoslavia. That is, they were the key force in uniting the South Slavs ("Yugo"="South") in a state whose unity provided its constituent national groups with sufficient strength to resist - or at least try to resist - foreign domination. The German Establishment has been fully aware of this fact for 100 years which is why the Austro-Hungarian Empire launched World War I by attacking Serbia, and why Nazi Germany put so much effort into crushing the rebellious Serbs, who were the backbone of the Partisan resistance to the Nazis.
Thus throughout the 1990s Yugoslavia, led by Serbia, has in effect resisted Anglo-U.S.-German-Islamist "dreams of expansion."
Serbia was in a position similar to that of the northern states during the U.S. Civil War. The North fought to prevent the southern states from forming a slave nation under British domination and Serbia fought to prevent parts of Yugoslavia from forming ethnically 'pure' statelets under Western domination.
Western politicians and the mass media have accused Serbia of destabilizing the Balkans. What breathtaking cynicism. As anyone who has read European history knows, the existence of a state unifying the 'south Slavs' (hence 'Yugo-slavia') is crucial to the stability of southern Europe and Russia. Serbia's opposition to the splintering of Yugoslavia into weak Anglo-American and German neocolonies has nothing to do with "dreaming of a 'Greater Serbia'".
** The Media Milosevic **
To make the 'Greater Serbia' charge believable it has been linked to the accusation that Mr. Milosevic was and is motivated by hatred of non-Serbs.
The Western media has come up with a new, improved Milosevic to aid in digesting this idea. I encountered this Media Milosevic while watching a Fox News program during the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia. Fox was interviewing a 'NY Times' reporter, an 'expert' on Yugoslavia. The reporter said:
"The ethnic cleansing of Kosovo, as Milosevic would call it, is a success."
"As Milosevic would call it." So brief but so untrue.
If the reporter had said, "Milosevic has popularized the term 'ethnic cleansing' and used it in Kosovo," it would have been a lie, but at least a straight forward lie. One could have asked: "Where's the proof?"
But the reporter presented his accusation (that Milosevic supported ethnic cleansing) as if he were mentioning a fact so well known it required no proof. Such casualness has great power for it leads the viewer who is uninformed about the Balkans (virtually all Americans) to think: "Milosevic invented ethnic cleansing. One more reason to get that guy."
New York Times reporting is replete with references to Milosevic as the author of the term 'ethnic cleansing.' For instance, on August 3, 1992, Anthony Lewis, a Times columnist and prolific Serb-baiter, wrote, in a column syndicated in other papers:
"President Bush compared Saddam Hussein to Hitler. I am against such analogies, because they cheapen the Holocaust. But if that one is to be used, it better fits the Serbian leader, Slobodan Milosevic, the inventor of 'ethnic cleansing.'" (Anthony Lewis, 'N.Y. Times,' August 3, 1992)
Emperor's Clothes uses a research tool called Lexis. With it we can, in a few seconds, scan the world press going back 20 years.
I did an exhaustive search of 'N.Y. Times' articles. The 'N.Y. Times' has never quoted Milosevic saying one word in favor of 'ethnic cleansing'. Never.
How could Milosevic have originated the term, 'ethnic cleansing,' without using the term, 'ethnic cleansing'? And how could Lewis know Milosevic originated the term, when the supposed statement in which Milosevic originated it has never been reported?
The reporter interviewed by Fox (and Mr. Lewis, and many others) was simply lying. Or to be more accurate, he was not only lying, he was presenting his lie in a manner calculated to make the viewer feel that everyone except perhaps himself or herself already knew it was true.
The term 'ethnic cleansing' has an interesting history. It was first used in Kosovo in the early 1980s. Albanian secessionists were waging a campaign of racist harassment, driving tens of thousands of Serbs from Kosovo. (4a)
-- Continued in Part 2, to be mailed out shortly. Or you may continue reading now at http://www.tenc.net/articles/jared/expan.htm#part2
* Footnotes *
1) The BBC tells all. Anyway, it tells a lot. See: 'Diplomats Admit NATO Backs KLA Invasion of Inner Serbia' at http://emperors-clothes.com/docs/admi.htm
2) For a detailed explanation of what happened in a Kosovo town after NATO took over and put the Kosovo Liberation Army in power, see "The Women of Orahovac Speak"
http://emperors-clothes.com/misc/savethe-a.htm
For an account by the Jewish leader in Pristina (capital of Kosovo province) of how the KLA terrorists, with the full knowledge of British officers, drove all loyal Yugoslavs from the province, see "Driven from Kosovo!"
http://emperors-clothes.com/interviews/ceda.htm
3) See, "Stranger than Fiction: NATO and the US Sponsor Terror in Kosovo and Macedonia,"
http://emperors-clothes.com/articles/jared/nocrime.htm
4) On NATO helicopters providing air cover for the KLA invasion of southern Serbia, see 'Pentagon Dogs'; at http://emperors-clothes.com/articles/tika/dogs.htm
4a) Before the media launched its demonization of the Serbs, there was some news about the campaign to drive the Serbs from Kosovo. See for example this 1987 article from the London Times.
http://emperors-clothes.com/archive/timesnov187.htm
www.tenc.net * Emperor's Clothes
Subject: Jackson 5.0
Jackson 5.0
So I work in that same beauty salon, I'm chained to the old masquerade
The lipstick, the shadow, the silicone: I follow my father's trade - Leonard Cohen
Michael Jackson may be another example of a celebrity distraction which, upon examination, reveals more about our society's mortal condition than a tabloid could imagine. Almost certainly more than it would dare to describe.
Yesterday, Jackson was ordered to close Neverland for having failed to pay the ranch's 47 employees their salary or insurance since the end of 2005. Unfortunate for the unpaid staff and the abandoned llamas but no surprise. He's moved on since his aquittal, like Gary Glitter did after his 1999 conviction, having departed last June for a Bahrain "vacation" from which he's yet to emerge. ("For the people working at Bahrain's malls, the person covered head to toe in a black veil, gloves and glasses appeared to be a rich, doting Saudi mother.... But why would a woman wear a man's shoes? Why the bodyguards? And why did the person's fluid movements seem so familiar?")
Last week's real Jackson story ran in the New York Daily News, under the snappy banner "Creepy dad was root of all clan's woe, singer sez." The singer was brother Jermaine, and the claims based on the projected outline for his abandoned "tell-all" family story.
Reading that Joseph was a nightmare of a father and sexually abusive towards his daughters is not exactly a "stop the presses" moment. What's new is this:
Jermaine even suggested his father may have set up Michael to be somehow victimized by older men.
He tells how his father would have Michael join in at late-night hotel room meetings with "important business people," and wondered whether "something happened" to Michael at those sessions.
He said he sensed something was wrong because Michael would be sick for days after. "What was Joseph doing?" Jermaine wrote.
This lifts the Jackson family horror show to a whole new order of dysfunction, one that sees parents network with power and trade their children for privilege. This should be a motif familiar to anyone acquainted with the literature of mind control and ritual abuse survivors: the father and first controller, passing his child-victim up the social ladder of abuse in return for status, protection and reward. All that's missing is the element of occult terror. Or maybe not: "LaToya also described being awakened in the night by Joseph wearing a 'monster mask.'"
Perhaps we can take more from this than the suspicion that the Jackson clan had gotten with the program. Perhaps rather the point is that the program exploits pre-existing conditions for abuse which are more common than most suspect. (This is how I tend to think of Ponchatoula's Hosanna Church.) Yet we shouldn't discount the suspicion, either, particularly given some of Michael's paranormal interests and peculiar associations. His close friendship with SPECTRA contactee and channeller of the Nine, Uri Geller, for one instance. (Jackson was Geller's best man in 2001 when he and his wife renewed his vows, the same year Geller is said to have been reactivated as a psychic spy.) His entourage including a "personal magician" for another.
Even if you wanted to, you won't be reading Jermaine's account now. Like every Jackson sibling who's tried to break from Joe, he's climbed down, returned to the fold and scrapped the book, apparently on the strength of Michael's threats to sue. Previously, Michael's given cause for family observers to attribute his grotesque body dysmorphia to a dread of resembling his father. Yet there they were at Jackson's trial last year, hand in hand.
In the big picture Michael Jackson means not very much. But his little picture may be more newsworthy than the news suggests.
http://rigorousintuition.blogspot.com/2006/03/jackson-50.html
The link "personal majician" is intrigueing.
From Madsen via Boucher:
Jackson�s stay at the Cedars was arranged through David Kuo, George W. Bush�s White House director of the Office of Faith-based Initiatives. Kuo, a former CIA employee... had been Executive Director of the Center for Effective Compassion, founded in 1995 by Arianna Huffington... Kuo also previously worked for the Christian Coalition and Senator John Ashcroft.
There's also some curious Neverland/Disneyland connections to the "Mickey Mouse Club" children who are now stars, including Justin Timberlake (remember the star on Janet Jackson's breast?) and Brittany Spears, Christina Aguilera...
The piper walks into the mountain, still followed by the children, and the cave closes again...
Here is Boucher's follow up to the "majician" link of Jeff's.
starroute said...
Anonymous quoted, "Jackson�s stay at the Cedars was arranged through David Kuo . . ."
Hold on -- the Cedars is the headquarters of the Fellowship Foundation, the creepy Christianoid cult with deep political connections. Here's a bit of the original Madsen article that the Michael Jackson quote comes from:
In 1976, the Fellowship began looking for a permanent headquarters in Arlington. It set its sights on the estate of George Mason IV, The Cedars, located at 2301 North Uhle Street. Mason was one of the drafters of the Bill of Rights. The Fellowship, also known as the International Foundation, bought the property from Charles Piluso. Although not much is known about Piluso, the Los Angeles Times reported that Howard Hughes, the man with whom Fellowship Senator Ralph Owen Brewster once sparred, also lived there. According to a senior Pentagon official, the Cedars had been used as a CIA safe house prior to the Fellowship�s purchase of the estate. The Fellowship paid $1.5 million for the Cedars, the money coming from Tom Phillips, the CEO of Raytheon, and Ken Olsen, the CEO of Digital Equipment Corporation. Sanford McDonnell of McDonnell Douglas Corporation was another deep-pocketed supporter of the Fellowship through Full Gospel Business Men�s Fellowship International, an activity linked to Fellowship core member Pat Robertson.
I posted above that The Cedars, where Michael Jackson was mentioned as having stayed for a time, was the center of the Fellowship Foundation.
I just ran across the Fellowship Foundation again, when looking for something to explain the anomalous situation of recently-disgraced Republican shoplifter Claude A. Allen. The quote below is from the LaRouchies -- and thus, as always, not to be considered 100% reliable -- but in this case it fits in so well with the ongoing discussion that I'm tentatively inclined to trust it:
DeLay's career and power became at the same time a central project for all three of the shadow partners, Grover Norquist, Jack Abramoff and Ralph Reed. DeLay was by no means a random point of interest.
Tom DeLay staggered into Washington as a freshman Congressman in 1984, a terrible drunk, his life dissolving. Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.) approached him with a road to salvation. He reportedly showed DeLay a videotape that made him weep. Tom DeLay then radically changed his life, turning his soul over to higher powers.
But by all reliable accounts, DeLay became a much nastier, a fearsomely un-Christian individual.
Frank Wolf represented an old "black operations" soul-robbing agency known as the Fellowship Foundation. Practicing secrecy on about the same level as the National Security Agency, the Fellowship does conduct one public function�it runs the huge annual Congressional/Presidential Prayer Breakfast in Washington, with similar events managed inside the Pentagon and at other government and military sites.
The Fellowship Foundation (earlier called International Christian Leadership and a succession of cover names) was created before World War II by the organization of the pro-Nazi Frank Buchman. Sen. H. Alexander Smith (R-N.J.), Buchman's lieutenant who in 1940 had called for a joint world dictatorship of the United States, Britain, and Nazi Germany, brought the Fellowship into acceptance in Washington. In the 1950s, the group was sponsored by former Nazi SS officer, Holland's Prince Bernhard, and the Dutch royal family.
The Fellowship runs a house near the U.S. Capitol, where Congressmen and Senators, who are members, live. For example, Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kans.), the delirious End-Timer, has lived in the cult's house in Washington. Raytheon CEO Tom Phillips and other figures in the military-industrial complex, pay the bills.
The Fellowship specializes in taking over the lives of potentially powerful individuals who have become somehow ruined, and promising them dominion in the world if they will play along. Watergate dirty-trickster Charles Colson, when he was on his way to prison and suddenly powerless, was recruited, and turned his life over to the Fellowship. Colson's Prison Fellowship Ministries is a subordinate unit of the cult, with its tentacles in most prisons in the United States.
After Tom DeLay was zapped, Charles Colson became DeLay's personal guru. Colson's militancy for the End-Times war on Muslims has made him a congenial companion to Jack Abramoff in their keeping of DeLay�Abramoff has repeatedly led Tom to Israel to call for all-out war against the Arabs.
And Christian Coalition co-founder Pat Robertson was himself a product of the Fellowship magic.
Robertson was the good-for-nothing playboy son of Sen. A. Willis Robertson (R-Va.), the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. Pat began speaking in tongues and uttering prophecies under the guidance of Harald Bredesen, a master training agent of the Fellowship group, who had proved himself to the highest circles of British intelligence. Pat Robertson started off as assistant pastor to Bredesen, whose intelligence partners, the Full Gospel Businessmen's Fellowship, raised the money to expand Robertson's and Bredesen's Virginia-based Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) toward global power status.
The sentence I put in boldface is *extremely* interesting. Wasn't there a Michael Jackson video where he was envisioning himself as ruler of the world or some such?
Subject: Was Milosevic Poisoned?
Was Milosevic Poisoned?
Lisa Pease
Would you believe that looking into Milosevic's death led me to a strong link between the US government and al Qaeda, sharing common goals in Kosovo? That's why history is always relevant, and the truth always matters.
Here's where I started.
ABC News is reporting the "swirl of suspicion" regarding the death of former Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevich:
Among the scenarios being floated: Drugs smuggled into prison, a poisoning plot and the possibility Milosevic was undermining his own treatment in hopes of being sent to Moscow, where his wife and son live in exile.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Moscow did not fully trust the autopsy report and would send its own pathologists to examine the body. The U.N. war crimes tribunal had said a heart attack killed Milosevic, according to preliminary findings from Dutch pathologists who conducted a nearly eight-hour autopsy.
... Milosevic was found dead in his prison cell in The Hague on Saturday, just hours after writing Russian officials a letter alleging that an "extremely strong drug" was found in his bloodstream. Zdenko Tomanovic, his family lawyer, said Milosevic was "seriously concerned" he was being poisoned.
I almost blogged about this when I first heard he had died. I was immediately suspicious because a former associate of Milosevich's, who had later testified against him, was found dead in the same facility just six days earlier. The sentiments expressed by Marija Darijevic in this Chicago Tribune piece echo my own:
Six days before Milosevic's death, Milan Babic, 50, leader of Serb rebels in Croatia and a convicted war criminal, committed suicide in the same prison. Babic had provided key testimony against Milosevic and was back in The Hague testifying in another case.
"First Babic, now Milosevic. This is not an accident," said Marija Darijevic, 34, a Belgrade lawyer. "I suffered under Milosevic and I don't feel any regret at his death, but I think that even the worst criminal has the right to proper medical treatment."
The suspicious death, labeled officially "heart failure," took place in a city that bills itself as the "City of Peace and Justice." Saddam Hussein had just last year asked that his own trial be moved there, believing he would get a fairer deal. I imagine he's having serious second thoughts on that front now.
I'm surprised how people just accept at face value that Milosevich was, as the press called him, the "Butcher of the Balkans." As is often the case in historical matters, the victor's account of history is only one side of the story. Ramsey Clark, a former Attorney General of the United States, wrote a letter to Secretary General of the United Nations Kofi Annan, in which he stated:
The Prosecution of the former President of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia is scheduled to end its presentation of evidence to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) on February 19, 2004, more than two years after its first witness testified.
Over 500,000 pages of documents and 5000 videocassettes have been placed in evidence. There have been some 300 trial days. More than 200 witnesses have testified. The trial transcript is near 33,000 pages.
The Prosecution has failed to present significant or compelling evidence of any criminal act or intention of President Milosevic. In the absence of incriminating evidence, the Prosecution apparently hoped to create a record so massive that it would be years, if the effort was ever made, before scholars could examine and analyze the evidence to determine whether it supported a conviction.
Is it possible Milosevic was not the monster the press told us about? Is it possible it was necessary to paint him as such as an excuse to go to war, much as the WMD lie had to be invented?
After some searching tonight, I found this interesting article from Jurist. Author Marjorie Cohn, an associate professor of law, a Court TV commentator, and a news consultant for CBS, presented facts that make me think my suspicions are justified:
The most significant international war crimes trial since Hitler�s henchmen were tried at Nuremberg is scheduled to begin on February 12. Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic will appear in the dock at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia at The Hague to answer charges of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.
But Milosevic, often referred to in Western circles as the �Butcher of the Balkans,� maintains it is really the leaders of NATO who should be tried for their crimes against the people of Yugoslavia. In 1999, thousands of Yugoslavs were killed or wounded by NATO�s bombs, allegedly to stop the ethnic cleansing of the Albanians in Kosovo.
As The New York Times said on February 9: �When Mr. Milosevic sneers at the tribunal here as �victor�s justice,� he is not entirely wrong.� Former President William Clinton, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and U.S. military leaders orchestrated the use of laser-guided and cluster bombs and depleted uranium that devastated the people and the land of Yugoslavia. They will never face charges at The Hague.
Milosevic contends he acted in defense of the Serbs against Muslim extremists. He claims he was fighting the same type of terrorism the United States is now battling in Afghanistan and elsewhere. At that time, the United States gave active support to the Kosovo Liberation Army, a Muslim terrorist group financed by the Third World Relief Agency, through which Osama bin Laden and others funneled $350 million. Milosevic insists that his pleas to Clinton to get bin Laden out of Kosovo were ignored; instead, Clinton allied with the Albanian Muslims against the Serbs.
That the Clinton administration allied themselves with the Kosovo Liberation Army is well-documented. In fact, the more I read, the more the KLA sounds like the Contras in Nicaragua, a group that was primarily made by US funding. The rhetoric was even similar:
"[The] United States of America and the Kosovo Liberation Army stand for the same human values and principles ... Fighting for the KLA is fighting for human rights and American values." (Sen. Lieberman quoted in the 'Washington Post,' April 28, 1999)
This gets even more interesting when you find out that al Qaeda was also helping the KLA. Peter Dale Scott, for an upcoming book on 9/11, makes a compelling case that the US-KLA-al Qaeda collaboration was about protecting oil interests:
Though the origins of the Kosovo tragedy were rooted in local enmities, oil became a prominent aspect of the outcome. There the al Qaeda-backed UCK or �Kosovo Liberation Army� (KLA) was directly supported and politically empowered by NATO, beginning in 1998.[49] But according to a source of Tim Judah, KLA
representatives had already met with American, British, and Swiss intelligence agencies in 1996, and possibly �several years earlier.�[50] ...
Mainstream accounts of the Kosovo War are silent about the role of al Qaeda in training and financing the UCK/KLA, yet this fact has been recognized by experts and to my knowledge never contested by them.[52] For example, James Bissett, former Canadian ambassador to Yugoslavia, said �Many members of the Kosovo Liberation Army were sent for training in terrorist camps in Afghanistan�. Milosevic is right. There is no question of their [al Qaeda�s] participation in conflicts in the Balkans. It is very well documented."[53] In March 2002, Michael Steiner, the United Nations administrator in Kosovo, warned of "importing the Afghan danger to Europe" because several cells trained and financed by al-Qaeda remained in the region.[54] ...
At the time critics charged that US oil interests were interested in building a trans-Balkan pipeline with US Army protection; although initially ridiculed, these critics were eventually proven correct.[59] BBC News announced in December 2004 that a $1.2 billion pipeline, south of a huge new U.S. army base in Kosovo, has been given a go-ahead by the governments of Albania, Bulgaria, and Macedonia.[60]
And Peter Dale Scott is not the only one putting this all together. This article also speaks of the links between the CIA, German Intelligence, al Qaeda, and the KLA. If I had many more hours I might find many more articles. But I'm already starting to see the pattern.
I'm not crying over Milosevic's death. I didn't know him. I didn't live under him. I don't support any kind of genocide. But as an American citizen, I am especially upset when people who are supposed to represent me, i.e., American officials, engage in genocidal behavior. (Or fail to prevent it, as we're failing to do in Darfur.)
I'm also trying to say that the powers that be use our emotions against us. Most people get upset at the name "Milosevic" and can't go any further than that. just as many get upset at the thought of 9/11 and can't imagine the truth could be other than what they heard in the midst of their terror and grief. The media riles us up with partial facts, but doesn't usually present the other side of the story. That's why it's important to question everything.
Ramsey Clark's letter to Annan regarding the the International War Crimes tribunal's case against Milosevic truly startled me. I had no idea when I started searching tonight that I would find this information:
The initial indictment made no allegations of any crimes in Croatia, or Bosnia. It dealt exclusively with alleged acts by Serb forces in Kosovo in 1999. All of Serbia, including Kosovo, remained under heavy U.S./NATO bombardment at the time of the indictment. There were no U.S., or NATO forces, or ICTY investigators in Kosovo. Investigation was impossible. The indictment was purely a political act to demonize President Milosevic and Serbia and justify U.S. and NATO bombing of Serbia which was itself criminal and in violation of the U.N. and NATO Charters.
And why does that seem so believable? Perhaps because the pattern of deception leading to war was repeated just recently in Iraq. And because we appear to be seeing something similar now re Iran.
If Milosevic was killed, shouldn't we find out why? Was it possible he was killed because his trial might not have produced the "desired" result? I don't know the answer. But the question was definitely worth asking. I had no idea that opening the Milosevic door would give me new reasons to question the official story of 9/11.
http://realhistoryarchives.blogspot.com/2006/03/was-milosevic-poisoned.html
Well. If I had just gone to Rigorous Intuition first, I could have saved myself a few hours tonight. Seems he and I are, as is not uncommon, on the same wavelength here..!
And in case any are wondering...
NO, I'm not trying to say that Milosevic has been unjustly prosecuted, or that the atrocities didn't happen on his watch.
I always wonder what the other side of the story is, as there's always another side of the story. And since that's the one I don't get to hear, that's the one I'm curious about. It doesn't mean I'll believe it or find it valid when I hear it. But I wish we were given more information.
The truth doesn't have 'sides'. But the media DOES take sides, so I worry about what I haven't heard.
Subject: Inoculations
Inoculations
Through the days of shame that are coming
Through the nights of wild distress
Though your promise count for nothing
You must keep it nonetheless - Leonard Cohen
I've been recovering this week from a nasty stomach virus. A bit like an ayahuasca ceremony without the ayahuasca, and piss-all enlightenment, too. But it's reminded me that illness is more than a metaphor, and sometimes not entirely natural.
Smallpox, for one bloody precedent. In a postscript to his letter of July 16, 1763 Lord Jeffrey Amherst, the commander of British forces in North America during the French and Indian War, instructed Colonel Henry Bouquet to "do well to try to innoculate the Indians by means of blanketts, as well as to try every other method that can serve to extirpate this execrable race." (I don't see inoculate used like that these days, except by those whom the mass culture deems to be in need of medication themselves.) Infected blankets wasn't a one-off for Amherst. In other letters he calls the natives "Vermine [who] have forfeited all claim to the rights of humanity," and expresses his desire to "put a most Effectual Stop to their very Being."
Of course that was then, before genocide was even a word, much less a crime. Though at Massachusetts' Amherst College, china plates depicting sword-wielding, mounted Englishmen in hot pursuit of Indians were still in use as late as the 1970s. Dictionaries and law books and generations of bad examples haven't crimped the style of the pro-active eugenicist.
"The forms of warfare are changing," said Russian Communist party leader Gennady Zyuganov in a Tuesday press conference. "It's strange that not a single duck has yet died in America - they are all dying in Russia and European countries. This makes one seriously wonder why." Asked whether he was suggesting Avian Flu was a US biological weapon, he replied "I not only suggest this, I know very well how this can be arranged. There is nothing strange here."
I think Zyuganov is wrong on at least a couple of points. For one thing, Lord Amherst could tell him that nothing has changed. And for another, if Avian Flu is a weapon of either design or opportunity, its intended victims are also American. Because at the top of the food chain, where it's whole nations that are consumed, the fattest and most tender of all is naturally also on the menu.
As a third US beef cow tests positive for BSE, Newspapers move US mad cow story off front pages. One infected cow is the End of the World; two is worrisome. Three, and it's yesterday's news. The horror is in the novelty. Make something bad, bad enough for long enough that it becomes part of our landscape, and we just don't care anymore. It seems whatever doesn't kill us outright we can make peace with until it kills us eventually. It's another way in which we are inoculated. And so, the alarmingly predictable development that, "Despite the confirmation of a third case of mad cow disease, the government intends to scale back testing for the brain-wasting disorder blamed for the deaths of more than 150 people in Europe."
The Democratic dithering over Feingold's modest resolution is engendering considerable counter-dithering by those who still hope to see a political solution they can recognize to a parapolitical crisis they can't imagine. "The majority of the American people agree with what the president�s doing," said a Democratic aide. "A lot of people outside the beltway see [illegal surveillance] as a tool that�s keeping Americans safe."
Illness is also a metaphor, and the sickness of American politics is not indeliberate. Democrats and Republicans have both been taking strange medicine for a long while, and those who've refused their inoculations have been prone to other kinds of magic bullets: fatal accidents and character assassinations, and the receipt of envelopes filled with white powder bearing the return address of Fort Detrick. Bush in 2006 should be the most vulnerable president since Nixon in 1974, yet he isn't. To ask why he's not may take the courage of a microbiologist.
I've been thinking of the family in Tikrit who were murdered yesterday morning in an American raid. Eleven shot to death, including five children, one as young as seven months, before their house was blown up.
Another policeman, Colonel Farouq Hussein, said autopsies had been carried out at Tikrit hospital and found "all the victims had gunshot wounds to the head". The bodies, their hands bound, had been dumped in one room before the house was destroyed, Hussein said. Police had found spent American-issue cartridges in the rubble.
Despite the eyewitness accounts and the photos of dead babies, the US Army admits to only the deaths of two women and a child, and most American reports of the incident preface the news with the advisory "Iraqis Say -". It needs reminding that, unlike three years ago, the Iraqi police and US forces are now supposedly on the same side. Though just the day before, also in Tikrit, an American "security contractor" was arrested travelling alone with explosives in his car.
Charitably, though inaccurately, the US mission in Iraq could be described as a clinical test gone horribly wrong, while the "men in smart suits," like Francis Fukuyama, make themselves scarce. But the US isn't dispensing that kind of inoculation. It isn't the neocon fable of intravenous democracy, even if it kills the patient. It's Lord Amherst's blankets.
Many German and Austrian neighbours of the camps knew well enough what happened after the box cars rolled through the gates. Still, they didn't see until the liberators forced them to walk the grounds and bury the innocent dead. The victims were foreign and faceless, and it was easy to continue believing one was a good neighbour for minding one's business.
Things are different now. The dead babies are on Yahoo, and Salon hosts hundreds of Abu Ghraib photos and videos. No people in history have had greater access to the atrocities of their own force of arms even as they are being committed. Americans are growing accustomed to the spectacle of broken and beheaded bodies, and I think that's the idea. Because it's getting old. Meanwhile, the only truly forbidden images are those of flag-drapped coffins. The Pentagon certainly wants Americans kept in the dark, but darkness can mean more than mere ignorance.
One dead baby is the End of the World. Too many dead babies and we have a new world altogether.
http://rigorousintuition.blogspot.com/2006/03/inoculations_16.html
THE HISTORICAL ROOTS OF THE NEW WORLD ORDER AND ITS PERMANENT WAR ECONOMY
A classified conference sponsored by the Los Alamos nuclear weapons lab was held in the Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University in November 1993. Colonel Alexander served as the conference Chairman. The meeting was attended by Attorney-General Janet Reno, numerous scientists, military weapons experts, and intelligence officials from state and local police departments. The main purpose of the meeting was to prepare leading law enforcement officials for the use of psychotronic mind-control weapons.
Zbiegniew Brzezinski, a Rockefeller recruit and founder of the Trilateral Commission, had much revealing information to give back in the seventies about technologies that are being disclosed now. He wrote in Between two Ages:
"Accurately timed, artificially excited electronic strokes could lead to a pattern of oscillations that produce relatively high power levels over certain regions of the Earth ... one could develop a system that would seriously impair the brain performance of a very large population in selected regions over an extended period." (Zbiegniew Brzezinski, Between Two Ages, 1971).
When an American electropollution activist asked Motorola the purpose of the 10 hertz frequency on the carrier wave of the new Motorola police radio system, she did not get an answer (Personal Communications with Libby Kelley, Chair Marin County Health Council, 2003). From my own investigations and many interviews, I learned that this system was beamed across America when the Cold War ended, through Motorola radio systems, the Police and emergency response radio towers, cell phone towers, satellites, and another Motorola product �TETRA�in Britain:
Costing �2.9 billion, the UK�s new police communication system TETRA has been described by one independent scientist as likely to cause �more civilian deaths than all the world�s terrorist organisations put together�. (Jay Griffiths, "A Popular Revolt", The Ecologist, September 17, 2004)
Death may be the hidden purpose, for "culling" society. Welcome to the New World Order.
Subject: How American Elections Became a Criminal Enterprise
How American Elections Became a Criminal Enterprise
Address:http://www.hermes-press.com/criminal_vote2.htm Changed:2:44 PM
on Saturday, March 11, 2006
Subject: The End
this is from the US to Iraq.9 to the music of the Doors song THE END
this is the end our foreign friend. this is the end our only friend
the end. of our ambitious lies the end. of everything to buy, the
end. no safety for our guys, the end. how can we look into their
eyes again. can u picture what would be if Iraq was free.
desparately in need of Americas hand in that desert land.
Lost in a mideast wilderness plain. all the leaders are insane. all
the leaders are insane. waiting for a better reign.
there's danger on the edge and down. ride Bush's highway baby. weird
scenes by the landmines. the west isn't the best. the west isn't the
best. if you can't do it we'll do the rest. the bombed bus is
calling us. the bombed bus is calling us. Bush where have you taken
The killers awoke before dawn. they put their boots on. they took
some stuff from the ancient scripts and they walk on down the
highway baby. (Bush jr. to Bush senoir) daddy, yes son. "i want to
kill him. mother, i want to.............
Come in iraq take a chance with us. come on Iraq take a chance with
us. meet us at the back of the NY bus(3x) tonight. blue rock on a
blues bus tonight...
It hurts to set them free, but they will never follow me.
4est
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The Abstract World of Wassily Kandinsky
“Of all the arts, abstract painting is the most difficult. It demands that you know how to draw well, that you have a heightened sensitivity for composition and for colours, and that you be a true poet. This last is essential.”
Today we are celebrating the colourful, deep and impressive art of one the world’s most important abstract painters, Wassily Kandinsky. Born in Russia on 4 December 1866, Kandinsky lived in a time where modernity and its consequences were questioned, inspiring artists in Europe to criticise the lack of spirituality and the values of the modern Western society of the late 19th century.
Kandinsky studied painting only at the age of 30 after giving up a successful career as a professor of economics and law. It was also at the art school that he began to develop and write his famous theories about art. Later he was also acclaimed as a great art theorist. His writings generated huge impact on the history of art.
“Colour is a means of exerting direct influence of the soul”.
Kandinsky believed that colour, composition, forms and lines could be used in paintings not only to describe an object but also to bring new levels of meaning and expression. He was fascinated by music and for years developed and studied how to express his inner experiences activated by the sound of the melody through his paintings.
Kandinsky’s work became very popular in the 20th century. Today exhibitions of his paintings draw an incredible amount of people to museums and art galleries. If you are curious about Kandinsky and his art, browse through our extensive collections and find out more.
One thought on “The Abstract World of Wassily Kandinsky”
Antonio Pérez Carballo says:
Kandinsky’s compositions have always fascinated me, in particular his works of the Bauhaus period. I have often asked me about the cultural background behind these images. The reading of this book, now in Kindle format, has clarified me a lot of things. I would recommend it to the people who are interested in Kandinsky’s theoretical inspiration. Unfortunately, the title is only available in Spanish. Antonio Pérez Carballo
“Kandinsky: los fundamentos del arte abstracto y su relación con las ciencias experimentales”. Luis López García, E-book, Amazon
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Home » Uncategorized » “Free Ploughshares” Review: Winter 1983
“Free Ploughshares” Review: Winter 1983
Author: Jordan Koluch |
Issue: Winter 1983
This is a review of a back issue of Ploughshares. The author won our “Free Ploughshares” contest that we hosted earlier this year and agreed to review his/her free issue. This post was written by Stephanie Rogers. Enjoy!
Time and Timelessness
In 1983, President Obama and I were twenty-two years old. Like the president, I have never considered myself a “Baby Boomer.” The title just never seemed to fit, I never seemed to get it—the selflessness of the ‘60s that gave way to the selfishness of the ‘80s that led to the self-righteousness of the ‘00s. I’ve always been just at little bit too young to be caught up in time the way it seems a Real Boomer should be. And I have never been more aware of that difference than I am now, as I review, at 50 years of age, a 1983 issue of Ploughshares, guest edited by Raymond Carver.
Raymond Carver is one of the reasons I write. When I edit, particularly short stories, it’s Carver’s cigarette smoke that drifts across my eyes. So, when the Ploughshares issue arrived, I simply held it for a long minute, staring at the names of publication and editor, remembering the first time Ploughshares rejected a short story of mine, remembering the first time I read Raymond Carver.
When I reverently opened the issue, I first reviewed the authors. Some names I, of course, recognized—Joyce Carol Oates, Max Apple, Tess Gallagher, Jay McInerney. My nose wrinkled. For decades, I have been jealous of Ms. Gallagher, Mr. Carver’s poet-wife, and for the same decades, I have been less than a fan of Mr. McInerney, Mr. Carver’s one-time student. (I will deny jealousy there.) Consequently, I was anxious to read their entries right away, but as I flipped the pages, I remembered that Carver, as guest editor, must have chosen story order and decided instead to read the issue from start to finish. I’m glad I did.
The issue opens with Tim O’Brien’s “Quantum Jumps,” and within a few paragraphs I was experiencing the familiar but uncomfortable feeling of being out of my depth. Not so much because of talent, (though Mr. O’Brien is a far better story teller than I), but because of content. There it was again—Boomer Land—the place I recognize but don’t quite belong. Like “Quantum Jumps,” many of the issue’s other pieces (including Ms. Gallagher’s “A Pair of Glasses,” Max Apple’s “The Eighth Day,” and Sandra Scofield’s “Trespass”), rose before me like Twilight Zone episodes. Well-written stories with universal themes made for familiar landscapes, but their inhabitants spoke an almost foreign language that I somehow felt I should know. I was twenty-two again, at a party where everyone else was almost forty.
Mid-issue are two first-time publications with which I hoped to fare better, Jamie Diamond’s “Not Modern” and Barbara P. Erdle’s “Loneliness Quiz.” Mr Carver’s eye was clearly evident in their choice for inclusion; both are “minimalistic,” offering a microscopic look at a moment in time through the eyes of an “ordinary” person. But there was dullness to the stories and to their characters, an almost lifeless flatness that I did not expect in a Carver selection. I was back to being fifty, only now the party was for children.
By the end of the issue, I found two stories that, more than any of the others, say “Ray Carver chose me:” “The Farmer’s Wife,” by Lynda Lloyd and “Amanda,” by Jay McInerney.
Written a year before the publication of his wildly popular novel, Bright Lights, Big City, “Amanda” is prototypical McInerney, a second person eye-view of 1980’s excess, replete with name-dropping, cocaine snorting, and rabid self-involvement. I didn’t like the view then and I don’t like it now. However, now, it is, at least, possible for me to imagine why Raymond Carver did. Certainly he shared with his student, an ability to stare bleary-eyed at the world then paint it with vividness both frightening and pathetic, and certainly Mr. Carver would have been pleased with Mr. McInerney’s then unusual use of You. Yet there is something in the McInerney piece that rings hollow for me still, more hollow than surely he intended, something more vapid even than the runway model veneer over his Amanda’s papier-mâché soul. The story is very much, perhaps too much, of its time.
There are no veneers in “The Farmer’s Wife.” With very few words, Lynda Lloyd tells a fairy tale that is not, and she tells it with the voice of a female Raymond Carver. Because every word is the right word, Ms. Lloyd’s story of one short break in the hard, busy life of a small farm family becomes a moment of wonder. Because every word is the only word, this moment transcends both the time in which it happens and the time in which it was written. This is especially evident in the author’s description of the farmer’s wife:
We can see in this unthought, tiny frame of time that she should have been a princess, a historic beauty, a ruling passion. The shape of her head, its buoyant angle, the sun-brushed glow of her skin and hair make visible for an instant the phantom crown she should have had. Her pale gold hands on her son’s head shape the prince, the monarch, the demigod she should have embraced. She was born on a farm and has done the work of a farm woman since she was thirteen. Her palms and fingers are calloused. She is still young.
This is good writing. At twenty-two or fifty, this is good writing. This is timeless writing. This is writing that must have made Raymond Carver smile.
Stephanie Rogers won her first writing award at the age of eleven for an essay on Texas and, after graduating from the University of Texas, was published in various regional lit journals. Since then, her prose has been nominated for The Pushcart Prize (2008) and her poetry has won numerous awards, culminating in the 2010 Poetry Award in Grace Notes Books’ Discovering the Undiscovered Competition. This award resulted in the publication of Stephanie’s first poetry collection, Toms, in October 2011. A Grief Counselor, Stephanie is currently working on a collection of stories about her work in Hospice. She is also the prose editor for Notes Magazine. Other work may be found at www.kittysteph.com.
Tags:Free Ploughshares
Literary Boroughs #32: Madrid, Spain
A Knack for Names
The Things I Haven’t Read
Episodia 1.5: Mad Men’s Tell-Tale Heart
Jordan Koluch
Jordan is a junior Writing, Literature and Publishing major at Emerson College. She is the managing editor of The Emerson Review, the College's longest-running undergraduate literary magazine, and a fall marketing intern at Ploughshares.
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The Relationship Between Discipline and Leadership
Jocko Willink, an author, podcast host, and retired United States Navy SEAL commander, has been speaking to the public for years about what he has learned from his experiences. Willink received both the Silver and Bronze Star for his service in the War on Iraq. He was the commander of SEAL Team Three's Task Unit, Bruiser. He is the author of Extreme Ownership and hosts a weekly podcast called The Jocko Podcast.
Willink also founded a consulting firm in 2010 called Echelon Front. He worked with his fellow former SEAL commander, Leif Babin, to do this. He has since realized that some of his clients assumed that he would act like a tough military man and yell at their teams, but that is not how Willink works.
He found that his clients expected him to "whip their employees into shape," but Willink knows that if you want to motivate people to act a certain way, it is important to not treat them like that. Doing so just beats people down instead of lifting them up. Further, if you treat people in that way, they will begin to rebel and do the opposite of what you want them to do.
Willink learned his methods as a 22-year-old SEAL when he had an officer who was a dictatorial leader who was inexperienced and did not show any signs of confidence. Willink believed that his leader made up for his lack of confidence by being oppressive. For example, if a team member disputed an order, he would tell the person to do it anyway without explaining the reasoning behind it. The leader used too much discipline in his leadership and it ended up working against him.
This type of leadership caused Willink and his fellow SEALs to have a rebellion. They didn't want to be treated this way and wanted some more autonomy and say in their jobs. They joined together and stopped taking orders from their officer and approached the commanding officer to express their concerns. They told the commanding officer that their leader was not equipped to do this job and they were no longer willing to work for him or follow his rules. Their leader was then quickly dismissed and replaced by someone who had better leadership qualities.
The new leader had a lot of experience in leading people and proved himself to be very capable of doing the job. He was also very smart and humble, which made it easy for Willink to work for him. He used discipline in the proper way without overdoing it to gain the trust and respect of his team.
One of the best things about the new leader was that the team all wanted to make him happy and proud. They wanted their hard work to reflect their leader's ability to lead. This was a big difference from their previous leader, which was very obvious to Willink and his team. This sparked Willink's attention and inspired him to want to become an officer himself.
Willink learned that forcing someone to do something will only work for a short period of time. However, not only does it not work forever, but it actually as not as effective in the short term than telling someone how you think something should be done before considering suggestions from the team. An effective leader also allows their team to work using the methods that are most comfortable for them so that everyone can maximize their own abilities.
Willink now teaches others that in order to be an effective leader, it is important to use discipline with caution. Too much discipline will turn people away, while if you are able to work with your team and take their suggestions, they will be more likely to want to follow your lead and respect you as a leader.
This Month In Motivation
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Public Consultation George Street Pocket Park
Residents are invited to view the plans for the George Street Pocket Park and help to develop the proposals. Meet with the planning team and view the plans at Chester Town Hall, Palatine Room on 24 October 3.30pm to 6.30pm.
George Street Pocket Park is located next to the Shropshire Union Canal and the City Walls. The park has been closed for some time and will be brought back to its former glory by Cheshire West and Chester Council.
Said Councillor Louise Gittins, Cabinet Member for Communities and Wellbeing: “The new park will promote the unique history of the City Walls and waterways that Chester has to offer.
“The importance of public open space for residents became very apparent at the consultation event for the development of Water Tower Gardens. The park is part of the wider regeneration strategy and Waterways Strategy for Chester enhancing the connections with the bus interchange and city centre businesses.”
View: Councillor Louise Gittins's profile
The pocket park contains a mature row of lime trees which form a significant natural feature that help to define the park. The intention is to restore the existing historic boundary including the railings, sandstone plinth and main entrance. A new entrance will be introduced to allow entry to the park on the western approach from George Street.
The proposals aim to introduce an alternative pedestrian route within the park. This pathway will be inclusive for all, and will follow the existing contours of the site. Seating will be provided within the park and steps will encourage users to access the existing green space. Lighting will also be introduced into the park, to encourage the development of an evening economy along this route.
A viewing platform will be situated at a lower level to the east of the existing site entrance, to enable views towards King Charles Tower, the Shropshire Union Canal and the City Walls. The platform will be set at a level that allows for inclusive access from the main pathway.
Wildflowers will be planted, such as snowdrops, bluebells, wood anemones, wild garlic and cow parsley, to enrich the existing habitat on the site, provide seasonal change and encourage greater diversity of habitat for wildlife.
The aims of the Council’s Waterways Strategy (2014) are to provide a clear direction how developments related to waterways can contribute to the growth agenda. The strategy vision includes improving the connectivity between the canal, river and city encouraging increased inward investment and increased tourism. Also encouraging increased employment relating to the leisure economy and maximising the potential of the waterways for recreational purposes.
The Waterways Strategy identified the opportunity ‘to create the new pocket park by George Street to open vistas of the walls and cutting and encourage active use, especially from workers/visitors to the health centre.’
George Street Pocket Park photo montage
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Home >> Mineral Encyclopedia >> Mineral datum >> Hydromagnesite
Hydromagnesite
Mg5(CO3)4(OH)2·4H2O
Monoclinic
Colorless, white
Vitreous, Silky, Pearly, Earthy
n = 1.523 n = 1.527 n = 1.545
PerfectOn .
Uneven
Crystal Habit：Acicular and as encrustations
Geological Setting：Low-temperature, hydrothermal environments in serpentine and altered magnesium-rich igneous rocks.
Hydromagnesite is a hydrated magnesium carbonate mineral with the formula: Mg5(CO3)4(OH)2·4H2O.
It generally occurs associated with the weathering products of magnesium containing minerals such as serpentine or brucite. It occurs as incrustations and vein or fracture fillings in ultramafic rocks and serpentinites. It occurs in hydrothermally altered dolomite and marble. It commonly appears in caves as speleothems and "moonmilk", deposited from water that has seeped through magnesium rich rocks. It is the most common cave carbonate after calcite and aragonite. It thermally decomposes, over a temperature range of approximately 220 °C to 550 °C, releasing water and carbon dioxide leaving a magnesium oxide residue.
It was first described in 1836 for an occurrence in Hoboken, Hudson County, New Jersey.
Stromatolites in an alkaline (pH greater than 9) freshwater lake (Salda G?lü) in southern Turkey are made of hydromagnesite precipitated by diatoms and cyanobacteria. Microbial deposition of hydromagnesite is also reported from playas in British Columbia.
One of the largest deposits of hydromagnesite exists in Greece. It consists of a natural mixture with huntite. Local people have used the white mineral as a source of material for whitewashing buildings for centuries. In the mid 20th century the minerals, ground to a fine powder, found use as a filler for rubber shoe soles. The locals used the granite mills designed for grinding wheat. Commercial exploitation of the minerals began in the late 70s and early 80s with the mineral being exported worldwide. The Greek deposit is still operated commercially, although the world’s largest commercially operated reserves are in Turkey.
Its most common industrial use is as a mixture with huntite as a flame retardant or fire retardant additive for polymers. Hydromagnesite decomposes endothermically, giving off water and carbon dioxide, leaving a magnesium oxide residue. The initial decomposition begins at about 220 °C making it ideal for use as a filler in polymers and giving it certain advantages over the most commonly used fire retardant, aluminium hydroxide.
Hydromagnesite thermally decomposes in three stages releasing water and carbon dioxide.
The first stage starting at about 220 °C, is the release of the four molecules of water of crystallisation. This is followed at about 330 °C by the decomposition of the hydroxide ion to a further molecule of water. Finally, at about 350 °C carbon dioxide begins to be released. The release of the carbon dioxide can be further broken down into two stages depending on the rate of heating.
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Home > Encyclopedias > International Standard Bible Encyclopedia > Priests and Levites
The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia
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Priesthood in the New Testament Primogeniture
International Standard Bible Encyclopedia
» Course of Priests and Levites
PRIESTS AND LEVITES
(kohen, "priest"; nothing is definitely known as to the origin of the word; Lewi, "Levite," on which see LEVI):
I. DIFFERENT VIEWS OF THE HISTORY
1. The Old View
2. The Graf-Wellhausen View
3. Mediating Views
4. An Alternative View
II. THE DATA OF THE PRIESTLY CODE (P) IN THE PENTATEUCH
1. The Levites
2. Aaron and His Sons
III. THE OTHER PORTIONS OF THE PENTATEUCH
IV. FROM MOSES TO MALACHI
1. The Sources Other than Ezekiel
(1) The Custody of the Ark
(2) On Its Return from the Philistines
(3) In Abinadab's House
2. Ezekiel
V. EZRA, NEHEMIAH, CHRONICLES
1. Estimates of the Chronicler
2. His Data
VI. LEGAL PROVISIONS
In some Minaean inscriptions found at El-`Ola, dating back about 1200-800 BC (Hommel in Hilprecht, Explorations in Bible Lands, 719), certain "priests and priestesses of the god Wadd are designated by the term lawi, feminine lawi`at" (op. cit., 749). It is not known whether this is due to Israelite influence.
I. Different Views of the History.
1. The Old View:
There are great divergences of opinion among modern writers as to the true course of history and the dating of the different documents. It will therefore be best to sketch these views in rough outline, and then give the evidence of the various authorities, together with the reasons that in each case arise naturally from the consideration of that evidence.
The old belief was that the whole of the Pentateuchal laws were the work of Moses, that the account of the subsequent history given in the Books of Chronicles was correct, that Ezekiel's vision, if taken literally, could not be reconciled with the other known facts and was inexplicable, and that in the case of all other discrepancies harmonistic explanations should be adopted.
2. The Graf-Wellhausen View:
The modern critical school have traversed every one of these doctrines. The Chronicler is declared to be in constant and irreconcilable conflict with the older authorities, harmonistic explanations are uniformly rejected, the Pentateuch is denied to Moses and split up into a variety of sources of different ages, and Ezekiel gains a place of honor as representing a stage in a continuous and normal development. The subject is thus inextricably linked with the Pentateuchal problem, and reference must be made to the article PENTATEUCH for an explanation of the supposed documents and a consideration of the analysis with its nomenclature. On the other hand the present article and the article SANCTUARY (which see) explain and discuss the most widely held theory of the historical development into which the history of the supposed Pentateuchal sources has been fitted.
The dominant theory is that of Wellhausen. According to this, "Levite" was originally a term denoting professional skill, and the early Levites were not members of the tribe of Levi, but professional priests. Anybody could sacrifice. "For a simple altar no priest was required, but only for a house which contained a sacred image; this demanded watching and attendance" (Wellhausen, Prolegomena, 130). The whole Levitical Law was unknown and the distinction between priests and Levites unheard of. There were a few great sanctuaries and one influential priesthood, that of Shiloh (afterward at Nob). With the monarchy the priesthood became more important. The royal priests at Jerusalem grew in consequence and influence until they overshadowed all the others. Deuteronomy recognized the equal priestly right of all Levites, and Josiah's reformation placed the sons of Zadok, who were the priests of Jerusalem and not descendants of Aaron, in a position of decisive superiority. Then Eze drew a new and previously unknown distinction between "the priests the Levites, the sons of Zadok" who are "keepers of the charge of the altar," and the other Levites who were made "keepers of the charge of the house" as a punishment for having ministered in the high places. The Priestly Code takes up this distinction and represents it as being of Mosaic origin, making of the sons of Zadok "sons of Aaron." "In this way arose as an illegal consequence of Josiah's reformation, the distinction between priests and Levites. With Ezekiel this distinction is still an innovation requiring justification and sanction; with the Priestly Code it is a `statute forever,' although even yet not absolutely undisputed, as appears from the priestly version of the story of Korah's company. For all Judaism subsequent to Ezra, and so for Christian tradition, the Priestly Code in this matter also has been authoritative. Instead of the Deuteronomic formula `the priests the Levites,' we henceforward have `the priests and the Levites,' particularly in Chronicles" (op. cit., 147). From that time onward the priests and Levites are two sharply distinguished classes. It is an essential part of this theory that the Chronicler meant his work to be taken as literal history, correctly representing the true meaning of the completed law.
See CRITICISM.
3. Mediating Views:
There have been various attempts to construct less thoroughgoing theories on the same data. As a rule, these views accept in some form the documentary theory of the Pentateuch and seek to modify the Wellhausen theory in two directions, either by attributing earlier dates to one or more of the Pentateuchal documents--especially to the Priestly Code--or else by assigning more weight to some of the statements of Chronicles (interpreted literally). Sometimes both these tendencies are combined. None of these views has met with any great measure of success in the attempt to make headway against the dominant Wellhausen theory, and it will be seen later that all alike make shipwreck on certain portions of the evidence.
4. An Alternative View:
The independent investigations on which the present article is based have led the writer to a view that diverges in important particulars from any of these, and it is necessary to state it briefly before proceeding to the evidence. In one respect it differs from all the rival schemes, not merely in result, but also in method, for it takes account of versional evidence as to the state of the texts. Subject to this it accepts the Mosaic authenticity of all the Pentateuchal legislation and the clear and consentient testimony of the Law and the Prophets (i.e. of the two earlier and more authoritative portions of the Hebrew Canon), while regarding Chronicles as representing a later interpretation, not merely of the history, but also of the legal provisions. In outline the story of the priesthood is then as follows:
Moses consecrated Aaron and his sons as the priests of the desert tabernacle. He purified the rest of the tribe of Levi as a body of sacred porters for the period of wanderings, but in the legislation of Numbers he made no provision whatever for their performing any duties after the sanctuary obtained a permanent location. At the same time he gave a body of priestly teaching requiring for its administration in settled conditions a numerous and scattered body of priests, such as the house of Aaron alone could not have provided immediately after the entry into Canaan. To meet this, Deuteronomy--the last legislative work of Moses--contains provisions enlarging the rights and duties of the Levites and conferring on them a priestly position. The earlier distinction was thus largely obliterated, though the high-priestly dignity remained in the house of Aaron till the time of Solomon, when it was transferred from the house of Eli to that of Zadok, who, according to Ezekiel's testimony, was a Levite (but see below, IV, 1). So matters remained till the exile, when Ezekiel put forward a scheme which together with many ideal elements proposed reforms to insure the better application of the Mosaic principle of the distinction between holy and profane to greatly altered circumstances. Taking his inspiration from the wilderness legislation, he instituted a fresh division in the tribe of Levi, giving to the sons of Zadok a position similar to that once held by the sons of Aaron, and degrading all other Levites from the priesthood conferred on them by De to a lower rank. The duties now assigned to this class of "keepers of the charge of the house" were never even contemplated by Moses, but Ezekiel applies to them the old phrases of the Pentateuch which he invests with a new significance. As a result of his influence, the distinction between priests and Levites makes its appearance in post-exilic times, though it had been unknown to all the writers of the second division of the Hebrew Canon. At the same time a meaning was read into the provisions of the Law which their original author could not have contemplated, and it was this interpretation which is presented (at any rate to some extent) in Chronicles, and has given us the current tradition. Many of the Chronicler's statements are, however, not meant to be taken literally, and could not have been so taken by his original public.
II. The Data of the Priestly Code (P) in the Pentateuch.
1. The Levites:
To arrive at an objective conclusion it is necessary, in the first instance, to examine the facts without such bias as any view put forward by any other author, ancient or modern, sacred or profane, might impart. Every legislator is entitled to be judged on his own language, and where he has, so to speak, made his own dictionary, we are compelled to read his meaning into the terms used. The very first of the material references to the Levites drives this truth home. "But appoint thou the Levites over the tabernacle of the testimony, and over all the furniture thereof" (Numbers 1:50). It is necessary to consider whether such expressions are to be read in a wide or a narrow sense. We learn from Numbers 18:3 that death would be the result of a Levite's touching any of these vessels, and it therefore appears that these words are meant to be construed narrowly. "They shall bear the tabernacle, and all the furniture thereof; and they shall minister unto it," are the next words (1:50); but yet we read later of the Kohathites who were to bear it that "they shall not touch the sanctuary, lest they die" (4:15). This shows that the service in question is strictly limited to a service of porterage after the articles have been wrapped up by Aaron and his sons. By no possibility could it include such a task as cleaning the vessels. It is then further directed that the Levites are to take down and set up the dwelling and camp round about it. All these are desert services and desert services only. Then we read that "the Levites shall keep the charge of the tabernacle (dwelling) of the testimony. This concludes the first material passage (Numbers 1:50-53). The other passages of Nu only amplify these directions; they never change them. But some phrases are used which must be more particularly considered.
(1) Technical Phrases.
We hear that the Levites are "to serve the service of the tent of meeting," and this looks as if it might refer to some general duties, but the context and the kindred passages always forbid this interpretation. Numbers 7:5 is an admirable instance. Six wagons are there assigned to the Levites for this service, two to the Gershonites and four to the Merarites. "But unto the sons of Kohath he gave none, because the service of the sanctuary belonged unto them; they bare it upon their shoulders." Here service is transport and nothing else. Again we read of the charge of the Levites in the tent of meeting, e.g. 4:25 f. If we look to see what this was, we find that it consisted of transporting portions of the tent that had been packed up. The "in" of English Versions of the Bible does not represent the meaning of the Hebrew fairly; for the context makes it clear that the legislator means "in respect to." "But they shall not go in to see the sanctuary even for a moment, lest they die" (4:20). In English idiom we cannot speak of the transport of portions of a dismantled tent as service in that tent. One other expression requires notice, the phrase "keep the charge" which is distinguished in 8:26 from "doing service." The exact meaning cannot be determined. It appears to denote something kindred to service, but of a less exacting nature, perhaps the camping round the tent and the guardianship of the articles on the march. We shall see hereafter by comparison with other books that in P it does not bear the same meaning as elsewhere.
(2) Other Legal Provisions.
The Levites were to act under the orders of Aaron and his sons, who were to assign to each man his individual functions (448/A>, etc.). They were to undergo a special rite of purification (Numbers 8), but not of consecration. They were taken in place of the firstborn (Numbers 3). The age for beginning service is given in Numbers 4 as 30 years, but in Numbers 8:24 as 25 years, if the text is sound. The age for ceasing to serve was 50. In many passages the versions suggest that a good many phrases are textually doubtful, and it is probable that when a critical text of the Pentateuch is formed on scientific principles, a good many superfluous expressions will be found not to be original; but there is no reason to suppose that any real difference in the meaning of the passages would be revealed by such a text.
The story of Korah is easily misunderstood. It appears from Numbers 16:3 that his real object was to put himself on an equality with Moses and Aaron, and this is the "priesthood" referred to in 16:10. Numbers 18 reinforces the earlier passages. It is noteworthy as showing that in the conception of the legislator the Levites were not to come near the vessels or the altar (18:3). The penalty is death for both Levites and priests.
(3) Contrast with Ezekiel and Chronicles.
The impression as to the meaning of P which may be gathered from an examination of its statements is powerfully reinforced when they are tested by reference to Ezekiel and Chronicles, Ezekiel 44:9-14 seems to demand of the Levites some service as gatekeepers, the slaying of burnt offering and sacrifice for the people and a keeping of "the charge of the house, for all the service thereof," which in the light of 44:7 f appears to mean in his terminology, not a service of transport, but an entry into the house and the performance of certain duties there. The Priestly Code (P), on the contrary, knows nothing of gatekeepers, regards the slaying of the burnt offering and sacrifice as the duty of the individual sacrificant (Leviticus 1; 3), and--if, as Wellhausen thinks, it refers to the temple--it would have visited with death a Levite who was present in the places in which Ezekiel requires him to minister. Similarly with the Chronicler. For instance, he the Levites being `for the service of the .... in the courts and over the chambers, and over the cleansing of every holy thing' (1 Chronicles 23:28), but P knows nothing of any chambers, would not have allowed the Levites to touch (much less clean) many of the holy things, and regarded service simply as porterage. In 1 Chronicles 23:31 the Levites are to offer burnt offerings on certain occasions; in P their approach to the altar would have meant death both to themselves and the priests (Numbers 18:3). Other instances will be found in PS, 238 f.
(4) What the Foregoing Proves.
In view of these facts it is impossible to hold that the Levites in P represent a projection of the Levites of the second temple or any post-Mosaic age into the desert period. To P they are a body of sacred porters. The temple of course could not be carried about, and it cannot be held that in this respect the legislation mirrors later circumstances. "Secondly, the net result of such a scheme would be to create a body of Levites for use during the period of wanderings and never thereafter. As soon as the desert age was over the whole tribe would find their occupation gone. How can we conceive that any legislator deliberately sat down and invented such a scheme centuries after the epoch to which it relates, well knowing that in so far as his scheme purported to be a narrative of events it was fictitious from beginning to end, and in so far as it might be regarded as a legislation applicable to his own or any future day, there was not a line in it that could conceivably be put into practice? If any theorist can be conceived as acting in this way, how are we to suppose that his work would meet with acceptance? .... Thirdly, P neither embodies the views of Ezekiel nor finds an accurate reflection in Chronicles. The facts are such as to enable us to say definitely that P is not in line with them. It is impossible to assume that he appointed the death penalty for certain acts if performed by Levites because he really wished the Levites to perform those acts" (PS, 241 f).
2. Aaron and His Sons:
Priests and Levites also speaks of Aaron the priest and the sons of Aaron the priest. It is doubtful whether the expression "the sons of Aaron the priests," which occurs frequently in the Massoretic Text, is ever original; the Massoretic expression is nowhere supported by all the authorities. "The phrase `Aaron the high priest' is entirely unknown to Priests and Levites. Where the high priest's name is given the only qualifying apposition possible in his usage is `the priest.' " Aaron and his sons, unlike the Levites, were consecrated, not merely purified.
At this point two features only of the legislation need be noticed:
the inadequacy of the staff to post-conquest conditions and the signs of date. For example, the leprosy laws (Leviticus 13) postulate the presence of priests to inspect and isolate the patient. "Remembering that on the critical theory P assumes the capital at Jerusalem as self-evident, we must ask how such provisions were to work after the conquest. During the desert period nothing could have been simpler, but what was to happen when the Israelites dwelt all over Canaan from Beersheba to Dan?" (PS, 246). The difficulty is immensely increased if we postulate an exilic or post-exilic date, when the Jewish center of gravity was in Babylonia and there were large colonies in Egypt and elsewhere. And "What are we to say when we read of leprous garments (Leviticus 13:47)? Was a man to make the pilgrimage from Babylonia to Jerusalem to consult a priest about a doubtful garment? And what about the leper's offerings in Leviticus 14? Could they conceivably have been meant to apply to such circumstances?" (PS, 247). The case is no better with the law of leprous houses, which is expressed to apply to the post-conquest period (Leviticus 4:33-5:3). The notification to the priest and his inspections require a priesthood scattered all over the country, i.e. a body far more numerous than the house of Aaron at the date of the conquest. Such instances could easily be multiplied from the legislation; one more only will be cited on account of its importance to the history of the priesthood. According to Leviticus, the individual sacrificant is to kill the victims and flay the burnt offerings. How could such procedure be applied to such sacrifices as those of Solomon (1 Kings 8:63)? With the growth of luxury the sacrifices would necessarily become too large for such a ritual, and the wealthy would grow in refinement and object to performing such tasks personally. This suggests the reason for later abuses and for the modifications of Ezekiel and the representations of the Chronicler.
Result of the Evidence.
Thus, the evidence of P is unfavorable alike to the Wellhausen and the mediating views. The indications of date are consistently Mosaic, and it seems impossible to fit the laws into the framework of any other age without reading them in a sense that the legislator can be shown not to have contemplated. On the other hand P is a torso. It provides a large body of Levites who would have nothing to do after the conquest, and a corpus of legislation that could not have been administered in settled conditions by the house of Aaron alone.
III. The Other Portions of the Pentateuch.
In Exodus 19:22,24 we read of priests, but a note has come down to us that in the first of those verses Aquila had "elders," not "priests," and this appears to be the correct reading in both places, as is shown by the prominence of the elders in the early part of the chapter. In Hebrew the words differ by only two letters. It is said by Wellhausen that in Exodus 33:7-11 (E) Joshua has charge of the ark. This rests on a mistranslation of Exodus 33:7, which should be rendered (correcting English Versions of the Bible), `And Moses used to take a (or the) tent and pitch it for himself without the camp.' It is inconceivable that Moses should have taken the tent of the ark and removed it to a distance from the camp for his private use, leaving the ark bared and unguarded. Moreover, if he had done so, Joshua could not have been in charge of the ark, seeing that he was in this tent while the ark (ex hypothesi) remained in the camp. Nor had the ark yet been constructed. Nor was Joshua in fact a priest or the guardian of the ark in E:
(1) in the Book of Joshua E knows of priests who carry the ark and are quite distinct from Joshua (3);
(2) in Deuteronomy 31:14 (E) Joshua is not resident in the tent of meeting;
(3) in E, Aaron and Eleazar are priests (Deuteronomy 10:6), and the Levitical priesthood is the only one recognized (Deuteronomy 33:10);
(4) there is no hint anywhere of Joshua's discharging any priestly duty whatsoever.
The whole case rests on his presence in the tent in Exodus 33:7-11, and, as shown in the article PENTATEUCH (which see), this passage should stand after Exodus 13:22.
Then it is said that in Exodus 4:14; Judges 17:7, "Levite" denotes profession, not ancestry. In the latter passage the youth whom Micah made a priest was of Levitical descent, being the grandson of Moses (Judges 17:13), and the case rests on the phrase, "of the family of Judah." Neither of the Septuagintal translations had this text (Field, Hexapla, at the place), which therefore cannot be supported, since it cannot be suggested that Moses belonged to the tribe of Judah. As to Exodus 4:14, the phrase "Aaron thy brother the Levite" is merely an adaptation of the more usual, "Aaron, son of Amram, the Levite," rendered necessary by the fact that his brother Moses is the person addressed. The Wellhausen theory here is shown to be untenable in PS, 250 and RE3, XI, 418.
Exodus 32:26-29 foreshadows the sacred character of Levi, and Deuteronomy 10:6 (E) knows the hereditary Aaronic priesthood. In D the most important passage is Deuteronomy 18:6-8. In 18:7 three Septuagintal manuscripts omit the words "the Levites," and if this be a gloss, the whole historic sense of the passage is changed. It now contains an enactment that any Levite coming to the religious capital may minister there "as all his brethren do, who stand there," etc., i.e. like the descendants of Aaron. "The Levites" will then be the explanation of a glossator who was imbued with the latest post-exilic ideas, and thought that "his brethren" must mean those of his fellow-Levites who were not descended from Aaron. The passage is supplemented by 21:5, giving to the Levites judicial rights, and 24:8 assigning to them the duty of teaching the leprosy regulations. Together with 33:10 (E), `they shall teach thy judgments to Jacob and thy law to Israel:
they shall put incense in thy nostrils and whole burnt-offering on thine altar,' these passages complete the provisions of P in giving to the Levites an occupation in place of their transport duties, and providing the necessary staff for administering the legislation when the Israelites were no longer massed together in a single camp, but scattered over the country. We shall see in the next section that this view of the meaning of the Law was taken by every writer of the second part of the Canon who touches on the subject. Everywhere we are confronted with the legitimacy of a Levitical priesthood; nowhere is there any mention of an exclusive Aaronic right. Smaller points which cannot be discussed here are examined in PS. It only remains to notice that these provisions fully explain the frequent Deuteronomic locution, "the priests the Levites." One other remark must be made. Though it is not expressly stated, we may assume that consecration would be necessary in the case of any Levite acting on the provisions of Deuteronomy 18:6-8, and was not mentioned because in Hebrew antiquity it went without saying that every priest must be consecrated (compare Judges 17).
IV. From Moses to Malachi.
1. The Sources Other than Ezekiel:
Joshua adds but little to our information. In 18:7 the priesthood is called the inheritance of the Levites, and it is singular that the Wellhausen critics attribute this to a priestly redactor, though such a writer should ex hypothesi have been jealous to withhold the priesthood from the Levites. It is very interesting to find that in Joshua 3; 4, all the different critical documents speak in exactly the same terms of "the priests that bare the ark." The priestly writer ought, on the Wellhausen theory, to have said "the Levites." The expression "the priests the Levites" is found alternating with the expression "the priests." All this points to the construction put upon the provisions of the Law in the preceding section, and finds fresh confirmation in Judges, where we see Micah rejoicing at having a Levite as a priest (Judges 17:13), thus showing that the sacred character of the tribe was recognized in the earliest post-Mosaic times. The lay sacrifices in this and the following books are explained under SANCTUARY; SACRIFICE (which see).
The period of the early kings shows us kings blessing the people (e.g. 2 Samuel 6:18). It is claimed that this is the priestly blessing, but without evidence, and there seems no more reason to see special priestly rights here than in David's blessing his household (2 Samuel 6:20), or the frequent blessings of the Bible (e.g. Genesis passim, especially "in thee will Israel bless," Genesis 48:20), while in 1 Kings 8:55 we actually have the words of the blessing delivered on one of those occasions by Solomon, and it is quite unlike the blessing of the priests (Num 6:22).
Textual criticism disposes of the supposed priesthood of certain non-Levitical persons. In 2 Samuel 8:18 the Massoretic Text makes David's sons "priests," but this reading was unknown to the Septuagint, Symmachus, and Theodotion (Field, ad. loc.). The Septuagint has "aularches," i.e. chamberlains. That this represents a different Hebrew word is proved by the Septuagintal list of 3 Ki 2:46 (not extant in Hebrew), where we read that Benaiah, son of Jehoiada, was "over the aularchy and over the brick-making." It cannot be suggested that this represents an original Hebrew "over the priesthood and over the brick-making," and accordingly we must concede the existence of some secular court office which was rendered by this Greek phrase. Hitzig and Cheyne conjecture that tsokhenim should be read for kohanim. This word gives the sense required (see Isaiah 22:15) Revised Version margin "steward"). In 2 Samuel 20:26 we read that Ira, ha-ya'iri ("the Jairite"), was a priest, but the Syriac version supported by Lucian and 23:38 reads ha-yattiri ("the Jattirite"). Jattir was a priestly city. In 1 Kings 4:5 Nathan's son is described as `priest friend of the king,' but the Septuagint reads only "friend of the king" (compare especially 1 Chronicles 27:33; 2 Samuel 15:32), and at another period Nathan's son held the kindred secular office of king's counselor (the Septuagint 3 Ki 2:46, a fact that is certainly unfavorable to the view that he ever held priestly office). There can therefore be no doubt that the word "priest," kohen has arisen through dittography of the preceding word nathan, Nathan.
Various dealings with the ark and the age of Samuel require notice. As a boy, Samuel himself is given into the service of Eli. It has been argued that he really officiated as a priest, though probably (if the Chronicler's data is rejected) not of the Levitical descent. The answer is to be found in his age. Weaning sometimes took place at as late an age as three, and accordingly, the boy may have been as much as four years old when he was taken to Shiloh (1 Samuel 1:24). His mother used to bring him a little cloak (1 Samuel 2:19) every year, and this notice also shows his extreme youth. In view of this, it cannot be seriously contended that he performed any priestly service. He must have been something like a page, and he performed some duties of a porter, opening the door-valves of the temple at Shiloh (1 Samuel 3:15).
When the ark was captured by the Philistines, it was in the charge of priests. When David brought it to Jerusalem, it was again placed in priestly custody, but there is an interregnum of some 20 years (1 Samuel 7:2).
It must be remembered that whatever may have happened during this period of great national confusion, the practice of all the rest of history, extending over some 600 or 700 years, is uniform and would far outweigh any irregularities during so short and troubled a period.
The first difficulty arises on 1 Samuel 6:14,15. In the second of these verses the Levites come up after the Beth-shemites have finished, and, in Wellhausen's words, "proceed as if nothing had happened, lift the ark from the now-no-longer-existent cart, and set it upon the stone on which the sacrifice is already burning" (Prolegomena, 128). It is therefore suggest that 6:15 is a gloss. But there is difficulty in 6:14 which tells of the breaking up of the cart, etc., without explaining what happened to the ark. The trouble may be met by a slight transposition, thus:
`14a and the cart came into the field, .... and stood there, and there was there a great stone: 15a and the Levites took down the ark, etc. and put them on the great stone: 14b and clave the wood of the cart,' etc., followed by 15b. This makes perfect sense.
The second difficulty is made by 1 Samuel 7:1, where we read that the ark was brought to the house of Abinadab `and Eleazar his son they sanctified to guard' it. Its old abode, the house at Shiloh, had apparently been destroyed (Jeremiah 7:12,14; 26:6,9). There it enjoyed considerable importance, for Poels is unquestionably right in identifying the Gibeah of God (1 Samuel 10:5) with the Gibeah (hill) of the ark. Thus, there was a high place there and a Philistine garrison (compare 1 Samuel 13:3, where Septuagint and Targum have "Gibeah"). There remains the difficulty caused by the guardianship of Eleazar. Poels may be right in reading we'eth bene' El'azar, "and the sons of Eleazar," for we'eth 'El`azar beno, "and Eleazar his son"; but in the entire absence of information, alike as to Eleazar's functions and as to his tribe, nothing definite can be said. The narratives of the slaughter among the Beth-shemites and the fate of Uzzah make it certain that Eleazar's custody of the ark kept him at a respectful distance from it.
When David at the end of this period removed the ark, it was first taken in a cart. This proved fatal to Uzzah, and the ark was deposited in the house of Obededom the Gittite. The text of Samuel knows nothing of any guardianship of the ark by Obed-edom. Probably he took very good care not to go near it in view of Uzzah's fate. Then it was transported to Jerusalem by bearers (2 Samuel 6:13)--presumably of Levitical descent. No further irregularities are urged.
More important is the change of priesthood; 1 Samuel 2:27-36 clearly threatens Eli, whose house had been chosen in Egypt, with a transference of the high-priesthood to another line. Careful comparison with 1 Kings 2:27 makes it certain that the prophecy was fulfilled when Zadok was placed by Solomon in the place of Abiathar. Who was Zadok? According to Chronicles (1 Chronicles 6:8,53; 24:3; 27:17) he was descended from Aaron through Eleazar, and this is accepted by Orr, Van Hoonacker and many others, who take Chronicles in a literal sense. According to Ezekiel he was a Levite (40:46, etc.). It is noteworthy that throughout the prophetical books we always hear of the Levitical priesthood, not the Aaronic (see especially 1 Kings 12:31; Jeremiah 33:18-22; 1 Samuel 2:27-36 that was chosen in Egypt could only be the house of
Aaron, not of Ithamar, if the passage is to be taken in its natural sense. On this view Zadok's appointment could only have fulfilled the prophecy if it terminated the Aaronic succession. It would seem therefore that the high-priesthood was transferred to a family of non-Aaronic Levites. For the alternative view see ZADOK.
The prophet's speech in 1 Samuel 2:27-36 is also important for the light it throws on the organization of the priesthood. The high priest has in his gift a number of priestly offices with pecuniary and other emoluments. This postulates a far more advanced hierarchy than that of Priest.
The reference to "the priests and the Levites" in 1 Kings 8:4 was unknown to the Septuagint, but in other passages the Books of Kings show further advances in hierarchical organization. There is not merely the high priest--generally like Aaron in the Priestly Code (P) called "the priest," but sometimes the high priest--but also the second priest (2 Kings 25:18; Jeremiah 52:24; 2 Kings 23:4, according to the Targum), three keepers of the threshold (ubi supra, and 2 Kings 12:10) and "elders of the priests" (2 Kings 19:2; Isaiah 37:2; perhaps also Jeremiah 19:1). See also Jeremiah 20:1; 29:26 for priestly organization and jurisdiction in the temple precincts. All this contrasts strikingly with the simplicity of the Pentateuchal organization.
2. Ezekiel:
Ezekiel is entirely in line with the other sources for this period, but he seeks to institute certain reforms. He writes, "Her priests have done violence to my law, and have profaned my holy things:
they have made no distinction between the holy and the common, neither have they caused men to discern between the unclean and the clean," etc. (Ezekiel 22:26). If these words have any meaning they signify that he was acquainted with a law which followed the very words of Leviticus 10 and other passages of the Priestly Code (P), and was intended to reach the people through the teaching of the priests. In Ezekiel 40-48, there is a vision of the future which stands in the closest relation to the Pentateuch. Three views have been held of this. The old view was that Ezekiel could not be reconciled with the Pentateuch at all, and that the difficulties presented were insoluble. Wellhausen and his followers maintain that the prophet is prior to the Priestly Code (P), and here introduces the distinction between priests and Levites for the first time. The third alternative is to hold that Ezekiel was familiar with P and drew from it the inspiration to make a fresh division among the Levites, giving the sons of Zadok a position similar to that occupied by the sons of Aaron in the wilderness period, and reenacting with slight modifications the legislation applicable to the sons of Aaron, this time applying it to the sons of Zadok. The crucial passage is 44:6-16, from which it clearly appears that in Solomon's temple aliens had performed sundry tasks that should have been executed by more holy persons, and that Ezekiel proposes to degrade Levites who are not descended from Zadok to perform such tasks in the future as a punishment for their ministrations to idols in high places. Either of the two latter views would explain the close connection that evidently exists between the concluding chapters of Ezekiel and the Priestly Code (P), and, accordingly, in choosing between them, the reader must consider four main points:
(1) Is P shown on the internal evidence to be early or late? Is it desert legislation, or is it accurately reflected in Chronicles? This point has already been discussed in part and is further treated in PENTATEUCH (which see).
(2) Is theory of the late composition of P psychologically and morally probable? On this see PENTATEUCH and POT, 292-99.
(3) Is it the case that the earlier history attests the existence of institutions of P that are held by Wellhausen and his followers to be late--e.g. more national offerings than the critics allow? On this see EPC 200, and passim; POT, 305-15, and passim; SBL and OP passim, and article PENTATEUCH.
(4) Does Ezekiel himself show acquaintance with P (e.g. in 22:26), or not? On this too see SBL, 96; PS, 281 f.
With regard to the non-mention of the high-priesthood and certain other institutions in Ezekiel's vision, the natural explanation is that in the case of these the prophet did not desire to institute any changes. It is to be noted that Ezekiel does not codify and consolidate all existing law. On the contrary, he is rather supplementing and reforming. In his ideal temple the prince is to provide the statutory national offerings (45:17), i.e. those of Numbers 28; 29. Apparently the king had provided these earlier (2 Kings 16:13). But in addition to these there had grown up a "king's offering," and it is probably to this only that Ezekiel 45:22; 46:2-15 relate. In 46:13 Septuagint, Syriac, Vulgate, and some Hebrew manuscripts preserve the reading "he" for "thou."
V. Ezra, Nehemiah, Chronicles.
Whatever the course of the earlier history, there is general agreement that in these books a distinction between priests and Levites is established (see e.g. Nehemiah 10:37 f (38 f); 12:1 f). We also find singers and porters (Nehemiah 13:5, etc.), Nethinim and the sons of Solomon's servants (Ezra 7:7,24; 10:23; Nehemiah 10:28); 11:3, etc.). It must not be assumed that these classes were new. The story of the Gibeonites (Joshua 9) gives us the origin of some of these grades, and the non-mention of them in many of the earlier books is easily explained by the character of those books. We know from such passages as Amos 5:23 that there were musical services in far earlier times (compare Nehemiah 12:42).
1. Estimates of the Chronicler:
Chronicles presents an account of the earlier history of the priests and Levites that in many respects does not tally with the older sources. Many modern writers think that the author's views of the past were colored by the circumstances of his own day, and that he had a tendency to carry back later conditions to an earlier period. On the other hand it is impossible to deny fairly that he used some sources which have not been preserved to us elsewhere. Again, there is evidence to show that his work was not intended to be taken for history and would not have been so regarded by his contemporaries. Talmudical authorities held some such view as this. The historical value of his work has yet to be appraised in a more critical and impartial spirit than is exhibited in any of the current discussions. For the present purpose it is only possible to notice the effect of some of his statements, if interpreted literally. As there are passages where he has clearly substituted Levites for the less holy personages of the older sources (contrast e.g. 2 Kings 11:4-12 with 2 Chronicles 23:1-11), it may be that Levites have also been substituted by him for other persons in notices of which no other version has survived.
2. His Data:
David and Solomon recognized the hierarchy. The former king instituted the musical services (1 Chronicles 6:3; 16:4; 25). The Levites were divided into courses (1 Chronicles 23:6) and were rendered liable to service from the age of twenty by his enactment (1 Chronicles 23:27). There were also 24 courses or divisions of priests, 16 of the sons of Eleazar and 8 of the sons of Ithamar (1 Chronicles 23:24). The courses were divided by lot. In Nehemiah 12:1-7 we read of "chiefs of the priests," but these are only 22 in number, while 12:12-21 give us 21 in the time of Joiakim (12:26). But not much importance can be attached to such lists, as names could easily fall out in transmission. According to 1 Chronicles 9:26 the four chief porters were Levites, and Levites were also over the things baked in pans and the shewbread (9:31 f). This of course is not in accordance with the Law, but is found elsewhere in Chronicles. In 1 Chronicles 23 the Levites from 30 years old and upward number 38,000, of whom 24,000 oversee the work of the house of the Lord, 6,000 were officers and judges, 4,000 were doorkeepers and 4,000 were musicians. David altered the age of beginning service to 20, and an account of their functions is given in 1 Chronicles 23:27-32 (see, further, MUSIC). All these arrangements were confirmed and enforced by Solomon (2 Chronicles 8:14). There is often uncertainty as to whether the Chronicler identifies priests and Levites in particular cases or not, e.g. in 2 Chronicles 30:27, "the priests the Levites" bless the people according to the ordinary text, but many authorities read "the priests and the Levites." Hezekiah appears to have undertaken some reorganization (2 Chronicles 17). In 2 Chronicles 29:34 it is clearly the duty of the priests to flay burnt offerings (contrast Le 1). It is impossible to draw any consistent picture from the Chronicler because he gives different data for different periods; it is doubtful whether he meant his statements to be taken as historical, e.g. in 1 Chronicles 25 we find Levites whose names Giddalti (= "I have magnified"), etc., are really words forming part of a prayer, and it is difficult to believe that either the Chronicler or his public intended this chapter to be interpreted in any but a spiritual sense (see PS, 284-86).
In Ezra 2:40 the number of Levites who returned with Zerubbabel is given as 74, as against 973 priests (2:36), 128 singers (2:41), 139 children of the porters (2:42), 392 Nethinim and children of Solomon's servants (2:58), and the figures are the same in Nehemiah 7, except that there the singers number 148 (7:44) and the porters 138 (7:45). When Ezra went up, he was at first joined by no Levites (8:15), but subsequently gathered 38 Levites and 220 Nethinim (8:18-20). We get glimpses of the organization in Nehemiah 12:44-47 and 13:10. It appears that in this period genealogies were carefully scrutinized in the case of doubtful claims to priestly descent (Ezra 2:61; Nehemiah 7:63). In Ezra 6:19 the Levites are represented as killing the Passover.
Of these books no satisfactory account can be given in the present state of textual criticism and Biblical science generally. Some writers, e.g., hold that the Chronicler had before him a source to which the Levites were entirely unknown, others that he invented freely, others again that he reproduces trustworthy pre-exilic information. The student has only an assortment of theories from which to choose. The bedrock fact is that the statements of these books, if taken in their natural meaning, convey an entirely different impression from the statements of the earlier books construed similarly. Modern research has not yet been seriously addressed to the question whether all the statements were really intended to be interpreted as mere history.
VI. Legal Provisions.
Aaron and his sons underwent consecration to fit them for their duties. Exodus 28 f prescribes their garments and consecration (see DRESS; BREASTPLATE; EPHOD; ROBE; COAT; MITRE; GIRDLE; URIM AND THUMMIM), and the account of the latter may be read in Leviticus 8 f. In individual sacrifices brought to the religious capital the priests performed the part of the ritual which related to the altar (sprinkling, burning, etc.) (Leviticus 1-4). See SACRIFICE. A principal function was the duty of teaching the people the law of God (Leviticus 10:11; 14:54-57; Deuteronomy 24:8; 33:10; compare Ezekiel 44:23; Hosea 4:1-6; Haggai 2:11, and many passages in the Prophets).
The priests were subject to special laws designed to maintain their purity (Leviticus 21 compare Ezekiel 44). The rules aim at preventing defilement through mourning (save in the case of ordinary priests for a near relation) and at preventing those who were physically unfitted from performing certain functions, and those who were for any reason unclean from approaching the holy things. See further STRANGER AND SOJOURNER. They performed several semi-judicial functions (Numbers 5:5,11, etc.; see JUDGE). They also blessed the people (Numbers 6:22; compare Deuteronomy 10:8, etc.).
See BLESSING. On their dues see SACRIFICE; TITHE; FIRSTLING; FIRST-FRUITS; LEVITICAL CITIES; AGRARIAN LAWS; see further CHEMARIM; NETHINIM; SOLOMON'S SERVANTS; SINGERS; DOORKEEPER; SERVING-WOMEN; JUDGE.
LITERATURE.
Wellhausen, Prolegomena, chapter iv, for the Graf-Wellhausen view; Wiener, Wiener, Pentateuchal Studies, 230-89, for the view taken above; S.I. Curtiss, Levitical Priests, for the conservative view. This writer afterward changed to the critical view. James Orr, POT; A. Van Hoonacker, Le sacerdoce levitique (important); W. Baudissin, article "Priests and Levites" in HDB, IV, for mediating views. The best account in English of the details of the priestly duties is contained in Baudissin's article, where a further bibliography will be found.
Harold M. Wiener
These files are public domain and are a derivative of an electronic edition that is available from Crosswire Software.
Orr, James, M.A., D.D. General Editor. "Entry for 'PRIESTS AND LEVITES'". "International Standard Bible Encyclopedia". <http://classic.studylight.org/enc/isb/view.cgi?number=T7088>. 1915.
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» Home » News » Archive2010 » pilgrim
CLOGHER PILGRIMAGE – JORDAN
31st October ~ 8th November 2011
‘Clogher Diocese has now become renowned for interesting and meaningful pilgrimages. We have visited the Holy Land on three occasions in less than 18 months. Every Pilgrimage has been over subscribed. Our Fourth Pilgrimage is now planned for October/November 2011 and will be to Jordan. This will offer an opportunity of a lifetime to explore the world of the Old Testament and of John the Baptist. Spiritually the desert will provide the personal and corporate space to prepare for Advent and Christmas. The link between the earlier Pilgrimages and the 2011 Pilgrimage is, of course, the River Jordan itself. I encourage you to take this unique invitation to go deeper and to strengthen the faith which binds us together and holds us in the palm of God’s hand.’
† Michael
We depart from Belfast on our flight to Amman via London Heathrow. On arrival at Queen Alia airport we will be met and transferred to our hotel in Amman for overnight.
Day 2 – Umm Qais / Um Qais / Jerash
In the New Testament period, north Jordan was the region of the Decapolis (Greek for ‘ten cities’), where Jesus taught and performed miracles (Matthew 4:25; Mark 5:20). The city of Gardara (modern Um Qais), with its spectacular panoramic views overlooking the Sea of Galilee, is the site of Jesus’ miracle of the Gadarene swine, where he sent demented spirits out of two men into a herd of swine. They ran down the hill and drowned in the Sea of Galilee (Matthew 8:28-34). Lunch at Um Qais. Drive to Gerasa (Jerash) where we visit the most complete and best-preserved Graeco-Roman city in the Middle East.
Dinner and overnight Amman.
Day 3 – Amman city tour / Madaba / Petra
The region around the Jordanian capital of Amman was known in the Bible as Ammonite Kingdom (Deuteronomy 2:37; Samuel 10:2) famed for its springs and citadel. Its massive fortifications are still standing, where David arranged for Uriah the Hittite to die in battle in order to marry his widow Bathsheba. Visit the Church of Christ the Redeemer in Amman. We drive to Madaba, “The city of Mosaics”, there we see the 6th Century Byzantine mosaic map of the Greek Orthodox Church of St. George that depicts the Holy Land as early Christians saw it. We continue to Mukawir, Herod’s hilltop fortress.
Dinner and overnight in Petra.
Day 4 – Petra, the Rose-Red City
The ancient fortress-city of Petra, which means “stone” in Greek, was the capital of the Nabateans, who carved this wonderland of temples, tombs and elaborate buildings out of solid rock and who grew rich by levying taxes on travellers to ensure safe passage through their lands.
Petra’s exquisite ruins open doorways in time to the biblical land of Moab and the nearby Valley of Moses. The plains of Moab were so named because this area once fell under the control of King Eglon of Moab in the Iron Age (Judges 3:12-14).
To these plains, the wide floor of the Jordan Valley east of the Jordan River, Moses finally brought his people after their epic wilderness journey. Here is where Joshua prepared the people for the crossing of the river into Canaan (Joshua 3:1). The area’s principal water source, Ain Moussa (spring of Moses), held to be one of the many places where Moses struck a rock with his staff to bring forth water (Numbers 20:10-12). Aaron’s final resting place lies atop nearby Mount Hor, now called Jabal Haroon (Mount Aaron).
Day 5 – Wadi Rum / Dead Sea
We leave Petra and visit Wadi Rum where we enjoy a 4 x 4 jeep ride into the desert of Lawrence of Arabia fame, have lunch in the desert and then drive to Aqaba for dinner and overnight.
Day 6 – Aqaba
In addition to some free time, we hope our friend Reverend Cameron Macdonald (Mission to Seamen) will be able to arrange a boat trip on the Red Sea (optional) and visits to meet some local Christians.
Dinner and overnight.
Day 7 – Lot’s Cave / Baptism Site
This morning we drive to Lot’s Cave, via the beautiful Wadi Feifeh road near Tafileh, along the King’s Highway. Here, after fleeing Sodom, Lot and his daughters are said to have lived (Genesis 19:30). The Bible says Lot’s daughters gave birth to sons whose descendants would become the Ammonite and Moabite people (Genesis 19:31-38), whose kingdoms were in what is now central Jordan. We continue to the Bethany-beyond-the-Jordan Baptism Site. The winding loop in the Jordan River opposite Jericho has long been considered the place of Jesus’ baptism. It is known in Arabic as Al-Maghtas (the baptism site). Here the spirit of God descended like a dove upon Jesus, and a voice from heaven said, “This is my son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.” (Matthew 3:17, NIV). About a kilometre east of the river, beyond the thick belt of trees and bush that the Bible calls “the jungle of the Jordan” or “the pride of the Jordan” (Jeremiah 12:5, Zechariah 11:3), the landscape abruptly changes into a stark and barren area known in the Bible as the “wilderness”. It was in this wilderness that Jesus went to fast for forty days and nights after his baptism. The term “Bethany” refers both to the general area between the ancient town and the river (this should not be confused with the village of Bethany outside Jerusalem, where the Bible says Lazarus was raised from the dead). The hill at the heart of Bethany, know as Tel Mar Elijah (Elijah’s Hill), is revered as the spot where Elijah descended to heaven.
Day 8 – Mount Nebo / Macharis
This morning we visit Mount Nebo (also known as Pisgah), to see where Moses glimpsed the Promised Land (Deuteronomy 34:1-5). Early Christians revered this spot and made pilgrimages to it from Jerusalem. A small church was built in the 4th Century A.D. to commemorate the end of the life of Moses and was subsequently expanded into the present large basilica with its stunning collection of Byzantine mosaics. We continue to Mukawir (also known as Machaerus), and see where John the Baptist was beheaded after Salome’s fateful dance for her step-father (Matthew 14:3-11).
Transfer to airport for our return flight to Belfast via London Heathrow.
‘TOWARDS THE PROMISED LAND’
(By Revd Glenn West)
Our earthly pilgrimage towards the eternal Promised Land is a journey in which we seek to encounter and understand God through worship and prayer, through Scripture, our church and our life experiences. Our diocesan pilgrimages are all designed to bring these threads together in a meaningful and engaging way.
Jordan is a relatively small, elongated country to the east of the Jordan valley and to the east of Israel (the Promised Land of Canaan). It has a rich and unbroken legacy in the birth and development of the Christian faith.
Abraham, Moses, Joshua and Elijah were prophets who journeyed westward through this area to the Promised Land and Petra (perhaps Jordan’s most famous world heritage site) was a staging post for the 3 wise men from the east who brought gold, frankincense and myrrh to the new born ‘prince of peace’.
It was in the area to the south and east of the Dead Sea that an aged Abraham fathered two sons, Ishmael whose seed became the Arabic tribes – the sons of the east, and Isaac whose seed became Israel, the sons of the west. Here too more liberal western Islam touches much more conservative eastern Islam.
In the north Jew and Muslim share the drinking water of the Sea of Galilee and in the south where Eilat (Sinai/Israel) and Aqaba (Jordan) face each other across the Red Sea the beautiful sweeping sandy beach and crystal clear sea water are other natural resources shared by both. Here the cultural diversity of swimming and bathing habits couldn’t be more different and more obvious.
Noah’s tomb at Keraic is but one of the reminders of the unbroken and shared continuity between the three Abrahamic faiths (Christianity, Islam, Judaism).
Throughout scripture God repeatedly designated this a land of peace and refuge. The reconciliation of Jacob and Laban and Jacob and Esau are two examples of Jordan’s enduring symbolism as a place where humans learned and applied God’s command to love one another and to be merciful, tolerant, humble and forgiving.
God appeared frequently – often dramatically, and encountered humankind in this particular area; the Red Sea parted for the Israelites; Moses ushered water forth from the rock, Lot’s wife turned to salt, Jacob wrestled with God, Balaam climbed the mountain and Ruth found refuge.
When we read of the suffering of Job we are also aware that the book describes the patriarchal social structures and pastoral economy so typical of the almost lunar like Wadi Rum and South Jordan.
It is here that many recognise parallels between Elisha and Jesus; both pursued travelling ministries, both had followers or disciples, both challenged political powers and indeed performed similar miracles including cleansing lepers and bringing the dead back to life.
At Bethany in Jordan (not the same Bethany on the eastern slope of the Mount of Olives) Elijah ascended and both John the Baptist and Jesus began their public ministries.
Christ’s teachings in this region include the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to little children, advice to the rich young ruler, the first shall be last and the last first and the healing of the demon possessed man.
The life of John the Baptist ended in cruel fashion in Jordan and it was from the area of the 10 Graeco-Roman cities of the Decapolis in the north that Jesus started out on his last journey to his cruel crucifixion in Jerusalem.
During the time of the early church and following his conversion on the Damascus Road St Paul spent some time in Jordan. It was at impressive Petra, among the many temples and tombs that he apparently formulated some of his doctrines.
Jordan is rich in archaeological remains; they include the remains of the earliest and oldest church in the world at Aqaba, ‘the port city of Solomon’, and a mosaic of the oldest known map of the Holy Land at Magaba, ‘the city of mosaics’.
Christians comprise only 6% of the population of the country. Present church congregations (the Living Stones) include Anglicans (under the Bishop of Jerusalem – Bishop Suheil), Latin and Greek Orthodox. The parish school at the growing Church of Christ the Redeemer in the capital Amman (present rector Revd Fadi Diab) has an unfamiliar perspective on male/female co-education, but many congregations have interesting stories to tell in their continuing witness to the faith. So too does the Revd Cameron MacDonald of the Mission to Seamen who works at the port of Aqaba.
We have a thematic approach to our pilgrimages. Each has a distinctive emphasis. Our previous visits to Israel reflected on the birth, death and resurrection of our Lord (Advent 2008, Lent 2009 and Easter 2010).
In Luke Chapter 16 verse 16 we read:
‘The Law and the Prophets were proclaimed until John. Since that time the good news of the Kingdom of God is being preached and everyone is forcing his way into it’.
Our Jordan pilgrimage will form part of our 2011 Advent preparations as we focus on those who prepared (proclaimed) the way of Jesus Christ.
This is a new pilgrimage destination for our diocese. Whether to complement our previous pilgrimages or as a stand alone experience we commend it for your consideration and invite expressions of interest.
Tour Leaders:
Bishop Michael Jackson
Revd Glenn West (( 02866 346870) glenn.west55@hotmail.com
Revd David Skuce (( 028677 21250) davidskuce@btinternet.com
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Genetic Engineering of Hematopoiesis to Treat Inherited Diseases
Serena Scala, San Raffaele Telethon Institute for Gene Therapy, Italy
Serena Scala is Post-Doc in the group of Prof. Alessandro Aiuti at San Raffaele Telethon Institute for Gene Therapy (SR-TIGET) in Milan. She is PhD in Molecular Medicine. Her main interests are hematopoiesis, gene therapy and integration site-clonal tracking. Her works combine deep multi-parametric phenotyping and integration site analyses aimed at studying the biology of the hematopoietic system and at evaluating dynamics of hematopoietic reconstitution upon gene therapy. She is currently investigating the role of distinct hematopoietic/stem and progenitor subpopulations during early reconstitution after transplantation and at steady state. She recently developed with her collaborators a novel flow-cytometry technology, currently under patent filing, with a wide range of pre-clinical and clinical applications going from the characterization of hematopoietic disorders to the monitoring of hematopoietic reconstitution and stem cell maintenance in patients after transplant or gene therapy.
Robert Hooke Lecture
Luminescent dots for multiplexing cytometry and super-resolution imaging
Dayong Jin, University of Technology Sydney, Australia
Distinguished Professor Dayong Jin is a former ISAC scholar (awarded in 2007). He directs the Australian Research Council IDEAL Research Hub and Institute for Biomedical Materials & Devices (IBMD), at the University of Technology Sydney. His research has been in the physical, engineering and interdisciplinary sciences. He is a technology developer with expertise covering optics, luminescent materials, sensing, automation devices, microscopy imaging, and analytical chemistry to enable rapid detection of cells and molecules and engineering of sensors and photonics devices. Prof Jin is the winner of the Australian Museum Eureka Prize for Interdisciplinary Scientific Research in 2015, the Australian Academy of Science John Booker Medalist in 2017, and the Prime Minister’s Malcolm McIntosh Prize for Physical Scientist of the Year 2017.
Roger Tsien Keynote Lecture
Roger Tsien's Heritage: Investigating Live Cells in Action
Tullio Pozzan, National Research Council of Italy
Tullio Pozzan graduated in Medicine in 1973 at the University of Padova, from 1978 to 1981 worked as post doc at the Department of Biochemistry in Cambridge (UK) and was nominated full Professor of General Pathology at the University of Ferrara in 1986. In 1990 he returned to the University of Padova where he served as Department Chairman for 12 years. At present Prof. Pozzan is head of the Department of Biomedical Sciences of the National Research Council (CNR).
His main scientific interest over the last 30 years has been the study of Ca2+ as a universal intracellular second messenger. His interests in Ca2+ signaling began with the characterization, in isolated organelles, of the mitochondrial Ca2+ homeostatic mechanisms. During the post doc, in collaboration with R.Y. Tsien (Nobel laureate in 2008), he participated to the development of the intracellular trappable fluorescent Ca2+ indicators and using these tools he clarified a number of key questions in cell activation. His research group developed the first genetically encoded probes with selective subcellular localization (targeted aequorins). This new approach lead to a series of novel discoveries on the mechanisms of subcellular Ca2+ handling and in particular to the understanding of how mitochondria participate in cellular Ca2+ handling. His present interests focus on a detailed description of the mechanisms of Ca2+ uptake and release in mitochondria in vivo, on the role of Ca2+ signaling in neuron-glia cross talk and on the role of altered mitochondrial Ca2+ handling in neurodegenerative diseases. Finally over the last years he became interested also in the signaling pathway controlled by the other universal intracellular messenger, cAMP. His group generated the first genetically encoded fluorescent cAMP probe and contributed to establishing the concept of cAMP microdomains. Recently he described the existence and regulation of an autonomous cAMP generation and hydrolysis mechanism within the matrix of mitochondria.
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TheConditionsOfLove@gmail.com
Dale M. Kushner
The Conditions of Love
Anne Frank and My Birth as a Writer
by Dale M. Kushner | October 14th, 2015
I first read Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl when I was about nine years old. As you may remember, Anne received her diary as a gift for her thirteenth birthday and she used it to chronicle her life, thoughts, and feelings for two traumatic years, from June 12, 1942 until August 1, 1944 while she and her family hid from the Nazis in several rooms concealed behind a bookcase in a building in Amsterdam.
At the time I was fascinated by what’s now called Holocaust literature and remember also reading John Hersey’s novel The Wall about the Warsaw Ghetto. I grew up in postwar New Jersey and in our house World War II was never discussed, though Roosevelt and Churchill were considered saints. Yes, Jews have saints! It might have been the whispery conversations in the kitchen among the women that piqued my curiosity about the unsaid. Undoubtedly, some of those whispered phrases contained the words Auschwitz and Treblinka.
But it wasn’t Anne’s description of the terror of the Nazi occupation of Holland that intrigued me. Rather, it was that she, like myself, had undisclosed feelings—about her mother, her father, her sister, about Peter van Pels, the young man whose family was in hiding in the Annex with the Franks. It was Anne’s private voicings of her feelings, so similar to mine at the time, that captivated me.
Reading Anne Frank, with whom I identified as a young, sensitive, intelligent Jewish girl, gave me the idea that I could also find words and a place to express myself. I loved the confidential tone with which she addressed her Kitty, the name she called her diary. Anne wrote in her diary: I hope I will be able to confide everything to you, as I have never been able to confide in anyone, and I hope you will be a great source of comfort and support.
From my perspective, this statement describes the ideal relationship between a writer and her work: truth-telling in the form of an interior monologue. Only later, when I was in high school, did I begin to keep my own diary, never once imagining that I would become a professional author. Almost two decades after that, I returned to school to earn a Master’s in Fine Arts in Creative Writing, but I trace the seeds of my career to that first intimate relationship with Anne’s voice.
As we all know, Anne was not a survivor, but through her words she has survived and changed us.
Post-script: sometime over the years my original copy of The Diary disappeared. In the foreword to the edition I now own, The Definitive Edition, the translator writes that Anne had hoped to someday publish her diary. In 1944, a member of the Dutch government in exile had announced on the radio that after the war he hoped to publish eyewitness accounts of the German occupation. Anne heard this broadcast and planned, after the war, to publish a book based on her diary. So she began to keep two diaries, her original one and an edited version.
This passage has special meaning for me as a writer. Eunice, my protagonist in The Conditions of Love, also keeps a diary. Like her, I believe our words matter. I believe our suffering matters. I believe that out of the raw material of our lives we form art and create beauty. As Eunice’s downstairs neighbor and confidant Mr. Tabachnik says, “From the terrible the beautiful comes.”
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A Grammy-nominated producer, DJ Snake is a Frenchman at the forefront of the trap music movement, having taken the genre to the charts with his 2013 single "Turn Down for What" featuring Lil Jon. Born William Grigahcine, Snake's production work on Lady Gaga's 2011 effort Born This Way earned him a Grammy nod when it was nominated for Album of the Year in 2012. Also in 2012, he signed with Diplo's imprint Mad Decent and released the single "Bird Machine" on the label in 2013. The singles "Slow Down" and "Together" also arrived in 2013, along with more work for Lady Gaga on her ARTPOP album. His big break as a solo artist came late in the year when "Turn Down for What," featuring Lil Jon, arrived and became the most popular crossover trap hit since Baauer's "Harlem Shake."
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101.87(2m) (2m) For purposes of meeting the requirement relating to experience under sub. (1) (b), a degree or diploma from a 2-year program in a school of electrical engineering or from a 2-year program in an accredited technical or vocational school in an electrical-related program shall be accepted by the department as being equivalent to 12 months and 2,000 hours of experience.
101.87(3m) (3m) Subsection (1) does not apply to any residential or industrial journeyman electricians or to any other type of journeyman electrician that may be recognized under s. 101.84 (5). The qualifying criteria required for licensing residential and industrial journeyman electricians and any other such type of journeyman electrician shall be established by the department by rule.
101.87 History History: 1983 a. 164; 1989 a. 348; 1993 a. 112; 2007 a. 63; 2013 a. 143.
101.87 Cross-reference Cross-reference: See also ss. SPS 305.40, 305.41, 305.43, 305.44, and 305.45, Wis. adm. code.
101.874 101.874 Reciprocity.
101.874(1)(1) In this section, “credential" means a registration, license, certification, or other approval to perform or inspect electrical work.
101.874(2) (2) The department may enter into a reciprocal agreement with another state under which credentials issued to electricians, electrical apprentices, electrical contractors, and electrical inspectors by either state are recognized as comparable credentials by the other state. Under the agreement, the department may recognize credentials from the other state only if the education, experience, and examination requirements in the other state are at least equivalent to the education, experience, and examination requirements for being issued credentials under this subchapter.
101.874(3) (3) Upon entering into an agreement under this section, the department may issue a credential only if all of the following apply:
101.874(3)(a) (a) The individual seeking the credential submits an application and pays the applicable fee established under s. 101.82 (4).
101.874(3)(b) (b) The individual holds a valid comparable credential issued by the other state.
101.875 101.875 Inspections.
101.875(1)(1) All inspections of electrical wiring shall be performed by inspectors certified by the department.
101.875(2) (2) Any rule promulgated under s. 101.82 (2m) may not require the inspection of any of the installation, repair, or maintenance of electrical wiring within an existing industrial facility or an existing manufacturing facility unless the plan for the installation, repair, or maintenance is required to be examined under s. 101.12 (2) by the department or by a municipality that has its examinations accepted by the department under s. 101.12 (3) (a), (am), or (b).
101.875 History History: 2013 a. 143 ss. 25 to 27.
101.875 Cross-reference Cross-reference: See also s. SPS 305.62, Wis. adm. code.
101.88 101.88 Compliance and penalties.
101.88(1)(1) Every person installing, repairing, or maintaining electrical wiring shall use materials, methods, and equipment that are in conformance with the rules promulgated by the department under this subchapter.
101.88(3) (3) Any person who violates this subchapter or any rule promulgated under this subchapter shall forfeit to the state not less than $25 nor more than $500 for each violation. Each day of violation constitutes a separate offense.
101.88 History History: 1979 c. 309; 1983 a. 164; 2007 a. 63; 2013 a. 143.
MANUFACTURED HOMES AND MOBILE HOMES
101.91(1g) (1g) “Delivery date" means the date on which a manufactured home is physically delivered to the site chosen by the owner of the manufactured home.
101.91(1i) (1i) “Installation standards" means specifications for the proper installation of manufactured homes at their place of occupancy to ensure proper siting, the joining of all sections of the manufactured home, connection to existing utility services and the installation of stabilization, support, or anchoring systems.
101.91(1j) (1j) “Installer" means a person who is in the business of installing new manufactured homes.
101.91(1m) (1m) “License period" means the period during which a license issued under s. 101.951 or 101.952 is effective, as established by the department under s. 101.951 (2) (b) 1. or 101.952 (2) (b) 1.
101.91(1t) (1t) “Licensed installer" means an installer licensed under s. 101.96 (2) (b).
101.91(1v) (1v) “Licensed manufacturer" means a manufactured home manufacturer licensed under s. 101.95.
101.91(2) (2) “Manufactured home" means any of the following:
101.91(2)(am) (am) A structure that is designed to be used as a dwelling with or without a permanent foundation and that is certified by the federal department of housing and urban development as complying with the standards established under 42 USC 5401 to 5425.
101.91(2)(c) (c) A mobile home, unless a mobile home is specifically excluded under the applicable statute.
101.91(3) (3) “Manufactured home dealer" means a person who, for a commission or other thing of value, sells, exchanges, buys or rents, or offers or attempts to negotiate a sale or exchange of an interest in, manufactured homes or who is engaged wholly or partially in the business of selling manufactured homes, whether or not the manufactured homes are owned by the person, but does not include:
101.91(3)(a) (a) A receiver, trustee, personal representative, guardian, or other person appointed by or acting under the judgment or order of any court.
101.91(3)(b) (b) Any public officer while performing that officer's official duty.
101.91(3)(c) (c) Any employee of a person enumerated in par. (a) or (b).
101.91(3)(d) (d) Any lender, as defined in s. 421.301 (22).
101.91(3)(e) (e) A person transferring a manufactured home used for that person's personal, family or household purposes, if the transfer is an occasional sale and is not part of the business of the transferor.
101.91(4) (4) “Manufactured home owner" means any person who purchases, or leases from another, a manufactured home primarily for use for personal, family or household purposes.
101.91(5m) (5m) “Manufactured home community" means any plot or plots of ground upon which 3 or more manufactured homes that are occupied for dwelling or sleeping purposes are located. “Manufactured home community" does not include a farm where the occupants of the manufactured homes are the father, mother, son, daughter, brother or sister of the farm owner or operator or where the occupants of the manufactured homes work on the farm.
101.91(6m) (6m) “Manufactured home community contractor" means a person, other than a public utility, as defined in s. 196.01 (5) (a), who, under a contract with a manufactured home community operator, provides water or sewer service to a manufactured home community occupant or performs a service related to providing water or sewer service to a manufactured home community occupant.
101.91(7) (7) “Manufactured home community occupant" means a person who rents or owns a manufactured home in a manufactured home community.
101.91(8) (8) “Manufactured home community operator" means a person engaged in the business of owning or managing a manufactured home community.
101.91(9) (9) “Manufactured home salesperson" means any person who is employed by a manufactured home manufacturer or manufactured home dealer to sell or lease manufactured homes.
101.91(10) (10) “Mobile home" means a vehicle manufactured or assembled before June 15, 1976, designed to be towed as a single unit or in sections upon a highway by a motor vehicle and equipped and used, or intended to be used, primarily for human habitation, with walls of rigid uncollapsible construction, which has an overall length in excess of 45 feet. “Mobile home" includes the mobile home structure, its plumbing, heating, air conditioning and electrical systems, and all appliances and all other equipment carrying a manufacturer's warranty.
101.91(11) (11) “New manufactured home" means a manufactured home that has never been occupied, used or sold for personal or business use.
101.91(12) (12) “Used manufactured home" means a manufactured home that has previously been occupied, used or sold for personal or business use.
101.91 History History: 1973 c. 116, 132; 1983 a. 27, 192; 1995 a. 362; 1999 a. 9, 53; 2001 a. 16 ss. 2533 to 2539, 2975 to 2977; 2001 a. 102; 2005 a. 45.
101.92 101.92 Departmental powers and duties. The department:
101.92(3) (3) Shall review annually the rules adopted under this subchapter.
101.92(4) (4) Shall provide for announced or unannounced inspection of manufacturing facilities, processes, fabrication and assembly of manufactured homes to ensure compliance with the rules adopted under this subchapter.
101.92(6) (6) May enter into reciprocal agreements with other states regarding the inspection, installation, and labeling of manufactured homes where the laws or rules of other states meet the intent of this subchapter and where the laws or rules are actually enforced.
101.92(7) (7) Shall establish a staff for the administration and enforcement of this subchapter.
101.92(8) (8) May revoke the license of any manufacturer who violates this subchapter or any rules promulgated thereunder.
101.92(9) (9) Shall promulgate rules and establish standards necessary to carry out the purposes of ss. 101.951 and 101.952.
101.92 History History: 1973 c. 116; 1979 c. 221; 1983 a. 27 ss. 1375pr, 1375q, 2200 (25); 1995 a. 27, 362; 1999 a. 9, 53; 2005 a. 45.
101.92 Cross-reference Cross-reference: See also s. SPS 305.32, Wis. adm. code.
101.9202 101.9202 Excepted liens and security interests. Sections 101.9203 to 101.9218 do not apply to or affect:
101.9202(1) (1) A lien given by statute or rule of law to a supplier of services or materials for the manufactured home.
101.9202(2) (2) A lien given by statute to the United States, this state or any political subdivision of this state.
101.9202(3) (3) A security interest in a manufactured home created by a manufactured home dealer or manufacturer who holds the manufactured home for sale, which shall be governed by the applicable provisions of ch. 409.
101.9202 History History: 1999 a. 9, 53.
101.9203 101.9203 When certificate of title required.
101.9203(1)(1) Except as provided in subs. (3) and (4), the owner of a manufactured home situated in this state or intended to be situated in this state shall make application for certificate of title under s. 101.9209 for the manufactured home if the owner has newly acquired the manufactured home.
101.9203(2) (2) Any owner who situates in this state a manufactured home for which a certificate of title is required without the certificate of title having been issued or applied for, knowing that the certificate of title has not been issued or applied for, may be required to forfeit not more than $200. A certificate of title is considered to have been applied for when the application accompanied by the required fee has been delivered to the department or deposited in the mail properly addressed and with postage prepaid.
101.9203(3) (3) Unless otherwise authorized by rule of the department, a nonresident owner of a manufactured home situated in this state may not apply for a certificate of title under this subchapter unless the manufactured home is subject to a security interest or except as provided in s. 101.9209 (1) (a).
101.9203(4) (4) The owner of a manufactured home that is situated in this state or intended to be situated in this state is not required to make application for a certificate of title under s. 101.9209 if the owner of the manufactured home intends, upon acquiring the manufactured home, to make the manufactured home a fixture to land in which the owner of the manufactured home has an ownership or leasehold interest subject to ch. 706.
101.9203 History History: 1999 a. 9, 53; 2001 a. 16; 2005 a. 45.
101.9204 101.9204 Application for certificate of title.
101.9204(1)(1) An application for a certificate of title shall be made to the department upon a form or in an automated format prescribed by it and shall be accompanied by the required fee. Each application for certificate of title shall include the following information:
101.9204(1)(a) (a) The name and address of the owner.
101.9204(1)(b) (b) A description of the manufactured home, including make, model, identification number and any other information or documentation that the department may reasonably require for proper identification of the manufactured home.
101.9204(1)(c) (c) The date of purchase by the applicant, the name and address of the person from whom the manufactured home was acquired and the names and addresses of any secured parties in the order of their priority.
101.9204(1)(d) (d) If the manufactured home is a new manufactured home being titled for the first time, the signature of the manufactured home dealer. The document of origin shall contain the information specified by the department.
101.9204(1)(e) (e) Any further evidence of ownership which the department may reasonably require to enable it to determine whether the owner is entitled to a certificate of title and the existence or nonexistence of security interests in the manufactured home.
101.9204(1)(f) (f) If the identification number of the manufactured home has been removed, obliterated or altered, or if the original casting has been replaced, or if the manufactured home has not been numbered by the manufacturer, the application for certificate of title shall so state.
101.9204(1)(g) (g) If the manufactured home is a used manufactured home that was last previously titled in another jurisdiction, the applicant shall furnish any certificate of ownership issued by the other jurisdiction and a statement, in the form prescribed by the department, pertaining to the title history and ownership of the manufactured home.
101.9204(1m) (1m) On the form or in the automated format for application for a certificate of title, the department may show the fee under s. 101.9208 (4m) separately from the fee under s. 101.9208 (1) or (4).
101.9204(2) (2) Any person who knowingly makes a false statement in an application for a certificate of title is guilty of a Class H felony.
101.9204 History History: 1999 a. 9, 53, 185; 2001 a. 38, 109; 2005 a. 45, 253.
101.9205 101.9205 When department to issue certificate and to whom; maintenance of records.
101.9205(1)(1) The department shall maintain a record of each application for certificate of title received by it and, when satisfied as to its genuineness and regularity and that the applicant is entitled to the issuance of a certificate of title, shall issue and deliver a certificate to the owner of the manufactured home.
101.9205(2) (2) The department shall maintain a record of all applications, and all certificates of title issued by the department, indexed in the following manners:
101.9205(2)(a) (a) According to title number.
101.9205(2)(b) (b) Alphabetically, according to the name of the owner.
101.9205(2)(c) (c) In any other manner that the department determines to be desirable.
101.9205(3) (3) The department shall establish, by rule under s. 101.19, a fee of not less than $2 for conducting a file search of manufactured home title records.
101.9205 History History: 1999 a. 9, 53, 185; 2005 a. 45.
101.9206 101.9206 Contents of certificate of title.
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120.15(1) (1) Countersign all checks, share drafts or other drafts for disbursement of school district moneys.
120.15(2) (2) Defend on behalf of the school district all actions brought against the school district.
120.15(3) (3) Prosecute, when authorized by an annual meeting or the school board, actions brought by the school district.
120.15(4) (4) Prosecute an action for the recovery of any forfeiture incurred under chs. 115 to 121 in which the school district is interested. If the school district president has incurred the forfeiture, such action shall be prosecuted by the school district treasurer. Of the net sum recovered under such action, one-half shall be paid into the school district treasury and one-half to the county treasury for the benefit of the school fund.
120.15(5) (5) Act as chairperson of school board meetings and see that minutes of the meetings are properly recorded, approved and signed. In the absence of the president, the vice president or, in the case of a 3-member board, another school board member selected by the school board, shall act as chairperson of school board meetings.
120.15 History History: 1979 c. 89, 173; 1981 c. 20; 1983 a. 368.
120.16 120.16 School district treasurer; duties. The school district treasurer of a common or union high school district shall:
120.16(2) (2) Apply for, receive and sue for all money appropriated to or collected for the school district and disburse the same in accordance with this subsection and s. 66.0607. Disbursements from the school district treasury shall be made by the school district treasurer upon the written order of the school district clerk after proper vouchers have been filed with the school district clerk. Such disbursements shall be by order check, share draft or other draft and no order check, share draft or other draft is valid nor may it be released to the payee unless signed by the school district clerk and school district treasurer and countersigned by the school district president. In a school district having 5 or more school board members, another school board member may countersign such order checks, share draft or other draft in lieu of the school district president. No order check, share draft or other draft may be drawn for the payment of which money has not been appropriated according to law. The school district treasurer may receive money raised in extracurricular activities. The school board may by resolution authorize the use of facsimile signatures as provided in s. 66.0607 (3). A certified copy of the resolution shall be filed with the school district clerk and each public depository concerned.
120.16(3) (3) Enter in the treasurer's account books all money received and disbursed by the treasurer, specifying the source from which it was received, the person to whom it was paid and the object for which it was paid.
120.16(4) (4) Present to the annual meeting a written statement of all money received and disbursed by the treasurer during the preceding year.
120.16(5) (5) Immediately upon receipt, deposit the funds of the school district in the name of the school district in a public depository deposit designated by the school board under s. 120.12 (7). Failure to comply with this subsection shall be prima facie grounds for removal from office. When such funds are so deposited, the school district treasurer and his or her bonders are not liable for losses as defined in s. 34.01 (2). The interest derived from such funds shall be paid into the school district treasury.
120.16(6) (6) Withdraw funds of the school district deposited in savings or time deposits by written transfer order in accordance with this subsection and s. 66.0607. Written transfer orders may be executed only for the purpose of transferring deposits to an authorized deposit of the school district in the same or another authorized public depository. The transfer shall be made directly by the public depository from which the withdrawal is made. No transfer order is valid unless signed by the school district clerk and school district treasurer and countersigned by the school district president. In a school district having 5 or more school board members, another school board member may countersign transfer orders in lieu of the school district president. The school board may, by resolution, authorize the use of facsimile signatures as provided in s. 66.0607 (3). A certified copy of the resolution shall be filed with the school district clerk and each public depository concerned.
120.16 History History: 1973 c. 90; 1977 c. 29, 211; 1979 c. 318; 1981 c. 20; 1983 a. 189 s. 329 (21); 1983 a. 368, 1993 a. 492; 1999 a. 150 s. 672.
120.17 120.17 School district clerk; duties. The school district clerk of a common or union high school district shall:
120.17(1) (1) Report the name and post-office address of each officer of the school district, within 10 days after the election or appointment of the officer, to the clerk and treasurer of each municipality having territory within the school district.
120.17(2) (2) Act as clerk and record the proceedings of annual and special meetings.
120.17(3) (3) Enter in the record book provided by the school board the minutes of its meetings, orders, resolutions and other proceedings.
120.17(4) (4) Enter in the record book copies of all the school district clerk's reports to the municipal clerks and the certificate of the proceedings of a meeting returned by a temporary school district clerk.
120.17(5) (5) Draw orders on the school district treasurer as directed by an annual or special meeting or the school board and record all orders drawn on the school district treasurer.
120.17(7) (7) Furnish each teacher with a copy of the contract between the teacher and the school board.
120.17(8)(a)(a) Annually on or before November 10, deliver to the clerk of each municipality having territory within the school district a certified statement showing that proportion of the amount of taxes voted and not before reported, and that proportion of the amount of tax to be collected in such year, if any, for the annual payment of any loan to be assessed on that part of the school district territory lying within the municipality. Such proportion shall be determined from the full values certified to the school district clerk under s. 121.06 (2).
120.17(8)(bm) (bm) If the equalized valuation of that part of a municipality lying within a school district is reduced due to the removal of property from the tax roll because the imposition of the property tax on that property is found unconstitutional, the school district clerk shall notify the supervisor of equalization. The supervisor of equalization shall reduce the equalized valuation by the full value of the property so removed and certify the resulting equalized valuation to the state superintendent and the school district clerk for use in computing the tax levy certifications under this subsection. Corrections may be made under this paragraph only for the valuations used by the department for the last 2 school years.
120.17(8)(c) (c) If an order of school district reorganization under ch. 117 is effective after January 1 and before July 1 of any year, the school district clerks of the school districts affected shall prepare the statement under par. (a) based on the equalized valuation of the school districts as altered by the order and related to the equalized valuation of the year upon which the tax levy is required to be made. If the school district clerk has filed the statement prior to the effective date of the order, the clerk shall file a corrected certification which shall be accepted by the clerks of the municipalities affected and acted upon by them as provided in par. (a). Failure of the school district clerk to file a corrected certification of the levy based on the equalized valuation of each of the municipalities or portions thereof within the school district shall be corrected by the school district clerk by an appropriate adjustment in the levy certified in the following year.
120.17(9) (9) Within 5 days after receipt of notification from the school board of the name of a new school, notify the proper postmaster of the name and location of the school and the number of the school district. If a school is not located on a mail route, the school district clerk shall furnish the postmaster with the names of persons to whom the mail for the school may be delivered. The school board may rent a lock box at school district expense for each school not on a mail route. The school district clerk shall notify the postmaster of school vacations and shall direct what disposition shall be made of the school mail during vacations.
120.17(10) (10) Have authority to administer the oath of office to school board members.
120.17 History History: 1971 c. 56; 1973 c. 61, 90; 1977 c. 29 s. 1647 (4); 1977 c. 418; 1983 a. 275 s. 15 (3); 1983 a. 339, 405; 1985 a. 225; 1989 a. 114; 1993 a. 16, 492; 1995 a. 27; 1997 a. 27; 2011 a. 105.
120.18 120.18 Annual school district report.
120.18(1)(1) Annually at such time as the department prescribes but after the end of the school year and no later than September 1, the school district clerk of a common or union high school district shall file a verified annual school district report with the department, on forms supplied by the department. The school district clerk shall send a copy of the annual school district report to the school district administrator and shall notify the person in charge of each school in the school district that the reports are on file in the school district clerk's office. Accounting and financial information provided by the school district in the annual report shall be prepared from the system of accounts prescribed by the department. If the school district clerk neglects to make the annual report, the clerk shall be liable to the school district for the whole amount of money lost by the school district because of such neglect. The annual report shall contain:
120.18(1)(a) (a) The school count, showing the numbers and ages of persons who are at least 4 years old but not yet 14 years old and who reside in a school district operating only elementary grades, showing the number and ages of persons between the ages of 14 and 20 residing in a union high school district and showing the number and ages of persons between the ages of 4 and 20 residing in any other school district. Children cared for at a charitable or penal institution of this state may not be included in the report. The school district clerk may employ a competent person to take the school count. The count may be determined by using any of the following methods:
120.18(1)(a)1. 1. Conducting a school census on the preceding June 30.
120.18(1)(a)2. 2. Adding the number of persons under this paragraph who were residents of the school district and were enrolled in the school district on the 3rd Friday of September of the previous school year; plus the number of persons under this paragraph who were residents of the school district and who were enrolled in private schools, tribal schools, home-based private educational programs, or other school districts on the 3rd Friday of September of the previous school year; plus the number or an estimate of the number of those persons under this paragraph who were residents of the school district and not enrolled in the school district, private schools, tribal schools, home-based private educational programs, or other school districts on the 3rd Friday of September of the previous school year.
120.18(1)(b) (b) The number of children between the ages of 4 and 20 taught in the schools of the school district during the school year.
120.18(1)(c) (c) The number of children attending the schools of the school district during the school year under the age of 4 and over the age of 20 years.
120.18(1)(d) (d) The number of school days taught, including holidays, and the number of hours of direct pupil instruction provided in each school, by teachers legally qualified to teach.
120.18(1)(e) (e) The names of all teachers employed by the school district during the school year; the number of days taught by each, including holidays; the monthly salary paid to each; and the time allowed each teacher for attendance at an educational convention for which no wages were deducted.
120.18(1)(f) (f) The amount of money received during the school year, designating separately the amount received from the school fund income, from taxes levied by the county board, from taxes voted by the school district and from all other sources and the manner in which such money was expended, showing separately the expenditure of school money received from the state.
120.18(1)(g) (g) The amount and character of school district debts.
120.18(1)(gm) (gm) Payroll and related benefit costs for all school district employees in the previous school year. Payroll costs for represented employees shall be based upon the costs of wages of any collective bargaining agreements covering such employees for the previous school year. If, as of the time specified by the department for filing the report, the school district has not entered into a collective bargaining agreement for any portion of the previous school year with the recognized or certified representative of any of its employees, increased costs of wages reflected in the report shall be equal to the maximum wage expenditure that is subject to collective bargaining under s. 111.70 (4) (mb) 2. for the employees. The school district shall amend the annual report to reflect any change in such costs as a result of any collective bargaining agreement entered into between the date of filing the report and October 1. Any such amendment shall be concurred in by the certified public accountant licensed or certified under ch. 442 certifying the school district audit.
120.18(1)(i) (i) A description of the educational technology used by the school district, including the uses made of the technology, the cost of the technology, and the number of persons using or served by the technology. In this paragraph, “educational technology" has the meaning given in s. 16.99 (3).
120.18(1)(o) (o) The number of pupils enrolled in each school transferred to an opportunity schools and partnership program under subch. IX of ch. 115, as reported by the commissioner in the enrollment report submitted pursuant to s. 115.999 (4).
120.18(1)(s) (s) Such other facts and statistics in relation to the public, private or tribal schools, in the school district as the department requires.
120.18(3) (3) The state superintendent may promulgate rules to implement and administer this section.
120.18 History History: 1975 c. 189, 224; 1989 a. 31; 1993 a. 16; 1995 a. 27 s. 9145 (1); 1997 a. 27, 87; 2001 a. 16; 2003 a. 33; 2005 a. 252; 2009 a. 302; 2011 a. 10; 2015 a. 55.
120.20 120.20 School board members; compatible positions.
120.20(1)(1) A school board member may serve as a volunteer coach or a supervisor of an extracurricular activity if all of the following apply:
120.20(1)(a) (a) The school board member does not receive compensation for serving as a volunteer coach or supervisor.
120.20(1)(b) (b) The school board member agrees to abstain from voting on any issue that comes before the school board that substantially and directly concerns the activity that he or she coaches or supervises while he or she is serving as a volunteer coach or supervisor.
120.20(1)(c) (c) The school board receives the results of a criminal background investigation of the school board member conducted by the department of justice or the federal bureau of investigation.
120.20(2) (2) Subsection (1) (b) may not be construed to require a school board member who is serving as a volunteer coach or supervisor to abstain from voting on the school district's annual budget.
120.20(3) (3) Notwithstanding s. 120.001, this section applies to members of a school board of a common, union high, or unified school district.
120.21 120.21 School board contracts for courses.
120.21(1)(1)
120.21(1)(a) (a) The school board of a union high school district or a common school district operating elementary and high school grades may contract:
120.21(1)(a)1. 1. With the University of Wisconsin-Extension for extension courses for pupils enrolled in high school.
120.21(1)(a)2. 2. With flight operator schools, approved by the U.S. civil aeronautics administration, for courses in flight instruction approved by the state superintendent.
120.21(1)(b) (b) The cost of contracts under this subsection shall be paid out of the school district general fund.
120.21(3) (3) Any contract entered into by a school board that relates to providing online courses is open to public inspection and copying.
120.21 History History: 1985 a. 29; 1995 a. 27 s. 9145 (1); 1997 a. 27; 2001 a. 103; 2007 a. 222.
120.25 120.25 School board cooperation in acquiring school facilities.
120.25(1)(1) Two or more school boards may by written contract executed by all participants to the contract, own, construct, lease or otherwise acquire school facilities including real estate located within or outside the boundaries of any participating school district.
120.25(2) (2) School boards entering into a contract under this section may, without limitation because of enumeration:
120.25(2)(a) (a) Provide for acquisition, construction, operation and administration of a facility, and establish the functions, projects and services to be provided in the facility, including, without limitation because of enumeration, proration of all expenses involved, operational and fiscal management including deposit and disbursement of funds appropriated, designation of the municipal employer for purposes of compliance with s. 111.70, teacher retirement, worker's compensation and unemployment insurance.
120.25(2)(b) (b) Purchase real estate and personal property, including a fractional or other interest in the real estate and personal property and enter into leases for sites, building and equipment for a term not exceeding 50 years.
120.25(2)(c) (c) Issue municipal obligations subject to the procedures and limitations of ch. 67.
120.25(2)(d) (d) Provide the terms and conditions for accepting additional school districts as participants in the plan and for withdrawal from or termination of the contract including apportionment of assets and liabilities.
120.25(3) (3) A contract entered into under this section shall at all times be limited to a period of 50 years but may, by mutual written consent of all participants, be modified or extended beyond the initial term.
120.25(4) (4) A contract or any extension of the contract of over 5 years duration which includes a common or union high school district participant shall be approved by the annual or special school district meeting.
120.25(5) (5) Each school board shall adopt and maintain a written policy on contracting under this section.
120.25(6) (6) School boards entering into a contract under this section shall designate for each employee providing services under the contract either a school district entering into the contract or a cooperative educational service agency as the employer for purposes of compliance with s. 111.70, teacher's retirement, worker's compensation and unemployment insurance.
120.25 History History: 1999 a. 150 ss. 357, 632; 2005 a. 220.
subch. II of ch. 120 SUBCHAPTER II
UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICTS
120.40 120.40 Applicability. This subchapter applies to unified school districts.
120.40 History History: 1985 a. 225 s. 80; Stats. 1985 s. 120.40.
120.41 120.41 Composition of school board.
120.41(1)(1) A school board of a unified school district may have 5, 7 or 9 members.
120.41(2) (2) The number of school board members may be changed in accordance with s. 120.02 (1). A plan of apportionment of school board members may be adopted in accordance with s. 120.02 (2).
120.41 History History: 1981 c. 20; 1985 a. 225 s. 84; Stats. 1985 s. 120.41.
120.42 120.42 Election of school board members.
120.42(1)(a) (a) Except as provided in pars. (b), (c), and (d), school board members in a unified school district shall be electors of the school district and shall be elected at large, at large to numbered seats or at large to an apportioned election district area by a plurality vote of the electors of the school district. School board members in a unified school district shall be elected under s. 120.06 at the spring election. All candidates for school board seats shall file a declaration of candidacy as provided in s. 120.06 (6) (b).
120.42(1)(b) (b) School board members in a unified school district that encompasses a city with a population greater than 150,000 but less than 500,000 shall be elected at large to numbered seats.
120.42(1)(c) (c) School board members elected to a school board in an election under s. 117.22 (2) (bm) shall reside in the territory of the school district created by the reorganization.
120.42(1)(d) (d)
120.42(1)(d)1.1. School board members in a unified school district that encompasses a city with a population greater than 75,000 but less than 100,000 and that encompasses at least 2 villages may by resolution provide for the election of members from election districts established pursuant to a representation plan under sub. (1m) by a plurality of the electors of each election district within the school district.
120.42(1)(d)2. 2. Notwithstanding subd. 1., school board members in a unified school district that, on July 14, 2015, encompasses a city with a population greater than 75,000 but less than 100,000 and that encompasses at least 2 villages shall be elected from election districts established pursuant to a representation plan under sub. (1m) by a plurality of the electors of each election district within the school district.
120.42(1m) (1m)
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The Zygon Inversion
Posted in Episode by Kyle - March 07, 2016
Aired 7 November 2015
Writer Peter Harness certainly set himself up a difficult task with all of the differing plot points he set up that needing resolving at the end of ‘The Zygon Invasion,’ but he masterfully proves to be up to the task and offers one of the strongest instalments of Doctor Who in recent memory. That’s saying a lot considering how strong the entire Capaldi era has been so far. Gone is any lingering stereotype of what a family programme should and should not do, for on full display is a lesson on politics, war, and tolerance. Undoubtedly many viewers will disagree with this approach, but it’s a bold path for the programme to take, and one that it can’t shy away from forever considering how often the Doctor comes up against evil in some form. Following a clever resolution to a rather tight cliffhanger, the episode quickly picks up momentum never looks back.
Last episode, for the first time this series, Capaldi’s Doctor was not front and centre, but that is certainly not the cases this time. In fact, Capaldi unequivocally gives his best performance in the role yet, highlighted by one enrapturing monologue that grows more and more mesmerising at it continues. Kate and Bonnie both hold an Osgood box, each believing herself capable of causing mass destruction, and the Doctor simply has his words and intelligence to try to avert the end of the world. Capaldi throws his total weight into this impassioned plea, amazingly switching tone and intensity in an instant on several occasions, and after nearly ten minutes the Doctor has won with only reason in his corner. After that performance, it hardly matters that the boxes are ultimately empty.
This setup is perhaps the biggest gamble and achievement of ‘The Zygon Inversion.’ Whereas second halves- almost by rule- tend to amplify the action and culminate in a battle of epic proportions, this episode instead continues to narrow the focus and action down, culminating with conversation. The cast, scale, and locations are all dramatically reduced compared to the first part, yet the tension and stakes are clearly higher than ever. Underlining these stakes, of course, is a storyline that is incredibly relevant to the state of affairs in the modern world. Again, any programme that is willing to tackle these issues so directly, even under the guise of science fiction, must be commended, and it’s clear that nothing is being toned down for its family demographic. Perhaps most unsettling, though, is the fact that the Doctor has gone through this sequence of events fifteen times so far, all in the hopes of maintaining the Zygon treaty.
Just as Capaldi gives his best performance yet, Coleman also does her best work of this series as well. Clara’s been a bit of a lost enigma through these first few episodes, but the interrogation scene featuring Clara and Bonnie is absolutely spectacular. Coleman believably plays off of herself and continually keeps the balance of power shifting and the intense dynamic between the two shifting. Especially in the last series, and to an extent through these episodes, there has been an underlying thread of Clara becoming more like the Doctor, and the manner in which she uses her intelligence as her primary weapon in this situation is certainly in keeping with that progression.
‘The Zygon Inversion,’ then is a superb piece of television, more than equalling its opening act and speaking to the masses about very serious issues plaguing the world today. While ultimately nothing is resolved and the chess pieces are simply reset, quite possibly with a sixteenth confrontation possible, that’s almost the point in itself of the episode and shows just how much determination and hope the Doctor actually holds in his beliefs. There’s a lot more to explore in this uneasy treaty should anyone wish to do so. With strong lead performances and applications of the word ‘inversion’ in many senses right down to the format of this episode, this is certainly an episode that will be remembered as a bold and resounding success.
Tags: Clara Oswald, Ingrid Oliver, Jemma Redgrave, Jenna Coleman, Kate Stewart, Osgood, Peter Capaldi, Twelfth Doctor, UNIT, Zygons
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Events, Partners, Heritage
Delta Center welcomes new director
During the celebration of the Mississippi Delta National Heritage Area designation, Dr. Rolando Herts (far right), director of the Delta Center for Culture and Learning, is welcomed by (l to r) Dr. Luther Brown, former director; Lee Aylward, DCCL program associate for education and community outreach; and Heather Miller, DCCL program associate for projects. Photo by Roy Meeks.
The Delta Center for Culture and Learning at Delta State University is pleased to announce the arrival of its new director, Dr. Rolando Herts. Herts officially began serving in his new role Aug. 18 after the retirement of Dr. Luther Brown, who established the Delta Center in the year 2000.
“I am excited about working with colleagues at Delta State and partners throughout the Mississippi Delta region,” said Herts. “The Delta Center will be managing the implementation of the Mississippi Delta National Heritage Area, as well as overseeing the International Delta Blues Project. These and other exciting initiatives and programs will utilize the region’s rich cultural heritage as a tool for promoting education, tourism, community engagement and economic development.”
Brown said he looks forward to seeing Herts take on the leading role.
“The Mississippi Delta National Heritage Area is benefiting the entire Mississippi Delta. It has a strong management plan, and Rolando Herts will lead the effort to turn the plan into reality,” said Brown.
Herts has years of experience working in and conducting research on the Delta region. After completing undergraduate and graduate programs at Morehouse College in Atlanta and the University of Chicago, he returned to the Delta to teach second grade in Indianola with Teach For America. He also directed TRIO Student Support Services at the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff.
While at Pine Bluff, he exposed students to educational cultural heritage and civil rights attractions in Memphis, Atlanta, Birmingham and in Arkansas communities. He earned a doctorate in planning and public policy from Rutgers University, where he examined the MDNHA as a case study of university-community tourism engagement.
“I spent formative years in Eudora, Arkansas, and graduated from Little Rock Central High School, a National Historic Site of the National Park Service — where nine black students led school integration efforts in 1957,” said Herts. “Growing up, all around me were reminders of the importance of cultural heritage, education and community.
“Attending Morehouse reinforced this with educational, social justice and heritage leaders like Dr. Martin Luther King, Dr. Benjamin Elijah Mays and Dr. Wendell Whalum as exemplars. While working on my doctorate at Rutgers, I met Dr. Luther Brown through Ron Nurnberg, executive director of Teach For America Mississippi Delta. Dr. Brown has been an excellent mentor who has worked tirelessly to preserve and promote cultural heritage in and for the Delta region. I am humbled by this opportunity to help carry on this important legacy.”
Given its management role with the MDNHA and the International Delta Blues Project, the Delta Center will be expanding its capacity to serve as a regional connector and resource for understanding and celebrating the Mississippi Delta’s cultural heritage. Through funding from the Hearin Foundation, the center will soon be hiring a director of blues studies. Undergraduate internship and graduate assistantship positions also will be created, providing Delta State students with experience that will prepare them to engage with the Delta’s emerging cultural economy.
“The Delta region was fortunate to have a visionary like Dr. Luther Brown come into the Delta and open all our eyes to our rich heritage,” said Lee Aylward, DCCl program associate for education and community outreach. “With the arrival of Dr. Herts, the Delta Center will be spreading its wings, not only building on this legacy, but also expanding programming and engagement throughout the Delta.
“As a native of the Delta, Dr. Herts brings to the table an understanding and desire to help promote the region and its importance to the world. With the new program in blues studies coming to the Delta Center, and the approval of the Mississippi Delta National Heritage Area’s management plan, these are exciting times at the Delta Center. Dr. Herts’ education, background and energy make him the ideal person to lead us to the next level.”
To learn more about the The Delta Center for Culture and Learning, visithttp://deltacenterforcultureandlearning.com/. More information on the International Delta Blues Project is available at http://www.deltastate.edu/president/international-blues-conference/.
Tagged: director, new, delta, Delta State University, Delta Center, heritage
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Search ORC:
Ohio Administrative Code Home Help
» Title [51] LI PUBLIC WELFARE
Chapter 5165: MEDICAID COVERAGE OF NURSING FACILITY SERVICES
5165.01 Definitions.
As used in this chapter:
(A) "Affiliated operator" means an operator affiliated with either of the following:
(1) The exiting operator for whom the affiliated operator is to assume liability for the entire amount of the exiting operator's debt under the medicaid program or the portion of the debt that represents the franchise permit fee the exiting operator owes;
(2) The entering operator involved in the change of operator with the exiting operator specified in division (A)(1) of this section.
(B) "Allowable costs" are a nursing facility's costs that the department of medicaid determines are reasonable. Fines paid under sections 5165.60 to 5165.89 and section 5165.99 of the Revised Code are not allowable costs.
(C) "Ancillary and support costs" means all reasonable costs incurred by a nursing facility other than direct care costs, tax costs, or capital costs. "Ancillary and support costs" includes, but is not limited to, costs of activities, social services, pharmacy consultants, habilitation supervisors, qualified intellectual disability professionals, program directors, medical and habilitation records, program supplies, incontinence supplies, food, enterals, dietary supplies and personnel, laundry, housekeeping, security, administration, medical equipment, utilities, liability insurance, bookkeeping, purchasing department, human resources, communications, travel, dues, license fees, subscriptions, home office costs not otherwise allocated, legal services, accounting services, minor equipment, maintenance and repairs, help-wanted advertising, informational advertising, start-up costs, organizational expenses, other interest, property insurance, employee training and staff development, employee benefits, payroll taxes, and workers' compensation premiums or costs for self-insurance claims and related costs as specified in rules adopted under section 5165.02 of the Revised Code, for personnel listed in this division. "Ancillary and support costs" also means the cost of equipment, including vehicles, acquired by operating lease executed before December 1, 1992, if the costs are reported as administrative and general costs on the nursing facility's cost report for the cost reporting period ending December 31, 1992.
(D) "Applicable calendar year" means the calendar year immediately preceding the calendar year that precedes the first of the state fiscal years for which a rebasing is conducted.
(E) "Budget reduction adjustment factor" means the factor specified pursuant to or in section 5165.361 of the Revised Code for a state fiscal year.
(1) "Capital costs" means the actual expense incurred by a nursing facility for all of the following:
(a) Depreciation and interest on any capital assets that cost five hundred dollars or more per item, including the following:
(i) Buildings;
(ii) Building improvements;
(iii) Except as provided in division (C) of this section, equipment;
(iv) Transportation equipment.
(b) Amortization and interest on land improvements and leasehold improvements;
(c) Amortization of financing costs;
(d) Lease and rent of land, buildings, and equipment.
(2) The costs of capital assets of less than five hundred dollars per item may be considered capital costs in accordance with a provider's practice.
(G) "Capital lease" and "operating lease" shall be construed in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles.
(H) "Case-mix score" means a measure determined under section 5165.192 of the Revised Code of the relative direct-care resources needed to provide care and habilitation to a nursing facility resident.
(I) "Change of operator" means an entering operator becoming the operator of a nursing facility in the place of the exiting operator.
(1) Actions that constitute a change of operator include the following:
(a) A change in an exiting operator's form of legal organization, including the formation of a partnership or corporation from a sole proprietorship;
(b) A transfer of all the exiting operator's ownership interest in the operation of the nursing facility to the entering operator, regardless of whether ownership of any or all of the real property or personal property associated with the nursing facility is also transferred;
(c) A lease of the nursing facility to the entering operator or the exiting operator's termination of the exiting operator's lease;
(d) If the exiting operator is a partnership, dissolution of the partnership;
(e) If the exiting operator is a partnership, a change in composition of the partnership unless both of the following apply:
(i) The change in composition does not cause the partnership's dissolution under state law.
(ii) The partners agree that the change in composition does not constitute a change in operator.
(f) If the operator is a corporation, dissolution of the corporation, a merger of the corporation into another corporation that is the survivor of the merger, or a consolidation of one or more other corporations to form a new corporation.
(2) The following, alone, do not constitute a change of operator:
(a) A contract for an entity to manage a nursing facility as the operator's agent, subject to the operator's approval of daily operating and management decisions;
(b) A change of ownership, lease, or termination of a lease of real property or personal property associated with a nursing facility if an entering operator does not become the operator in place of an exiting operator;
(c) If the operator is a corporation, a change of one or more members of the corporation's governing body or transfer of ownership of one or more shares of the corporation's stock, if the same corporation continues to be the operator.
(J) "Cost center" means the following:
(1) Ancillary and support costs;
(2) Capital costs;
(3) Direct care costs;
(4) Tax costs.
(K) "Custom wheelchair" means a wheelchair to which both of the following apply:
(1) It has been measured, fitted, or adapted in consideration of either of the following:
(a) The body size or disability of the individual who is to use the wheelchair;
(b) The individual's period of need for, or intended use of, the wheelchair.
(2) It has customized features, modifications, or components, such as adaptive seating and positioning systems, that the supplier who assembled the wheelchair, or the manufacturer from which the wheelchair was ordered, added or made in accordance with the instructions of the physician of the individual who is to use the wheelchair.
(1) "Date of licensure" means the following:
(a) In the case of a nursing facility that was required by law to be licensed as a nursing home under Chapter 3721. of the Revised Code when it originally began to be operated as a nursing home, the date the nursing facility was originally so licensed;
(b) In the case of a nursing facility that was not required by law to be licensed as a nursing home when it originally began to be operated as a nursing home, the date it first began to be operated as a nursing home, regardless of the date the nursing facility was first licensed as a nursing home.
(2) If, after a nursing facility's original date of licensure, more nursing home beds are added to the nursing facility, the nursing facility has a different date of licensure for the additional beds. This does not apply, however, to additional beds when both of the following apply:
(a) The additional beds are located in a part of the nursing facility that was constructed at the same time as the continuing beds already located in that part of the nursing facility;
(b) The part of the nursing facility in which the additional beds are located was constructed as part of the nursing facility at a time when the nursing facility was not required by law to be licensed as a nursing home.
(3) The definition of "date of licensure" in this section applies in determinations of nursing facilities' medicaid payment rates but does not apply in determinations of nursing facilities' franchise permit fees.
(M) "Desk-reviewed" means that a nursing facility's costs as reported on a cost report submitted under section 5165.10 of the Revised Code have been subjected to a desk review under section 5165.108 of the Revised Code and preliminarily determined to be allowable costs.
(N) "Direct care costs" means all of the following costs incurred by a nursing facility:
(1) Costs for registered nurses, licensed practical nurses, and nurse aides employed by the nursing facility;
(2) Costs for direct care staff, administrative nursing staff, medical directors, respiratory therapists, and except as provided in division (N)(8) of this section, other persons holding degrees qualifying them to provide therapy;
(3) Costs of purchased nursing services;
(4) Costs of quality assurance;
(5) Costs of training and staff development, employee benefits, payroll taxes, and workers' compensation premiums or costs for self-insurance claims and related costs as specified in rules adopted under section 5165.02 of the Revised Code, for personnel listed in divisions (N)(1), (2), (4), and (8) of this section;
(6) Costs of consulting and management fees related to direct care;
(7) Allocated direct care home office costs;
(8) Costs of habilitation staff (other than habilitation supervisors), medical supplies, emergency oxygen, over-the-counter pharmacy products, physical therapists, physical therapy assistants, occupational therapists, occupational therapy assistants, speech therapists, audiologists, habilitation supplies, and universal precautions supplies;
Costs of wheelchairs other than the following:
(a) Custom wheelchairs;
(b) Repairs to and replacements of custom wheelchairs and parts that are made in accordance with the instructions of the physician of the individual who uses the custom wheelchair.
(10) Costs of other direct-care resources that are specified as direct care costs in rules adopted under section 5165.02 of the Revised Code.
(O) "Dual eligible individual" has the same meaning as in section 5160.01 of the Revised Code.
(P) "Effective date of a change of operator" means the day the entering operator becomes the operator of the nursing facility.
(Q) "Effective date of a facility closure" means the last day that the last of the residents of the nursing facility resides in the nursing facility.
(R) "Effective date of an involuntary termination" means the date the department of medicaid terminates the operator's provider agreement for the nursing facility.
(S) "Effective date of a voluntary withdrawal of participation" means the day the nursing facility ceases to accept new medicaid residents other than the individuals who reside in the nursing facility on the day before the effective date of the voluntary withdrawal of participation.
(T) "Entering operator" means the person or government entity that will become the operator of a nursing facility when a change of operator occurs or following an involuntary termination.
(U) "Exiting operator" means any of the following:
(1) An operator that will cease to be the operator of a nursing facility on the effective date of a change of operator;
(2) An operator that will cease to be the operator of a nursing facility on the effective date of a facility closure;
(3) An operator of a nursing facility that is undergoing or has undergone a voluntary withdrawal of participation;
(4) An operator of a nursing facility that is undergoing or has undergone an involuntary termination.
(1) Subject to divisions (V)(2) and (3) of this section, "facility closure" means either of the following:
(a) Discontinuance of the use of the building, or part of the building, that houses the facility as a nursing facility that results in the relocation of all of the nursing facility's residents;
(b) Conversion of the building, or part of the building, that houses a nursing facility to a different use with any necessary license or other approval needed for that use being obtained and one or more of the nursing facility's residents remaining in the building, or part of the building, to receive services under the new use.
(2) A facility closure occurs regardless of any of the following:
(a) The operator completely or partially replacing the nursing facility by constructing a new nursing facility or transferring the nursing facility's license to another nursing facility;
(b) The nursing facility's residents relocating to another of the operator's nursing facilities;
(c) Any action the department of health takes regarding the nursing facility's medicaid certification that may result in the transfer of part of the nursing facility's survey findings to another of the operator's nursing facilities;
(d) Any action the department of health takes regarding the nursing facility's license under Chapter 3721. of the Revised Code.
(3) A facility closure does not occur if all of the nursing facility's residents are relocated due to an emergency evacuation and one or more of the residents return to a medicaid-certified bed in the nursing facility not later than thirty days after the evacuation occurs.
(W) "Franchise permit fee" means the fee imposed by sections 5168.40 to 5168.56 of the Revised Code.
(X) "Inpatient days" means both of the following:
(1) All days during which a resident, regardless of payment source, occupies a bed in a nursing facility that is included in the nursing facility's medicaid-certified capacity;
(2) Fifty per cent of the days for which payment is made under section 5165.34 of the Revised Code.
(Y) "Involuntary termination" means the department of medicaid's termination of the operator's provider agreement for the nursing facility when the termination is not taken at the operator's request.
(Z) "Low resource utilization resident" means a medicaid recipient residing in a nursing facility who, for purposes of calculating the nursing facility's medicaid payment rate for direct care costs, is placed in either of the two lowest resource utilization groups, excluding any resource utilization group that is a default group used for residents with incomplete assessment data.
(AA) "Maintenance and repair expenses" means a nursing facility's expenditures that are necessary and proper to maintain an asset in a normally efficient working condition and that do not extend the useful life of the asset two years or more. "Maintenance and repair expenses" includes but is not limited to the costs of ordinary repairs such as painting and wallpapering.
(BB) "Medicaid-certified capacity" means the number of a nursing facility's beds that are certified for participation in medicaid as nursing facility beds.
(CC) "Medicaid days" means both of the following:
(1) All days during which a resident who is a medicaid recipient eligible for nursing facility services occupies a bed in a nursing facility that is included in the nursing facility's medicaid-certified capacity;
(DD) "Medicare skilled nursing facility market basket index" means the index established by the United States secretary of health and human services under section 1888(e)(5) of the "Social Security Act," 42 U.S.C. 1395yy(e)(5).
(EE)
(1) "New nursing facility" means a nursing facility for which the provider obtains an initial provider agreement following medicaid certification of the nursing facility by the director of health, including such a nursing facility that replaces one or more nursing facilities for which a provider previously held a provider agreement.
(2) "New nursing facility" does not mean a nursing facility for which the entering operator seeks a provider agreement pursuant to section 5165.511 or 5165.512 or (pursuant to section 5165.515 ) section 5165.07 of the Revised Code.
(FF) "Nursing facility" has the same meaning as in the "Social Security Act," section 1919(a), 42 U.S.C. 1396r(a).
(GG) "Nursing facility services" has the same meaning as in the "Social Security Act," section 1905(f), 42 U.S.C. 1396d(f).
(HH) "Nursing home" has the same meaning as in section 3721.01 of the Revised Code.
(II) "Operator" means the person or government entity responsible for the daily operating and management decisions for a nursing facility.
(JJ)
(1) "Owner" means any person or government entity that has at least five per cent ownership or interest, either directly, indirectly, or in any combination, in any of the following regarding a nursing facility:
(a) The land on which the nursing facility is located;
(b) The structure in which the nursing facility is located;
(c) Any mortgage, contract for deed, or other obligation secured in whole or in part by the land or structure on or in which the nursing facility is located;
(d) Any lease or sublease of the land or structure on or in which the nursing facility is located.
(2) "Owner" does not mean a holder of a debenture or bond related to the nursing facility and purchased at public issue or a regulated lender that has made a loan related to the nursing facility unless the holder or lender operates the nursing facility directly or through a subsidiary.
(KK) "Per diem" means a nursing facility's actual, allowable costs in a given cost center in a cost reporting period, divided by the nursing facility's inpatient days for that cost reporting period.
(LL) "Provider" means an operator with a provider agreement.
(MM) "Provider agreement" means a provider agreement, as defined in section 5164.01 of the Revised Code, that is between the department of medicaid and the operator of a nursing facility for the provision of nursing facility services under the medicaid program.
(NN) "Purchased nursing services" means services that are provided in a nursing facility by registered nurses, licensed practical nurses, or nurse aides who are not employees of the nursing facility.
(OO) "Reasonable" means that a cost is an actual cost that is appropriate and helpful to develop and maintain the operation of patient care facilities and activities, including normal standby costs, and that does not exceed what a prudent buyer pays for a given item or services. Reasonable costs may vary from provider to provider and from time to time for the same provider.
(PP) "Rebasing" means a redetermination of each of the following using information from cost reports for an applicable calendar year that is later than the applicable calendar year used for the previous rebasing:
(1) Each peer group's rate for ancillary and support costs as determined pursuant to division (C) of section 5165.16 of the Revised Code;
(2) Each peer group's rate for capital costs as determined pursuant to division (C) of section 5165.17 of the Revised Code;
(3) Each peer group's cost per case-mix unit as determined pursuant to division (C) of section 5165.19 of the Revised Code;
(4) Each nursing facility's rate for tax costs as determined pursuant to section 5165.21 of the Revised Code.
(QQ) "Related party" means an individual or organization that, to a significant extent, has common ownership with, is associated or affiliated with, has control of, or is controlled by, the provider.
(1) An individual who is a relative of an owner is a related party.
(2) Common ownership exists when an individual or individuals possess significant ownership or equity in both the provider and the other organization. Significant ownership or equity exists when an individual or individuals possess five per cent ownership or equity in both the provider and a supplier. Significant ownership or equity is presumed to exist when an individual or individuals possess ten per cent ownership or equity in both the provider and another organization from which the provider purchases or leases real property.
(3) Control exists when an individual or organization has the power, directly or indirectly, to significantly influence or direct the actions or policies of an organization.
(4) An individual or organization that supplies goods or services to a provider shall not be considered a related party if all of the following conditions are met:
(a) The supplier is a separate bona fide organization.
(b) A substantial part of the supplier's business activity of the type carried on with the provider is transacted with others than the provider and there is an open, competitive market for the types of goods or services the supplier furnishes.
(c) The types of goods or services are commonly obtained by other nursing facilities from outside organizations and are not a basic element of patient care ordinarily furnished directly to patients by nursing facilities.
(d) The charge to the provider is in line with the charge for the goods or services in the open market and no more than the charge made under comparable circumstances to others by the supplier.
(RR) "Relative of owner" means an individual who is related to an owner of a nursing facility by one of the following relationships:
(1) Spouse;
(2) Natural parent, child, or sibling;
(3) Adopted parent, child, or sibling;
(4) Stepparent, stepchild, stepbrother, or stepsister;
(5) Father-in-law, mother-in-law, son-in-law, daughter-in-law, brother-in-law, or sister-in-law;
(6) Grandparent or grandchild;
(7) Foster caregiver, foster child, foster brother, or foster sister.
(SS) "Residents' rights advocate" has the same meaning as in section 3721.10 of the Revised Code.
(TT) "Skilled nursing facility" has the same meaning as in the "Social Security Act," section 1819(a), 42 U.S.C. 1395i-3(a).
(UU) "State fiscal year" means the fiscal year of this state, as specified in section 9.34 of the Revised Code.
(VV) "Sponsor" has the same meaning as in section 3721.10 of the Revised Code.
(WW) "Tax costs" means the costs of taxes imposed under Chapter 5751. of the Revised Code, real estate taxes, personal property taxes, and corporate franchise taxes.
(XX) "Title XIX" means Title XIX of the "Social Security Act," 42 U.S.C. 1396 et seq.
(YY) "Title XVIII" means Title XVIII of the "Social Security Act," 42 U.S.C. 1395 et seq.
(ZZ) "Voluntary withdrawal of participation" means an operator's voluntary election to terminate the participation of a nursing facility in the medicaid program but to continue to provide service of the type provided by a nursing facility.
Amended by 132nd General Assembly File No. TBD, HB 49, §101.01, eff. 9/29/2017.
Amended by 131st General Assembly File No. TBD, HB 483, §101.01, eff. 10/12/2016.
Amended by 131st General Assembly File No. TBD, HB 158, §1, eff. 10/12/2016.
Renumbered from § 5111.20 by 130th General Assembly File No. 25, HB 59, §101.01, eff. 9/29/2013.
Amended by 129th General AssemblyFile No.127, HB 487, §101.01, eff. 9/10/2012.
Amended by 129th General AssemblyFile No.28, HB 153, §101.01, eff. 9/29/2011.
Amended by 128th General AssemblyFile No.9, HB 1, §101.01, eff. 7/1/2009, op. 7/17/2009.
Effective Date: 06-26-2003; 07-01-2005; 03-30-2006; 2007 HB119 09-29-2007.
5165.011 Nursing facility references.
(A) Except as provided in division (B) of this section, whenever "skilled nursing facility," "intermediate care facility," or "dual skilled nursing and intermediate care facility" is referred to or designated in any statute, rule, contract, provider agreement, or other document pertaining to the medicaid program, the reference or designation is deemed to refer to a nursing facility.
(B) A reference to or designation of an "intermediate care facility for individuals with intellectual disabilities" or "ICF/IID" is not deemed to refer to a nursing facility.
Renumbered from § 5111.201 by 130th General Assembly File No. 25, HB 59, §101.01, eff. 9/29/2013.
Effective Date: 12-13-1990 .
5165.02 Rules.
The medicaid director shall adopt rules as necessary to implement this chapter. The rules shall be adopted in accordance with Chapter 119. of the Revised Code.
Added by 130th General Assembly File No. 25, HB 59, §101.01, eff. 9/29/2013.
5165.03 Admission of mentally ill person to nursing facility.
(1) "Dementia" includes Alzheimer's disease or a related disorder.
(2) "Serious mental illness" means "serious mental illness," as defined by the United States department of health and human services in regulations adopted under the "Social Security Act," section 1919(e)(7)(G)(i), 42 U.S.C. 1396r(e)(7)(G)(i).
(3) "Mentally ill individual" means an individual who has a serious mental illness other than either of the following:
(a) A primary diagnosis of dementia;
(b) A primary diagnosis that is not a primary diagnosis of dementia and a primary diagnosis of something other than a serious mental illness.
(4) "Mentally retarded individual" means an individual who is mentally retarded or has a related condition, as described in the "Social Security Act," section 1905(d), 42 U.S.C. 1396d(d).
(5) "Specialized services" means the services specified by the United States department of health and human services in regulations adopted under the "Social Security Act," section 1919(e)(7)(G)(iii), 42 U.S.C. 1396r(e)(7)(G)(iii).
(1) Except as provided in division (D) of this section, no nursing facility shall admit as a resident any mentally ill individual unless the facility has received evidence that the department of mental health and addiction services has determined both of the following under section 5119.40 of the Revised Code:
(a) That the individual requires the level of services provided by a nursing facility because of the individual's physical and mental condition;
(b) Whether the individual requires specialized services for mental illness.
(2) Except as provided in division (D) of this section, no nursing facility shall admit as a resident any mentally retarded individual unless the facility has received evidence that the department of developmental disabilities has determined both of the following under section 5123.021 of the Revised Code:
(b) Whether the individual requires specialized services for mental retardation.
(C) The department of medicaid shall not make medicaid payments to a nursing facility on behalf of any individual who is admitted to the facility in violation of division (B) of this section for the period beginning on the date of admission and ending on the date the requirements of division (B) of this section are met.
(D) A determination under division (B) of this section is not required for any individual who is exempted from the requirement that a determination be made by division (B)(2) of section 5119.40 of the Revised Code or rules adopted by the department of mental health and addiction services under division (E)(3) of that section, or by division (B)(2) of section 5123.021 of the Revised Code or rules adopted by the department of developmental disabilities under division (E)(3) of that section.
Amended by 128th General Assemblych.9, SB 79, §1, eff. 10/6/2009.
5165.031 Hearing.
An individual who applies for admission to or resides in a nursing facility job and family services shall provide notice and an opportunity for a hearing to any applicant for admission to a nursing facility or resident of a nursing facility who is may appeal if adversely affected by a determination made by the department of mental health and addiction services under section 5119.40 of the Revised Code or by the department of developmental disabilities under section 5123.021 of the Revised Code. If the individual is an applicant for or recipient of medicaid, the individual may appeal pursuant to section 5160.31 of the Revised Code. If the individual is not an applicant for or recipient of medicaid, the individual may appeal pursuant to a process the department of medicaid shall establish, which shall be similar to the appeals process established by section 5101.35 of the Revised Code. The department of medicaid shall provide notice of the right to appeal to individuals adversely affected by determinations made under sections 5119.40 and 5123.021 of the Revised Code. Any decision made on the basis of such an appeal is binding on the department of mental health and addiction services and the department of developmental disabilities.
5165.04 Assessment to determine level of care.
(A) As used in this section, "representative" means a person acting on behalf of an applicant for or recipient of medicaid. A representative may be a family member, attorney, hospital social worker, or any other person chosen to act on behalf of an applicant or recipient.
(B) The department of medicaid may require each applicant for or recipient of medicaid who applies or intends to apply for admission to a nursing facility or resides in a nursing facility to undergo an assessment to determine whether the applicant or recipient needs the level of care provided by a nursing facility. The assessment may be performed concurrently with a long-term care consultation provided under section 173.42 of the Revised Code.
To the maximum extent possible, the assessment shall be based on information from the resident assessment instrument specified in rules authorized by section 5165.191 of the Revised Code. The assessment shall also be based on criteria and procedures established in rules authorized by division (F) of this section and information provided by the person being assessed or the person's representative.
The department of medicaid, or if the assessment is performed by an agency under contract with the department pursuant to division (G) of this section, the agency, shall, not later than the time the level of care determination based on the assessment is required to be provided under division (C) of this section, give written notice of its conclusions and the basis for them to the person assessed and, if the department or agency under contract with the department has been informed that the person has a representative, to the representative.
(C) The department or agency under contract with the department, whichever performs the assessment, shall provide a level of care determination based on the assessment as follows:
(1) In the case of a person applying or intending to apply for admission to a nursing facility while hospitalized, not later than one of the following:
(a) One working day after the person or the person's representative submits the application or notifies the department of the person's intention to apply and submits all information required for providing the level of care determination, as specified in rules authorized by division (F)(2) of this section;
(b) A later date requested by the person or the person's representative.
(2) In the case of a person applying or intending to apply for admission to a nursing facility who is not hospitalized, not later than one of the following:
(a) Five calendar days after the person or the person's representative submits the application or notifies the department of the person's intention to apply and submits all information required for providing the level of care determination, as specified in rules authorized by division (F)(2) of this section;
(3) In the case of a person who resides in a nursing facility, not later than one of the following:
(a) Five calendar days after the person or the person's representative submits an application for medicaid and submits all information required for providing the level of care determination, as specified in rules authorized by division (F)(2) of this section;
(4) In the case of an emergency, as specified in rules authorized by division (F)(4) of this section, within the number of days specified in the rules.
(D) A person assessed under this section or the person's representative may appeal the conclusions reached by the department or agency under contract with the department on the basis of the assessment. The appeal shall be made pursuant to section 5160.31 of the Revised Code. The department or agency under contract with the department shall provide to the person or the person's representative and the nursing facility written notice of the person's right to request a state hearing. The notice shall include an explanation of the procedure for requesting a state hearing. If a state hearing is requested, the state shall be represented in the hearing by the department or the agency under contract with the department, whichever performed the assessment.
(E) A nursing facility that admits or retains a person determined pursuant to an assessment required under this section not to need the level of care provided by the nursing facility shall not be paid under the medicaid program for the person's care.
(F) The medicaid director shall adopt rules under section 5165.02 of the Revised Code to implement and administer this section. The rules shall include all of the following:
(1) Criteria and procedures to be used in determining whether admission to a nursing facility or continued stay in a nursing facility is appropriate for the person being assessed;
(2) Information the person being assessed or the person's representative must provide to the department or agency under contract with the department for purposes of the assessment and providing a level of care determination based on the assessment;
(3) Circumstances under which a person is not required to be assessed;
(4) Circumstances that constitute an emergency for purposes of division (C)(4) of this section and the number of days within which a level of care determination must be provided in the case of an emergency.
(G) Pursuant to section 5162.35 of the Revised Code, the department of medicaid may enter into contracts in the form of interagency agreements with one or more other state agencies to perform the assessments required under this section. The interagency agreements shall specify the responsibilities of each agency in the performance of the assessments.
Effective Date: 07-01-2000; 09-29-2005
5165.06 Nursing facility eligibility.
Subject to section 5165.072 of the Revised Code, an operator is eligible to enter into a provider agreement for a nursing facility if all of the following apply:
(A) The nursing facility is certified by the director of health for participation in medicaid;
(B) The nursing facility is licensed by the director of health as a nursing home if so required by law;
(C) The operator and nursing facility comply with all applicable state and federal laws and rules.
Amended by 128th General AssemblyFile No.54, HB 449, §1, eff. 9/17/2010.
Amended by 128th General AssemblyFile No.9, HB 1, §101.01, eff. 7/17/2009.
5165.07 Provider agreement requirements.
(A) Except as provided in section 5165.072 of the Revised Code, the department of medicaid shall enter into a provider agreement with a nursing facility operator who applies, and is eligible, for the provider agreement.
(B) A provider agreement shall require the
department to make medicaid payments to the provider in accordance with this chapter for nursing facility services the nursing facility provides to its residents who are medicaid recipients eligible for nursing facility services.
(C) A provider agreement shall require the provider to do all of the following:
(1) Maintain eligibility for the provider agreement as provided in section 5165.06 of the Revised Code;
(2) Keep records relating to a cost reporting period for the greater of seven years after the cost report is filed or, if the department issues an audit report in accordance with section 5165.109 of the Revised Code, six years after all appeal rights relating to the audit report are exhausted;
(3) File reports as required by the department;
(4) Open all records relating to the costs of the nursing facility's services for inspection and audit by the department;
(5) Open its premises for inspection by the department, the department of health, and any other state or local authority having authority to inspect;
(6) Supply to the department such information as it requires concerning the nursing facility's services to residents who are, or are eligible to be, medicaid recipients;
(7) Comply with section 5165.08 of the Revised Code.
(D) A provider agreement may contain other provisions that are consistent with law and considered necessary by the department.
5165.071 Facility operator may contract with more than one provider.
A nursing facility operator may enter into provider agreements for more than one nursing facility .
5165.072 Revalidation.
The department of medicaid shall not revalidate a nursing facility provider agreement if the provider fails to maintain eligibility for the provider agreement as provided in section 5165.06 of the Revised Code.
5165.073 Termination for non-compliance with installation of fire extinguishing and fire alarm systems.
The department of medicaid shall terminate the provider agreement with a nursing facility provider that does not comply with the requirements of section 3721.071 of the Revised Code for the installation of fire extinguishing and fire alarm systems.
5165.08 Nursing facilities' provider agreement terms.
"Bed need" means the number of long-term care beds a county needs as determined by the director of health pursuant to division (B)(3) of section 3702.593 of the Revised Code.
"Bed need excess" means that a county's bed need is such that one or more long-term care beds may be relocated from the county according to the director's determination of the county's bed need.
(B) Every provider agreement with a nursing facility provider shall do both of the following:
(1) Permit the provider to exclude one or more parts of the nursing facility from the provider agreement, even though those parts meet federal and state standards for medicaid certification, if all of the following apply:
(a) The nursing facility initially obtained both its nursing home license under Chapter 3721. of the Revised Code and medicaid certification on or after January 1, 2008.
(b) The nursing facility is located in a county that has a bed need excess at the time the provider excludes the parts from the provider agreement.
(c) Federal law permits the provider to exclude the parts from the provider agreement.
(d) The provider gives the department of medicaid written notice of the exclusion not less than forty-five days before the first day of the calendar quarter in which the exclusion is to occur.
(2) Prohibit the provider from doing either of the following:
(a) Discriminating against a resident on the basis of race, color, sex, creed, or national origin;
(b) Subject to division (D) of this section, failing or refusing to do either of the following:
(i) Except as otherwise prohibited under section 5165.82 of the Revised Code, admit as a resident of the nursing facility an individual because the individual is, or may (as a resident of the nursing facility) become, a medicaid recipient unless at least twenty-five per cent of the nursing facility's medicaid-certified beds are occupied by medicaid recipients at the time the person would otherwise be admitted;
(ii) Retain as a resident of the nursing facility an individual because the individual is, or may (as a resident of the nursing facility) become, a medicaid recipient.
(C) For the purpose of division (B)(2)(b)(ii) of this section, a medicaid recipient who is a resident of a nursing facility shall be considered a resident of the nursing facility during any hospital stays totaling less than twenty-five days during any twelve-month period.
(D) Nothing in this section shall bar a provider from doing any of the following:
(1) If the provider is a religious organization operating a religious or denominational nursing facility from giving preference to persons of the same religion or denomination;
(2) Giving preference to persons with whom the provider has contracted to provide continuing care;
(3) If the nursing facility is a county home organized under Chapter 5155. of the Revised Code, admitting residents exclusively from the county in which the county home is located;
(4) Retaining residents who have resided in the provider's nursing facility for not less than one year as private pay patients and who subsequently become medicaid recipients, but refusing to accept as a resident any person who is, or may (as a resident of the nursing facility) become a medicaid recipient, if all of the following apply:
(a) The provider does not refuse to retain any resident who has resided in the provider's nursing facility for not less than one year as a private pay resident because the resident becomes a medicaid recipient, except as necessary to comply with division (D)(4)(b) of this section;
(b) The number of medicaid recipients retained under division (D)(4) of this section does not at any time exceed ten per cent of all the residents in the nursing facility;
(c) On July 1, 1980, all the residents in the nursing facility were private pay residents.
(E) No provider shall violate the provider agreement obligations imposed by this section.
(F) A nursing facility provider who excludes one or more parts of the nursing facility from a provider agreement pursuant to division (B)(1) of this section does not violate division (C) of section 3702.53 of the Revised Code.
Amended by 130th General Assembly File No. TBD, SB 276, §1, eff. 1/1/2015.
Amended by 130th General Assembly File No. TBD, HB 394, §1, eff. 1/1/2015.
Amended by 130th General Assembly File No. 25, HB 59, §110.25, eff. 1/1/2015.
5165.081 Action against facility for breach of provider agreement or other duties.
A nursing facility resident has a cause of action against a nursing facility provider for breach of the provider agreement obligations or other duties imposed by section 5165.08 of the Revised Code. The action may be commenced by the resident, or on the resident's behalf by the resident's sponsor or a residents' rights advocate, by the filing of a civil action in the court of common pleas of the county in which the nursing facility is located, or in the court of common pleas of Franklin county.
If a court of common pleas finds that a provider has breached a provider agreement obligation or other duty imposed by section 5165.08 of the Revised Code , the court may do one or more of the following:
(A) Enjoin the provider from engaging in the practice;
(B) Order such affirmative relief as may be necessary;
(C) Award to a resident and a sponsor or government entity that brings the action on behalf of a resident actual damages, costs, and reasonable attorney's fees.
5165.082 Qualification of beds.
(A) Except as provided in division (B) of this section, the operator of a nursing facility that elects to have the nursing facility participate in the medicaid program shall qualify all of the nursing facility's medicaid-certified beds in the medicare program. The medicaid director may adopt rules under section 5165.02 of the Revised Code to establish the time frame in which a nursing facility must comply with this requirement.
(B) The department of veterans services is not required to qualify all of the medicaid-certified beds in a nursing facility the department maintains and operates under section 5907.01 of the Revised Code in the medicare program.
5165.10 Annual cost report.
(A) Except as provided in division (C) of this section, each nursing facility provider shall file with the department of medicaid an annual cost report for each of the provider's nursing facilities that participate in the medicaid program. The cost report for a year shall cover the calendar year or the portion of the calendar year during which the nursing facility participated in the medicaid program. Except as provided in division (D) of this section, the cost report is due not later than ninety days after the end of the calendar year, or portion of the calendar year, that the cost report covers.
(B) If a nursing facility undergoes a change of provider that the department determines, in accordance with rules adopted under section 5165.02 of the Revised Code, is not an arm's length transaction, the new provider shall file the nursing facility's cost report in accordance with division (A) of this section and the cost report shall cover the portion of the calendar year during which the new provider operated the nursing facility and the portion of the calendar year during which the previous provider operated the nursing facility.
The provider of a new nursing facility is not required to file a cost report in accordance with division (A) of this section for the first calendar year that the provider has a provider agreement for the nursing facility if the initial provider agreement goes into effect after the first day of October of that calendar year. The provider shall file a cost report for the nursing facility in accordance with division (A) of this section for the immediately following calendar year.
(D) The department may grant to a provider a fourteen-day extension to file a cost report under this section if the provider provides the department a written request for the extension and the department determines that there is good cause for the extension.
Amended by 130th General Assembly File No. TBD, HB 483, §101.01, eff. 9/15/2014.
5165.101 Cost of franchise permit fee not reimbursable expense.
A nursing facility provider filing the nursing facility's cost report with the department of medicaid under section 5165.10 or 5165.522 of the Revised Code shall report as a nonreimbursable expense the cost of the nursing facility's franchise permit fee.
5165.1010 Nursing facility fines.
(A) Subject to division (D) of this section, the department of medicaid shall fine the provider of a nursing facility if the report of an audit conducted under section 5165.109 of the Revised Code regarding a cost report for the nursing facility includes either of the following:
(1) Adverse findings that exceed three per cent of the total amount of medicaid-allowable costs reported in the cost report;
(2) Adverse findings that exceed twenty per cent of medicaid-allowable costs for a particular cost center reported in the cost report.
(B) A fine issued under this section shall equal the greatest of the following:
(1) If the adverse findings exceed three per cent but do not exceed ten per cent of the total amount of medicaid-allowable costs reported in the cost report, the greater of three per cent of those reported costs or ten thousand dollars;
(2) If the adverse findings exceed ten per cent but do not exceed twenty per cent of the total amount of medicaid-allowable costs reported in the cost report, the greater of six per cent of those reported costs or twenty-five thousand dollars;
(3) If the adverse findings exceed twenty per cent of the total amount of medicaid-allowable costs reported in the cost report, the greater of ten per cent of those reported costs or fifty thousand dollars;
(4) If the adverse findings exceed twenty per cent but do not exceed twenty-five per cent of medicaid-allowable costs for a particular cost center reported in the cost report, the greater of three per cent of the total amount of medicaid-allowable costs reported in the cost report or ten thousand dollars;
(5) If the adverse findings exceed twenty-five per cent but do not exceed thirty per cent of medicaid-allowable costs for a particular cost center reported in the cost report, the greater of six per cent of the total amount of medicaid-allowable costs reported in the cost report or twenty-five thousand dollars;
(6) If the adverse findings exceed thirty per cent of medicaid-allowable costs for a particular cost center reported in the cost report, the greater of ten per cent of the total amount of medicaid-allowable costs reported in the cost report or fifty thousand dollars.
(C) Fines paid under this section shall be deposited into the health care/medicaid support and recoveries fund created under section 5162.52 of the Revised Code.
(D) The department may not collect a fine under this section until all appeal rights relating to the audit report that is the basis for the fine are exhausted.
Added by 129th General AssemblyFile No.28, HB 153, §101.01, eff. 9/29/2011.
5165.102 Fines excluded from cost report.
No nursing facility provider shall report fines paid under sections 5165.60 to 5165.89 or section 5165.99 of the Revised Code in a cost report filed under section 5165.10 or 5165.522 of the Revised Code.
5165.103 Completion of cost reports.
Cost reports shall be completed using the form prescribed under section 5165.104 of the Revised Code and in accordance with the guidelines established under that section.
5165.104 Form of cost reports; guidelines.
The department of medicaid shall do all of the following:
(A) Prescribe the form to be used for completing a cost report and a uniform chart of accounts for the purpose of reporting costs on the form;
(B) Distribute a paper copy of the form, or computer software for electronic submission of the form, to each provider at least sixty days before the date the cost report is due;
(C) Establish guidelines for completing the form.
5165.105 Addendum for disputed costs.
The department of medicaid shall develop an addendum to the cost report form that a nursing facility provider may use to set forth costs that the provider believes the department may dispute. The department may consider such costs in determining a nursing facility's medicaid payment rate. If the department does not consider such costs in determining a nursing facility's medicaid payment rate, the provider may seek reconsideration of the determination in accordance with section 5165.38 of the Revised Code. If the department subsequently includes such costs in a nursing facility's medicaid payment rate, the department shall pay the provider interest at a reasonable rate established in rules adopted under section 5165.02 of the Revised Code for the period that the rate excluded the costs.
5165.106 Termination for failure to file report.
If a nursing facility provider required by section 5165.10 of the Revised Code to file a cost report for the nursing facility fails to file the cost report by the date it is due or the date, if any, to which the due date is extended pursuant to division (D) of that section, or files an incomplete or inadequate report for the nursing facility under that section, the department of medicaid shall provide immediate written notice to the provider that the provider agreement for the nursing facility will be terminated in thirty days unless the provider submits a complete and adequate cost report for the nursing facility within thirty days. During the thirty-day termination period or any additional time allowed for an appeal of the proposed termination of a provider agreement, the provider shall be paid the nursing facility's then current per medicaid day payment rate, minus the dollar amount by which nursing facility's per medicaid day payment rates are reduced during state fiscal year 2013 in accordance with division (A)(2) of section 5111.26 of the Revised Code (renumbered as section 5165.10 of the Revised Code by H.B. 59 of the 130th general assembly) as that section existed on the day immediately preceding September 29, 2013. On the first day of each July, the department shall adjust the amount of the reduction in effect during the previous twelve months to reflect the rate of inflation during the preceding twelve months, as shown in the consumer price index for all items for all urban consumers for the north central region, published by the United States bureau of labor statistics.
5165.107 Amendments to cost reports.
(A) Except as provided in division (B) of this section and not later than three years after a nursing facility provider files a cost report with the department of medicaid under section 5165.10 of the Revised Code, the provider may amend the cost report if the provider discovers a material error in the cost report or additional information to be included in the cost report. The department shall review the amended cost report for accuracy and notify the provider of its determination.
(B) A provider may not amend a cost report if the department has notified the provider that an audit of the cost report or a cost report of the provider for a subsequent cost reporting period is to be conducted under section 5165.109 of the Revised Code. The provider may, however, provide the department information that affects the costs included in the cost report. Such information may not be provided after the adjudication of the final settlement of the cost report.
5165.108 Desk review of cost report.
(A) The department of medicaid shall conduct a desk review of each cost report it receives under section 5165.10 or 5165.522 of the Revised Code. Based on the desk review, the department shall make a preliminary determination of whether the reported costs are allowable costs. The department shall notify each nursing facility provider of whether any of the reported costs are preliminarily determined not to be allowable, the medicaid payment rate determined under this chapter that results from that determination, and the reasons for the determination and resulting rate. The department shall allow the provider to verify the calculation and submit additional information.
Effective Date: 07-01-2000; 07-01-2005; 03-30-2006
5165.109 Audit.
(A) The department of medicaid may conduct an audit, as defined in rules adopted under section 5165.02 of the Revised Code, of any cost report filed under section 5165.10 or 5165.522 of the Revised Code. The decision whether to conduct an audit and the scope of the audit, which may be a desk or field audit, may be determined based on prior performance of the provider, a risk analysis, or other evidence that gives the department reason to believe that the provider has reported costs improperly. A desk or field audit may be performed annually, but is required whenever a provider does not pass the risk analysis tolerance factors.
(B) Audits shall be conducted by auditors under contract with the department, auditors working for firms under contract with the department, or auditors employed by the department.
The department may establish a contract for the auditing of nursing facilities by outside firms. Each contract entered into by bidding shall be effective for one to two years.
(C) The department shall notify a provider of the findings of an audit of a cost report by issuing an audit report. The audit report shall include notice of any fine imposed under section 5165.1010 of the Revised Code. The department shall issue the audit report not later than three years after the earlier of the following:
(1) The date the cost report is filed;
(2) The date a desk or field audit of the cost report or a cost report for a subsequent cost reporting period is completed.
(D) The department shall prepare a written summary of any audit disallowance that is made after the effective date of the rate that is based on the cost. Where the provider is pursuing judicial or administrative remedies in good faith regarding the disallowance, the department shall not withhold from the provider's current payments any amounts the department claims to be due from the provider pursuant to section 5165.41 of the Revised Code.
(1) The department shall establish an audit manual and program for field audits conducted under this section. Each auditor conducting a field audit under this section shall follow the audit manual and program, regardless of whether the auditor is under contract with the department, works for a firm under contract with the department, or is employed by the department. The manual and program shall do both of the following:
(a) Require each field audit to be conducted by an auditor to whom all of the following apply:
(i) During the period of the auditor's contract, firm's contract, or auditor's employment with the department, the auditor or firm does not have and is not committed to acquire any direct or indirect financial interest in the ownership, financing, or operation of nursing facilities in this state.
(ii) The auditor does not audit any provider that has been a client of the auditor or the auditor's firm.
(iii) The auditor is otherwise independent as determined by the standards of independence included in the government auditing standards produced by the United States government accountability office.
(b) Require each auditor conducting a field audit to do all of the following:
(i) Comply with applicable rules prescribed pursuant to Title XVIII and Title XIX;
(ii) Consider generally accepted auditing standards prescribed by the American institute of certified public accountants;
(iii) Include a written summary as to whether the costs included in the cost report examined during the audit are allowable and are presented in accordance with state and federal laws and regulations, and whether, in all material respects, allowable costs are documented, reasonable, and related to patient care;
(iv) Complete the audit within the time period specified by the department;
(v) Provide to the provider complete written interpretations that explain in detail the application of all relevant contract provisions, regulations, auditing standards, rate formulae, and departmental policies, with explanations and examples, that are sufficient to permit the provider to calculate with reasonable certainty those costs that are allowable and the rate to which the provider's nursing facility is entitled.
(2) For the purpose of division (E)(1)(a)(i) of this section, employment of a member of an auditor's family by a nursing facility that the auditor does not audit does not constitute a direct or indirect financial interest in the ownership, financing, or operation of the nursing facility.
5165.15 Calculation of payments to nursing facility providers.
Except as otherwise provided by sections 5165.151 to 5165.157 and 5165.34 of the Revised Code, the total per medicaid day payment rate that the department of medicaid shall pay a nursing facility provider for nursing facility services the provider's nursing facility provides during a state fiscal year shall be determined as follows:
(A) Determine the sum of all of the following:
(1) The per medicaid day payment rate for ancillary and support costs determined for the nursing facility under section 5165.16 of the Revised Code;
(2) The per medicaid day payment rate for capital costs determined for the nursing facility under section 5165.17 of the Revised Code;
(3) The per medicaid day payment rate for direct care costs determined for the nursing facility under section 5165.19 of the Revised Code;
(4) The per medicaid day payment rate for tax costs determined for the nursing facility under section 5165.21 of the Revised Code;
(5) If the nursing facility qualifies as a critical access nursing facility, the nursing facility's critical access incentive payment paid under section 5165.23 of the Revised Code.
(B) To the sum determined under division (A) of this section, add the following:
(1) For state fiscal years 2018 and 2019, sixteen dollars and forty-four cents;
(2) For state fiscal year 2020 and, except as provided in division (B)(3) of this section, each state fiscal year thereafter, the sum of the following:
(a) The amount specified or determined for the purpose of division (B) of this section for the immediately preceding state fiscal year;
(b) The difference between the following:
(i) The medicare skilled nursing facility market basket index determined for the federal fiscal year that begins during the state fiscal year immediately preceding the state fiscal year for which the determination is being made under division (B) of this section;
(ii) The budget reduction adjustment factor for the state fiscal year for which the determination is being made under division (B) of this section.
(3) For the first state fiscal year in a group of consecutive state fiscal years for which a rebasing is conducted after state fiscal year 2020, the amount specified or determined for the purpose of division (B) of this section for the immediately preceding state fiscal year.
(C) From the sum determined under division (B) of this section, subtract one dollar and seventy-nine cents.
(D) To the difference determined under division (C) of this section, add the per medicaid day quality payment rate determined for the nursing facility under section 5165.25 of the Revised Code.
Amended by 131st General Assembly File No. TBD, HB 64, §101.01, eff. 7/1/2016.
Amended by 129th General AssemblyFile No.194, HB 303, §1, eff. 7/1/2013.
Amended by 129th General AssemblyFile No.60, SB 264, §1, eff. 7/1/2012.
Amended by 129th General AssemblyFile No.28, HB 153, §101.01, eff. 7/1/2011.
5165.151 Initial rates for new nursing facilities.
(A) The total per medicaid day payment rate determined under section 5165.15 of the Revised Code shall not be the initial rate for nursing facility services provided by a new nursing facility. Instead, the initial total per medicaid day payment rate for nursing facility services provided by a new nursing facility shall be determined in the following manner:
(1) The initial rate for ancillary and support costs shall be the rate for the new nursing facility's peer group determined under division (C) of section 5165.16 of the Revised Code.
(2) The initial rate for capital costs shall be the rate for the new nursing facility's peer group determined under division (C) of section 5165.17 of the Revised Code;
(3) The initial rate for direct care costs shall be the product of the cost per case-mix unit determined under division (C) of section 5165.19 of the Revised Code for the new nursing facility's peer group and the new nursing facility's case-mix score determined under division (B) of this section.
(4) The initial rate for tax costs shall be the following:
(a) If the provider of the new nursing facility submits to the department of medicaid the nursing facility's projected tax costs for the calendar year in which the provider obtains an initial provider agreement for the new nursing facility, an amount determined by dividing those projected tax costs by the number of inpatient days the nursing facility would have for that calendar year if its occupancy rate were one hundred per cent;
(b) If division (A)(4)(a) of this section does not apply, the median rate for tax costs for the new nursing facility's peer group in which the nursing facility is placed under division (B) of section 5165.16 of the Revised Code.
(5) The quality payment shall be the mean quality payment rate determined for nursing facilities under section 5165.25 of the Revised Code.
(6) Fourteen dollars and sixty-five cents shall be added to the sum of the rates and payment specified in divisions (A)(1) to (5) of this section.
(B) For the purpose of division (A)(3) of this section, a new nursing facility's case-mix score shall be the following:
(1) Unless the new nursing facility replaces an existing nursing facility that participated in the medicaid program immediately before the new nursing facility begins participating in the medicaid program, the median annual average case-mix score for the new nursing facility's peer group;
(2) If the nursing facility replaces an existing nursing facility that participated in the medicaid program immediately before the new nursing facility begins participating in the medicaid program, the semiannual case-mix score most recently determined under section 5165.192 of the Revised Code for the replaced nursing facility as adjusted, if necessary, to reflect any difference in the number of beds in the replaced and new nursing facilities.
(C) Subject to division (D) of this section, the department of medicaid shall adjust the rates established under division (A) of this section effective the first day of July, to reflect new rate calculations for all nursing facilities under this chapter.
(D) If a rate for direct care costs is determined under this section for a new nursing facility using the median annual average case-mix score for the new nursing facility's peer group, the rate shall be redetermined to reflect the new nursing facility's actual semiannual average case-mix score determined under section 5165.192 of the Revised Code after the new nursing facility submits its first two quarterly assessment data that qualify for use in calculating a case-mix score in accordance with rules authorized by section 5165.192 of the Revised Code. If the new nursing facility's quarterly submissions do not qualify for use in calculating a case-mix score, the department shall continue to use the median annual average case-mix score for the new nursing facility's peer group in lieu of the new nursing facility's semiannual case-mix score until the new nursing facility submits two consecutive quarterly assessment data that qualify for use in calculating a case-mix score.
5165.152 Payments for services provided to low resource utilization residents.
The total per medicaid day payment rate determined under section 5165.15 of the Revised Code shall not be paid for nursing facility services provided to low resource utilization residents. Instead, the total rate for such nursing facility services shall be the following:
(A) One hundred fifteen dollars per medicaid day if the department of medicaid is satisfied that the nursing facility's provider is cooperating with the long-term care ombudsman program in efforts to help the nursing facility's low resource utilization residents receive the services that are most appropriate for such residents' level of care needs;
(B) Ninety-one dollars and seventy cents per medicaid day if division (A) of this section does not apply to the nursing facility.
5165.153 Rates for outlier facilities or units.
(A) The total per medicaid day payment rate determined under section 5165.15 of the Revised Code shall not be paid for nursing facility services provided by a nursing facility, or discrete unit of a nursing facility, designated by the department of medicaid as an outlier nursing facility or unit. Instead, the provider of a designated outlier nursing facility or unit shall be paid each state fiscal year a total per medicaid day payment rate that the department shall prospectively determine in accordance with a methodology established in rules authorized by this section.
(B) The department may designate a nursing facility, or discrete unit of a nursing facility, as an outlier nursing facility or unit if the nursing facility or unit serves residents who have either of the following:
(1) Diagnoses or special care needs that require direct care resources that are not measured adequately by the resident assessment instrument specified in rules authorized by section 5165.191 of the Revised Code;
(2) Diagnoses or special care needs specified in rules authorized by this section as otherwise qualifying for consideration under this section.
(C) Notwithstanding any other provision of this chapter (except section 5165.156 of the Revised Code), the costs incurred by a designated outlier nursing facility or unit shall not be considered in establishing medicaid payment rates for other nursing facilities or units.
(D) The medicaid director shall adopt rules under section 5165.02 of the Revised Code as necessary to implement this section.
(a) The rules shall do both of the following:
(i) Specify the criteria and procedures the department will apply when designating a nursing facility, or discrete unit of a nursing facility, as an outlier nursing facility or unit;
(ii) Establish a methodology for prospectively determining the total per medicaid day payment rate that will be paid each state fiscal year for nursing facility services provided by a designated outlier nursing facility or unit.
(b) The rules authorized by division (D)(1)(a)(i) of this section regarding the criteria for designating outlier nursing facilities and units shall do both of the following:
(i) Provide for consideration of whether all of the allowable costs of a nursing facility, or discrete unit of a nursing facility, would be paid by a rate determined under section 5165.15 of the Revised Code;
(ii) Specify the minimum number of nursing facility beds that a nursing facility, or discrete unit of a nursing facility, must have to be designated an outlier nursing facility or unit, which may vary based on the diagnoses or special care needs of the residents served by the nursing facility or unit.
(c) The rules authorized by division (D)(1)(a)(i) of this section regarding the criteria for designating outlier nursing facilities and units shall not limit the designation to nursing facilities, or discrete units of nursing facilities, located in large cities.
(d) The rules authorized by division (D)(1)(a)(ii) of this section regarding the methodology for prospectively determining the rates of designated outlier nursing facilities and units shall provide for the methodology to consider the historical costs of providing nursing facility services to the residents of designated outlier nursing facilities and units.
(a) The rules may do both of the following:
(i) Include for designation as an outlier nursing facility or unit, a nursing facility, or discrete unit of a nursing facility, that serves medically fragile pediatric residents; residents who are dependent on ventilators; residents who have severe traumatic brain injury, end-stage Alzheimer's disease, or end-stage acquired immunodeficiency syndrome; or residents with other diagnoses or special care needs specified in the rules;
(ii) Require that a designated outlier nursing facility receive authorization from the department before admitting or retaining a resident.
(b) If the director adopts rules authorized by division (D)(2)(a)(ii) of this section regarding the authorization of a designated outlier nursing facility or unit to admit or retain a resident, the rules shall specify the criteria and procedures the department will apply when granting that authorization.
5165.154 Calculating prospective rates for facilities with residents whose care costs are not adequately measured.
(A) To the extent, if any, provided for in rules authorized by this section, the total per medicaid day payment rate determined under section 5165.15 of the Revised Code shall not be paid for nursing facility services that a nursing facility not designated as an outlier nursing facility or unit provides to a resident who meets the criteria for admission to a designated outlier nursing facility or unit, as specified in rules authorized by section 5165.153 of the Revised Code. Instead, the provider of a nursing facility providing nursing facility services to such a resident shall be paid each state fiscal year a total per medicaid day payment rate that the department of medicaid shall prospectively determine in accordance with a methodology established in rules authorized by this section.
(B) The medicaid director may adopt rules under section 5165.02 of the Revised Code to implement this section. The rules may require that a nursing facility receive authorization from the department before admitting or retaining a resident who meets the criteria for admission to a designated outlier nursing facility or unit. If the director adopts such rules, the rules shall specify the criteria and procedures the department will apply when granting the authorization.
5165.155 Amount of payments for dual eligible individuals.
(A) As used in this section, "medicaid maximum allowable amount" means one hundred per cent of a nursing facility's total per medicaid day payment rate .
(B) Instead of paying the total per medicaid day payment rate determined under section 5165.15 of the Revised Code, the department of medicaid shall pay the provider of a nursing facility the lesser of the following for nursing facility services the nursing facility provides on or after January 1, 2012, to a dual eligible individual who is eligible for nursing facility services under the medicaid program and post-hospital extended care services under Part A of Title XVIII:
(1) The coinsurance amount for the services as provided under Part A of Title XVIII;
(2) The medicaid maximum allowable amount for the services, less the amount paid under Part A of Title XVIII for the services.
5165.156 Centers of excellence component.
The medicaid director may establish a centers of excellence component of the medicaid program. The purpose of the centers of excellence component is to increase the efficiency and quality of nursing facility services provided to medicaid recipients with complex nursing facility service needs. The director may adopt rules under section 5165.02 of the Revised Code governing the component, including rules that establish a method of determining the medicaid payment rates for nursing facilities providing nursing facility services to medicaid recipients participating in the component. The rules may specify the extent to which, if any, of the provisions of sections 5165.153 and 5165.154 of the Revised Code are to apply to the centers of excellence component. If such rules are adopted, the nursing facilities that provide nursing facility services to medicaid recipients participating in the centers of excellence component shall be paid for those services in accordance with the method established in the rules instead of the total per medicaid day payment rate determined under section 5165.15 of the Revised Code.
5165.157 Alternative purchasing model for nursing facility services.
(A) The medicaid director shall establish an alternative purchasing model for nursing facility services provided by designated discrete units of nursing facilities to medicaid recipients with specialized health care needs. The director shall do all of the following with regard to the model:
(1) Establish criteria that a discrete unit of a nursing facility must meet to be designated as a unit that, under the alternative purchasing model, may admit and provide nursing facility services to medicaid recipients with specialized health care needs;
(2) Specify the health care conditions that medicaid recipients must have to have specialized health care needs, which may include dependency on a ventilator, severe traumatic brain injury, the need to be admitted to a long-term acute care hospital or rehabilitation hospital if not for nursing facility services, and other serious health care conditions;
(3) For each fiscal year, set the total per medicaid day payment rate for nursing facility services provided by designated discrete units of nursing facilities under the alternative purchasing model at either of the following:
(a) Thirty-four per cent of the statewide average of the total per medicaid day payment rate for long-term acute care hospital services as of the first day of the fiscal year;
(b) Another amount determined in accordance with an alternative methodology that includes improved health outcomes as a factor in determining the payment rate.
(4) Require, to the extent the director considers necessary, a medicaid recipient to obtain prior authorization for admission to a long-term acute care hospital or rehabilitation hospital as a condition of medicaid payment for long-term acute care hospital or rehabilitation hospital services.
(B) The criteria established under division (A)(1) of this section shall provide for a discrete unit of a nursing facility to be excluded from the alternative purchasing model if the unit is paid for nursing facility services in accordance with section 5165.153, 5165.154, or 5165.156 of the Revised Code. The criteria may require the provider of a nursing facility that has a discrete unit designated for participation in the alternative purchasing model to report health outcome measurement data to the department of medicaid.
(C) A discrete unit of a nursing facility that provides nursing facility services to medicaid recipients with specialized health care needs under the alternative purchasing model shall be paid for those services in accordance with division (A)(3) of this section instead of the total per medicaid day payment rate determined under section 5165.15, 5165.153, 5165.154, or 5165.156 of the Revised Code.
Source: 130th General Assembly File No. TBD, HB 59, §323.280.
Amended by 131st General Assembly File No. TBD, HB 64, §101.01, eff. 9/29/2015.
Added by 130th General Assembly File No. TBD, HB 483, §101.01, eff. 9/15/2014.
5165.16 Per medicaid day payment rate for ancillary and support costs; peer groups.
(A) The department of medicaid shall determine each nursing facility's per medicaid day payment rate for ancillary and support costs. A nursing facility's rate shall be the rate determined under division (C) of this section for the nursing facility's peer group.
(B) For the purpose of determining nursing facilities' rates for ancillary and support costs, the department shall establish six peer groups
composed as follows:
(1) Each nursing facility located in any of the following counties shall be placed in peer group one or two: Brown, Butler, Clermont, Clinton, Hamilton, and Warren. Each nursing facility located in any of those counties that has fewer than one hundred beds shall be placed in peer group one. Each nursing facility located in any of those counties that has one hundred or more beds shall be placed in peer group two.
(2) Each nursing facility located in any of the following counties shall be placed in peer group three or four: Allen, Ashtabula, Champaign, Clark, Cuyahoga, Darke, Delaware, Fairfield, Fayette, Franklin, Fulton, Geauga, Greene, Hancock, Knox, Lake, Licking, Lorain, Lucas, Madison, Mahoning, Marion, Medina, Miami, Montgomery, Morrow, Ottawa, Pickaway, Portage, Preble, Ross, Sandusky, Seneca, Stark, Summit, Trumbull, Union, and Wood. Each nursing facility located in any of those counties that has fewer than one hundred beds shall be placed in peer group three. Each nursing facility located in any of those counties that has one hundred or more beds shall be placed in peer group four.
(3) Each nursing facility located in any of the following counties shall be placed in peer group five or six: Adams, Ashland, Athens, Auglaize, Belmont, Carroll, Columbiana, Coshocton, Crawford, Defiance, Erie, Gallia, Guernsey, Hardin, Harrison, Henry, Highland, Hocking, Holmes, Huron, Jackson, Jefferson, Lawrence, Logan, Meigs, Mercer, Monroe, Morgan, Muskingum, Noble, Paulding, Perry, Pike, Putnam, Richland, Scioto, Shelby, Tuscarawas, Van Wert, Vinton, Washington, Wayne, Williams, and Wyandot. Each nursing facility located in any of those counties that has fewer than one hundred beds shall be placed in peer group five. Each nursing facility located in any of those counties that has one hundred or more beds shall be placed in peer group six.
(1) The department shall determine the rate for ancillary and support costs for each peer group established under division (B) of this section. The rate for ancillary and support costs determined under this division for a peer group shall be used for subsequent years until the department conducts a rebasing. To determine a peer group's rate for ancillary and support costs, the department shall do all of the following:
(a) Subject to division (C)(2) of this section, determine the rate for ancillary and support costs for each nursing facility in the peer group for the applicable calendar year by using the greater of the nursing facility's actual inpatient days for the applicable calendar year or the inpatient days the nursing facility would have had for the applicable calendar year if its occupancy rate had been ninety per cent;
(b) Subject to division (C)(3) of this section, identify which nursing facility in the peer group is at the twenty-fifth percentile of the rate for ancillary and support costs for the applicable calendar year determined under division (C)(1)(a) of this section;
(c) Multiply the rate for ancillary and support costs determined under division (C)(1)(a) of this section for the nursing facility identified under division (C)(1)(b) of this section by the rate of inflation for the eighteen-month period beginning on the first day of July of the applicable calendar year and ending the last day of December of the calendar year immediately following the applicable calendar year using the following:
Except as provided in division (C)(1)(c)(ii) of this section, the consumer price index for all items for all urban consumers for the midwest region, published by the United States bureau of labor statistics;
(ii) If the United States bureau of labor statistics ceases to publish the index specified in division (C)(1)(c)(i) of this section, the index the bureau subsequently publishes that covers urban consumers' prices for items for the region that includes this state.
(d) For state fiscal year 2020 and each state fiscal year thereafter (other than the first state fiscal year in a group of consecutive state fiscal years for which a rebasing is conducted), adjust the amount calculated under division (C)(1)(c) of this section using the difference between the following:
(i) The medicare skilled nursing facility market basket index determined for the federal fiscal year that begins during the state fiscal year immediately preceding the state fiscal year for which the adjustment is being made under division (C)(1)(d) of this section;
(ii) The budget reduction adjustment factor for the state fiscal year for which the adjustment is being made under division (C)(1)(d) of this section.
(2) For the purpose of determining a nursing facility's occupancy rate under division (C)(1)(a) of this section, the department shall include any beds that the nursing facility removes from its medicaid-certified capacity unless the nursing facility also removes the beds from its licensed bed capacity.
(3) In making the identification under division (C)(1)(b) of this section, the department shall exclude both of the following:
(a) Nursing facilities that participated in the medicaid program under the same provider for less than twelve months in the applicable calendar year;
(b) Nursing facilities whose ancillary and support costs are more than one standard deviation from the mean desk-reviewed, actual, allowable, per diem ancillary and support cost for all nursing facilities in the nursing facility's peer group for the applicable calendar year.
(4) The department shall not redetermine a peer group's rate for ancillary and support costs under this division based on additional information that it receives after the rate is determined. The department shall redetermine a peer group's rate for ancillary and support costs only if the department made an error in determining the rate based on information available to the department at the time of the original determination.
5165.17 Per medicaid day payment rate for reasonable capital costs.
(A) The department of medicaid shall determine each nursing facility's per medicaid day payment rate for capital costs. A nursing facility's rate shall be the rate determined under division (C) of this section.
(B) For the purpose of determining nursing facilities' rates for capital costs, the department shall establish six peer groups.
Each nursing facility located in any of the following counties shall be placed in peer group one or two: Brown, Butler, Clermont, Clinton, Hamilton, and Warren. Each nursing facility located in any of those counties that has fewer than one hundred beds shall be placed in peer group one. Each nursing facility located in any of those counties that has one hundred or more beds shall be placed in peer group two.
(1) The department shall determine the rate for capital costs for each peer group established under division (B) of this section. The rate for capital costs determined under this division for a peer group shall be used for subsequent years until the department conducts a rebasing. To determine a peer group's rate for capital costs, the department shall do both of the following:
(a) Determine the rate for capital costs for the nursing facility in the peer group that is at the twenty-fifth percentile of the rate for capital costs for the applicable calendar year;
(b) For state fiscal year 2020 and each state fiscal year thereafter (other than the first state fiscal year in a group of consecutive state fiscal years for which a rebasing is conducted), adjust the amount calculated under division (C)(1)(a) of this section using the difference between the following:
(i) The medicare skilled nursing facility market basket index determined for the federal fiscal year that begins during the state fiscal year immediately preceding the state fiscal year for which the adjustment is being made under division (C)(1)(a) of this section;
(ii) The budget reduction adjustment factor for the state fiscal year for which the adjustment is being made under division (C)(1)(a) of this section.
(2) To identify the nursing facility in a peer group that is at the twenty-fifth percentile of the rate for capital costs for the applicable calendar year, the department shall do both of the following:
(a) Subject to division (C)(3) of this section, use the greater of each nursing facility's actual inpatient days for the applicable calendar year or the inpatient days the nursing facility would have had for the applicable calendar year if its occupancy rate had been one hundred per cent;
(b) Exclude both of the following:
(i) Nursing facilities that participated in the medicaid program under the same provider for less than twelve months in the applicable calendar year;
(ii) Nursing facilities whose capital costs are more than one standard deviation from the mean desk-reviewed, actual, allowable, per diem capital cost for all nursing facilities in the nursing facility's peer group for the applicable calendar year.
(3) For the purpose of determining a nursing facility's occupancy rate under division (C)(2)(a) of this section, the department shall include any beds that the nursing facility removes from its medicaid-certified capacity after June 30, 2005, unless the nursing facility also removes the beds from its licensed bed capacity.
(4) The department shall not redetermine a peer group's rate for capital costs under this division based on additional information that it receives after the rate is determined. The department shall redetermine a peer group's rate for capital costs only if the department made an error in determining the rate based on information available to the department at the time of the original determination.
(D) Buildings shall be depreciated using the straight line method over forty years or over a different period approved by the department. Components and equipment shall be depreciated using the straight-line method over a period designated in rules adopted under section 5165.02 of the Revised Code, consistent with the guidelines of the American hospital association, or over a different period approved by the department. Any rules authorized by this division that specify useful lives of buildings, components, or equipment apply only to assets acquired on or after July 1, 1993. Depreciation for costs paid or reimbursed by any government agency shall not be included in capital costs unless that part of the payment under this chapter is used to reimburse the government agency.
(E) The capital cost basis of nursing facility assets shall be determined in the following manner:
(1) Except as provided in division (E)(3) of this section, for purposes of calculating the rates to be paid for facilities with dates of licensure on or before June 30, 1993, the capital cost basis of each asset shall be equal to the desk-reviewed, actual, allowable, capital cost basis that is listed on the facility's cost report for the calendar year preceding the state fiscal year during which the rate will be paid.
(2) For facilities with dates of licensure after June 30, 1993, the capital cost basis shall be determined in accordance with the principles of the medicare program, except as otherwise provided in this chapter.
(3) Except as provided in division (E)(4) of this section, if a provider transfers an interest in a facility to another provider after June 30, 1993, there shall be no increase in the capital cost basis of the asset if the providers are related parties or the provider to which the interest is transferred authorizes the provider that transferred the interest to continue to operate the facility under a lease, management agreement, or other arrangement. If the previous sentence does not prohibit the adjustment of the capital cost basis under this division, the basis of the asset shall be adjusted by one-half of the change in the consumer price index for all items for all urban consumers, as published by the United States bureau of labor statistics, during the time that the transferor held the asset.
(4) If a provider transfers an interest in a facility to another provider who is a related party, the capital cost basis of the asset shall be adjusted as specified in division (E)(3) of this section if all of the following conditions are met:
(a) The related party is a relative of owner;
(b) Except as provided in division (E)(4)(c)(ii) of this section, the provider making the transfer retains no ownership interest in the facility;
(c) The department determines that the transfer is an arm's length transaction pursuant to rules adopted under section 5165.02 of the Revised Code. The rules shall provide that a transfer is an arm's length transaction if all of the following apply:
(i) Once the transfer goes into effect, the provider that made the transfer has no direct or indirect interest in the provider that acquires the facility or the facility itself, including interest as an owner, officer, director, employee, independent contractor, or consultant, but excluding interest as a creditor.
(ii) The provider that made the transfer does not reacquire an interest in the facility except through the exercise of a creditor's rights in the event of a default. If the provider reacquires an interest in the facility in this manner, the department shall treat the facility as if the transfer never occurred when the department calculates its reimbursement rates for capital costs.
(iii) The transfer satisfies any other criteria specified in the rules.
(d) Except in the case of hardship caused by a catastrophic event, as determined by the department, or in the case of a provider making the transfer who is at least sixty-five years of age, not less than twenty years have elapsed since, for the same facility, the capital cost basis was adjusted most recently under division (E)(4) of this section or actual, allowable capital costs was determined most recently under division (F)(9) of this section.
(F) As used in this division:
Imputed interest" means the lesser of the prime rate plus two per cent or ten per cent.
Lease expense" means lease payments in the case of an operating lease and depreciation expense and interest expense in the case of a capital lease.
New lease" means a lease, to a different lessee, of a nursing facility that previously was operated under a lease.
(1) Subject to division (A) of this section, for a lease of a facility that was effective on May 27, 1992, the entire lease expense is an actual, allowable capital cost during the term of the existing lease. The entire lease expense also is an actual, allowable capital cost if a lease in existence on May 27, 1992, is renewed under either of the following circumstances:
(a) The renewal is pursuant to a renewal option that was in existence on May 27, 1992;
(b) The renewal is for the same lease payment amount and between the same parties as the lease in existence on May 27, 1992.
(2) Subject to division (A) of this section, for a lease of a facility that was in existence but not operated under a lease on May 27, 1992, actual, allowable capital costs shall include the lesser of the annual lease expense or the annual depreciation expense and imputed interest expense that would be calculated at the inception of the lease using the lessor's entire historical capital asset cost basis, adjusted by one-half of the change in the consumer price index for all items for all urban consumers, as published by the United States bureau of labor statistics, during the time the lessor held each asset until the beginning of the lease.
(3) Subject to division (A) of this section, for a lease of a facility with a date of licensure on or after May 27, 1992, that is initially operated under a lease, actual, allowable capital costs shall include the annual lease expense if there was a substantial commitment of money for construction of the facility after December 22, 1992, and before July 1, 1993. If there was not a substantial commitment of money after December 22, 1992, and before July 1, 1993, actual, allowable capital costs shall include the lesser of the annual lease expense or the sum of the following:
(a) The annual depreciation expense that would be calculated at the inception of the lease using the lessor's entire historical capital asset cost basis;
(b) The greater of the lessor's actual annual amortization of financing costs and interest expense at the inception of the lease or the imputed interest expense calculated at the inception of the lease using seventy per cent of the lessor's historical capital asset cost basis.
(4) Subject to division (A) of this section, for a lease of a facility with a date of licensure on or after May 27, 1992, that was not initially operated under a lease and has been in existence for ten years, actual, allowable capital costs shall include the lesser of the annual lease expense or the annual depreciation expense and imputed interest expense that would be calculated at the inception of the lease using the entire historical capital asset cost basis of one-half of the change in the consumer price index for all items for all urban consumers, as published by the United States bureau of labor statistics, during the time the lessor held each asset until the beginning of the lease.
(5) Subject to division (A) of this section, for a new lease of a facility that was operated under a lease on May 27, 1992, actual, allowable capital costs shall include the lesser of the annual new lease expense or the annual old lease payment. If the old lease was in effect for ten years or longer, the old lease payment from the beginning of the old lease shall be adjusted by one-half of the change in the consumer price index for all items for all urban consumers, as published by the United States bureau of labor statistics, from the beginning of the old lease to the beginning of the new lease.
(6) Subject to division (A) of this section, for a new lease of a facility that was not in existence or that was in existence but not operated under a lease on May 27, 1992, actual, allowable capital costs shall include the lesser of annual new lease expense or the annual amount calculated for the old lease under division (F)(2), (3), (4), or (6) of this section, as applicable. If the old lease was in effect for ten years or longer, the lessor's historical capital asset cost basis shall be, for purposes of calculating the annual amount under division (F)(2), (3), (4), or (6) of this section, adjusted by one-half of the change in the consumer price index for all items for all urban consumers, as published by the United States bureau of labor statistics, from the beginning of the old lease to the beginning of the new lease.
In the case of a lease under division (F)(3) of this section of a facility for which a substantial commitment of money was made after December 22, 1992, and before July 1, 1993, the old lease payment shall be adjusted for the purpose of determining the annual amount.
(7) For any revision of a lease described in division (F)(1), (2), (3), (4), (5), or (6) of this section, or for any subsequent lease of a facility operated under such a lease, other than execution of a new lease, the portion of actual, allowable capital costs attributable to the lease shall be the same as before the revision or subsequent lease.
(8) Except as provided in division (F)(9) of this section, if a provider leases an interest in a facility to another provider who is a related party or previously operated the facility, the related party's or previous operator's actual, allowable capital costs shall include the lesser of the annual lease expense or the reasonable cost to the lessor.
(9) If a provider leases an interest in a facility to another provider who is a related party, regardless of the date of the lease, the related party's actual, allowable capital costs shall include the annual lease expense, subject to the limitations specified in divisions (F)(1) to (7) of this section, if all of the following conditions are met:
(b) If the lessor retains an ownership interest, it is, except as provided in division (F)(9)(c)(ii) of this section, in only the real property and any improvements on the real property;
(c) The department determines that the lease is an arm's length transaction pursuant to rules adopted under section 5165.02 of the Revised Code. The rules shall provide that a lease is an arm's length transaction if all of the following apply:
(i) Once the lease goes into effect, the lessor has no direct or indirect interest in the lessee or, except as provided in division (F)(9)(b) of this section, the facility itself, including interest as an owner, officer, director, employee, independent contractor, or consultant, but excluding interest as a lessor.
(ii) The lessor does not reacquire an interest in the facility except through the exercise of a lessor's rights in the event of a default. If the lessor reacquires an interest in the facility in this manner, the department shall treat the facility as if the lease never occurred when the department calculates its reimbursement rates for capital costs.
(iii) The lease satisfies any other criteria specified in the rules.
(d) Except in the case of hardship caused by a catastrophic event, as determined by the department, or in the case of a lessor who is at least sixty-five years of age, not less than twenty years have elapsed since, for the same facility, the capital cost basis was adjusted most recently under division (E)(4) of this section or actual, allowable capital costs were determined most recently under division (F)(9) of this section.
(10) This division does not apply to leases of specific items of equipment.
5165.19 Per medicaid day payment rate for direct care costs.
(A) Semiannually, the department of medicaid shall determine each nursing facility's per medicaid day payment rate for direct care costs by multiplying the facility's semiannual case-mix score determined under section 5165.192 of the Revised Code by the cost per case-mix unit determined under division (C) of this section for the facility's peer group.
(B) For the purpose of determining nursing facilities' rates for direct care costs, the department shall establish three peer groups.
Each nursing facility located in any of the following counties shall be placed in peer group one: Brown, Butler, Clermont, Clinton, Hamilton, and Warren.
(2) Each nursing facility located in any of the following counties shall be placed in peer group two: Allen, Ashtabula, Champaign, Clark, Cuyahoga, Darke, Delaware, Fairfield, Fayette, Franklin, Fulton, Geauga, Greene, Hancock, Knox, Lake, Licking, Lorain, Lucas, Madison, Mahoning, Marion, Medina, Miami, Montgomery, Morrow, Ottawa, Pickaway, Portage, Preble, Ross, Sandusky, Seneca, Stark, Summit, Trumbull, Union, and Wood.
(3) Each nursing facility located in any of the following counties shall be placed in peer group three: Adams, Ashland, Athens, Auglaize, Belmont, Carroll, Columbiana, Coshocton, Crawford, Defiance, Erie, Gallia, Guernsey, Hardin, Harrison, Henry, Highland, Hocking, Holmes, Huron, Jackson, Jefferson, Lawrence, Logan, Meigs, Mercer, Monroe, Morgan, Muskingum, Noble, Paulding, Perry, Pike, Putnam, Richland, Scioto, Shelby, Tuscarawas, Van Wert, Vinton, Washington, Wayne, Williams, and Wyandot.
(1) The department shall determine a cost per case-mix unit for each peer group established under division (B) of this section. The cost per case-mix unit determined under this division for a peer group shall be used for subsequent years until the department conducts a rebasing. To determine a peer group's cost per case-mix unit, the department shall do all of the following:
(a) Determine the cost per case-mix unit for each nursing facility in the peer group for the applicable calendar year by dividing each facility's desk-reviewed, actual, allowable, per diem direct care costs for the applicable calendar year by the facility's annual average case-mix score determined under section 5165.192 of the Revised Code for the applicable calendar year;
(b) Subject to division (C)(2) of this section, identify which nursing facility in the peer group is at the twenty-fifth percentile of the cost per case-mix units determined under division (C)(1)(a) of this section;
(c) Calculate the amount that is two per cent above the cost per case-mix unit determined under division (C)(1)(a) of this section for the nursing facility identified under division (C)(1)(b) of this section;
(d) Using the index specified in division (C)(3) of this section, multiply the rate of inflation for the eighteen-month period beginning on the first day of July of the applicable calendar year and ending the last day of December of the calendar year immediately following the applicable calendar year by the amount calculated under division (C)(1)(c) of this section;
For state fiscal year 2020 and each state fiscal year thereafter (other than the first state fiscal year in a group of consecutive state fiscal years for which a rebasing is conducted), adjust the amount calculated under division (C)(1)(d) of this section using the difference between the following:
(i) The medicare skilled nursing facility market basket index determined for the federal fiscal year that begins during the state fiscal year immediately preceding the state fiscal year for which the adjustment is being made under division (C)(1)(e) of this section;
(ii) The budget reduction adjustment factor for the state fiscal year for which the adjustment is being made under division (C)(1)(e) of this section.
(b) Nursing facilities whose cost per case-mix unit is more than one standard deviation from the mean cost per case-mix unit for all nursing facilities in the nursing facility's peer group for the applicable calendar year.
(3) The following index shall be used for the purpose of the calculation made under division (C)(1)(d) of this section:
Except as provided in division (C)(3)(b) of this section, the employment cost index for total compensation, nursing and residential care facilities occupational group, published by the United States bureau of labor statistics;
(b) If the United States bureau of labor statistics ceases to publish the index specified in division (C)(3)(a) of this section, the index the bureau subsequently publishes that covers nursing facilities' staff costs.
(4) The department shall not redetermine a peer group's cost per case-mix unit under this division based on additional information that it receives after the peer group's per case-mix unit is determined. The department shall redetermine a peer group's cost per case-mix unit only if it made an error in determining the peer group's cost per case-mix unit based on information available to the department at the time of the original determination.
5165.191 Resident assessment data.
Each calendar quarter, each nursing facility provider shall compile complete assessment data for each resident of each of the provider's nursing facilities, regardless of payment source, who is in the nursing facility, or on hospital or therapeutic leave from the nursing facility, on the last day of the quarter. A resident assessment instrument specified in rules authorized by this section shall be used to compile the resident assessment data. Each provider shall submit the resident assessment data to the department of health and, if required by the rules, the department of medicaid. The resident assessment data shall be submitted not later than fifteen days after the end of the calendar quarter for which the data is compiled. If the resident assessment data is to be submitted to the department of medicaid, it shall be submitted to the department through the medium or media specified in the rules.
Rules adopted under section 5165.02 of the Revised Code shall do all of the following:
(A) In a manner consistent with the "Social Security Act," section 1919(e)(5), 42 U.S.C. 1396r(e)(5), specify a resident assessment instrument to be used by nursing facility providers under this section;
(B) Specify whether nursing facility providers must submit the resident assessment data to the department of medicaid;
(C) If the rules specify that nursing facility providers must submit the resident assessment data to the department, specify the medium or media through which the data is to be submitted.
5165.192 Case-mix scores for nursing facilities.
(1) Except as provided in division (B) of this section and in accordance with the process specified in rules authorized by this section, the department of medicaid shall do all of the following:
(a) Every quarter, determine the following two case-mix scores for each nursing facility:
(i) A quarterly case-mix score that includes each resident who is a medicaid recipient and is not a low resource utilization resident;
(ii) A quarterly case-mix score that includes each resident regardless of payment source.
(b) Every six months, determine a semiannual average case-mix score for each nursing facility by using the quarterly case-mix scores determined for the nursing facility pursuant to division (A)(1)(a)(i) of this section;
(c) After the end of each calendar year, determine an annual average case-mix score for each nursing facility by using the quarterly case-mix scores determined for the nursing facility pursuant to division (A)(1)(a)(ii) of this section.
(2) When determining case-mix scores under division (A)(1) of this section, the department shall use all of the following:
(a) Data from a resident assessment instrument specified in rules authorized by section 5165.191 of the Revised Code;
(b) Except as provided in rules authorized by this section, the case-mix values established by the United States department of health and human services;
(c) Except as modified in rules authorized by this section, the grouper methodology used on June 30, 1999, by the United States department of health and human services for prospective payment of skilled nursing facilities under the medicare program.
(1) Subject to division (B)(2) of this section, the department, for one or more months of a calendar quarter, may assign to a nursing facility a case-mix score that is five per cent less than the nursing facility's case-mix score for the immediately preceding calendar quarter if any of the following apply:
(a) The provider does not timely submit complete and accurate resident assessment data necessary to determine the nursing facility's case-mix score for the calendar quarter;
(b) The nursing facility was subject to an exception review under section 5165.193 of the Revised Code for the immediately preceding calendar quarter;
(c) The nursing facility was assigned a case-mix score for the immediately preceding calendar quarter.
(2) Before assigning a case-mix score to a nursing facility due to the submission of incorrect resident assessment data, the department shall permit the provider to correct the data. The department may assign the case-mix score if the provider fails to submit the corrected resident assessment data not later than the earlier of the forty-fifth day after the end of the calendar quarter to which the data pertains or the deadline for submission of such corrections established by regulations adopted by the United States department of health and human services under Title XVIII and Title XIX.
(3) If, for more than six months in a calendar year, a provider is paid a rate determined for a nursing facility using a case-mix score assigned to the nursing facility under division (B)(1) of this section, the department may assign the nursing facility a cost per case-mix unit that is five per cent less than the nursing facility's actual or assigned cost per case-mix unit for the immediately preceding calendar year. The department may use the assigned cost per case-mix unit, instead of determining the nursing facility's actual cost per case-mix unit in accordance with section 5165.19 of the Revised Code, to establish the nursing facility's rate for direct care costs for the fiscal year immediately following the calendar year for which the cost per case-mix unit is assigned.
(4) The department shall take action under division (B)(1), (2), or (3) of this section only in accordance with rules authorized by this section. The department shall not take an action that affects rates for prior payment periods except in accordance with sections 5165.41 and 5165.42 of the Revised Code.
(C) The medicaid director shall adopt rules under section 5165.02 of the Revised Code as necessary to implement this section.
(1) The rules shall do all of the following:
(a) Specify the process for determining the semiannual and annual average case-mix scores for nursing facilities;
(b) Adjust the case-mix values specified in division (A)(2)(b) of this section to reflect changes in relative wage differentials that are specific to this state;
(c) Express all of those case-mix values in numeric terms that are different from the terms specified by the United States department of health and human services but that do not alter the relationship of the case-mix values to one another;
(d) Modify the grouper methodology specified in division (A)(2)(c) of this section as follows:
(i) Establish a different hierarchy for assigning residents to case-mix categories under the methodology;
(ii) Allow the use of the index maximizer element of the methodology;
(iii) Incorporate changes to the methodology the United States department of health and human services makes after June 30, 1999;
(iv) Make other changes the department determines are necessary.
(e) Establish procedures under which resident assessment data shall be reviewed for accuracy and providers shall be notified of any data that requires correction;
(f) Establish procedures for providers to correct resident assessment data and specify a reasonable period of time by which providers shall submit the corrections. The procedures may limit the content of corrections in the manner required by regulations adopted by the United States department of health and human services under Title XVIII and Title XIX.
(g) Specify when and how the department will assign case-mix scores or costs per case-mix unit to a nursing facility under division (B) of this section if information necessary to calculate the nursing facility's case-mix score is not provided or corrected in accordance with the procedures established by the rules.
(2) Notwithstanding any other provision of this chapter, the rules may provide for the exclusion of case-mix scores assigned to a nursing facility under division (B) of this section from the determination of the nursing facility's semiannual or annual average case-mix score and the cost per case-mix unit for the nursing facility's peer group.
Amended by 131st General Assembly File No. TBD, HB 64, §101.01, eff. 9/29/2015, (Vetoed).
Amended by 128th General AssemblyFile No.9, HB 1, §101.01, eff. 10/16/2009.
5165.193 Exception review of assessment data.
(A) The department of medicaid may, pursuant to rules authorized by this section, conduct an exception review of resident assessment data submitted by a nursing facility provider under section 5165.191 of the Revised Code. The department may conduct an exception review based on the findings of a medicaid certification survey conducted by the department of health, a risk analysis, or prior performance of the provider.
Exception reviews shall be conducted at the nursing facility by appropriate health professionals under contract with or employed by the department. The professionals may review resident assessment forms and supporting documentation, conduct interviews, and observe residents to identify any patterns or trends of inaccurate resident assessments and resulting inaccurate case-mix scores.
(B) If an exception review is conducted before the effective date of a nursing facility's rate for direct care costs that is based on the resident assessment data being reviewed and the review results in findings that exceed tolerance levels specified in the rules authorized by this section, the department, in accordance with those rules, may use the findings to redetermine individual resident case-mix scores, the nursing facility's case-mix score for the quarter, and the nursing facility's annual average case-mix score. The department may use the nursing facility's redetermined quarterly and annual average case-mix scores to determine the nursing facility's rate for direct care costs for the appropriate calendar quarter or quarters.
(C) The department shall prepare a written summary of any exception review finding that is made after the effective date of a nursing facility's rate for direct care costs that is based on the resident assessment data that was reviewed. Where the provider is pursuing judicial or administrative remedies in good faith regarding the finding, the department shall not withhold from the provider's current payments any amounts the department claims to be due from the provider pursuant to section 5165.41 of the Revised Code.
(1) The medicaid director shall adopt rules under section 5165.02 of the Revised Code as necessary to implement this section. The rules shall establish an exception review program that does all of the following:
(a) Requires each exception review to comply with Title XVIII and Title XIX;
(b) Requires a written summary for each exception review that states whether resident assessment forms have been completed accurately;
(c) Prohibits each health professional who conducts an exception review from doing either of the following:
(i) During the period of the professional's contract or employment with the department, having or being committed to acquire any direct or indirect financial interest in the ownership, financing, or operation of nursing facilities in this state;
(ii) Reviewing any provider that has been a client of the professional.
(2) For the purposes of division (D)(1)(c)(i) of this section, employment of a member of a health professional's family by a nursing facility that the professional does not review does not constitute a direct or indirect financial interest in the ownership, financing, or operation of the nursing facility.
5165.21 Per resident per medicaid day payment rate for tax costs.
The department of medicaid shall determine each nursing facility's per medicaid day payment rate for tax costs. The rate for tax costs determined under this division for a nursing facility shall be used for subsequent years until the department conducts a rebasing. To determine a nursing facility's rate for tax costs , the department shall do both of the following:
(A) Divide the nursing facility's desk-reviewed, actual, allowable tax costs paid for the applicable calendar year by the number of inpatient days the nursing facility would have had if its occupancy rate had been one hundred per cent during the applicable calendar year;
(B) For state fiscal year 2020 and each state fiscal year thereafter (other than the first state fiscal year in a group of consecutive state fiscal years for which a rebasing is conducted), adjust the amount calculated under division (A) of this section using the difference between the following:
(1) The medicare skilled nursing facility market basket index determined for the federal fiscal year that begins during the state fiscal year immediately preceding the state fiscal year for which the adjustment is being made under division (B) of this section;
(2) The budget reduction adjustment factor for the state fiscal year for which the adjustment is being made under division (B) of this section.
Amended by 128th General AssemblyFile No.36, HB 198, §1, eff. 6/8/2010.
5165.23 Critical access incentive payments to qualified facilities.
(A) Each state fiscal year, the department of medicaid shall determine the critical access incentive payment for each nursing facility that qualifies as a critical access nursing facility. To qualify as a critical access nursing facility for a state fiscal year, a nursing facility must meet all of the following requirements:
(1) The nursing facility must be located in an area that, on December 31, 2011, was designated an empowerment zone under the "Internal Revenue Code of 1986," section 1391, 26 U.S.C. 1391.
(2) The nursing facility must have an occupancy rate of at least eighty-five per cent as of the last day of the calendar year immediately preceding the state fiscal year.
(3) The nursing facility must have a medicaid utilization rate of at least sixty-five per cent as of the last day of the calendar year immediately preceding the state fiscal year.
(B) A critical access nursing facility's critical access incentive payment for a state fiscal year shall equal five per cent of the portion of the nursing facility's total per medicaid day payment rate for the state fiscal year that is the sum of the rates identified in divisions (A)(1) to (4) of section 5165.15 of the Revised Code.
Amended by 131st General Assembly File No. TBD, HB 64, §101.01, eff. 7/1/2016, (Vetoed).
Added by 129th General AssemblyFile No.127, HB 487, §101.01, eff. 9/10/2012.
5165.25 Determination of per medicaid day quality payment rate.
(1) "Long-stay resident" means an individual who has resided in a nursing facility for at least one hundred one days.
(2) "Measurement period" means the following:
(a) For state fiscal year 2017, the period beginning July 1, 2015, and ending December 31, 2015;
(b) For each subsequent state fiscal year, the calendar year immediately preceding the calendar year in which the state fiscal year begins.
(3) "Nurse aide" has the same meaning as in section 3721.21 of the Revised Code.
(4) "Short-stay resident" means a nursing facility resident who is not a long-stay resident.
(1) Using all of the funds made available for a state fiscal year by the rate reductions under division (C) of section 5165.15 of the Revised Code, the department of medicaid shall determine a per medicaid day quality payment rate to be paid for that state fiscal year to each nursing facility that meets at least one of the quality indicators specified in division (B)(2) of this section for the measurement period. The largest quality payment rate for a state fiscal year shall be paid to nursing facilities that meet all of the quality indicators for the measurement period.
(2) The following are the quality indicators to be used for the purpose of division (B)(1) of this section:
(a) Not more than the target percentage of the nursing facility's short-stay residents had new or worsened pressure ulcers .
(b) Not more than the target percentage of long-stay residents at high risk for pressure ulcers had pressure ulcers.
(c) Not more than the target percentage of the nursing facility's short-stay residents newly received an antipsychotic medication .
(d) Not more than the target percentage of the nursing facility's long-stay residents received an antipsychotic medication.
(e) Not more than the target percentage of the nursing facility's long-stay residents had an unplanned weight loss.
(f) The nursing facility's employee retention rate is at least the target rate.
(g) The nursing facility utilized the nursing home version of the preferences for everyday living inventory for all of its residents.
(3) The department shall specify the target percentage for the purpose of divisions (B)(2)(a) to (e) of this section at the fortieth percentile of nursing facilities that have data for the quality indicators. The department also shall specify the target rate for the purpose of division (B)(2)(f) of this section . In determining whether a nursing facility meets the quality indicators specified in divisions (B)(2)(c) and (d) of this section, the department shall exclude from consideration the following:
(a) In the case of the quality indicator specified in division (B)(2)(c) of this section, all of the nursing facility's short-stay residents who newly received an antipsychotic medication in conjunction with hospice care;
(b) In the case of the quality indicator specified in division (B)(2)(d) of this section, all of the nursing facility's long-stay residents who received antipsychotic medication in conjunction with hospice care.
(C) If a nursing facility undergoes a change of operator during a state fiscal year, the per medicaid day quality payment rate to be paid to the entering operator for nursing facility services that the nursing facility provides during the period beginning on the effective date of the change of operator and ending on the last day of the state fiscal year shall be the same amount as the per medicaid day quality payment rate that was in effect on the day immediately preceding the effective date of the change of operator and paid to the nursing facility's exiting operator. For the immediately following state fiscal year, the per medicaid day quality payment rate shall be the following:
(1) If the effective date of the change of operator is on or before the first day of October of the calendar year immediately preceding the state fiscal year, the amount determined for the nursing facility in accordance with division (B) of this section for the state fiscal year;
(2) If the effective date of the change of operator is after the first day of October of the calendar year immediately preceding the state fiscal year, the mean per medicaid day quality payment rate for all nursing facilities for the state fiscal year.
Added by 131st General Assembly File No. TBD, HB 64, §101.01, eff. 7/1/2016.
5165.26 [Repealed].
Repealed by 131st General Assembly File No. TBD, HB 64, §105.01, eff. 7/1/2016.
Renumbered from § 5111.245 by 130th General Assembly File No. 25, HB 59, §101.01 (Vetoed Provisions), eff. 9/29/2013.
Added by 129th General AssemblyFile No.60, SB 264, §1, eff. 7/1/2012.
5165.28 Rate for added, replaced, or renovated beds.
If a provider of a nursing facility adds or replaces one or more medicaid certified beds to or at the nursing facility, or renovates one or more of the nursing facility's beds, the medicaid payment rate for the added, replaced, or renovated beds shall be the same as the medicaid payment rate for the nursing facility's existing beds.
5165.29 Cost of operating rights for relocated beds not allowable cost.
If one or more medicaid-certified beds are relocated from one nursing facility to another nursing facility owned by a different person or government entity and the application for the certificate of need authorizing the relocation is filed with the director of health on or after July 1, 2005, amortization of the cost of acquiring operating rights for the relocated beds is not an allowable cost for the purpose of determining the nursing facility's medicaid payment rate.
5165.30 Related party costs to pass through.
Except as provided in section 5165.17 of the Revised Code, the costs of goods, services, and facilities, furnished to a nursing facility provider by a related party are includable in the allowable costs of the provider at the reasonable cost to the related party.
5165.32 Reduction in rate not permitted.
The department of medicaid shall not reduce a nursing facility's medicaid payment rate determined under this chapter on the basis that the provider charges a lower rate to any resident who is not eligible for medicaid.
5165.33 No payment for discharge date.
No medicaid payment shall be made to a nursing facility provider for the day a medicaid recipient is discharged from the nursing facility.
5165.34 Payments made to reserve bed during temporary absence.
(A) The department of medicaid may make medicaid payments to a nursing facility provider under this chapter to reserve a bed for a recipient during a temporary absence under conditions prescribed by the department, to include hospitalization for an acute condition, visits with relatives and friends, and participation in therapeutic programs outside the facility, when the resident's plan of care provides for such absence and federal financial participation for the payments is available.
(B) The maximum period for which payments may be made to reserve a bed in a nursing facility shall not exceed thirty days in a calendar year.
(C) The department shall establish the per medicaid day payment rates for reserving beds under this section. In establishing the per medicaid day payment rates, the department shall set the per medicaid day payment rate at an amount equal to the following:
(1) In the case of a nursing facility that had an occupancy rate exceeding ninety-five per cent, an amount not exceeding fifty per cent of the per medicaid day payment rate the provider would be paid if the recipient were not absent from the nursing facility that day;
(2) In the case of a nursing facility that had an occupancy rate not exceeding ninety-five per cent, an amount not exceeding eighteen per cent of the per medicaid day payment rate the provider would be paid if the recipient were not absent from the nursing facility that day.
(D) For the purpose of setting a nursing facility's per medicaid day payment rate to reserve a bed for a day during the period beginning on September 29, 2013, and ending December 31, 2013, the department shall determine the nursing facility's occupancy rate by using information reported on the nursing facility's cost report for calendar year 2012. For the purpose of setting a nursing facility's per medicaid day payment rate to reserve a bed for January 1, 2014, or thereafter, the department shall determine the nursing facility's occupancy rate by using information reported on the nursing facility's cost report for the calendar year preceding the state fiscal year in which the reservation falls.
5165.35 Payments made to facility for services provided after involuntary termination.
Medicaid payments may be made for nursing facility services provided not later than thirty days after the effective date of an involuntary termination of the nursing facility that provides the services if the services are provided to a medicaid recipient who is eligible for the services and resided in the nursing facility before the effective date of the involuntary termination.
5165.36 Rebasing.
The department of medicaid shall conduct a rebasing at least once every five state fiscal years. When the department conducts a rebasing for a state fiscal year, it shall conduct the rebasing for each cost center.
Added by 132nd General Assembly File No. TBD, HB 49, §101.01, eff. 9/29/2017.
5165.361 Budget reduction adjustment factor.
It is the general assembly's intent to specify in statute the factor to be used for state fiscal year 2020 and each state fiscal year thereafter (other than the first state fiscal year in a group of consecutive state fiscal years for which a rebasing is conducted) as the budget reduction adjustment factor for the purpose of sections 5165.15, 5165.16, 5165.17, 5165.19, and 5165.21 of the Revised Code. The budget reduction adjustment factor to be used for a state fiscal year shall not exceed the medicare skilled nursing facility market basket index determined for the federal fiscal year that begins during the state fiscal year immediately preceding the state fiscal year for which the budget reduction adjustment factor is being used. If the general assembly fails to specify in statute the factor to be used for a state fiscal year as the budget reduction adjustment factor, the budget reduction adjustment factor shall be zero.
5165.37 Calculating rates and making payments.
The department of medicaid shall make its best efforts each year to calculate nursing facilities' medicaid payment rates under this chapter in time to pay the rates by the fifteenth day of August of each state fiscal year. If the department is unable to calculate the rates so that they can be paid by that date, the department shall pay each provider the rate calculated for the provider's nursing facilities under this chapter at the end of the previous state fiscal year. If the department also is unable to calculate the rates to pay the rates by the fifteenth day of September and the fifteenth day of October, the department shall pay the previous state fiscal year's rate to make those payments. The department may increase by five per cent the previous state fiscal year's rate paid for any nursing facility pursuant to this section at the request of the provider. The department shall use rates calculated for the current state fiscal year to make the payments due by the fifteenth day of November.
If the rate paid to a provider for a nursing facility pursuant to this section is lower than the rate calculated for the nursing facility for the current state fiscal year, the department shall pay the provider the difference between the two rates for the number of days for which the provider was paid for the nursing facility pursuant to this section. If the rate paid for a nursing facility pursuant to this section is higher than the rate calculated for it for the current state fiscal year, the provider shall refund to the department the difference between the two rates for the number of days for which the provider was paid for the nursing facility pursuant to this section.
5165.38 Reconsideration of rate.
The medicaid director shall adopt rules under section 5165.02 of the Revised Code that establish a process under which a nursing facility provider, or a group or association of nursing facility providers, may seek reconsideration of medicaid payment rates established under this chapter, including a rate for direct care costs recalculated before the effective date of the rate as a result of an exception review of resident assessment data conducted under section 5165.193 of the Revised Code. The
only issue that a provider, group, or association may raise in the rate reconsideration shall be whether the rate was calculated in accordance with this chapter and the rules adopted under section 5165.02 of the Revised Code. The provider, group, or association may submit written arguments or other materials that support its position. The provider, group, or association and department of medicaid shall take actions regarding the rate reconsideration within time frames specified in rules authorized by this section.
If the department determines, as a result of the rate reconsideration, that the rate determined for one or more nursing facilities is less than the rate to which the nursing facility is entitled, the department shall increase the rate. If the department has paid the incorrect rate for a period of time, the department shall pay the provider the difference between the amount the provider was paid for that period for the nursing facility and the amount the provider should have been paid for the nursing facility.
5165.40 Adjustment of rates.
If a nursing facility provider properly amends a cost report for the nursing facility under section 5165.107 of the Revised Code and the amended report shows that the provider received a lower medicaid payment rate under the original cost report than the provider was entitled to receive, the department of medicaid shall adjust the provider's rate for the nursing facility prospectively to reflect the corrected information. The department shall pay the adjusted rate beginning two months after the first day of the month after the provider files the amended cost report.
If the department finds, from an exception review of resident assessment data conducted pursuant to section 5165.193 of the Revised Code after the effective date of a nursing facility's rate for direct care costs that is based on the resident assessment data, that inaccurate resident assessment data resulted in the provider receiving a lower rate for the nursing facility than it was entitled to receive, the department prospectively shall adjust the provider's rate accordingly . The department shall make payments to the provider using the adjusted rate for the remainder of the six-month period for which the resident assessment data is used to determine the rate, beginning one month after the first day of the month after the exception review is completed.
department to the provider. The and the provider may enter into an agreement under which the amount, together with interest, is deducted in installments from payments from the to the provider.
department shall request a written statement of the average bank prime rate from the federal reserve bank of Cleveland or the federal reserve board.
5165.41 Redetermination of rates.
(A) The department of medicaid shall redetermine a provider's medicaid payment rate for a nursing facility using revised information if any of the following results in a determination that the provider received a higher medicaid payment rate for the nursing facility than the provider was entitled to receive:
(1) The provider properly amends a cost report for the nursing facility under section 5165.107 of the Revised Code;
(2) The department makes a finding based on an audit under section 5165.109 of the Revised Code;
(3) The department makes a finding based on an exception review of resident assessment data conducted under section 5165.193 of the Revised Code after the effective date of the nursing facility's rate for direct care costs that is based on the resident assessment data;
(4) The department makes a finding based on a post-payment review conducted under section 5165.49 of the Revised Code.
(B) The department shall apply the redetermined rate to the periods when the provider received the incorrect rate to determine the amount of the overpayment. The provider shall refund the amount of the overpayment. The department may charge the provider the following amount of interest from the time the overpayment was made:
(1) If the overpayment resulted from costs reported for calendar year 1993, the interest shall be no greater than one and one-half times the current average bank prime rate.
(2) If the overpayment resulted from costs reported for a subsequent calendar year:
(a) The interest shall be no greater than two times the current average bank prime rate if the overpayment was no more than one per cent of the total medicaid payments to the provider for the state fiscal year for which the overpayment was made.
(b) The interest shall be no greater than two and one-half times the current average bank prime rate if the overpayment was more than one per cent of the total medicaid payments to the provider for the state fiscal year for which the overpayment was made.
5165.42 Additional penalties.
In addition to the other penalties authorized by this chapter, the department of medicaid may impose the following penalties on a nursing facility provider:
(A) If the provider does not furnish invoices or other documentation that the department requests during an audit within sixty days after the request, a fine of no more than the greater of the following:
(1) One thousand dollars per audit;
(2) Twenty-five per cent of the cumulative amount by which the costs for which documentation was not furnished increased the total medicaid payments to the provider during the state fiscal year for which the costs were used to determine a rate.
(B) If an exiting operator or owner fails to provide notice of a facility closure or voluntary withdrawal of participation in the medicaid program as required by section 5165.50 of the Revised Code, or an exiting operator or owner and entering operator fail to provide notice of a change of operator as required by section 5165.51 of the Revised Code, a fine of not more than the current average bank prime rate plus four per cent of the last two monthly payments.
5165.43 Determination of interest rate.
For the purposes of sections 5165.41 and 5165.42 of the Revised Code, the department of medicaid shall determine the current average bank prime rate using statistical release H.15, "selected interest rates," a weekly publication of the federal reserve board, or any successor publication. If statistical release H.15, or its successor, ceases to contain the bank prime rate information or ceases to be published, the department shall request a written statement of the average bank prime rate from the federal reserve bank of Cleveland or the federal reserve board.
5165.44 Deductions.
(A) Except as provided in division (B) of this section, the department of medicaid shall deduct the following from the next available medicaid payment the department makes to a nursing facility provider who continues to participate in medicaid:
(1) Any amount the provider is required to refund, and any interest charged, under section 5165.41 of the Revised Code;
(2) The amount of any penalty imposed on the provider under section 5165.42 of the Revised Code.
(B) The department and a nursing facility provider may enter into an agreement under which a deduction required by division (A) of this section is taken in installments from payments the department makes to the provider.
5165.45 Deposits to general revenue fund.
The department of medicaid shall transmit to the treasurer of state for deposit in the general revenue fund amounts collected from the following:
(A) Refunds required by, and interest charged under, section 5165.41 of the Revised Code;
(B) Amounts collected from penalties imposed under section 5165.42 of the Revised Code.
5165.46 Administrative adjudication.
All of the following are subject to an adjudication conducted in accordance with Chapter 119. of the Revised Code:
(A) Any audit disallowance that the department of medicaid makes as the result of an audit under section 5165.109 of the Revised Code;
(B) Any adverse finding that results from an exception review of resident assessment data conducted for a nursing facility under section 5165.193 of the Revised Code after the effective date of the nursing facility's medicaid payment rate for direct care costs that is based on the resident assessment data;
(C) Any medicaid payment deemed an overpayment under section 5165.523 of the Revised Code;
(D) Any penalty the department imposes under section 5165.42 of the Revised Code or section 5165.523 of the Revised Code.
5165.47 Claim for medicaid payment for service provided to nursing facility resident.
No person, other than a nursing facility provider , shall submit a claim for medicaid payment for a service provided to a nursing facility resident if the service is included in a medicaid payment made to the nursing facility provider under this chapter or in the allowable expenses reported on a provider's cost report for a nursing facility. No nursing facility provider shall submit a separate claim for medicaid payment for a service provided to a resident of the nursing facility if the service is included in a medicaid payment made to the provider under this chapter or in the allowable expenses on the provider's cost report for the nursing facility.
5165.48 Nursing facility not required to submit Medicaid claim for Medicare cost-sharing expenses under certain circumstances.
The provider of a nursing facility is not required to submit a claim to the department of medicaid regarding the medicare cost-sharing expenses of a resident of the nursing facility who, under federal law, is eligible to have the medicaid program pay for a part of the cost-sharing expenses if the provider determines that, under rules adopted under section 5165.02 of the Revised Code, the nursing facility would not receive a medicaid payment for any part of the medicare cost-sharing expenses. In such a situation, a claim for the medicare cost-sharing expenses shall be considered to have been adjudicated at no payment.
Renumbered from § 5111.0211 by 130th General Assembly File No. 25, HB 59, §101.01, eff. 9/29/2013.
Added by 128th General AssemblyFile No.44, HB 215, §1, eff. 9/13/2010.
5165.49 Post-payment reviews of nursing facility Medicaid claims.
The department of medicaid may conduct a post-payment review of a claim submitted by a nursing facility provider and paid by the medicaid program to determine whether the provider was overpaid. The department shall provide the provider a written summary of the review's results. The review's results are not subject to an adjudication under Chapter 119. of the Revised Code; however, the provider may request that the medicaid director reconsider the review's results. The director shall reconsider the review's results on receipt of a request made in good faith. The department shall not deduct any amounts the department claims to be due from the provider as a result of the review from the provider's medicaid payments pursuant to section 5165.44 of the Revised Code until the conclusion of the director's reconsideration, if any, of the review.
5165.50 Notice of facility closure or withdrawal of participation.
An exiting operator or owner of a nursing facility participating in the medicaid program shall provide the department of medicaid written notice of a facility closure or voluntary withdrawal of participation not less than ninety days before the effective date of the facility closure or voluntary withdrawal of participation. The written notice shall be provided to the department in accordance with the method specified in rules authorized by section 5165.53 of the Revised Code.
The written notice shall include all of the following:
(A) The name of the exiting operator and, if any, the exiting operator's authorized agent;
(B) The name of the nursing facility that is the subject of the written notice;
(C) The exiting operator's medicaid provider agreement number for the nursing facility that is the subject of the written notice;
(D) The effective date of the facility closure or voluntary withdrawal of participation;
(E) The signature of the exiting operator's or owner's representative.
5165.501 Compliance with Social Security Act required.
An operator shall comply with the "Social Security Act," section 1919(c)(2)(F), 42 U.S.C. 1396r(c)(2)(F) if the operator's nursing facility undergoes a voluntary withdrawal of participation.
5165.51 Notice of change of operator.
(A) An exiting operator or owner and entering operator shall provide the department of medicaid written notice of a change of operator if the nursing facility participates in the medicaid program and the entering operator seeks to continue the nursing facility's participation. The written notice shall be provided to the department in accordance with the method specified in rules authorized by section 5165.53 of the Revised Code. The written notice shall be provided to the department not later than forty-five days before the effective date of the change of operator if the change of operator does not entail the relocation of residents. The written notice shall be provided to the department not later than ninety days before the effective date of the change of operator if the change of operator entails the relocation of residents.
(1) The name of the exiting operator and, if any, the exiting operator's authorized agent;
(2) The name of the nursing facility that is the subject of the change of operator;
(3) The exiting operator's seven-digit medicaid legacy number and ten-digit national provider identifier number for the nursing facility that is the subject of the change of operator;
(4) The name of the entering operator;
(5) The effective date of the change of operator;
(6) The manner in which the entering operator becomes the nursing facility's operator, including through sale, lease, merger, or other action;
(7) If the manner in which the entering operator becomes the nursing facility's operator involves more than one step, a description of each step;
(8) Written authorization from the exiting operator or owner and entering operator for the department to process a provider agreement for the entering operator;
(9) The names and addresses of the persons to whom the department should send initial correspondence regarding the change of operator;
(10) If the nursing facility also participates in the medicare program, notification of whether the entering operator intends to accept assignment of the exiting operator's medicare provider agreement;
(11) The signature of the exiting operator's or owner's representative.
(B) An exiting operator or owner and entering operator immediately shall provide the department written notice of any changes to information included in a written notice of a change of operator that occur after that notice is provided to the department. The notice of the changes shall be provided to the department in accordance with the method specified in rules authorized by section 5165.53 of the Revised Code.
5165.511 Agreements with entering operators effective on date of change of operator.
The department of medicaid may enter into a provider agreement with an entering operator that goes into effect at 12:01 a.m. on the effective date of the change of operator if all of the following requirements are met:
(A) The department receives a properly completed written notice required by section 5165.51 of the Revised Code on or before the date required by that section.
(B) The department receives both of the following in accordance with the method specified in rules authorized by section 5165.53 of the Revised Code and not later than ten days after the effective date of the change of operator:
(1) From the entering operator, a completed application for a provider agreement and all other forms and documents specified in rules authorized by section 5165.53 of the Revised Code;
(2) From the exiting operator or owner, all forms and documents specified in rules authorized by section 5165.53 of the Revised Code.
(C) The entering operator is eligible for medicaid payments as provided in section 5165.06 of the Revised Code.
5165.512 Agreements with entering operators effective on a later date.
(A) The department of medicaid may enter into a provider agreement with an entering operator that goes into effect at 12:01 a.m. on the date determined under division (B) of this section if all of the following are the case:
(1) The department receives a properly completed written notice required by section 5165.51 of the Revised Code.
(2) The department receives, from the entering operator and in accordance with the method specified in rules authorized by section 5165.53 of the Revised Code, a completed application for a provider agreement and all other forms and documents specified in rules adopted under that section.
(3) The department receives, from the exiting operator or owner and in accordance with the method specified in rules authorized by section 5165.53 of the Revised Code, all forms and documents specified in rules adopted under that section.
(4) One or more of the following apply:
(a) The requirement of division (A)(1) of this section is met after the time required by section 5165.51 of the Revised Code;
(b) The requirement of division (A)(2) of this section is met more than ten days after the effective date of the change of operator;
(c) The requirement of division (A)(3) of this section is met more than ten days after the effective date of the change of operator.
(5) The entering operator is eligible for medicaid payments as provided in section 5165.06 of the Revised Code.
(B) The department shall determine the date a provider agreement entered into under this section is to go into effect as follows:
(1) The effective date shall give the department sufficient time to process the change of operator, assure no duplicate payments are made, and make the withholding required by section 5165.521 of the Revised Code.
(2) The effective date shall be not earlier than the latest of the following:
(a) The effective date of the change of operator;
(b) The date that the entering operator complies with section 5165.51 of the Revised Code and division (A)(2) of this section;
(c) The date that the exiting operator or owner complies with section 5165.51 of the Revised Code and division (A)(3) of this section.
(3) The effective date shall be not later than the following after the later of the dates specified in division (B)(2) of this section:
(a) Forty-five days if the change of operator does not entail the relocation of residents;
(b) Ninety days if the change of operator entails the relocation of residents.
5165.513 Entering operator duties under provider agreement.
(A) A provider that enters into a provider agreement with the department of medicaid under section 5165.511 or 5165.512 of the Revised Code shall do all of the following:
(1) Comply with all applicable federal statutes and regulations;
(2) Comply with section 5165.07 of the Revised Code and all other applicable state statutes and rules;
(3) Subject to division (B) of this section, comply with all the terms and conditions of the exiting operator's provider agreement, including, but not limited to, all of the following:
(a) Any plan of correction;
(b) Compliance with health and safety standards;
(c) Compliance with the ownership and financial interest disclosure requirements of 42 C.F.R. 455.104, 455.105, and 1002.3;
(d) Compliance with the civil rights requirements of 45 C.F.R. parts 80, 84, and 90;
(e) Compliance with additional requirements imposed by the department;
(f) Any sanctions relating to remedies for violation of the provider agreement, including deficiencies, compliance periods, accountability periods, monetary penalties, notification for correction of contract violations, and history of deficiencies.
(B) Division (A)(3) of this section does not prohibit a nursing facility provider from excluding one or more parts of the nursing facility from the provider agreement pursuant to division (B)(1) of section 5165.08 of the Revised Code.
5165.514 Exiting operator deemed operator pending change.
In the case of a change of operator, the exiting operator shall be considered to be the operator of the nursing facility for purposes of the medicaid program, including medicaid payments, until the effective date of the entering operator's provider agreement if the provider agreement is entered into under section 5165.511 or 5165.512 of the Revised Code.
5165.515 Provider agreement with operator not complying with prior agreement.
The department of medicaid may enter into a provider agreement as provided in section 5165.07 of the Revised Code, rather than section 5165.511 or 5165.512 of the Revised Code, with an entering operator if the entering operator does not agree to a provider agreement that satisfies the requirements of division (A)(3) of section 5165.513 of the Revised Code. The department may not enter into the provider agreement unless the department of health certifies the nursing facility for participation in medicaid. The effective date of the provider agreement shall not precede any of the following:
(A) The date that the department of health certifies the nursing facility;
(B) The effective date of the change of operator;
(C) The date the requirement of section 5165.51 of the Revised Code is satisfied.
5165.516 Medicaid reimbursement adjustments; change of operator.
The medicaid director may adopt rules under section 5165.02 of the Revised Code governing adjustments to the medicaid payment rate for a nursing facility that undergoes a change of operator. No rate adjustment resulting from a change of operator shall be effective before the effective date of the entering operator's provider agreement. This is the case regardless of whether the provider agreement is entered into under section 5165.511, section 5165.512, or, pursuant to section 5165.515, section 5165.07 of the Revised Code.
5165.517 Determination of change of operator for purposes of licensure not controlling.
The department of health's determination that a change of operator has or has not occurred for purposes of licensure under Chapter 3721. of the Revised Code shall not affect the department of medicaid's determination of whether or when a change of operator occurs or the effective date of an entering operator's provider agreement under section 5165.511, section 5165.512, or, pursuant to section 5165.515, section 5165.07 of the Revised Code
Amended by 128th General Assemblych.28, SB 79, §1, eff. 10/6/2009.
5165.52 Overpayment amounts determined following notice of closure, etc.
(A) On receipt of a written notice under section 5165.50 of the Revised Code of a facility closure or voluntary withdrawal of participation, on receipt of a written notice under section 5165.51 of the Revised Code of a change of operator, or on the effective date of an involuntary termination, the department of medicaid shall estimate the amount of any overpayments made under the medicaid program to the exiting operator, including overpayments the exiting operator disputes, and other actual and potential debts the exiting operator owes or may owe to the department and United States centers for medicare and medicaid services under the medicaid program, including a franchise permit fee.
(B) In estimating the exiting operator's other actual and potential debts to the department and the United States centers for medicare and medicaid services under the medicaid program, the department shall use a debt estimation methodology the medicaid director shall establish in rules authorized by section 5165.53 of the Revised Code. The methodology shall provide for estimating all of the following that the department determines are applicable:
(1) Refunds due the department under section 5165.41 of the Revised Code;
(2) Interest owed to the department and United States centers for medicare and medicaid services;
(3) Final civil monetary and other penalties for which all right of appeal has been exhausted;
(4) Money owed the department and United States centers for medicare and medicaid services from any outstanding final fiscal audit, including a final fiscal audit for the last state fiscal year or portion thereof in which the exiting operator participated in the medicaid program;
(5) Other amounts the department determines are applicable.
(C) The department shall provide the exiting operator written notice of the department's estimate under division (A) of this section not later than thirty days after the department receives the notice under section 5165.50 of the Revised Code of the facility closure or voluntary withdrawal of participation; the department receives the notice under section 5165.51 of the Revised Code of the change of operator; or the effective date of the involuntary termination. The department's written notice shall include the basis for the estimate.
5165.521 Withholding amounts owed from medicaid payments to exiting operator.
(A) Except as provided in divisions (B), (C), and (D) of this section, the department of medicaid may withhold from payment due an exiting operator under the medicaid program the total amount specified in the notice provided under division (C) of section 5165.52 of the Revised Code that the exiting operator owes or may owe to the department and United States centers for medicare and medicaid services under the medicaid program.
(B) In the case of a change of operator and subject to division (E) of this section, the following shall apply regarding a withholding under division (A) of this section if the exiting operator or entering operator or an affiliated operator executes a successor liability agreement meeting the requirements of division (F) of this section:
(1) If the exiting operator, entering operator, or affiliated operator assumes liability for the total, actual amount of debt the exiting operator owes the department and the United States centers for medicare and medicaid services under the medicaid program as determined under section 5165.525 of the Revised Code, the department shall not make the withholding.
(2) If the exiting operator, entering operator, or affiliated operator assumes liability for only the portion of the amount specified in division (B)(1) of this section that represents the franchise permit fee the exiting operator owes, the department shall withhold not more than the difference between the total amount specified in the notice provided under division (C) of section 5165.52 of the Revised Code and the amount for which the exiting operator, entering operator, or affiliated operator assumes liability.
(C) In the case of a voluntary withdrawal of participation or facility closure and subject to division (E) of this section, the following shall apply regarding a withholding under division (A) of this section if the exiting operator or an affiliated operator executes a successor liability agreement meeting the requirements of division (F) of this section:
(1) If the exiting operator or affiliated operator assumes liability for the total, actual amount of debt the exiting operator owes the department and the United States centers for medicare and medicaid services under the medicaid program as determined under section 5165.525 of the Revised Code, the department shall not make the withholding.
(2) If the exiting operator or affiliated operator assumes liability for only the portion of the amount specified in division (C)(1) of this section that represents the franchise permit fee the exiting operator owes, the department shall withhold not more than the difference between the total amount specified in the notice provided under division (C) of section 5165.52 of the Revised Code and the amount for which the exiting operator or affiliated operator assumes liability.
(D) In the case of an involuntary termination and subject to division (E) of this section, the following shall apply regarding a withholding under division (A) of this section if the exiting operator, the entering operator, or an affiliated operator executes a successor liability agreement meeting the requirements of division (F) of this section and the department approves the successor liability agreement:
(2) If the exiting operator, entering operator, or affiliated operator assumes liability for only the portion of the amount specified in division (D)(1) of this section that represents the franchise permit fee the exiting operator owes, the department shall withhold not more than the difference between the total amount specified in the notice provided under division (C) of section 5165.52 of the Revised Code and the amount for which the exiting operator, entering operator, or affiliated operator assumes liability.
(E) For an exiting operator or affiliated operator to be eligible to enter into a successor liability agreement under division (B), (C), or (D) of this section, both of the following must apply:
(1) The exiting operator or affiliated operator must have one or more valid provider agreements, other than the provider agreement for the nursing facility that is the subject of the involuntary termination, voluntary withdrawal of participation, facility closure, or change of operator;
(2) During the twelve-month period preceding either the effective date of the involuntary termination or the month in which the department receives the notice of the voluntary withdrawal of participation or facility closure under section 5165.50 of the Revised Code or the notice of the change of operator under section 5165.51 of the Revised Code, the average monthly medicaid payment made to the exiting operator or affiliated operator pursuant to the exiting operator's or affiliated operator's one or more provider agreements, other than the provider agreement for the nursing facility that is the subject of the involuntary termination, voluntary withdrawal of participation, facility closure, or change of operator, must equal at least ninety per cent of the sum of the following:
(a) The average monthly medicaid payment made to the exiting operator pursuant to the exiting operator's provider agreement for the nursing facility that is the subject of the involuntary termination, voluntary withdrawal of participation, facility closure, or change of operator;
(b) Whichever of the following apply:
(i) If the exiting operator or affiliated operator has assumed liability under one or more other successor liability agreements, the total amount for which the exiting operator or affiliated operator has assumed liability under the other successor liability agreements;
(ii) If the exiting operator or affiliated operator has not assumed liability under any other successor liability agreements, zero.
(F) A successor liability agreement executed under this section must comply with all of the following:
(1) It must provide for the operator who executes the successor liability agreement to assume liability for either of the following as specified in the agreement:
(a) The total, actual amount of debt the exiting operator owes the department and the United States centers for medicare and medicaid services under the medicaid program as determined under section 5165.525 of the Revised Code;
(b) The portion of the amount specified in division (F)(1)(a) of this section that represents the franchise permit fee the exiting operator owes.
(2) It may not require the operator who executes the successor liability agreement to furnish a surety bond.
(3) It must provide that the department, after determining under section 5165.525 of the Revised Code the actual amount of debt the exiting operator owes the department and United States centers for medicare and medicaid services under the medicaid program, may deduct the lesser of the following from medicaid payments made to the operator who executes the successor liability agreement:
(b) The amount for which the operator who executes the successor liability agreement assumes liability under the agreement.
(4) It must provide that the deductions authorized by division (F)(3) of this section are to be made for a number of months, not to exceed six, agreed to by the operator who executes the successor liability agreement and the department or, if the operator who executes the successor liability agreement and department cannot agree on a number of months that is less than six, a greater number of months determined by the attorney general pursuant to a claims collection process authorized by statute of this state.
(5) It must provide that, if the attorney general determines the number of months for which the deductions authorized by division (F)(3) of this section are to be made, the operator who executes the successor liability agreement shall pay, in addition to the amount collected pursuant to the attorney general's claims collection process, the part of the amount so collected that, if not for division (H) of this section, would be required by section 109.081 of the Revised Code to be paid into the attorney general claims fund.
(G) Execution of a successor liability agreement does not waive an exiting operator's right to contest the amount specified in the notice the department provides the exiting operator under division (C) of section 5165.52 of the Revised Code.
(H) Notwithstanding section 109.081 of the Revised Code, the entire amount that the attorney general, whether by employees or agents of the attorney general or by special counsel appointed pursuant to section 109.08 of the Revised Code, collects under a successor liability agreement, other than the additional amount the operator who executes the agreement is required by division (F)(5) of this section to pay, shall be paid to the department of medicaid for deposit into the appropriate fund. The additional amount that the operator is required to pay shall be paid into the state treasury to the credit of the attorney general claims fund created under section 109.081 of the Revised Code.
5165.522 Cost report by exiting operator; waiver.
(A) Except as provided in division (B) of this section, an exiting operator shall file with the department of medicaid a cost report not later than ninety days after the last day the exiting operator's provider agreement is in effect or, in the case of a voluntary withdrawal of participation, the effective date of the voluntary withdrawal of participation. The cost report shall cover the period that begins with the day after the last day covered by the operator's most recent previous cost report required by section 5165.10 of the Revised Code and ends on the last day the exiting operator's provider agreement is in effect or, in the case of a voluntary withdrawal of participation, the effective date of the voluntary withdrawal of participation. The cost report shall include, as applicable, all of the following:
(1) The sale price of the nursing facility ;
(2) A final depreciation schedule that shows which assets are transferred to the buyer and which assets are not transferred to the buyer;
(3) Any other information the department requires.
(B) The department, at its sole discretion, may waive the requirement that an exiting operator file a cost report in accordance with division (A) of this section.
5165.523 Failure to file cost report; payments deemed overpayments.
If an exiting operator required by section 5165.522 of the Revised Code to file a cost report with the department of medicaid fails to file the cost report in accordance with that section, all payments under the medicaid program for the period the cost report is required to cover are deemed overpayments until the date the department receives the properly completed cost report. The department may impose on the exiting operator a penalty of one hundred dollars for each calendar day the properly completed cost report is late.
5165.524 Final payment withheld pending receipt of cost reports.
The department of medicaid may not provide an exiting operator final payment under the medicaid program until the department receives all properly completed cost reports the exiting operator is required to file under sections 5165.10 and 5165.522 of the Revised Code.
5165.525 Determination of debt of exiting operator; summary report.
The department of medicaid shall determine the actual amount of debt an exiting operator owes the department and the United States centers for medicare and medicaid services under the medicaid program by completing all final fiscal audits not already completed and performing all other appropriate actions the department determines to be necessary. The department shall issue an initial debt summary report on this matter not later than sixty days after the date the exiting operator files the properly completed cost report required by section 5165.522 of the Revised Code with the department or, if the department waives the cost report requirement for the exiting operator, sixty days after the date the department waives the cost report requirement. The initial debt summary report becomes the final debt summary report thirty-one days after the department issues the initial debt summary report unless the exiting operator, or an affiliated operator who executes a successor liability agreement under section 5165.521 of the Revised Code, requests a review before that date.
The exiting operator, and an affiliated operator who executes a successor liability agreement under section 5165.521 of the Revised Code, may request a review to contest any of the department's findings included in the initial debt summary report. The request for the review must be submitted to the department not later than thirty days after the date the department issues the initial debt summary report. The department shall conduct the review on receipt of a timely request and issue a revised debt summary report. If the department has withheld money from payment due the exiting operator under division (A) of section 5165.521 of the Revised Code, the department shall issue the revised debt summary report not later than ninety days after the date the department receives the timely request for the review unless the department and exiting operator or affiliated operator agree to a later date. The exiting operator or affiliated operator may submit information to the department explaining what the operator contests before and during the review, including documentation of the amount of any debt the department owes the operator. The exiting operator or affiliated operator may submit additional information to the department not later than thirty days after the department issues the revised debt summary report. The revised debt summary report becomes the final debt summary report thirty-one days after the department issues the revised debt summary report unless the exiting operator or affiliated operator timely submits additional information to the department. If the exiting operator or affiliated operator timely submits additional information to the department, the department shall consider the additional information and issue a final debt summary report not later than sixty days after the department issues the revised debt summary report unless the department and exiting operator or affiliated operator agree to a later date.
Each debt summary report the department issues under this section shall include the department's findings and the amount of debt the department determines the exiting operator owes the department and United States centers for medicare and medicaid services under the medicaid program. The department shall explain its findings and determination in each debt summary report.
The exiting operator, and an affiliated operator who executes a successor liability agreement under section 5165.521 of the Revised Code, may request, in accordance with Chapter 119. of the Revised Code, an adjudication regarding a finding in a final debt summary report that pertains to an audit or alleged overpayment made under the medicaid program to the exiting operator. The adjudication shall be consolidated with any other uncompleted adjudication that concerns a matter addressed in the final debt summary report.
5165.526 Release of amount withheld less amounts owed.
The department of medicaid shall release the actual amount withheld under division (A) of section 5165.521 of the Revised Code, less any amount the exiting operator owes the department and United States centers for medicare and medicaid services under the medicaid program, as follows:
(A) Unless the department issues the initial debt summary report required by section 5165.525 of the Revised Code not later than sixty days after the date the exiting operator files the properly completed cost report required by section 5165.522 of the Revised Code, sixty-one days after the date the exiting operator files the properly completed cost report;
(B) If the department issues the initial debt summary report required by section 5165.525 of the Revised Code not later than sixty days after the date the exiting operator files a properly completed cost report required by section 5165.522 of the Revised Code, not later than the following:
(1) Thirty days after the deadline for requesting an adjudication under section 5165.525 of the Revised Code regarding the final debt summary report if the exiting operator, and an affiliated operator who executes a successor liability agreement under section 5165.521 of the Revised Code, fail to request the adjudication on or before the deadline;
(2) Thirty days after the completion of an adjudication of the final debt summary report if the exiting operator, or an affiliated operator who executes a successor liability agreement under section 5165.521 of the Revised Code, requests the adjudication on or before the deadline for requesting the adjudication.
(C) Unless the department issues the initial debt summary report required by section 5165.525 of the Revised Code not later than sixty days after the date the department waives the cost report requirement of section 5165.522 of the Revised Code, sixty-one days after the date the department waives the cost report requirement;
(D) If the department issues the initial debt summary report required by section 5165.525 of the Revised Code not later than sixty days after the date the department waives the cost report requirement of section 5165.522 of the Revised Code, not later than the following:
5165.527 Release of amount withheld on postponement of change of operator.
The department of medicaid, at its sole discretion, may release the amount withheld under division (A) of section 5165.521 of the Revised Code if the exiting operator submits to the department written notice of a postponement of a change of operator, facility closure, or voluntary withdrawal of participation and the transactions leading to the change of operator, facility closure, or voluntary withdrawal of participation are postponed for at least thirty days but less than ninety days after the date originally proposed for the change of operator, facility closure, or voluntary withdrawal of participation as reported in the written notice required by section 5165.50 or 5165.51 of the Revised Code. The department shall release the amount withheld if the exiting operator submits to the department written notice of a cancellation or postponement of a change of operator, facility closure, or voluntary withdrawal of participation and the transactions leading to the change of operator, facility closure, or voluntary withdrawal of participation are canceled or postponed for more than ninety days after the date originally proposed for the change of operator, facility closure, or voluntary withdrawal of participation as reported in the written notice required by section 5165.50 or 5165.51 of the Revised Code. A written notice shall be provided to the department in accordance with the method specified in rules authorized by section 5165.53 of the Revised Code.
After the department receives a written notice regarding a cancellation or postponement of a facility closure or voluntary withdrawal of participation, the exiting operator or owner shall provide new written notice to the department under section 5165.50 of the Revised Code regarding any transactions leading to a facility closure or voluntary withdrawal of participation at a future time. After the department receives a written notice regarding a cancellation or postponement of a change of operator, the exiting operator or owner and entering operator shall provide new written notice to the department under section 5165.51 of the Revised Code regarding any transactions leading to a change of operator at a future time.
5165.528 Disposition of amounts withheld from payment due an exiting operator.
(A) All amounts withheld under section 5165.521 of the Revised Code from payment due an exiting operator under the medicaid program shall be deposited into the medicaid payment withholding fund created by the controlling board pursuant to section 131.35 of the Revised Code. Money in the fund shall be used as follows:
(1) To pay an exiting operator when a withholding is released to the exiting operator under section 5165.526 or 5165.527 of the Revised Code;
(2) To pay the department of medicaid and United States centers for medicare and medicaid services the amount an exiting operator owes the department and United States centers under the medicaid program.
(B) Amounts paid from the medicaid payment withholding fund pursuant to division (A)(2) of this section shall be deposited into the appropriate department fund.
Former section 5111.688 amended and renumbered as § 5111.6891 by 128th General AssemblyFile No.33, HB 398, §1, eff. 8/31/2010. .
5165.53 Adoption of rules regarding change in operators.
The medicaid director shall adopt rules under section 5165.02 of the Revised Code to implement sections 5165.50 to 5165.53 of the Revised Code, including rules applicable to an exiting operator that provides written notification under section 5165.50 of the Revised Code of a voluntary withdrawal of participation. Rules adopted under this section shall comply with the "Social Security Act," section 1919(c)(2)(F), 42 U.S.C. 1396r(c)(2)(F), regarding restrictions on transfers or discharges of nursing facility residents in the case of a voluntary withdrawal of participation. The rules may prescribe a medicaid payment methodology and other procedures that are applicable after the effective date of a voluntary withdrawal of participation that differ from the payment methodology and other procedures that would otherwise apply. The rules shall specify all of the following:
(A) The method by which written notices to the department required by sections 5165.50 to 5165.53 of the Revised Code are to be provided;
(B) The forms and documents that are to be provided to the department of medicaid under sections 5165.511 and 5165.512 of the Revised Code, which shall include, in the case of such forms and documents provided by entering operators, all the fully executed leases, management agreements, merger agreements and supporting documents, and fully executed sales contracts and any other supporting documents culminating in the change of operator;
(C) The method by which the forms and documents identified in division (B) of this section are to be provided to the department.
Amended and renumbered from § 5111.6881 by 128th General AssemblyFile No.33, HB 398, §1, eff. 8/31/2010.
5165.60 Definitions for sections 5165.60 to 5165.89.
As used in this section, "a resident's rights" means the rights of a nursing facility resident under sections 3721.10 to 3721.17 of the Revised Code , the "Social Security Act," sections 1819(c) and 1919(c), 42 U.S.C. 1395i-3(c) and 1396r(c), and federal regulations issued under those sections of the "Social Security Act."
As used in sections 5165.60 to 5165.89 of the Revised Code:
(A) "Certification requirements" means the requirements for nursing facilities established under the "Social Security Act," sections 1819 and 1919, 42 U.S.C. 1395i-3 and 1396r.
(B) "Compliance" means substantially meeting all applicable certification requirements.
(C) "Contracting agency" means a state agency that has entered into a contract with the department of medicaid under section 5165.63 of the Revised Code.
(1) "Deficiency" means a finding cited by the department of health during a survey, on the basis of one or more actions, practices, situations, or incidents occurring at a nursing facility, that constitutes a severity level three finding, severity level four finding, scope level three finding, or scope level four finding. Whenever the finding is a repeat finding, "deficiency" also includes any finding that is a severity level two and scope level one finding, a severity level two and scope level two finding, or a severity level one and scope level two finding.
(2) "Cluster of deficiencies" means deficiencies that result from noncompliance with two or more certification requirements and are causing or resulting from the same action, practice, situation, or incident.
(E) "Emergency" means either of the following:
(1) A deficiency or cluster of deficiencies that creates a condition of immediate jeopardy;
(2) An unexpected situation or sudden occurrence of a serious or urgent nature that creates a substantial likelihood that one or more residents of a nursing facility may be seriously harmed if allowed to remain in the facility, including the following:
(a) A flood or other natural disaster, civil disaster, or similar event;
(b) A labor strike that suddenly causes the number of staff members in a nursing facility to be below that necessary for resident care.
(F) "Finding" means a finding of noncompliance with certification requirements determined by the department of health under section 5165.66 of the Revised Code.
(G) "Immediate jeopardy" means that one or more residents of a nursing facility are in imminent danger of serious physical or life-threatening harm.
(H) "Medicaid eligible resident" means a person who is a resident of a nursing facility, or is applying for admission to a nursing facility, and is eligible for nursing facility services under the medicaid program .
(I) "Noncompliance" means failure to substantially meet all applicable certification requirements.
(J) "Nursing facility" includes a skilled nursing facility to the extent the context requires.
(K)
"Repeat finding" or "repeat deficiency" means a finding or deficiency cited pursuant to a survey, to which both of the following apply:
(1) The finding or deficiency involves noncompliance with the same certification requirement, and the same kind of actions, practices, situations, or incidents caused by or resulting from the noncompliance, as were cited in the immediately preceding standard survey or another survey conducted subsequent to the immediately preceding standard survey of the facility. For purposes of this division, actions, practices, situations, or incidents may be of the same kind even though they involve different residents, staff, or parts of the facility.
(2) The finding or deficiency is cited subsequent to a determination by the department of health that the finding or deficiency cited on the immediately preceding standard survey, or another survey conducted subsequent to the immediately preceding standard survey, had been corrected.
(1) "Scope level one finding" means a finding of noncompliance by a nursing facility in which the actions, situations, practices, or incidents causing or resulting from the noncompliance affect one or a very limited number of facility residents and involve one or a very limited number of facility staff members.
(2) "Scope level two finding" means a finding of noncompliance by a nursing facility in which the actions, situations, practices, or incidents causing or resulting from the noncompliance affect more than a limited number of facility residents or involve more than a limited number of facility staff members, but the number or percentage of facility residents affected or staff members involved and the number or frequency of the actions, situations, practices, or incidents in short succession does not establish any reasonable degree of predictability of similar actions, situations, practices, or incidents occurring in the future.
(3) "Scope level three finding" means a finding of noncompliance by a nursing facility in which the actions, situations, practices, or incidents causing or resulting from the noncompliance affect more than a limited number of facility residents or involve more than a limited number of facility staff members, and the number or percentage of facility residents affected or staff members involved or the number or frequency of the actions, situations, practices, or incidents in short succession establishes a reasonable degree of predictability of similar actions, situations, practices, or incidents occurring in the future.
(4) "Scope level four finding" means a finding of noncompliance by a nursing facility causing or resulting from actions, situations, practices, or incidents that involve a sufficient number or percentage of facility residents or staff members or occur with sufficient regularity over time that the noncompliance can be considered systemic or pervasive in the facility.
(1) "Severity level one finding" means a finding of noncompliance by a nursing facility that has not caused and, if continued, is unlikely to cause physical harm to a facility resident, mental or emotional harm to a resident, or a violation of a resident's rights that results in physical, mental, or emotional harm to the resident.
(2) "Severity level two finding" means a finding of noncompliance by a nursing facility that, if continued over time, will cause, or is likely to cause, physical harm to a facility resident, mental or emotional harm to a resident, or a violation of a resident's rights that results in physical, mental, or emotional harm to the resident.
(3) "Severity level three finding" means a finding of noncompliance by a nursing facility that has caused physical harm to a facility resident, mental or emotional harm to a resident, or a violation of a resident's rights that results in physical, mental, or emotional harm to the resident.
(4) "Severity level four finding" means a finding of noncompliance by a nursing facility that has caused life-threatening harm to a facility resident or caused a resident's death.
(N) "State agency" has the same meaning as in section 1.60 of the Revised Code.
(O) "Substandard care" means care furnished in a facility in which the department of health has cited a deficiency or deficiencies that constitute one of the following:
(1) A severity level four finding, regardless of scope;
(2) A severity level three and scope level four finding, in the quality of care provided to residents;
(3) A severity level three and scope level three finding, in the quality of care provided to residents.
(1) "Survey" means a survey of a nursing facility conducted under section 5165.64 of the Revised Code.
(2) "Standard survey" means a survey conducted by the department of health under division (A) of section 5165.64 of the Revised Code and includes an extended survey.
(3) "Follow-up survey" means a survey conducted by the department of health to determine whether a nursing facility has substantially corrected deficiencies cited in a previous survey.
5165.61 Adoption of rules.
The medicaid director may adopt rules under section 5165.02 of the Revised Code that are consistent with regulations, guidelines, and procedures issued by the United States secretary of health and human services under the "Social Security Act," sections 1819 and 1919, 42 U.S.C. 1395i-3 and 1396r, and necessary for administration and enforcement of sections 5165.60 to 5165.89 of the Revised Code. If the secretary does not issue appropriate regulations for enforcement of those sections of the "Social Security Act" on or before December 13, 1990, the medicaid director may adopt, under section 5165.02 of the Revised Code, rules that are consistent with those sections and with sections 5165.60 to 5165.89 of the Revised Code.
5165.62 Enforcement of provisions.
The department of medicaid is hereby authorized to enforce sections 5165.60 to 5165.89 of the Revised Code. The department may enforce the sections directly or through contracting agencies. The department and agencies shall enforce the sections in accordance with the requirements of the "Social Security Act," sections 1819 and 1919, 42 U.S.C. 1395i-3 and 1396r, that apply to nursing facilities; with regulations, guidelines, and procedures adopted by the United States secretary of health and human services for the enforcement of those sections of the "Social Security Act"; and with the rules authorized by section 5165.61 of the Revised Code. The department and agencies shall enforce sections 5165.60 to 5165.89 of the Revised Code for purposes of the medicare program only to the extent prescribed by the regulations, guidelines, and procedures issued by the secretary under the "Social Security Act," section 1819, 42 U.S.C. 1395i-3.
5165.63 Contracts with state agencies for enforcement.
The department of medicaid may enter into contracts with other state agencies pursuant to section 5162.35 of the Revised Code that authorize the agencies to perform all or part of the duties assigned to the department of medicaid under sections 5165.60 to 5165.89 of the Revised Code. Each contract shall specify the duties the agency is authorized to perform and the sections of the Revised Code under which the agency is authorized to perform those duties.
5165.64 Annual standard surveys.
(A) The department of health shall conduct a survey, titled a standard survey, of every nursing facility in this state on a statewide average of not more than once every twelve months. Each nursing facility shall undergo a standard survey at least once every fifteen months as a condition of meeting certification requirements. The department may extend a standard survey; such a survey is titled an extended survey.
(B) The department may conduct surveys in addition to standard surveys when it considers them necessary.
(C) The department shall conduct surveys in accordance with the regulations, guidelines, and procedures issued by the United States secretary of health and human services under Title XVIII and Title XIX , sections 5165.65 to 5165.68 of the Revised Code, and rules adopted under section 3721.022 of the Revised Code.
5165.65 Exit interview with administrator.
(A) A department of health survey team shall conclude each survey of a nursing facility not later than one business day after the survey team ceases to need to be on site at the facility for the survey. Not later than the day that the survey team concludes the survey, the survey team shall conduct an exit interview with the administrator or other person in charge of the facility and any other facility staff members designated by the administrator or person in charge of the facility. During the exit interview, at the request of the administrator or other person in charge of the facility, the survey team shall provide one of the following, as selected by the survey team:
(1) Copies of all survey notes and any other written materials created during the survey;
(2) A written summary of the survey team's recommendations regarding findings of noncompliance with certification requirements;
(3) An audio or audiovisual recording of the interview. If the survey team selects this option, at least two copies of the recording shall be made and the survey team shall select one copy to be kept by the survey team for use by the department of health.
(B) All expenses of copying under division (A)(1) of this section or recording under division (A)(3) of this section, including the cost of the copy of the recording kept by the survey team, shall be paid by the facility.
5165.66 Citations for failure to comply with one or more certification requirements.
(A) Except as provided in section 3721.17 of the Revised Code, a finding shall be cited only on the basis of a survey and a determination that one or more actions, practices, situations, or incidents at a nursing facility caused or resulted from the facility's failure to comply with one or more certification requirements. The department of health shall determine whether the actions, practices, situations, or incidents can be justified by either of the following:
(1) The actions, practices, situations, or incidents resulted from a resident exercising the resident's rights guaranteed under the laws of the United States or of this state;
(2) The actions, practices, situations, or incidents resulted from a facility following the orders of a person licensed under Chapter 4731. of the Revised Code to practice medicine or surgery or osteopathic medicine and surgery.
(B) If the department of health determines both that the actions, practices, situations, or incidents cannot be justified by the factors identified in division (A) of this section and that one or more of the following are applicable, the department shall declare that the actions, practices, situations, or incidents constitute a finding:
(1) The actions, practices, situations, or incidents could have been prevented by one or more persons involved in the facility's operation;
(2) No person involved in the facility's operation identified the actions, practices, situations, or incidents prior to the survey;
(3) Prior to the survey, no person involved in the facility's operation initiated action to correct the noncompliance caused by or resulting in the actions, practices, situations, or incidents;
(4) The facility does not have in effect, if needed, a contingency plan that is reasonably calculated to prevent physical, mental, or emotional harm to residents while permanent corrective action is being taken.
(C) The department of health shall determine the severity level and scope level of each finding.
(D) A deficiency that is substantially corrected within the time limits specified in sections 5165.79 to 5165.83 of the Revised Code and for which no remedy is imposed, shall be counted as a deficiency for the purpose of determining whether a deficiency is a repeat deficiency.
(E) Whenever the department of health determines that during the period between two surveys a finding existed at the facility, but the facility substantially corrected it prior to the second survey, the department shall cite it. However, the department of medicaid or a contracting agency shall impose a remedy only as provided in division (C) of section 5165.72 of the Revised Code.
(F) Immediately upon determining the severity and scope of a finding at a nursing facility, the department of health shall notify the department of medicaid and any contracting agency of the finding, the severity and scope of the finding, and whether the finding creates immediate jeopardy. Immediately upon determining that an emergency exists at a facility that does not result from a deficiency that creates immediate jeopardy, the department of health shall notify the department of medicaid and any contracting agency.
5165.67 Survey results.
The results of a survey of a nursing facility that is conducted under section 5165.64 of the Revised Code, including any statement of deficiencies and all findings and deficiencies cited in the statement on the basis of the survey, shall be used solely to determine the nursing facility's compliance with certification requirements or with this chapter or another chapter of the Revised Code. Those results of a survey, that statement of deficiencies, and the findings and deficiencies cited in that statement shall not be used in either of the following:
(A) Any court or in any action or proceeding that is pending in any court and are not admissible in evidence in any action or proceeding unless that action or proceeding is an appeal of an administrative action by the department of medicaid or contracting agency under this chapter or is an action by any department or agency of the state to enforce this chapter or another chapter of the Revised Code;
(B) An advertisement, unless the advertisement includes all of the following:
(1) The date the survey was conducted;
(2) A statement that the department of health conducts a survey of all nursing facilities at least once every fifteen months;
(3) If a finding or deficiency cited in the statement of deficiencies has been substantially corrected, a statement that the finding or deficiency has been substantially corrected and the date that the finding or deficiency was substantially corrected;
(4) The number of findings and deficiencies cited in the statement of deficiencies on the basis of the survey;
(5) The average number of findings and deficiencies cited in a statement of deficiencies on the basis of a survey conducted under section 5165.64 of the Revised Code during the same calendar year as the survey used in the advertisement;
(6) A statement that the advertisement is neither authorized nor endorsed by the department or any other government agency.
Nothing in this section prohibits the results of a survey, a statement of deficiencies, or the findings and deficiencies cited in that statement on the basis of the survey under this section from being used in a criminal investigation or prosecution.
Amended by 130th General Assembly File No. TBD, HB 290, §1, eff. 3/23/2015.
5165.68 Statement of deficiencies.
(A) Not later than ten days after an exit interview, including an exit interview at which a department of health survey team discloses a finding that immediate jeopardy exists, the department of health shall deliver to the nursing facility a detailed statement, titled a statement of deficiencies, setting forth all findings and deficiencies cited on the basis of the survey, including any finding cited pursuant to division (E) of section 5165.66 of the Revised Code. The statement shall indicate the severity and scope level of each finding and fully describe the incidents or other facts that form the basis of the department's determination of the existence of each finding and deficiency. A failure by the survey team to completely disclose in the exit interview every finding that may result from the survey does not affect the validity of any finding or deficiency cited in the statement of deficiencies. On request of the facility, the department shall provide a copy of any written worksheet or other document produced by the survey team in making recommendations regarding scope and severity levels of findings and deficiencies.
(B) At the same time the department of health delivers a statement of deficiencies, it also shall deliver to the facility a separate written notice that states all of the following:
(1) That the department of medicaid or a contracting agency will issue an order under section 5165.84 of the Revised Code denying payment for any medicaid eligible residents admitted on and after the effective date of the order if the facility does not substantially correct, within ninety days after the exit interview, the deficiency or deficiencies cited in the statement of deficiencies in accordance with the plan of correction it submitted under section 5165.69 of the Revised Code;
(2) If a condition of substandard care has been cited on the basis of a standard survey and a condition of substandard care was also cited on the immediately preceding standard survey, that the department of medicaid or a contracting agency will issue an order under section 5165.84 of the Revised Code denying payment for any medicaid eligible residents admitted on and after the effective date of the order if a condition of substandard care is cited on the basis of the next standard survey;
(3) That the department of medicaid or a contracting agency will issue an order under section 5165.88 of the Revised Code terminating the facility's participation in the medicaid program if either of the following applies:
(a) The facility does not substantially correct the deficiency or deficiencies in accordance with the plan of correction it submitted under section 5165.69 of the Revised Code within six months after the exit interview.
(b) The facility substantially corrects the deficiency or deficiencies within the six-month period, but after correcting it, the department of health, based on a follow-up survey conducted during the remainder of the six-month period, determines that the facility has failed to maintain compliance with certification requirements.
5165.69 Plan of correction.
(A) Whenever a nursing facility receives a statement of deficiencies under section 5165.68 of the Revised Code, the facility shall submit to the department of health for its approval a plan of correction for each finding cited in the statement. The plan shall include all of the following:
(1) Detailed descriptions of the actions the facility will take to correct each finding , including actions the facility will take to protect residents situated similarly to the residents affected by the causes of the findings;
(2) The date by which each finding will be corrected;
(3) A detailed description of an ongoing monitoring and improvement process to be used at the facility that is focused on preventing any recurrence of the causes of the findings;
(4) If the plan concerns a finding assigned a severity level indicating that a resident was harmed or immediate jeopardy exists, all of the following:
(a) Detailed analyses of the facts and circumstances of the finding, including identification of its cause;
(b) A detailed explanation of how the corrective actions described pursuant to division (A)(1) of this section relate to the cause of the finding identified pursuant to division (A)(4)(a) of this section;
(c) A detailed explanation of the relationship between the ongoing monitoring and improvement process described pursuant to division (A)(3) of this section and the cause of the finding identified pursuant to division (A)(4)(a) of this section.
(5) If the plan concerns a finding cited pursuant to division (E) of section 5165.66 of the Revised Code, a description of the actions the facility took to correct the finding and the date on which it was corrected.
(1) The department shall approve any plan, and any modification of an existing plan a nursing facility submits to the department, that does both of the following:
(a) Conforms to the requirements for approval of plans of corrections, and modifications, established in the regulations, guidelines, and procedures issued by the United States secretary of health and human services under Title XVIII and Title XIX ;
(b) Includes all the information required by division (A) of this section.
(2) The department may consult with the department of medicaid, department of aging, and office of the state long-term care ombudsman program when determining whether a plan, or modification of an existing plan, to which division (A)(4) of this section applies conforms to the requirements for approval. The department of health has sole authority to make the determination regardless of whether it consults with the other departments or office. The department shall not reject a facility's plan of correction or modification on the ground that the facility disputes the finding, if the plan or modification is reasonably calculated to correct the finding.
(C) A facility that complies with this section shall not be considered to have admitted the existence of a finding cited by the department.
5165.70 On-site monitoring.
The department of health may appoint employees of the department to conduct on-site monitoring of a nursing facility whenever a finding is cited, including any finding cited pursuant to division (E) of section 5165.66 of the Revised Code, or an emergency is found to exist. Appointment of monitors under this section is not subject to appeal under section 5165.87 or any other section of the Revised Code. No employee of a facility for which monitors are appointed, no person employed by the facility within the previous two years, and no person who currently has a consulting or other contract with the department or the facility, shall be appointed as a monitor under this section. Every monitor appointed under this section shall have the professional qualifications necessary to monitor correction of the finding or elimination of the emergency.
5165.71 Deficiencies not substantially corrected.
(A) If the department of health cites a deficiency or deficiencies that was not substantially corrected before a survey and that does not constitute a severity level four finding or create immediate jeopardy, the department of medicaid or a contracting agency shall permit the nursing facility to continue participating in the medicaid program for up to six months after the exit interview, if all of the following apply:
(1) The facility meets the requirements, established in regulations issued by the United States secretary of health and human services under Title XIX for certification of nursing facilities that have a deficiency.
(2) The department of health has approved a plan of correction submitted by the facility under section 5165.69 of the Revised Code for each deficiency.
(3) The provider agrees to repay the department of medicaid, in accordance with section 5165.85 of the Revised Code, the federal share of all payments made by the department to the facility during the six-month period following the exit interview if the facility does not within the six-month period substantially correct the deficiency or deficiencies in accordance with the plan of correction submitted under section 5165.69 of the Revised Code.
(B) If any of the conditions in divisions (A)(1) to (3) of this section do not apply, the department of medicaid or contracting agency shall issue an order terminating the facility's participation in the medicaid program. An order issued under this division is subject to appeal under Chapter 119. of the Revised Code. The order shall not take effect prior to the later of the thirtieth day after it is delivered to the facility or, if the order is appealed, the date on which a final adjudication order upholding the termination becomes effective pursuant to Chapter 119. of the Revised Code.
(C) At the time the department of medicaid or contracting agency issues an order under division (B) of this section terminating a nursing facility's participation in the medicaid program, it may also impose, subject to section 5165.76 of the Revised Code, other remedies under sections 5165.72 to 5165.74 of the Revised Code.
5165.72 Uncorrected deficiencies constituting severity level four findings.
(A) If the department of health cites a deficiency, or cluster of deficiencies, that was not substantially corrected before a survey and constitutes a severity level four finding, the department of medicaid or contracting agency shall, subject to sections 5165.79 to 5165.83 of the Revised Code, impose a remedy for the deficiency or cluster of deficiencies. The department or agency may act under either division (A)(1) or (2) of this section:
(1) The department or agency may impose one or more of the following remedies:
(a) Issue an order terminating the nursing facility's participation in the medicaid program.
(b) Do either of the following:
(i) Regardless of whether the provider consents, appoint a temporary manager of the facility.
(ii) Apply to the common pleas court of the county in which the facility is located for such injunctive or other equitable relief as is necessary for the appointment of a special master with such powers and authority over the facility and length of appointment as the court considers necessary.
(c) Do either of the following:
(i) Issue an order denying medicaid payments to the facility for all medicaid eligible residents admitted after the effective date of the order;
(ii) Impose a fine.
(d) Issue an order denying medicaid payments to the facility for medicaid eligible residents admitted after the effective date of the order who have certain diagnoses or special care needs specified by the department or agency.
(a) Appoint, subject to the continuing consent of the provider, a temporary manager of the facility;
(i) Regardless of whether the provider consents, appoint a temporary manager of the facility;
(d) Issue an order denying medicaid payments to the facility for medicaid eligible residents admitted after the effective date of the order who have certain diagnoses or special care needs specified by the department or agency;
(e) Issue an order requiring the facility to correct the deficiency or cluster of deficiencies under the plan of correction submitted by the facility and approved by the department of health under section 5165.69 of the Revised Code.
(B) The department of medicaid or contracting agency shall deliver a written order issued under division (A)(1) of this section terminating a nursing facility's participation in the medicaid program to the facility within five days after the exit interview. If the facility alleges, at any time prior to the later of the twentieth day after the exit interview or the fifteenth day after it receives the order, that the deficiency or cluster of deficiencies for which the order was issued has been substantially corrected, the department of health shall conduct a follow-up survey to determine whether the deficiency or cluster of deficiencies has been substantially corrected. The order shall take effect and the facility's participation shall terminate on the twentieth day after the exit interview, unless the facility has substantially corrected the deficiency or cluster of deficiencies that constituted a severity level four finding or did not receive notice from the department of medicaid or contracting agency within five days after the exit interview. In the latter case, the order shall take effect and the facility's participation shall terminate on the fifteenth day after the facility received the order.
(C) If the department of health cites a deficiency or cluster of deficiencies pursuant to division (E) of section 5165.66 of the Revised Code that constituted a severity level four finding, the department of medicaid or a contracting agency shall, subject to section 5165.83 of the Revised Code, impose a fine. The fine shall be in effect for a period equal to the number of days the deficiency or cluster of deficiencies existed at the facility.
5165.73 Uncorrected deficiencies constituting severity level three and scope level three or four findings.
If the department of health cites a deficiency, or cluster of deficiencies, that was not substantially corrected before a survey and constitutes a severity level three and scope level three or four finding, the department of medicaid or a contracting agency may, subject to sections 5165.82 and 5165.83 of the Revised Code, impose one or more of the following remedies:
(A) Do either of the following:
(1) Issue an order denying medicaid payments to the facility for all medicaid eligible residents admitted after the effective date of the order;
(2) Impose a fine.
(B) Issue an order denying medicaid payments to the facility for medicaid eligible residents admitted after the effective date of the order who have certain diagnoses or special care needs specified by the department or agency;
(C) Issue an order requiring the facility to correct the deficiency or cluster of deficiencies under the plan of correction submitted by the facility and approved by the department of health under section 5165.69 of the Revised Code.
5165.74 Uncorrected deficiencies constituting severity level one or two or severity level three, scope level two finding.
(A) If the department of health cites a deficiency, or cluster of deficiencies, that was not substantially corrected before a survey and constitutes a severity level three and scope level two finding, the department of medicaid or a contracting agency may, subject to sections 5165.82 and 5165.83 of the Revised Code, impose one or more of the following remedies:
(1) Do either of the following:
(a) Issue an order denying medicaid payments to the facility for all medicaid eligible residents admitted after the effective date of the order;
(b) Impose a fine.
(2) Issue an order denying medicaid payments to the facility for medicaid eligible residents admitted after the effective date of the order who have certain diagnoses or special care needs specified by the department or agency;
(3) Issue an order requiring the facility to correct the deficiency or cluster of deficiencies under the plan of correction proposed by the facility and approved by the department of health under section 5165.69 of the Revised Code.
(B) If the department of health cites a deficiency, or cluster of deficiencies, that was not substantially corrected before a survey and constitutes a severity level three and scope level one finding, the department of medicaid or a contracting agency may, subject to sections 5165.82 and 5165.83 of the Revised Code, impose one or more of the following remedies:
(1) Impose a fine;
(C) If the department of health cites a deficiency, or cluster of deficiencies, that was not substantially corrected before a survey and constitutes a severity level two and a scope level three or four finding, the department of medicaid or a contracting agency may, subject to sections 5165.82 and 5165.83 of the Revised Code, impose one or more of the following remedies:
(3) Issue an order requiring the facility to correct the deficiency or cluster of deficiencies under the plan of correction submitted by the facility and approved by the department of health under section 5165.69 of the Revised Code.
(D) If the department of health cites a deficiency, or cluster of deficiencies, that was not substantially corrected before a survey, constitutes a severity level two and scope level one or two finding, and is a repeat finding, the department of medicaid or a contracting agency may issue an order requiring the facility to correct the deficiency or cluster of deficiencies under the plan of correction submitted by the facility and approved by the department of health under section 5165.69 of the Revised Code.
(E) If the department of health cites a deficiency, or cluster of deficiencies, that was not substantially corrected before a survey and constitutes a severity level one and scope level three or four finding, the department of medicaid or a contracting agency may issue an order requiring the facility to correct the deficiency or cluster of deficiencies under the plan of correction submitted by the facility and approved by the department of health under section 5165.69 of the Revised Code.
(F) If the department of health cites a deficiency, or cluster of deficiencies, that was not substantially corrected before a survey, constitutes a severity level one and scope level two finding, and is a repeat finding, the department of medicaid or a contracting agency may issue an order requiring the facility to correct the deficiency or cluster of deficiencies under the plan of correction submitted by the facility and approved by the department of health under section 5165.69 of the Revised Code.
5165.75 Imposing remedies and fines.
(A) In determining which remedies to impose under section 5165.72, 5165.73, or 5165.74 of the Revised Code, including whether a fine should be imposed, the department of medicaid or a contracting agency shall do both of the following:
(1) Impose the remedies that are most likely to achieve correction of deficiencies, encourage sustained compliance with certification requirements, and protect the health, safety, and rights of facility residents, but that are not directed at punishment of the facility;
(2) Consider all of the following:
(a) The presence or absence of immediate jeopardy;
(b) The relationships of groups of deficiencies to each other;
(c) The facility's history of compliance with certification requirements generally and in the specific area of the deficiency or deficiencies;
(d) Whether the deficiency or deficiencies are directly related to resident care;
(e) The corrective, long-term compliance, resident protective, and nonpunitive outcomes sought by the department or agency;
(f) The nature, scope, and duration of the noncompliance with certification requirements;
(g) The existence of repeat deficiencies;
(h) The category of certification requirements with which the facility is out of compliance;
(i) Any period of noncompliance with certification requirements that occurred between two certifications by the department of health that the facility was in compliance with certification requirements;
(j) The facility's degree of culpability;
(k) The accuracy, extent, and availability of facility records;
(l) The facility's financial condition, exclusive of any moneys donated to a facility that is an organization described in subsection 501(c)(3) and is tax exempt under subsection 501(a) of the "Internal Revenue Code of 1986," 100 Stat. 2085, 26 U.S.C.A. 1;
(m) Any adverse effect that the action or fine would have on the health and safety of facility residents;
(n) If the noncompliance that resulted in the citation of a deficiency or cluster of deficiencies existed before a change in ownership of the facility, whether the new owner or owners have had sufficient time to correct the noncompliance.
(B) Whenever the department or agency imposes remedies under section 5165.72, 5165.73, or 5165.74 of the Revised Code, it shall provide a written statement to the nursing facility that specifies all of the following:
(1) The effective date of each remedy;
(2) The deficiency or cluster of deficiencies for which each remedy is imposed;
(3) The severity and scope of the deficiency or cluster of deficiencies;
(4) The rationale, including all applicable factors specified in division (A) of this section, for imposing the remedies.
5165.76 Fine collected if termination order does not take effect.
At the time the department of medicaid or a contracting agency, under section 5165.71, 5165.72, or 5165.77 of the Revised Code, issues an order terminating a nursing facility's participation in the medicaid program, the department or agency may also impose a fine, in accordance with sections 5165.72 to 5165.74 and 5165.83 of the Revised Code, to be collected in the event the termination order does not take effect. The department or agency shall not collect this fine if the termination order takes effect.
5165.77 Emergency remedies.
(A) If the department of health finds during a survey that an emergency exists at a nursing facility, as the result of a deficiency or cluster of deficiencies that creates immediate jeopardy, the department of medicaid or a contracting agency shall impose one or more of the remedies described in division (A)(1) of this section and, in addition, may take one or both of the actions described in division (A)(2) of this section.
(1) The department or agency shall impose one or more of the following remedies:
(b) Apply to the common pleas court of the county in which the facility is located for a temporary restraining order, preliminary injunction, or such other injunctive or equitable relief as is necessary to close the facility, transfer one or more residents to other nursing facilities or other appropriate care settings, or otherwise eliminate the condition of immediate jeopardy. If the court grants such an order, injunction, or relief, it may appoint a special master empowered to implement the court's judgment under the court's direct supervision.
(c) Issue an order terminating the facility's participation in the medicaid program;
(d) Regardless of whether the provider consents, appoint a temporary manager of the facility.
(2) The department or agency may do one or both of the following:
(b) Impose remedies under sections 5165.72 to 5165.74 of the Revised Code appropriate to the severity and scope of the deficiency or cluster of deficiencies, except that the department or agency shall not impose a fine for the same deficiency for which the department or agency has issued an order under division (A)(2)(a) of this section.
(B) If the department of health, department of medicaid, or a contracting agency finds on the basis of a survey or other visit to the facility by representatives of that department or agency that an emergency exists at a facility that is not the result of a deficiency or cluster of deficiencies that constitutes immediate jeopardy, the department of medicaid or contracting agency may do either of the following:
(1) Appoint, subject to the continuing consent of the provider, a temporary manager of the facility;
(2) Apply to the common pleas court of the county in which the facility is located for a temporary restraining order, preliminary injunction, or such other injunctive or equitable relief as is necessary to close the facility, transfer one or more residents to other nursing facilities or other appropriate care settings, or otherwise eliminate the emergency. If the court grants such an order, injunction, or relief, it may appoint a special master empowered to implement the court's judgment under the court's direct supervision.
(1) Prior to acting under division (A)(1)(b), (c), (d), or (2), or (B)(2) of this section, the department of medicaid or contracting agency shall give written notice to the facility specifying all of the following:
(a) The nature of the emergency, including the nature of any deficiency or deficiencies that caused the emergency;
(b) The nature of the action the department or agency intends to take unless the department of health determines that the facility, in the absence of state intervention, possesses the capacity to eliminate the emergency;
(c) The rationale for taking the action.
(2) If the department of health determines that the facility does not possess the capacity to eliminate the emergency in the absence of state intervention, the department of medicaid or contracting agency may immediately take action under division (A) or (B) of this section. If the department of health determines that the facility possesses the capacity to eliminate the emergency, the department of medicaid or contracting agency shall direct the facility to eliminate the emergency within five days after the facility's receipt of the notice. At the end of the five-day period, the department of health shall conduct a follow-up survey that focuses on the emergency. If the department of health determines that the facility has eliminated the emergency within the time period, the department of medicaid or contracting agency shall not act under division (A)(1)(b), (c), (d), or (2)(a), or (B)(2) of this section. If the department of health determines that the facility has failed to eliminate the emergency within the five-day period, the department of medicaid or contracting agency shall take appropriate action under division (A)(1)(b), (c), (d), or (2), or (B)(2) of this section.
(3) Until the written notice required by division (C)(1) of this section is actually delivered, no action taken by the department of medicaid or contracting agency under division (A)(1)(b), (c), (d), or (2), or (B)(2) of this section shall have any legal effect. In addition to the written notice, the department of health survey team shall give oral notice to the facility, at the time of the survey, concerning any recommendations the survey team intends to make that could form the basis of a determination that an emergency exists.
(D) The department of medicaid or contracting agency shall deliver a written order issued under division (A)(1) of this section terminating a nursing facility's participation in the medicaid program to the facility within five days after the exit interview. If the facility alleges, at any time prior to the later of the twentieth day after the exit interview or the fifteenth day after it receives the order, that the condition of immediate jeopardy for which the order was issued has been eliminated, the department of health shall conduct a follow-up survey to determine whether the immediate jeopardy has been eliminated. The order shall take effect and the facility's participation shall terminate on the twentieth day after the exit interview, unless the facility has eliminated the immediate jeopardy or did not receive notice from the department of medicaid or contracting agency within five days after the exit interview. In the latter case, the order shall take effect and the facility's participation shall terminate on the fifteenth day after the facility received the order.
(E) Any action taken by the department of medicaid or a contracting agency under division (A)(1)(c), (d), or (2)(a) of this section is subject to appeal under Chapter 119. of the Revised Code, except that the department or agency may take such action prior to and during the pendency of any proceeding under that chapter. No action taken by a facility under division (C) of this section to eliminate an emergency cited by the department of health shall be considered an admission by the facility of the existence of an emergency.
5165.771 Special focus facility program.
"SFF list" means the list of nursing facilities that the United States department of health and human services creates under the special focus facility program.
"Special focus facility program" means the program conducted by the United States secretary of health and human services pursuant to the "Social Security Act," section 1919(f)(10), 42 U.S.C. 1396r(f)(10).
"Table A" means the table included in the SFF list that identifies nursing facilities that are newly added to the SFF list.
"Table B" means the table included in the SFF list that identifies nursing facilities that have not improved.
"Table C" means the table included in the SFF list that identifies nursing facilities that have shown improvement.
"Table D" means the table included in the SFF list that identifies nursing facilities that have recently graduated from the special focus facility program.
(B) The department of medicaid shall issue an order terminating a nursing facility's participation in the medicaid program if any of the following apply:
(1) The nursing facility is listed in table A or table B on the effective date of this section and fails to be placed in table C not later than twelve months after the effective date of this section.
(2) The nursing facility is listed in table A, table B, or table C on the effective date of this section and fails to be placed in table D not later than twenty-four months after the effective date of this section.
(3) The nursing facility is placed in table A after the effective date of this section and fails to be placed in table C not later than twelve months after the nursing facility is placed in table A.
(4) The nursing facility is placed in table A after the effective date of this section and fails to be placed in table D not later than twenty-four months after the nursing facility is placed in table A.
(C) An order issued under this section is not subject to appeal under Chapter 119. of the Revised Code.
(D) To help a nursing facility avoid having its participation in the medicaid program terminated pursuant to division (B) of this section, the department of aging shall provide the nursing facility technical assistance through the nursing home quality initiative established under section 173.60 of the Revised Code at least four months before the department of medicaid would be required to terminate the nursing facility's participation.
5165.78 Appointment of temporary resident safety assurance manager.
(A) If the department of medicaid determines that a nursing facility is experiencing or is likely to experience a serious financial loss or failure that jeopardizes or is likely to jeopardize the health, safety, and welfare of its residents, the department, subject to the provider's consent, may appoint a temporary resident safety assurance manager in the nursing facility to take actions the department determines are appropriate to ensure the health, safety, and welfare of the residents.
(B) A temporary resident safety assurance manager appointed under this section is vested with the authority necessary to take actions the department of medicaid determines are appropriate to ensure the health, safety, and welfare of the residents.
(C) A temporary resident safety assurance manager appointed under this section may use any of the following funds to pay for costs the manager incurs on behalf of the nursing facility:
(1) Medicaid payments made in accordance with the provider agreement for the nursing facility;
(2) Funds from the residents protection fund that the department provides the manager under section 5162.66 of the Revised Code;
(3) Other funds the department determines are appropriate if such use of the funds is consistent with the appropriations that authorize the use of the funds and all other state and federal laws governing the use of the funds.
(D) The provider is liable to the department for the amount of any payments the department makes to the temporary resident safety assurance manager, other than payments specified in division (C)(1) of this section. The department may recover the amount the provider owes the department by doing any of the following:
(1) Offsetting medicaid payments made to the provider in accordance with the provider agreement;
(2) Placing a lien on any of the provider's real and personal property;
(3) Initiating other collection actions.
(E) No action the department takes under this section is subject to appeal under Chapter 119. of the Revised Code.
(F) In rules authorized by section 5165.61 of the Revised Code, the medicaid director may establish all of the following:
(1) Qualifications persons must meet to be appointed temporary resident safety assurance managers under this section;
(2) Procedures for maintaining a list of qualified temporary resident safety assurance managers;
(3) Procedures consistent with federal law for paying for the services of temporary resident safety assurance managers;
(4) Accounting and reporting requirements for temporary resident safety assurance managers;
(5) Other procedures and requirements the director determines are necessary to implement this section.
5165.79 Terminating provider agreements.
(A) As used in this section, "terminating" includes not renewing.
(B) A nursing facility's participation in the medicaid program shall be terminated under sections 5165.60 to 5165.89 of the Revised Code as follows:
(1) If the department of medicaid is terminating the facility's participation, it shall issue an order terminating the facility's provider agreement.
(2) If the department of health, acting as a contracting agency, is terminating the facility's participation, it shall issue an order terminating certification of the facility's compliance with certification requirements. When the department of health terminates certification, the department of medicaid shall terminate the facility's provider agreement. The department of medicaid is not required to provide an adjudication hearing when it terminates a provider agreement following termination of certification by the department of health.
(3) If a state agency other than the department of health, acting as a contracting agency, is terminating the facility's participation, it shall notify the department of medicaid, and the department of medicaid shall issue an order terminating the facility's provider agreement. The contracting agency shall conduct any administrative proceedings concerning the order.
(C) If the following conditions are met, the department of medicaid may make medicaid payments to a nursing facility for a period not exceeding thirty days after the effective date of termination under sections 5165.60 to 5165.89 of the Revised Code of the facility's participation in the medicaid program:
(1) The payments are for medicaid eligible residents admitted to the facility prior to the effective date of the termination;
(2) The provider is making reasonable efforts to transfer medicaid eligible residents to other care settings.
The period during which payments may be made under this division begins on the later of the effective date of the termination or, if the facility has appealed a termination order, the date of issuance of the adjudication order upholding termination.
5165.80 Transfer of residents to other appropriate care settings.
(A) Whenever a nursing facility is closed under sections 5165.60 to 5165.89 of the Revised Code, the department of medicaid or contracting agency shall arrange for the safe and orderly transfer of all residents, including residents who are not medicaid eligible residents, to other appropriate care settings. Whenever a nursing facility's participation in the medicaid program is terminated under sections 5165.60 to 5165.89 of the Revised Code, the department or agency shall arrange for the safe and orderly transfer of all medicaid eligible residents or, if the termination results in the closure of the facility, of all residents. The provider and all persons involved in the facility's operation shall cooperate with and assist in the transfer of residents.
(B) After a nursing facility's participation in the medicaid program is terminated under section 5165.71, 5165.72, 5165.77, 5165.771, or 5165.85 of the Revised Code, the department of medicaid or contracting agency may appoint a temporary manager subject to the continuing consent of the provider, or may apply to the common pleas court of the county in which the facility is located for such injunctive relief as is necessary for the appointment of a special master, to ensure the transfer of medicaid eligible residents to other appropriate care settings and, if applicable, the orderly closure of the facility.
5165.81 Qualifications of temporary manager of nursing facility.
(A) A temporary manager of a nursing facility appointed by the department of medicaid or a contracting agency under sections 5165.60 to 5165.89 of the Revised Code shall meet all of the following qualifications:
(1) Be licensed as a nursing home administrator under Chapter 4751. of the Revised Code;
(2) Have demonstrated competence as a nursing home administrator;
(3) Have had no disciplinary action taken against the temporary manager by any licensing board or professional society in this state.
(B) The salary of a temporary manager or special master appointed under sections 5165.60 to 5165.89 of the Revised Code shall be paid by the facility and set by the department of medicaid or contracting agency, in the case of a temporary manager, or by the court, in the case of a special master, at a rate not to exceed the maximum allowable compensation for an administrator under the medicaid program. The extent to which this compensation is allowable under the medicaid program is subject to and limited by this chapter and rules adopted under section 5165.02 of the Revised Code.
Subject to division (C) of this section, any costs incurred on behalf of a nursing facility by a temporary manager or special master appointed under sections 5165.60 to 5165.89 of the Revised Code shall be paid by the facility. The allowability of these costs under the medicaid program shall be subject to and governed by this chapter and rules adopted under section 5165.02 of the Revised Code. This division does not prohibit a facility from applying for or receiving any waiver of cost ceilings available under the rules .
(C) No temporary manager or special master appointed under sections 5165.60 to 5165.89 of the Revised Code shall enter into any employment contract on behalf of a facility, or purchase any capital goods using facility funds totaling more than ten thousand dollars, unless the temporary manager or special master has obtained prior approval for the contract or purchase from either the provider or the court.
(1) A temporary manager appointed for a nursing facility under section 5165.72 of the Revised Code is hereby vested, subject to division (C) of this section, with the legal authority necessary to correct any deficiency or cluster of deficiencies at a facility, bring the facility into compliance with certification requirements, and otherwise ensure the health and safety of the residents.
(2) A temporary manager appointed under section 5165.77 of the Revised Code is hereby vested, subject to division (C) of this section, with the authority necessary to eliminate the emergency, bring the facility into compliance with certification requirements, and otherwise ensure the health and safety of the residents.
(3) A temporary manager appointed under section 5165.80 of the Revised Code is hereby vested, subject to division (C) of this section, with the authority necessary to ensure the transfer of medicaid eligible residents to other appropriate care settings and, if applicable, the orderly closure of the facility, and to otherwise ensure the health and safety of the residents.
(E) Prior to acting under division (A)(1)(b) or (2)(b) of section 5165.72 of the Revised Code to appoint a temporary manager or apply for a special master, the department of medicaid or contracting agency shall order the facility to substantially correct the deficiency or deficiencies within five days after receiving the statement and inform the facility, in the statement it provides pursuant to division (B) of section 5165.75 of the Revised Code, of the order and that it will not take that action unless the facility fails to substantially correct the deficiency or deficiencies within that five-day period. At the end of the five-day period, the department of health shall conduct a follow-up survey that focuses on the deficiency or deficiencies. If the department of health determines that the facility has substantially corrected the deficiency or deficiencies within that time, the department of medicaid or contracting agency shall not appoint a temporary manager or apply for a special master. If the department of health determines that the facility has failed to substantially correct the deficiency or deficiencies within that time, the department of medicaid or contracting agency may proceed with appointment of the temporary manager or application for a special master. Until the statement required under division (B) of section 5165.75 of the Revised Code is actually delivered, no action taken by the department or agency to appoint a temporary manager or apply for a temporary manager under division (A)(1)(b) or (2)(b) of section 5165.72 of the Revised Code shall have any legal effect. No action taken by a facility under this division to substantially correct a deficiency or deficiencies shall be considered an admission by the facility of the existence of a deficiency or deficiencies.
(F) Appointment of a temporary manager under division (A)(1)(b) or (2)(b) of section 5165.72 or division (A)(1)(d) of section 5165.77 of the Revised Code shall expire at the end of the seventh day following the appointment. If the department of medicaid or contracting agency finds that the deficiency or deficiencies that prompted the appointment under division (A)(1)(b) or (2)(b) of section 5165.72 of the Revised Code cannot be substantially corrected, or the condition of immediate jeopardy that prompted the appointment under division (A)(1)(d) of section 5165.77 of the Revised Code cannot be eliminated, prior to the expiration of the appointment, it may take one of the following actions:
(1) Appoint, subject to the continuing consent of the provider, a temporary manager for the facility;
(2) Apply to the common pleas court of the county in which the facility is located for an order appointing a special master who, under the authority and direct supervision of the court and subject to divisions (B) and (C) of this section, may take such additional actions as are necessary to correct the deficiency or deficiencies or eliminate the condition of immediate jeopardy and bring the facility into compliance with certification requirements.
(G) The court, on finding that the deficiency or deficiencies for which a special master was appointed under division (F)(2) of this section or division (A)(1)(b) or (2)(b) of section 5165.72 of the Revised Code has been substantially corrected, or the emergency for which a special master was appointed under division (F)(2) of this section or division (A)(1)(b) or (B)(2) of section 5165.77 of the Revised Code has been eliminated, that the facility has been brought into compliance with certification requirements, and that the provider has established the management capability to ensure continued compliance with the certification requirements, shall immediately terminate its jurisdiction over the facility and return control and management of the facility to the provider. If the deficiency or deficiencies cannot be substantially corrected, or the emergency cannot be eliminated practicably within a reasonable time following appointment of the special master, the court may order the special master to close the facility and transfer all residents to other nursing facilities or other appropriate care settings.
(H) This section does not apply to temporary resident safety assurance managers appointed under section 5165.78 of the Revised Code.
5165.82 Residents to whom denial of medicaid payments applies.
(A) An order issued under section 5165.72, 5165.73, 5165.74, 5165.77, or 5165.84 of the Revised Code denying medicaid payments to a nursing facility for all medicaid eligible residents admitted after its effective date, or an order issued under section 5165.72, 5165.73, or 5165.74 of the Revised Code denying medicaid payments to a nursing facility for medicaid eligible residents admitted after the effective date of the order who have specified diagnoses or special care needs, shall also apply to individuals admitted to the facility on and after the effective date of the order who are not medicaid eligible residents but become medicaid eligible residents after admission. Such an order shall not apply to any of the following:
(1) An individual who was a medicaid eligible resident of the facility on the day immediately preceding the effective date of the order and continues to be a medicaid eligible resident on and after that date;
(2) An individual who was a resident of the facility on the day immediately preceding the effective date of the order, continues to be a resident on and after that date, and becomes medicaid eligible on or after that date;
(3) An individual who was a medicaid eligible resident of the facility prior to the effective date of the order, is temporarily absent from the facility on that or a subsequent date due to hospitalization or participation in therapeutic programs outside the facility, and chooses to return to the facility;
(4) An individual who was a resident of the facility prior to the effective date of the order, is temporarily absent from the facility on that or a subsequent date due to hospitalization or participation in therapeutic programs outside the facility, becomes medicaid eligible on or after that date, and chooses to return to the facility.
(B) An order issued under section 5165.72 of the Revised Code denying medicaid payments to a nursing facility for all medicaid eligible residents admitted after its effective date, or denying medicaid payments to a facility for medicaid eligible residents admitted after the effective date of the order who have specified diagnoses or special care needs shall not take effect prior to the fifth day after the order is delivered to the facility. Such an order issued under section 5165.73 or 5165.74 of the Revised Code shall not take effect prior to the twentieth day after it is delivered to the facility.
(C) No nursing facility that has received an order under section 5165.72, 5165.73, 5165.74, 5165.77, or 5165.84 of the Revised Code denying medicaid payments for all new admissions of medicaid eligible residents shall admit a medicaid eligible resident on or after the effective date of the order, unless the resident is described in division (A)(3) or (4) of this section, until the order is terminated pursuant to this section. No nursing facility that has received an order under section 5165.72, 5165.73, or 5165.74 of the Revised Code denying medicaid payments to a nursing facility for new admissions of medicaid eligible residents with specified diagnoses or special care needs shall admit such a resident on or after the effective date of the order, unless the resident is described in division (A)(3) or (4) of this section, until the order is terminated pursuant to this section.
(D) In the case of an order imposed under division (B) of section 5165.84 of the Revised Code, the department or agency shall appoint monitors in accordance with section 5165.70 of the Revised Code to conduct on-site monitoring.
(1) A facility may give written notice to the department of health whenever any of the following apply:
(a) With respect to an order denying payment issued under section 5165.72, 5165.73, or 5165.74 of the Revised Code, either of the following is the case:
(i) The facility has completed implementation of the plan of correction it submitted under section 5165.69 of the Revised Code and substantially corrected all deficiencies for which the order was issued.
(ii) The facility has reduced the severity or scope of all of the deficiencies to a level at which sections 5165.72 to 5165.74 of the Revised Code do not authorize the order.
(b) With respect to an order denying payment issued under section 5165.77 of the Revised Code, the facility has eliminated the immediate jeopardy.
(c) With respect to an order denying medicaid payments issued under division (A) of section 5165.84 of the Revised Code, the facility has completed implementation of the plan of correction it submitted under section 5165.69 of the Revised Code and substantially corrected all deficiencies for which the order was issued.
(d) With respect to an order denying medicaid payments issued under division (B) of section 5165.84 of the Revised Code, both of the following are the case:
(ii) The facility is in compliance with certification requirements and has provided adequate assurance that it will remain in compliance with them.
(2) Within ten working days after it receives the notice under division (E)(1) of this section, the department of health shall conduct a follow-up survey that focuses on the cited deficiency or deficiencies, unless the department is able to determine, on the basis of documentation provided by the facility, that the facility has completed the applicable action described in divisions (E)(1)(a) to (d) of this section. If the department of health makes that determination on the basis of the documentation, the department of medicaid or contracting agency shall terminate the order denying medicaid payments as of the date the facility completed the applicable action, as subsequently verified by the department of health. If the department of health conducts a follow-up survey, the department of medicaid or contracting agency shall terminate the order denying medicaid payments as of the date the department of health makes the determination that the facility completed the applicable action.
(F) The department of medicaid or contracting agency shall provide public notice implementing an order under section 5165.72, 5165.73, 5165.74, 5165.77, or 5165.84 of the Revised Code denying medicaid payments to a nursing facility for all medicaid eligible residents by publishing in a newspaper of general circulation in the county in which the facility is located an announcement stating: "By order of the (Ohio Department of Medicaid or name of contracting agency), effective on and after (effective date of order), (name of facility) is no longer authorized to admit Medicaid eligible residents." Immediately following termination of any such order, the department or agency shall publish in a newspaper of general circulation in the county in which the facility is located an announcement stating: "By order of the (Ohio Department of Medicaid or name of contracting agency), effective on and after (effective date of termination), (name of facility) is hereby authorized to admit Medicaid eligible residents." Neither the department nor the contracting agency shall issue public notice of an order under section 5165.72, 5165.73, or 5165.74 of the Revised Code denying payment to a nursing facility for medicaid eligible residents with specified diagnoses or special care needs; public notice is not required for such an order to take effect.
(G) A facility that complies with division (E) of this section shall not be considered to have admitted to the existence of the deficiency that constitutes the basis of the department's or agency's order.
5165.83 Fines.
(A) As used in this section, "certified beds" means beds certified under Title XVIII or Title XIX .
(B) If the department of medicaid or a contracting agency imposes a fine on a nursing facility under section 5165.72, 5165.73, or 5165.74 of the Revised Code, it may impose one or more of the following:
(1) One hundred sixty per cent of the amount calculated under division (C) of this section for any deficiency or cluster of deficiencies that constitutes a severity level four and scope level four finding;
(2) One hundred forty per cent of the amount calculated under division (C) of this section for any deficiency or cluster of deficiencies that constitutes a severity level four and scope level three finding;
(3) One hundred twenty per cent of the amount calculated under division (C) of this section for any deficiency or cluster of deficiencies that constitutes a severity level four and scope level two finding;
(4) The amount calculated under division (C) of this section for any deficiency or cluster of deficiencies that constitutes a severity level four and scope level one finding or any deficiency or cluster of deficiencies that constitutes a severity level three and scope level four finding;
(5) Ninety per cent of the amount calculated under division (C) of this section for any deficiency or cluster of deficiencies that constitutes a severity level three and scope level three finding;
(6) Eighty per cent of the amount calculated under division (C) of this section for any deficiency or cluster of deficiencies that constitutes a severity level three and scope level two finding;
(7) Seventy per cent of the amount calculated under division (C) of this section for any deficiency or cluster of deficiencies that constitutes a severity level three and scope level one finding;
(8) Fifty per cent of the amount calculated under division (C) of this section for any deficiency or cluster of deficiencies that constitutes a severity level two and scope level four finding;
(9) Forty per cent of the amount calculated under division (C) of this section for any deficiency or cluster of deficiencies that constitutes a severity level two and scope level three finding.
(C) The amount subject to division (B) of this section shall be the product of multiplying two dollars and fifty cents for each day the fine is in effect by the total number of licensed nursing home beds or certified beds, whichever is greater, in the facility as of the date the deficiency or cluster of deficiencies that is the reason for the fine was cited.
(1) The department of medicaid or contracting agency shall not impose on a facility, at any one time, more than four fines as a result of any one survey.
(2) The department of medicaid or contracting agency shall not impose more than one fine based on a deficiency or cluster of deficiencies. However, if the department of health, in a follow-up or other subsequent survey, finds a change in the scope or severity of the deficiency or cluster of deficiencies, the department of medicaid or contracting agency may increase or decrease the fine in accordance with division (B) of this section to reflect the change in scope or severity. The department or agency shall give the facility written notice of the change in the amount of the fine. The change shall take effect on the date the follow-up or other subsequent survey is completed.
If the department of health finds that a deficiency is a repeat deficiency, the department of medicaid or contracting agency may impose a fine that is one hundred per cent greater than the fine specified in division (B) of this section for the deficiency.
(E) The total amount of fines the department of medicaid or contracting agency may impose on a facility in a single calendar year shall not exceed five hundred dollars for each licensed nursing home bed or certified bed, whichever is greater in number, in the facility.
(1) Except as provided in division (F)(2) of this section, the department of medicaid or contracting agency shall not impose a fine under section 5165.72, 5165.73, or 5165.74 of the Revised Code if the deficiency or cluster of deficiencies is substantially corrected within twenty days after the nursing facility receives the statement provided under division (B) of section 5165.75 of the Revised Code. The department or agency shall inform the nursing facility in that statement that the fine will not be imposed if the deficiency or cluster of deficiencies is substantially corrected within the twenty-day period.
(2) If a nursing facility has substantially corrected a deficiency or cluster of deficiencies within six months after the exit interview of a survey that was the basis for citing a deficiency or cluster of deficiencies, but after correcting it has been cited for the same deficiency or cluster of deficiencies by the department of health on the basis of a subsequent survey conducted during the remainder of the six-month period, the department of medicaid or contracting agency may impose a fine beginning on the date of the exit interview of the subsequent survey.
(G) Whenever a facility believes that it has completed implementation of the plan of correction it submitted under section 5165.69 of the Revised Code and substantially corrected the cited deficiency or cluster of deficiencies that is the basis for a fine, it may give written notice to that effect to the department of health. After receiving the notice, the department shall conduct a follow-up survey of the facility that focuses on the deficiency or cluster, unless the department is able to determine, on the basis of documentation provided by the facility, that the facility has substantially corrected the deficiency or cluster. If, based on the follow-up survey, the department establishes that the facility had not completed implementation of the plan of correction at the time the department received the notice, any fine based on the deficiency or cluster shall be doubled effective from the date the department received the notice. A facility that complies with this division shall not be considered to have admitted the existence of the deficiency or cluster that is the basis for the fine.
(H) Except for a fine imposed under division (C) of section 5165.72 of the Revised Code and as provided in division (F)(2) of this section, the department of medicaid or contracting agency shall impose a fine only if the facility fails to give notice under division (G) of this section within twenty days after it receives the statement required by division (B) of section 5165.75 of the Revised Code or if the department of health determines, based on a follow-up survey, that the deficiency or cluster of deficiencies for which the fine is proposed has not been substantially corrected within the twenty-day period. The fine shall be imposed effective on the twenty-first day after the facility receives the statement under division (B) of section 5165.75 of the Revised Code. The fine shall remain in effect until the earliest of the following:
(1) The date the department of health receives notice under division (G) of this section, unless the department determines, on the basis of a follow-up survey, that the deficiency or cluster of deficiencies that is the basis for the fine has not been substantially corrected as of that date;
(2) The date on which the department of health makes a determination, on the basis of a follow-up survey, that the deficiency or cluster of deficiencies has been substantially corrected;
(3) The date the facility substantially corrected the deficiency or cluster, as subsequently determined by the department of health on the basis of documentation provided by the facility.
(I) Any fine imposed by the department of medicaid or contracting agency under this section is subject to appeal under Chapter 119. of the Revised Code. If the facility does not request a hearing under Chapter 119. of the Revised Code and either pays or agrees in writing to pay the fine when payment becomes due under division (J) of this section, the department or agency shall reduce the fine by fifty per cent. The department or agency may compromise any claim for payment of a fine under sections 5165.60 to 5165.89 of the Revised Code.
(J) The department of medicaid or contracting agency shall collect interest on fines, at the rate per calendar month that equals one-twelfth of the rate per year prescribed by section 5703.47 of the Revised Code for the calendar year that includes the month for which the interest charge accrues. Payment of a fine is due, and interest begins to accrue on the unpaid fine or balance, on the thirty-first day after the department or agency issues a final adjudication order imposing the fine. If the deficiency or deficiencies on which the fine is based have not been corrected when the final adjudication order is issued, the payment is due, and interest begins to accrue on the unpaid fine or balance, on the thirty-first day after the deficiency or deficiencies are corrected and the department or agency mails a notice specifying the amount of the fine to the facility.
(K) The department of medicaid or contracting agency shall collect fines and interest imposed under this section through one of the following means:
(1) A lump sum payment from the provider;
(2) Periodic payments for a period not to exceed twelve months, in accordance with a schedule approved by the department or agency;
(3) Appropriately reducing the amounts of medicaid payments made to the facility for nursing facility services provided to medicaid eligible residents for a period not to exceed twelve months following the date on which payment of the fine becomes due under division (J) of this section. An amount equal to the amount by which each payment is reduced shall be deposited to the credit of the residents protection fund in accordance with section 5162.66 of the Revised Code.
5165.84 Order denying payment when deficiency is not corrected within time limits.
(A) The department of medicaid or a contracting agency shall issue an order denying medicaid payments to a nursing facility for all medicaid eligible residents admitted to the facility on or after the effective date of the order, if the facility has failed to substantially correct within ninety days after the exit interview a deficiency or cluster of deficiencies in accordance with the plan of correction it submitted under section 5165.69 of the Revised Code, as determined by the department of health on the basis of a follow-up survey.
(B) The department of medicaid or contracting agency shall issue an order denying medicaid payments to a nursing facility for all medicaid eligible residents admitted to the facility on or after the effective date of the order, if during three consecutive standard surveys conducted after December 13, 1990, the department of health has found a condition of substandard care in a facility.
(C) An order issued under division (A) or (B) of this section shall take effect on the later of the date the facility receives the order or the date the public notice required under division (F) of section 5165.82 of the Revised Code is published. The order is subject to appeal under Chapter 119. of the Revised Code; however the order may take effect prior to or during the pendency of any hearing under that chapter. In that case, the department or agency shall provide the facility an opportunity for a hearing in accordance with section 5165.87 of the Revised Code.
5165.85 Termination of participation for failure to correct deficiency within six months.
(A) If a nursing facility notifies the department of medicaid or a contracting agency, at any time during the six-month period following the exit interview of a survey that was the basis for citing a deficiency or deficiencies, that the deficiency or deficiencies have been substantially corrected in accordance with the plan of correction submitted and approved under section 5165.69 of the Revised Code, the department of health shall conduct a follow-up survey to determine whether the deficiency or deficiencies have been substantially corrected in accordance with the plan.
(B) The department of medicaid or a contracting agency shall terminate a nursing facility's participation in the medicaid program whenever the facility has not substantially corrected, within six months after the exit interview of the survey on the basis of which it was cited, a deficiency or deficiencies in accordance with the plan of correction submitted under section 5165.69 of the Revised Code, as determined by the department of health on the basis of a follow-up survey.
(C) Unless the facility has substantially corrected the deficiency or deficiencies in accordance with the plan of correction, as determined by the department of health on the basis of a follow-up survey, the department of medicaid or contracting agency shall deliver to the facility, at least thirty days prior to the day that is six months after the exit interview, a written order terminating the facility's participation in the medicaid program. The order shall take effect and the facility's participation shall terminate on the day that is six months after the exit interview. The order shall not take effect if, after it is delivered to the facility and prior to the effective date of the order, the department of health determines on the basis of a follow-up survey that the facility has corrected the deficiency or deficiencies.
An order issued under this section is subject to appeal under Chapter 119. of the Revised Code; however, the order may take effect prior to or during the pendency of any hearing under that chapter. In that case, the department of medicaid or contracting agency shall provide the facility an opportunity for a hearing in accordance with section 5165.87 of the Revised Code.
(D) Except as provided in division (E) of this section, whenever the department of medicaid or a contracting agency terminates a facility's participation in the medicaid program pursuant to this section, the provider shall repay the department the federal share of all medicaid payments made by the department to the facility during the six-month period following the exit interview of the survey that was the basis for citing the deficiency or cluster of deficiencies. The provider shall repay the department within thirty days after the department repays to the federal government the federal share of medicaid payments made to the facility during that six-month period.
(E) A provider is not required to repay the department of medicaid if either of the following is the case:
(1) The facility has brought an appeal under Chapter 119. of the Revised Code of termination of its participation in the medicaid program, except that the provider shall repay the department of medicaid within thirty days after the facility exhausts its right to appeal under that chapter.
(2) The facility complied with the plan of correction approved by the department of health and the obligation to repay resulted from the department's failure to provide timely verification to the United States department of health and human services of the facility's compliance with the plan of correction.
(F) If a provider's obligation to repay the department of medicaid under division (D) of this section results from disallowance of federal financial participation by the United States department of health and human services, the provider shall not be required to repay the department of medicaid until the federal disallowance becomes final.
(G) Any fines paid under sections 5165.60 to 5165.89 of the Revised Code during any period for which the facility is required to repay the department of medicaid under division (D) of this section shall be offset against the amount the provider is required to repay the department for that period.
(H) Prior to a change of ownership of a facility for which a provider has an obligation to repay the department of medicaid under division (D) of this section that has not become final, or has become final but not been paid, the department may do one or more of the following:
(1) Require the provider to place money in escrow, or obtain a bond, in sufficient amount to indemnify the state against the provider's failure to repay the department after the change of ownership occurs;
(2) Place a lien on the facility's real property;
(3) Use any method to recover the medicaid payments that is available to the attorney general to recover payments on behalf of the department of medicaid.
5165.86 Delivery of notices.
The department of medicaid, the department of health, and any contracting agency shall deliver a written notice, statement, or order to a nursing facility under sections 5165.60 to 5165.66 and 5165.69 to 5165.89 of the Revised Code by certified mail or hand delivery. If the notice, statement, or order is mailed, it shall be addressed to the administrator of the facility as indicated in the department's or agency's records. If it is hand delivered, it shall be delivered to a person at the facility who would appear to the average prudent person to have authority to accept it.
Delivery of written notice by a nursing facility to the department of health, the department of medicaid, or a contracting agency under sections 5165.60 to 5165.89 of the Revised Code shall be by certified mail or hand delivery to the appropriate department or the agency.
(A) Except as provided in division (B) of this section, the following remedies are subject to appeal under Chapter 119. of the Revised Code:
(1) An order issued under section 5165.71, 5165.72, 5165.77, or 5165.85 of the Revised Code terminating a nursing facility's participation in the medicaid program;
(2) Appointment of a temporary manager of a facility under division (A)(1)(b) or (2)(b) of section 5165.72, or division (A)(1)(d) of section 5165.77 of the Revised Code;
(3) An order issued under section 5165.72, 5165.73, 5165.74, 5165.77, or 5165.84 of the Revised Code denying medicaid payments to a facility for all medicaid eligible residents admitted after the effective date of the order;
(4) An order issued under section 5165.72, 5165.73, or 5165.74 of the Revised Code denying medicaid payments to a facility for medicaid eligible residents admitted after the effective date of the order who have certain diagnoses or special care needs specified by the department or agency;
(5) A fine imposed under section 5165.72, 5165.73, or 5165.74 of the Revised Code.
(B) The department of medicaid or contracting agency may do any of the following prior to or during the pendency of any proceeding under Chapter 119. of the Revised Code:
(1) Issue and execute an order under section 5165.72, 5165.77, or 5165.85 of the Revised Code terminating a nursing facility's participation in the medicaid program;
(2) Appoint a temporary manager under division (A)(1)(b) or (2)(b) of section 5165.72 or division (A)(1)(d) of section 5165.77 of the Revised Code;
(3) Issue and execute an order under section 5165.72, 5165.73, 5165.77, or 5165.84 of the Revised Code denying medicaid payments to a facility for all medicaid eligible residents admitted after the effective date of the order;
(4) Issue and execute an order under section 5165.72 or 5165.73 or division (A), (B), or (C) of section 5165.74 of the Revised Code denying medicaid payments to a facility for medicaid eligible residents admitted after the effective date of the order who have specified diagnoses or special care needs.
(C) Whenever the department or agency imposes a remedy listed in division (B) of this section prior to or during the pendency of a proceeding, all of the following apply:
(1) The provider against whom the action is taken shall have ten days after the date the facility actually receives the notice specified in section 119.07 of the Revised Code to request a hearing.
(2) The hearing shall commence within thirty days after the date the department or agency receives the provider's request for a hearing.
(3) The hearing shall continue uninterrupted from day to day, except for Saturdays, Sundays, and legal holidays, unless other interruptions are agreed to by the provider and the department or agency.
(4) If the hearing is conducted by a hearing examiner, the hearing examiner shall file a report and recommendations within ten days after the close of the hearing.
(5) The provider shall have five days after the date the hearing officer files the report and recommendations within which to file objections to the report and recommendations.
(6) Not later than fifteen days after the date the hearing officer files the report and recommendations, the medicaid director or the director of the contracting agency shall issue an order approving, modifying, or disapproving the report and recommendations of the hearing examiner.
(D) If the department or agency imposes more than one remedy as the result of deficiencies cited in a single survey, the proceedings for all of the remedies shall be consolidated. If any of the remedies are imposed during the pendency of a hearing, as permitted by division (B) of this section, the consolidated hearing shall be conducted in accordance with division (C) of this section. The consolidation of the remedies for purposes of a hearing does not affect the effective dates prescribed in sections 5165.60 to 2165.85 of the Revised Code.
(E) If a contracting agency conducts administrative proceedings pertaining to remedies imposed under sections 5165.60 to 5165.89 of the Revised Code, the department of medicaid shall not be considered a party to the proceedings.
5165.88 Confidentiality.
(1) Except as required by court order, as necessary for the administration or enforcement of any statute relating to nursing facilities, or as provided in division (C) of this section, the department of medicaid and any contracting agency shall not release any of the following information without the permission of the individual or the individual's legal representative:
(a) The identity of any resident of a nursing facility;
(b) The identity of any individual who submits a complaint about a nursing facility;
(c) The identity of any individual who provides the department or agency with information about a nursing facility and has requested confidentiality;
(d) Any information that reasonably would tend to disclose the identity of any individual described in division (A)(1)(a) to (c) of this section.
(2) An agency or individual to whom the department or contracting agency is required, by court order or for the administration or enforcement of a statute relating to nursing facilities, to release information described in division (A)(1) of this section shall not release the information without the permission of the individual who would be or would reasonably tend to be identified, or of the individual's legal representative, unless the agency or individual is required to release it by division (C) of this section, by court order, or for the administration or enforcement of a statute relating to nursing facilities.
(B) Except as provided in division (C) of this section, any record that identifies an individual described in division (A)(1) of this section or that reasonably would tend to identify such an individual is not a public record for the purposes of section 149.43 of the Revised Code, and is not subject to inspection and copying under section 1347.08 of the Revised Code.
(C) If the department or a contracting agency, or an agency or individual to whom the department or contracting agency was required by court order or for administration or enforcement of a statute relating to nursing facilities to release information described in division (A)(1) of this section, uses information in any administrative or judicial proceeding against a facility that reasonably would tend to identify an individual described in division (A)(1) of this section, the department, agency, or individual shall disclose that information to the facility. However, the department, agency, or individual shall not disclose information that directly identifies an individual described in divisions (A)(1)(a) to (c) of this section, unless the individual is to testify in the proceedings.
(D) No person shall knowingly register a false complaint about a nursing facility with the department or a contracting agency, or knowingly swear or affirm the truth of a false complaint, when the allegation is made for the purpose of incriminating another.
5165.89 Hearing on transfer or discharge of resident who medicaid or medicare beneficiary.
The department of health shall be the designee of the department of medicaid for the purpose of conducting a hearing pursuant to section 3721.162 of the Revised Code concerning a nursing facility's decision to transfer or discharge a resident if the resident is a medicaid recipient or medicare beneficiary.
5165.99 Penalties.
(A) Whoever violates section 5165.102 or division (E) of section 5165.08 of the Revised Code shall be fined not less than five hundred dollars nor more than one thousand dollars for the first offense and not less than one thousand dollars nor more than five thousand dollars for each subsequent offense. Fines paid under this section shall be deposited in the state treasury to the credit of the general revenue fund.
(B) Whoever violates division (D) of section 5165.88 of the Revised Code is guilty of registering a false complaint, a misdemeanor of the first degree.
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Topical Articles
Category Archives: Topical Articles
Opinion: Resource sector offers opportunities for First Nations people
Risks can be mitigated: Blanket ban on all development in the province is troubling
Written by: Bruce Dumont for The Vancouver Sun, December 02, 2013
I received an early education in the benefits of the resource industry, having grown up around the forestry and oil and gas sectors in B.C. and Alberta.
My father worked in forestry as a faller and bucker for 46 years, and I did the same for some 20 years, later specializing in occupational safety.
I’ve witnessed first-hand the enormous economic and social opportunities our resource sector can provide to Metis and First Nations people.
In fact, across the country more than 650 communities depend on resource industries like mining, forestry, fishing and oil and gas — and these industries employ millions of Canadians directly and indirectly.
The oilsands sector, for example, is one of the largest employers of Aboriginal people in the country. In 2010, companies in the oilsands purchased $1.3 billion in goods and services from Aboriginal-owned businesses.
There are some 17,000 Metis working in the resource sector today in wide-ranging fields from lawyers and accountants to pipefitters, electricians, welders, consultants and engineers. These are high-paying jobs that help support Metis families and communities.
B.C. must continue to support its vital resource and energy sectors. Whether it’s building a mine or constructing a pipeline, such projects can be built responsibly, in a manner that protects the environment while enhancing livelihoods for Metis people and other British Columbians.
Metis history is closely intertwined with the history of the resource sector. Indeed, the Metis were the original entrepreneurs of the fur trade in this country.
While I’m very proud of that history, I also recognize that the resource sector has come a long way in the past few decades. I’ve seen it. Those who work in the resource sector today are no longer just “hewers of wood and drawers of water,” but rather innovators, using cutting-edge technology to pioneer more environmentally sound and effective means of extracting our bountiful natural resources for the benefit of society.
Yet some continue to promote an anti-development narrative in this province that claims all development, no matter how environmentally and socially responsible, should be restricted.
For me, a blanket ban on all resource development in this province is worrying.
Sure, we should say no to development projects that can’t be done right and that would damage our province’s environment.
At the same time, while no resource project is without risk, these risks can be mitigated. Serious efforts can be made to ensure such projects are built and operated responsibly using the highest environmental standards and safeguards.
And the risk runs both ways. Wide-ranging efforts to prevent responsible resource development risk us losing vital social and economic opportunities.
I believe some of this opposition is based simply on a lack of knowledge. People, including some in our Metis Nation BC membership, may react negatively to a resource project proposal because they do not have enough information about the project being planned. I respect any informed opinion.
And many urban dwellers have never seen the rigorous environmental and safety practices being implemented everyday in the modern resource sector.
So it’s important for the resource industries to continue educating British Columbians about modern mining, forestry, oil and gas and pipeline practices.
I continue to encourage our Metis youth to tour modern forestry operations and visit mine sites, for example, because such first-hand experiences can provide them with a better understanding of how the resource sector operates.
According to Statistics Canada, the Metis population is younger than the non-Aboriginal population and continues to grow. This young, dynamic and growing population is in need of jobs that pay well and provide good livelihoods.
Many of those jobs are being created in the resource sector. And so policies that encourage responsible resource development are critical to the future prosperity of this province.
That’s why I was pleased with the recent framework agreement supporting responsible oil pipeline development between B.C. Premier Christy Clark and Alberta Premier Alison Redford. The agreement makes clear that B.C. will permit pipelines only if they are built to the highest standards and provide clear benefits for local communities and the province as a whole.
The Metis are a proud and independent people. My experience has been that the resource sector allows people to maintain and enhance that independence.
When I was young, the resource sector provided opportunities that allowed me to work hard, build a good life and raise a family.
I’d like to see the youth of today get those same opportunities. And by developing policies that support a strong, thriving and environmentally responsible resource sector, those opportunities can continue to be made real for thousands of young British Columbians.
Bruce Dumont is President of Metis Nation BC, which represents 35 Metis Chartered Communities and the majority of the 70,000 self identified Metis in British Columbia and is mandated to develop and enhance opportunities for Metis communities by implementing culturally relevant social and economic programs and services.
Read the original article here.
Opinion: Northern communities need pipeline — and its jobs (Ron Burnett)
Opinion: Northern communities need pipeline — and its jobs
Written by: Ron Burnett for The Province, November 27, 2014
Recent news coverage suggests there’s a growing awareness that B.C. needs economic development and that projects such as the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline can play an important role in making that happen. That’s good news for employees, business owners and their families throughout resource-dependent B.C. that have gone through a tough last decade or more.
As a longtime resident of Kitimat near the proposed pipeline terminus, and as someone who has watched the local demise of the Eurocan pulp mill and its 500 jobs, and the Methanex plant and its 120 jobs, I focus a lot of my energy on working with my colleagues to try to replace high-paid local employment to build and sustain our community. Here’s how I think about the proposed Northern Gateway Pipeline project.
First, Northern Gateway’s positive economic impact on the country will be felt from here to the East Coast. Most people by now have heard reference to the $6.5-billion investment the project represents. But in my view, that’s just the beginning of the economic story.
If approved, this pipeline would allow Canadian producers to obtain fair market price for their products by selling to Asia rather than being restricted to U.S. markets, where bottlenecks and new domestic energy capacity combine to hurt our prices significantly. Accessing Asia, in turn, would help clear the way for the industry and our country to prosper.
Remember, there are a lot of families in our region that are dependent on the oil and gas employment economy. If the market access challenge is solved, we — all of us — do better.
Next, the province must support this proposal as an initiative that can truly improve our lives. Some 3,000 B.C. jobs will be created during the project’s construction, as well as 560 permanent B.C. jobs in the long term. Investment and new jobs from the pipeline will generate $1.2 billion in revenue for B.C.’s treasury over the next 30 years, which can help to build new hospitals, improve classroom education, and to support our quality of life in general.
Our own community stands to derive jobs and taxes from a proposed storage facility and additional employment on the marine side where the large tugs will require crews and maintenance.
And if value were to be added in Canada through upgrading and refining — both topics still under discussion in some circles — then the economic returns could be even more significant.
To push the economic point further, I say Premier Christy Clark was right to hold out for a framework agreement on her five conditions. One of those conditions is designed to ensure British Columbians are fairly rewarded for the level of risk their province undertakes. To me, the condition makes perfect sense.
But let’s be clear. Safety can be managed. Tankers in this region are most certainly not a new phenomenon.
As a 60-year user of the Douglas Channel and as a lifelong Kitimat resident, I can assure you tanker traffic has been plying the channel since the early 1950s, and the tanker traffic continues to today.
In other words, my view is the project benefits outweigh any risks and the precautions proposed are more than adequate.
Double-hulled tankers tethered to very powerful tugs, two pilots and enhanced navigational technology like land-based radar all go a long way to satisfying my concerns.
Further, pipe monitoring 24/7, remote pump stations staffed around the clock, enhanced, dual leak detection and thicker pipe combine to assuage concerns on the land.
Our corner of the province has had a very rough ride through the catastrophic pine-beetle epidemic in our Interior forests that resulted in the closure of manufacturing in Kitimat, Terrace, Hazelton, Houston and Quesnel. That’s a lot of lost jobs and worried families. We need to put the economic pieces back together and then move forward, in a safe, responsible way.
I often point out to people that we in Canada seem to live in a bubble. We account for just two per cent of the global economy and yet we think we can compete with the world on its terms. But for a few rare exceptions, we simply don’t have the population to do so.
We Canadians are fortunate. We have a rich energy resource and the world-leading technical know-how to develop, transport and sell it safely and responsibly to the rest of the world. It’s our ace in the hole. Let’s be proud of the opportunities our natural resources export sector offers, and let’s move forward.
Ron Burnett is president of the Kitimat Economic Development Association and past-president of the Kitimat — Terrace Industrial Development Society. He lives in Kitimat.
Opinion: Some thoughts on Jack Munro
Some thoughts on Jack Munro
Written by: Tom Tevlin, www.TreeFrogCreative.ca, Nov 18 2013 Continue reading →
It’s indisputable that Jack Munro, a giant of BC politics, improved the lives of a great many Canadians. It’s even fair to say he saved some lives as well; Munro’s commitment to logger safety is as important an achievement as any other of his collective bargaining accomplishments.
But what’s less discussed is the key role he played at the Forest Alliance of BC where he was its high-profile and influential Chair through the 1990s, as valley-by-valley land-use disputes spread across the province like wildfire, making headlines here and in BC’s international markets.
From the perspective of his young Forest Alliance team, Munro bore little resemblance to his bombastic public persona. He was protective of us, generous with his time, his counsel and his praise, and always ready to share stories of past strikes, lockouts, campaigns and the broader lessons learned. Each of us was amazed at the soft heart of this legendary street fighter.
That’s why we staffers, after having lots of opportunity to offer him our advice, would accept his decisions and then follow him anywhere. He was the necessary ingredient in making the Forest Alliance a credible voice here and abroad during the era of the infamous ‘forestry wars,’ and he was, to use the hackneyed phrase, the guy you wanted in the fox hole with you.
Populated by a group of 30 high-profile British Columbians who were used to making policy decisions and setting an organization’s agenda, the Forest Alliance ‘citizens board’ meetings were sometimes events to behold. Munro’s rhetorical abilities were mesmerizing.
When a dispute came up at a Citizens Board session, and an experienced board member cited meeting procedure, Jack would wryly remind the board member of the process:
“Don’t talk to me about Roberts Rules,” he’d say with a smile. “Around here we operate according to Munro’s Rules. And there’s only one, so it’s pretty simple: I make the rules.”
The directors quickly learned an important aspect of management, Munro-style: They would have to gain their influence with him not through citing procedure around a large meeting table, but through mixing it up in smaller discussions before the meeting ever took place.
That’s because people were aware that while Jack had limitless time for “a good BS session” around his office desk, he was not a great fan of long get-togethers. “Those people can take a two-hour meeting, and if they work like hell, they can cram it into five hours,” he’d say after an especially long session.
If one director in particular dominated the floor of the meeting, Jack would report back to staff afterwards: “That so-and-so was vaccinated with a goddamn phonograph needle.” It was always followed by Munro’s infectious, body-shaking laugh.
Great punch-lines aside, Munro was a great strategist and an astute observer of people – those both with and without power. Whether around a table of fellow labour leaders, or forest industry CEOs, or folks in a restaurant in Williams Lake or Ladysmith, he had an uncanny way of connecting, changing their views and influencing their actions.
He engendered strong loyalty among his board, his staff and his membership, and as a result, his leadership on the forest and land-use file was remarkable, as was easily seen through public opinion polling through the decade, where support for the forest industry doubled over his tenure as Chair.
In discussions in Victoria, or with Federal officials in Ottawa or in our forestry markets in Europe or the US, Jack was a force to be reckoned with — especially among Canadian diplomats whom he felt needed to do more to fend off a possible product boycott.
When a government official made a commitment that Munro felt wasn’t genuine, he’d usually respond: “I might have been born at night, but not LAST night.” That was the signal for the official to ante up; on the discussion would go until Jack felt the official’s commitment would lead to action.
That the industry would entrust Munro with the job to lead a well-funded organization to engage in the environmental debates of the day was a credit to those CEOs. But for the young Forest Alliance staff, working with Jack was very simply the experience of a lifetime.
Tom Tevlin held a number of positions at the Alliance, eventually becoming President. Today he’s President & CEO of Greenspirit Strategies Ltd., where another Forest Alliance staffer, Trevor Figueiredo is his business partner.
Opinion: Capt. Stephen Brown: B.C. mariners reject oil-tanker fearmongering
Written by: Stephen Brown for The Province, October 16, 2013
Most British Columbians are aware the Canadian oilsands provide needed, well-paying jobs. Perhaps less appreciated is the fact that the oilsands industry has an indirect but very substantial positive impact on our local economies.
For years, many rural B.C. communities struggled to develop sustainable economies in which young people could build their lives without being forced to move away in search of work.
As a former seafarer, I know very well the challenges of working away from home, often for many months at a time. We embraced that lifestyle as the basis of a career. But many British Columbians would prefer to do without such a nomadic way of life.
By investing in responsible resource extraction and energy development in B.C., we can create new opportunities for our citizens, allowing them to live and work in their home towns.
Just look at what’s happening in Alberta. Many communities there are, for the first time, benefiting from paved roads, well-equipped and staffed health-care centres and public facilities that are second to none. Indeed, on a recent visit to Fort McMurray, I was surprised to learn that the city has the largest and most modern recreation centre in Canada. What a great asset in a growing community.
While cynics may dismiss this form of economic development as oil companies buying their social license, it’s much more than that. For example, the Northeastern Alberta Aboriginal Business Association is a vital cog in the oilsands economy as it provides tremendous employment opportunities and a previously unimaginable standard of living for its members. In 2010, oilsands companies are reported to have contracted more than $1.3 billion for goods and services from native-owned businesses.
Although we may not notice it, the oilsands also benefit B.C. As a prominent Vancouver Island mayor recently explained to me, there is a disconnect between natural resource development and the local wealth it generates. People have no appreciation for how many well-paying B.C. jobs are dependent on the continued success of the oilsands. In future, roughly 126,000 oilsands jobs will be created in provinces other than Alberta.
But here, for me, is the most impressive economic fact for British Columbia: recent estimates from the Canadian Energy Research Institute show that the oilsands will generate $28 billion in economic benefits solely for our province over the next 25 years.
B.C.’s professional marine industry will continue to argue for what we know to be the silent majority of Canadians who support environmentally sustainable resource development. Indeed, most Canadians are appalled at how much money we are sacrificing as a country (up to $50 million a day) simply because our oilsands resources are landlocked.
Preventing this oil from reaching markets worldwide makes no sense when everyone knows how badly we need that money to be pumped into infrastructure development, schools, hospitals and social services — not to mention pay down a provincial debt of $57 billion in B.C. that is growing by more than $200 every second.
The tragedy of the Exxon Valdez tanker 24 years ago remains a rallying point for opponents of development. However, had the Exxon Valdez been built under legislation crafted in 1990 in the U.S. and which is now internationally applied, there would have been no loss of oil in that incident.
Indeed, in 2012, no major spills occurred anywhere. So, given the additional layers of risk mitigation that we are committed to applying, we entirely reject the notion that it is only a matter of time before a spill will occur on the coastline of B.C.
That’s not to say we are complacent. Indeed, a diverse group of stakeholders travelled to Norway in June to examine what many believe to be that country’s world-class spill regime.
We take the view that if lessons learned can provide even a marginal improvement in preparedness, then we must make that investment.
The marine industry will continue to operate safely, as we do on tens of thousands of vessels, including several thousand tankers, that ply the oceans of the world every day in order to ensure the lights stay on and there is gas at the pump — even if we don’t always care for the price.
And we’ll continue to work closely with our resource and energy sector partners, creating new opportunities for British Columbians right here at home.
Capt. Stephen Brown is president of the Chamber of Shipping of British Columbia.
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Opinion: Shipping oil has never been safer
Posted on October 8, 2013 by admin
Improved tanker design, navigation and a fleet of response vessels means spills aren’t inevitable
Written by: Stephen Brown and Kevin Gardner, Special to the Vancouver Sun, October 8, 2013
An oil tanker is guided by tug boats as it goes under the Lions Gate Bridge at the mouth of Vancouver Harbour.
Photograph by: Jonathan Hayward, The Canadian Press
As British Columbians continue to debate energy development and transportation proposals to allow Canada to ship oil exports to new markets, questions are being asked of safety in the marine sector and of our ability to deal with an oil spill in the unlikely event of such an occurrence.
Shipping oil in and out of B.C. is nothing new. Oil has been uneventfully moved on the coast of British Columbia for the past 100 years. For most of that time, the technologies of precision navigation that are today compulsory equipment on the bridge of a ship simply did not exist.
But what of the Exxon Valdez?, argue some critics.
The marine industry can reasonably claim to have learned the lessons of Exxon Valdez. In fact, had the Exxon Valdez been built to construction standards first introduced in the 1990s, not a drop of oil would have been spilled in that incident.
Before any tanker is chartered by an oil company, the vessel is vetted in detail with the assistance of international databases describing every aspect of a tanker’s history. As a consequence, tanker owners are highly incentivized to ensure their vessels, and the crews that operate them, maintain an exemplary record of performance.
Highly experienced marine pilots, assisted by equally senior tug masters commanding state of the art and immensely powerful tugs, guide tankers through local waters. It’s the law.
Real time wind and current monitors in combination with comprehensive communications systems ensure marine pilots in British Columbia are at the leading edge of safety innovation.
And so modern ship construction, rigorous training and safety standards, and advanced technologies ensure oil spills today are not inevitable. The proof is clear: Oil spills in the marine environment have declined massively over the past 30 years and in 2012 there were no large spills anywhere in the world.
Yet B.C.’s shipping sector is not resting on its laurels. The marine industry is fully supportive of the federal government’s decision to conduct a review of oil spill preparedness and response, which will be published later this year.
And Western Canada Marine Response Corporation, the organization charged by the federal government with maintaining oil spill preparedness on Canada’s West Coast, is a leader in adopting the latest international marine safety approaches.
The Canada Shipping Act requires that we have the ability to respond to a 10,000-tonne (70,000-barrel) oil spill. WCMRC exceeds that capacity by two and a half times — and we continue to grow our capacity even further.
WCMRC has initiated detailed mapping of the B.C. coastline to improve the organization’s coastal knowledge base, maintains strategically located equipment caches in 11 locations from Vancouver to Prince Rupert, and conducts training exercises regularly across the B.C. coast.
In the unlikely event of a spill, WCMRC has a fleet of 31 vessels at the ready. An additional 80 vessels manned by well-trained and experienced contractors are also available. And WCMRC can call upon a worldwide network of resources and personnel that further enhances its ability to respond rapidly and effectively to any spill.
WCMRC continues to benchmark itself against several other leading countries and was recently part of a B.C. delegation to study Norway’s experiences with the aim of continually improving its own expertise.
Federal and provincial governments and the oil and pipeline companies are making unprecedented investments in scientific research to better understand the behaviour of different products in the marine environment. The outcome of this research will provide WCMRC with an even higher level of advanced knowledge for spill preparedness and response.
As for the ability to pay for a significant cleanup, however remote the likelihood, Canada is a world leader. While the principle of “polluter pays” is applicable in all jurisdictions worldwide, thanks to a layer of national reserve funding known as the Canadian Ship Source Oil Pollution Fund (CSSOPF), the Canadian marine industry’s coverage is over and above statutory international requirements.
And following a detailed international review in 2012, the Limits to Liability for Maritime Claims Convention (LLMC) has raised liability limits in the marine sector by 51 per cent effective 2015. Even so, a review of the size of the CSSOPF forms part of the federal government’s current review of preparedness.
In summary, the world fleet of around 12,500 tankers is quietly but safely going about its business providing essential service to the world economy 24 hours a day, every day of the year.
We should demand of the marine sector the highest standards. We must also recognize how far the sector has come in terms of marine safety and oil spill preparedness and response.
Stephen Brown is president of the Chamber of Shipping of British Columbia. Kevin Gardner is president and general manager of Western Canada Marine Response Corporation.
What B.C. needs is more energy
Written by: Lori Ackerman, The Vancouver Sun September 24, 2013 Continue reading →
It’s often difficult for the public to assess any large energy project like Northern Gateway or the LNG initiatives without a reasonable level of what many call “energy literacy.”
Energy literacy, of course, describes a person’s understanding of the role energy plays in our lives, how that energy is generated and transported, and touches on the ways the energy industry continues to evolve and improve over time. We need energy literacy to achieve long-term, affordable energy solutions. As the Standing Senate Committee on Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources notes, “Every citizen must be part of the solution and start by becoming more energy literate.”
In our region we work in natural gas, coal, wind, solar, geothermal and hydro and yes, we also have a deep understanding of pipelines and pipeline safety. Generally, this region is relatively energy literate.
But if energy literacy is to yield sound decision-making, then the public at large deserves a primer on energy innovation, and on energy more broadly.
The oil and gas industry, from production right through to distribution, has made enormous strides toward ever-newer technologies and better methods — from planning through construction, monitoring and maintenance.
One of the great aspects of being involved in my community is knowing our entrepreneurs and innovators. These are the people that get up each day and ask themselves: “How can I make my work more efficient, effective and leave a lighter footprint?” That intellectual property is creating wealth.
I am passionate about this approach because I was raised by an innovator and I see it as an antidote to simply saying ‘no’ to industrial development, including large energy projects like the proposed Northern Gateway Pipeline or the LNG projects. Saying ‘no’ can temporarily preserve the way things are, but inevitably saying ‘no’ can also mean tough decisions need to be made and some of the services we rely on to create quality of life may face closure.
Sure, saying ‘no’ is always an option, but it can’t be a community’s only option.
To be honest, I’d much rather challenge the oil and gas industry to continue with innovation, than to say ‘no.’ My experience has been that when you challenge this industry to do something better, it’s amazing how the industry comes up with proposals to meet that challenge. Their regard for safety can only be described as remarkable. As a mom of some of these workers, you can only imagine how I appreciate this. As a leader in the community, the sector’s outreach to ensure social license is unlike any other industry.
That’s why we’re holding the Fort St. John Energy Conference from Oct. 1 to 3 (bcenergyconference.ca).
We can change the conversation, and raise the level of energy literacy across the province. We view this as a very important initiative for moving our region and our province forward.
But oil and gas aren’t our only natural assets in northeastern B.C., and nor is energy. Among other things, the Fort St. John region is also the northernmost agricultural region in the country and we have a vibrant forestry industry as well. So when we talk about the four pillars of our community plan, we take a wide-ranging view of what it is we want to achieve in future, including economic prosperity, environmental sustainability, social inclusion and cultural vitality.
For us, being proactive means consulting with our community, engaging as many citizens and businesses as we can, and preparing our community for growth and change within the framework of the four pillars.
To be honest, residents from this area of the province well understand how to work toward lower CO2 emissions, and how to build and maintain safe energy infrastructure, including pipelines. We do this every day.
We want to share that experience with those outside our region. The Energy Conference in October is one way for us to help re-focus the discussion and to bring more British Columbians into the conversation to raise the knowledge level on energy issues. After all, it’s a conversation that needs changing.
Northerners recognize the world is moving ever closer to a knowledge economy. We also know we’re a small population spread out across a very large country, and natural resources are highly valued worldwide. If we’re going to continue with our resource-based economy, then let’s ensure we proceed in an effective and efficient manner that leaves a lighter footprint — that approach is knowledge that can then be exported as well.
We need to be a proactive part of creating policy that drives all industries in a more sustainable direction.
Lori Ackerman is mayor of Fort St. John and a director of both the Peace River Regional District and the Northern Development Initiative Trust.
© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun
Read the original article
Banning coal simplistic, unreasonable and unwise
Opinion: Mineral is part of the fabric of our human existence
By David Brett, The Vancouver Sun, September 05, 2013
Poor coal. It’s the mineral not even a mother could love. It’s the orphaned rock, dirty to burn and easy to hate. Vancouver was cheered recently for banning coal, even though it had no coal to ban. Oppose coal and you’re a rock star. Support coal and you’re booed offstage. Surely opposing West Coast coal exports to Asia is the smart, environmentally and morally right thing to do.
Or is it? A series of inconvenient realities suggest otherwise.
First, despite the current trend away from coal to cheap gas, China and other developing countries will need coal for the foreseeable future. The morality of denying them access to it is questionable. For hundreds of millions in China and elsewhere, consuming coal for electricity and heat is not a choice. Removing North American coal supplies from the market will not reduce consumption, but will likely increase prices. It will also encourage coal mining in less safe jurisdictions. Is it right for us to impose such hardships on our fellow human beings while presenting no current practical alternatives?
Second, the intelligence of actively choking off coal exports is suspect. The robust emerging economies of China, India and Southeast Asia are crucial to our own economic well-being. Stock markets tremble at even the hint of a slowdown in China. Consumer confidence here lives in simpatico with Asia. How smart is it to put our foot on the brakes of those economies by increasing their energy costs?
One way some pundits make such imprudence look clever is to style natural resource wealth as a handicap, as if knowledge-based sectors falter when resource extraction thrives. But this is a false argument because the extractive sectors are knowledge-based and already rich with intellectual capital. Just ask any geologist, engineer, or GIS software designer. Resource wealth drives innovation, not the opposite.
Another inconvenient reality is that poverty in the developing world will worsen if we manipulate energy supplies. Industrialization reduces poverty by releasing agrarian families from mere subsistence. It creates higher paying jobs, enabling increased education for children and autonomy for women. Over the long term, this results in a more affluent, service- and knowledge-based economy. The energy driving this gradual process is coal. Blocking North American coal supplies to Asia risks driving up the cost of living for the world’s poor.
Making life harder for the poor through our energy agenda is not something we in the West like to contemplate. Instead, we romanticize the notion of the noble peasant farmer, living off the land with a minimal environmental footprint. Subsistence farming is not poverty, we reason, it’s a cherished traditional lifestyle we should admire. Of course, most of us don’t live those ideals ourselves, choosing rather to educate our children for knowledge-based careers in the city. The dissonance is so real we pat ourselves on the back for paying a few cents extra for fair-trade coffee, as if that rights all the wrong we are doing.
Yes, the negative environmental, health and safety impacts of coal mining and use are significant. Poor countries are not oblivious to coal’s negative impact, but they need it at present to better the standard of living for their citizens. Why not provide these countries with North American coal that’s mined according to tough environmental and safety guidelines, creating well-paying jobs and prosperous communities on this side of the Pacific?
And why not encourage them to use the latest coal burning and scrubber technologies to reduce air pollutants?
The problem with public discourse on coal is that simplistic answers are preferred over holistic, well-reasoned and defensible solutions.
Coal adds to global warming and therefore we should ban it, they say. But the truth is we can’t ban coal. Australia will be more than happy to rake in the billions we will be leaving on the table for them.
Then there’s the “leadership” argument. If we “take a stand” and “send a message” that coal is bad, we do ourselves proud. But such hectoring from one of the world’s wealthiest cities is at best sanctimonious and at worst pure, selfish NIMBYism.
Coal is not just a much-loathed rock we can toss aside; it’s part of the fabric of our human existence. We have a complex relationship with coal built over millennia. We can’t rashly break it off over night. Coal needs a little love too.
A senior adviser to Greenspirit Strategies Ltd. (greenspiritstrategies.com), David Brett has spent much of his life in the natural resources sector.
Why B.C. needs to ‘get to yes’ on major resource projects
Opinion: A minority’s pushback is threatening our future
Written by: John Winter, Special to the Vancouver Sun August 16, 2013
For a province awash in talent and natural assets, it’s disturbing to see how much British Columbian ingenuity is being channelled into our province’s alarming — and growing — “culture of no.”
Robyn Allan’s attack of Northern Gateway’s job numbers (Vancouver Sun, Issues and Ideas, Aug. 13) is yet another example of that — an intellectual exercise geared at undercutting one of B.C.’s most ambitious and promising job-creating projects to date.
And for what gain?
As British Columbians, we need to sit up and take heed of where the public discourse on resource projects has got to.
From our vantage point, as a network of more than 120 Chambers and 36,000 represented businesses in communities throughout all of B.C., here’s what we’re seeing: it’s a pretty frightening place.
In virtually every corner of the province, we’re seeing the same thing: Smart, highly environmentally responsible projects that can employ our children and keep our towns alive are being battered, paralyzed and stomped out.
By whom, you ask?
Not by most of you, that’s for sure. Broad-based polling consistently finds that the majority of British Columbians favour a “getting to yes” approach to resource projects. This approach calls for top-tier environmental and social practices but, critically, wants to see sound projects succeed.
So no — the pushback on projects isn’t broad-based but rather a minority position. However, that minority pushback, through effective organization and scathing rhetoric, is threatening B.C.’s future for all of us.
And that’s where, as British Columbians, we can’t sit back and watch the “culture of no” threaten our province’s economic future.
Take the Northern Gateway project.
With its $6.5-billion price tag, the project promises to be one of the largest private investments this province has ever seen.
And while critics such as Allan may attack specific job counts, here’s what’s clear: this project will create a vast quantity of high-paying jobs in northern B.C. That’s jobs that will help communities thrive and B.C.’s broader economy to grow. (As a side point, the real problem for B.C. won’t be how many jobs Northern Gateway can create, but just how we’ll fill them all.)
For all of us B.C. taxpayers, as we brace for aging demographics and escalating health care costs, Northern Gateway means $1.2 billion in projected tax revenue to support B.C. health care, education and social programs. That’s a substantial investment in maintaining and growing B.C.’s enviable standard of living.
For B.C. businesses, perhaps one of the most promising things about this project is Enbridge’s commitment to local procurement and local jobs. That’s a commitment to employ British Columbians and keeping spinoff economic activity in the province. That means that from Terrace to Tumbler Ridge, Prince George to Prince Rupert and Vancouver to Victoria, B.C. businesses will see very real benefits from this project.
This is a great gain for B.C. small businesses, which make up 98 per cent of our provincial business community. It also aligns directly with the B.C. government’s forward-looking Small Business Accord. This accord, which the B.C. Chamber had long sought and was implemented this year, will ensure that B.C.’s small businesses have a real shot at landing procurement deals for government projects and programs.
Principles of local procurement and local jobs will only heighten the gains for small business that, as we’ve seen time and time again in B.C., are triggered by large-scale infrastructure investments in our province.
Whether it’s the Port of Prince Rupert in the northwest, oil and gas development in the northeast or investments in Port Metro Vancouver and Vancouver International Airport, these investments have catalyzed the creation and development of countless B.C. businesses.
So there’s a lot at stake here. And frankly, what’s yet to be decided has nothing to do with project economics (which, Ms. Allan, are frankly settled), but rather how we balance economic value against other B.C. priorities, as the Joint Review Panel is assessing.
And with this project, as with any that proposes such substantial benefits for B.C., we hope that British Columbians will take a close look at what’s to gain here. We certainly don’t ask that environmental or community concerns be sidelined. But we’d ask that jobs and economic value not be sidelined as well. This is our future and our kids’ future.
And if you’ve been staying out of project debates in B.C. thus far, we’d urge you to lend your voice to shifting this “culture of no.”
Because if we can pool our B.C. ingenuity and focus on building our province, there’s no telling what we can accomplish.
John Winter is president and CEO of the B.C. Chamber of Commerce.
Douglas Channel, the proposed termination point for an oil pipeline in the Enbridge Northern Gateway Project, is pictured in an aerial view in Kitimat, B.C., on January 10, 2012.
Building oil pipelines to bring Canadian product to market is in many ways a no-brainer.
The world will not wait for Canada’s oil
Written by: Sherry Cooper, The Globe and Mail on August 06, 2013
Take for example the proposed Northern Gateway from Alberta to the West Coast and the Energy East proposal from Alberta to the East Coast.
The construction of these projects is a no-brainer because today, more than ever before, we need Canadian oil sands product to reach tidewater and international markets.
According to a recent bank report, Canadians lost $25-billion in oil revenue in 2012 due to a lack of pipeline infrastructure and continuing bottlenecks that prevent our oil from getting to the highest-paying markets.
We’ll lose another $20-billion this year and $15-billion every year going forward without new pipeline construction.
This is money that would benefit Canadians from coast to coast, helping to fund our health, education and social programs.
The time when we could depend on the United States as our sole oil and gas customer is long gone. In 2011, for the first time in more than 60 years, the US exported more gasoline, diesel and other fuels than it imported.
Thanks to the shale revolution, the United States is set to become the world’s largest oil producer – overtaking Saudi Arabia and Russia – just four years from now according to the International Energy Agency.
Given the U.S. is awash in oil and gas and given the country remains Canada’s only customer, Western Canadian oil sold earlier this year for a discount of as much as $43 a barrel compared to the oil known as West Texas Intermediate. And Canadian oil was discounted even further compared to the North Sea oil known as Brent. While those differentials have since narrowed, Canadian oil still trades at a significant discount.
Even more worrisome is the prediction by experts that in the foreseeable future the US won’t need Canadian oil at all. Currently, the U.S. has been able to reduce its reliance on oil from unfriendly countries such as Venezuela by replacing it with increased imports from Canada. But as U.S. oil production continues to grow rapidly, its imports of Canadian oil will inevitably decline.
Canada’s need to diversify its oil markets, then, has never been clearer. While U.S. demand for foreign oil declines, strong demand remains in emerging markets such as China and India.
So why the controversy over pipelines? Surely we must consider environmental impacts and ensure those impacts are managed and mitigated to the greatest extent possible. Proposed projects like Northern Gateway have committed to doing just that.
But pipelines are not a new, untested technology. Canadians have been building pipelines since 1853, and we’ve become leaders in innovative and safe pipeline design.
Pipelines remain the safest means of transporting large volumes of oil and gas overland.
Today’s pipelines use the latest technology, including 24/7 computerized monitoring, aerial patrols, x-ray and ultrasonic testing of welds, durable coating systems, increased pipe wall thickness and properly spaced safety control valves – just to name a few of the advances.
I can’t emphasize enough how essential it is that we start moving ahead with pipeline projects that run east to west and west to east. And let’s not consider the Energy East pipeline as a replacement for Northern Gateway or vice versa – true market diversification means we need both.
Yes, there are risks with moving forward, as there are with any energy development.
But I believe the risks of not doing so are far greater. Indeed, if we fail to build new pipeline infrastructure, we are risking the future prosperity of this country.
Norway made the right decision in developing its offshore oil and gas reserves. It now enjoys one of the highest per capita incomes in the world and its health, social and educational programs are second to none.
Closer to home, Newfoundland has developed its offshore oil and gas sector, becoming a “have” province for the first time in history and enriching its citizens and Canada as a whole.
Endlessly debating the pros and cons of pipeline development will get us nowhere.
The world will not wait for Canadian oil. If we can’t deliver the goods, markets will find other suppliers, including growing shale oil and gas deposits in the United States.
Determining what share of the windfall each province receives is a detail that can be worked out at the negotiating table – but not having inter-provincial agreements now is no reason to delay the decision-making process.
So let’s commit to new, safe and environmentally-sound pipeline infrastructure that runs east to west and west to east and will get our oil to market responsibly – and let’s do it now.
Because whether you’re from B.C., Alberta, Quebec, New Brunswick or another province, we’re all Canadians, and we’ll all benefit when our oil can be sold on the international market for a fair price.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/commentary/the-world-will-not-wait-for-canadas-oil/article13608302/
Sherry Cooper is financial advisor to MDC Partners Inc. and former executive vice-president and chief economist at Bank of Montreal.
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Education Week's blogs > Inside School Research See our Research news coverage
Sarah D. Sparks
From achievement gaps and teacher evaluations to homework and student engagement, Education Week reporters help you understand the education research behind big policy debates and daily classroom concerns.
« School Absenteeism: What Do We Know About Students Who Aren't There? | Main | 'Deeper Learning' Boosts Grad Rates, but Benefits Less for Students in Poverty »
National Academy of Education Expands Members' Diversity
By Sarah D. Sparks on March 1, 2016 8:16 AM
With the announcement of 11 new members, the National Academy of Education is making good on a pledge to bring in top education researchers from a more diverse array of racial and ethnic backgrounds and disciplines.
"It is my pleasure to welcome these leaders who represent the rich diversity of fields that study education," said Michael Feuer, president of the academy and dean of George Washington University's graduate school of education and human development, in a statement.
The academy, which includes 199 American members and 11 international associates, chooses new members annually based on education scholarship. Here are the 2016 members:
Ron Astor, a professor of school behavioral health and social work at the University of Southern California;
Joan Herman, a co-director emeritus of the National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing at the University of California, Berkeley;
Glynda Hull, the chair of undergraduate education at the University of California, Berkeley;
Deanna Kuhn, an education psychology professor at Teachers College, Columbia University;
K. Tsianina Lomawaima, a professor of justice and social inquiry, and distinguished scholar of indigenous education at the Center for Indian Education at Arizona State University;
Henrietta Mann, the founding president of the Cheyenne Arapaho Tribal College and the first chair (now emeritus) of Native American Studies at Montana State University, Bozeman;
Russell Rumberger, an education professor and director of the California Dropout Research Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara;
Anna Sfard, a professor and the head of the mathematics education program at the University of Haifa in Israel;
Carola Suárez-Orozco, an education professor and co-director of the Institute for Immigration, Globalization, and Education at the University of California, Los Angeles;
William Tate IV, the dean of the graduate school of arts and sciences at Washington University in St. Louis; and
Carol Camp Yeakey, an education professor and founding director of the Center on Urban Research and Public Policy at Washington University in St. Louis.
Seeking more research relevance
At a 50th anniversary meeting in November, Feuer and other members noted the need to broaden the group's mostly older and white membership, as well as make the National Academy of Education's focus more relevant to education policymakers.
Research Group Seeks More influence Over Policy, Practice
Panel to Assess Methodology for Judging Teacher Prep
National Academy Guides the Future of Education Research
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Our Collection Develops: October 2, 2018
Published October 2, 2018 | By Jennifer Sharp
The following titles – and more – will be on the shelves of Hartford Public Library, beginning October 2. If the title is not at your closest branch, place a hold and it will be delivered there for you. All our titles are in our catalog; you may search it at any time.
(Summaries from book vendors)
Taking the Arrow Out of the Heart by Alice Walker
Available on the Bookmobile and Downtown.
Presented in both English and Spanish, Alice Walker shares a timely collection of nearly seventy works of passionate and powerful poetry that bears witness to our troubled times, while also chronicling a life well-lived. From poems of painful self-inquiry, to celebrating the simple beauty of baking frittatas, Walker offers us a window into her magical, at times difficult, and liberating world of activism, love, hope and, above all, gratitude. Whether she’s urging us to preserve an urban paradise or behold the delicate necessity of beauty to the spirit, Walker encourages us to honor the divine that lives inside all of us and brings her legendary free verse to the page once again, demonstrating that she remains a revolutionary poet and an inspiration to generations of fans.
Alaskan Holiday by Debbie Macomber
Available at Barbour, Camp Field, and Downtown.
Before beginning her dream job as sous chef in one of Seattle’s hottest new restaurants, Josie Avery takes a summer position cooking at a lakeside lodge in the remote Alaskan town of Ponder. Josie falls for the rustic charms of the local community—including Jack Corcoran, the crotchety keeper of Ponder’s famed sourdough starter, and, in particular, the quiet and intense Palmer Saxon, a famed master swordsmith.
Josie and Palmer become close during the long Alaskan summer days, but Josie knows that, come fall, she’ll be returning to reality and the career she’s worked so hard for. Palmer, on the other hand, would like nothing better than to make Josie his wife and to keep her in Ponder. But Josie can’t imagine abandoning her mother back in the Emerald City and sacrificing her career to stay in this isolated town—not even for a man she’s quickly coming to love.
Fate has other plans. Josie misses the last boat out of town before winter sets in, stranding her in Ponder and putting her dream job at risk. As the holidays approach, Josie and Palmer must grapple with the complications that arise when dreams confront reality, and the Christmas magic that can happen when they put their faith in love.
Debbie Macomber is at her best in this beautiful holiday story about the far journeys we travel to find a place to call home.
Mad Scenes and Exit Arias: The Death of the New York City Opera and the Future of Opera in America by Heidi Waleson
Available Downtown.
In October 2013, the arts world was rocked by the news that the New York City Opera–“the people’s opera”–had finally succumbed to financial hardship after 70 years in operation. The company had been a fixture on the national opera scene–as the populist antithesis of the grand Metropolitan Opera, a nurturing home for young American talent, and a place where new, lively ideas shook up a venerable art form. But NYCO’s demise represented more than the loss of a cherished organization: it was a harbinger of massive upheaval in the performing arts–and a warning about how cultural institutions would need to change in order to survive.
Drawing on extensive research and reporting, Heidi Waleson, one of the foremost American opera critics, recounts the history of this scrappy company and reveals how, from the beginning, it precariously balanced an ambitious artistic program on fragile financial supports. Waleson also looks forward and considers some better-managed, more visionary opera companies that have taken City Opera’s lessons to heart.
Above all, Mad Scenes and Exit Arias is a story of money, ego, changes in institutional identity, competing forces of populism and elitism, and the ongoing debate about the role of the arts in society. It serves as a detailed case study not only for an American arts organization, but also for the sustainability and management of nonprofit organizations across the country.
For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Politics by Donna Brazile et al
Available at Barbour, Downtown, and Park.
The lives of black women in American politics are remarkably absent from the shelves of bookstores and libraries. For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Politics is a sweeping view of American history from the vantage points of four women who have lived and worked behind the scenes in politics for over thirty years—Donna Brazile, Yolanda Caraway, Leah Daughtry, and Minyon Moore—a group of women who call themselves The Colored Girls. Like many people who have spent their careers in public service, they view their lives in four-year waves where presidential campaigns and elections have been common threads. For most of the Colored Girls, their story starts with Jesse Jackson’s first campaign for president. From there, they went on to work on the presidential campaigns of Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Over the years, they’ve filled many roles: in the corporate world, on campaigns, in unions, in churches, in their own businesses and in the White House. Through all of this, they’ve worked with those who have shaped our country’s history—US Presidents such as Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, well-known political figures such as Terry McAuliffe and Howard Dean, and legendary activists and historical figures such as Jesse Jackson, Coretta Scott King, and Betty Shabazz.
For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Politics is filled with personal stories that bring to life heroic figures we all know and introduce us to some of those who’ve worked behind the scenes but are still hidden. Whatever their perch, the Colored Girls are always focused on the larger goal of “hurrying history” so that every American — regardless of race, gender or religious background — can have a seat at the table. This is their story.
Blood Communion: A Tale of Prince Lestat by Anne Rice
Available at Barbour, Downtown, and Dwight.
In this spellbinding novel, Lestat, rebel outlaw, addresses the tribe of vampires, directly, intimately, passionately, and tells the mesmerizing story of the formation of the Blood Communion and how he became Prince of the vampire world, the true ruler of this vast realm, and how his vision for all the Children of the Universe to thrive as one, came to be.
The tale spills from Lestat’s heart, as he speaks first of his new existence as reigning monarch–and then of his fierce battle of wits and words with the mysterious Rhoshamandes, proud Child of the Millennia, reviled outcast for his senseless slaughter of the legendary ancient vampire Maharet, avowed enemy of Queen Akasha; Rhoshamandes, a demon spirit who refuses to live in harmony at the Court of Prince Lestat and threatens all that Lestat has dreamt of.
As the tale unfolds, Lestat takes us from the towers and battlements of his ancestral castle in the snow-covered mountains of France to the verdant wilds of lush Louisiana with its lingering fragrances of magnolias and night jasmine; from the far reaches of the Pacific’s untouched islands to the 18th-century city of St. Petersburg and the court of the Empress Catherine . . .
The Dead Ringer by M.C. Beaton
Available at Camp Field and Downtown.
New York Times bestseller M. C. Beaton’s cranky, crafty Agatha Raisin—now the star of a hit T.V. show—is back on the case again in The Dead Ringer.
The idyllic Cotswolds village of Thirk Magna is best known for the medieval church of St. Ethelred and its bells, which are the pride and glory of the whole community.
As the bell-ringers get ready for the visit of the dashing Bishop Peter Salver-Hinkley, the whole village is thrown into a frenzy. Meanwhile, Agatha convinces one of the bell-ringers, the charming lawyer Julian Brody, to hire her to investigate the mystery of the Bishop’s ex-fiancée: a local heiress, Jennifer Toynby, who went missing years ago and whose body was never found…
Meanwhile, the bodies in the village just keep on piling up: the corpse of Larry Jensen, a local policeman, is discovered in the crypt. Millicent Dupin, one of a pair of bell-ringing identical twins, is murdered near the church. And Terry Fletcher, a journalist and (briefly) Agatha’s lover, is found dead in her sitting room! Agatha widens her investigation and very soon her main suspect is the handsome Bishop himself. But could he really be behind this series of violent killings, or is it someone who wants to bring him—and his reputation—down?
The Greatest Love Story Ever Told: An Oral History by Megan Mullally and Nick Offerman
The year: 2000. The setting: Los Angeles. A gorgeous virtuoso of an actress agreed to star in a random play, and a basement-dwelling scenic carpenter said he would assay a supporting role in the selfsame pageant. At the first rehearsal she surveyed her fellow cast members, determining if any of the men might qualify to provide her with a satisfying fling. Her gaze fell upon the carpenter, and like a bolt of lightning the thought struck her: no dice. Moving on.
Yet, unbeknownst to our protagonists, Cupid had merely set down his bow and picked up a rocket launcher . . . that fired a love rocket (not a euphemism). The players were Megan Mullally and Nick Offerman, and the resulting romance, once ignited, was . . . epic. Beyond epic. It resulted in a coupling that has endured to this day; a sizzling, perpetual tryst that has captivated the world with its kindness, athleticism, astonishingly low-brow humor, and true (fire emoji) passion.
How did they do it? They came from completely different families, ignored a significant age difference, and were separated by the gulf of several social strata. Megan loved books and art history; Nick loved hammers. But much more than these seemingly unsurpassable obstacles were the values they held in common: respect, decency, the ability to mention genitalia in almost any context, and an abiding obsession with the songs of Tom Waits.
Eighteen years later, they’re still very much in love and have finally decided to reveal the philosophical mountains they have conquered, the lessons they’ve learned, and the myriad jigsaw puzzles they’ve completed. Presented as an oral history in a series of conversations between the couple, the book features anecdotes, hijinks, photos, and a veritable grab bag of tomfoolery. This is not only the intoxicating book that Mullally’s and Offerman’s fans have been waiting for, it might just hold the solution to the greatest threat facing our modern world: the single life.
Under My Skin by Lisa Unger
What if the nightmares are actually memories?
It’s been a year since Poppy’s husband, Jack, was brutally murdered during his morning run through Manhattan’s Riverside Park. In the immediate aftermath, Poppy spiraled into an oblivion of grief, disappearing for several days only to turn up ragged and confused wearing a tight red dress she didn’t recognize. What happened to Poppy during those lost days? And more importantly, what happened to Jack?
The case was never solved, and Poppy has finally begun to move on. But those lost days have never stopped haunting her. Poppy starts having nightmares and blackouts—there are periods of time she can’t remember, and she’s unable to tell the difference between what is real and what she’s imagining. When she begins to sense that someone is following her, Poppy is plunged into a game of cat and mouse, determined to unravel the mystery around her husband’s death. But can she handle the truth about what really happened?
Anne Frank’s Diary: The Graphic Adaptation
Available at Barbour, Camp Field, Downtown, and Ropkins.
A timeless story rediscovered by each new generation, The Diary of a Young Girl stands without peer. For both young readers and adults it continues to capture the remarkable spirit of Anne Frank, who for a time survived the worst horror the modern world has seen—and who remained triumphantly and heartbreakingly human throughout her ordeal.
Adapted by Ari Folman, illustrated by David Polonsky, and authorized by the Anne Frank Foundation in Basel, this is the first graphic edition of The Diary and includes extensive quotation directly from the definitive edition. It remains faithful to the original, while the stunning illustrations interpret and add layers of visual meaning and immediacy to this classic work of Holocaust literature.
Virgil Wander by Leif Enger
Midwestern movie house owner Virgil Wander is “cruising along at medium altitude” when his car flies off the road into icy Lake Superior. Virgil survives but his language and memory are altered and he emerges into a world no longer familiar to him. Awakening in this new life, Virgil begins to piece together his personal history and the lore of his broken town, with the help of a cast of affable and curious locals—from Rune, a twinkling, pipe-smoking, kite-flying stranger investigating the mystery of his disappeared son; to Nadine, the reserved, enchanting wife of the vanished man, to Tom, a journalist and Virgil’s oldest friend; and various members of the Pea family who must confront tragedies of their own. Into this community returns a shimmering prodigal son who may hold the key to reviving their town.
With intelligent humor and captivating whimsy, Leif Enger conjures a remarkable portrait of a region and its residents, who, for reasons of choice or circumstance, never made it out of their defunct industrial district. Carried aloft by quotidian pleasures including movies, fishing, necking in parked cars, playing baseball and falling in love, Virgil Wander is a swift, full journey into the heart and heartache of an often overlooked American Upper Midwest by a “formidably gifted” (Chicago Tribune) master storyteller.
Is there something else you would like to see on our shelves? Let us know!
Posted in Hartford | Tagged books, fiction, new books, non-fiction
Our Collection Develops: September 25, 2018
Published September 25, 2018 | By Jennifer Sharp
The following titles – and more – will be on the shelves of Hartford Public Library, beginning September 25. If the title is not at your closest branch, place a hold and it will be delivered there for you. All our titles are in our catalog; you may search it at any time.
The King and the Catholics: England, Ireland, and the Fight for Religious Freedom, 1780-1829 by Antonia Fraser
In the summer of 1780, mob violence swept through London. Nearly one thousand people were killed, looting was widespread, and torch-bearing protestors marched on the Prime Minister’s residence at 10 Downing Street. These were the Gordon Riots: the worst civil disturbance in British history, triggered by an act of Parliament designed to loosen two centuries of systemic oppression of Catholics in the British Isles. While many London Catholics saw their homes ransacked and chapels desecrated, the riots marked a crucial turning point in their fight to return to public life.
Over the next fifty years, factions battled one another to reform the laws of the land: wealthy English Catholics yearned to rejoin the political elite; the protestant aristocracy in Ireland feared an empowered Catholic populace; and the priesthood coveted old authority that royal decree had forbidden. Kings George III and George IV stubbornly refused to address the “Catholic Question” even when pressed by their prime ministers–governments fell over it–and events in America and Europe made many skeptical of disrupting the social order. But in 1829, through the dogged work of charismatic Irish lawyer Daniel O’Connell and with the support of the Duke of Wellington, the Roman Catholic Relief Act finally passed. It was a watershed moment, opening the door to future social reform and the radical transformation of the Victorian age.
The King and the Catholics is a gripping, character-driven example of narrative history at its best. It is also a distant mirror of our own times, reflecting the dire consequences of state-sanctioned intolerance and showing how collective action and the political process can triumph over wrongheaded legislation.
Doughnuts: 90 Simple and Delicious Recipes to Make at Home by Lara Ferroni
There’s nothing quite like a fresh doughnut! With instructions written for home cooks, this book makes it easy to create doughnuts in your own kitchen.
Be prepared to be tempted by favorite classics like old-fashioned sour cream, maple-bacon bars, or red velvet, and new delights such as pineapple fritters, dulce de leche, and rainbow cake. There are also variations for vegan and gluten-free versions in this expanded edition, now with 30 new recipes. Your family and friends will not be disappointed!
The Three Escapes of Hannah Arendt: A Tyranny of Truth by Ken Krimstein
Available at Albany and Downtown.
One of the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century and a hero of political thought, the largely unsung and often misunderstood Hannah Arendt is best known for her landmark 1951 book on openness in political life, The Origins of Totalitarianism, which, with its powerful and timely lessons for today, has become newly relevant.
She led an extraordinary life. This was a woman who endured Nazi persecution firsthand, survived harrowing “escapes” from country to country in Europe, and befriended such luminaries as Walter Benjamin and Mary McCarthy, in a world inhabited by everyone from Marc Chagall and Marlene Dietrich to Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud. A woman who finally had to give up her unique genius for philosophy, and her love of a very compromised man–the philosopher and Nazi-sympathizer Martin Heidegger–for what she called “love of the world.”
Compassionate and enlightening, playful and page-turning, New Yorker cartoonist Ken Krimstein’s The Three Escapes of Hannah Arendt is a strikingly illustrated portrait of a complex, controversial, deeply flawed, and irrefutably courageous woman whose intelligence and “virulent truth telling” led her to breathtaking insights into the human condition, and whose experience continues to shine a light on how to live as an individual and a public citizen in troubled times.
The New Essentials Cookbook: A Modern Guide to Better Cooking by America’s Test Kitchen
We’ve made improvements to well-loved dishes by incorporating innovative techniques in recipes such as Butter-Basted Rib-Eye Steak and added modern classics such as Vegetable Bibimbap and Olive Oil-Yogurt Bundt Cake.
In this book, you’ll find the perfect roast chicken and a killer banana bread but also a Turkish-inspired tomato soup, luscious Chinese braised short ribs, and a set of wholesome grain bowls. A chapter on weeknight dinners offers smart paths to great flavor–from Bucatini with Peas, Kale, and Pancetta that cooks in one pot to a pizza that bakes in a skillet–including plenty of vegetarian options. Other chapters turn up the volume on breakfast and dessert standbys; try the 100 Percent Whole-Wheat Pancakes and Brown Sugar Cookies and you may never go back to the regular versions. We’ll also help you pull off your next–or even your first!–dinner party with recipes guaranteed to impress (and to work), such as Braised Lamb Shanks with Bell Peppers and Harissa, Miso-Marinated Salmon, and Roasted Zucchini and Eggplant Lasagna.
Most of us–not just newbies–could stand to bone up on certain culinary basics, and our methods may surprise even more experienced cooks, from seeding fresh chiles (we use a measuring spoon) to hulling strawberries (a plastic straw works well). And that’s just the tip of the iceberg of what these recipes teach. You’ll discover how to “reverse sear” thick pork chops so they turn out juicy all the way through, grind meat in a food processor for the ultimate burger, and shape fresh corn tortillas without a tortilla press or rolling pin.
As you progress through this book, you will also gain a deeper understanding of ingredients, better techniques, and the secrets we use in the test kitchen via sidebars called “Think Like a Cook,” which offers insights that can help in your larger culinary life.
Rap Dad: A Story of Family and the Subculture That Shaped a Generation by Juan Vidal
Just as his music career was taking off, Juan Vidal received life-changing news: he’d soon be a father. Throughout his life, neglectful men were the rule—his own dad struggled with drug addiction and infidelity—a cycle that, inevitably, wrought Vidal with insecurity. At age twenty-six, with only a bare grip on life, what lessons could he possibly offer a kid? Determined to alter the course for his child, Vidal did what he’d always done when confronted with life’s challenges. He turned to the counterculture.
“The counterculture took the place of a father I could no longer touch. Since things like school and church couldn’t get through to me, I was being trained up outside of organized institutions. What I gravitated to were these movements that not only felt redeeming, but also freeing. They were almost everything I needed.”
In Rap Dad, the musician-turned-journalist takes a thoughtful and inventive approach to exploring identity and examining how we view fatherhood in a modern context. To root out the source of his fears around parenting, Vidal revisits the flash points of his juvenescence, a feat that transports him, a first-generation American born to Colombian parents, back to the drug-fueled streets of 1980s–90s Miami. It’s during those pivotal years that he’s drawn to skateboarding, graffiti, and the music of rebellion: hip-hop. As he looks to the past for answers, he infuses his personal story with rap lyrics and interviews with some of pop culture’s most compelling voices—plenty of whom have proven to be some of society’s best, albeit nontraditional, dads. Along the way, Vidal confronts the unfair stereotypes that taint urban men—especially Black and Latino men—in today’s society.
An illuminating journey of discovery, Rap Dad is a striking portrait of modern fatherhood that is as much political as it is entertaining, personal as it is representative, and challenging as it is revealing.
Ninth Street Women: Lee Krasner, Elaine De Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frankenthaler: Five Painters and the Movement That Changed Modern Art by Mary Gabriel
Available Downtown
Set amid the most turbulent social and political period of modern times, Ninth Street Women is the impassioned, wild, sometimes tragic, always exhilarating chronicle of five women who dared to enter the male-dominated world of twentieth-century abstract painting–not as muses but as artists. From their cold-water lofts, where they worked, drank, fought, and loved, these pioneers burst open the door to the art world for themselves and countless others to come.
Gutsy and indomitable, Lee Krasner was a hell-raising leader among artists long before she became part of the modern art world’s first celebrity couple by marrying Jackson Pollock. Elaine de Kooning, whose brilliant mind and peerless charm made her the emotional center of the New York School, used her work and words to build a bridge between the avant-garde and a public that scorned abstract art as a hoax. Grace Hartigan fearlessly abandoned life as a New Jersey housewife and mother to achieve stardom as one of the boldest painters of her generation. Joan Mitchell, whose notoriously tough exterior shielded a vulnerable artist within, escaped a privileged but emotionally damaging Chicago childhood to translate her fierce vision into magnificent canvases. And Helen Frankenthaler, the beautiful daughter of a prominent New York family, chose the difficult path of the creative life. Her gamble paid off: At twenty-three she created a work so original it launched a new school of painting.
These women changed American art and society, tearing up the prevailing social code and replacing it with a doctrine of liberation. In Ninth Street Women, acclaimed author Mary Gabriel tells a remarkable and inspiring story of the power of art and artists in shaping not just postwar America but the future.
Transcription by Kate Atkinson
Available Downtown and at Dwight.
In 1940, eighteen-year old Juliet Armstrong is reluctantly recruited into the world of espionage. Sent to an obscure department of MI5 tasked with monitoring the comings and goings of British Fascist sympathizers, she discovers the work to be by turns both tedious and terrifying. But after the war has ended, she presumes the events of those years have been relegated to the past forever.
Ten years later, now a radio producer at the BBC, Juliet is unexpectedly confronted by figures from her past. A different war is being fought now, on a different battleground, but Juliet finds herself once more under threat. A bill of reckoning is due, and she finally begins to realize that there is no action without consequence.
Transcription is a work of rare depth and texture, a bravura modern novel of extraordinary power, wit and empathy. It is a triumphant work of fiction from one of the best writers of our time.
Bury the Lead by Archer Mayor
Joe Gunther and the Vermont Bureau of Investigation tackle a murder and arson case that may be related to an Ebola outbreak and is further complicated by limited evidence and unclear motives.
Our Collection Develops: September 18th-ish, 2018
Some technical difficulties this week, but without further ado…
Empowered Boundaries:: Speaking Truth, Setting Boundaries, and Inspiring Social Change by Cristien Storm
Explaining power and privilege and the links between individual safety and community safety, Cristien Storm shows readers how to set emotional boundaries that build vibrant social movements and a better world for all. As there have been increases in violence against women, people of color, immigrants, and LGBTQI-identified people, there has been a corresponding demand for individual and community self-defense, boundary setting, and bystander trainings. Boundary setting can be used not just as a means for personal safety but as form of solidarity, resistance, and inspiration.
From saying no to a boss who always asks you to work late, to setting a boundary with a loved one, to navigating an uncomfortable situation at the bus stop, Cristien Storm offers a new approach to verbal boundary setting that is accessible for all bodies and identities. Practical in scope, the book includes tools, tips, and strategies from Storm’s decades of experience leading boundary-setting workshops. Grounded in resiliency and trauma-informed theory, Storm pays particular attention to the experiences of women, people of color, immigrants, and LQBTQI-identified people, making this necessary reading for anyone looking to create healthier relationships and build stronger communities.
American Prison: A Reporter’s Undercover Journey into the Business of Punishment by Shane Bauer
In 2014, Shane Bauer was hired for $9 an hour to work as an entry-level prison guard at a private prison in Winnfield, Louisiana. An award-winning investigative journalist, he used his real name; there was no meaningful background check. Four months later, his employment came to an abrupt end. But he had seen enough, and in short order he wrote an exposé about his experiences that won a National Magazine Award and became the most-read feature in the history of the magazine Mother Jones. Still, there was much more that he needed to say. In American Prison, Bauer weaves a much deeper reckoning with his experiences together with a thoroughly researched history of for-profit prisons in America from their origins in the decades before the Civil War. For, as he soon realized, we can’t understand the cruelty of our current system and its place in the larger story of mass incarceration without understanding where it came from. Private prisons became entrenched in the South as part of a systemic effort to keep the African-American labor force in place in the aftermath of slavery, and the echoes of these shameful origins are with us still.
The private prison system is deliberately unaccountable to public scrutiny. Private prisons are not incentivized to tend to the health of their inmates, or to feed them well, or to attract and retain a highly-trained prison staff. Though Bauer befriends some of his colleagues and sympathizes with their plight, the chronic dysfunction of their lives only adds to the prison’s sense of chaos. To his horror, Bauer finds himself becoming crueler and more aggressive the longer he works in the prison, and he is far from alone.
A blistering indictment of the private prison system, and the powerful forces that drive it, American Prison is a necessary human document about the true face of justice in America.
Sea Prayer by Khaled Hosseini
Available at Albany, Camp Field, and Downtown.
A short, powerful, illustrated book written by beloved novelist Khaled Hosseini in response to the current refugee crisis, Sea Prayer is composed in the form of a letter, from a father to his son, on the eve of their journey. Watching over his sleeping son, the father reflects on the dangerous sea-crossing that lies before them. It is also a vivid portrait of their life in Homs, Syria, before the war, and of that city’s swift transformation from a home into a deadly war zone.
Impelled to write this story by the haunting image of young Alan Kurdi, the three-year-old Syrian boy whose body washed upon the beach in Turkey in September 2015, Hosseini hopes to pay tribute to the millions of families, like Kurdi’s, who have been splintered and forced from home by war and persecution, and he will donate author proceeds from this book to the UNHCR (the UN Refugee Agency) and The Khaled Hosseini Foundation to help fund lifesaving relief efforts to help refugees around the globe.
Khaled Hosseini is one of the most widely read writers in the world, with more than fifty-five million copies of his novels sold worldwide in more than seventy countries. Hosseini is also a Goodwill Envoy to the UNHCR, and the founder of The Khaled Hosseini Foundation, a nonprofit that provides humanitarian assistance to the people of Afghanistan.
Black Flags, Blue Waters: The Epic History of America’s Most Notorious Pirates by Eric Jay Dolan
Set against the backdrop of the Age of Exploration, Black Flags, Blue Waters reveals the dramatic and surprising history of American piracy’s “Golden Age”—spanning the late 1600s through the early 1700s—when lawless pirates plied the coastal waters of North America and beyond. Best-selling author Eric Jay Dolin illustrates how American colonists at first supported these outrageous pirates in an early display of solidarity against the Crown, and then violently opposed them. Through engrossing episodes of roguish glamour and extreme brutality, Dolin depicts the star pirates of this period, among them towering Blackbeard, ill-fated Captain Kidd, and sadistic Edward Low, who delighted in torturing his prey. Also brilliantly detailed are the pirates’ manifold enemies, including colonial governor John Winthrop, evangelist Cotton Mather, and young Benjamin Franklin. Upending popular misconceptions and cartoonish stereotypes, Dolin provides this wholly original account of the seafaring outlaws whose raids reflect the precarious nature of American colonial life.
Leadership in Turbulent Times by Doris Kearns Goodwin
Are leaders born or made? Where does ambition come from? How does adversity affect the growth of leadership? Does the leader make the times or do the times make the leader?
In Leadership, Goodwin draws upon the four presidents she has studied most closely—Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Lyndon B. Johnson (in civil rights)—to show how they recognized leadership qualities within themselves and were recognized as leaders by others. By looking back to their first entries into public life, we encounter them at a time when their paths were filled with confusion, fear, and hope.
Leadership tells the story of how they all collided with dramatic reversals that disrupted their lives and threatened to shatter forever their ambitions. Nonetheless, they all emerged fitted to confront the contours and dilemmas of their times.
No common pattern describes the trajectory of leadership. Although set apart in background, abilities, and temperament, these men shared a fierce ambition and a deep-seated resilience that enabled them to surmount uncommon hardships. At their best, all four were guided by a sense of moral purpose. At moments of great challenge, they were able to summon their talents to enlarge the opportunities and lives of others.
This seminal work provides an accessible and essential road map for aspiring and established leaders in every field. In today’s polarized world, these stories of authentic leadership in times of apprehension and fracture take on a singular urgency.
These Truths: A History of the United States by Jill Lepore
Written in elegiac prose, Lepore’s groundbreaking investigation places truth itself—a devotion to facts, proof, and evidence—at the center of the nation’s history. The American experiment rests on three ideas—”these truths,” Jefferson called them—political equality, natural rights, and the sovereignty of the people. And it rests, too, on a fearless dedication to inquiry, Lepore argues, because self-government depends on it. But has the nation, and democracy itself, delivered on that promise?These Truths tells this uniquely American story, beginning in 1492, asking whether the course of events over more than five centuries has proven the nation’s truths, or belied them. To answer that question, Lepore traces the intertwined histories of American politics, law, journalism, and technology, from the colonial town meeting to the nineteenth-century party machine, from talk radio to twenty-first-century Internet polls, from Magna Carta to the Patriot Act, from the printing press to Facebook News.Along the way, Lepore’s sovereign chronicle is filled with arresting sketches of both well-known and lesser-known Americans, from a parade of presidents and a rogues’ gallery of political mischief makers to the intrepid leaders of protest movements, including Frederick Douglass, the famed abolitionist orator; William Jennings Bryan, the three-time presidential candidate and ultimately tragic populist; Pauli Murray, the visionary civil rights strategist; and Phyllis Schlafly, the uncredited architect of modern conservatism.Americans are descended from slaves and slave owners, from conquerors and the conquered, from immigrants and from people who have fought to end immigration. “A nation born in contradiction will fight forever over the meaning of its history,” Lepore writes, but engaging in that struggle by studying the past is part of the work of citizenship. “The past is an inheritance, a gift and a burden,” These Truths observes. “It can’t be shirked. There’s nothing for it but to get to know it.”
Billion Dollar Whale: The Man Who Fooled Wall Street, Hollywood, and the World by Tom Wright and Bradley Hope
In 2009, with the dust yet to settle on the financial crisis, a baby-faced, seemingly mild-mannered Wharton grad began setting in motion a fraud of unprecedented gall and magnitude–one that would come to symbolize the next great threat to the global financial system. His name is Jho Low, a man whose behavior was so preposterous he might seem made up.
An epic true-tale of hubris and greed, Billion Dollar Whale reveals how this young social climber pulled off one of the biggest heists in history–right under the nose of the global financial industry. Federal agents who helped unravel Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme say the 1MDB affair will become the textbook case of financial fraud in the modern age–and its fallout is already being credited for taking down the prime minister of Malaysia. With his yacht and private jet reportedly seized by authorities and facing money-laundering charges in Malaysia, an Interpol red notice, and an ongoing U.S. Department of Justice Investigation, Low has become an international fugitive.
For readers of Liar’s Poker, Den of Thieves, and Bad Blood, Billion Dollar Whale will become a classic, harrowing parable about finance run amok.
Whiskey in a Teacup: What Growing Up in the South Taught Me About Life, Love, and Baking Biscuits by Reese Witherspoon
Reese Witherspoon’s grandmother Dorothea always said that a combination of beauty and strength made southern women “whiskey in a teacup.” We may be delicate and ornamental on the outside, she said, but inside we’re strong and fiery.
Reese’s southern heritage informs her whole life, and she loves sharing the joys of southern living with practically everyone she meets. She takes the South wherever she goes with bluegrass, big holiday parties, and plenty of Dorothea’s fried chicken. It’s reflected in how she entertains, decorates her home, and makes holidays special for her kids—not to mention how she talks, dances, and does her hair (in these pages, you will learn Reese’s fail-proof, only slightly insane hot-roller technique). Reese loves sharing Dorothea’s most delicious recipes as well as her favorite southern traditions, from midnight barn parties to backyard bridal showers, magical Christmas mornings to rollicking honky-tonks.
It’s easy to bring a little bit of Reese’s world into your home, no matter where you live. After all, there’s a southern side to every place in the world, right?
Button Man by Andrew Gross
After a string of New York Times bestselling suburban thrillers, Andrew Gross has reinvented himself as a writer of historical thrillers. In his latest novel,Button Man, he delivers a stirring story of a Jewish family brought together in the dawn of the women’s garment business and torn apart by the birth of organized crime in New York City in the 1930s.
Morris, Sol, and Harry Rabishevsky grew up poor and rough in a tiny flat on the Lower East Side, until the death of their father thrust them into having to fend for themselves and support their large family. Morris, the youngest, dropped out of school at twelve years old and apprenticed himself to a garment cutter in a clothing factory; Sol headed to accounting school; but Harry, scarred by a family tragedy, fell in with a gang of thugs as a teenager. Morris steadily climbs through the ranks at the factory until at twenty-one he finally goes out on his own, convincing Sol to come work with him. But Harry can’t be lured away from the glamour, the power, and the money that come from his association with Louis Buchalter, whom Morris has battled with since his youth and who has risen to become the most ruthless mobster in New York. And when Buchalter sets his sights on the unions that staff the garment makers’ factories, a fatal showdown is inevitable, pitting brother against brother.
This new novel is equal parts historical thriller, rich with the detail of a vibrant New York City in the 1920s and 1930s, and family saga, based on Andrew Gross’s own family story and on the history of the era, complete with appearances by real-life characters like mobsters Louis Lepke and Dutch Schultz and special prosecutor Thomas Dewey, and cements Gross’s reputation as today’s most atmospheric and original historical thriller writer.
Time’s Convert by Deborah Harkness
On the battlefields of the American Revolution, Matthew de Clermont meets Marcus MacNeil, a young surgeon from Massachusetts, during a moment of political awakening when it seems that the world is on the brink of a brighter future. When Matthew offers him a chance at immortality and a new life free from the restraints of his puritanical upbringing, Marcus seizes the opportunity to become a vampire. But his transformation is not an easy one and the ancient traditions and responsibilities of the de Clermont family clash with Marcus’s deeply held beliefs in liberty, equality, and brotherhood.
Fast-forward to contemporary Paris, where Phoebe Taylor–the young employee at Sotheby’s whom Marcus has fallen for–is about to embark on her own journey to immortality. Though the modernized version of the process at first seems uncomplicated, the couple discovers that the challenges facing a human who wishes to be a vampire are no less formidable than they were in the eighteenth century. The shadows that Marcus believed he’d escaped centuries ago may return to haunt them both–forever.
A passionate love story and a fascinating exploration of the power of tradition and the possibilities not just for change but for revolution, Time’s Convert channels the supernatural world-building and slow-burning romance that made the All Souls Trilogy instant bestsellers to illuminate a new and vital moment in history, and a love affair that will bridge centuries.
The Incurable Romantic And Other Tales of Madness and Desire by Frank Tallis
In The Incurable Romantic, Frank Tallis recounts the extraordinary stories of patients who are, quite literally, madly in love: a woman becomes utterly convinced that her dentist is secretly infatuated with her and drives him to leave the country; a man destroys his massive fortune through trysts with over three thousand prostitutes–because his ego requires that they fall in love with him; a beautiful woman’s pathological jealousy destroys the men who love her. Along the way, we learn a great deal about the history of psychiatry and the role of neuroscience in addressing disordered love. Elegantly written and infused with deep sympathy, The Incurable Romantic shows how all of us can become a bit crazy in love.
Preparation for our system conversion is going smoothly. On your end, there will be all the functions you’re familiar with, along with better searching capabilities, automatic renewals, and more. Our color scheme is still in flux, so I’m unable to share it at this time. Hopefully soon!
Robert B. Parker’s Colorblind: a Jesse Stone novel by Reed Farrel Coleman
Jesse Stone is back on the job after a stint in rehab, and the road to recovery is immediately made bumpy by a series of disturbing and apparently racially motivated crimes, beginning with the murder of an African American woman. Then, Jesse’s own deputy Alisha–the first black woman hired by the Paradise police force–becomes the target of a sophisticated frame-up. As he and his team work tirelessly to unravel the truth, he has to wonder if this is just one part of an even grander plot, one with an end game more destructive than any of them can imagine.
At the same time, a mysterious young man named Cole Slayton rolls into town with a chip on his shoulder and a problem with authority–namely, Jesse. Yet, something about the angry twenty-something appeals to Jesse, and he takes Cole under his wing. But there’s more to him than meets the eye, and his secrets might change Jesse’s life forever.
Miss Kopp Just Won’t Quit by Amy Stewart
After a year on the job, New Jersey’s first female deputy sheriff has collared criminals, demanded justice for wronged women, and gained notoriety nationwide for her exploits. But on one stormy night, everything falls apart.
While transporting a woman to an insane asylum, Deputy Kopp discovers something deeply troubling about her story. Before she can investigate, another inmate bound for the asylum breaks free and tries to escape.
In both cases, Constance runs instinctively toward justice. But the fall of 1916 is a high-stakes election year, and any move she makes could jeopardize Sheriff Heath’s future—and her own. Although Constance is not on the ballot, her controversial career makes her the target of political attacks.
With wit and verve, book-club favorite Amy Stewart brilliantly conjures the life and times of the real Constance Kopp to give us this “unforgettable, not-to-be messed-with heroine” (Marie Claire) under fire in Miss Kopp Just Won’t Quit.
The Personality Brokers: The Strange History of Myers-Briggs and the Birth of Personality Testing by Merve Emre
The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator is the most popular personality test in the world. It is used regularly by Fortune 500 companies, universities, hospitals, churches, and the military. Its language of personality types–extraversion and introversion, sensing and intuiting, thinking and feeling, judging and perceiving–has inspired television shows, online dating platforms, and Buzzfeed quizzes. Yet despite the test’s widespread adoption, experts in the field of psychometric testing, a $2 billion industry, have struggled to validate its results–no less account for its success. How did Myers-Briggs, a homegrown multiple choice questionnaire, infiltrate our workplaces, our relationships, our Internet, our lives?
First conceived in the 1920s by the mother-daughter team of Katherine Briggs and Isabel Briggs Myers, a pair of devoted homemakers, novelists, and amateur psychoanalysts, Myers-Briggs was designed to bring the gospel of Carl Jung to the masses. But it would take on a life entirely its own, reaching from the smoke-filled boardrooms of mid-century New York to Berkeley, California, where it was administered to some of the twentieth century’s greatest creative minds. It would travel across the world to London, Zurich, Cape Town, Melbourne, and Tokyo, until it could be found just as easily in elementary schools, nunneries, and wellness retreats as in shadowy political consultancies and on social networks.
Drawing from original reporting and never-before-published documents, The Personality Brokers takes a critical look at the personality indicator that became a cultural icon. Along the way it examines nothing less than the definition of the self–our attempts to grasp, categorize, and quantify our personalities. Surprising and absorbing, the book, like the test at its heart, considers the timeless question: What makes you, you?
Home After Dark by David Small
A long-awaited graphic novel by the Caldecott Medal-winning creator of Stitches uses evocative, spliced imagery to convey the story of an abandoned youth struggling to survive in a dilapidated, racially torn and chronically violent 1950s California community.
Accessory to War: The Unspoken Alliance Between Astrophysics and the Military by Neil deGrasse Tyson and Avis Lang
In this fascinating foray into the centuries-old relationship between science and military power, acclaimed astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson and writer-researcher Avis Lang examine how the methods and tools of astrophysics have been enlisted in the service of war. “The overlap is strong, and the knowledge flows in both directions,” say the authors, because astrophysicists and military planners care about many of the same things: multi-spectral detection, ranging, tracking, imaging, high ground, nuclear fusion, and access to space. Tyson and Lang call it a “curiously complicit” alliance. “The universe is both the ultimate frontier and the highest of high grounds,” they write. “Shared by both space scientists and space warriors, it’s a laboratory for one and a battlefield for the other. The explorer wants to understand it; the soldier wants to dominate it. But without the right technology—which is more or less the same technology for both parties—nobody can get to it, operate in it, scrutinize it, dominate it, or use it to their advantage and someone else’s disadvantage.”Spanning early celestial navigation to satellite-enabled warfare, Accessory to War is a richly researched and provocative examination of the intersection of science, technology, industry, and power that will introduce Tyson’s millions of fans to yet another dimension of how the universe has shaped our lives and our world.
Betty Ford: First Lady, Women’s Advocate, Survivor, Trailblazer by Lisa McCubbin
Betty Ford: First Lady, Women’s Advocate, Survivor, Trailblazer is the inspiring story of an ordinary Midwestern girl thrust onto the world stage and into the White House under extraordinary circumstances. Setting a precedent as First Lady, Betty Ford refused to be silenced by her critics as she publicly championed equal rights for women, and spoke out about issues that had previously been taboo—breast cancer, depression, abortion, and sexuality. Privately, there were signs something was wrong. After a painful intervention by her family, she admitted to an addiction to alcohol and prescription drugs. Her courageous decision to speak out publicly sparked a national dialogue, and in 1982, she co-founded the Betty Ford Center, which revolutionized treatment for alcoholism and inspired the modern concept of recovery.
Lisa McCubbin also brings to light Gerald and Betty Ford’s sweeping love story: from Michigan to the White House, until their dying days, their relationship was that of a man and woman utterly devoted to one another other—a relationship built on trust, respect, and an unquantifiable chemistry.
Based on intimate in-depth interviews with all four of her children, Susan Ford Bales, Michael Ford, Jack Ford, and Steven Ford, as well as family friends, and colleagues, Betty Ford: First Lady, Women’s Advocate, Survivor, Trailblazer is a deeply personal, empathic portrait of an outspoken First Lady, who was first and foremost a devoted wife and mother. With poignant details and rare insight, McCubbin reveals a fiercely independent woman who had a lively sense of humor, unwavering faith, and an indomitable spirit—the true story behind one of the most admired and influential women of our time.
Palaces for the People: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life by Eric Klinenberg
We are living in a time of deep divisions. Americans are sorting themselves along racial, religious, and cultural lines, leading to a level of polarization that the country hasn’t seen since the Civil War. Pundits and politicians are calling for us to come together, to find common purpose. But how, exactly, can this be done?
In Palaces for the People, Eric Klinenberg suggests a way forward. He believes that the future of democratic societies rests not simply on shared values but on shared spaces: the libraries, childcare centers, bookstores, churches, synagogues, and parks where crucial, sometimes life-saving connections, are formed. These are places where people gather and linger, making friends across group lines and strengthening the entire community. Klinenberg calls this the “social infrastructure”: When it is strong, neighborhoods flourish; when it is neglected, as it has been in recent years, families and individuals must fend for themselves.
Klinenberg takes us around the globe—from a floating school in Bangladesh to an arts incubator in Chicago, from a soccer pitch in Queens to an evangelical church in Houston—to show how social infrastructure is helping to solve some of our most pressing challenges: isolation, crime, education, addiction, political polarization, and even climate change.
Richly reported, elegantly written, and ultimately uplifting, Palaces for the People urges us to acknowledge the crucial role these spaces play in civic life. Our social infrastructure could be the key to bridging our seemingly unbridgeable divides—and safeguarding democracy.
Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women’s Anger by Soraya Chemaly
Women are angry, and it isn’t hard to figure out why.
We are underpaid and overworked. Too sensitive, or not sensitive enough. Too dowdy or too made-up. Too big or too thin. Sluts or prudes. We are harassed, told we are asking for it, and asked if it would kill us to smile. Yes, yes it would.
Contrary to the rhetoric of popular “self-help” and an entire lifetime of being told otherwise, our rage is one of the most important resources we have, our sharpest tool against both personal and political oppression. We’ve been told for so long to bottle up our anger, letting it corrode our bodies and minds in ways we don’t even realize. Yet our anger is a vital instrument, our radar for injustice and a catalyst for change. On the flip side, the societal and cultural belittlement of our anger is a cunning way of limiting and controlling our power.
We are so often told to resist our rage or punished for justifiably expressing it, yet how many remarkable achievements in this world would never have gotten off the ground without the kernel of anger that fueled them? Rage Becomes Her makes the case that anger is not what gets in our way, it is our way, sparking a new understanding of one of our core emotions that will give women a liberating sense of why their anger matters and connect them to an entire universe of women no longer interested in making nice at all costs.
Following in the footsteps of classic feminist manifestos like The Feminine Mystique and Our Bodies, Ourselves, Rage Becomes Her is an eye-opening book for the twenty-first century woman: an engaging, accessible credo offering us the tools to re-understand our anger and harness its power to create lasting positive change.
Our Collection Develops: September 4, 2018
Published September 5, 2018 | By Jennifer Sharp
The following titles – and more – will be on the shelves of Hartford Public Library, beginning September 4. If the title is not at your closest branch, place a hold and it will be delivered there for you. All our titles are in our catalog; you may search it at any time.
You will notice we have taken some shortcuts this week, and there are no images to go along with the book titles. At the end of October we will be migrating from our 22-year old integrated library system (which includes the online catalog you’re familiar with) to a brand new one! This is a very busy, yet exciting, couple of months for us, and our extra time is being used for testing and training. In next week’s post we will share more information.
The Good Neighbor by Maxwell King
Fred Rogers (1928–2003) was an enormously influential figure in the history of television and in the lives of tens of millions of children. As the creator and star of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, he was a champion of compassion, equality, and kindness. Rogers was fiercely devoted to children and to taking their fears, concerns, and questions about the world seriously.
The Good Neighbor, the first full-length biography of Fred Rogers, tells the story of this utterly unique and enduring American icon. Drawing on original interviews, oral histories, and archival documents, Maxwell King traces Rogers’s personal, professional, and artistic life through decades of work, including a surprising decision to walk away from the show to make television for adults, only to return to the neighborhood with increasingly sophisticated episodes, written in collaboration with experts on childhood development. An engaging story, rich in detail, The Good Neighbor is the definitive portrait of a beloved figure, cherished by multiple generations.
Leverage in Death by J.D. Robb
For the airline executives finalizing a merger that would make news in the business world, the nine a.m. meeting would be a major milestone. But after marketing VP Paul Rogan walked into the plush conference room, strapped with explosives, the headlines told of death and destruction instead. The NYPSD’s Eve Dallas confirms that Rogan was cruelly coerced by two masked men holding his family hostage. His motive was saving his wife and daughter—but what was the motive of the masked men?
Despite the chaos and bad publicity, blowing up one meeting isn’t going to put the brakes on the merger. All it’s accomplished is shattering a lot of innocent lives. Now, with the help of her billionaire husband Roarke, Eve must untangle the reason for an inexplicable act of terror, look at suspects inside and outside both corporations, and determine whether the root of this crime lies in simple sabotage, or something far more complex and twisted.
The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris
In April 1942, Lale Sokolov, a Slovakian Jew, is forcibly transported to the concentration camps at Auschwitz-Birkenau. When his captors discover that he speaks several languages, he is put to work as a Tätowierer (the German word for tattooist), tasked with permanently marking his fellow prisoners.
Imprisoned for over two and a half years, Lale witnesses horrific atrocities and barbarism—but also incredible acts of bravery and compassion. Risking his own life, he uses his privileged position to exchange jewels and money from murdered Jews for food to keep his fellow prisoners alive.
One day in July 1942, Lale, prisoner 32407, comforts a trembling young woman waiting in line to have the number 34902 tattooed onto her arm. Her name is Gita, and in that first encounter, Lale vows to somehow survive the camp and marry her.
A vivid, harrowing, and ultimately hopeful re-creation of Lale Sokolov’s experiences as the man who tattooed the arms of thousands of prisoners with what would become one of the most potent symbols of the Holocaust, The Tattooist of Auschwitz is also a testament to the endurance of love and humanity under the darkest possible conditions.
Sunrise Highway by Peter Blauner
In the summer of Star Wars and Son of Sam, a Long Island schoolgirl is found gruesomely murdered. A local prosecutor turns a troubled teenager known as JT from a suspect to a star witness in the case, putting away a high school football star who claimed to be innocent. Forty years later, JT has risen to chief of police, but there’s a trail of a dozen dead women that reaches from Brooklyn across Long Island, along the Sunrise Highway, and it’s possible that his actions actually enabled a killer.
That’s when Lourdes Robles, a relentless young Latina detective for the NYPD, steps in to track the serial killer. She discovers a deep and sinister web of connections between the victims and some of the most powerful political figures in the region, including JT himself. Now Lourdes not only has to catch a killer, but maybe dismantle an entire system that’s protected him, possibly at the cost of her own life.
If You Love Me: A Mother’s Journey Through Her Daughter’s Opioid Addiction by Maureen Cavanagh
Fast-paced and heartwarming, devastating and redemptive, Maureen’s incredible odyssey into the opioid crisis—first as a parent, then as an advocate—is ultimately a deeply moving mother-daughter story. When Maureen and her ex-husband Mike see their daughter Katie’s needle track marks for the first time, it is a complete shock. But, slowly, the drug use explains everything—Katie’s constant exhaustion, erratic moods, and all those spoons that have gone missing from the house. Once Mike and Maureen get Katie into detox, Maureen goes to sleep that night hoping that in 48 hours she’ll have her daughter back. It’s not that simple.
Like the millions of parents and relatives all over the country—some of whom she has helped through her nonprofit organization—Maureen learns that recovery is neither straightforward nor brief. She fights to save Katie’s life, breaking down doors on the seedy side of town with Mike, kidnapping Katie outside a convenience store, and battling the taboo around substance use disorder in her picturesque New England town. Maureen is launched into the shadowy world of overcrowded, for-profit rehabilitation centers that often prey on worried parents. As Katie runs away from one program after another, never outrunning her pain, Maureen realizes that even while she becomes an expert on getting countless men and women into detox and treatment centers, she remains powerless to save her own daughter. Maureen’s unforgettable story brings the opioid crisis out of the shadows and into the house next door.
Climate Justice: Hope, Resilience, and the Fight for a Sustainable Future by Mary Robinson
Holding her first grandchild in her arms in 2003, Mary Robinson was struck by the uncertainty of the world he had been born into. Before his fiftieth birthday, he would share the planet with more than nine billion people–people battling for food, water, and shelter in an increasingly volatile climate. The faceless, shadowy menace of climate change had become, in an instant, deeply personal.
Mary Robinson’s mission would lead her all over the world, from Malawi to Mongolia, and to a heartening revelation: that an irrepressible driving force in the battle for climate justice could be found at the grassroots level, mainly among women, many of them mothers and grandmothers like herself. From Sharon Hanshaw, the Mississippi matriarch whose campaign began in her East Biloxi hair salon and culminated in her speaking at the United Nations, to Constance Okollet, a small farmer who transformed the fortunes of her ailing community in rural Uganda, Robinson met with ordinary people whose resilience and ingenuity had already unlocked extraordinary change.
Powerful and deeply humane, Climate Justice is a stirring manifesto on one of the most pressing humanitarian issues of our time, and a lucid, affirmative, and well-argued case for hope.
The Person You Mean to Be: How Good People Fight Bias by Dolly Chugh
An inspiring guide from Dolly Chugh, an award-winning social psychologist at the New York University Stern School of Business, on how to confront difficult issues including sexism, racism, inequality, and injustice so that you can make the world (and yourself) better.
Many of us believe in equality, diversity, and inclusion. But how do we stand up for those values in our turbulent world? The Person You Mean to Be is the smart, “semi-bold” person’s guide to fighting for what you believe in.
Dolly reveals the surprising causes of inequality, grounded in the “psychology of good people”. Using her research findings in unconscious bias as well as work across psychology, sociology, economics, political science, and other disciplines, she offers practical tools to respectfully and effectively talk politics with family, to be a better colleague to people who don’t look like you, and to avoid being a well-intentioned barrier to equality. Being the person we mean to be starts with a look at ourselves.
She argues that the only way to be on the right side of history is to be a good-ish— rather than good—person. Good-ish people are always growing. Second, she helps you find your “ordinary privilege”—the part of your everyday identity you take for granted, such as race for a white person, sexual orientation for a straight person, gender for a man, or education for a college graduate. This part of your identity may bring blind spots, but it is your best tool for influencing change. Third, Dolly introduces the psychological reasons that make it hard for us to see the bias in and around us. She leads you from willful ignorance to willful awareness. Finally, she guides you on how, when, and whom, to engage (and not engage) in your workplaces, homes, and communities. Her science-based approach is a method any of us can put to use in all parts of our life.
Whether you are a long-time activist or new to the fight, you can start from where you are. Through the compelling stories Dolly shares and the surprising science she reports, Dolly guides each of us closer to being the person we mean to be.
When the Last Lion Roars: The Rise and Fall of the King of the Beasts by Sara Evans
The 2015 killing of a much-loved lion called Cecil by an American big-game hunter in Zimbabwe sparked international outrage. It also drew world attention to shrinking numbers of the ‘king of the beasts’ and and the facts that humans continue to hunt them for sport. There are no lions left north of the Sahara and their range in southern Africa has shrunk considerably. Two sub species have already gone. With numbers down to just 20,000, many experts believe, that without effective conservation plans in place, Africa’s remaining lions will be wiped out by the mid half of this century.
Sara Evans considers the cultural significance of the Lion over thousands of years as well as its historic rise and fall as a global species. She also explores the many, and often complex, reasons that explain why numbers have plummeted so catastrophically in recent decades. As humans are the lion’s only predator, she asks what is being done to reverse, or at least stem this hemorrhage?
By interweaving vivid personal encounters with Africa’s last lions–from Kenya in the northeast to Botswana in the south–visits to breeding projects in the west and their protectors all over the continent, she hopes to answer this question as well as turn the spotlight on the plight of Africa’s most iconic and mesmerizing animals.
The narrative also includes photographs, illustrations and maps as well as insights from experts in the field.
Field of Bones by J.A. Jance
Sheriff Joanna Brady’s best intentions to stay on maternity leave take a hit when a serial homicide case rocks Cochise County, dragging her into a far-reaching investigation to bring down a relentless killer in this chilling tale of suspense from New York Times bestselling author J. A. Jance.
This time Sheriff Joanna Brady may expect to see her maternity leave through to completion, but the world has other plans when a serial homicide case surfaces in her beloved Cochise County. Rather than staying home with her newborn and losing herself in the cold cases to be found in her father’s long unread diaries, Joanna instead finds herself overseeing a complex investigation involving multiple jurisdictions.
Filled with the beloved characters, small town charm, vivid history, intriguing mystery, and the scenic Arizona desert backdrop that have made the Joanna Brady series perennial bestsellers, this latest entry featuring the popular sheriff is sure to please J. A. Jance’s legion of fans.
Lake Success by Gary Shteyngart
Narcissistic, hilariously self-deluded, and divorced from the real world as most of us know it, hedge-fund manager Barry Cohen oversees $2.4 billion in assets. Deeply stressed by an SEC investigation and by his three-year-old son’s diagnosis of autism, he flees New York on a Greyhound bus in search of a simpler, more romantic life with his old college sweetheart. Meanwhile, his super-smart wife, Seema—a driven first-generation American who craved the picture-perfect life that comes with wealth—has her own demons to face. How these two flawed characters navigate the Shteyngartian chaos of their own making is at the heart of this piercing exploration of the 0.1 Percent, a poignant tale of familial longing and an unsentimental ode to what really makes America great.
Fashion Climbing by Bill Cunningham
For Bill Cunningham, New York City was the land of freedom, glamour, and, above all, style. Growing up in a lace-curtain Irish suburb of Boston, secretly trying on his sister’s dresses and spending his evenings after school in the city’s chicest boutiques, Bill dreamed of a life dedicated to fashion. But his desires were a source of shame for his family, and after dropping out of Harvard, he had to fight them tooth-and-nail to pursue his love.
When he arrived in New York, he reveled in people-watching. He spent his nights at opera openings and gate-crashing extravagant balls, where he would take note of the styles, new and old, watching how the gowns moved, how the jewels hung, how the hair laid on each head. This was his education, and the birth of the democratic and exuberant taste that he came to be famous for as a photographer for The New York Times. After two style mavens took Bill under their wing, his creativity thrived and he made a name for himself as a designer. Taking on the alias William J.–because designing under his family’s name would have been a disgrace to his parents–Bill became one of the era’s most outlandish and celebrated hat designers, catering to movie stars, heiresses, and artists alike. Bill’s mission was to bring happiness to the world by making women an inspiration to themselves and everyone who saw them. These were halcyon days when fashion was all he ate and drank. When he was broke and hungry he’d stroll past the store windows on Fifth Avenue and feed himself on beautiful things.
Fashion Climbing is the story of a young man striving to be the person he was born to be: a true original. But although he was one of the city’s most recognized and treasured figures, Bill was also one of its most guarded. Written with his infectious joy and one-of-a-kind voice, this memoir was polished, neatly typewritten, and safely stored away in his lifetime. He held off on sharing it–and himself–until his passing. Between these covers, is an education in style, an effervescent tale of a bohemian world as it once was, and a final gift to the readers of one of New York’s great characters.
The Last Palace: Europe’s Turbulent Century in Five Lives and One Legendary House by Norman Eisen
A former U.S. ambassador describes the prior occupants of his residence in Prague, including a Jewish financial baron and a Nazi general who carved swastikas into the furniture, and in the process creates a detailed history of Central Europe in the 20th century.
None of My Business by P.J. O’Rourke
After decades covering war and disaster, bestselling author and acclaimed satirist P. J. O’Rourke takes on his scariest subjects yet—business, investment, finance, and the political chicanery behind them.
Want to get rich overnight for free in 3 easy steps with no risk? Then don’t buy this book. (Actually, if you believe there’s a book that can do that, you shouldn’t buy any books because you probably can’t read.) P.J.’s approach to business, investment, and finance is different. He takes the risks for you in his chapter “How I Learned Economics by Watching People Try to Kill Each Other.” He proposes “A Way to Raise Taxes That We’ll All Love”—a 200% tax on celebrities. He offers a brief history of economic transitions before exploring the world of high tech innovation with a chapter on “Unnovations,” which asks, “The Internet—whose idea was it to put all the idiots on earth in touch with each other?” He misunderstands bitcoin, which seems “like a weird scam invented by strange geeks with weaponized slide rules in the high school Evil Math Club.” He closes with a fanciful short story about the morning that P.J. wakes up and finds that all the world’s goods and services are free! This is P.J. at his finest, a book not to be missed.
Small Fry by Lisa Brennan-Jobs
Born on a farm and named in a field by her parents—artist Chrisann Brennan and Steve Jobs—Lisa Brennan-Jobs’s childhood unfolded in a rapidly changing Silicon Valley. When she was young, Lisa’s father was a mythical figure who was rarely present in her life. As she grew older, her father took an interest in her, ushering her into a new world of mansions, vacations, and private schools. His attention was thrilling, but he could also be cold, critical and unpredictable. When her relationship with her mother grew strained in high school, Lisa decided to move in with her father, hoping he’d become the parent she’d always wanted him to be.
Small Fry is Lisa Brennan-Jobs’s poignant story of childhood and growing up. Scrappy, wise, and funny, young Lisa is an unforgettable guide, marveling at the particular magic of growing up in this family, in this place and time, while grappling with her feelings of illegitimacy and shame. Part portrait of a complex family, part love letter to California in the seventies and eighties, Small Fry is an enthralling story by an insightful new literary voice.
The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure by Greg Lukianoff
Something has been going wrong on many college campuses in the last few years. Speakers are shouted down. Students and professors say they are walking on eggshells and are afraid to speak honestly. Rates of anxiety, depression, and suicide are rising—on campus as well as nationally. How did this happen?
First Amendment expert Greg Lukianoff and social psychologist Jonathan Haidt show how the new problems on campus have their origins in three terrible ideas that have become increasingly woven into American childhood and education: What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker; always trust your feelings; and life is a battle between good people and evil people. These three Great Untruths contradict basic psychological principles about well-being and ancient wisdom from many cultures. Embracing these untruths—and the resulting culture of safetyism—interferes with young people’s social, emotional, and intellectual development. It makes it harder for them to become autonomous adults who are able to navigate the bumpy road of life.
Lukianoff and Haidt investigate the many social trends that have intersected to promote the spread of these untruths. They explore changes in childhood such as the rise of fearful parenting, the decline of unsupervised, child-directed play, and the new world of social media that has engulfed teenagers in the last decade. They examine changes on campus, including the corporatization of universities and the emergence of new ideas about identity and justice. They situate the conflicts on campus within the context of America’s rapidly rising political polarization and dysfunction.
This is a book for anyone who is confused by what is happening on college campuses today, or has children, or is concerned about the growing inability of Americans to live, work, and cooperate across party lines.
Feminasty: The Complicated Woman’s Guide to Surviving the Patriarchy Without Drinking Herself to Death by Erin Gibson
Since women earned the right to vote a little under one hundred years ago, our progress hasn’t been the Olympic sprint toward gender equality first wave feminists hoped for, but more of a slow, elderly mall walk (with frequent stops to Cinnabon) over the four hundred million hurdles we still face. Some of these obstacles are obvious-unequal pay, under-representation in government, reproductive restrictions, lack of floor-length mirrors in hotel rooms. But a lot of them are harder to identify. They’re the white noise of oppression that we’ve accepted as lady business as usual, and the patriarchy wants to keep it that way.
Erin Gibson has a singular goal-to create a utopian future where women are recognized as humans. In FEMINASTY-titled after her nickname on the hit podcast “Throwing Shade”-she has written a collection of make-you-laugh-until-you-cry essays that expose the hidden rules that make life as a woman unnecessarily hard and deconstructs them in a way that’s bold, provocative and hilarious.
Whether it’s shaming women for having their periods, allowing them into STEM fields but never treating them like they truly belong, or dictating strict rules for how they should dress in every situation, Erin breaks down the organized chaos of old fashioned sexism, intentional and otherwise, that systemically keeps women down.
How Do We Look: The Body, the Divine, and the Question of Civilization by Mary Beard
Conceived as a gorgeously illustrated accompaniment to “How Do We Look” and “The Eye of Faith,” the famed Civilisations shows on PBS, renowned classicist Mary Beard has created this elegant volume on how we have looked at art. Focusing in Part I on the Olmec heads of early Mesoamerica, the colossal statues of the pharaoh Amenhotep III, and the nudes of classical Greece, Beard explores the power, hierarchy, and gender politics of the art of the ancient world, and explains how it came to define the so-called civilized world. In Part II, Beard chronicles some of the most breathtaking religious imagery ever made—whether at Angkor Wat, Ravenna, Venice, or in the art of Jewish and Islamic calligraphers— to show how all religions, ancient and modern, have faced irreconcilable problems in trying to picture the divine. With this classic volume, Beard redefines the Western-and male-centric legacies of Ernst Gombrich and Kenneth Clark.
How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them by Jason Stanley
As the child of refugees of World War II Europe and a renowned philosopher and scholar of propaganda, Jason Stanley has a deep understanding of how democratic societies can be vulnerable to fascism: Nations don’t have to be fascist to suffer from fascist politics. In fact, fascism’s roots have been present in the United States for more than a century. Alarmed by the pervasive rise of fascist tactics both at home and around the globe, Stanley focuses here on the structures that unite them, laying out and analyzing the ten pillars of fascist politics—the language and beliefs that separate people into an “us” and a “them.” He knits together reflections on history, philosophy, sociology, and critical race theory with stories from contemporary Hungary, Poland, India, Myanmar, and the United States, among other nations. He makes clear the immense danger of underestimating the cumulative power of these tactics, which include exploiting a mythic version of a nation’s past; propaganda that twists the language of democratic ideals against themselves; anti-intellectualism directed against universities and experts; law and order politics predicated on the assumption that members of minority groups are criminals; and fierce attacks on labor groups and welfare. These mechanisms all build on one another, creating and reinforcing divisions and shaping a society vulnerable to the appeals of authoritarian leadership.
By uncovering disturbing patterns that are as prevalent today as ever, Stanley reveals that the stuff of politics—charged by rhetoric and myth—can quickly become policy and reality. Only by recognizing fascists politics, he argues, may we resist its most harmful effects and return to democratic ideals.
Inner Witch: A Modern Guide to the Ancient Craft by Gabriela Herstik
In these uncertain times, witchcraft, astrology, tarot, crystals, and similar practices are seeing a massive resurgence, especially among young women, as part of their self-care and mindfulness routines. Gabriela helps readers take back their power while connecting to something larger than themselves. She covers:
* Witchcraft as a feminist call to action
* Fashion magick
* Spells for self-love
* Cleansing your space
* Holidays of the witch
* How to create a spellbook / grimoire
* Witchcraft as self-care
Whether the reader is looking to connect with her green thumb, banish negative energies, balance her chakras, energetically fight the patriarchy, or revitalize her sense of self, Inner Witch has something to offer. After all, empowered women run the world–and the ones who do are usually witches.
Sleepyhead: The Neuroscience of a Good Night’s Rest by Henry Nicholls
Whether it’s a bout of bad jet lag or a stress-induced all-nighter, we’ve all suffered from nights that left us feeling less than well-rested. But for some people, getting a bad night’s sleep isn’t just an inconvenience: it’s a nightmare. In Sleepyhead, science writer Henry Nicholls uses his own experience with chronic narcolepsy as a gateway to better understanding the cryptic, curious, and relatively uncharted world of sleep disorders. We meet insomniacs who can’t get any sleep, narcoleptics who can’t control when they sleep, and sleep apnea victims who nearly suffocate in their sleep. We learn the underlying difference between morning larks and night owls; why our sleeping habits shift as we grow older; and the evolutionary significance of REM sleep and dreaming. Charming, eye-opening, and deeply humanizing, Sleepyhead will help us all uncover the secrets of a good night’s sleep.
The Power of Yes: Positive and Practical Advice to Help You Live Life to the Full by Abbie Headon
Embrace and explore the full power of yes and all the amazing things it can do for you.
“Yes” has magic within it. So often we are afraid of failure, of disappointment, of being vulnerable, that we settle for “no”. We expect the worst and lose sight of incredible opportunities and chances you can only happen across with that one word: yes.
With The Power of YES you will finally get to do the things that you really want to do. Discover chance, change and a new sense of freedom.
· Ditch limitations
· Open doors
· Grow confidence
· Have fun and abandon your fears
New As of August 28:
These are the titles we weren’t able to write about last week.
Moodtopia : tame your moods, de-stress, and find balance using herbal remedies, aromatherapy, and more
The disordered mind : what unusual brains tell us about ourselves
The lies that bind : rethinking identity, creed, country, color, class, culture
Pandemic 1918 : eyewitness accounts from the greatest medical holocaust in modern history
Mastering pizza : the art and practice of handmade pizza, focaccia, and calzone
Not quite not white : losing and finding race in America
Posted in Hartford | Tagged fiction, new books, non-fiction
Our Collection Develops: August 21, 2018
Published August 21, 2018 | By Jennifer Sharp
The following titles – and more – will be on the shelves of Hartford Public Library, beginning August 21. If the title is not at your closest branch, place a hold and it will be delivered there for you. All our titles are in our catalog; you may search it at any time.
Godless Citizens in a Godly Republic: Atheists in American Public Life by R. Laurence Moore and Isaac Kramnick
God occupies our nation’s consciousness, even defining to many what it means to be American. Nonbelievers have often had second-class legal status and have had to fight for their rights as citizens.As R. Laurence Moore and Isaac Kramnick demonstrate in their sharp and convincing work, avowed atheists were derided since the founding of the nation. Even Thomas Paine fell into disfavor and his role as a patriot forgotten. Popular Republican Robert Ingersoll could not be elected in the nineteenth century due to his atheism, and the suffragette Elizabeth Cady Stanton was shunned when she questioned biblical precepts about women’s roles.Moore and Kramnick lay out this fascinating history and the legal cases that have questioned religious supremacy. It took until 1961 for the Supreme Court to ban religious tests for state officials, despite Article 6 of the Constitution. Still, every one of the fifty states continues to have God in its constitution. The authors discuss these cases and more current ones, such as Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., which address whether personal religious beliefs supersede secular ones.In Godless Citizens in a Godly Republic, the authors also explore the dramatic rise of an “atheist awakening” and the role of organizations intent on holding the country to the secular principles it was founded upon.
The Devoted: A Novel by Blair Hurley
Nicole Hennessy’s life revolves around her Zen practice at the Boston Zendo, seeking solace in the tenets of Buddhism to the chagrin of her Irish Catholic family. After a decade of grueling spiritual practice under her Master’s tutelage, living on a shoestring budget as a shop clerk, Nicole has become dangerously entangled with her mentor. As Nicole confronts her past—a drug-fueled year spent fleeing her family’s loaded silences and guilt-laden “Our Fathers”—and reinvents herself in New York City, her Master’s intoxicating voice pursues her, an electrifying whisper on the other end of the phone. Somehow, he knows everything.In deft, soaring prose that bristles with psychological and erotic tension, Blair Hurley crafts a thrilling exploration of Nicole’s ecstatic quest for spirituality.
How Are You Going to Save Yourself by J.M. Holmes
Available at Barbour, Downtown, and at Dwight.
Bound together by shared experience but pulled apart by their changing fortunes, four young friends coming of age in the postindustrial enclave of Pawtucket, Rhode Island, struggle to liberate themselves from the legacies left to them as black men in America. With potent immediacy and bracing candor, this provocative debut follows a decade in the lives of Dub, Rolls, Rye, and Gio as they each grapple with the complexity of their family histories, the newfound power of sex and drugs, and the ferocity of their desires.
Gio proves himself an unforgettable narrator, beautifully flawed and unstintingly honest, as he recounts both the friends’ conflicts and their triumphs. Whether it’s a fraught family cookout, a charged altercation on the block, a raucous night in high-society Manhattan gone wrong, or the troubled efforts of a drug hustler to go clean, JM Holmes brings the thump and the heat of his scenes to life with the kind of ease that makes us not just eavesdroppers but participants.
How Are You Going to Save Yourself illuminates in breathtaking detail an entire world-one that has been underrepresented in American fiction. At times funny, often uncomfortable, occasionally disturbing, these stories fearlessly engage with issues of race, sex, drugs, class, and family. Holmes’s blistering and timely new voice, richly infused with the unmistakable rhythms of hip-hop that form the sound track to his characters’ lives, delivers an indelible fiction that has never been more vital and necessary.
Pieces of Her: A Novel by Karin Slaughter
What if the person you thought you knew best turns out to be someone you never knew at all . . . ?
Andrea knows everything about her mother, Laura. She knows she’s spent her whole life in the small beachside town of Belle Isle; she knows she’s never wanted anything more than to live a quiet life as a pillar of the community; she knows she’s never kept a secret in her life. Because we all know our mothers, don’t we?
But all that changes when a trip to the mall explodes into violence and Andrea suddenly sees a completely different side to Laura. Because it turns out that before Laura was Laura, she was someone completely different. For nearly thirty years she’s been hiding from her previous identity, lying low in the hope that no one would ever find her. But now she’s been exposed, and nothing will ever be the same again.
The police want answers and Laura’s innocence is on the line, but she won’t speak to anyone, including her own daughter. Andrea is on a desperate journey following the breadcrumb trail of her mother’s past. And if she can’t uncover the secrets hidden there, there may be no future for either one of them. . . .
Heartbreaker: A Novel by Claudia Dey
Available Downtown and at Park.
It’s 1985. Pony Darlene Fontaine has lived all her fifteen years in “the territory,” a settlement founded decades ago by a charismatic cult leader. In this strange town run on a sinister economic resource, the women crimp their hair and wear shoulder pads, and the teenagers listen to Nazareth and Whitesnake on their Walkmans. Pony’s family lives in the bungalow at the farthest edge of town, where the territory borders the rest of the wider world—a place none of the townspeople have ever been.
Except for Billie Jean Fontaine, Pony’s mother. When Billie Jean arrived in the territory seventeen years prior—falling from the open door of a stolen car—the residents took her in and made her one of their own. She was the first outsider they had ever laid eyes on. Pony adores and idolizes her mother, but like everyone else in the territory she is mystified by her. Billie Jean refuses to describe the world she came from.
One night, Billie Jean grabs her truck keys, bolts barefoot into the cold October darkness—and vanishes. Beautiful, beloved, and secretive, Billie Jean was the first person to be welcomed into the territory. Now, with a frantic search under way for her missing mother, Pony fears: Will she be the first person to leave it too?
Told from the three unforgettable perspectives of a daughter, a killer dog, and a teenage boy named Supernatural, this novel is startling in its humor and wrenching in its wisdom about the powers, limits, and dangers of love. Heartbreaker is an electrifying page-turner about a woman reinventing herself in order to survive—and a daughter who must race against the clock to untangle the mysteries left in her mother’s wake.
America: the Farewell Tour by Chris Hedges
A profound and provocative examination of America in crisis, where unemployment, deindustrialization, and a bitter hopelessness and malaise have resulted in an epidemic of diseases of despair—drug abuse, gambling, suicide, magical thinking, xenophobia, and a culture of sadism and hate.
America, says Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter Chris Hedges, is convulsed by an array of pathologies that have arisen out of profound hopelessness, a bitter despair and a civil society that has ceased to function. The opioid crisis, the retreat into gambling to cope with economic distress, the pornification of culture, the rise of magical thinking, the celebration of sadism, hate, and plagues of suicides are the physical manifestations of a society that is being ravaged by corporate pillage and a failed democracy. As our society unravels, we also face global upheaval caused by catastrophic climate change. All these ills presage a frightening reconfiguration of the nation and the planet.
Donald Trump rode this disenchantment to power. In America: The Farewell Tour, Hedges argues that neither political party, now captured by corporate power, addresses the systemic problem. Until our corporate coup d’état is reversed these diseases will grow and ravage the country. A poignant cry reported from communities across the country, America: The Farewell Tour seeks to jolt us out of our complacency while there is still time.
Summer by Karl Ove Knausgaard
2 June–It is completely dark out now. It is twenty-three minutes to midnight and you have already slept for four hours. What you will dream of tonight, no one will ever know. Even if you were to remember it when you wake up, you wouldn’t have a language in which to communicate it to us, nor do I think that you quite understand what dreams are, I think that is still undefined for you, that your thoughts haven’t grasped it yet, and that it therefore lies within that strange zone where it neither exists nor doesn’t exist.
The conclusion to one of the most extraordinary and original literary projects in recent years, Summer once again intersperses short vividly descriptive essays with emotionally-raw diary entries addressed directly to Knausgaard’s newborn daughter. Writing more expansively and, if it is possible, even more intimately and unguardedly than in the previous three volumes, he mines with new depth his difficult memories of his childhood and fraught relationship with his own father. Documenting his family’s life in rural Sweden and reflecting on a characteristically eclectic array of subjects–mosquitoes, barbeques, cynicism, and skin, to name just a few–he braids the various threads of the previous volumes into a moving conclusion.
At his most voluminous since My Struggle, his epic sensational series, Knausgaard writes for his daughter, striving to make ready and give meaning to a world at once indifferent and achingly beautiful. In his hands, the overwhelming joys and insoluble pains of family and parenthood come alive with uncommon feeling.
Physical Disobedience: An Unruly Guide to Health & Stamina for the Modern Feminist by Sarah Hays Coomer
Even as a wave of renewed feminism swells, too many women continue to starve, stuff, overwork, or neglect our bodies in pursuit of paper-thin ideals. “Fitness” has been co-opted by the beauty industry. We associate it with appearance when we should associate it with power.
Grounded in advocacy with a rowdy, accessible spirit, Physical Disobedience asserts that denigrating our bodies is, in practice, an act of submission to inequality. But when we strengthen ourselves–taking broad command of our individual physicality–we reclaim our authority and build stamina for the literal work of activism: the protests, community service, and emotional resilience it takes to face the news and stay engaged.
Physical Disobedience introduces a breathtaking new perspective on wellness by encouraging nonviolence toward our bodies, revitalizing them through diet and exercise, fashion and social media, alternative therapies, music, and motherhood. The goal is no longer to keep our bodies in check. The goal is to ignite them, to set them free, and have a mighty fine time doing it.
The Chosen Wars: How Judaism Became an American Religion by Steven R. Weisman
Steven R. Weisman tells the dramatic history of how Judaism redefined itself in America in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries—the personalities that fought each other and shaped its evolution and, crucially, the force of the American dynamic that transformed an ancient religion.
The struggles that produced a redefinition of Judaism illuminate the larger American experience and the efforts by all Americans to reconcile their faith with modern demands. The narrative begins with the arrival of the first Jews in New Amsterdam and plays out over the nineteenth century as a massive immigration takes place at the dawn of the twentieth century.
First there was the practical matter of earning a living. Many immigrants had to work on the Sabbath or traveled as peddlers to places where they could not keep kosher. Doctrine was put aside or adjusted. To take their places as equals, American Jews rejected their identity as a separate nation within America. Judaism became an American religion.
These profound changes did not come without argument. The Chosen Wars tells the stories of the colorful rabbis and activists, including women, who defined American Judaism and whose disputes divided it into the Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox branches that remain today. Isaac Mayer Wise, Mordecai Noah, David Einhorn, Rebecca Gratz, and Isaac Lesser are some of the major figures in this wonderful story.
Where Did You Get This Number?: A Pollster’s Guide to Making Sense of the World by Anthony Salvanto
CBS News’ Elections and Surveys Director Anthony Salvanto takes you behind the scenes of polling to show you how to think about who we are and where we’re headed as a nation.
As Elections and Surveys Director for CBS News, it’s Anthony Salvanto’s job to understand you—what you think and how you vote. He’s the person behind so many of the poll numbers you see today, making the winner calls on election nights and surveying thousands of Americans. In Where Did You Get This Number? A Pollster’s Guide to Making Sense of the World, Salvanto takes readers on a fast-paced, eye-opening tour through the world of polling and elections and what they really show about America today, beyond the who’s-up-who’s-down headlines and horse races. Salvanto is just the person to bring much-needed clarity in a time when divisions seem to run so deep.
The language of polling may be numbers, but the stories it tells are about people. In this engaging insider’s account, Salvanto demystifies jargon with plain language and answers readers’ biggest questions about polling and pollsters. How can they talk to 1,000 people and know the country? How do they know the winner so fast? How do they decide what questions to ask? Why didn’t they call you? Salvanto offers data-driven perspective on how Americans see the biggest issues of our time, from the surprising 2016 election, to the shocks of the financial crisis, the response to terrorism and the backlash against big money. He doesn’t shy away from pointing out what’s worked and what hasn’t. Salvanto takes readers inside the CBS newsroom on Election Night 2016 and makes readers rethink conventional wisdom and punditry just in time for the 2018 midterms. He shows who really decides elections and why you should think about a poll differently from the forecasts popularized by Nate Silver and others.
Where Did You Get This Number? is an essential resource for anyone interested in politics—and how to better measure and understand patterns of human behavior. For any American who wants to get a better read on what America is thinking, this book shows you how to make sense of it all.
Swift Vengeance: A Novel by T. Jefferson Parker
Returning hero and private investigator Roland Ford is on the trail of a mysterious killer who is beheading CIA drone operators and leaving puzzling clues at each crime scene. His troubled friend Lindsay Rakes is afraid for her own life and the life of her son after a fellow flight crew member is killed in brutal fashion. Even more terrifying is the odd note the killer left behind: “Welcome to Caliphornia. This is not the last.” Ford strikes an uneasy alliance with San Diego-based FBI agent Joan Taucher, who is tough as nails but haunted by what sees as the Bureau’s failure to catch the 9/11 terrorists, many of whom spent their last days in her city. As the killer strikes again, Ford and Taucher dash into the fray, each desperate for their own reasons–each ready to risk it all to stop the killer from doing far more damage.
The Other Woman by Sandie Jones
Available from the Library on Wheels.
The most twisty, addictive and gripping debut thriller you’ll read this year.
HE LOVES YOU: Adam adores Emily. Emily thinks Adam’s perfect, the man she thought she’d never meet.
BUT SHE LOVES YOU NOT: Lurking in the shadows is a rival, a woman who shares a deep bond with the man she loves.
AND SHE’LL STOP AT NOTHING: Emily chose Adam, but she didn’t choose his mother Pammie. There’s nothing a mother wouldn’t do for her son, and now Emily is about to find out just how far Pammie will go to get what she wants: Emily gone forever.
THE OTHER WOMAN will have you questioning her on every page, in Sandie Jones’ chilling psychological thriller about a man, his new girlfriend, and the mother who will not let him go.
City of Ink by Elsa Hart
Li Du was prepared to travel anywhere in the world except for one place: home. But to unravel the mystery that surrounds his mentor’s execution, that’s exactly where he must go.
Plunged into the painful memories and teeming streets of Beijing, Li Du obtains a humble clerkship that offers anonymity and access to the records he needs. He is beginning to make progress when his search for answers buried in the past is interrupted by murder in the present.
The wife of a local factory owner is found dead, along with a man who appears to have been her lover, and the most likely suspect is the husband. But what Li Du’s superiors at the North Borough Office are willing to accept as a crime of passion strikes Li Du as something more calculated. As past and present intertwine, Li Du’s investigations reveal that many of Beijing’s residents — foreign and Chinese, artisan and official, scholar and soldier — have secrets they would kill to protect.
When the threats begin, Li Du must decide how much he is willing to sacrifice to discover the truth in a city bent on concealing it, a city where the stroke of a brush on paper can alter the past, change the future, prolong a life, or end one.
Foundryside by Robert Jackson Bennett
Sancia Grado is a thief, and a damn good one. And her latest target, a heavily guarded warehouse on Tevanne’s docks, is nothing her unique abilities can’t handle.
But unbeknownst to her, Sancia’s been sent to steal an artifact of unimaginable power, an object that could revolutionize the magical technology known as scriving. The Merchant Houses who control this magic–the art of using coded commands to imbue everyday objects with sentience–have already used it to transform Tevanne into a vast, remorseless capitalist machine. But if they can unlock the artifact’s secrets, they will rewrite the world itself to suit their aims.
Now someone in those Houses wants Sancia dead, and the artifact for themselves. And in the city of Tevanne, there’s nobody with the power to stop them.
To have a chance at surviving—and at stopping the deadly transformation that’s under way—Sancia will have to marshal unlikely allies, learn to harness the artifact’s power for herself, and undergo her own transformation, one that will turn her into something she could never have imagined.
Red, White, Blue: A Novel by Lea Carpenter
Anna is the beloved only child of the charismatic Noel, a New York City banker–and a mother who abandoned her. When Noel dies in a mysterious skiing accident in Switzerland the day before his daughter’s wedding, Anna, consumed by grief, grows increasingly distant from her prominent music-producing husband, who begins running for office. One day, while on her honeymoon in the south of France, Anna meets an enigmatic stranger who will cause perhaps even greater upheaval in her life. It will soon become clear that this meeting was no chance encounter: this man once worked with Anna’s father and has information about parts of Noel’s life that Anna never knew. When she arrives back in New York, she receives a parcel that contains a series of cryptic recordings and videos showing Noel at the center of a brutal interrogation. Soon, everything Anna knows about her father’s life–and his death–is called into question, launching her into a desperate search for the truth.
Smart, fast-moving, and suspenseful, Red, White, Blue plunges us into the inner workings of the CIA, a China Ops gone wrong, and the consequences of a collision between one’s deepest personal ties and the most exacting and fateful professional commitment.
The Last Englishmen: Love, War, and the End of Empire by Deborah Baker
John Auden was a pioneering geologist of the Himalaya. Michael Spender was the first to draw a detailed map of the North Face of Mount Everest. While their younger brothers—W. H. Auden and Stephen Spender—achieved literary fame, they vied to be included on an expedition that would deliver Everest’s summit to an Englishman, a quest that had become a metaphor for Britain’s struggle to maintain power over India. To this rivalry was added another: in the summer of 1938 both men fell in love with a painter named Nancy Sharp. Her choice would determine where each man’s wartime loyalties would lie.
Set in Calcutta, London, the glacier-locked wilds of the Karakoram, and on Everest itself, The Last Englishmen is also the story of a generation. The cast of this exhilarating drama includes Indian and English writers and artists, explorers and Communist spies, Die Hards and Indian nationalists, political rogues and police informers. Key among them is a highborn Bengali poet named Sudhin Datta, a melancholy soul torn, like many of his generation, between hatred of the British Empire and a deep love of European literature, whose life would be upended by the arrival of war on his Calcutta doorstep.
Dense with romance and intrigue, and of startling relevance for the great power games of our own day, Deborah Baker’s The Last Englishmen is an engrossing story that traces the end of empire and the stirring of a new world order.
Presidio by Randy Kennedy
Set in the 1970s in the vast and arid landscape of the Texas panhandle, this darkly comic and stunningly mature literary debut tells the story of a car thief and his brother who set out to recover some stolen money and inadvertently kidnap a Mennonite girl who has her own reasons for being on the run.
Troy Falconer returns home after years of working as a solitary car thief to help his younger brother, Harlan, search for his wife, who has run away with the little money he had. When they steal a station wagon for the journey, the brothers accidentally kidnap Martha Zacharias, a Mennonite girl asleep in the back of the car. Martha turns out to be a stubborn survivor who refuses to be sent home, so together these unlikely road companions attempt to escape across the Mexican border, pursued by the police and Martha’s vengeful father.
The story is told partly through Troy’s journal, in which he chronicles his encounters with con artists, down-and-outers, and roadside philosophers, people looking for fast money, human connection, or a home long since vanished. The journal details a breakdown that has left Troy unable to function in conventional society; he is reduced to haunting motels, stealing from men roughly his size, living with their possessions in order to have none of his own and all but disappearing into their identities.
With a page-turning plot about a kidnapped child, gorgeously written scenes that probe the soul of the American West, and an austere landscape as real as any character, Presidio packs a powerful punch of anomie, dark humor, pathos, and suspense.
The Fighters by C.J. Chivers
More than 2.7 million Americans have served in Afghanistan or Iraq since September 11, 2001. C.J. Chivers reported from both wars from their beginnings. The Fighters vividly conveys the physical and emotional experience of war as lived by six combatants: a fighter pilot, a corpsman, a scout helicopter pilot, a grunt, an infantry officer, and a Special Forces sergeant.
Chivers captures their courage, commitment, sense of purpose, and ultimately their suffering, frustration, and moral confusion as new enemies arise and invasions give way to counterinsurgency duties for which American forces were often not prepared.
The Fighters is a tour de force, a portrait of modern warfare that parts from slogans to do for American troops what Stephen Ambrose did for the G.I.s of World War II and Michael Herr for the grunts in Vietnam. Told with the empathy and understanding of an author who is himself an infantry veteran, The Fighters presents the long arc of two wars.
Chicken Soup for the Soul The Power of Yes!: 101 Stories About Adventure, Change and Positive Thinking by Amy Newmark
Chicken Soup for the Soul: The Power of Yes! celebrates the empowerment we feel when we say “Yes!” to something that challenges us. Change your life for the better by doing the things that scare you. These 101 true, revealing stories will help you do just that.
In a world where “why” is too often asked and “no” is too often an answer, this book encourages us to ask “why not” and celebrates the tremendous power in saying “Yes!” The authors of these 101 stories explain how saying “Yes!” changed their lives for the better. Whether it’s something little, like trying a new food or something big, like jumping out an airplane, you’ll be ready to shake up your own life after you read about their experiences.
Feared by Lisa Scottoline
Available at Barbour and Downtown.
When three men announce that they are suing the Rosato & DiNunzio law firm for reverse sex discrimination—claiming that they were not hired because they were men—Mary DiNunzio and Bennie Rosato are outraged. To make matters worse, their one male employee, John Foxman, intends to resign, claiming that there is some truth to this case.
The plaintiffs’ lawyer is Nick Machiavelli, who has already lost to Mary once and is now back with a vengeance —determined not to not only win, but destroy the firm. It soon becomes clear that Machiavelli will do anything in his power to achieve his end…even after the case turns deadly. The stakes have never been higher for Mary and her associates as they try to keep Machiavelli at bay, solve a murder, and save the law firm they love…or they could lose everything they’ve worked for. Told with Scottoline’s trademark gift for twists, turns, heart, and humanity, this latest thriller asks the question: Is it better to be loved, or feared…
Feared, the sixth entry in the acclaimed Rosato & DiNunzio series, expertly explores what happens when we are tempted to give in to our own inner darkness.
Texas Ranger by James Patterson
Across the ranchlands and cities of his home state, Rory Yates’s discipline and law-enforcement skills have carried him far: from local highway patrolman to the honorable rank of Texas Ranger. He arrives in his hometown to find a horrifying crime scene and a scathing accusation: he is named a suspect in the murder of his ex-wife, Anne, a devoted teacher whose only controversial act was ending her marriage to a Ranger.
In search of the killer, Yates plunges into the inferno of the most twisted and violent minds he’s ever encountered, vowing to never surrender. That code just might bring him out alive.
Little has been known of one of the most important figures in early American history, Dr. Joseph Warren, an architect of the colonial rebellion, and a man who might have led the country as Washington or Jefferson did had he not been martyred at Bunker Hill in 1775. Warren was involved in almost every major insurrectionary act in the Boston area for a decade, from the Stamp Act protests to the Boston Massacre to the Boston Tea Party, and his incendiary writings included the famous Suffolk Resolves, which helped unite the colonies against Britain and inspired the Declaration of Independence. Yet after his death, his life and legend faded, leaving his contemporaries to rise to fame in his place and obscuring his essential role in bringing America to independence.
Christian Di Spigna’s definitive new biography of Warren is a loving work of historical excavation, the product of two decades of research and scores of newly unearthed primary-source documents that have given us this forgotten Founding Father anew. Following Warren from his farming childhood and years at Harvard through his professional success and political radicalization to his role in sparking the rebellion, Di Spigna’s thoughtful, judicious retelling not only restores Warren to his rightful place in the pantheon of Revolutionary greats, it deepens our understanding of the nation’s dramatic beginnings.
Playing Changes: Jazz For the New Century by Nate Chinen
One of jazz’s leading critics gives us an invigorating, richly detailed portrait of the artists and events that have shaped the music of our time. Grounded in authority and brimming with style, Playing Changes is the first book to take the measure of this exhilarating moment: it is a compelling argument for the resiliency of the art form and a rejoinder to any claims about its calcification or demise.
“Playing changes,” in jazz parlance, has long referred to an improviser’s resourceful path through a chord progression. Playing Changes boldly expands on the idea, highlighting a host of significant changes—ideological, technological, theoretical, and practical—that jazz musicians have learned to navigate since the turn of the century. Nate Chinen, who has chronicled this evolution firsthand throughout his journalistic career, vividly sets the backdrop, charting the origins of jazz historicism and the rise of an institutional framework for the music. He traces the influence of commercialized jazz education and reflects on the implications of a globalized jazz ecology. He unpacks the synergies between jazz and postmillennial hip-hop and R&B, illuminating an emergent rhythm signature for the music. And he shows how a new generation of shape-shifting elders, including Wayne Shorter and Henry Threadgill, have moved the aesthetic center of the music.
Woven throughout the book is a vibrant cast of characters—from the saxophonists Steve Coleman and Kamasi Washington to the pianists Jason Moran and Vijay Iyer to the bassist and singer Esperanza Spalding—who have exerted an important influence on the scene. This is an adaptive new music for a complex new reality, and Playing Changes is the definitive guide.
The Cut Out Girl: A Story of War and Family, Lost and Found by Bart Van Es
Bart van Es left Holland for England many years ago, but one story from his Dutch childhood never left him. It was a mystery of sorts: a young Jewish girl named Lientje had been taken in during the war by relatives and hidden from the Nazis, handed over by her parents, who understood the danger they were in all too well. The girl had been raised by her foster family as one of their own, but then, well after the war, there was a falling out, and they were no longer in touch. What was the girl’s side of the story, Bart wondered? What really happened during the war, and after?
So began an investigation that would consume Bart van Es’s life, and change it. After some sleuthing, he learned that Lientje was now in her 80s and living in Amsterdam. Somewhat reluctantly, she agreed to meet him, and eventually they struck up a remarkable friendship, even a partnership. The Cut Out Girl braids together a powerful recreation of that intensely harrowing childhood story of Lientje’s with the present-day account of Bart’s efforts to piece that story together, including bringing some old ghosts back into the light.
It is a story rich with contradictions. There is great bravery and generosity–first Lientje’s parents, giving up their beloved daughter, and then the Dutch families who face great danger from the Nazi occupation for taking Lientje and other Jewish children in. And there are more mundane sacrifices a family under brutal occupation must make to provide for even the family they already have. But tidy Holland also must face a darker truth, namely that it was more cooperative in rounding up its Jews for the Nazis than any other Western European country; that is part of Lientje’s story too. Her time in hiding was made much more terrifying by the energetic efforts of the local Dutch authorities, zealous accomplices in the mission of sending every Jew, man, woman and child, East to their extermination. And Lientje was not always particularly well treated, and sometimes, Bart learned, she was very badly treated indeed.
The Cut Out Girl is an astonishment, a deeply moving reckoning with a young girl’s struggle for survival during war, a story about the powerful love of foster families but also the powerful challenges, and about the ways our most painful experiences define us but also can be redefined, on a more honest level, even many years after the fact. A triumph of subtlety, decency and unflinching observation, The Cut Out Girl is a triumphant marriage of many keys of writing, ultimately blending them into an extraordinary new harmony, and a deeper truth.
A Girl’s Guide to Missiles: Growing Up in America’s Secret Desert by Karen Piper
The China Lake missile range is located in a huge stretch of the Mojave Desert, about the size of the state of Delaware. It was created during the Second World War, and has always been shrouded in secrecy. But people who make missiles and other weapons are regular working people, with domestic routines and everyday dilemmas, and four of them were Karen Piper’s parents, her sister, and–when she needed summer jobs–herself. Her dad designed the Sidewinder, which was ultimately used catastrophically in Vietnam. When her mom got tired of being a stay-at-home mom, she went to work on the Tomahawk. Once, when a missile nose needed to be taken offsite for final testing, her mother loaded it into the trunk of the family car, and set off down a Los Angeles freeway. Traffic was heavy, and so she stopped off at the mall, leaving the missile in the parking lot.
Piper sketches in the belief systems–from Amway’s get-rich schemes to propaganda in The Rocketeer to evangelism, along with fears of a Lemurian takeover and Charles Manson–that governed their lives. Her memoir is also a search for the truth of the past and what really brought her parents to China Lake with two young daughters, a story that reaches back to her father’s World War II flights with contraband across Europe. Finally, it recounts the crossroads moment in a young woman’s life when she finally found a way out of a culture of secrets and fear, and out of the desert.
Nodding Off: The Science of Sleep from Cradle to Grave by Alice Gregory
Sleep is vital to the way we learn, remember and forget, to how we feel about family and partners, our wellbeing, and our mental and physical health. It is essential for life itself. In Nodding Off, renowned sleep researcher Alice Gregory explores every aspect of sleep, from the different stages of sleep and how our sleeping patterns change throughout our lives, to what happens when things go wrong and getting some shut-eye becomes more of a trial than a pleasure.
Using cutting-edge findings in the field, Gregory tackles the big questions, such as:
– How do things that happen before we are even born affect our sleep?
– What sleep problems should raise a red flag in children?
– How do genes influence the way we sleep?
– What are the consequences of sleep problems in the elderly?
– Why are scientists turning to sleep disorders such as sleep paralysis to try to understand paranormal experiences?
Most of us spend a large portion of our lives asleep without ever thinking about why we do this. Nodding Off lifts the lid on this mysterious and universal past time. It examines all of the biggest sleep secrets, and Professor Gregory provides solutions to some of the common sleep problems that people suffer throughout their lives.
His Favorites by Kate Walbert
They were on a lark, three teenage girls speeding across the greens at night on a “borrowed” golf cart, drunk. The cart crashes and one of the girls lands violently in the rough, killed instantly. The driver, Jo, flees the hometown that has turned against her and enrolls at a prestigious boarding school. Her past weighs on her. She is responsible for the death of her best friend. She has tipped her parents’ rocky marriage into demise. She is ready to begin again, far away from the accident.
Taut, propulsive, and devastating, His Favorites reveals the interior life of a young woman determined to navigate the treachery in a new world. Told from her perspective many years later, the story cooly describes a series of shattering events and the system that failed to protect her. Walbert, who brilliantly explored a century of women’s struggles for rights and recognition in her award-winning A Short History of Women, limns the all-too-common violations of vulnerability and aspiration in the lives of young women in this suspenseful short novel. From the publisher of the classic A Separate Peace, His Favorites is an urgent book by a “wickedly smart writer” (The New York Times Book Review) whose work is “fascinating, moving and significant” (The Washington Post).
Our Collection Develops: August 7, 2018
Published August 8, 2018 | By Jennifer Sharp
The following titles – and more – will be on the shelves of Hartford Public Library, beginning August 7. If the title is not at your closest branch, place a hold and it will be delivered there for you. All our titles are in our catalog; you may search it at any time.
Fly Girls: How Five Daring Women Defied All Odds and Made Aviation History by Keith O’Brien
Between the world wars, no sport was more popular, or more dangerous, than airplane racing. Thousands of fans flocked to multi‑day events, and cities vied with one another to host them. The pilots themselves were hailed as dashing heroes who cheerfully stared death in the face. Well, the men were hailed. Female pilots were more often ridiculed than praised for what the press portrayed as silly efforts to horn in on a manly, and deadly, pursuit. Fly Girls recounts how a cadre of women banded together to break the original glass ceiling: the entrenched prejudice that conspired to keep them out of the sky.
O’Brien weaves together the stories of five remarkable women: Florence Klingensmith, a high‑school dropout who worked for a dry cleaner in Fargo, North Dakota; Ruth Elder, an Alabama divorcee; Amelia Earhart, the most famous, but not necessarily the most skilled; Ruth Nichols, who chafed at the constraints of her blue‑blood family’s expectations; and Louise Thaden, the mother of two young kids who got her start selling coal in Wichita. Together, they fought for the chance to race against the men — and in 1936 one of them would triumph in the toughest race of all.
Like Hidden Figures and Girls of Atomic City, Fly Girls celebrates a little-known slice of history in which tenacious, trail-blazing women braved all obstacles to achieve greatness.
The Prisoner in the Castle by Susan Ella MacNeal
World War II is raging, and former spy Maggie Hope knows too much.
She knows what the British government is willing to do to keep its secrets.
She knows the real location of the planned invasion of France.
She knows who’s lying. She knows who the double-crossers are. She knows exactly who is sending agents to their deaths.
These are the reasons Maggie is isolated on a remote Scottish island, in a prison known as Killoch Castle, out of contact with friends and family.
Then one of her fellow inmates drops dead in the middle of his after-dinner drink—and he’s only the first. As victims fall one by one, Maggie will have to call upon all her wits and skills to escape—not just certain death . . . but certain murder.
For what’s the most important thing Maggie Hope knows?
She must survive.
Good Luck with That by Kristan Higgins
Emerson, Georgia, and Marley have been best friends ever since they met at a weight-loss camp as teens. When Emerson tragically passes away, she leaves one final wish for her best friends: to conquer the fears they still carry as adults.
For each of them, that means something different. For Marley, it’s coming to terms with the survivor’s guilt she’s carried around since her twin sister’s death, which has left her blind to the real chance for romance in her life. For Georgia, it’s about learning to stop trying to live up to her mother’s and brother’s ridiculous standards, and learning to accept the love her ex-husband has tried to give her.
But as Marley and Georgia grow stronger, the real meaning of Emerson’s dying wish becomes truly clear: more than anything, she wanted her friends to love themselves.
A novel of compassion and insight, Good Luck With That tells the story of two women who learn to embrace themselves just the way they are.
The Washington Decree by Jussi Adler-Olsen
Sixteen years before Democratic Senator Bruce Jansen was elected president of the United States, a PR stunt brought together five very different people: fourteen-year-old Dorothy “Doggie” Rogers, small-town sheriff T. Perkins, single mother Rosalie Lee, well-known journalist John Bugatti, and the teenage son of one of Jansen’s employees, Wesley Barefoot. In spite of their differences, the five remain bonded by their shared experience and devotion to their candidate.
For Doggie, who worked the campaign trail with Wesley, Jansen’s election is a personal victory: a job in the White House, proof to her Republican father that she was right to support Jansen, and the rise of an intelligent, clear-headed leader with her same ideals. But the triumph is short-lived: Jansen’s pregnant wife is assassinated on election night, and the alleged mastermind behind the shooting is none other than Doggie’s own father.
When Jansen ascends to the White House, he is a changed man, determined to end gun violence by any means necessary. Rights are taken away as quickly as weapons. International travel becomes impossible. Checkpoints and roadblocks destroy infrastructure. The media is censored. Militias declare civil war on the government. The country is in chaos, and Jansen’s former friends each find themselves fighting a very different battle, for themselves, their rights, their country . . . and, in Doggie’s case, the life of her father, who just may be innocent.
Four Funerals and Maybe a Wedding by Rhys Bowen
If only Darcy and I had eloped! What I thought would be a simple wedding has been transformed into a grand affair, thanks to the attendance of the queen, who has offered up the princesses as bridesmaids. Silly me! I thought that withdrawing from the royal line of succession would simplify my life. But before Darcy and I tie the knot in front of queen and country, we have to find a place to live as man and wife…
House hunting turns out to be a pretty grim affair. Just as we start to lose hope, my globetrotting godfather offers us his fully staffed country estate. Mistress of Eynsleigh I shall be! With Darcy off in parts unknown, I head to Eynsleigh alone, only to have my hopes dashed. The grounds are in disarray and the small staff is suspiciously incompetent. Not to mention the gas tap leak in my bedroom, which I can only imagine was an attempt on my life. Something rotten is afoot–and bringing the place up to snuff may put me six feet under before I even get a chance to walk down the aisle…
The Great Grilled Cheese Book by Eric Greenspan
A fresh take on the beloved American classic, from the classic white bread with American cheese to “The Champ” (a taleggio and short rib extravaganza); the “Johnny Pastrami,” which combines pastrami with the bite and freshness of apple chutney; and “The Tomater” with creamy mozzarella and a sun-dried tomato spread. Featuring both common and elevated ingredients like brie cheese, poppy seed bread, olive tapenade, fig marmalade, smoked salmon, candied bacon, bourbon-glazed ham, and raisin walnut bread, these are recipes that invite you into new and uncharted grilled cheese territory. With notes on the best cheese and breads and pro tips for the best cooking techniques, this book has something for every taste and is guaranteed up your grilled cheese game.
Tailspin by Sandra Brown
Rye Mallett, a fearless “freight dog” pilot charged with flying cargo to far-flung locations, is often rough-spoken and all business, but soft on regulations when they get in the way of meeting a deadline. But he does have a rock-solid reputation: he will fly in the foulest weather, day or night, and deliver the goods safely to their destination. So when Rye is asked to fly into a completely fogbound northern Georgia town and deliver a mysterious black box to a Dr. Lambert, he doesn’t ask questions.
As Rye’s plane nears the isolated landing strip, more trouble than inclement weather awaits him. He is greeted first by a sabotage attempt on his plane that causes him to crash land, and then by Dr. Brynn O’Neal, who claims she was sent for the box in Dr. Lambert’s stead. Despite Rye’s “no-involvement” policy when it comes to other people’s problems, he finds himself irresistibly drawn to the intrigue surrounding his cargo . . . and to the mysterious and alluring Brynn.
Soon Rye and Brynn are in a treacherous forty-eight-hour race to deliver the box before time runs out. With everyone from law enforcement officials to hired thugs hot on their heels, they must learn to trust each other so they can protect their valuable cargo from those who would kill for it.
Becoming Belle by Nuala O’Connor
In 1887, Isabel Bilton is the eldest of three daughters of a middle-class military family, growing up in a small garrison town. By 1891 she is the Countess of Clancarty, dubbed “the peasant countess” by the press, and a member of the Irish aristocracy. Becoming Belle is the story of the four years in between, of Belle’s rapid ascent and the people that tried to tear her down.
With only her talent, charm, and determination, Isabel moves to London alone at age nineteen, changes her name to Belle, and takes the city by storm, facing unthinkable hardships as she rises to fame. A true bohemian and the star of a dancing double act she performs with her sister, she reigns over The Empire Theatre and The Corinthian Club, where only select society entertains. It is there she falls passionately in love with William, Viscount Dunlo, a young aristocrat. For Belle, her marriage to William is a dream come true, but his ruthless father makes clear he’ll stop at nothing to keep her in her place.
Reimagined by a novelist at the height of her powers, Belle is an unforgettable woman. Set against an absorbing portrait of Victorian London, hers is a timeless rags-to-riches story a la Becky Sharpe.
A Short Film About Disappointment by Joshua Matson
In near-future America, film critic Noah Body uploads his reviews to a content aggregator. His job is routine: watch, seethe, pan. He dreams of making his own film, free from the hackery of commercial cinema. Faced with writing about lousy movies for a website that no one reads, Noah smuggles into his work episodes from his trainwreck of a life.
We learn that his apartment in Miniature Aleppo has been stripped of furniture after his wife ran off with his best friend—who Noah believes has possessed his body. He’s in the middle of an escalating grudge match against a vending machine tycoon with a penchant for violence. And he’s infatuated with a doctor who has diagnosed him with a “disease of thought.” Sapped by days performing the labor of entertainment, forced to voice opinions on cinema to earn his water rations, Noah is determined to create his own masterpiece, directed by and starring himself.
Written by a debut novelist with a rotten wit and a singular imagination, A Short Film About Disappointment is a story about holding on to a scrap of hope in a joyously crummy world of nanny states and New Koreas.
Tiffany Blues by M.J. Rose
The New York Times bestselling author of The Library of Light and Shadow crafts a dazzling Jazz Age jewel—a novel of ambition, betrayal, and passion about a young painter whose traumatic past threatens to derail her career at a prestigious summer artists’ colony run by Louis Comfort Tiffany of Tiffany & Co. fame. “[M.J. Rose] transports the reader into the past better than a time machine could accomplish” (The Associated Press).
New York, 1924. Twenty‑four‑year‑old Jenny Bell is one of a dozen burgeoning artists invited to Louis Comfort Tiffany’s prestigious artists’ colony. Gifted and determined, Jenny vows to avoid distractions and romantic entanglements and take full advantage of the many wonders to be found at Laurelton Hall.
But Jenny’s past has followed her to Long Island. Images of her beloved mother, her hard-hearted stepfather, waterfalls, and murder, and the dank hallways of Canada’s notorious Andrew Mercer Reformatory for Women overwhelm Jenny’s thoughts, even as she is inextricably drawn to Oliver, Tiffany’s charismatic grandson.
As the summer shimmers on, and the competition between the artists grows fierce as they vie for a spot at Tiffany’s New York gallery, a series of suspicious and disturbing occurrences suggest someone knows enough about Jenny’s childhood trauma to expose her.
Supported by her closest friend Minx Deering, a seemingly carefree socialite yet dedicated sculptor, and Oliver, Jenny pushes her demons aside. Between stolen kisses and stolen jewels, the champagne flows and the jazz plays on until one moonless night when Jenny’s past and present are thrown together in a desperate moment, that will threaten her promising future, her love, her friendships, and her very life.
The Middleman by Olen Steinhauer
With The Middleman, the perfect thriller for our tumultuous, uneasy time, Olen Steinhauer, the New York Times bestselling author of ten novels, including The Tourist and The Cairo Affair, delivers a compelling portrait of a nation on the edge of revolution, and the deepest motives of the men and women on the opposite sides of the divide.
One day in the early summer of 2017, about four hundred people disappear from their lives. They leave behind cell phones, credit cards, jobs, houses, families–everything–all on the same day. Where have they gone? Why? The only answer, for weeks, is silence.
Kevin Moore is one of them. Former military, disaffected, restless, Kevin leaves behind his retail job in San Francisco, sends a good-bye text to his mother, dumps his phone and wallet into a trash can, and disappears.
The movement calls itself the Massive Brigade, and they believe change isn’t coming fast enough to America. But are they a protest organization, a political movement, or a terrorist group? What do they want? The FBI isn’t taking any chances. Special Agent Rachel Proulx has been following the growth of left-wing political groups in the U.S. since the fall of 2016, and is very familiar with Martin Bishop, the charismatic leader of the Massive Brigade. But she needs her colleagues to take her seriously in order to find these people before they put their plan–whatever it is–into action.
What Rachel uncovers will shock the entire nation, and the aftermath of her investigation will reverberate through the FBI to the highest levels of government.
The Black and the Blue: A Cop Reveals the Crimes, Racism, and Injustice in America’s Law Enforcement by Matthew Horace
Matthew Horace was an officer at the federal, state, and local level for 28 years working in every state in the country. Yet it was after seven years of service when Horace found himself face-down on the ground with a gun pointed at his head by a white fellow officer, that he fully understood the racism seething within America’s police departments.
Using gut-wrenching reportage, on-the-ground research, and personal accounts garnered by interviews with police and government officials around the country, Horace presents an insider’s examination of police tactics, which he concludes is an “archaic system” built on “toxic brotherhood.” Horace dissects some of the nation’s most highly publicized police shootings and communities highlighted in the Black Lives Matter movement and beyond to explain how these systems and tactics have had detrimental outcomes to the people they serve. Horace provides fresh analysis on communities experiencing the high killing and imprisonment rates due to racist policing such as Ferguson, New Orleans, Baltimore, and Chicago from a law enforcement point of view and uncovers what has sown the seeds of violence.
Timely and provocative, The Black and The Blue sheds light on what truly goes on behind the blue line.
Eat at Home Tonight: 101 Simple Busy-Family Recipes for Your Slow Cooker, Sheet Pan, Instant Pot, and More by Tiffany King
A popular food blogger with 8.5 million page views, Tiffany King’s debut cookbook is crafted for those nights “when life happens.” This is the cookbook to turn to when all hope of a homemade, wholesome dinner seems lost: when the fridge is empty, when it’s already 8pm, when one kid has soccer practice and the other dance, when there’s no time for cleanup because homework has to get done. Just like her blog, King’s book is tirelessly encouraging and realistic. The recipes feature bright vegetables and affordable pantry ingredients. The book, uniquely arranged by “excuses,” includes sidebars with mealtime conversation starters and helpful cooking hints.
Future of Faith: The Path of Change in Politics and Society by Pope Francis
Pope Francis met with French reporter and sociologist Dominique Wolton for an unprecedented series of twelve fascinating and timely conversations—open dialogues revolving around the political, cultural, and religious issues dominating communication and conflict around the world—now published in A Future of Faith: The Path of Change in Politics and Society.
Inspiring and insightful, Pope Francis’s views on immigration, poverty, diversity, globalization, and more are borne from his Christian faith and basic humanity. Meeting the challenges of the twenty-first century requires compassion for those in need, a willingness to work towards common goals without domineering other cultures, and the ability to negotiate with trust, respect, and dignity. And for the first time, Pope Francis shares insights into his own personality, and the formation of his faith, including his experience with psychotherapy, and some of the most important women in his upbringing.
Controversial, bold, personal, and illuminating— A Future of Faith will serve to be essential reading for not only Catholics, but those who want to see how the “people’s pope” confronts the social injustices of the world with the foresight to create positive change.
The Husband Hunters: American Heiresses Who Married into the British Aristocracy by Anne De Courcy
A deliciously told group biography of the young, rich, American heiresses who married into the impoverished British aristocracy at the turn of the twentieth century – The real women who inspired Downton Abbey
Towards the end of the nineteenth century and for the first few years of the twentieth, a strange invasion took place in Britain. The citadel of power, privilege and breeding in which the titled, land-owning governing class had barricaded itself for so long was breached. The incomers were a group of young women who, fifty years earlier, would have been looked on as the alien denizens of another world – the New World, to be precise. From 1874 – the year that Jennie Jerome, the first known ‘Dollar Princess’, married Randolph Churchill – to 1905, dozens of young American heiresses married into the British peerage, bringing with them all the fabulous wealth, glamour and sophistication of the Gilded Age.
Anne de Courcy sets the stories of these young women and their families in the context of their times. Based on extensive first-hand research, drawing on diaries, memoirs and letters, this richly entertaining group biography reveals what they thought of their new lives in England – and what England thought of them.
Survival Guide for the Soul: How to Flourish Spiritually in a World That Pressures Us to Achieve by Ken Shigematsu
What keeps us from flourishing in our spiritual lives is a neglect of the inner life of the soul. And more and more today, this neglect is driven by our ambition to accomplish something big outside ourselves. We live in a society that pressures us to achieve professionally, socially, and through the constant acquisition of material possessions. Drawing on a wide range of sources including scripture, church history, psychology, and neuroscience, as well as a rich variety of stories from his own life, Ken Shigematsu demonstrates how the gospel redeems our desires and reorders our lives. He offers fresh perspective on how certain spiritual practices help orient our lives so that our souls can flourish in the midst of a demanding, competitive society. And he concludes with a liberating and counter-cultural definition of true greatness.
This book will appeal to anyone who longs to experience a deeper relationship with Christ in the midst of the daily pressures to succeed, as well as to those on the borderlands of faith seeking to transcend the human tendency to define ourselves by our production and success.
Viking Wars: War and Peace in King Alfred’s Britain, 789-955 by Max Adams
In 865, a great Viking army landed in East Anglia, precipitating a series of wars that would last until the middle of the following century. It was in this time of crisis that the modern kingdoms of Britain were born. In their responses to the Viking threat, these kingdoms forged their identities as hybrid cultures: vibrant and entrepreneurial peoples adapting to instability and opportunity.
Traditionally, Alfred the Great is cast as the central player in the story of Viking Age Britain. But Max Adams, while stressing the genius of Alfred as war leader, law-giver, and forger of the English nation, has a more nuanced narrative approach to this conventional version of history. The Britain encountered by the Scandinavians of the ninth and tenth centuries was one of regional diversity and self-conscious cultural identities, depicted in glorious narrative fashion in The Viking Wars.
Ninety-Nine Glimpses of Princess Margaret by Craig Brown
She made John Lennon blush and Marlon Brando tongue-tied. She iced out Princess Diana and humiliated Elizabeth Taylor. Andy Warhol photographed her. Jack Nicholson offered her cocaine. Gore Vidal revered her. Francis Bacon heckled her. Peter Sellers was madly in love with her. For Pablo Picasso, she was the object of sexual fantasy.
Princess Margaret aroused passion and indignation in equal measures. To her friends, she was witty and regal. To her enemies, she was rude and demanding. In her 1950s heyday, she was seen as one of the most glamorous and desirable women in the world. By the time of her death in 2002, she had come to personify disappointment. One friend said he had never known an unhappier woman. The tale of Princess Margaret is Cinderella in reverse: hope dashed, happiness mislaid, life mishandled.
Such an enigmatic and divisive figure demands a reckoning that is far from the usual fare. Combining interviews, parodies, dreams, parallel lives, diaries, announcements, lists, catalogues, and essays, Craig Brown’s Ninety-Nine Glimpses of Princess Margaret is a kaleidoscopic experiment in biography and a witty meditation on fame and art, snobbery and deference, bohemia and high society.
If You Leave Me by Crystal Hana Kim
An emotionally riveting debut novel about war, family, and forbidden love—the unforgettable saga of two ill-fated lovers in Korea and the heartbreaking choices they’re forced to make in the years surrounding the civil war that still haunts us today.
When the communist-backed army from the north invades her home, sixteen-year-old Haemi Lee, along with her widowed mother and ailing brother, is forced to flee to a refugee camp along the coast. For a few hours each night, she escapes her family’s makeshift home and tragic circumstances with her childhood friend, Kyunghwan.
Focused on finishing school, Kyunghwan doesn’t realize his older and wealthier cousin, Jisoo, has his sights set on the beautiful and spirited Haemi—and is determined to marry her before joining the fight. But as Haemi becomes a wife, then a mother, her decision to forsake the boy she always loved for the security of her family sets off a dramatic saga that will have profound effects for generations to come.
Richly told and deeply moving, If You Leave Me is a stunning portrait of war and refugee life, a passionate and timeless romance, and a heartrending exploration of one woman’s longing for autonomy in a rapidly changing world.
Temper by Nicky Drayden
In a land similar to South Africa, twin brothers are beset by powerful forces beyond their understanding or control in this thrilling blend of science fiction, horror, magic, and dark humor—evocative of the works of Lauren Beukes, Ian McDonald, and Nnedi Okorafor—from the author of The Prey of Gods.
Two brothers.
Seven vices.
One demonic possession.
Can this relationship survive?
Auben Mutze has more vices than he can deal with—six to be exact—each branded down his arm for all the world to see. They mark him as a lesser twin in society, as inferior, but there’s no way he’ll let that define him. Intelligent and outgoing, Auben’s spirited antics make him popular among the other students at his underprivileged high school. So what if he’s envious of his twin Kasim, whose single vice brand is a ticket to a better life, one that likely won’t involve Auben.
The twins’ strained relationship threatens to snap when Auben starts hearing voices that speak to his dangerous side—encouraging him to perform evil deeds that go beyond innocent mischief. Lechery, deceit, and vanity run rampant. And then there are the inexplicable blood cravings. . . .
On the southern tip of an African continent that could have been, demons get up to no good during the time of year when temperatures dip and temptations rise. Auben needs to rid himself of these maddening voices before they cause him to lose track of time. To lose his mind. And to lose his . . .
In this masterful work, Beth Macy takes us into the epicenter of America’s twenty-plus year struggle with opioid addiction. From distressed small communities in Central Appalachia to wealthy suburbs; from disparate cities to once-idyllic farm towns; it’s a heartbreaking trajectory that illustrates how this national crisis has persisted for so long and become so firmly entrenched.
Beginning with a single dealer who lands in a small Virginia town and sets about turning high school football stars into heroin overdose statistics, Macy endeavors to answer a grieving mother’s question-why her only son died-and comes away with a harrowing story of greed and need. From the introduction of OxyContin in 1996, Macy parses how America embraced a medical culture where overtreatment with painkillers became the norm. In some of the same distressed communities featured in her bestselling book Factory Man, the unemployed use painkillers both to numb the pain of joblessness and pay their bills, while privileged teens trade pills in cul-de-sacs, and even high school standouts fall prey to prostitution, jail, and death.
Through unsparing, yet deeply human portraits of the families and first responders struggling to ameliorate this epidemic, each facet of the crisis comes into focus. In these politically fragmented times, Beth Macy shows, astonishingly, that the only thing that unites Americans across geographic and class lines is opioid drug abuse. But in a country unable to provide basic healthcare for all, Macy still finds reason to hope-and signs of the spirit and tenacity necessary in those facing addiction to build a better future for themselves and their families.
Rust and Stardust by T. Greenwood
Camden, NJ, 1948. When 11 year-old Sally Horner steals a notebook from the local Woolworth’s, she has no way of knowing that 52 year-old Frank LaSalle, fresh out of prison, is watching her, preparing to make his move. Accosting her outside the store, Frank convinces Sally that he’s an FBI agent who can have her arrested in a minute—unless she does as he says.
This chilling novel traces the next two harrowing years as Frank mentally and physically assaults Sally while the two of them travel westward from Camden to San Jose, forever altering not only her life, but the lives of her family, friends, and those she meets along the way.
Based on the experiences of real-life kidnapping victim Sally Horner and her captor, whose story shocked the nation and inspired Vladimir Nabokov to write his controversial and iconic Lolita, this heart-pounding story by award-winning author T. Greenwood at last gives a voice to Sally herself.
Arab of the Future 3 by Riad Sattouf
The Arab of the Future is the widely acclaimed, internationally bestselling graphic memoir that tells the story of Riad Sattouf’s peripatetic childhood in the Middle East. In the first volume, which covers the years 1978–1984, his family moves between rural France, Libya, and Syria, where they eventually settle in his father’s native village of Ter Maaleh, near Homs. The second volume recounts young Riad’s first year attending school in Syria (1984–1985), where he dedicates himself to becoming a true Syrian in the country of Hafez al-Assad. In this third volume, (1985–1987), Riad’s mother, fed up with the grinding reality of daily life in the village, decides she cannot take it any longer. When she resolves to move back to France, young Riad sees his father torn between his wife’s aspirations and the weight of family traditions.
Our Collection Develops: July 31, 2018
Published July 31, 2018 | By Jennifer Sharp
The following titles – and more – will be on the shelves of Hartford Public Library, beginning July 31. If the title is not at your closest branch, place a hold and it will be delivered there for you. All our titles are in our catalog; you may search it at any time.
A Measure of Darkness by Jonathan Kellerman and Jesse Kellerman
Available at Camp Field.
Clay Edison is busy. He’s solved a decades-old crime and redeemed an innocent man, earning himself a suspension in the process. Things are getting serious with his girlfriend. Plus his brother’s fresh out of prison, bringing with him a whole new set of complications.
Then the phone rings in the dead of night.
A wild party in a gentrifying East Bay neighborhood. A heated argument that spills into the street. Gunshots. Chaos.
For Clay and his fellow coroners, it’s the start of a long night and the first of many to come. The victims keep piling up. What begins as a community tragedy soon becomes lurid fodder for social media.
Then the smoke clears and the real mystery emerges—one victim’s death doesn’t match the others. Brutalized and abandoned, stripped of ID, and left to die: She is Jane Doe, a human question mark. And it falls to Clay to give her a name and a voice.
Haunted by the cruelty of her death, he embarks upon a journey into the bizarre, entering a hidden world where innocence and perversity meet and mingle. There, his relentless pursuit of the truth opens the gateway to a dark and baffling past—and brings him right into the line of fire.
Paradox by Catherine Coulter
Chief Ty Christie of Willicott, Maryland, witnesses a murder at dawn from the deck of her cottage on Lake Massey. When dragging the lake, not only do the divers find the murder victim, they also discover dozens of bones. Even more shocking is the identification of a unique belt buckle found among the bones. Working together with Chief Christie, Savich and Sherlock soon discover a frightening connection between the bones and the escaped psychopath.
Paradox is a chilling mix of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, old secrets that refuse to stay buried, and ruthless greed that keep Savich and Sherlock and Chief Ty Christie working at high speed to uncover the truth before their own bones end up at the bottom on the lake.
Don’t miss Paradox, the twenty-second FBI thriller.
Fruit of the Drunken Tree by Ingrid Rojas Contreras
Seven-year-old Chula and her older sister Cassandra enjoy carefree lives thanks to their gated community in Bogotá, but the threat of kidnappings, car bombs, and assassinations hover just outside the neighborhood walls, where the godlike drug lord Pablo Escobar continues to elude authorities and capture the attention of the nation.
When their mother hires Petrona, a live-in-maid from the city’s guerrilla-occupied slum, Chula makes it her mission to understand Petrona’s mysterious ways. But Petrona’s unusual behavior belies more than shyness. She is a young woman crumbling under the burden of providing for her family as the rip tide of first love pulls her in the opposite direction. As both girls’ families scramble to maintain stability amidst the rapidly escalating conflict, Petrona and Chula find themselves entangled in a web of secrecy that will force them both to choose between sacrifice and betrayal.
Inspired by the author’s own life, and told through the alternating perspectives of the willful Chula and the achingly hopeful Petrona, Fruit of the Drunken Tree contrasts two very different, but inextricably linked coming-of-age stories. In lush prose, Rojas Contreras has written a powerful testament to the impossible choices women are often forced to make in the face of violence and the unexpected connections that can blossom out of desperation.
A Double Life by Flynn Berry
Claire is a hardworking doctor leading a simple, quiet life in London. She is also the daughter of the most notorious murder suspect in the country, though no one knows it.
Nearly thirty years ago, while Claire and her brother slept upstairs, a brutal crime was committed in her family’s townhouse. The next morning, her father’s car was found abandoned near the English Channel, with bloodstains on the front seat. Her mother insisted she’d seen him in the house that night, but his powerful, privileged friends maintained his innocence. The first lord accused of murder in more than a century, he has been missing ever since.
When the police tell Claire they’ve found him, her carefully calibrated existence begins to fracture. She doesn’t know if she’s the daughter of a murderer or a wronged man, but Claire will soon learn how far she’ll go to finally find the truth.
Loosely inspired by one of the most notorious unsolved crimes of the 20th century – the Lord Lucan case – A Double Life is at once a riveting page-turner and a moving reflection on women and violence, trauma and memory, and class and privilege.
Bloody Sunday by Ben Coes
North Korea, increasingly isolated from most of the rest of the world, is led by an absolute dictator and a madman with a major goal—he’s determined to launch a nuclear attack on the United States. While they have built, and continue to successfully test nuclear bombs, North Korea has yet to develop a ballistic missile with the range necessary to attack America. But their missiles are improving, reaching a point where the U.S. absolutely must respond.
What the U.S. doesn’t know is that North Korea has made a deal with Iran. In exchange for effective missiles from Iran, they will trade nuclear triggers and fissionable material. An exchange, if it goes through, that will create two new nuclear powers, both with dangerous plans.
Dewey Andreas, still reeling from recent revelations about his own past, is ready to retire from the CIA. But he’s the only available agent with the skills to carry out the CIA’s plan to stop North Korea. The plan is to inject a singular designer poison into the head of the North Korean military and in exchange for the nuclear plans, provide him with the one existing dose of the antidote. But it goes awry when Dewey manages to inject a small amount of the poison into himself. Now, to survive, Dewey must get into North Korea and access the antidote and, while there, thwart the nuclear ambitions of both North Korea and Iran. And he has less than 24 hours to do so—in the latest thriller from Ben Coes.
Better Late than Never by Kimberla Lawson Roby
Available at Albany, Barbour, and Downtown.
Rev. Curtis Black is no stranger to scandal. Throughout the decades, he has done much in the public eye, both good and evil. But what most people don’t realize is that Curtis has been hiding a horrific childhood that has affected him in countless, unspeakable ways.
His buried past resurfaces when his estranged sister becomes alarmingly ill and his youngest child, twelve-year-old Curtina, becomes the kind of problem daughter whom he never imagined she could be. This is only the beginning.
The horror of Curtis’s childhood secrets, as well as Curtina’s wild and rebellious behavior, takes a critical toll on Curtis and the entire Black family. All the public scandals they’ve experienced over the years now seem like child’s play compared to the turmoil they are facing in private. Who could have known that the deepest wounds would come from within?
The Ghost Script: A Graphic Novel by Jules Feiffer
Hollywood is haunted. 1953. Ghosts abound. In particular, the ghost of Detective Sam Hannigan—murdered in Bay City twenty-two years earlier by Addie Perl, the hired assassin who then bought a Hollywood nightclub with her blood money. Among the nightclub’s favored clientele is Sam’s widow, Elsie. Blinded by a Japanese bullet while on a USO tour in the South Pacific, Elsie has been reinvented into “Miss Know-It-All,” a Hollywood gossip columnist. But blind Elsie is haunted by the ghost of her husband, Sam, who asks her accusingly: “If Miss Know-It-All knows so much, why can’t she find Cousin Joseph, the man who had me killed?”Hollywood is haunted. Spooks abound. Agents Shoen and Kline, investigators for the House Un-American Activities Committee, manipulate the blacklisted, buxom, over-the-hill starlet-turned-hooker Lola Burns into working for them and naming the names she had once refused to betray.Hollywood is haunted. Communist screenwriters Oz McCay and Faye Bloom are noisily plotting, boozing, and laughing their way toward their impending disaster.Hollywood is haunted. As an inside joke, writer-director Annie Hannigan—Sam and Elsie’s daughter—comes up with the idea of a “Ghost Script” that may or may not exist but is rumored to expose the inside story of the Hollywood blacklist and the names of its undercover masterminds, most notably the reclusive philanthropist Lyman Murchison, a superpatriot with a dirty secret.Hollywood is haunted. Stumbling his way through this maze is private eye Archie Goldman, a tough-talking, nebbishy good guy who’s never been in a fight he didn’t lose. Archie’s single aim is to live up to the memory of the ghost who haunts him: Detective Sam Hannigan. Trail along with Archie into the middle of this muddle, as he tracks the arc of history and finds that it has rounded itself off into a circular firing squad.In this antic and brilliant assault on our past and present, Jules Feiffer shows us, once and for all, that if there’s one thing Americans hate, it’s learning from past mistakes. Every twenty years or so, a new generation must address new biases and injustices that are virtually identical to past biases and injustices. But who remembers? Exposing the tragically cyclical path of American history, Jules Feiffer pens the final installment to a noir masterpiece.
Posted in Hartford | Tagged fiction, new books
Give Me Your Hand by Megan Abbott
Kit Owens harbored only modest ambitions for herself when the mysterious Diane Fleming appeared in her high school chemistry class. But Diane’s academic brilliance lit a fire in Kit, and the two developed an unlikely friendship. Until Diane shared a secret that changed everything between them.
More than a decade later, Kit thinks she’s put Diane behind her forever and she’s begun to fulfill the scientific dreams Diane awakened in her. But the past comes roaring back when she discovers that Diane is her competition for a position both women covet, taking part in groundbreaking new research led by their idol. Soon enough, the two former friends find themselves locked in a dangerous game of cat-and-mouse that threatens to destroy them both.
The Sinners by Ace Atkins
The Pritchards had never been worth a damn–an evil, greedy family who made their living dealing drugs and committing mayhem. Years ago, Colson’s late uncle had put the clan’s patriarch in prison, but now he’s getting out, with revenge, power, and family business on his mind. To make matters worse, a shady trucking firm with possible ties to the Gulf Coast syndicate has moved into Tibbehah, and they have their own methods of intimidation.
With his longtime deputy Lillie Virgil now working up in Memphis, Quinn Colson finds himself having to fall back on some brand-new deputies to help him out, but with Old West-style violence breaking out, and his own wedding on the horizon, this is without a doubt Colson’s most trying time as sheriff. Cracks are opening up all over the county, and shadowy figures are crawling out through them–and they’re all heading directly for him.
Cottage by the Sea: A Novel by Debbie Macomber
Available at Barbour and Camp Field.
Annie Marlow has been through the worst. Rocked by tragedy, she heads to the one place that makes her happy: Oceanside in the Pacific Northwest, the destination of many family vacations when Annie was a teenager.
Once there, Annie begins to restore her broken spirit, thanks in part to the folks she meets: a local painter, Keaton, whose large frame is equal to his big heart—and who helps Annie fix up her rental cottage by the sea; Mellie, the reclusive, prickly landlord Annie is determined to befriend; and Britt, a teenager with a terrible secret. But it is Keaton to whom Annie feels most drawn. His quiet, peaceful nature offers her both comfort and reprieve from her grief, and the two begin to grow closer.
Then events threaten to undo the idyll Annie has come to enjoy. And when the opportunity of a lifetime lands in her lap, she is torn between the excitement of a new journey toward success and the safe and secure arms of the haven—and the man—she’s come to call home.
In this heartwarming tale, Annie finds that the surest way to fix what is damaged within is to help others rise above their pain and find a way to heal.
New England by Eleanor Berman, et al.
Available at Albany.
DK Eyewitness Travel Guide: New England will lead you straight to the best attractions this breathtaking region has to offer. Packed with stunning photography, illustrations, and detailed maps, this fully updated guide will help you discover the Northeast state by state, from rocky coast of Maine to the river landscapes of Connecticut to the world class culture of revolutionary Boston.
Explore the culture, history, wildlife, and architecture of New England with walks and hikes through dramatic landscapes, scenic routes, and guidance on the region’s fresh coastal cuisine. DK Eyewitness Travel Guide: New England provides all the insider tips you need, whether you are sailing in infamous Newport, exploring museums of the American Revolution, or hiking across the spectacular Appalachian Mountains. The guide includes 3-D cutaway illustrations and floor plans of all the must-see sights, street-by-street maps of major cities and towns, and reliable information about getting around this incredible region.
With hundreds of photographs, illustrations, and maps, DK Eyewitness Travel Guide: New England shows you what others only tell you.
Double Blind by Iris Johansen and Roy Johansen
Kendra Michaels, formerly blind and now a hired gun for law enforcement agencies who relies on her razor-sharp powers of observation, is reluctant to help the FBI with the most recent case they’ve brought to her. But then she hears the details: the body was found just blocks away from Kendra’s condo. The young woman was carrying an envelope with Kendra’s name on it, and inside was an SD card with what appears to be an innocuous video of a wedding reception. The woman died trying to get the video to Kendra, but for what purpose? Before Kendra and the FBI can answer that question, the bride is abducted from her suburban home.
And so the hunt is on for a killer whose nightmarish plan is slowly becoming clear. A plan that involves a powerful law firm and a multi-billion dollar corporation. As the body count rises, Kendra joins forces with private investigator Jessie Mercado and agent-for-hire Adam Lynch to stop the plot as it grows ever closer to its terrifying conclusion.
In Double Blind, Iris and Roy Johansen deliver an emotional, gripping new entry in the bestselling Kendra Michaels series.
Rescued by David Rosenfelt
In Rescued, David Rosenfelt again delights his readers with the charm and wit they’ve come to expect. Even the most fervent fans of the sardonic Andy Carpenter and his team will be enthralled by this latest case, where the stakes have never been higher.
Defense lawyer Andy Carpenter is reluctant to take on any more cases. He’d much rather spend his time working for his dog rescue organization, the Tara Foundation, than find himself back in a courtroom. However, when a truck carrying over seventy dogs from the South to the rescue-friendly northeast turns up with a murdered driver, Andy can’t help but get involved.
Of course Andy is eager to help the dogs, many of whom come to the Tara Foundation while awaiting forever homes – it’s the man accused of murder who he has a problem defending. The accused just happens to be his wife Laurie’s ex-fiance; her tall, good looking, ex-Marine ex-fiance. Even though he acknowledges having argued with the victim, he swears that he is not a killer, and though he would rather not, Andy has to admit he believes he’s telling the truth.
For Andy, even with dozens of successful cases behind him, this case that his wife insists he take may prove to be his most difficult.
Baby Teeth by Zoje Stage
Available at Dwight.
Afflicted with a chronic debilitating condition, Suzette Jensen knew having children would wreak havoc on her already fragile body. Nevertheless, she brought Hanna into the world, pleased and proud to start a family with her husband Alex. Estranged from her own mother, Suzette is determined to raise her beautiful daughter with the love, care, and support she was denied.
But Hanna proves to be a difficult child. Now seven-years-old, she has yet to utter a word, despite being able to read and write. Defiant and anti-social, she refuses to behave in kindergarten classes, forcing Suzette to homeschool her. Resentful of her mother’s rules and attentions, Hanna lashes out in anger, becoming more aggressive every day. The only time Hanna is truly happy is when she’s with her father. To Alex, she’s willful and precocious but otherwise the perfect little girl, doing what she’s told.
Suzette knows her clever and manipulative daughter doesn’t love her. She can see the hatred and jealousy in her eyes. And as Hanna’s subtle acts of cruelty threaten to tear her and Alex apart, Suzette fears her very life may be in grave danger…
King of the Dancehall by Nick Cannon
Available at Albany, Barbour, Downtown, Dwight, and Park.
A heartpounding, exhilarating novel based on the hot new movie from Nick Cannon.
The coming of age story of Tarzan Brixton, a product of the harsh and merciless Brooklyn projects. After being released from a 5 year prison sentence for an armed robbery gone sideways, he makes a vow to his dying mother to change his ways. With his mother’s medical bills piling up, the temptation of the criminal life becomes too real once again. His solution is to escape the rough streets of New York for the equally ruthless beaches of Kingston, Jamaica. He soon creates a drug running empire while falling in love with a beautiful Jamaican woman named Maya. It’s through Maya that Tarzan becomes captivated by the music, dance, and lifestyle of Jamaican Dancehall culture, which ultimately lifts him towards the path of righteousness.
The Late Bloomers’ Club: A Novel by Louise Miller
Nora, the owner of the Miss Guthrie Diner, is perfectly happy serving up apple cider donuts, coffee, and eggs-any-way-you-like-em to her regulars, and she takes great pleasure in knowing exactly what’s “the usual.” But her life is soon shaken when she discovers she and her free-spirited, younger sister Kit stand to inherit the home and land of the town’s beloved cake lady, Peggy Johnson.
Kit, an aspiring–and broke–filmmaker thinks her problems are solved when she and Nora find out Peggy was in the process of selling the land to a big-box developer before her death. The people of Guthrie are divided–some want the opportunities the development will bring, while others are staunchly against any change–and they aren’t afraid to leave their opinions with their tips.
Time is running out, and the sisters need to make a decision soon. But Nora isn’t quite ready to let go of the land, complete with a charming farmhouse, an ancient apple orchard and the clues to a secret life that no one knew Peggy had. Troubled by the conflicting needs of the town, and confused by her growing feelings towards Elliot, the big-box developer’s rep, Nora throws herself into solving the one problem that everyone in town can agree on–finding Peggy’s missing dog, Freckles.
When a disaster strikes the diner, the community of Guthrie bands together to help her, and Nora discovers that doing the right thing doesn’t always mean giving up your dreams.
The Death of Truth: Notes on Falsehood in the Age of Trump by Michiko Kakutani
We live in a time when the very idea of objective truth is mocked and discounted by the occupants of the White House. Discredited conspiracy theories and ideologies have resurfaced, proven science is once more up for debate, and Russian propaganda floods our screens. The wisdom of the crowd has usurped research and expertise, and we are each left clinging to the beliefs that best confirm our biases.
How did truth become an endangered species in contemporary America? This decline began decades ago, and in The Death of Truth, former New York Times critic Michiko Kakutani takes a penetrating look at the cultural forces that contributed to this gathering storm. In social media and literature, television, academia, and politics, Kakutani identifies the trends—originating on both the right and the left—that have combined to elevate subjectivity over factuality, science, and common values. And she returns us to the words of the great critics of authoritarianism, writers like George Orwell and Hannah Arendt, whose work is newly and eerily relevant.
With remarkable erudition and insight, Kakutani offers a provocative diagnosis of our current condition and points toward a new path for our truth-challenged times.
More Together than Alone: Discovering the Power and Spirit of Community in Our Lives and in the World by Mark Nepo
The #1 New York Times bestselling author and popular spiritual teacher presents a poignant and timely meditation on the importance of community, and demonstrates how we live more enriching lives by cultivating connectedness.
At once a moving meditation and an empowering guide, More Together Than Alone is an compelling testament to the power of community and why it’s so essential in our lives, now more than ever. Mark Nepo draws from historical events, spiritual thought leaders, and the natural world to show how, in every generation, our tendency is to join together to accomplish our greatest achievements, from creating education to providing clean drinking water, and preserving the arts.
Nepo’s historical snapshots, from ancient times to contemporary examples, show how community creates a light in the darkest of times, and gets to the heart of how we come together in varied and beautiful ways, whether forming resistance groups during the Holocaust or rebuilding after the nuclear devastation in Nagasaki. These inspiring stories teach us that even in the bleakest days, we have the power to create connections and draw strength from one another.
Featuring thought-provoking analysis and practical takeaways, More Together Than Alone will help us inhabit a stronger sense of togetherness where we live and in the world so we can achieve our highest potential, as individuals, and as communities.
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Schallaburg
Schallaburg Castle counts as one of the most beautiful Renaissance castles in Lower Austria. It has some early remains of medieval Romanesque and Gothic architecture, but these are overshadowed by later additions. Particularly impressive are the Renaissance courtyard and the two-storey red and white terracotta arcades, the work of Jakob Bernecker. Carved terracotta atlantes support the secondstorey arcades; sculptures and terracotta masks decorate the lower niches and walls of the castle. One of the best of these is the mask of a court jester holding a wand. Wilhelm von Losenstein, who owned the castle when the arcades were created, was a Protestant and a Humanist, a fact that is reflected in the works commissioned by him. At the end of World War II, Schallaburg Castle was totally destroyed by the Russians, and it was not until 1970, when it came into state administration, that work began in order to return the castle to its former splendour. Today, the Schallaburg houses Lower Austria’s Cultural and Educational Centre, and serves as a venue for excellent exhibitions and lectures.
Schallaburg Photo Gallery
Schallaburg: 01 photo
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Universal emergency telephone number system
A means by which a user of a telephone can request assistance from a variety of emergency services, including police, firefighting, emergency medical service, and perhaps others appropriate to the location and user, such as search and rescue. While there has not yet been worldwide standardization on the number to reach the dispatcher at the Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP), the most common are 911 and 112.
In many cases, telephone reporting will activate emergency management of small and large disasters.
Caller location
Enhancements of the service give additional information to the dispatcher, such as the location of the calling telephone. Even for a plain old telephone service (POTS) user, location reporting is not a trivial problem, at least for anything more complex than a single-family house. If the caller is in a business with many extensions, or an apartment building, the location provided may be no more precise than the street address. One enhancement gives a more specific location in a multiple-unit building.
It is required that most new cellular telephones be manufactured with a GPS receiver, which can send the actual location of the caller. In many telephones, however, the user can completely disable GPS, or limit position reporting only to emergency calls.
With voice over Internet Protocol, the user could be anywhere that has Internet connectivity. Most VoIP services administratively assign a physical address to be reported with emergency calls.
PSAP location
911 or 112 is not the physical location of a telephone, but a code that tells the first telephone end office to switch the call to an appropriate PSAP. Unfortunately, many such systems are not sufficiently fine-grained. For example, many systems in the United States have a three-digit area code, a three digit local exchange, and a four digit local line number. The local exchange usually is associated with a particular physical area, but that area may not correspond to the jurisdiction of individual emergency services. For example, (703)998-XXXX in the state of Virginia, in the United States, contains telephones in Alexandria and Arlington. All 911 calls, at least within recent times, would go to the Alexandria PSAP, and, if the emergency was in Arlington, the Alexandria dispatcher had to transfer the call to Arlington.
Retrieved from "http://en.citizendium.org/wiki?title=Universal_emergency_telephone_number_system&oldid=100673446"
Emergency management Subgroup
Emergency management tag
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SXSW 0
Joe Biden’s SXSW Speech Gave Me Hope for the Future
By Bryan Flynn · On March 18, 2017
Cancer research is an incredibly important endeavor. The advancements being made by scientists across the country and the world will go on to save countless lives, the value of which is immeasurable. The proposed federal spending budget released by the White House on Thursday includes a cut of nearly twenty percent to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which could take away millions of dollars to this important research.
In response, leaders from the University of Washington and Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Institute – which receives more NIH grants than any other cancer research facility in the country held a press conference to criticize the proposed cuts, as reported in The Seattle Times.
And that is a very bleak opening for a blog post with such an optimistic title. That is because running alongside to the story of missed opportunities to save lives is the one that came from Joe Biden. His was of hope and possibility, and for an hour at SXSW last week, I heard and believed.
Preparation is everything at SXSW. The longer I was there, the more committed I became to the nightly ritual of meticulously planning the following day’s activities. With so many people eager to hear from the innovative minds that SXSW brings, it was not uncommon to find many lectures at capacity at arrival. This was especially true for Joe Biden’s speech, which required collecting a special wristband hours before he was set to speak
When the time came for him to take the stage, I headed to the Austin Convention Center without a wristband, hoping to find a seat in the overflow room set up to accommodate high demand. That overflow room proved to be a necessity, because by the time I arrived, there were only a handful of seats remaining. And even though we weren’t in the actual room with Mr. Biden, the excitement was still palpable. It could have been that the collective nostalgia for the world of eight weeks ago was so strong that it could have been measured in equal years. Either way, the stage was set for a great speech, and Biden certainly delivered.
(Featured image: Ricardo B. Brazziell / Associated Press)
Biden opened with a sentiment he has expressed many times, beginning his speech with, “my name is Joe Biden and I am Jill Biden’s husband.” From there, he framed his continued plans to complete the Cancer Moonshot Initiative he began late last year in the story of his late son’s battle with the disease. It was that tragedy that in part influenced his decision not to run for president. “No one should ever run for president unless they are willing to give every ounce of their energy towards it” he said, adding, “I had one regret in making the decision not to run, and that was I would have loved to have been the president who presided over the end of cancer as we know it.”
From there, Biden shifted his focus to the audience, speaking to the many ways that everyone can contribute to the fight against cancer. The possibility of decreased funding aside, the biggest challenge to cancer research isn’t actually the research. It is collaboration and communication between those involved in the work. Biden recalled that for one of the more experimental treatments his son Beau received, doctors at the hospital did not have the technical infrastructure to share CAT scans with leading researchers at another institution. Committed to progress, one doctor literally took pictures on his iPhone and sent the images via text. But strides are being made by both Biden and the incredible network of researchers, doctors, professors and countless others working towards a cure. Biden began telling a series of stories about collaboration by saying “let me define hope for you”, a welcome message for many reasons these days.
In the CommLead Graduate program at the University of Washington, one of the first things we are taught is to look for “out of domain” solutions to problems. That means leveraging seemingly unrelated resources to help generate truly creative and innovative ideas. Biden demonstrated this perfectly when, looking for ways to improve radiation therapy for cancer patients, he turned to an unlikely source, NASA. “I don’t know anyone that knows more about radiation than them” he said.
And that collaboration continues all the way to our neck of the woods up here in Seattle. At one point, Biden asked “what does Amazon have to do with cancer research?” Turns out they have donated free cloud storage so the work of researchers across the world can become more accessible. And the genomic data that is being stored by Amazon has already been accessed 80 million times. That, Biden said, is why there is reason to hope.
And according to Biden, there is reason to believe that collaboration can continue all the way to the political world. Perhaps the most impactful line from his talk was when Biden stated “the only bipartisan issue left in this country is cancer research”, citing his work with Democrats and Republicans alike to help pass the Cancer Moonshot bill that allocated $6.3 billion towards this important work. “I am optimistic about the American people. Given the chance, they will never, never, never let their country down. At their core, Republicans and Democrats are decent people. I’m confident we can break through it.”
Cancer is a scary thing. And these are certainly scary times. But I walked away from Joe Biden’s speech at SXSW feeling at least a little bit more hopeful. I can take solace in the dedication of people like Joe Biden. I can draw inspiration from his calls to collaborate, and determination to find my own way to contribute to something bigger than myself.
Thank you Joe Biden, you truly are an inspiration.
Link to full talk:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IykG7_zHXoo&t=8s
Bryan Flynn
Authenticity in Storytelling: Lessons from SXSW
Let’s get chatty about chatbots
Less tech, more human
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Tags: retrospective
Tagged content
DAFilms.com presents: Retrospective of Jonas Mekas
By Marcos Ortega on Mon, 01/10/2018 - 07:08
DAFilms.com presents an extensive retrospective of Jonas Mekas, 95-year-old director straddled between Europe and the US, documentary and the avant-garde. Discover the work of the Lithuanian-American director, poet and visual artist often called the godfather of American avant-garde cinema and founder of the diary genre in documentary film.
Ivan Ladislav Galeta retrospective
By Marcos Ortega on Tue, 21/08/2012 - 07:22
As part of the K3 Short Film Festival
August, 23rd, 21h, Visionario, Udine
with the presence of the author
Ivan Ladislav Galeta’s small cinematic universe is indefinite but not infinite; sometimes he lets you see the edges. By Vassily Bourikas, curator of the Experimental Forum - Thessaloniki International Film Festival. The author will be present and explain the concept of his films with his famous flipchart-drawings.
Ivan Ladislav Galeta was born in the Kraj Gornji village, near Zagreb. He graduated from the School of Applied Arts in Zagreb (1967), followed by a degree in Fine Arts from the Faculty of Teacher Training (1969) and Pedagogy from the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Zagreb (1981). From 1977 to 1990, he was the manager of the University of Zagreb Students Multimedia Centre (MM), the first systematic venue for the screening of national and international experimental film and video art in Croatia. He was the founder and manager of the art cinema Filmoteka 16 (1991-1994). He initiated the introduction of animation (2000) and new media studies (2004) at the same Academy. In 1993 he became an associate media lecturer at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, and since 2007 he has been a full-time professor. He has been making films since 1969 and videos since 1975. From 1973 he has been exhibiting objects-installations, photographs-installations, expanded cinema presentations, video and TV works, texts, sound installations, spatial interventions, environmental projects and actions. In the mid 1990s he adopted an environmental approach to art with references to Henry David Thoreau, Karel Capek, Masanobu Fukuoka, Bill Mollison, James Joyce, Bela Hamvas, Claude Monet and others. His works are kept at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb, Centre Georges Pompidou, Oberhausen, Croatian Film Clubs’ Association… He has won numerous awards, including a medal of honour by the Ministry of Culture and Communications of the French Republic in 1999.
Playback: ATA Film & Video Festival 2006 - 2010
By Marcos Ortega on Wed, 06/04/2011 - 03:38
Playback: ATA Film & Video Festival 2006-2010
April 19, 2011, 19:30h, 10$
The Roxie Theater, 3117 16th Street, San Francisco, USA
Join us for a special presentation of short films from the first five years of the ATA Film & Video Festival. The selections include works by Tommy Becker, Ariel Diaz, Paul Clipson, Zachary Epcar, Sam Barnett, Jibz Cameron & Hedia Maron, John Palmer, Rachel Manera, Carl Diehl, Martha Colburn, Guy Maddin, Clare Samuel & Candice Purwin, Olga Chernysheva, and Federico Campanale.
ATA proudly presents these local & international works, celebrating unconventional films and a singular film festival that entertains and provokes audiences worldwide. Don’t miss your chance to experience what BadLit describes as “a real powerhouse of experimental media exhibition.”
TIE Retrospective: The Shivering Eyelash (Houston, TX)
By Marcos Ortega on Thu, 18/09/2008 - 21:28
TIE Retrospective: The Shivering Eyelash
9/20/08 (8:PM) & 9/21/08 (3:PM)
Aurora Picture Show
800 Aurora St., Houston, Texas
- X-Ray Film I - The Alimentary System (Fleisch Archive, 1936, 16mm, silent, 11 min., 22fps, Germany)
This is the first of several of Prof. Robert Janker’s x-ray films. The
filmmaker was a pioneer of x-ray cinematography. The film was featured
in a TIE-2005 festival program, showcasing educational films that were
released during the Third Reich in Germany.
- Un Chant D'Amour (Jean Genet, 1950, 16mm, silent, 23min., 24fps, France)
One of the most memorable avant-garde films ever made, Un Chant D'Amour
is also one of the most controversial. Made by the famed writer, Jean
Genet, it features uncensored, sensual, jail-house scenes. Two
prisoners in complete isolation, separated by the thick brick walls,
and desperately in need of human contact, devise a most unusual kind of
- Spectator (Frans Zwartjes, 1970, 16mm, optical sound, 11min., 24fps, Netherlands)
Hidden safely behind his camera, the photographer can't get enough of
what the glamorous model, with her long eye lashes, has to offer him.
- The Secret Cinema (Paul Bartel, 1968, 16mm, optical sound, 30min., 24fps, USA)
The Secret Cinema is a black-comic tale of a woman whose fears that her
life is being filmed for the entertainment of her friends turn out to
be true. The film presaged the sardonic tone of most of the maker's
later work (Eating Raoul), though he would mostly abandon The Secret
Cinema's experimental aspects in favor of linear narratives with
perverse touches.
http://www.experimentalcinema.org
TIE, The International Experimental Cinema Exposition
interview Cineinfinito (S8) Mostra de Cine Periférico Jonas Mekas CCCB Ken Jacobs releases Albert Alcoz Phil Solomon Pablo Mazzolo experimental film Robert Beavers DVD festival Nathaniel Dorsky videoart call for entries Kenneth Anger Stan Brakhage Mark Webber awards Ben Rivers Laida Lertxundi screening Xcèntric
Zigmunt Cedinsky
Stuart Sherman
Tiago Ganhão
Alessio Di Zio
Tom Palazzolo
Lois Patiño
Matthijs Blonk
The Censorship Show
Roger Barlow
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Home » News » Marines are flying more than the Air Force
Marines are flying more than the Air Force
By: Shawn Snow
U.S. Marine Corps Master Sgt. Brian Walker, the aviation technician chief with Marine All-Weather Fighter Attack Squadron (VMFA) 242, oversees his Marines as they finish maintaining an F/A-18D Hornet at Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni, Japan, Oct. 27, 2017. (Lance Cpl. Gabriela Garcia-Herrera/Marine Corps)
The Marine Corps’ aviators have increased their monthly flight hours per pilot, and are now flying substantially more than Air Force pilots, military officials said.
Both the Marine Corps and Air Force are facing pilot shortages and aircraft readiness problems that have left a large number of aircraft grounded.
But the Marine Corps says it has made strides over the past year increasing monthly flight hours.
The Marines are averaging between 14 to 16 hours a month per pilot per aircraft, while the Air Force is averaging just a little above nine to 10 hours per pilot per month, according to testimony Wednesday from Gen. Glenn M. Walters, the Marine Corps assistant commandant, and Air Force Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Stephen W. Wilson at a Senate Armed Services hearing on military readiness.
Average monthly flight hours is an important metric for the services, an indicator of how much training and experience their pilots have. The Corps has frequently cited lower flight hours as a potential reason for numerous air mishaps that have plagued the Marines over the last couple years.
In 2017, the Marines had 12 air incidents that resulted in either death or more than $2 million in damages, also known as a class A mishap. The Marines have steadily been pushing to increase flight hours and to get more aircraft and pilots in the air.
But flight hours can fluctuate drastically from unit to unit, especially with pilots are deployed down range.
“Why do you think the Marines are ahead of you on this?” Oklahoma Republican Sen. Jim Inhofe asked Gen. Wilson.
“I don’t have a good reason why they are ahead of us,” Wilson replied.
Wilson said the Air Force is trying to catch up by increasing manpower, productivity, instructor pilots and capacity to help pilots increase their flight hours.
“We are trying to increase about an hour per month going forward this year,” Wilson told the senator.
A U.S. Marine MV-22B Osprey aircraft lands on the deck of the Bonhomme Richard amphibious assault ship off the coast from Sydney during events marking the start of Talisman Saber 2017. (Jason Reed/Pool Photo via AP, File)
Aviation readiness has been a problem impacting all the services. Last year the Corps reported that nearly half their F/A-18 Hornets couldn’t fly and those numbers have only improved slightly with the increase of 44 new aircraft, Walters said.
Marine Commandant Gen. Robert B. Neller said in late January that the Corps has too many Hornets. The service is trying to push out older legacy aircraft and replace them with a new generation of fighters and rotary wing aircraft. The Marines just can’t afford to keep all the aircraft maintained and serviced, Neller said.
Moreover, pilot shortages have plagued both the Air Force and Marines as competition from commercial airlines continues to pluck away trained and experienced pilots while military budget woes are grounding pilots and aircraft.
But more bonuses and bigger paychecks are not necessarily the answer to the problem.
“They don’t come in to get rich, they come to fly,” Walters said, about the motivation that keeps pilots in the service.
The Pentagon’s FY19 budget is expected to address some of these issues.
Top Marine aviator: ‘If I don’t get more money, I’ll stop flying in July or August’
U.S. Marines nearing F-35B combat readiness declaration
Sequestration Already Biting Navy, Marines Readiness
Marines’ F/A-18 Hornet Stand-Down Addressed Ground Mishaps: Neller
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Young Nigerian graduates at one of orientation camps in the country, ready to serve their motherland
By Esther Alade, Landmark University Undergraduate, Kwara State North Central Nigeria
Citizens of a society cannot do without the existence of a nation because every activity people engage in, within and outside the nation can all be determined by policies made by the people in the nation. Nations are an important part of modern society. History tells us about the existence of empires, chiefdoms and kingdoms, all dating from the classical era, medieval period, age of enlightenment, even to the contemporary modern world of today.
However, nations or nation states have replaced all of them as the basic unit of human political organization.
Nations are not a product of historical accidents but are deliberately built by men and women of vision and resolve.
Nation-building is therefore not the product of wishful thinking but of conscious, well thought-out governance. It is a continuous work-in-progress, a dynamic process in constant need of development and re-invention.
Nation-building never stops and true nation-builders never rest because all nations are constantly faced with new challenges.
Nation-building encompasses many important aspects. First, it is about building a political entity that is said to be related to a given territory which has its foundation on some generally accepted rules, norms and principles, and citizens who share the same vision.
Secondly, it is also about building institutions which embody the political entity; institutions such as a bureaucracy, an economy, the judiciary, universities, a civil service, and civil society organizations.
However and perhaps most importantly, nation-building is about the builders, i.e. the citizens, building a common sense of purpose, a sense of shared identity and destiny, and possessing a collective imagination of belonging. It involves the building of the tangible and intangible threads that hold a political entity together and gives it a sense of purpose by which it attains modernity.
This can be linked to the founders of Nigeria, men like Chief Obafemi Awolowo, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, Sir Tafawa Balewa, Sir Ahmadu Bello and others, who had vision and showed keen interest in the attainment of independence and continuous building of the nation. These are the kinds of people that the nation Nigeria needs for its continuous growth and development.
Unfortunately, in modern times, Nigeria has been caught in the webs of so many challenges, despite the fact that she is endowed with so many human and natural resources.
Some of the webs of challenges trapping Nigeria as a nation include the following:
The Web of History
The Web of Socio-Economic Inequalities
The Web of Building of Institutions for Democracy and Development
The Constitutional Web
The Web of Leadership
From times past, it could be said that the challenges of nation-building have their roots in the colonial rule.
According to Peter Ekeh’s Colonialism and the Two Publics, the two publics are the primitive and the civilian publics which involve the African and the colonial bourgeoisie respectively. In it, he stipulated that the primitive public involves the African way of living – their traditions, cultures, norms, values and political systems related to the culture and the likes.
The civilian public refers to the colonial period and how the colonialists covered the Africans with the veil of ideology including: the fact that traditional worship is evil; that Africans are not progressive or developed because of their way of life and such similar thoughts.
In essence, this period can be regarded as the era of civilization, which involves the building of institutions like schools, hospitals, the constitution which involves rules for the people, political institutions and systems which encompasses or has been responsible for the people’s standard of living, even after the colonialists had left governance in care of Nigerians, assigning nationalist leaders according to their regions.
This has led to tribalism which has gradually created the web of illegitimacy crisis, political instability and the likes. Scars had been left from history which cannot be forgotten because everybody is affected by what had happened since then, even up till date.
But instead of focusing on the past, we can focus on what is on ground and give solutions to it. A wise man once said that history is past politics and politics is present history but those who do not learn from their past are doomed to repeat it – again.
In Nigeria, many citizens are denied basic rights, such as the right to affordable and qualitative education and healthcare. There are also variations in the enjoyment of these rights across the country.
As a consequence, the average citizen is not motivated to support the state and society, because he or she does not feel that the society is adequately concerned about their welfare.
Secondly a socio-economic inequality across the country encourages fear and suspicion which keep people divided.
For example, the level of immunization of children against dangerous childhood diseases, it can be said that while the South-East has 44.6% immunization coverage, the North-West has 3.7% and North-East 3.6%.
This also applicable to the education of the girl-child as an indicator; the pattern of inequality is similar with the South-East having an enrolment rate of 85%, South-West 89%, South-South 75%, North-East 20%, and North-West 25%.
Only 25% of pregnant women in the North-West use maternity clinics, while 85% of the women in the South-East do.
It is not surprising that 939% more women die in child-birth in the North-East, compared to the South-West.
Education and poverty levels show the dimensions of inequalities across Nigeria.
If we take admissions into Nigerian universities in the academic year 2000/1, we see that the North-West had only 5% of the admissions, while the South-East had 39%.
As for poverty, the former Governor of the Central Bank, Charles Soludo, once pointed out that while 95% of the population of Jigawa State is classified as poor, only 20% of Bayelsa State is so classified. While 85% of Kwara State is classified as poor, only 32% of Osun is in the same boat. These inequalities can be related as challenges to nation-building.
The presence of socio-economic inequalities means that different Nigerians live different lives in different parts of the country. To put it succinctly, Nigeria needs a social contract with its citizens as a basis for demanding their loyalty and support.
It can be said that ever since Nigeria got her independence, the country has been caught in the web of creating an acceptable constitution by the people without having so much lacunas.
In the 1940’s and 1950’s, our founding fathers were said to have been caught in the web of a stable constitution arrangement. In the long run, they embraced the principle of federalism as a foundation for our nation.
But federalism had been caught in the web of those who, on the one side, want a unitary form of government and of those, on the other side want a confederal arrangement.
Another constitutional web is in relation to the nature of the nation’s democracy. Many Nigerians may embrace the principles of democracy which includes the forming of government based on the will of the majority, respect for the rule of law, and respect for basic freedoms of citizens, but in reality, Nigerians are said to be caught in the web of either the military rule or defective civilian governments.
These events can be related in terms of accountability, or respect for the rule of law, or the holding of elections, our conduct in the recent past has been far from democratic. Be that as it may, while most Nigerians do not want military rule, the practice of democracy does not imply uniformity, showing a fundamental lack of consensus on this important question as well.
Moreover, political parties should need to become little more than vehicles to deliver power to the highest bidders at local, state and federal levels.
The Web of Building Institutions for Democracy and Development
Institution building can be said to be very important in nation-building. Lest nations are able to manage their political and social disputes peacefully, without being involved in conflict, or sustain economic growth without creating huge inequalities, it absolutely depends on the quality of the relevant national institutions.
Institution building encompasses the following components:
Institutions for the Enforcement of Laws; This is often related to the courts, Police, EFCC (Economic and Financial Crime Commission) and the likes are said to be institutions that ensures the integrity of the public.
The Judicial Institutions: These are important institutions in any democracy and are important in the functioning of a market economy. The judiciary settles disputes between the various levels of government, between government and citizens, and among citizens and also among private sector agents.
Economical Governance Institutions: An economic institution is responsible for the regulation of the supply and flow of money and the financial system (Central Bank); to allocate capital to firms and individuals (Banks and Stock Exchange); to insure against commercial risks (insurance firms); to insure individual bank depositors against loss of up to certain amount (deposit insurance); to enforce contractual obligations (courts); and to collect revenue for the government (fiscal authorities) and the likes.
The Web of Leadership Failure
Since inception, Nigeria has been caught in the web of poor leadership.
Leadership is an essential factor in nation-building. It is the ability to lead, manage, control, guide, and give direction to the people. Leadership is often given to appointed or elected individuals who possess personal qualities of integrity, honesty, commitment, noble character and competence of individual leaders at the top. Also, leaders possess the collective qualities of common vision, focus, and desire for development as a group of the elites.
The performance of our past individual leaders over the years has left much to be desired. In these times, Nigeria as a nation needs leaders who can understand the social, political, cultural, and economic problems of the nation, and provide solutions to them; leaders who see all citizens as one, and carry them along; leaders who do not place self above the constitution and laws of the nation, but lead by example showing respect for the rule of law.
Nigeria needs leaders who are not of double-standards. This vision however, cannot be accomplished by one person alone but with people who share the same vision and goals. This can be linked to the statement united we stand but divided we fall.
Nations are built by men and women who have the will and vision to accomplish greatness, not born of selfish motives, but for the country and for posterity.
A good personality to mention is Late Chief Obafemi Awolowo who can never be wiped away from history because of his numerous contributions. Among his other notable accomplishments, he coined the name of the Nigerian monetary unit – the Naira. Late President Nnamdi Azikwe, Late Sir Tafewa Balewa together with Late Sir Ahmadu Bello, had shared the vision and began the nation known today as Nigeria.
Lastly, national greatness can be achieved by the will to offer such a leadership and support it through strong dependable political and economic institutions. Hiring persons with the technical expertise and moral competence to interpret the rules or implement the goals of the organisations; and ensuring that the institutions inspire public confidence by being transparent, fair and consistent. These are also the standards by which the performance of any organisation, in particular, public sector organisations should be measured.
This shows that the act of creating the organisation itself is not as important as its proper functioning and overall effectiveness. In this regard, Nigeria needs to create and strengthen institutions that would help achieve the national goals of democratic governance and sustainable development.
http://www.mafng.org/anniversary/challenges_nation_building_nigeria.htm#_edn4 Being a presentation by: Professor Ibrahim A. Gambari, on THE CHALLENGES OF NATIONS BUILDING: THE CASE OF NIGERIA @ Sheraton Hotel Abuja, Nigeria on 7 February 2008
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download;jsessionid=38E85C61F8D0A0DEF6185FDADB8068A2?doi=10.1.1.542.4768&rep=rep1&type=pdf Colonialism and the Two Publics in Africa: A Theoretical Statement; Peter P. Ekeh; Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 17, No. 1. (Jan., 1975), pp. 91-112.
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//Abuja, with Authenticnews//
No fewer than2600 athletes are expected to converge on the University of Ilorin for the 2016 National Youth Games billed to hold this month.
This was disclosed on phone by the Director of Grassroots Sports Development, Federal Ministry of Youth and Sports Development, Dr. Ademola Are on phone on Thursday morning.
According to him, about 400 officials would also officiate at the Games.
When asked about the sponsors of the Games, he said that for now the ministry is bankrolling the Games.
“We are still reaching out to state governments, individuals and organizations as well as all stakeholders in sports for sponsorship,” he said.
The Director explained that the Permanent Secretary of the ministry has already a Memoranda of Understanding (MoU) with the University of Ilorin to host two editions of the Games.
On why Ilorin was chosen, he explained that several things were put into consideration.
“They have all the required facilities in place, as such, they would be hosting the 2016 and 2017 editions,” he said.
When asked if it is an annual event, he said it is expected to be held annually, but could not hold in 2014 and 2015 after the first edition in 2013 because of lack of funds.
“We are determined to ensure it holds annually funds prevented 2014/15 editions. You know it’s supposed to complement National Sports Festival (NSF),” he added.
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MindShare Network
Dave Goodman
The Disneyland Resort – Starting as an hourly musician in the All-American College Band, a ten year stint as a clinician/consultant and five salaried positions later, Dave reached the top entertainment job as the Vice President of Entertainment and Executive Producer. There he managed a staff of approximately 2500 employees, created content based strategies for driving attendance and increasing revenues and was credited for re-inventing Disney fireworks shows.
Tokyo Disney Resort – As the head of Entertainment and Costuming from 1993 to 1995, TDR presented more quality live entertainment than any other venue in the world. Shows, spectaculars and parades from TDR, like Disney’s Fantillusion, are still traveling to other Disney properties today.
SeaWorld Orlando and Discovery Cove –Re-imagined and developed a new brand of animal experiences as the Executive Producer and V.P. of Entertainment. These internationally acclaimed award winning shows paved the way for record revenues and attendance each year from 2003 to 2007. He also represented the company as the media spokesperson for various events, promotions and grand openings of major entertainment attractions.
The Walt Disney Special Events Group – Created and led the first global special event company for Disney with offices in London, Singapore, Melbourne, California and Florida. This group produced hundreds of signature events and multi-city tours in over forty countries each year between 1995 and 2001.
Projects/Clients – Carnivale in Rio de Janeiro, Waldorf Astoria, Tournament of Roses Parades, ESPN, Louisiana State University, Major League Baseball, Young President’s Organization, Bobby Flay, Jeff Corwin, University of Arizona, Jack Hanna, Kodak, Dubai Shopping Festival, McDonald’s Japan, Australian Grand Prix, Beauty and the Beast…the musical London, The Disney Channel, Universal Studios Japan, Pixar Studios, The White House, ABC, Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parades, Westin, Hilton, Sesame Street’s “Elmo and the Bookaneers”, “Believe”, “Shamu Rocks” and “Blue Horizons” at SeaWorld Orlando, Panasonic Avionics, Presidential Rallies and galas for foreign dignitaries and heads of state, Ritz Carlton, California Governor Inaugurals, TaylorMade/Adidas, and more.
Education – Colorado State University graduate in Music Education
Philosophy – Americans are ready for a new brand of thinking…one that uses hope as a filter…a brand of thinking that encourages each and every one of us to reach our potential, to realize our dreams and to nurture the authenticity in every living being.
Music – He formed his first corporation at the age of 23, toured across America performing as a musician in the concert/record business. They shared billings with jazz artists like Spyro Gyra, Bob James and Pat Metheny. He co-owned a small jingle company and performed drum clinics for Yamaha Drums and Sabian Cymbals. He played with comedians like the Smothers Brothers and Andy Kaufman and musical acts such as Doc Severinson and Roy Clark.
Goodman Experiences, 2017
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UK >> England >> Winchester
www.winchester.ac.uk
West Hill, WINCHESTER
Winchester is a city and the county town of Hampshire, England. The city lies at the heart of the wider City of Winchester, a local government district, and is located at the western end of the South Downs National Park, along the course of the River Itchen. It is situated 61 miles south-west of London and 13.6 miles from Southampton, its closest city. Winchester developed from the Roman town of Venta Belgarum, which in turn developed from an Iron Age oppidum. Winchester's major landmark is Winchester Cathedral, one of the largest cathedrals in Europe, with the distinction of having the longest nave and overall length of all Gothic cathedrals in Europe. The city is home to the University of Winchester and Winchester College, the oldest public school in the United Kingdom still using its original buildings.
More Details About Winchester
The University of Winchester is a public research university based in the city of Winchester, Hampshire, England. The university has origins tracing back to 1840. Winchester University is a member of The Cathedrals Group (officially the Council of Church Universities and Colleges or CCUC) is an association of universities and university colleges in the United Kingdom. Every year the University holds its graduation ceremonies in Winchester Cathedral. Graduates of the University of Winchester may use the post-nominals Winton., from the Latin Wintoniensis meaning 'of Winchester'. The main University Campus, King Alfred, is located close to the city centre of Winchester. Some of the buildings on this campus are named after former staff or governors.
More Details About University of Winchester
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Queens University of Belfast
UK >> Northern Ireland >> Belfast
www.qub.ac.uk
Undergraduate:840 Postgraduate:580
University Road, BELFAST
BT7 1NN
For so much, what shall we give back?
World Rankings 201-250 201-250 201-250 200 251-275
World Rankings 251-275 276-300 251-275 N/A
Belfast meaning "rivermouth of the sandbanks" is the capital city of Northern Ireland, located on the banks of the River Lagan on the east coast of Ireland. It is the largest city in Northern Ireland and second largest city on the island. By the early 1800s the former town was home to a major port. Belfast played a key role in the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century, becoming the biggest linen producer in the world, earning it the nickname "Linenopolis". By the time it was granted city status in 1888, it was a major centre of the Irish linen as well as tobacco-processing, rope-making and shipbuilding industries. Today, Belfast remains a centre for industry, as well as the arts, higher education, business, and law, and is the economic engine of Northern Ireland.
More Details About Belfast
Queen's University Belfast (informally Queen's or QUB) is a public research university in Belfast, Northern Ireland. The university was chartered in 1845, and opened in 1849 as "Queen's College, Belfast". The university forms the focal point of the Queen's Quarter area of the city, one of Belfast's six cultural districts. It offers academic degrees at various levels and across a broad subject range, with over 300 degree programmes available. Queen's is a member of the Russell Group of leading research intensive universities, the Association of Commonwealth Universities, the European University Association, Universities Ireland and Universities UK. The university is associated with two Nobel laureates and one Turing Award laureate.
More Details About Queens University of Belfast
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Steve Burgess
(Business)
Steve Burgess is the Chaired Professor of Marketing at Wits Business School and has taught on programmes in Africa, Asia, Europe and North America. He was Director of the Nelson Mandela University Business School and marketing professor, leading the School from start-up to international accreditation. He played a major role in the turnaround of the UCT Graduate School of Business as Associate Director (Research) and held the Association of Marketers Chair at Wits. He has been a Visiting Professor of Marketing at the Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the Fisher College of Business at The Ohio State University, a Faculty Affiliate of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan, a Corresponding Researcher with the Centre for Marketing and Communications at Copenhagen Business School in Denmark and an AIM/AMA Sheth Foundation Doctoral Consortium faculty member.
In 2013, Professor Burgess received a special award for outstanding contributions to marketing education at the World Marketing Summit in Putrajaya, Malaysia. He was the first recipient of the MSI Visiting Scholar Award from the Marketing Science Institute (Boston, USA) for his work in consumer behaviour. He also has received The Ohio State University’s Fisher College of Business International Alumni Award for lifetime contributions to marketing in South Africa and the USA and the Millennium Merit Certificate from the South African Association of Marketers. He was one of five people who represented President Mandela’s government on its first trade mission to the USA in June, 1994.
Prof Burgess is a globally recognised authority on consumer behaviour and strategic marketing management in emerging markets. He is author of more than 75 papers and 6 books, which have been cited some 4000 times in scholarly literature. He serves as an editorial review board member or ad-hoc reviewer for several of the top international scholarly journals in marketing and international business (e.g., Journal of Marketing, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, International Journal of Research in Marketing, International Journal of Advertising, Journal of Macromarketing, Journal of African Business). A new book on marketing strategy in emerging markets is due for launch in early 2019.
In business practice, he served as Managing Director of Autopage Cellular in the Altron Group, Managing Director of ConsumaData (now Experian South Africa) and as a senior marketing executive at Johnson & Johnson South Africa, where he won numerous awards. He is a consulting partner to the Institute for Customer Relationship Management Inc (iCRM, USA). His consulting practice has focused primarily on consumer packaged goods, customer relationship management, financial services, automotive, marketing research firms, and advertising agencies and includes more than 30 international and African blue-chip firms.
A popular public speaker at corporate and academic events, he has presented speeches at events in more than a dozen countries on four continents. He is a fellow of the Academy of Marketing Science (USA) and the International Trade Institute of Southern Africa. He serves on the CMO Council (USA) global Academic Advisory Board, Academy of Indian Marketing Advisory Board and as an Academic Trustee of AiMark (Europe) and a member of the Emerging Markets Conference Board (USA).
Video: Professor Steve Burgess introduces the NMMU Business Schools web presence
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Health Reform WA
Understanding behavioral health and primary care integration
Can the state’s small insurance companies survive reform?
Dr. David Lynch
Transforming Healthcare in Whatcom County
There’s some exciting work underway to transform the health care delivery system in Whatcom County–sort of a communitywide ACO on steroids. Plans for the Whatcom Community Health Association call for pooling public and private health care dollars under a community organization dedicated to supporting not only health care services but also the broader aspects of community health. (Read the ACO project overview here.)
We talked with Larry Thompson, executive director of the Whatcom Alliance for Healthcare Access (WAHA), the convening organization, to get some details.
Q: What prompted this initiative?
A: WAHA was created in 2002 to initiate community dialogue and action around transforming the health care delivery system. WAHA engaged the different groups that have a stake in health care–consumers, business, government, providers and plans–but early on, the timing and environment weren’t right for making sweeping changes. So WAHA focused on one worthwhile aspect: getting uninsured people care. Then in 2010, the passage of health care reform set off a lot of discussion about and planning for retooling the financing and delivery of health care within organizations, and to some extent, within the community. At the same time, over the last 20 years, we’ve developed a critical mass of evidence about what works and what doesn’t to help frame a big picture path of how to move forward with transforming the delivery system. We’ve never before seen this degree of creative energy and momentum around reforming health care delivery–now the time is right for significant transformation.
Q: What stage are you at right now?
A: We are in the first phase of developing the concept and mapping out who will participate and what roles they will play. We started discussions about how we might approach this as a community in December and hosted a community forum with the St. Luke’s Foundation in March. We have another community forum planned for June 24.
Q: Who is involved in these plans and discussions?
A: We have an 13-member steering committee with representatives from all the different stakeholder groups that is developing the concept of what a transformed health system would look like. Overall, there are about 70 people involved in task forces looking at different aspects of the project. Roughly 80-90 percent of the physician community is engaged in this process, including PeaceHealth St. Joseph Hospital, our two major medical groups, community health centers and the coalition representing independent physicians. We’re also working with representatives from mental health and long-term care, as well as the Bellingham-Whatcom Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Group Health and Regence, and Whatcom County and the City of Bellingham.
Q: What are some of the approaches you’re discussing?
A: We’re looking at a public/private organization that will aggregate funds and allocate them based on the needs of our population. The idea, which is similar to the regional health care authority concept bubbling up around the state, is to pool our funding resources so we can build our delivery system around patients’ needs instead of around funding streams. The concept includes plans for a communitywide Accountable Care Organization (ACO) in which providers would be paid for and share responsibility for more effective, coordinated, patient-centered care. This would include better integration among providers from a technical (health records) standpoint as well as a more holistic approach to patient care. But we’re talking about more than an ACO; we’re looking at what we can do beyond the borders of health care services to improve the health of our community. For example, instead of funding exotic surgeries, we might want to direct our community health resources toward preventing childhood obesity by helping school kids stay fit. Essentially we plan to chip away at the .5 billion that we spend every year on health care in Whatcom County by not only having the best health delivery system possible but also by keeping front of mind the greater good of the community outside the walls of hospitals and doctors’ offices.
Q: Do you think this model would work in other communities?
A: It can, and has, most notably in Grand Junction, Colorado. But not everywhere. It helps to have a history and willingness to operate collaboratively as a community. At this point, the majority of the ACO work around the country is in the private sector–a large health plan or health system decides to role the dice on this approach as a competitive operating strategy and goes about better integrating and organizing its own system of care around patients. Doing this as a community requires a certain level of trust. It also helps to have a can-do attitude, a willingness to stick with it when the going gets difficult.
Read the presentations from the first community forum:
Dave Lynch, MD: The Case for Change
Rud Browne: The Impact of Rising Healthcare Costs on Hiring Decisions in Washington State and the Critical Need to Drive Cost Reductions
Dewey Desler: Whatcom County Health Care Costs
Larry Thompson: Transforming Health Care In Our Community, A Progress Report
← State health insurance exchange takes a significant step forward Washington as Health Reform Lab →
Lara Welker
Copyright © 2019 Health Reform WA. All Rights Reserved.
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Kathy Hassett
Potomac Greens/Potomac Yard, VA Real Estate
The communities of Potomac Yard and Potomac Green border Arlandria and Del Ray on the east and are just south of Reagan National Airport. At the turn of the 19th century, Potomac Yard was one of the busiest rail yards on the eastern seaboard. Today, Potomac Yard is still a major hub for transportation.
As the names may suggest, Potomac Yard and Potomac Green borrow their names from the Potomac River on which they are situated. While much of the area’s history is contemporary in nature, it should be noted that Daingerfield Island, located in the eastern part of Potomac Yard, marks one of the first permanent colonial settlements in Alexandria. Daingerfield Island was settled in 1669.
Potomac Yard and Potomac Green are close to it all. Residents enjoy numerous amenities at Potomac Yard Center. Property here is defined by stately townhouses. Expansive green space inaptly named Potomac Green affords wonderful, riverside views of the Washington Monument. The Mt. Vernon Trail, also located in Potomac Green, is ideal for bikers and joggers; traversing this trail, one can safely travel the banks of the Potomac, north to Roosevelt Island or south to George Washington’s Mt. Vernon estate.
As with most communities in the City of Alexandria, residents of Potomac Yard and Potomac Green are only steps away from Old Town. The restaurants and boutiques of Del Ray are also easily accessible.
Commutes are easy from Potomac Yard and Potomac Green. Route 1 and the George Washington Parkway are both nearby. Potomac Yard and Potomac Green are central to several metro stops. Venturing to Arlington in the north, one can pick up the Blue and Yellow Line metro at the Crystal City Metro or Pentagon City Metro. There is an Amtrak platform at the Crystal City Metro. The Braddock Road Metro is located just to the south. Residents are moments away from Reagan National Airport.
Ronald Reagan National Airport: < 5 miles.
Washington-Dulles International Airport: < 35 miles.
Baltimore-Washington International Airport: < 40 miles.
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Sir John the Fool
Rolf-Peter
Sir John Harington and other famous European fools
by Rolf-Peter Wille
How, you are asking, can we perceive the merit of a certain culture? How do we know that the English culture is greater, more civilized than, for example, the Antarctic one? Well, we could count the number of Nobel prize winners, right? Wrong! Believe me: It is foolish to count Nobel prize winners. The true value of any unique culture is defined by the quality of its fools.
If you think that I am fooling you, consider the centrality of foolishness in European culture. The most perfect essay ever written and one of the truly influential works in Western literature is "In Praise of Folly" by Erasmus of Rotterdam. The eloquent orator here is not just anybody. She is a god, Folly herself, nursed by Inebriation and Ignorance, whose faithful companions include Self-love, Flattery, Oblivion, Laziness, Pleasure, Madness, Wantonness, Intemperance and Dead sleep. The essay was enormously popular and before Erasmus’ death it already had been translated into French and German with an English edition soon following.
The art of writing eloquently on a trivial subject (adoxography) soon became a popular exercise in Elizabethan grammar schools. I believe it certainly is no coincidence that Britain has the highest number of eccentrics in the world (see the blood sausage throwing contest in Eccentric Britain : The Guide to Britain's Follies and Foibles). It is eye opening to find so many eccentric fools among the heroes of Shakespeare’s plays. Hamlet, the genius of awareness, acts as a fool, King Lear foolishly abdicates the throne and divides his kingdom among his greedy daughters, Othello, a military genius, succumbs to foolish jealousy, Anthony and Cleopatra behave like foolish children without any common sense whatsoever. In comparison to these foolish heroes, the so called "Fools" in Shakespeare are unusually wise characters and Lear’s Fool unfoolishly calls Lear a fool. Shakespeare’s most famous fool, Falstaff, is a clown rather than a fool. But the greatest eccentric fool in European literature is not the "Fat knight" but the "Knight of the Sorrowful Face". Don Quixote is gallantly battling windmills and slaying wineskins. His horse is an old nag. His squire is a village simpleton. His helmet is a washbasin. His lady, the most beauteous maid in the world, is a common country bumpkin, and he hasn’t even met her. With his "Don Quixote" Cervantes did not only invent the novel but he also created a knight more famous than all the "true" knights before him.
Of course Don Quixote is neither the first foolish nor the most crazy knight. He is only the most quixotic one. The truly crazy one is "Orlando furioso". This paladin of the emperor Charlemagne is everything that a knight should be, chivalric, valorous, invulnerable, invincible, a real killing machine. And he falls hopelessly in love with Angelica, a princess of Cathay. When she marries somebody else, Orlando becomes insane and runs amok through Europe and Africa destroying everything in his path, uprooting giant trees and plucking off people’s heads as easily as one might take apples from a tree. Finally a friend of Orlando, an English knight, mounts his winged horse and flies up to the moon where everything lost on earth is to be found, including Orlando's wits. He brings them back in a bottle and makes Orlando sniff them, thus restoring him to sanity.
A journey to the moon sounds lunatic indeed. Yet some famous writers discussed the feasibility of making the moon a fool’s paradise. Milton changed the location of the fool’s paradise to "limbo" in his "Paradise Lost" and thus "corrected" Ariosto. "Orlando furioso" is one of the longest poems ever written, containing 38,736 lines or 4,842 stanzas in ottava rima. It certainly will take a few hours for a very gifted poet to translate a single Italian stanza into English and only a complete fool would begin to translate all of them. Nevertheless, in 1591 a courtier and godson of Queen Elisabeth I, Sir John Harington, published the first edition of his complete translation. I am truly relieved, though, to learn that he did not translate the entire text voluntarily. Quite cleverly he only chose canto 28, the juiciest, which describes a very funny ménage à quatre, a tale almost as bawdy as "Putting the Devil back into Hell" by Boccaccio. Sir John then vainly circulated this dirty story around the Court and it was voraciously devoured by the Queen’s maids of honor until the Queen herself read it and discovered the source of it. If the historians are correct, she was furious—though maybe not as much as Orlando. Elizabeta furiosa did not pluck the head of Sir John but condemned him to translate the entire "Orlando furioso". And he was banished from Court until he had finished it. She might as well have condemned him to fly to the moon and find his own lost wits. It is bad enough to sign your own name a few hundred times. But translating 38,736 lines of Italian poetry into English verse complete with rhyme?
Nevertheless, when Harington’s translation was published, it did not only contend the entire text in English heroic verse but also lots of marginal notes, illustrations, commentary, summary, and other literary addition. Sometimes, it seems, he imposed his own persona upon the work and the reader. The translation was successful and Sir John Harington should have been very happy to finally have fallen back into favor with the Queen. But I am shocked to read that he went on to invent the flush toilet. This, of course, is nothing dirty in itself though it does vex me to find another poet with a fable for toilets. But Harington introduced his invention in a satirical essay which described the stinking matter in such graphic detail, worthy of Rabelais, that he almost did not find a publisher for it. And maybe that would have been better, because his godmother, Elizabeta furiosa, almost banished Sir John again for it. Nevertheless, a WC alla John was finally installed in the palace and till today "John" is still American slang for "toilet".
And, wait a moment: I wanted to write an essay on culture and on the importance of fools. How did I end up with toilets?
Back to Rolf-Peter Wille: My Writings
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As newspapers drop wire services, will readers care?
Posted on December 24, 2012 by John Robinson
On Sunday, Allen Johnson, editorial page editor of the News & Record and my friend, announced that the paper was dropping the New York Times News Service.
Today, I read that the Chicago Tribune, the Baltimore Sun, the Orlando Sentinel and other Tribune-owned papers are dropping the AP wire service.
I hope they’re dropping the services for the right reasons — to get more local reporting — but I suspect it’s all about saving money.
The News & Record’s decision isn’t unexpected. Seven years ago, when I was the editor, I dropped the Times. We were under cost-cutting orders and I wanted to save as many reporting jobs as I could. Meanwhile, the service was — still is — expensive, and we didn’t use its news report much because the stories were often long and often late. The choice was easy.
Readers responded quickly and angrily, but they didn’t miss the news stories. They missed the columnists, specifically Thomas Friedman. We appealed to the Times to unbundle the package and allow us to buy Friedman alone. No dice. (It didn’t escape me that readers had asked us for years to unbundle the newspaper, letting them subscribe only to the sections and days they wanted. We refused, too.)
That decision stood for about a year, and we went without the Times. I can’t recall how many reporting jobs that saved, but however many it was, it was worth it.
Then, the paper’s financial crisis eased a bit, and Allen found the money to buy the Times wire service again. Friedman came back and readers were happy. But times, of course, are tough again and the Times is out. This time, I suspect, it’s gone for good. Allen explains how he plans to improve the editorial pages with new syndicated columnists, new local columnists and other feature. (Not posted.) I hope he’s successful.
But it’s hard to imagine a newspaper without the AP, particularly the ones of the stature of the Tribune, etc. I have the feeling the money they will save will drop straight to the bottom line, rather than go toward increased/improved local reporting.
I had my own problems with the AP, and its cost to us dwarfed the Times’. I spent some time investigating replacement options, but nothing seemed to fit our needs. AP provided the breadth of news from around the world that traditional newspaper readers expected. Even as most of the AP news had been on television the night before, we couldn’t shake those older readers who wanted it in the morning paper. (We also needed the AP for sports, in particular. The wire service was efficient in getting us scores from around the nation in a timely way.)
But in full honesty, we really needed the AP stories to fill the space inside the paper. We didn’t have enough local content to fill pages 4-12 in the front section. We certainly weren’t going to hire enough reporters to fill that space. While I considered turning that space over to reader-submitted content, I feared we wouldn’t get enough.
The last thing I wanted to do was further devalue the paper by dropping content that some of them liked. I had already done that enough.
That’s a long explanation of why I hope the Tribune papers are prepared. I hope that they will replace the AP content with something better. With content that readers need. Consider the service you’re providing and then provide it. Are the AP stories providing a service? Can you improve upon that service? That will be value-added.
But I’m afraid it is just another act to cut costs, which will give readers yet another reason to drop them. What service is that providing to me, the reader? If the answer isn’t positive, you’re in trouble. Once people get used to the act of getting news and information elsewhere — likely for free — they’re gone forever.
I know that editors know that. I hope publishers do.
17 thoughts on “As newspapers drop wire services, will readers care?”
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Lex on December 24, 2012 at 7:28 pm said:
The more you know, the less valuable you believe Friedman is. Bloggers such as Driftglass and Esquire’s Charles P. Pierce have exposed many times how fact-free, illogically argued and economically biased his columns are, so I won’t repeat their exposes, but I will say the esteem in which he is held illustrates a larger problem: Global warming may doom the species within a century, but conventional wisdom will do it even faster.
Shafqat Islam on December 24, 2012 at 10:05 pm said:
Good post but I would argue that there are now alternatives that fit the needs you outline above. The company I started (NewsCred) now provides wire-like news services to many of the Tribune papers, along with other major publishers in the US and worldwide. We’re especially strong in international coverage, business, sports and other vertical content — allowing local papers to focus on what they do best.
Our biggest challenge has nothing to do with the product – it’s mindshare. The AP is part of the furniture at most newspapers, and change is hard. To be clear, we offer an alternative that can also be complementary – we carry the AP as one of our content partners, so publishers have the option of getting the AP plus 1000+ other great sources all through a single feed/agreement. The AP produces great journalism, and we want to ensure it’s still accessible. We just want to offer diversity and choice.
Ellie Kesselman on December 25, 2012 at 2:05 am said:
Will readers care? No, not at first, I don’t believe. However, your last sentence is key:
“Once people get used to the act of getting news and information elsewhere – likely for free…”
Now THAT will be a problem! News and information from the Associated Press et. al. is very valuable. It can’t be replaced “for free”. The alternatives are the blogosphere, government press releases and PR Newswire. That doesn’t contradict Lex’s comment, nor yours. I don’t doubt for a moment that readers clamor for columnists, and that some bloggers are preferable to news media columnists. Yet that doesn’t lessen the importance of wire services, news reporting and analysis. The public takes it for granted. It isn’t. I don’t know what the answer is, though, in light of the budget problems you described.
Barry Friedman on December 25, 2012 at 12:00 pm said:
Tribune papers have been moving away from AP for several years. The centralized editing team that assembles story modules for use throughout the chain favors articles produced by Tribune Co. reporters and bureaus. It looks like they’re now willing to trust Reuters will have reporters in the places where Tribune isn’t represented.
PM on December 25, 2012 at 12:43 pm said:
As a mere newspaper reader, I care about losing the AP. It may be generic and non-local, but news of a generic interest doesn’t need to be local, so there is value in having that content for readers. And more pages filled with stories is more pages where ads can be sold, which is really the underlying issue here. If you can’t sell ads and pages are only being kept because you’ve got stories you pay for… do the math.
On the other hand, I will not miss the AP’s practice of running stories without a byline. If you have the guts to write a story, put your name on it. Take the praise or the blame.
Responder on December 27, 2012 at 11:45 pm said:
A good comment on the use of AP. The byline decision, however, is incorrect. The newspapers themselves decide whether to use the byline and frequently take them off in an effort to make it look as though they wrote it.
Stories by AP reporters (that is, not short rewrites from member papers) almost always do carry bylines, and, as pointed out by others, the decision to remove them is local. Indeed, it can be purely arbitrary. At one paper at which I worked, the full AP byline remained on AP stories that ran on a section front, but stories that ran inside a section received only “The Associated Press” for a byline, without the writer’s name. No substantive reason; as I say, it was arbitrary.
H. Barca on December 26, 2012 at 2:17 am said:
There’s no rocket science as to why the Tribune papers are dropping AP. It’s a major cost and Tribune doesn’t plan on owning any of these papers by the end of next year, probably much earlier. It helps the bottom line in the short term. Let the new owners decide to reinstate the wire service (which they will). Why not the LA Times? Because it is the one property in the Trib constellation that might sell for what passes for a premium price these days – and you don’t want to undercut its value. The Tribune has already undercut its value with its embrace of Journatic, which it obviously plans to use to fill the AP-less spaces.
Bottom line: This move has nothing to do with AP, just another page in Tribune’s sad short-term strategies to pump up numbers at expense of long-term brand quality.
Ed Bell on December 26, 2012 at 11:04 am said:
Most AP stories do indeed carry a by-line. It is the decision of the newspaper not to publish them. Tribune newspapers have been trying to drop AP for years to cut costs; It is their readers’ loss.
JD on December 26, 2012 at 9:29 pm said:
Tribune newspapers have been using Reuters’ increased US coverage product for a few years now, so dropping the AP is probably just another step to use more of this service.
William P. Davis on December 27, 2012 at 9:27 am said:
If you’re not concerned about the cost or quality of news or systems that are costly and lock papers into antiquated ways, by all means the AP is a perfect wire service. I’ve been pleased with the quality of the stories Reuters produces, and with their willingness to work with us to provide us a product that is valuable to us and to our readers — cooperation I’ve never seen the AP give anyone. The AP is a collective, and yet it seems it could care less about whether the work they’re producing matters to its members. Reuters isn’t owned by its members, and yet it seems to work a lot harder to please them.
Ellie Kesselman on December 31, 2012 at 12:59 pm said:
I think highly of Reuters too! Their reporters and specialty content is quite fine. They are more accessible to readers than Associated Press or many other media, yet do so in an appropriate and ethical manner.
The very best coverage I’ve noticed, (online, since that is all I really know) is when AP, Reuters and a third e.g. NY Times or Wall Street Journal, report on a major news story. They coordinate so well, especially in remote locations. Usually, one will provide photos and the others do interviews, background or analysis. Sometimes there is name attribution to contributors from each media source, sometimes not.
Reuters has diversified into specialty areas such as WestLaw, Web of Science (or maybe SciVerse?) and of course has their financial market data, Yet I worry… if Reuters will be vulnerable to the same problems as Associated Press, eventually.
Jeff Thomas on December 30, 2012 at 3:08 pm said:
I don’t know about your shop, but in ours, full-service AP cost the equivalent of 3+ FTE. I sure could have used three new reporters, but there’s no way three additional reporters can generate enough copy 7/365 to fill all the space vacated by AP copy.
There are interesting foreign-news alternatives, such as Global Post, but again the issue is dependably voluminous news copy every day of the year. You can’t shut down AP foreign coverage alone, making room for the less-expensive GP so you can redeploy the savings; it’s either one in total, the other in total, or both in total. You’re stuck.
There are lesser-cost sports-stats services (at least here you can shut down AP sports agate only), but they require newsroom staff resources to integrate into the front-end system and to paginate. Goodbye savings.
There are platforms such as Publish2 that promise to remove AP as distribution middleman, but short of universal P2 adoption by all newspapers, the risk is being left blind to a breaking news story such as the Newtown shootings. As my AP bureau chief once put it: You don’t need a reporter in Lincoln, Mont., until the FBI arrests Ted Kaczynski in Lincoln, Mont. Then you need a reporter in Lincoln RIGHT NOW.
Unless newspapers across America are willing to wait for the Helena Independent Record to post its Kaczynski story so they can use it, or are willing to let their own websites remain silent until the NYT parachutes into central Montana and files its story, there is a need for a standing army of trained reporters, available to jump on breaking stories in remote areas and file quickly. To date, only AP can supply that manpower. And it is fabulously expensive to maintain a standing army.
As expensive as AP may be, it is, inch for copy inch, the most economical way to fill the paper. And unless your publisher is willing to dramatically cut back the number of pages in each edition (is this what the Tribune papers plan to do?), your options for keeping all those columns filled are limited. It’s just one of the ways the news business is bedeviled by its devotion to the printed newspaper, constructed in a format and published at a frequency that arose a century ago, yet publishers can’t seem to abandon or even modify to any significant degree.
Pingback: Do newspaper readers care about wire feeds and what of local TV | regionaltv
Debasish Roy on August 2, 2015 at 11:36 am said:
Readers demand Friedman. Other writers decry him for being not based on fact. Has it ever occurred to these elitist writers that that is precisely what is required for popularity with lay readers? Friedman presents an opinion. The opinion is based on his experience and knowledge. If all the other writers present is facts, then how are they better than the average cub reporter?
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Review of Gaia Symphony – first performance
Cheltenham Music Festival
The sun was blazing down on the hottest Sunday afternoon of the year, yet inside Cheltenham Town Hall, a modest audience (about 170 people I think) experienced a tsunami, a raging fire, a blizzard, the Northern Lights and the presence of giant prehistoric stone circles.
It was all in the music, of course – the music in question being John Pickard’s mighty ‘Gaia Symphony’, given as part of this year’s Cheltenham Music Festival by Buy As You View Band conducted by Dr. Robert Childs.
This massive work, based on the Four Elements of Water, Fire, Air and Earth, actually consists of four separate movements of test-piece standard, linked together by percussion interludes (Dr. Pickard calls them ‘windows’) and, although heralded as ‘the longest piece of music ever written for brass band’, the work seemed to pass swiftly enough, due to the fascinating sounds and textures which held the attention of the listeners throughout.
The imagery is vivid – a tidal wave, a blazing fire, the Aurora Borealis and the various Neolithic stone circles that are found around the British Isles. The music is no more ‘modern’ than in many test-pieces of recent years and approachable by anyone used to today’s ‘blockbuster’ film scores. This is not in any way to denigrate Dr. Pickard’s seriousness, nor belittle his achievement, but to outline the comprehensibility of the ‘Gaia Symphony’, which, by any standards, must already rank as one of the most significant compositions in the annals of brass band literature.
Each of the movements had already been performed separately (the earliest, ‘Wildfire’, as long ago as 1991) and it was only during the course of composition of these pieces over an 11-year period that the composer decided to weld them together into a single work.
For this performance, the band was set up on the floor of the hall, with the intention not only to provide the large percussion section with adequate space, but to involve the audience more.
The work was prefaced by an introduction from the Cheltenham Festival’s Artistic Director, the conductor Martyn Brabbins, himself a former baritone and euphonium player who ‘ate and drank’ brass bands throughout his school days.
John Pickard then analysed his work with great clarity (he is a lecturer at Bristol University), warning those rash enough to occupy the front rows that things were about to get a little noisy!
The performance was absolutely superb, with Buy As You View meeting the challenge of playing for 56 minutes on end, head on. The opening movement – ‘Tsunami’ – impressed with some sonorous utterances from the lower end of the band (Gavin Saynor, in his first concert as the newly-appointed principal Eb bass, on great form). Following the first percussion ‘window’ ‘Wildfire’ roared along convincingly, although John Pickard expressed concern at rehearsal that a special effect towards the end, designed to imitate the crackle of burning wood, might cause the audience to think it was time to applaud!
The third movement, ‘Aurora’, reflects the composer’s keen interest in astronomy (he was, for a while, Vice Chairman of Bristol Astronomical Society) and contains some of the most beautiful music in the entire work, the band producing its celebrated warm sound (one might say that it actually plays with a mellifluous Welsh accent).
The last movement, ‘Men of Stone’, evoking four pagan stone circles, is made up of four distinct sections: ‘Avebury’ (seen at dawn), ‘Castlerigg’ (seen in a snowstorm), ‘Barclodiad-y-Gawres’ (seen at sunset) and ‘Stonehenge’ (seen on Midsummer’s Eve). This last section ends with a marvelous musical depiction of the rising sun – a great, life-affirming major chord with a stratospheric soprano cornet reaching up to the skies – the playing here nearly lifting the ornate Edwardian roof.
Throughout the long span of the piece, I don’t think I heard a single note clipped, an untidy passage nor a moment of suspect intonation. It was really a tremendous achievement, owing much to teamwork as it did to some fantastic solo playing (Ian Williams, David Childs, Owen Farr, Chris Thomas, Gavin Saynor and, especially, guest soprano cornet, Kevin Crockford, on top form).
The only disappointment lay in the audience – fairly small (although the Festival organisers pronounced themselves satisfied “for a Sunday afternoon”) and predominantly elderly. Where were all the young people? As it was, the audience was a perfect model of attention, with no sign of restiveness, and very appreciative at the end.
This concert was not only an important milestone in new brass band music, but also for the movement itself. The Cheltenham Music Festival has been in existence since 1945, and has always been seen as a showcase for important new British music.
However, it has rarely embraced brass bands and Martyn Brabbins’ courage and faith in mounting this extraordinary event deserved far more support from the brass band movement than it received.
Steve York
www.4barsrest.com
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by Victor Hugo (Author) and Isabel F. Hapgood (Collaborator)
"As much a love letter to the cathedral as it is the story of two doomed lovers." —Smithsonian Magazine
Written in 1831, The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo is a beloved French gothic novel which centers around the wondrous Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, France. Set during the reign of King Louis XI, we are introduced to the gypsy dancer Esmerelda. A beautiful girl, both inside and out, Esmerelda captures the hearts of everyone around her, including Captain… (more)
Written in 1831, The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo is a beloved French gothic novel which centers around the wondrous Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, France. Set during the reign of King Louis XI, we are introduced to the gypsy dancer Esmerelda. A beautiful girl, both inside and out, Esmerelda captures the hearts of everyone around her, including Captain Phoebus, Pierre Gringoire, and the hunchback Quasimodo, who is hidden away in the tower of Notre Dame as a bell ringer.
Unfortunately, Esmerelda has also caught the attention of Archdeacon Claude Frollo, Quasimodo’s abusive guardian. Frollo battles with his lust, eventually succumbing, leading him to pursue Esmerelda while leaving morality behind.
A beautifully written novel about love, lust, and thirteenth-century Paris, The Hunchback of Notre Dame will leave readers both marveling at the beauty of Notre Dame and reeling at the lengths that people will go for love.
Packaged in handsome, affordable trade editions, Clydesdale Classics is a new series of essential works. From the musings of literary geniuses such as Nathaniel Hawthorne in The Scarlet Letter to the striking personal narrative of Harriet Jacobs in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, this new series is a comprehensive collection of masterpieces by some of the most famous writers in history.
Fiction Horror Romance Gothic Historical Media Tie-In
$ 9.99 For EPUB 26 loans, 1 year, 1 at a time
26 loans 1 loans 1 year 59 days
Publisher: Clydesdale (June 11, 2019)
Collection: Clydesdale
Romance >
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Home British Columbia Travel Guide Vancouver City Guide Vancouver Attractions
Gastown © Todd Van Hoosear
Alongside Chinatown, the fascinating historic enclave of Gastown transports visitors back in time to envision the city in the days of old. Set in the central core of Vancouver, it has cobbled streets, antique gaslights, Victorian architecture, narrow alleys, courtyards, and hidden boutiques and restaurants.
Gastown was named after Vancouver's first settler and saloon owner, Jack 'Gassy' Deighton, whose historic hotel was destroyed in the Great Fire of 1886 along with much of the city. The fire swept through the town in less than an hour, leaving only two of the 400 or so houses standing.
Gassy has been immortalised with a statue in Maple Tree Square in Gastown. Another point of interest is the Lamplighter Pub in the Dominion Hotel, which was the first Vancouver inn to serve alcohol to women.
The Europe Hotel was the first fireproof building in western Canada, having been built just after the fire in 1892. Gastown keeps time with the world's first steam clock, which plays the Westminster chimes every 15 minutes on five brass steam-whistles inside its cast bronze case.
Website: www.gastown.org
Transport: Gastown is easily accessible by Vancouver’s Rapid Transit System, SkyTrain, and city buses
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Explore Norwood KY
Norwood KY Demographics
As of the census[3] of 2000, there were 395 people, 156 households, and 114 families residing in the city. The population density was 3,362.7 people per square mile (1,270.9/km²). There were 165 housing units at an average density of 1,404.7 per square mile (530.9/km²). The racial makeup of the city was 96.46% White, 1.01% African American, 0.76% Asian, 0.25% from other races, and 1.52% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 0.76% of the population.
There were 156 households out of which 33.3% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 62.8% were married couples living together, 7.1% had a female householder with no husband present, and 26.9% were non-families. 22.4% of all households were made up of individuals and 7.1% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.53 and the average family size was 2.97.
In the city of Norwood KY the population was spread out with 27.1% under the age of 18, 4.8% from 18 to 24, 26.6% from 25 to 44, 27.3% from 45 to 64, and 14.2% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 40 years. For every 100 females there were 107.9 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 94.6 males.
The median income for a household in the city of Norwood KY was $65,833, and the median income for a family was $71,250. Males had a median income of $61,406 versus $31,923 for females. The per capita income for the city was $29,092. About 5.5% of families and 4.4% of the population were below the poverty line, including 4.8% of those under age 18 and 14.7% of those age 65 or over.
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City Commission Meeting Highlights, April 23, 2019
Note: Commissioner Gerald Watkins was unable to attend the meeting.
City Hall Unveiling Set for May 2
Planning Director Tammara Tracy provided an overview of the upcoming City Hall Unveiling ceremony set for May 2 at 4 p.m. Tracy said, “During the renovation, people have seen the building come back to its original glory.”
The ribbon cutting will be at 4:15 with the presentation of Dogwood Trail awards at 4:45. Also during the event, there will be refreshments and music by the Paducah Singers. Numerous photographs will be on display showing the rehabilitation work in addition to images from when the building opened in the 1960s. Attendees are invited to stay at City Hall until 6:30 to visit with the elected officials, City Manager, and Leadership Team for a Meet the Team event. Then at 7 p.m., the McCracken County Public Library is holding an Evening Upstairs program featuring Historic Preservationist Melinda Winchester. Winchester will talk about City Hall’s architect, Edward Durell Stone.
Program Development Agreement with Weyland Ventures Development
The Paducah Board of Commissioners approved a Municipal Order for a 12-month Program Development Agreement between the City and Weyland Ventures Development. Under this agreement, Louisville-based Weyland Ventures will be conducting a market analysis, financial analysis, and project design for the development of the city-owned block bounded by Second Street, Broadway, North Water Street, and Jefferson Street. This block currently is a parking lot. Depending upon the findings from the analyses, the development project could include a hotel, open space, and a mixed-use residential building. Open space for functions in addition to public parking will continue to be offered in that block.
Mayor Brandi Harless and Weyland Ventures have met with various stakeholders in the downtown area over the past few weeks to hear their thoughts and concerns. Mayor Harless said, “I’m very proud that we have found a development partner that listened and will be responsive to the concerns of the community and will develop something that I think will have a lot of impact.”
The City’s goals with this prospective project within the Tax Increment Financing (TIF) District are to continue the revitalization of Paducah’s downtown, increase the vibrancy of the area, add public space, improve connectivity, and diversify housing options. Mayor Harless added, “How great is it that we have a new developer interested in Paducah that wants to do this.”
The City and Weyland Ventures will work to engage and seek input from stakeholders throughout the process. Based upon the outcomes of these due diligence activities, the next step would be to negotiate a Development Agreement for a specific project. Mayor Harless said, “At the end of this, we will have some proposals put on the table.”
Change Order #2 with Huffman Construction for Floodwall Pump Station No. 2 Project
The Paducah Board of Commissioners approved a Municipal Order for Change Order # 2 with Huffman Construction for the Floodwall Pump Station # 2 Project. This change order increases the contract amount by $135,956 resulting in a new contract amount of $5,057,956 million. This change order is due to the need to replace three pumps at the pump station that could not be repaired.
The Board approved the contract with Huffman Construction in April 2018 to rehabilitate Floodwall Pump Station #2 located at 1416 North 6th Street. The project includes the replacement of discharge pipes, the rehabilitation or replacement of various mechanical components of all seven pumps and motors not previously repaired, and the replacement of the sluice gate. Pump Station #2 has the largest pumping capacity of 313,000 gallons per minute. Since it’s the first station to be activated at a local river stage of 27.5 feet, it receives the most wear-and-tear.
The City has $1.4 million in grant funds for the project which includes a $1 million Community Development Block Grant and $400,000 from Delta Regional Authority. To fund the rest of the project, the City has received a low interest loan through the Clean Water State Revolving Fund (CWSRF) through the Kentucky Energy & Environment Cabinet and Kentucky Infrastructure Authority. There is sufficient grant and loan funding to cover the cost of the Change Order increase.
Amendment No. 1 to Engagement Agreement with Moss & Barnett for Cable Franchise Negotiations (vote May 14)
The Paducah Board of Commissioners introduced an ordinance for Amendment No. 1 to the Engagement Agreement with Moss & Barnett, a full-service law firm specializing in telecommunications law, assisting the City of Paducah in updating Chapter 22 (Cable Communications) of the Paducah Code of Ordinances and negotiating an updated franchise agreement with a 10-year term with Comcast. The franchise agreement is non-exclusive. This amendment updates the hourly rates for the senior shareholder and paralegal working with the city, removes the amount-not-to-exceed sentence, and updates the primary contact person.
Quick Highlights
Municipal Order approved adopting the annual Administrative Plan for the Section 8 program. The Section 8 program is managed by the Housing Authority of Paducah.
Municipal Order approved for a contract for services between the City and the Paducah Convention & Visitors Bureau on behalf of the American Quilter’s Society for the City to provide $25,000 for the marketing of the 2019 Spring AQS QuiltWeek.
Ordinances approved for residential infill development agreements between the City of Paducah and Higdon Development, Inc. for the Greenway Village Phase II project and the Ridgewood Villas Phase I and II project. These agreements provide for rebates of ad valorem real property taxes (with a cap on each project) during a specified time period with the developer constructing public infrastructure including streets, gutters, and storm sewer system.
City of Paducah Mission Statement: To be the best city in the world.
View All Our Social Media Connections
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Dennis Tapper, best known for his project Hux Flux, has passed away yesterday, May 15.
Hux Flux was formed in 1998 and ever since Dennis Tapper has produced a unique blend of psychedelic trance and Goa trance music. The project released some psytrance classics such as the hit “Time Slices” and the debut album, Cryptic Crunch, together with Jonas Pettersson AKA Logic Bomb, which is considered to be a milestone in the psychedelic trance music.
After a long and successful career in the electronic music world, the Swedish artist has died at the age of 43. The reasons of the death have not been disclosed yet.
Listen to “Time Slices” below.
PreviousBlend with Dennis Ferrer | Bolivar Beach Bar
NextThe THIRD EYE presents Z-CAT
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Movie Review: "All the King’s Men"
Introduction and Plot to the Movie
“All the king’s men” is a film that was staged and produced in the year 2006 after an adaptation from the one produced in 1946. It has indeed won the Pulitzer Prize. It is based on the same novel by Robert Penn Warren. It was directed by Steven Zaillian who also acted as the scripter and producer of the same movie. The movie is a story that revolves round the life of a fictional character that resembles the Louisiana Governor Huey Long. There are other minor roles in the movie with Kate Winslet, Patricia Clarkson, among others starring. This version of the movie is more faithful to the narrative than that of the 1946.
Indeed, it seems that Zaillian never watched the earlier movie and thus developed this whole film right from the original script by the author Warren. The filming of this movie took place at the New Orleans in the city of Morgan, in the Donaldsonville. This was in the state of Louisiana. The premier to the movie was held at the Toronto festival on the 11th September, 2006. This was when it was first screened to the public and the press. Another special screening was done at the Tulane University in New Orleans on September 16th the same year.
In the movie, newspaper reporter Burden is really interested in Willie who is an idealistic lawyer in the small town of New Orleans. Circumstances have forced him to run for the post of Governor in Louisiana. He is advised to do this by a political leader known as Duffy. He has been raised in a political family leading the corresponding lifestyle. He has his ex-lover Stanton whose father was also a Governor. He was raised by Judge Irwin a very honorable man and his step-father. He is later to be judged by the very judge on counts of his misconduct in a public office, which becomes the epitome and the backbone of the whole sagas in this movie.
The Movie Review of the “All the King’s Men”
Just from the analysis of the plot of the movie, it is clear that this it looks like a replica to the actual novel by Warren. Many would consider this movie as a repeat of the version that was produced in the 1946, but it looks more detailed and inclined to the original script than the previous production. Peen has come out as the best actor in this film as compared to the early actor in the Crawford series. As the forces of nature are cropping up on Willie, Penn has really brought out this whole idea of natural circumstances in the lives of individuals in the immediate society, and this makes the movie fit very well into the current contemporary worlds. He has brought in this through his personal powerful moments in the movie in a very intriguing and illustrated manner. As much as this, he brings a single dimensional character that is not brought forward by Warren in his novel.
The epitome of this movie is seen when there is self-description of hick who rises from no proper background to capture the coveted Louisiana governor’s seat. This shows how the society could be challenging to the most powerful at times in the avenue of power in politics. Some leaders could emerge from very humble backgrounds as opposed to the rich and the mighty in the society. This is in line to the landslide vote rule that had just been passed in the constitution of the land. This is evidenced in the real life episode portrayed by Huey in the original script by the author. Here, the director captures the long unforgettable stumping style commonly characterized in the political lives of individuals. The movie has patched up the halos left by the author in his work to bring forth the theme of politics in the movie in a much clearer way and manner.
When Burden betrays his class and the calling to serve Stark, Jude Law comes into place, and his acting skills make the narration of the book and the film similar in one way or another. The film is packed with lots of platitudes, and yet it offers very little to the audience who are occasionally left baffled in between the scenes of the movie. The movie creates the issues of Burden as the name of the character says. He tries to put this character in a situation where he is forced to carry the weight and adversaries of the corrupt Louisiana state on his back. This is seen as a civil action on the part of the director and producer of the movie. This explains the relentlessness of jack to the Judas goat status (Warren 78). However, the rampant flashbacks to his childhood lifestyle completely destroy the belief in this story at all.
From the way Burden’s childhood sweetheart behaves as played by Kate Winslet by becoming one of the many women courted by Stark, it is evident that Stark is a flame in which there is more to a human than is laid bare to be seen by the public. The moths in the house seem powerless, especially in his presence. They even circle and drop dead in the incinerator. This shows how politically powerful this individual is seen in the public domain. He goes to relentlessly investigate the judge, and the flashbacks in this case reveal that the character was immersed into the world of money and has been concerned with lots of economic issues.
Native Americans and African Americans
Movie Review: "Chocolat"
Movies Review: “Why did I Get Married Too?” and “Think Like a Man”
Movie Review: "The Marriage Chronicles"
Movie Review: “Man in the Iron Mask”
Movie Review: “The Way”
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Who is... Graydon Carter
Graydon Carter is the current editor of Vanity Fair magazine. He started his career at Time magazine as a writer-trainee, it is at Time that he met, Kurt Anderson, who he started Spy Magazine with in 1986. When Spy closed down Carter became the editor at New York Observer. He worked at the New York Observer until he took over the editor job at Vanity Fair when Tina Brown left to work at The New Yorker. The style of Vanity Fair under his leadership has been a combination of high visibility celebrity stories, combined with in depth journalism. This balance has been something that has leaned at times in one way, and at times in the other.
In his "Editors Letter"s he has taken a strong stand against Bush and this administration. He calls himself a libertarian though, saying that as he gets older he finds it harder to feel like he wants to support either of the major parties. He describes feeling like there is so much more gray now that when he was younger.
He has had a strong connection with Hollywood and been a producer on a number of movies over the last couple years. These movies include the movies, 9/11, Chicago 10, and two up coming movies, Hunter and Surfwise. He is also the author of a book, titled "What We Lost", discussing the changes the country has taken during the Bush Administration, that he does not support.
Carter discusses these topics and many more with great cogency and specificity, detailing what Bush's radical agenda means for America's future--and its future standing in the world. What We've Lost is not the position paper of a policy wonk or a pundit, but the impassioned argument of a concerned citizen in response to the most precarious political crisis of our time.
Labels: Gossip, Graydon Carter, News, Who Is
Who is... Graydon Carter Graydon Carter is the ...
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'I felt like an afterthought': How this woman aims to change the childbirth experience in Ontario hospitals
It’s been a little over a year since Kate Macdonald gave birth to her son, but the memory is bittersweet because of what she calls a traumatic experience with hospital staff.
“I felt like an afterthought,” Macdonald told CBC Toronto. “I didn’t feel like my care providers were listening to me or like my needs were even on their radar. It was just about what’s easiest for them to get through their shift.”
A year later, Macdonald says she suffers from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and sees a therapist.
She has been gathering feedback on the hospital from other mothers who delivered their babies at St. Joseph’s Family Birthing Centre in Toronto, and has created a website called The Reproductive Justice Story Project.
She plans to send the data from over 400 mothers to the hospital hoping they’ll learn from the information and adapt the methods they use when dealing with mothers, and families, during childbirth. Ultimately, Macdonald wants to conduct an Ontario-wide survey.
“[Hospitals] have more power than they know of when it comes to whether or not a patient in their care has a good experience or a bad experience,” she said.
‘I was screaming … saying please stop’
Macdonald had never planned to give birth in a hospital, but she was overdue and had unusually high blood pressure. Once she got to the hospital she says her midwife was told to go, leaving her with a nurse who suggested Macdonald get an epidural, something from the outset she said she did not want.
Among a number of painful experiences, Macdonald describes a doctor coming in to adjust a heart rate monitor, which was attached to her baby’s head, still inside her womb.
“It felt like this doctor was inside me up to her elbows trying to put this little wire on my baby’s scalp,” she remembers, adding that after the first attempt to attach the monitor, the doctor tried again, unsuccessfully.
Kate Macdonald, with her son Roy Ignacio, aims to conduct an Ontario-wide survey of new mothers in order to give feedback to hospitals. (Submitted)
“It was just so painful, so I was screaming and crying and saying, ‘Please stop,’ and the doctor said, ‘No one’s trying to hurt you Kate.'”
Macdonald describes several incidents during her son’s birth in which she asked her nurse to stop whatever she was doing because she was in intense pain.
“I didn’t need special attention, I didn’t need extra stuff, I just needed compassion and some empathy and to feel like I mattered … I felt like nobody saw me or heard me.”
In a meeting after the fact, Macdonald said hospital staff told her the midwife could have come back, and that she could have asked for a different nurse, but that it was up to Macdonald to make those requests.
McDonald is not alone in her experience. A 2017 report by Ontario’s patient ombudsman found that two thirds of health care-related complaints involve some breakdown in communication between caregivers and patients.
‘I was in shock’
Recently, Macdonald started asking mothers to share their birth stories to be posted as a part of her Community Story Blog. Over 30 mothers from around Ontario have written in so far, including Ayesha Basit.
Basit wrote about her own run-in with a social worker who she says came into her room three hours after she had given birth and threatened to take her baby away if she showed signs of depression.
She said reading other stories on the website encouraged her to tell her own.
“I read the blog and I was just in shock,” Basit told CBC Toronto. “I felt that I had come out of my birthing experience far better than what a lot of these women were saying. They had terrible experiences.”
Staff meet with new parents twice a week
In a statement to CBC Toronto, St. Joseph’s said they are aware of Macdonald and her website and “look forward to receiving the information being collected and looking at how we can use the feedback and other input into helping us improve care.”
The hospital has a Patient Relations team, which acts as a mediator between the health care providers and patients. They also have a Community Engagement Council, a group made up of former patients and local residents to help “make the patient experience at St. Joe’s the best it can be,” according to the hospital’s website.
Also, the statement said the hospital staff meet twice a week with new parents after breastfeeding classes to solicit feedback about their birthing experience.
“This real-time feedback from our patients helps us understand their needs and values and supports them to be partners with us in their care.”
CBC | Health News
2 Ebola workers attacked, killed in eastern Congo
Unidentified attackers killed two Ebola health workers in eastern Congo over the weekend, the Health
Sexual health experts say infections like chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis are on the rise in
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PARKED PROGRAMMING
The district, however, is not content to just pack its schedule. It wants to create programming options that continuously attract new customers and excite old ones. To that end, it will install a video wall, professional lighting and a high-grade sound system in its main rink.
The equipment will create a disco-esque feel during the public skate sessions. Industry experts encourage such design because the vibrant, lively atmosphere sets the facility apart from the gray, warehouse-like rinks.
"It's a huge thing right now that other people cannot do," Olafson says. "Most people want to do it, but they can't. We can."
The district also plans to use its fitness center as a marketing tool. The gym will overlook the rinks, giving patrons a chance to watch the ice activities while on the treadmill or climber. Industry experts long have encouraged such a design because it gives parents something to do during their children's practices.
Many experts also believe fitness centers with rink views encourage new patrons because they spotlight the aerobic benefits of hockey and ice skating. As patrons sweat it out in the gym, they may decide to try an ice sport.
At the very least, the view sets the gym apart from most facilities.
"When you're in the fitness center, you can see everything," Ditchman says. "It'll be pretty neat."
COMMUNITY CLIMATE CONTROL
Like any recreation project involving construction, however, the project has had detractors. Nearby residents have objected to the plans because it eliminates an adjacent park and brings the facility within 30 feet of residential property lines. Opponents argue it will destroy the neighborhood and harm their property values.
Projected revenues—thanks in large part to the Wolves' presence—allowed the park district to spend extra money to address the neighbors' concerns. They willingly upped the price tag by $1.6 million to move the arena ice chillers away from homes, add facility fencing and sink the rink.
"Ice-time demand has far exceeded our initial budget projections and marketing plans," Bostrom says. "These projected revenues enabled us to remain a good neighbor by allowing us to meet the sight, sound, security and public-safety concerns of our community since construction costs have exceeded our initial budget."
The park district also worked to make sure the neighbors realized the facility's potential monetary impact. At every step along the way, the park district has educated the community of the facility's value, constantly reminding the public of the potential financial boon in the town's midst.
In addition to the team's multimillion dollar contribution, the district is expected to pocket at least $352,546 a year from the rink after debts and expenses are calculated. That will mean roughly an extra $6 million over the next 20 years.
The local economy—hotels and restaurants, in particular—is expected to glean $1 million each year, according to the local convention and visitor's bureau. The money will come from overnight visits and meals prompted by the four youth hockey tournaments scheduled at the facility each year.
The facility is expected to serve a 20-mile radius, attracting otherwise unlikely visitors to Hoffman Estates. To the delight of local officials, many of those patrons are people who would not be spending money in town if not for the ice rink.
"This," Bostrom says, "is going to be a first-rate facility that will offer something for the entire community."
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Objectives of the NZRA
NZRA Executive Committee
The place of the Treaty of Waitangi in health science (and other) research
26 Mar 2018 10:10 PM | William Levack (Administrator)
Today, I responded to an article in Stuff that was critical of the concept of cultural consultation in research. The article, which you can read here, stated that the Treaty of Waitangi has 'no place in scientific endeavour'. The article was also critical of the University of Otago's requirement for all researchers to incorporate consultation with Ngāi Tahu when planning and implementing research activities. (In fact, researchers at the University of Otago will also consult with local iwi in any region where they conduct research, not just Ngāi Tahu). The author, Bob Brockie, stated that: "I am astonished that a Māori iwi has the audacity to impose these heavy-arm rules on scientists, and more astonished that Otago University has acquiesced in these proscriptive, inquisitorial demands. The only researchers to speak out about these issues seem to be retirees. Young researchers dare not question these moves for fear of being labelled racist and putting their careers at stake."
It's not fear, Bob; it's education. So, in response to this article, I wrote a four-line comment, in Stuff, as follows: "Science is knowledge. Knowledge is power. Power is political. If you think science is not political you are naive. OR you are in power and it suits you to maintain this myth. Retired researchers who complain about positive social change lack education in contemporary perspectives on colonialism. Younger researchers don't want to perpetuate the oppression and arrogance of the older generation."
There were a number of misinformed and misleading responses to this article in general, but in response to my comment, I received the following from Richard Treadgold: "Your comments raise more questions than they answer. What has changed about scientific principles that requires input from Maoris? What scientific heritage justifies an invitation to Maoris to join the discussion? Why are Maoris invited above the Dutch, Korean, Chinese, Irish or any other of our national groups? Why do you call this racist invitation to Maoris based solely on their claimed race as "positive social change" and how can it improve science? Why are younger researchers concerned with the older generation (their elders) more than with the science they study? Why are scientific qualifications insufficient to judge the worthiness of research projects?"
It is impossible to answer all these questions, even superficially, in the 200 word limit of a Stuff.co.nz comments box. And so, here is my 1000+ word response, which I will send a link to via Stuff:
What has changed about scientific principles that requires input from Māori?
Nothing has changed about the physical laws that govern the universe. Of course! But science doesn’t occur in a social vacuum. Nothing is stopping you from building your own fusion engine in your basement, using your own money. But if you are using society’s money to undertake this research (as Universities do) then it is reasonable for that society to set some processes and policies about how that money is spent. Our last National government for instance introduced the ‘National Science Challenges’ and tied this to research funding, which is an example of an explicit political effort to change the direction of research in the country from ‘researcher-led’ to ‘mission-led’ research. Governments have always influenced the direction of research by saying what they choose or do not choose to fund: HRC and MBIE both do this. This is not new.
Here, in New Zealand, we have this founding document called the Treaty of Waitangi, which establishes a partnership between two groups of peoples: the indigenous population and a colonial group. The Treaty of Waitangi remains an important legal, social and political contract, despite there being extended periods of history when the colonial group (incidentally, my ancestors – albeit very indirectly) did not honour it. It is outside the scope of this blog to provide an in-depth discussion of the Treaty or its implications. Suffice to say that when dishing out research funding it is reasonable to have robust process to consider the conduct of that research from the perspective of the Treaty: partnership, participation, and protection. This consultation is not about how to do your statistical calculations, how to run to your DNA sequencer, or how to analyse your histology slides. Instead, this consultation is about asking who benefits from the research, how it will be used, by who, and to what end effect. This is the bit of science that has changed – not the nuts and bolt of ‘doing science’, but the social accountability of the actions and activities of scientists.
What scientific heritage justifies an invitation to Māori to join the discussion?
This question implies that you, Richard Treadgold, believe that you have gained your ‘right’ to engage in science on the basis of what science your ancestors conducted – and perhaps not your direct ancestors even, but people with similar skin colour to you, who were very, very vaguely related to some of your ancestors. This is sounding a teeeeeny bit racist. What social heritage justifies an invitation to Māori to join discussion of the use and application of science in New Zealand? Easy. The Treaty of Waitangi, which established the governance of New Zealand as a partnership between two peoples: see above.
Why are Māori invited above the Dutch, Korean, Chinese, Irish or any other of our national groups?
One: The Treaty of Waitangi. See above. Two: In my area of research, which is in the health sciences, Māori have MUCH worse health outcome than non-Māori. Lower life expectancy. Higher hospitalisation rates. Higher levels of morbidity for pretty much any major health condition. Healthcare is about so much more than popping pills and doing surgery: it is about health systems, health literacy, community engagement, interpersonal relationships and so on. It is perfectly reasonable for Māori to expect to be involved in discussions about health science research intended to improve Māori lives.
Why do you call this racist invitation to Māori based solely on their claimed race as ‘positive social change’?
One: It’s not racist, it’s moral thing to do. Two: In my area of research at least (health care), it produces better research, with more meaningful, translatable results for a group who is less well served, in terms of health outcomes, by New Zealand society. Three: It’s a positive social change because it is about confronting and addressing 170+ years of injustice. I look at race issues in the US and see a dominant colonial group who are too afraid, too arrogant, or perhaps too naïve to openly acknowledge and address the consequences of slavery in their nation. I strongly suspect this has significantly contributed to the failure in the US to address race-based conflict. They suffer as a nation as a result. The situation for the indigenous population in the US is even worse! I am proud of the Treaty we (non-Māori New Zealanders) have with our indigenous population in New Zealand, and when I look to countries like Australia and the US, I am proud of the efforts (however incomplete) being made to confront and rectify problems with it. New Zealander benefits enormously from Māori people and Māori culture. Let's not shit on them.
How can it improve science?
In my area of science – health science – consultation with Māori can and has helped people live longer, healthier lives. It helps by ensuring that interventions designed by non-Māori people can be implemented in the real world of Māori communities. It helps by ensuring that research findings relevant to Māori lives are disseminated to Māori communities. It helps by empowering Māori to lead their own research. It helps through the development of new methodologies to conduct better, more impactful research. How much more ‘improvement’ do you want??
Why are younger researchers concerned with the older generation (their elders) more than with the science they study?
Younger researchers are not concerned with the older generation more than with the science they study. This question can’t be answered because it contains false assumptions, so doesn’t make any sense to begin with.
Why are scientific qualification insufficient to judge the worthiness of research projects?
The ‘worth’ of a research project can be judged on the basis of: a) the quality of the science, b) its ethical implications, c) the potential cost-benefit of its possible outcomes, d) the meaningfulness of the research question being asked. Ethics committees and research funders consider all these things when judging the 'worth' of a research proposal. It is a REALLY bad idea to judge the worth of a research project just on the basis of whether or not the scientist has a qualification. Do I really need to give example of where this went horrendously wrong in history?
In summary, the practice of science changes over time because society changes. Science should not be above the laws and mores of a society. New Zealand society is structured, in part, around the Treaty of Waitangi. This Treaty established a formal agreement between two groups of people to work in partnership, and to protect the indigenous population, and agreements ought to be honoured. Besides, even if we did not have a Treaty, New Zealand (and New Zealand research) is enriched, not diminished, by engagement with our indigenous communities.
William Levack is an Associate Professor of Rehabilitation at the Rehabilitation Teaching & Research Unit, University of Otago, Wellington, New Zealand. Twitter: @DrLevack
© 2015 New Zealand Rehabilitation Association, Inc.
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Open Forum »
Lost Cities and Civilizations
Author Topic: Lost Cities and Civilizations (Read 11200 times)
Re: Lost Cities and Civilizations
How Did the Aztecs Feel about Alcohol?
The Aztecs did not tolerate crime or misbehavior in their society. Numerous offenses were punishable by death in the Aztec legal system, including homicide, perjury, robbery, destruction of crops, witchcraft, and even public drunkenness -- but only for younger offenders. Aztec elders could consume as much alcohol as they wished. The Aztecs' tipple of choice was pulque, a mildly alcoholic drink made from the fermented sap of the maguey plant. In the Aztec language, it was known as octli. The beverage's potency could be increased by adding certain roots and herbs.
Matters of life and death:
•Capital punishment could be carried out in a number of different ways, including hanging, stoning, beheading, disembowelment, burning, and quartering. If the victim chose to forgive the perpetrator, the death sentence could be vacated, and the perpetrator would become a slave of the victim’s family.
•Adultery was also a capital offense. Men were punished for adultery only if they had relations with a married woman. Married women were considered guilty regardless of the circumstances.
•The children of Aztec nobility could be sentenced to death if they were disrespectful, cowardly, or wasteful.
http://www.wisegeek.com/did-people-in-ancient-civilizations-drink-alcohol.htm
Found: oldest settlement in North America, confirms local tribe history
Mihai Andrei April 10, 2017
When Alisha Gauvreau, an anthropology PhD student at the University of Victoria started excavating a rocky spit on Triquet Island, some 500 kilometers northwest of Victoria, she didn’t really know what to expect, but this definitely surpassed even her most ambitious expectations.
The first North American settlers might have arrived on the coast and not on a frozen land bridge through Siberia , as was previously believed. Image via Wikipedia
The archaeological team patiently dug and then sifted through meters upon meters of soil and peat, before they finally found something interesting: the charred remains of an ancient hearth. As it so often happens, that’s just the start of interesting things. Not long after that, Gauvreau and collaborators found a trove of items, including tools for lighting fires, fish hooks, and spears, all dating back from 14,000 years ago.
“I remember when we get the dates back and we just kind of sat there going, holy moly, this is old,” said Gauvreau.“What this is doing is just changing our idea of the way in which North America was first peopled.”
The findings tell an interesting story, that of an early migration occurring on British Columbia’s ancient coastline, and challenges some of the most widely-held beliefs about humans migrating to North America. The classic story is that humans arrived some 13,000 or 14,000 years ago, crossing a land bridge that connected modern-day Siberia to Alaska. But more and more research is starting to challenge that belief. The challenging theory is that people arrived on the coast, settling down on a coastal strip of land that did not freeze during the ice age. In a radio interview with the CBC, Gauvreau says that her research adds significant weight to that idea.
“[A]rchaeologists had long thought that … the coast would have been completely uninhabitable and impassible when that is very clearly not the case,” she explains.
To make things even more interesting, these findings support the ancient, oral, histories of aboriginals. The Heiltsuk people are the descendants of a number of tribal groups who came together Bella in the 19th century. For countless generations, Heiltsuk First Nation elders have told the story about how their ancestors arrived in the area, on the coast.
“{I}t reaffirms a lot of the history that our people have been talking about for thousands of years,” William Housty, a member of Heiltsuk Nation, proudly stated.
Now, anthropologists and archaeologists want to explore more of the coast and the coastal islands, to further document how the migration happened.
http://www.zmescience.com/science/archaeology/oldest-settlement-north-america-10042017/
Ancient carvings show comet struck Earth, triggering mini Ice Age
Last updated on April 25th, 2017 at 5:27 pm by Mihai Andrei
Scientists have translated famous carvings found in Turkey, and they now believe it is indicative of a comet which struck Earth around 10,950 BCE — the same time a small ice age kicked off on Earth, changing the planet forever.
The carvings depict a dramatic event which shaped mankind and Earth for over a thousand years. Image credits: Alistair Coombs.
Some 10,950 years ago, the Younger Dryas period started to kick in. It was a huge disturbance to what was a generally warming Earth, sending the planet into an unexpected, thousand-year-long mini Ice Age. It was then that mankind started taking the first solid steps towards a true civilization, potentially as a result of this change in climate. This cold period has been studied to great extent, but we don’t really know what caused it. A comet impact is one of the leading hypotheses, but no evidence of a comet was ever found — until now.
Although it isn’t physical evidence, it’s still pretty intriguing. Researchers analyzed glyphs from a pillar known as the Vulture Stone, which suggest that a bunch of comet fragments hit the Earth some 13,000 years ago, which fits the timeline perfectly. A telling image is that of a decapitated man, which symbolizes great tragedy and loss of life.
“I think this research, along with the recent finding of a widespread platinum anomaly across the North American continent virtually seal the case in favour of [a Younger Dryas comet impact],” lead researcher Martin Sweatman of Edinburgh University told Sarah Knapton from The Telegraph. “Our work serves to reinforce that physical evidence. What is happening here is the process of paradigm change.”
The pillar was located in Gobekli Tepe in southern Turkey, one of the most exciting archaeological sites in human history and the earliest temple we’ve ever found, established over 11,000 years ago (potentially much more), 6,000 years before Stonehenge. Although the details of the structure’s function remain a mystery, there is growing evidence indicating that the site served as an observatory — aside from a site of worship.
“It appears Gobekli Tepe was, among other things, an observatory for monitoring the night sky,” Sweatman told the Press Association. “One of its pillars seems to have served as a memorial to this devastating event – probably the worst day in history since the end of the Ice Age.”
Computer algorithms showed that the animal carvings fit with the shape of astronomical constellations. Image credits: Martin Sweatman and Stellarium.
The Vulture Stone had been found decades go, but the inscriptions on it still puzzled scientists. Now, the Edinburgh team believes they’ve found the key: the symbols are actually constellations, which helped researchers put a date on the symbols as well. They used computer models to match the carvings of animals to patterns for stars, confirming firstly that the shapes fit the astronomical situation of the time, and secondly, that the 10,950 BCE date fits the theory. The date also matches cores from Greenland, which pinpoint the Younger Dryas period as beginning around 10,890 BCE. A few decades is a more than acceptable error rate when working at this scale.
But it gets even more interesting. Computer models indicated that the comet would have been visible in the night sky for thousands of years. According to the models, the comet entered the solar system more than 20,000 years ago and was likely visible for most of this time. Brighter and brighter, generation after generation until it finally struck our planet. Considering the obvious symbolism humans attributed to it and the massive impact the comet had on the planet, it’s easy to understand why the event was given such a great importance and was immortalized on the Vulture Stone. For thousands of years, the Gobekli Tepe priests guarded the stone and probably told the story of the bright rock in the sky that came crashing down on Earth.
“If you consider that, according to astronomers, this giant comet probably arrived in the inner solar system some 20 to 30 thousand years ago, and it would have been a very visible and dominant feature of the night sky, it is hard to see how ancient people could have ignored this given the likely consequences.”
This isn’t the first time archaeology has given indications on such ancient events. Many paleolithic cave paintings and artifacts give indications on catastrophic, or otherwise significant astronomic events. It’s not exactly the most reliable evidence in the world, but when you can correlate computer models of comets with carvings from 13 millennia ago — that’s got to feel good.
The research has been published in Mediterranean Archaeology and Archaeometry.
http://cdn.zmescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/AncientCarvings_web_1024.jpg
Forbidden History, Out of Place Discoveries TV
https://youtu.be/pLykeM27aig
Ever notice how evolutionists will manipulate reality to try and do away with creationism? For example, when you ask an evolutionist how they come up with the age of the sedimentary layers in the earth, they will always tell you they date them by the fossils found in those sedimentary layers. Then when you ask them how they come up with the age of the fossils, they say their age is determined by which sedimentary layer of rock they’re found in. But how can that be? How can the rocks date the layers, if the layers date the rocks? That's what's called “circular reasoning.” One minute they say the rock determines the age of the fossil, the next they say the fossil determines the age of the rock.
The evolutionist agrees with Darwin and says all life on earth evolved from primordial soup, which then somehow formed into many different species like birds, animals, plants, fish etc; and those birds, animals, plants and fish evolved into many different types of species themselves. For example, they believe a bird later formed different types of lizards, horses and dogs. They also believe that plants created everything from vines to trees to flowers, and fish evolved into dinosaurs, apes and humans. If that’s true, then I have to ask the evolutionist why is it for the last 6000 years of recorded history that not a single new species has ever been created?
When The Sahara Desert Was Green
https://youtu.be/2JcVMkyJoZY
Science Documentary 2017
Quote from: azozeo on July 01, 2017, 08:24:54 pm
Quote from: agelbert on July 01, 2017, 05:56:06 pm
Top Shelf Award to AG for this post :
That was amazing stuff about the 20,000 clock switching the area from jungle to desert in a mere single generation of humans! And that 150 degree F FRESH water all over the place under that desert is another amazing tidbit of info. It's a strange world out there, for sure.
Google Earth reveals hundreds of ancient structures in Saudi Arabia
LAST UPDATED ON OCTOBER 26TH, 2017 AT 3:16 PM BY MIHAI ANDREI
Article and pictures:
https://www.zmescience.com/science/archaeology/google-earth-structures-saudi-arabia-26102017/
Byzantine fountain and pools discovered in Israel
FEBRUARY 6, 2018 BY NATALIE ANDERSON
A ceremony was held last month to commemorate the opening of Ein Hanniya Park in Jerusalem, attended by various religious and political officials, including the directors general of the Jerusalem Development Authority, the Israel Nature and Parks Authority and the Israel Antiquities Authority.
The site of Ein Hanniya after Israel Antiquities Authority Conservation Administration work. Photo: Assaf Peretz, Israel Antiquities Authority
Excavations at the site uncovered a large and impressive system of pools from the Byzantine period (4th–6th centuries CE), a fragment of a capital typical of royal structures and estates in the First Temple period and a rare silver coin from the 4th century BCE, one of the most ancient ever found in the Jerusalem area.
These remarkable and significant finds were unearthed in Israel Antiquities Authority excavations at the site of Ein Hanniya between 2012 and 2016. The park will open to the public in the coming months. The excavations, which were carried out as part of the establishment of the park, were financed by the Jerusalem Development Authority in cooperation with the Israel Nature and Parks Authority, and were accompanied by conservation and development work by the Israel Antiquities Authority’s Conservation Administration.
Pottery vessels used by inhabitants in the Byzantine period. Photo: Clara Amit, Israel Antiquities Authority
The excavations were headed by Israel Antiquities Authority archaeologists Irina Zilberbod and Yaakov Billig, under the direction of the Jerusalem district archaeologist, Dr. Yuval Baruch.
The park was dedicated this morning at a planting ceremony with the participation of Minister of Environmental Protection, Jerusalem and Heritage Ze’ev Elkin, The Grand Sacristan of the Armenian Apostolic Patriarchate of Jerusalem, His Eminence Archbishop Sevan Gharibian, Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat, Jerusalem Development Authority Director General Eyal Haimovsky, Israel Nature and Parks Authority Director General Shaul Goldstein and Israel Antiquities Authority Director General Israel Hasson.
According to Irina Zilberbod, the excavation director for the Israel Antiquities Authority: “The most significant finding in the excavation is a large and impressive pool from the Byzantine period. This pool was built in the center of a spacious complex at the foot of a church that once stood here. Roofed colonnades were built around the pool that gave access to residential wings.” According to Zilberbod: “It’s difficult to know what the pool was used for – whether for irrigation, washing, landscaping or perhaps as part of baptismal ceremonies at the site.” The pool’s water drained through a network of channels to a magnificent and very special structure, the first of its kind known in Israel – a fountain (nymphaeon).”
Settlement in the area of Ein Hanniya apparently began at the time of the First Temple and perhaps even earlier. The most outstanding find from this period uncovered in the excavation is a fragment of a proto-Ionic capital – an artistic element typical of structures and estates of the kings of the First Temple period. The image of such a capital appears on the Israeli 5-shekel coin. Similar capitals have been found in the City of David in Jerusalem, which was the capital of the Kingdom of Judah, and at Ramat Rahel, where one of the palaces of the kings of Judah was found. Such capitals were also found in Samaria, Megiddo and Hazor, which were major cities in the Kingdom of Israel. According to the archaeologists, the site at Ein Hanniya may have been a royal estate at the time of the First Temple. After the destruction of the First Temple, settlement was renewed at the site in the form of an estate house that was inhabited by Jews.
Rare silver coin from the 4th century BCE, one of the most ancient ever discovered in the Jerusalem area. Photo: Clara Amit, Israel Antiquities Authority
The most significant find from this period is a rare silver coin, one of the most ancient so far discovered in the Jerusalem area – a drachma, minted in Ashdod by Greek rulers between 420 and 390 BCE.
The coins, pottery, glass, roof tiles and multicolored mosaic tesserae from the Byzantine period unearthed in the excavation attest to the fact that it was during this period (4th–6th centuries CE) that the site reached its zenith. According to Jerusalem District Archaeologist Dr. Yuval Baruch: “We believe that some early Christian commentators identified Ein Hanniya as the site where the Ethiopian eunuch was baptized, as described in Acts 8:26–40. The baptism of the eunuch by St. Philip was one of the key events ✨ in the spread of Christianity . Therefore, identifying the place where it occurred occupied scholars for many generations and became a common motif in Christian art. It’s no wonder that part of the site is still owned by Christians and is a focus of religious ceremonies, both for the Armenian Church (which owns the property) and the Ethiopian Church.”
The Jerusalem Development Authority, the Israel Nature and Parks Authority and the Israel Antiquities Authority undertook conservation and development work at the site over the past few years. The result is an extraordinarily beautiful site incorporating archaeology, an ancient landscape and a unique visitor experience. The conservation work was carried out by a team from the Israel Antiquities Authority Conservation Administration. The team was headed by conservator Fuad Abu Ta’a, with architectural planning by architects Avi Mashiah and Yehonatan Tzahor. The work included restoration of the ancient water systems, which are now functioning once again. The original spring that fed the pool discovered in the excavation had dried up over the years, and major efforts were invested in channeling water from the existing spring to replenish the pools. The work revealed additional water sources under an impressive stone arch whose surroundings have been restored as a shallow wading spot.
A great deal of attention was paid to restoring the imposing fountain structure (nymphaeon), including cleaning and replacing stones in its façade based on historic photographs and paintings.
https://youtu.be/-olvRQWERBU
http://www.medievalists.net/2018/02/byzantine-fountain-pools-discovered-israel/
Bob Cornuke - Search for the Temple 2018 Part 1
https://youtu.be/ckpUII9XNrA
Prophecy in the News
Dr. Kevin Clarkson and biblical archaeologist, Bob Cornuke, dive into the scripture to decipher what the Bible has to say about the location of the Temple.
https://youtu.be/zDPdEYB6Dcg
Oldest Intact Shipwreck Known to Man Discovered in Black Sea
October 24, 2018 by gCaptain
world's oldest intact shipwreck Image: Black Sea Map
An international team scientists led by researchers from the University of Southampton in the UK have discovered the world’s oldest intact shipwreck lying in over a mile of water in the Black Sea.
The shipwreck was discovered in late 2017 as part of three year mapping expedition known as the Black Sea Maritime Archaeology Project, which surveyed over 1,200 sq miles of seabed in the Black Sea. Over 60 shipwrecks were discovered over the course of the project, varying in age from the 17th century back to Roman trading vessels.
The Project confirmed this week that this particular shipwreck, thought to be a Greek trading vessel, has now been carbon dated back to 400 B.C.
“A ship, surviving intact, from the Classical world, lying in over 2km of water, is something I would never have believed possible,” said University of Southampton Professor Jon Adams, the Black Sea MAP’s principal investigator. “This will change our understanding of shipbuilding and seafaring in the ancient world.”
The ship lies in over 1.2mi (2km) of water deep in the Black Sea where the water is anoxic (oxygen free), which can preserve organic material for thousands of years. A small piece of the vessel has been carbon dated and has now been confirmed as the oldest intact shipwreck known to mankind.
Related: Underwater Archaeology Expedition Uncovers Dozens of Ancient Shipwrecks in Black Sea
The Black Sea MAP team is under the leadership of the University of Southampton and Professor Jon Adams, Professor Lyudmil Vagalinsky of the National Institute of Archaeology with Museum of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and Dr. Kalin Dimitrov of the Center of Underwater Archaeology in Sozopol, Bulgaria.
It set out in 2015 to investigate the changes in the ancient environment of the region off the coast of Bulgaria, including the impact of sea-level change following the last glacial cycle.
In addition to the discovery of the shipwrecks, the scientists excavated the remains of an early Bronze Age settlement at Ropotamo in Bulgaria, near what was the ancient shoreline when the sea level was much lower. As the waters rose, the settlement was abandoned and now the remains of house timbers, hearths and ceramics lie 2.5 meters below the seabed.
https://gcaptain.com/oldest-intact-shipwreck-known-to-man-discovered-in-black-sea/
The 12,000 Year old Comet that Landed on TEDTalks…and Erased Ancient Civilization - Greenland Crater
https://youtu.be/hMTTFLiOwX0
Bright Insight
NASA recently discovered of a massive, 19-mile (31km) wide crater, found hidden underneath Greenland’s Hiawatha Glacier.
This crater is the result of an asteroid impact, from a nearly 1 mile-wide mountain of iron, weighing somewhere around, get this, 11-12 BILLION tons, and was traveling at approximately 12 MILES per second - which is equivalent to more than 43,000 miles per hour - when it slammed into the earth some 12,000 years ago – And…with the mind-boggling force of essentially a 700-megaton bomb.
And without a doubt, THIS is the reason why there is so much mystery and why we know so little about lost Ancient human civilization
AG,
Haver just caught up with and have been reading this thread.
A gold mine!
Quote from: AGelbert on January 24, 2019, 08:29:40 pm
Excellent video. Well worth the time.
Agreed. In view of what we are learning about the Greenland hit, it is also quite possible that the nice curve in Hudson Bay (see below) got there by a rather large meteor hit. If any people inhabited North America when THAT ONE HIT, they were wiped out, along with all the megafauna that scientists (erroneously, IMHO) think were wiped out by human predators. I know most will vigorously disagree, but the fact is that a meteor that size would certainly melt all the ice it hit, causing a flood so massive in what is now the lower 48 that a canyon we call the Grand Canyon would be formed in a few days, not "millions of years", as geologists believe, with all that melt water thousands of feet high rushing away from the impact site in all directions. It does not matter that the rockies are "uphill" from the impact site, for impact force reasons and another logical reason. That is, an impact that huge probably is partly responsible for those rockies being thrust up in the first place, though the prevailing plate techtonics theory claims they were thrust up gradually over millions of years.
No matter what they say, just look at that circle. You know the elliptical shape left by a bullet at an angle. This hit had to be pretty perpendicular, and from the shape of the rest of Hudson Bay, coming from east to west. Look at those islands near the circle center. There is always a lot of bounceback from the ground in the center of a meteor hit. Those islands are more evidence of a massive meteor hit creating Hudson Bay, whether the geologists want to accept that or not.
« Last Edit: May 28, 2019, 05:42:11 pm by AGelbert »
Thank you, sir. I do the best I can to provide good reads that can be returned to for repeated reading in this forum/library. Sometimes I find dead links to videos and the like. I try to clean those up to preserve the content, but it is not always possible.
I also go (for relaxation), every now and then, to the videos in the "Wonders of Nature" Board. They are a tonic in these dark times. Here's one from Lebanon ("Majestic and sometimes Spectacular Scenery" Topic Thread):
https://youtu.be/coIXMyWzpAU
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Rory MacDonald
"Red King"
MacDonald is of Scottish, Irish and Norwegian descent.[citation needed] He started his training with David Lea at the age of 14 and his fight team Toshido Fighting Arts Academy out of Kelowna, B.C. MacDonald made his professional debut at the age of sixteen, winning against Terry Thiara, at an Extreme Fighting Challenge event. He moved to Montreal and joined Tristar Gym, home of former UFC Welterweight Champion Georges St-Pierre, after his loss to Carlos Condit.
King of the Cage
He then moved to 2–0, by beating Ken Tran in his King of the Cage (KOTC) debut. He won a fight in Rumble in the Cage and then signed exclusively with King of the Cage. He won two fights after signing and was then rewarded with a shot at the KOTC Canadian Lightweight title, against Kajan Johnson, which MacDonald won. MacDonald then was awarded a shot at the King of the Cage Lightweight Championship, against Clay French, MacDonald knocked him out in the second round. After the fight MacDonald moved up to welterweight and successfully defeated Elmer Waterhen by first round armbar.[8]
MacDonald was signed to the UFC after compiling a 9–0 professional record.[9]
He debuted for the promotion at UFC Fight Night 20 against Mike Guymon. Guymon dropped MacDonald with a right cross, before MacDonald quickly recovered, took Guymon down and won the fight with an armbar submission in the first round.[10] MacDonald lost to Carlos Condit via third-round TKO at UFC 115[11] in a bout that earned the Fight of the Nightaward. MacDonald was competitive in the first two rounds using effective striking and taking Condit down three times. Condit came back with a more aggressive attitude in the final round and finished MacDonald with a combination of elbows and punches. After the fight, the judges’ scorecards were revealed and showed that had MacDonald not been finished in the last seven seconds, he would have picked up a split decision victory.[12]
MacDonald was expected to face Matt Brown on November 20, 2010 at UFC 123,[13] but was forced from the card with an injury and replaced by Brian Foster.[14]
MacDonald was expected to face James Wilks on April 30, 2011 at UFC 129.[15] However, Wilks was replaced on the card by Nate Diaz. MacDonald dominated Diaz during all three rounds (throwing Diaz via German Suplex three times in the third round) and earning a unanimous decision victory.[16]
MacDonald next faced and defeated Mike Pyle by TKO in the first round on August 6, 2011 at UFC 133.[17]
MacDonald was expected to face Brian Ebersole on December 10, 2011 at UFC 140.[18] However, MacDonald pulled out of the bout with an injury and was replaced by Claude Patrick.[19] MacDonald beat Che Mills via second-round TKO on April 21, 2012 at UFC 145.[20] After getting hit with hard shots in the first round, MacDonald took the fight to the ground, where he controlled the fight with his superior wrestling and ground and pound.
MacDonald was expected to face BJ Penn on September 22, 2012 at UFC 152.[21] However, MacDonald pulled out of the bout after sustaining a cut to the forehead while training.[22] The fight eventually took place on December 8, 2012 at UFC on Fox 5.[23] MacDonald dominated Penn for three rounds and won by unanimous decision.[24]
MacDonald was expected to face Carlos Condit in a rematch on March 16, 2013 at UFC 158. However, MacDonald pulled out of the bout citing another injury, and was replaced by Johny Hendricks.[25]
MacDonald defeated Jake Ellenberger by unanimous decision on July 27, 2013, at UFC on Fox 8. He used his size and reach advantage to repeatedly land his jab, neutralizing the shorter Ellenberger. UFC president Dana White criticized the performance as “lackluster”.[26][27]
MacDonald next lost a split decision to Robbie Lawler at UFC 167.[28]
MacDonald beat Demian Maia by unanimous decision on February 22, 2014 at UFC 170, earning his second Fight of the Night bonus award.[29] MacDonald almost had to pull out of this fight after stabbing himself in the hand while cutting an avocado.[30]
MacDonald defeated Tyron Woodley by unanimous decision in the co-main event of UFC 174 on June 14, 2014.[31]
MacDonald scored a third-round TKO on Tarec Saffiedine on October 4, 2014 at UFC Fight Night 54.[32] This earned his first Performance of the Night bonus award.[33]
MacDonald was expected to face Hector Lombard on April 25, 2015 at UFC 186.[34] However, on February 10, the UFC indicated that both participants had been removed from the card and that the pairing had been scrapped as both fighters are expected to be rebooked against a new opponent.[35][36]
A rematch with former champion Robbie Lawler took place on July 11, 2015 at UFC 189.[37] MacDonald lost the fight via TKO in the fifth round.[38] The back and forth action earned both participants Fight of the Night honors.[39] The fight was considered an instant classic by fans and media alike with UFC President Dana White hailing it as one of the best welterweight fights in the promotion’s history.[40]
MacDonald next faced Stephen Thompson on June 18, 2016 at UFC Fight Night 89.[41] He lost the fight via unanimous decision.[42]
On August 26, 2016, MacDonald signed a contract with Bellator MMA. He subsequently appeared at Bellator 160 and announced his intentions to win both the welterweight and middleweight championships.[43] In his Bellator debut, MacDonald fought Paul Daley in the main event at Bellator 179 on May 19, 2017. He won the one-sided fight via rear-naked choke in the second round.[44]
MacDonald faced Bellator MMA welterweight champion Douglas Lima at Bellator 192 on January 20, 2018.[45] He won the back-and-forth fight by unanimous decision (48–47, 49–45, and 49–46).[46] He sustained an injury with a big swelling on the shin of his left leg, midway through the fight.[47][48]
MacDonald moved up and challenged Gegard Mousasi for the Bellator Middleweight Championship on September 29, 2018 at Bellator 206.[49] He lost the fight via technical knockout in round two.[50]
MacDonald is expected to defend his title against Jon Fitch in a fight that is simultaneously the first round of Bellator Welterweight Grand Prix at Bellator 220 on April 27, 2019.[51]
Article source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rory_MacDonald_(fighter)
Stephen Thompson
Fight Night 89
Robbie Lawler
Tarec Saffiedine
Demian Maia
Jake Ellenberger
UFC on Fox 8
Mike Pyle
Nate Diaz
Carlos Condit
City/State: South Carolina
Division: Welterweight
Colby Covington
City/State: Oregon
Height 5'11
City/State: Benin City
Darren Till
City/State: Liverpool
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Royal Brothers: William and Harry
Chapter 3: You Can Get Used To Anything
Contact Them
At 5:30 the next morning, Harry awoke to the sound of squeaking wheels. Someone began to nudge him gently, whispering, "You need to turn over on to your back, sweetie." He did as he was told, still too sleepy to argue. The nurse took his blood pressure, temperature, and pulse. He was grateful to hear the sound of squeaking wheels get softer as the nurse left his room and went down the hall.
He was awoken again a short time later as a male nurse came in and slammed down Harry's shower box on a table in the room. I give up, he thought. He lay there and let his thoughts wander.
This has to be the stupidest decision I've ever made. Why did I have to kill myself here? Why didn't I just jump into the Thames? Why did I have to be so far from home? I want to go home. But now I can't. That is what I signed up for. They won't let me leave until they think I'm ready. Shit, what am I going to do? On the bright side, they can't let the press in here. A smile crept across his face.
All of a sudden, his room was illuminated. Florescent lights can be blindingly bright if you aren't prepared for them. He groaned and shut his eyes tight. "Can you warn me before you do that?" he asked. His one-to-one nurse laughed. "Sorry, but its time to get up," she said.
He got out of bed and got ready to start another day. He went to the door to ask what he should be doing, and Jen was waiting for him. She was standing in the doorway to her room watching the nurses move around, going through charts, signing papers, etc.
"You know…when they rush around like that, they give us the impression that they're actually doing something," she said sarcastically.
"He laughed. "Good morning," he said.
"Mornin'."
One of the nurses came forward and said, "If you're going up to the roof, line up right here." 7 or 8 patients lined up by the nurses station. "OK, we'll see you guys later," she said to the other nurses. Jen waved to Harry.
When they left, Harry went back into his room. It wasn't as uncomfortable as he thought it would be. There were two beds, two closets, a desk, and a chair. Ut wasn't the Ritz hotel, but it was livable. He sat on the ledge by the window and looked out at the city. The window had a fence on both sides of it. He had to laugh. Dear God, its finally happened. I'm in prison.
*~~*~~*~~*~~*
Jen, Mack, and a few others were having breakfast on the roof. The roof was fenced in on all sides, so it was more like a cage than an "outdoor facility." It didn't matter to the patients though…fresh air is fresh air.
"So what's Harry's story?" Mack asked the group.
Without skipping a beat, Jen replied, "He's suicidal."
"That's ain't shit. What else?" Michael, a kid who tried to burn his house down while his parents were still in it, asked.
"Probably booze, drugs, sex…" Jen said.
"And how do you know all this?" Cassandra asked.
"I read about it," Jen said dryly. The other patients stared at her, not comprehending. "You guys do know who he is, right?" Seeing the blank faces, she laughed. "Am I the only one on this ward who's ever read 'People'?" She made the mistake of waiting for a response. Rolling her eyes, she went on. "He's Prince Harry…as in Princess Diana's son."
"Damn…and they STILL locked his ass in here?" Mack asked. "That blows." She paused. "Call me stupid, but aren't there rules about how we're supposed to talk to him and stuff?"
"I think so, but we're Americans. We don't have to follow that bullshit, do we?" Cassandra replied.
"HEY SNOWBALL!" Jen screamed to the nurse.
"Jen – do NOT yell like that, now what?" the middle aged black man replied.
"Sorry. Should we be talking to Harry in any special way?"
"Why would you do that?"
"Because he's…" she stopped herself. Nah, she thought. This tidbit is going to be our little secret. "Nevermind."
"Well, hurry up and finish your food. Community Meeting starts in 15 minutes, so we need to get back downstairs."
The patients finished their breakfasts and headed towards the elevators inside. They all silently hoped they would be able to come outside again tomorrow…just as they did every other morning.
TRH Prince William and Prince Harry are in no way, shape, or form, affiliated with this site. I don't know them personally, so don't ask any questions relating to that. If you use anything from this site, all I ask is you give credit where it's due. In other words, name this site as your source. Thanks.
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Thoughts: Assassin’s Creed 3.
In a word: ew.
Assassin’s Creed 3 strikes me as a game with a lot of different parts that have been developed in isolation with no consideration as to how they’re going to fit together into a coherent whole. The developers have just thrown a bunch of stuff at a wall without even bothering to look at it to see what sticks, and they definitely haven’t bothered cleaning up the stuff which didn’t; it’s still smeared all over the game, turning it into a sprawling and self-indulgent mess that flat-out ignores the useful lessons learned in Brotherhood and Revelations.
For a series that’s had so much trouble with overlong tutorial sections – and AC 3 is by far the worst offender where this is concerned, as we shall shortly see – I thought the beginning of Assassin’s Creed 3 was actually pretty well done. For the first three hours of the game you don’t play the main character. Instead you’re placed in the rather suave riding boots of Haytham Kenway, a British nobleman who is basically an 18th century version of James Bond. The opening level of the game is set in a rather striking theatre that Haytham has to clamber around in order to reach his assassination target, during which you learn the series basics: running, climbing, jumping, murdering and so on. Then he gets packed off to the American colonies on board a ship where you’re taught the new fighting system, and then finally once he gets to Boston he has to gather his resources and contacts and put together an organisation capable of achieving his goals – again, all staples of the AC series.
There’s one immediately glaring problem with this sequence, and that’s that Haytham is not the guy on the front cover of the game. You’re fully aware that as likeable and interesting as Haytham is – and he is very interesting, since while he seems like a fairly decent bloke on the surface he also has a cruel streak that’s barely disguised by his pithy upper-class witticisms – at some point you’re going to be transitioning to the main character, and that Haytham’s presence in the game merely functions as its prologue and tutorial. The thing is that despite its length the Haytham segment is by far the most worthwhile tutorial the series has ever had, since it functions both as a teaching tool and as a very effective way of setting the scene for the rest of the story. Even though it’s three hours long I enjoyed every one of them instead of wondering when I was going to get to the real meat of the game (and this is quite the achievement considering I went straight from Brotherhood to Revelations to 3), and if after Haytham the training wheels had been taken off and the game had immediately transitioned to the real main character running around in the open-world environment the series is supposed to be known for then I would have said that they’d finally gotten an Assassin’s Creed tutorial right.
Of course that doesn’t happen. Haytham is inevitably replaced with Connor, the actual protagonist of the game, and this is where Assassin’s Creed 3 starts to veer wildy off the rails because instead of actually getting on with things it uses Connor as an excuse to subject the player to even more tutorials. When we meet him Connor is ten years old. He’s skipping through the forest playing hide and seek with his friends. I just got done ruthlessly massacring a whole fort full of British troops as Haytham, and now I am playing fucking hide and seek for twenty minutes. Then there’s a cutscene, and the game skips forward seven years, and now Connor is teaching his equally-boring friend how to run through the trees and hunt! The tree-running tutorial was broken and the hunting tutorial was unforgiveably long and dull, going through each of the many hunting tools available to Connor in excruciating detail and even asking him to, and I quote, “Air assassinate a deer.” I didn’t buy an Assassin’s Creed game to assassinate deer, for crying out loud.
Long story short, Connor eventually leaves his village, runs across most of Massachusetts and meets up with an elderly Assassin. This guy agrees to teach Connor how to assassinate things that aren’t deer, and so Connor starts a mission called “Training Begins” which is just a little bit laughable considering that by this point I’d been playing the game for seven hours. The interminable series of tutorials never seems to end, and it isn’t until Sequence 9 (of 12) that you’re finally free of the blasted things. They’re also incredibly lopsided: compare and contrast the hour you spend learning how to hunt animals to the thirty second tutorial you’re given about how to gather materials, craft new items and trade things for sweet sweet cash. If hunting was in any way a central part of the game this might be justified, but as it is my hunting was limited to murdering anything cute and fluffy that had the bad fortune to blunder into my path while I was trying to get from A to B. Meanwhile I was forced to subsist on whatever cash I could loot from the various chests scattered around the game world because the crafting and trading interface was so impenetrable and it had barely been explained at all.
So your first hours with Connor are spent learning how to do utterly pointless shit that has absolutely no impact on the central gameplay, and I have to say that this really set the tone for his character in general. Connor is a psychopathic baby with a memory span roughly equivalent to that of a goldfish. Things happen to him because he is the Main Character, not because he – or you — makes them happen. The things he himself does he does because the plot demands it, not because it’s something he as a character has a logical motivation to do. Indeed, Connor has no character, acting as a blank cipher who fetches and carries for the founding fathers without asking any questions whatsoever. There’s one point in the game (and I should warn you that there is a bit of a spoiler coming here, although honestly the plot of AC 3 is garbage so I wouldn’t worry too much) where Connor learns that the man he thought was responsible for the burning of his village when he was a child — and who he has spent most of his time in the game attempting to kill in a number of incompetent ways — was in fact not involved in the slightest. Does he admit fault? Does he acknowledge that the anger that’s been driving him throughout his entire adult life has been aimed at the wrong target? Does he say “Oh, maybe I should stop trying to murder this guy every time we cross paths”? Nope, he just carries right on trucking like nothing ever happened, because that guy is the game’s Bad Guy and he has to die at the end of it.
It’s funny in a way, because we meet the Bad Guy in Haytham’s portion of the game and he comes across as nothing more than an over-eager yet capable young man, yet as soon as the action switches to Connor’s point of view he does a complete 180 and turns into a raging asshole who threatens to kill children because he is now Evil. Perhaps the game was trying to make a point about different perspectives, but I don’t credit AC 3 with that level of sophistication, and anyway the end result was that I much preferred Haytham’s perspective to Connor’s since it made far more logical and narrative sense. I wanted to spend the rest of the game playing as Haytham instead of being lumbered with this angsty monotonal clot. Connor is an actual, literal idiot, not to mention being a complete personality vacuum in every single part of the game that isn’t a Homestead mission1, and this did far more to turn me against Assassin’s Creed 3 than anything else in the game.
The other gameplay elements are a grab bag of random stuff that aren’t really connected in any way. The Homestead missions work reasonably well in terms of just watching your village grow, but from a gameplay perspective it amounts to several hours of busywork at the end of which you might get a new pistol holster or a new sword. The boat sections are outstanding – and in fact I’d be more than happy to see a full game based around them a la Pirates! – but there’s no getting around the fact that they’re there just because somebody wanted this game to have a boat, and aside from two scripted missions the boat combat consists of a series of standalone combat encounters that have no effect in the wider context of the game world. Assassin recruits are back and they even have some new abilities such as pretending to escort Connor into an enemy-controlled area as a prisoner; however, the one time I tried to use this my recruits turned up dressed in Colonial uniforms when the area I wanted to enter was inhabited by Redcoats. The ability to use your recruits in combat is locked off during every main mission and whenever you’re in the Frontier (so about 80% of the game), so the only thing to do with them is send them off on contracts, and this is something of a problem because the contract system in AC 3 is indescribably awful compared to what we got in Brotherhood and Revelations. In those games the contracts were worth doing even if they were fairly one-dimensional since they gave your recruits new levels and gained you money. In AC 3 not only is the rate at which your assassins level up painfully slow, but it’s not even clear that levelling them up even does anything. In Brotherhood/Revelations they got new armour, equipment and combat abilities, slowly evolving into a group of hardened killers. In AC 3 they get nothing aside from a message saying they’ve levelled up. The contracts feature is there, but it no longer has any effect on the gameplay. Which I think sums up AC 3 rather neatly, really.
Okay, so that’s all the ancillary stuff, but what about the main game? We’ve already established that it’s locked behind hours of tutorials and that the plot is terrible; fortunately if you can get past that the free-running this time around is, if not good, at least passable as an AC game. Connor moves in a more natural way that involves less canned animation compared to Ezio, although he’s hobbled slightly by colonial-era Boston and New York being rather bland and samey. Getting out into the Frontier is a double-edged sword; it looks far nicer – just about as nice as an AC game ever has, especially when it’s snowing – but the lack of rooftops and the linear nature of the tree routes means that most of the time you’re just running from one place to another, and this can get awkward because the Frontier is sodding huge and has no fast travel nodes unless you can find and clear out one of the seven forts dotted around the place. 2 You do this by exterminating the fort’s population of soldiers, which basically means getting involved in a massive five-minute brawl. I did enjoy the combat in AC 3; for this fifth iteration they’ve tossed out the old mechanics and adopted something very close to the combat mechanics from Arkham Asylum, with timed blocks and counters dictating the flow of the fighting. There’s a decent array of enemies and while there are only really two methods of dealing with them – counter kills or breaking their defence – remembering which one works on which enemy can be tricky when you’re trying to fight twenty guys at once. Add in pistols and other firearms and you’ve got something that is consistently entertaining, which is more than I can say for the combat in the previous games.
Assassin’s Creed 3 isn’t entirely bad news, then. It has a lot of good parts mixed in with the terrible ones. It’s just so unfocused, and given over to the worst excesses of the Assassin’s Creed series in general. Add in the fact that the resolution to the Desmond overplot is basically this, and that as a final parting shot once you’re finished the game locks you into a credits sequence that goes on for upwards of twenty-five minutes3 with no way to skip it aside from killing the process externally (I haven’t had a fuck-you from a game like this since Syndicate’s non-ending back in 1992), and I’m rather disinclined to give it a break. I’m certainly not looking forward to the next game — not unless somebody at Ubisoft has the nous to recognise that after the heyday of Ezio Assassin’s Creed 3 seems like a bloated mess scripted by a collection of twelve year-olds. Somehow I don’t think that’s going to happen, and so I’ll probably give next year’s4 AC release a pass.
During which he inexplicably morphs from an angry dickhead into a softly-spoken, thoughtful character. It was a nice change, but it also reinforced my impression that AC 3 has been assembled from a collection of separate pieces that were constructed in isolation and then glued together in no particular order. ↩
I only managed to find three of them despite criss-crossing the Frontier several times, so this isn’t easy. ↩
Ubisoft loves to troll people by listing the name of everyone who works at Ubisoft, everyone who works at an Ubisoft subsidiary and everyone who works at an Ubisoft affiliate whether they had anything to do with the game or not. I mean if you take the credits at face value there were probably more people involved with the making of Assassin’s Creed 3 than there were in the Apollo moon landings. ↩
Writing this in December, so by the time it’s published on the blog it’ll be this year’s Assassin’s Creed release. ↩
Tagged assassin's creed 3, boats automatically improve every game, thoughts
12 thoughts on “Thoughts: Assassin’s Creed 3.”
“Add in the fact that the resolution to the Desmond overplot is basically this”
BUT WITHOUT THE ZORDS.
How much better would it be WITH zords. Eh?
I shouldn’t know the word zord, should I?
Well it’s only the very start, and they’ve already got at least two Zordons, so the next game will probably star some teenagers with attitude. There’s plenty of time for Zords.
More realistically there are a few ways they can go with AssCreed 4 (ignoring the releases they’ll do to over-clutter 3′s gameplay even more… unless they do a Haytham Kenway standalone – I’d play the shit out of that):
1) Prequels to the Desmond time-line and wherever else you want for the meat of the game. Okay probably, and at least has the chance to reduce the sci-fi wrapper to a minimum.
2) Post-Desmond sequel. Which would probably necessitate focusing a lot more on the sci-fi stuff in the ‘present’. Eugh.
3) Just cram everything into the last few moments of 3 and have it timelessly explain all the other ancestor stuff. A bit rubbish as the wrapper would not move on, but if we concentrate on the past stuff, maybe it would work.
4) Something I haven’t thought of.
Janek says:
I’m glad I wasn’t the only one who found The Baddy’s flip from bumbling sidekick to MURDERDEATHBASTARD jarring.
I also basically found myself routing for the Templars for the entire game. Especially when they were making entirely reasonable arguments after Connor mortally wounded them and he’s all like “No you must all die, because FREEDOM”
God I hated those. Connor was just the most awful character, actively frustrating to watch let alone play as.
Everblue says:
So you preferred it to Planetside 2 then?
(Kidding – great review, thank you)
I’ve gone weirdly cold on Planetside, like I do with a lot of F2P games. But Assassin’s Creed 3 is still worse.
Adam Benton says:
I’ve been re-playing brotherhood and AC2 and, whilst ACB is better, I still found AC2 enjoyable. As such I’m not that fussed over whether AC3 matches up to the later sequels (since I plan on buying it later, at a discount) but whether it is at least as decent as AC2. So is it?
It’s nowhere near as tight as AC2 and doesn’t have the redeeming feature of a main character who is quite compelling.
Bits of it are very good, but the whole experience is too fuzzy to say it’s as good as AC2.
That said, I don’t think you’ll fail to enjoy it… just… it’s obviously nowhere near as good an AC game as it should be.
Saying it’s about the same as AC2 seems like a massive slur on AC2, but I feel that’s about where it is. I really liked AC2′s setting and character, and I didn’t like AC3′s setting so much and I hated its main character, but as far as I can recall they’re about on par in terms of what they’re like as actual games. AC3 is probably a tad worse thanks to just how unfocused it is, and there isn’t much it actually does better than 2, and when you look at it in the context of the previous two games and AC2 being released in 2009 you realise it’s actually a massive regression for the series, but I don’t think I’d call AC3 bad as such. Just really incoherent.
Sounds like I’ll have to wait until its very discounted. Bet I can get Revelations cheap though.
Thoughts: Assassin's Creed 4 - Black Flag. » The Scientific Gamer The Scientific Gamer says:
[...] at the end of last year’s Assassin’s Creed 3 review [...]
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You are here: Home › mathematics › The Short but Influential Life of Niels Henrik Abel
The Short but Influential Life of Niels Henrik Abel
mathematics 6. April 2018 1 Tabea Tietz
Niels Henrik Abel (1802-1829)
On April 6, 1829, Norwegian mathematician Niels Henrik Abel passed away. Abel is well known in mathematics for proving the impossibility of solving the quintic equation by radicals. In parallel to Évariste Galois – who also died very young – , he laid the foundations of group theory.[8]
“The mathematicians have been very much absorbed with finding the general solution of algebraic equations, and several of them have tried to prove the impossibility of it. However, if I am not mistaken, they have not as yet succeeded. I therefore dare hope that the mathematicians will receive this memoir with good will, for its purpose is to fill this gap in the theory of algebraic equations.”
Niels Henrik Abel, A Memoir on Algebraic Equations, Proving the Impossibility of a Solution of the General Equation of the Fifth Degree (1824)
A Talent for Mathematics
Nils Henrik Abel was born into a family of educated people. His father, for instance earned himself a degree in theology and philosophy and taught his children at home for some years. At the age of 13, Nils Abel entered a Cathedral School and especially his mathematics teacher depicted a great influence on the talented boy. Even though, his brother Hans got better grades in general, their math teacher Bernt Michael Holmboe early detected Niels’ abilities in mathematics. He provided Niels Abel with advanced lessons after school and assigned him more and more difficult problems during classes.
Family Struggles
Unfortunately, many issues in the Abel family followed in the next years. His father passed away and his mother dedicated her life to alcoholism, wherefore his brother went into a depression, quitting school and Niels himself began struggling in almost every subject but mathematics. Still, Holmboe supported his protégé and helped Abel with a scholarship wherefore he was able to attend the Royal Frederick University of Oslo, the oldest and largest university in Norway.
From the notebook of Niels Henrik Abel.
He is like the fox, who effaces his tracks in the sand with his tail
As it happened many times in history, at some point in teaching the student may become the master, and this was also the case with Abel. At the age of only 21, he was one of the most educated mathematicians in the country and since Holmboe had nothing left to teach him, Abel continued his research in libraries, studying the works of Newton, Euler, Lagrange, and Gauss.[9] About Gauss’ writing style, Abel once noted that ‘He is like the fox, who effaces his tracks in the sand with his tail.‘ However, in these years Abel also began working on what has made him so famous, the quintic equation in radicals. After working for a while on the problem that mathematicians have tried to solve for over 200 years, Abel instantly thought to have found its solution. His paper was checked and recalculated numerous times by experts and no one found any error. It was Abel himself, who discovered the mistakes in his method while trying to find specific examples.
On Algebraic Equations
After graduating, Abel began publishing several works, unfortunately only with modest success. Success in concerns of publications set in around 1824. Abel published his ‘Memoir on algebraic equations, in which the impossibility of solving the general equation of the fifth degree is proven‘. Even though his contribution to the scientific community through this paper was very important, it was difficult to read. The scientist limited the paper to six pages in order to save printing money. In the following years, Niels Henrik Abel traveled though Europe, meeting many scientists and completing several publications with them.
“If you disregard the very simplest cases, there is in all of mathematics not a single infinite series whose sum has been rigorously determined. In other words,the most important parts of mathematics stand without a foundation” (Niels Henrik Abel)
Further Mathematical Contributions
Abel, the mathematical genius made several significant contributions to his field of study. He proved the binomial theorem for all numbers, extending the works of Leonard Euler. Next to Évariste Galois, it was Abel, who developed the group theory in order to complete his works on quintic equation. While in Paris, Abel contracted tuberculosis. At Christmas 1828, he traveled by sled to Froland to visit his fiancée. He became seriously ill on the journey; and, although a temporary improvement allowed the couple to enjoy the holiday together, he died relatively soon after on 6 April 1829, just two days before a letter arrived from August Crelle.[10] Crelle had been searching for a new job for Abel in Berlin and had actually managed to have him appointed as a Professor at the University of Berlin. Crelle wrote to Abel to tell him, but the good news came too late. A statue of Abel stands in Oslo, and crater Abel on the Moon was named after him. In 2002, the Abel Prize was established in his memory.
At yovisto academic video search , you may learn more on Abel’s works through a short introduction to group theory.
[1] Niels Henrik Abel at Fermat’s Last Theorem Blog
[2] Abel Prize Website
[3 ]Wolfram Research
[4] O’Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., “Niels Henrik Abel“, MacTutor History of Mathematics archive, University of St Andrews.
[5 ]Math2033, University of Arkansas
[6] Niels Henrik Abel at NNDB
[7] aggregated biographies and works related with Niels Henrik Abel
[8] Only the Good Die Young – the Very Short Life of Évariste Galois, SciHi Blog, June 1, 2012.
[9] Carl Friedrich Gauss – The Prince of Mathematicians, SciHi Blog, April 30, 2013.
[10] August Leopold Crelle and his Journal, SciHi Blog
[11] Niels Henrik Abel at Wikidata
[12] Niels Henrik Abel at zbMATH
[13] Timeline of Group Theorists, via DBpedia and Wikidata
August Leopold Crelle, binomial theorem, Evariste Galois, group theory, NIels Henrik Abel, Norway
Nadar and How Photography became an Art
The Publication of the First RFC
Tabea Tietz
View all posts by Tabea Tietz →
Thor Heyerdahl’s Kon-Tiki
Only the Good Die Young – the Very Short Life of Évariste Galois
Arthur Cayley and his Love for Pure Mathematics
Carl Størmer and the Mathematical Model of the Formation of Aurorae
Onyekachi Nwankwo 11. April 2013 at 12:06
learn about yhe the life of famous authors in the dept of english and literary studies,unn.visit http://www.arts.unn.edu.ng
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Global campaigns against landmines and c
Global campaigns against landmines and cluster munitions call for end to these weapons on International Day of Mine Awareness and Assistance in Mine Action
(Geneva, 4 April 2013): Members of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) and the Cluster Munition Coalition (CMC) in close to 50 countries around the world today are calling on states to put an end to the use of landmines and cluster munitions immediately and to address their deadly legacy.
“The use of both these banned weapons recently by Syrian government forces, causing large numbers of civilian casualties, clearly demonstrates why these weapons are being consigned to the ash heap of history,” said Sylvie Brigot-Vilain, Executive Director of the ICBL-CMC. “The remaining hold-out countries should join the two treaties comprehensively banning these weapons now,” she added
The 1997 Mine Ban Treaty and 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions have been highly successful in addressing and reducing the threat to individuals and communities worldwide from these banned weapons. There are 161 States Parties and one signatory to the Mine Ban Treaty to date while 111 states have joined the Convention on Cluster Munitions, of which 80 are full States Parties (including three new additions this year and one in the past week – Chad).
Thanks to the treaties many hundreds of square kilometers of previously infested land have been cleared and more than 46 million stockpiled antipersonnel mines and 750,000 cluster munitions containing 85 million submunitions have been destroyed. Most importantly, the number of new casualties caused by these weapons each year has dropped dramatically to fewer than 5,000 recorded cases.
Still, every day on average 12 people are killed or maimed by these weapons. Some 60 states and 6 areas worldwide are still affected by contamination from landmines and cluster munitions and victims still struggle in many affected countries to access assistance and services. Thirty-five countries remain outside of the Mine Ban Treaty and 86 outside of the Convention on Cluster Munitions.
To push for more action by states, ICBL and CMC campaigners from Afghanistan to Zambia have organized public outreach events from 1 March to 4 April as part of global “Lend Your Leg” activities. The idea of rolling up a pants leg on 4 April in solidarity with victims was launched by Colombian NGO Fundación Arcángeles in 2011 to call attention to the issue of landmines and their devastating effect on communities in Colombia, and throughout the world (in 2012).
In 2013 campaigns worldwide mobilized celebrities, survivors, officials and the public calling on states to: initiate and/or speed up land clearance efforts; fully implement victim assistance legislation to improve access to services; destroy weapons stockpiles; and join the Mine Ban Treaty and the Convention on Cluster Munitions. A full listing of national campaign actions can be seen at: http://www.icbl.org/index.php/icbl/Home-Elements/Key-Issues/LYL2013/National-Campaign-Plans
Add to resources:
Download the full press release in Arabic
Download the full press release in English
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Download the full press release in Spanish
AOAV's Clearance Operator Mariem Zaid, in Western Sahara © Copyright Louise Orton
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Web Informant #85, 23 September 1997
(A look back)
http://www.strom.com/awards/85.html
It is time to take a look back at our industry. It was two years ago when I began these series of essays and put up the first series of pages that is now my web site. The site got up with the help of two teenaged designers (one is now a college freshman, the other is still doing business) and pages on a Unix server at Digex. My first Web Informants had a rant about bad IBM public relations (some things never change) and spoke about the notion of how the Internet was becoming more closed with version 2 of Navigator (now Microsoft and Sun are battling it out over Java). I looked at the ethics and legality of adding links to my site (well before Ticketmaster and Sidewalk got to their lawyers) and the fact that I don't like to do downloads of new software.
Well, I still don't like downloads, and I've got lots of company with my peers who also think the notion of putting a physical CD in the mail is a good way to separate the PR pros from the wanna-bes. You can read about other PR tips and tricks for the care and feeding of the press by Esther Schindler:
Since then, my domain name has moved first to an ISP that is now out of business and now sits at Sohonet in New York City. My web server went from Unix/Apache to NT and WebSite, and then moved again to Netscape and is now running on IIS v4 and NT. WebSite itself has gone through its own transition, from an entry-level easy-to-use web server to trying to be feature-competitive against Microsoft and Netscape, with the result being less than satisfying. In my review this week in Infoworld, I talk about how WebSite is like your college freshman who returns home for his first visit and has grown up in ways that you don't necessarily approve.
My essays are no longer being sent via a perl script, but are driven from a database that works with Cold Fusion code. There are even now commercial products that will do email merges for you and send out your own newsletter (www.arialsoftware.com's Campaign is one of them that I've used).
And while there certainly has been an explosion of site management and web creation products, I still write the vast majority of my web pages using either Word or WordPad. I have yet to find any HTML editor that can work well with an existing site. But that's grist for about 85 columns that I don't intend to start now.
Two years ago, I thought about giving awards for the best and worst sites in terms of navigation, information currency, and the like. Well, I quickly realized that there were many others who could do a better job and the awards eventually died off, with all that remains of them being the directory name that previous issues are located. So those of you that have the coveted Big Ducks should keep them locked away for safe keeping.
Two years ago we had Intranets. Now we have Extranets. I'm not sure that's progress. In the meantime, I've realized that neither can be assembled out of a single product, or even a few products. The best Intranets and Extranets are organically grown, stitched together out of many pieces. The unifying fabric is the web browser.
One way to build an Intranet is to start with a menuing program that allows you to launch your other software from within a browser. I recently wrote about doing such a thing using a little-known product called IntraLaunch in my "Browser" column for Windows Sources. It is entitled, "Build Your Own Intranet Menus."
But you'll need more than menus to do any Intranet right. One thing that should be considered is how you'll read your email when you aren't in the office. Back two years ago, the best solution was to use telnet and Pine when on the road, pointing to the same Unix mail server that I got my mail using Eudora when I was back in the office. Now I use a combination of products, including the AT&T/Samsung PocketNet phone and Infinite's email gateway.
The past two years has seen this particular area just explode with new products, and indeed I can count four different kinds of products that make use of some web/email connection. You have products that offer free email accounts on their own server like HotMail.com, but use a browser to read and review your mail. You have other products like Readmail.com that offer browser-based email review but use your own POP server and account. You have gateways to LAN-based groupware products, such as GroupWise WebAccess, and you have full- fledged discussion group products that work entirely with web clients.
That's a lot of products. Here is a page of links to these and others that have browser interfaces.
Back when I started two years ago, finding someone to host your web at their premises wasn't easy. Now just about every ISP has some sort of deal going, and everyone has their own page filled with pix of the grandkids. But finding which sites offer the best tools to manage content, maintain reliable connections to their upstream provider, and have stable businesses is still just as difficult.
Two years ago Novell went into hibernation while Microsoft went into Internet overdrive. I still don't think Novell has had much of a clear vision about its future: my op/ed piece this week for ComputerWorld is entitled, "Novell: Get a clue!" about the misplaced goals Novell has for taking back network mindshare.
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Home Health Care Senate Votes Down Broad Obamacare Repeal
Senate Votes Down Broad Obamacare Repeal
But the victory could be fleeting: Senate Republicans still have no agreement on a repeal bill that they can ultimately pass to uproot the law that has provided health insurance to millions of Americans.
The Senate is now moving ahead with debate, amendments and ultimately a final vote in the coming days on legislation that would have a profound effect on the American health care system — roughly one-sixth of the United States’ economy. But it is entirely possible that by week’s end, the senators will have passed nothing.
“Now we move forward towards truly great health care for the American people,” Mr. Trump said from the White House Rose Garden, where he was holding a news conference with the visiting prime minister of Lebanon. “This was a big step.”
Only two Republicans, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, voted against the procedural motion, though at least several other Republicans had been seen as possible holdouts. No Democrats voted in favor of the motion.
The Tuesday night vote was on a comprehensive amendment that included disparate proposals calculated to appeal to conservatives and moderates in the Republican caucus.
One proposal, offered by Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, would have allowed insurers to sell stripped-down health plans, without maternity care or other benefits required by the Affordable Care Act, if they also sold plans that included such benefits.
How Each Senator Voted on Full Obamacare Repeal-and-Replace
Republican leaders brought the first of several expected amendments to a vote Tuesday night.
“You shouldn’t have to buy what the federal government mandates you must buy,” Mr. Cruz said. “You should choose what meets the needs for you and your family.”
The amendment also included money to help pay out-of-pocket medical costs for low-income people, including those who buy private insurance after losing Medicaid coverage as a result of the Senate bill. This proposal was devised by Senator Rob Portman, Republican of Ohio, and other senators from states that have expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act.
But nine Republicans, spanning the party’s ideological spectrum, voted against the package.
The debate to come will have broad implications for health care and households in every state, and emotions are high.
Before senators voted to start the debate in midafternoon, protesters in the Senate gallery chanted, “Kill the bill, don’t kill us!” and “Shame, shame, shame!”
Despite his vote to move ahead, Mr. McCain offered harsh words for the secretive process by which Senate Republican leaders came up with their bill to repeal and replace the health law, and he delivered a pessimistic take on its chances.
Republicans Are Voting This Week to Repeal or Replace Obamacare. Here Are Their Proposals.
Three major proposals are being discussed.
OPEN Graphic
“Asking us to swallow our doubts and force it past a unified opposition — I don’t think that’s going to work in the end, and probably shouldn’t,” Mr. McCain said, adding that it “seems likely” that the current repeal effort would end in failure. Still, Mr. McCain voted with Republican leaders in favor of the comprehensive replacement plan on Tuesday night.
Arizona is one of the 31 states that expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, and Mr. McCain’s remarks could reflect concerns of other senators from states that expanded Medicaid, including the junior Republican senator from his state, Jeff Flake.
“We are ground zero for the failure of the exchanges, but we are also an expansion state,” Mr. Flake said. “I think all of us are concerned that we don’t pull the rug out from people.”
Just before the Senate vote, the Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer of New York, made an impassioned plea to Republicans.
“We know that A.C.A. is not perfect,” Mr. Schumer said. “But we also know what you’ve proposed is much worse. We can work together to improve health care in this country. Turn back now before it’s too late and millions and millions and millions of Americans are hurt so badly in ways from which they will never, ever recover.”
John McCain to Senate: ‘We’re Getting Nothing Done’
Senator John McCain, who was recently diagnosed with brain cancer, spoke to the Senate after casting his vote to begin debating legislation to repeal the Affordable Care Act.
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS.
Photo by Gabriella Demczuk for The New York Times.
Watch in Times Video »
Given the divisions within their caucus, Senate Republican leaders were considering a new approach to keeping their repeal quest alive: They could try to reach agreement on a slimmed-down bill that would repeal a few major provisions of the Affordable Care Act, like the penalties imposed on people who go without insurance and businesses that do not offer insurance to their employees. Republican leaders would not intend such a bill to become law, but they believe that it could win approval in the Senate.
That “skinny” bill could then be a basis for negotiations with the House.
Republican leaders in Congress have struggled all year to fulfill their promise of repealing the 2010 health care law. By a vote of 217 to 213, the House approved a repeal bill in early May, but only after Republicans overcame their own difficulties in that chamber.
Mr. Trump kept up pressure on the Senate on Tuesday with Twitter posts. After the procedural vote, he applauded the Senate, but was cutting toward Ms. Collins and Ms. Murkowski: “We had two Republicans that went against us, which is very sad, I think. It’s very, very sad for them.”
The successful procedural vote was also a moment of redemption, at least temporarily, for Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, who just last week appeared to have failed in his effort to put together a health bill that could squeak through the narrowly divided Senate.
That said, it remained far from certain whether Republicans would be able to agree on a bill in the days to come — and what exactly the contents of that bill would be. Mr. McConnell promised an “open amendment process” in which members of both parties could propose changes.
Majority needed to pass
Republicans 51 2
Democrats 0 48
“This is just the beginning,” Mr. McConnell said. “We’re not out here to spike the football.”
For weeks, Mr. McConnell has been promoting and revising a comprehensive bill that would repeal the health law while also replacing it, but he has struggled to nail down the support needed to pass that measure. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has yet to assess the most complete version of that legislation, which includes the proposals by Mr. Cruz and Mr. Portman.
Without that assessment, the measure needed 60 Senate votes, and it failed that test on Tuesday night.
The Senate is also expected to vote on a measure that would repeal the health law without putting in place any replacement, but that approach does not appear to have enough support to pass, either.
That proposal resembles a bill passed by the Senate in 2015 and vetoed by Mr. Obama in early 2016. But it would increase the number of people who are uninsured by 32 million in 2026, the budget office said.
Mr. Portman had anguished for weeks over provisions of Mr. McConnell’s repeal bill that would make deep cuts in projected Medicaid spending and roll back the expansion of the program under the Affordable Care Act.
Mr. Portman voted to move ahead with the debate on Tuesday after being assured that the Senate would vote on his plan to provide financial assistance to people moving from an expanded state Medicaid program to private health insurance.
States could have used the money, totaling $100 billion, to help low-income people pay deductibles and other out-of-pocket costs when they receive medical care.
Mr. Portman worked on the plan with the Trump administration and with several other Republican senators from states that have expanded Medicaid, including Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia and Dean Heller of Nevada.
Mr. Heller voted Tuesday to open the debate, but he made no commitment to vote for the repeal bill itself.
“If the final product isn’t improved for the state of Nevada, then I will not vote for it,” Mr. Heller said. “If it is improved, I will support it.”
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ABOUT RUSSIA / CULTURE AND ART / PAINTING / PAINTINGS XX CENTURY
Painting XX century
Arkhipov A. Ye.
Abram Yefimovich Arkhipov made his name in the history of Russian art of the turn of the century as a sensitive, poetic artist who devoted all his talent to themes from peasant life. He was born into a poor peasant family in a remote village in Ryazan Gubernia. As a boy he first showed an interest in drawing at his local school. His parents gave him every possible encouragement, and in 1876, having painstakingly gathered together the necessary means, they sent him to study at the School of Art, Sculpture and Architecture in Moscow. At that time people such as Ryabushkin, Kasatkin and Nesterov were among his fellow students. The heart of the school, and the best loved teacher was Vasily Perov, and other teachers included Makovsky, Polenov and Savrasov.
Arkhipov studied eagerly and with great application his works received prizes at exhibitions. In his third year he completed the painting "A Came of 'Svatka'", and in the early 1880s painted "The Second-Hand Shop" (1882, TG), "The Drunkard" (1883, TG) and "The Tavern" (1883, TG). Perov's lessons, which urged the artist to be truthful and not too shy from the darker sides of life, clearly did not fall on stony ground. Arkhipov started out as a genre-artist, in the footsteps of his teacher.
In 1883, after seven years at the School, Arkhipov decided to continue his education at the Academy of Arts. The academic system of teaching disappointed him, however. Despite the fact that his study "Man Falling from the Saddle" and various other drawings were hailed as masterpieces and donated to the Academy's permanent collection, Arkhipov left the Academy and retumed to the Moscow School. After Perov's death he studied under Polenov, whose art permeated with light and a joyful perception of life, and also exerted an influence on his work.
One of the most important works, drawing together the threads of Arkhipov's student period, was "Friends or Visiting the Sick Woman" (1885, TG), which depicts the artist's mother. Her head sadly inclined, her eyes fixed at one point, a sick woman is sitting on a straw-filled bed in a miserable dark hut. Besides her, with the same dimmed sorrowful look in her eyes, is her neighbour which came to pay the sick woman a visit. The postures of the two women, their tired, unhappy faces?everything tells of their humility, hopelessness and sadness. Only the sunlight, bursting in through the open door, is a reminder that happiness and beauty do exist somewhere. The painting contains both quiet melancholy and a feeling of deep compassion for human sorrow.
In 1888 Arkhipov set off on a trip along the Volga with his friends from the school. They stayed in villages, drawing a lot and painting many etudes. This was where he conceived the idea for the small painting "On the Volga" (1889, RM), in which for the first time he tried to achieve a successful fusion of genre scene and lyrical landscape.
Two years later Arkhipov was accepted as an active member of the Peredvizhniki Society. The same year he completed one of his best known works. "Along the River Oka", which shows a barge floating along the river with tired peasants, deep in thoughts. Its meaning extends beyond the bare subject-mailer, however. It is a story about people who are capable of enduring a great deal without losing their strength and steadfastness. It is an affirmation of the beauty of Russian nature, with its blue horizons, the spring flooding of its rivers, and its streams of sunlight. The muted colour scheme is in harmony with the general mood of the painting. Arkhipov's artistic style has changed. Compared to the careful detail of his early works, his style has become more free, expansive and passionate.
'The whole picture is painted in sunlight,' Wrote Stasov about this painting, 'and this can be felt in every patch of light and shade, and in the overall wonderful impressions among the people on the barge, the four women?idle, tired, despondent, sitting in silence on their bundles?are portrayed with magnificent realism.'
In the 1890s Arkhipov painted mostly 'open air", portraying his heroes not in their small stuffy studios and rooms but in the wide open spaces of the Volga, in broad sunlit squares, green meadows and roads. The painting "The Ice Is Gone" (1895, Ryazan Regional Art Gallery) breathes the cheerfulness of spring. The river is freeing itself of ice, throwing off the fetters of winter. The inhabitants is of the surrounding villages?old men, women and children?have come to observe the ceremonious awakening of Spring. Everything is bathed in the first rays of the sun. In Arkhipov's works people are closely bound up with nature. Their thoughts and feelings are refracted through the prism of the landscape, which?like Russian folk tales and songs ?has an epic breadth and sweep and is full of lyricism and gentle poetry.
Later, Arkhipov also painted highly dramatic works. The first of them?"The Convoy" (1893, TG)?deals with a new theme for the artist: that of the tragic fate of the peasants, ruined and impoverished, worn down by poverty and without land. Silent and submissive, they patiently bear their cross.
In his painting "Women Labourers at the Iron Foundry" (1896, TG), Arkhipov dealt with one of the nineteenth century's most poignant themes: the bitter fate of Russian women. The painting depicts the women resting from their exhausting labour, but the artist draws more attention to their milieu. The drifting black smoke, the sun-scorched earth and the low, wooden buildings help us to imagine the dreadful conditions that these women worked in from dawn to dusk.
Arkhipov's paintings seldom depict acute situations or actions. The basic meaning is revealed through the milieu or surroundings in which the events take place. This was a characteristic device for artists at the end of the nineteenth century. One of Arkhipov's best and most interesting works is the painting "The Washer-Women", of which there are two versions: (1899, RM; and 1901. TG). While working on it, the artist searched tirelessly for a model. He visited washhouses and spent hours watching the movements of the women at work. When the painting was almost finished, he noticed an old washerwoman sitting in a washhouse at the Smolensk market in Moscow. Her hunched back, her lowered head and her limply hanging arm?everything spoke of utter exhaustion, deep spiritual apathy and hopelessness. Profoundly moved by all this, Arkhipov decided to start a new canvas, and in this way the second version came about. The artist ignored many unnecessary details, enlarging the figures by moving them closer to the spectator. He raised the picture to a universal level, epitomizing the hopelessness and doom of these women's existence.
The Washer-Women is an example of the artist's new searchings in the realm of colour. In contrast to his earlier works, the painting is also to a certain extent, accusatory, a trait which brings it in line with the best traditions of critical realism of the second half of the nineteen the century.
The early 1900's saw the creation of Arkhipov's Northern landscapes. They represent nature in all its splendour, with muted colours, distinctive wooden buildings, rickety collages huddled together along river-banks, deserted wooded islands, and huge boulders by the seaside. He worked enthusiastically on "A Northern Villge" (1902, TG), "A Jetty in the North" (1903, TG), and "In the North" (1912, TG); the greyish colour-range of which is amazingly rich in subtle shades and half-tones.
At this time, too, Arkhipov painted an unusual series of portraits of peasant women and girls from the Ryazan and Nizhny Novgorod regions. They are all dressed in bright national costumes. with embroidered scarves and beads. Painted with broad lively strokes, the paintings are marked by their decorativeness and buoyant colours, with rich reds and pinks predominating.
Arkhipov also spent much time and energy on his activities as a teacher. He started teaching 1894 in the Moscow School of Art, Sculpture and Architecture, and carried on there after the Revolution. In 1924 he joined the Association of Artists of Revolutionary Russia, and in 1927?to mark his fortieth year as an artist?he was among the first who were awarded the title of "People's Artist of the Russian Republic". Abram Arkhipov died in 1930.
Bakst L.S.
Lev Samoilovich Bakst (Rosenberg) (1866 - 1924)
Leon Bakst (Lev Samoilovich Rosenberg) was born in a middle class Jewish family in Grodno, Belarus, on May 10, 1866 and died in Paris on December 27, 1924. He was educated at the gymnasium in St. Petersburg and then at the Academy of Fine Arts. He started his artistic career as an illustrator for magazines but changed his mind when he met Aleksander Benois. He travelled through Europe and came in contact with European artists. After his return to St Petersburg, he began to gain notoriety for his book designs and his portraits. In 1898, together with Benois and Serge Diaghilev, he founded the group World of Art (Mir Iskusstva). In 1906 he became a teacher of drawing in Yelizaveta Zvantseva's private art school where, among other students, he taught Marc Chagall.
Bakst's greatest achievements are related to theatre. He debuted with the stage design for the Hermitage and Aleksandrinsky theatres in St. Petersburg in 1902-3. Afterwards, he received several commissions from the Marinsky theatre (1903-4). In 1909 he began his collaboration with Diaghilev, which resulted in founding of the Ballets Russes, where he became the artistic director. His stage designs quickly brought him international fame. Most notable are his costume designs for Diaghilev's Sheherazade (1910) and L'Apres-midi d'un Faune. He settled in Paris in 1912, after being exiled because of his Jewish origins.
Benois A.N.
Alexander Benois (1870-1960)
Russian painter and stage designer Alexander Benois was born in a family of a St. Petersburg architect. He grew up in an atmosphere of love and respect for the arts. One of his brothers was also an architect and the other an excellent water-colorist. In 1894 Benois received a law degree from the St. Petersburg University and from 1896 till 1899 lived in France. There, he became fascinated with the life of Versailles and the epoch of Louis the XIV. Researching the period, Benois discovered the memoirs of the Count Louis de Saint-Simon, an eyewitness of the Sun-King's last years. Later, he used the memoirs for a series of paintings about life in the Versailles.
Chinese Pavillion: The Jealous One, painted in 1906, is related to the Versailles series. The actions of the characters are simplified until they acquire the schematic nature of the Italian commedia dell' arte. Placing the Chinese Pavillion in the centre of the painting, Benois elevates it to the status of the main "hero" of his work. One of Benois' favorite artistic devices, the impression that the human figures are just puppets, "governed" by majestic architecture, in this work is strengthened by the fact that the pavillion resembles a precious toy and dominates the composition, which corresponds to the World of Art notion that theater is first of all a spectacle, a "feast for the eyes." Benois conjures a precious "object d'art," in which the turquise sky with myriads of stars, the mysterious glow of the lights of the pavillion, and the doll-like tiny figures make us feel that we are looking at a delicate toy, perhaps at an elaborate music box.
After returning to St. Petersburg, Benois admitted that "no Versailles could compare with impressions made by Peterhof and Pavlovsk." As if he wanted to prove his point, he published highly acclaimed illustrations to Pushkin's Bronze Horseman and The Queen of Spades. Nevertheless, as before, the "heroes" of his illustrations are not the people but their surroundings, the landscape, the atmosphere and the spirit of the city.
One of the founders of the World of Art group, Benois, like many of his colleagues, refused to search for beauty in the chaos of contemporary life, and turned entirely to the past, producing series of paintings devoted to Elizabeth Petrovna and Catherine the Great. The World of Art circle was responsible for the revival of Russian book illustration, astonishing theatrical productions, rekindling of interest in the beauty of St. Petersburg, and the study of Russian art of the eighteenth and the nineteenth century.
Benois' international fame rests on his stage designs; he fused in them the traditional Russian folk elements with the French Rococo style. Theatrical spectacle for Benois was a fanciful invention, a stage magic, and a mirage. He assumed the role of a "theatrical wizard" who offered the viewers brilliant but purely fantastic images. He collaborated with Serge Diaghilev both in Russia and in Paris on a number of ballets, Giselle, Le Pavillon d'Armide, Les Sylphides, and Petrushka (1909-11), for which he wrote the libretto and made designs. The critics admitted that despite the "florid and wildly varied colors of the stage decorations and costumes, during the performance of Petrushka they could feel a deeply Russian harmony, a mixture of naive barbarism and refinement". Benois also collaborated with the Moscow Art Theater (MKhAT), where he directed and designed plays by Moliere, Goldoni, and Pushkin.
Benois published portfolios of art treasures of Russia and a History of Russian Painting (1904). After the Revolution, he was made curator of the painting at the Hermitage. In 1926 he left Russia and settled in Paris where he spent the rest of his life, involved in staging about 200 operas and ballets in many cities of Europe and America.
Eremeyev O. A.
Oleg Eremeyev is an active member of the Leningrad (St. Petersburg) art scene and is as well known as a painter of historical figures, portraits, landscapes, and of still life.
He was born in Leningrad on September 28, 1922 to a working class family. In 1930 he was placed into a school for gifted children and in 1938 he was accepted into the academy of art at Leningrad. His studies ended abruptly, however, in June of 1941 when he was called upon to enlist as the Great Civil war began.
After the war ended, he was able to return to his favorite occupation. Having completed his basic studies in 1951, he was then accepted into the masters program at the Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture of the USSR Academy of Art.
He graduated with distinction in 1957 while studying under professor B.Ioganson where he subsequently earned the official title of "Artist of Painting". After graduation his student works were shown at a national art exhibition in the city of Moscow. These were well received and as a result, he was invited to join the Creative Studio of the USSR Academy of Art, where, during the next four years (1957- 1961) he became the principal artist in residence.
Since 1960 he has been an active member of the Leningrad organization of the Union of Artists of Russia. Teaching has always been a part of his creative life. Since he first began instructing in 1959 it has been his goal to transfer his knowledge and experience to younger artists. He has a long history at the Institute having worked his way up through the ranks as an assistant, a professor, faculty manager, and eventually the dean of the painting department. His abilities as an artist, an organizer, and and a public figure makes him an ideal director for a public art school.
From 1977 until 1990 he served as the Institute's deputy director and since 1990 he has served as its Director.
His titles include: The Deserved Figure of Arts of RSFSR (1981), as well as the most honorable National Artist of The Russian Federation (1994). He is also an elected correspondent member of the Russian Academy of Art, and current member of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences (1997).
The artist is widely educated. Having lived during extrordinary times, he creates art about both the present and the historical past of Russia.
He paints portraits of both cultural and artistic subjects. His subjects include working class people, open fields and landscapes and he is particularly fond of a place known as *Old Pskov*. He also travels extensively both at home and abroad including trips to Europe, America, India, China, Egypt, and other countries...
Ever since his student years, he has been a constant participant in both local, national and international art exhibitions. His art hangs not only in Russian museums but in foreign lands both near and far:
Museum of History, St. Petersburg;
Management of Exhibition of The Art Fund of Russian Federation Moscow;
Ministry of Culture of The Russian Federation, Moscow;
Murmansk Art Museum;
Karaganda Museum of Fine Art;
Sakhalin Art Gallery;
Museum Navoi in Tashkent;
Foundation of The Modern Art Museum in St. Petersburg;
Museum of Fine Art, Taiwan;
Galleries and private collections in America, Germany, China, and South Korea.
Goncharova N.S.
Natalia Sergeyevna Goncharova (1881-1962)
Goncharova was born in Negaevo, in Tula Province on June 16, 1881 and died in Paris on October 17, 1962. A descendant of the great poet Aleksander Sergeyevich Pushkin's wife, she was the daughter of Sergei Goncharov, an architect, and Ekaterina Ilinichna Belyaeva, but grew up in her grandmother's house in the Tula Province. She attended the Fourth Gymnasium for Girls in Moscow and in 1898 entered the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture as a sculpture student. At the school Goncharova met Mikhail Larionov who became her lifelong companion and encouraged her to leave sculpture for painting. Goncharova was attracted briefly to Impressionism and Symbolism, but her participation in the "Golden Fleece" exhibition introduced her to the styles of Gauguin, Matisse, Cezanne and Toulouse-Lautrec whose art would influence her development. In a series depicting the favorite theme of the Russian peasants working the land, this influence is revealed in both color and the approach to form. In 1910 Goncharova became one of the founding members of the "Jack of Diamond" group but later went her separate way to establish the "Donkey's Tail" group with Larionov. In 1912 the group held their first exhibition with more than 50 works from Goncharova, executed in a number of different styles. Goncharova was a connoisseur of lubki, Russian popular prints, and the titles of her works clearly betray this influence. Her use of conventions of icon painting is particularly evident in the Evangelists.
In 1913 she entered her most productive period, painting dozens of canvases. In her Neo-primitive works she continued to explore the styles of Eastern and traditional art forms, but also experimented with Cubo-futurism (see The Cyclist, painted in 1912-13), and adopted Larionov new style of Rayonism. Her famous Cats (1911-12) and Green and Yellow Forest (1912) show how confidently she was able to work in the Rayonist style, developing her own artistic idiom independently of Larionov. In August 1913, Goncharova attracted international attention exhibiting over 700 paintings in an one-woman show . During this period she was, like Larionov, associated with the literary avant-garde. In 1914 Goncharova visited Paris to make designs for Dyaghilev's production of Le coq d'or. Her designs, based on Eastern and Russian folk art, took Paris by storm. She also held a joint exhibition with Larionov at the Galerie Paul Guillaume. She returned to Moscow after the beginning of the war. At the request of Dyaghilev, Larionov and Goncharova left Russia for Switzerland in June 1915. In 1916 they accompanied Diaghilev to Spain and Italy. Spain left an everlasting impression on Goncharova. She was especially moved by the bearing of Spanish women in their mantillas. From that moment on, Espagnoles became her favorite subject. In 1919 Larionov and Goncharova settled permanently in Paris; they were granted citizenship in 1938. During the Paris period, Goncharova became famous for her theatrical designs. In the 1920s she developed her own idiom for her series Espagnoles and for many paintings with bathers. Following Diaghilev's death in 1929, Goncharova's creative powers declined only to be briefly revitalized by the public rediscovery of Rayonism in 1948. After Larionov's stroke in 1950, Goncharova's health also started to decline, and although the couple married in 1955, their last years were spent in poverty.
Kandinsky V.V.
Vasily Vasiliyevich Kandinsky (1866 - 1944)
Vasily Kandinsky was a painter, printmaker, stage designer, decorative artist, and theorist. In 1886 he began to study law and economics at the University of Moscow. Three years later he took part in an ethnographical expedition to the Vologda province and wrote an article about folk art; this experience was to influence his early art, which would be highly decorative and would feature bright colors applied on the dark background. This effective technique can be seen in such paintings as Song of the Volga (1906), Couple Riding (1906), and Colorful Life (1907), devoted to the life of Old Russia. After traveling to St. Petersburg and Paris, in 1893 he was appointed to the Department of Law at the University of Moscow. In 1896, at the age of thirty, he gave up his successful career as a lawyer and economist to become a painter. he moved to Munich and one year later entered Anton Azbe's painting school. In 1900 he became a student at the Munich Academy and studied under Franz von Stuck. At that time, he was in contact with St. Petersburg World of Art group. Between 1900 and 1908 exhibited regularly with the Moscow Association of Artists and was very active in the Munich art world. In 1901 founded the Phalanx (dissolved in 1904) and began teaching at a private art school in Munich. Later, Kandinsky traveled through Europe (1903-6). He was affected by the expressive possibilities of Bavarian glass painting, icon painting, and Russian folk art. In 1909 the artist started his famous Improvisations and co-founded the group Neue Kunstlervereinigung. A year later he joined the Jack of Diamonds group and contributed to its first two exhibitions. In 1911 established the Blaue Reiter (Blue Rider) group, which included him, Muenter, Marc, and Kulbin. He participated in its exhibitions and contributed to its Almanac. The publication of the Almanac was one of the most important events in twentieth-century art. The artists of the Blue Rider believed in a birth of a new spiritual epoch and were engaged in the creation of symbols for their own time. There were fourteen major articles in the Almanac, interspersed with notes, quotes, and illustrations. Kandinsky published his concept of "inner necessity." He revised it in 1912, in his famous essay On the Spiritual in Art, Especially in Painting (originally written in German). For Kandinsky art was a portrayal of spiritual values. All art builds from the spiritual and intellectual life of the twentieth century. While each art form appears to be different externally, their internal properties serve the same inner purpose, of moving and refining the human soul. This belief in the secret correspondence of all the arts would become a cornerstone of his artistic convictions and a foundation of his painting. The article marked Kandinsky's transition from objective to non-objective art. In 1914 the artist returned to Moscow and three years later married Nina Andreyevskaya. He was active as a teacher, museum worker, writer, and lecturer. He was responsible for designing the pedagogical program for the Institute of Artistic Culture (Inkhuk) for 1920, which included Suprematism, Tatlin's "Culture of Materials" and Kandinsky's own theories. The program was opposed by the future Constructivists and Kandinsky had to wait for its implementation till his years at the Bauhaus. In 1921 he was actively involved in the organization of Rakhn (Russian Academy of Aesthetics). At the end of the same year, Kandinsky went to Germany to teach at the Bauhaus, where he was to stay till its closure by the Nazis in 1933. Participated in the Erste Russische Kunstausstellung in Berlin (1922). In 1924, together with Feininger, Iavlensky, and Klee, established the Blue Four. Moved to Paris in 1933 and remained active as a painter till his death. (After The Avant-Garde in Russia).
Kandinsky introduced a completely new conception of painting that he bequeathed to us in a variety of modes which were often received with hostility. It is a model of art that is non-representational, but understandable in substance. Very different artists and artistic trends have branched out from this model. But the resources of Kandinsky's ideas and theories have not yet been exhausted.
Kusnetsov A.
Alexei Kusnetsov was born in 1916 in the city of Orenburg, Russia into a family of printers. After completing seven years of school, Kusnetsov worked as a mechanic in a factory. Already at this time he began panting and drawing and showing his work in competitions for gifted youth in Leningrad.
In 1932 Alexei was accepted to the Penza Art College. He instructors were the famous artists N. Petrov and Gorjushkin-Sorokopudov. After graduating from the college in 1936, he was accepted to the Russian Academy of Art, where he continued studying under N. Petrov.
The war interrupted Alexei-s art education. Until the end of 1942, he was in the active army. In 1943 he was discharged in order to return to his studies at the Academy of Art which had been evacuated to Samarkand, Uzbekistan. This period is represented in his work ?Uzbek Girl.�
In 1946 Alexei graduated from the Academy of Art where he trained in the studio of Professor A. Osmerkin. He received the official title of Painter for his thesis painting entitled ?The Journey of Life� which now hangs in The Leningrad Museum of History.
In 1947 Alexei began his teaching career at the Art High School which was part of the Leningrad Academy of Art. Beginning in 1948 he worked in the art studio of Professor B. Ioganson.
Alexej completed his studio work in 1951 with the painting ?Stalin in an Underground Printing House� which was shown in the National Exhibit in Moscow and was bought for the traveling exhibit fund of the USSR.
Between 1952 and 1956, Alexei produced the paintings ?Workers Revolutionary Groups of Russia� and ?Lenin on the Second Party Congress� which now hang in museums of Moscow.
Kusnetsov-s creative journey was tightly interlaced with his pedagogical career. In 1952 he became the director of the Art High School which was part of the Academy of Art.
Alexej Kusnetsov, a student of the Russian school of realism, influenced an entire generation of painters who left a rich legacy in the history of Russian arts.
Due to his great experience as an educator and artist, the Ministry of the Arts of the USSR sent A. Kusnetsov to the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in 1960. His goal was to organize a national art school and to establish a program in the realist school of painting at the Hanoi Art Institute.
Alexei-s time in Vietnam was very fruitful v he resolved complex educational tasks and continued his creative work. During this period, he produced several great portraits of women such as ?Girl Tkhan,� ?Portrait of Tkhan,� ?Portrait of Uan� and others. In two years Alexej created over seventy paintings and many drawings which were shown in personal exhibits in Hanoi (1960-1962) and then in Leningrad in 1963. Some of his pieces remain in museums in Hanoi, Vietnam.
Upon returning from Vietnam, Kusnetsov continued his art and pedagogical work. Between 1962 and 1964, he worked on the painting ?Great Pochin� which was commissioned by the Ministry of Culture of Russia.
In 1968 he was conferred the prestigious title of Honorable Painter of Russia.
At this time, Kusnetsov oversaw the construction of a new building for the Art High School. The school moved to the new building in 1971 and in 1973 it was renamed The B. Ioganson-s School after the great painter and pedagogue.
The endeavors of Kusnetsov are an example of noble service to mankind and society. He dedicated 45 years of his life to the cultivation of a new generation of artists. His name has been entered into the history of Russian art as an educator and artist.
The last years of the artist-s life were highly influenced by the nature of Central Russia. Portraits and landscapes of this period (?Portrait of a Daughter� (illustration), ?Portrait of a Wife,� ?Gloomy Day,� ?Apple Trees� and others) are lyrical and have a depth of meaning.
In his last work, ?Self Portrait,� Alexei-s use of lightning achieves a particularly dramatic effect.
The creative achievements of Alexei Kusnetsov and other artists brought international attention to Russian painting.
Larionov L.F.
Mikhail Fyodorovich Larionov (1881-1964)
Mikhail Fyodorovich Larionov was born in Tiraspol, Moldova on June 3, 1881 and died in Fontenay-aux-Roses, near Paris, on May 10, 1964. He was the son of Fyodor Mikhailovich Larionov, a doctor and a pharmacist, and Aleksandra Fyodorovna Petrovskaya, but he grew up in his grandparents' home in Tiraspol. He attended the Voskresensky Technical High School in Moscow and in 1898 entered the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. Here he met Natalia Goncharova, who remained his lifelong companion. His imaginative work soon caught the attention of colleagues and critics and in1906 he was invited to exhibit with the Union of Russian Artists and to participate in the Russian Art exhibition at the Salon d'Automne in Paris. When Larionov met Nikolai Ryabushinsky, editor of the "Zolotoe runo" (the Golden Fleece), the famous art mecenas became the artist's chief patron and in 1908 helped him organize the "Golden Fleece" exhibition of the modern French painting in Moscow. As a result of this exhibition, many artists, including Larionov, turned away from Symbolism and started to experiment with Post-Impressionism. In 1910, Larionov was expelled by the Moscow School of Painting for organizing a demonstration against the school's teaching methods. Larionov was the founder of the "Jack of Diamond" group, and with them he exhibited a remarkable series of paintings, among them the Soldiers (1910), created during his military service. Larionov soon deserted the "Jack of Diamond" for the more radical "Donkey's Tail", which held an exhibition in 1912. In 1912 he initiated two very important movements: Rayonism (Rayism) and Neo-primitivism. Rayonism was inspired by Italian Futurism and Neo-primitivism and represented a development of the artist's Fauvist and Expressionist interests.
Rayonism was officially launched at the "Target" exhibition of 1913. In 1914 he traveled with Goncharova to Paris. They held an exhibition at the Gallerie Paul Guillaume. When the war began, they returned to Russia and Larionov was drafted into the army. He was injured in the battle of the Masurian Lakes and spent three months in a hospital. The injury affected his ability to concentrate and resulted in the decline of his artistic energy. In 1915 he travelled with Goncharova to Switzerland, at the request of Dyaghilev. There he designed for the ballet and gained success. While travelling through Spain and Italy he designed three more ballets, all equally successful. In 1919 he settled permanently in Paris, where he acted as Goncharova's manager. Throughout the decade he worked with Dyaghilev as a designer and artistic adviser. Following Dyaghilev's death in 1929, he resumed painting and also worked occasionally for the ballet. He and Goncharova were granted French citizenship in 1938. In 1950 he suffered a stroke that seriously handicapped his activity and he spent the last 14 years of his life in poverty.
Mylnikov A. A.
Andrei was born on February 22, 1919 in the city of Pokrovskoe, area of Saratov, into a family of engineers. In 1937 he studied at the Institute of Painting , Sculpture and Architecture of The All-Russian Academy of Art in the architectural department. He worked together with professors G.Kotov, Nikolsky and M. Rudnev. In 1940 he transferred to the painting faculty, where he was engaged working with V.Obolensky, P.Naumov and B.Fogel. From the beginning of The Great Domestic War he is at defensive works under Leningrad. He was awarded with several medals for his work "For the Defense of Leningrad". In 1942 is evacuated in Samarkand with Institute. In 1945 he begins pedagogical activity at the average art school at the institute. His shown degreed work "Oath of Baltic Sailors" is on display at the exhibition of degreed works of the institute. At this time he worked on above shown mosaics for The Palace of Advice (councils) in Moscow. He was also accepted in the Members of the Leningrad Organization of Union of the Artists of RSFSR. Since 1947 teaches in Institute. He was the assistant of I.Grabar, under who's direction he finished his PhD in 1948. Since 1948 during three years is by the main artist of creative workshop of Academy of art USSR. His elected by the member of a bureau and chairman of a bureau of section of painting Union of artists. He is awarded the state premium USSR in 1951 for a picture "On peace fields". In 1953 he was nominated as the manager by the faculty of painting and composition at the institute . Takes part in IV World festival of youth and students in Bucharest. In 1954-55 he worked on above shown mosaic panel "Abundance" for the "Vladimir" Leningrad underground station together with A.Koroljov. He is selected by the member of government of Union of the artists of RSFSR. He was awarded a silver medal for the painting "Awakening" in 1957. He authorized in a scientific rank of the professor. In 1960 he nominated by the chief of personal studio of monumental painting in Institute. He makes trip in USA and Italy. Finishes work above monumental work "V. Lenin" for Kremlin Palace of Congresses the following year. . His selected by the member - correspondent of Academy of art USSR on IX sessions of Academy. Finishes work on a list Leningrad theater TYS , panno "Children and Theatre", "Children and Knowledge. He honourable rank of the deserved figure of arts of RSFSR is appropriated in 1963. He is nominated as the chief of creative studio of monumental painting of Academy . He makes creative trip to the German Democratic Republic in 1965. He is a member of committee on award of the state premiums of RSFSR in the same year for 1969. His selected by the valid member of Academy of applied arts USSR in 1966 on XXIII sessions of Academy of art USSR. He is the honourable rank of the national artist of RSFSR is appropriated in 1968. He work of committee on award Lenin's and State premiums since 1969. In 1970 he is awarded by the diploma of ministerial Council for creative successes on IV Republican exhibitions . Creative trips to Spain and Yugoslavia in 1970. In 1975 he was awarded with the letter of senior Management of culture of the Leningrad executive committee for a picture "Farewell". His elected by the secretary of government of Union of the artists. In 1977 he have the state premium USSR for the painting "Farewell" is awarded. In 1978 he have the State premium of RSFSR for a mosaic panel for a memorial hall to the heroic defence counsels of Leningrad . He makes creative trip to Bulgaria and Hungary. In 1979 he was awarded with an award Lenin for merits in progress of fine art and in connection with 60-th from birthday. In 1981 he received the gold medal from the academy for "Spanish three-part painting" . He was awarded with a diploma for long-term and fruitful work on preparation highly skilled in the field of fine art. His selected by the secretary of government of Union of the artists of RSFSR on V congress of Union of the artists of RSFSR.
He participates in work of congress of artists of GDR and congress of the workers of culture of Finland. He is the chairman of council on a reconstruction of the Amber room at Ecaterina's Palace. In 1985 he was awarded with the anniversary medal "40 years of Victory in the Great Domestic War" . In 1987 his elected by the chairman of the Leningrad branch of the Soviet fund of culture. During many years he conducted the large public work, being by the member of council for the European safety. He was a member of the editorial staff of the magazines:"Artist", "The Young artist" and "Architecture and Construction of Leningrad". Since 1987 he is the chairman of the St-Petersburg Fund of culture.
From 1989-1991 he is national deputy USSR. He is awarded with an award of Friendship of the peoples. In 1997 he was elected vice-president of the Russian Academy of Applied Arts in St.-Petersburg. His paintings in collection of Russian State museum, Tretiakovskaya State gallery and meny other museums in Russia and foreign countrys.
Popova L.S.
Lyubov Sergeyevna Popova (1889-1924)
Lyubov Sergeyevna Popova was one of the most talented, prolific, and influential women artists of the Russian avant-garde. She was born in the village of Ivanovskoe in Moscow province, in a family of a wealthy and cultured merchant. After attending the private high schools of Yaltinskaya and Arseniyeva, she began to take art lessons with Zhukovsky and Yuon in Moscow. In 1910, Popova went to Italy and became acquainted with the works of Giotto and Pintoriccio. The rest of that year and in 1911, the artist traveled to St. Petersburg, Rostov, Yaroslavl, Suzdal, Pereslavl, and Kiev and discovered the work of Vrubel and icon painting. In 1912, she set up a studio in Moscow with N. Udal'tsova, her friend from Arseniyeva's school, and both women worked in Tatlin's studio The Tower, where Popova met her life-long friend Vesnin. The same year she traveled to Paris and studied Cubism with Le Fauconnier and Metzinger. After returning to Moscow in 1913, she became interested in Futurism. A year later, just before the war, she went to France and Italy again. In 1915 developed her own variant of non-objective art based on a dynamic combination of principles of icon painting (flatness, linearity) and avant-garde ideas.
In 1916, Popova started calling her compositions "Painterly Architectonics." She became a member of "Supremus," organized by K. Malevich. Two years later, she married Boris von Eding, a Russian art historian, and gave birth to a son. Together with Vesnin, she started teaching at Svomas (Free Art Studios) and later (after 1920) taught at Vkhutemas (Higher Art-Technical Studios). During a trip to Rostov on the Don in 1919, Eding caught typhus and died. Though infected and suffering from typhoid fever, Popova returned to Moscow and recovered from the illness. In 1920, she worked at Inkhuk (Institute of Artistic Culture), a center of Constructivist theories. Over time, the construction elements in Popova's painting increased, progressing from Painterly Architectonics of 1916 to Painterly Constructions of 1920 and Painterly Force Constructions of 1921.
Painterly Architectonics show Popova's interest in the presentation of surface planes with an energy of inner tension, as the colored masses, lines and volumes all interrelate to create a formal unity. Initially they took the form of fairly static compositions comprising overlapping planar forms, but very soon they acquired a startling dynamism as Popova tilted the planes at angles and made them slice into each other. Painterly Constructions further developed the idea of intersecting planes, but gave the compositions a feeling of greater freedom and fluidity. Finally, her Spatial Force Constructions were supposed to be preparatory experiments towards concrete material constructions (After Yablonskaya, 103-104).
The artist's fascination with construction allowed her to join other constructivists in absolute rejection of easel painting. She gave up her own painting and turned entirely to industrial design (1921). A year before her untimely death, Popova was appointed head of the Design Studio at the First State Textile Print Factory in Moscow. She excelled in industrial design of clothing and fabrics and produced posters, book designs, ceramics, and photomontages.
Popova participated in many famous avant-garde exhibitions in Moscow and St. Petersburg (Petrograd): Jack of Diamonds (Moscow, 1914 and 1916), Tramway V / First Futurist Exhibition of Paintings (Petrograd 1915), 0.10 / Last Futurist Exhibition of Paintings (Petrograd 1915), The Store (Moscow, 1916), 5 x 5 = 25 (with Rodchenko, Stepanova, Vesnin and Exter), and others. In addition, she was successful as a set designer for theatre. Her first scenic designs were for Tairov's production of Romeo and Juliet (1920). Even though these designs were not used by Tairov, Popova's interest in stage design did not wane. The following year, she created the sets for Lunacharsky's The Locksmith and the Chancellor and in 1922 for Vsevolod Meyerhold's productions of Crommelynck's Magnanimous Cuckold. She continued her collaboration with Meyerhold, preparing sets for S. Tretiakov's Earth in Turmoil (1923). Her life was cut short in 1924 when she contracted scarlet fever and died at the age of 35.
Rozanova O. V.
Olga Vladimirovna Rozanova (1886 - 1918)
Olga Vladimirovna Rozanova was born in 1886 in Melenki, a small town near Vladimir. Unlike Lyubov' Popova and many other avant-garde artists, she did not travel to Italy or France to get inspired by the most recent developments in Western painting. Therefore, her overall progress as an avant-garde artist is even more remarkable. She began her art education in 1904, attending art studios of K. Bolshakov and K. Yuon in Moscow and studying for a short time at the Stroganov School of Applied Art. After moving to St. Petersburg, she went to private school of E.N. Zvantseva and in 1911 became one of the most active members of the Union of Youth, an organization that organized and sponsored art exhibitions, public lectures and discussions.
From 1911 to 1915, Rozanova experimented with Neo-Primitivism, Cubo-Futurism. Her early works show greater influence of the Italian Futurism than the French Cubism. Rozanova's paintings of this period consist of strong straight lines, frequently combined with triangular and circular shapes. The straight lines and triangles are pointing in various directions; their angles are often turned towards the center of the picture. This combination makes the composition strong and dramatic. The triangles are made of slashing lines that invade the picture from the sides, trying to reach the center.
In 1912, Rozanova started a close friendship with the outstanding Russian Futurist poets Velimir Khlebnikov and Alexei Kruchenykh. They were writing "transrational" (zaumnaia) poetry to create a new universal poetic language based on the destruction of traditional grammar and the meanings of the words, the use of the neologisms, assonances, and illogical combinations of words and sounds. Rozanova became one of the first artists of the Russian avant-garde associated with the Futurist movement. In 1913, she started to design and illustrate books by her Futurist friends. This led to the creation of her own transrational poems, published in 1917 (in Kruchenykh's collection, Valos) and in 1919, posthumously, in the 4th issue of the journal Iskusstvo. Among many booklets Rozanova illustrated were A Forestly Rapid (Bukh lesinnyi), Explodity (Vzorval'), Let's Grumble (Vozropshchem), A Duck's Nest of Bad Words (Utinoe gnezdyshko durnykh slov) (all in 1913), Te li le (1914), Transrational Pook (Zaumnaia gniga), War (Voina), and Universal War (Vselenskaia voina) (all in 1916). Te li le "represents Rozanova's attempt to interlace verbal and pictorial elements. By using her own handwriting for the text, Rozanova not only fused the words with the design, but she also presented the text in a manner intended to convey mood and emotion" (The Avant-garde in Russia, 242). The Universal War is illustrated with twelve abstract collages. The collages consist of brightly colored polygonal shapes, arranged in geometric patterns. The irregular jagged shapes recall those in Rozanova's earlier abstract compositions. "The search for new connections between the word and the pictorial image became one of the most important impulses of her development" (Israel Museum).
In 1916 Rozanova married Kruchenykh and the same year she joined the "Supremus" group, headed by Malevich. Perhaps influenced by Malevich's suprematist experiments, Rozanova created some abstract compositions which further developed the dynamic element of her earlier works. They show flat, polygonal regions in bright colors. However, Rozanova's "suprematist" style differed from Malevich's -- it was not only more decorative, but it was not based on the philosophical, mystical ideas (after Sarabianov). In Varvara Stepanova's words, "Malevich constructed his works on the [basis of--A.B.] composition of the square while Rozanova constructed hers on the basis of color" (Yablonskaia, 83).
In 1917-18, Rozanova created a number of non-objective color compositions, which she called "colorpainting" (cvetopis'). These compositions were a completely new stage in the development of the Russian avant-garde art; unfortunately, after Rozanova's death, they did not find any continuators in Russia. Only after the WW II, similar color experiments appeared in the American color-field paintings of the 1950s and 1960s, particularly in the works of Barnett Newman. A good example of this type of painting is Rozanova's most famous oil, Untitled (Green Stripe), which features a rough cream-colored canvas surface cut by broad perpendicular green stripe.
After the revolution, Rozanova, thanks to her early ties to the Stroganov School, devoted her energies to the organization of industrial art in the country. She was involved with IZO Narkompros (Arts Department of the People's Commisariat of Education) and the Proletcult. Through personal persuasion and by travelling to various locations, she organized Free Art Studios (Svomas) in several provincial cities.
Before she died, Rozanova drew up a plan to reorganize the museum of industrial art in Moscow. Her efforts to combine art and industrial production were soon continued and expanded by the Constructivists. When she was diagnosed ill, she was actually engaged in putting up banners and slogans for the anniversary celebration of the October Revolution. Olga Rozanova died of diphtheria a week before this event. A few weeks later, she had a posthumous exhibition, which included 250 paintings, ranging in style from Impressionism through Neo-primitivism, Cubism and Futurism to Suprematism.
Although Rozanova died young, she was able to experiment widely and reach non-objectivity following her own, individual path. In the meantime, she created many remarkable paintings. Among the best known are Still Life with Scrolls (1911), The Harbor [Port] (1912), Still Life: Vase (1912), The Pub (1913), Portrait of a Woman in a Green Dress (1913), The City (1913), Writing Desk (1914), Geography (1914-15), Workbox (1915), The Metronome (1915), Non-Objective Composition (1916), Suprematism (1916), Color Composition (1917), and Untitled (Green Stripe) (1917-1918). Equally remarkable is a series of painting of playing cards, later used as one-tone illustrations for Transrational Pook: the boldly-colored Simultaneous Representation of a King of Hearts and a King of Diamonds, The Queen of Spades, The King of Clubs, and The Jack of Hearts(all 191
Rudakov K. I.
Konstantin Ivanovich Rudakov was born March 22, 1891 in St. Petersburg, Russia into a family of an artist/decorator of the Mariininsky Theater. His father died when he was three and Konstantin was placed in a philanthropic society orphanage where he was educated until he was twelve. In 1903 he entered the school of A.P. Kopilov. As Konstantin himself says, his interest in art developed at a very early age. While in his final years of school, he was brought to Tsarskoe Selo (Pushkin) to see a famous painter and pedagogue Pavel Petrovich Chistiakov. Following Chistiakov-s suggestion, Rudakov began to systematically work at drawing and painting in the private studio of V.E. Savinsky. At the same time he began attending a new art studio under the supervision of B.M. Kustodiev, E.E. Lansere, and M.V. Dobuzhinsky.
Chistiakov was the strongest influence on Rudakov in the first years of his art development. Chistiakov taught the young man ?how to paint without making a single thoughtless stroke,� and ?how to understand the objectives of a drawing.� In other words, Rudakov understood the strict relationship of a drawing as the structural foundation of a work of art. Chistiakov also played a certain role in the development of Rudakov-s style. He introduced Rudakov with Russian art, in particular with the works of M.A. Vrubel (who was one of Chistiakov-s most talented pupils) and also with the some of the phenomena of Western European painting, like the works of M. Fotuni and A. Tsorn.
In 1913 Rudakov began studying in the department of architecture of the Higher Art College, which was part of the Academy of Arts. In a year, he began his painting studies in the studio of Professor D.N. Kardovsky. An exceptional pedagogue, Kardovsky, according to Chistiakov, was able to create ?an academic institution without academic affiliations, passing on technical skills without imposing technical tricks� (A. V. Bakushinsky, A.V. Grigoriev, N.E. Radlov and D.N. Kardovsky. M., 1933, p. 50.). He helped Rudakov develop his talent freely and naturally. Also encouraging this development was that, in his pedagogical practice, Kardovsky devoted a great deal of time to questions of theory and art history.
Although Rudakov began his education in 1914, he finished it only in 1922 due to two interruptions in his education: the First World War in 1914 and the Russian Revolution in 1917. From 1918 to 1920 Rudakov was in the Red Army. He was a painter on the Baltic Fleet and helped fight illiteracy among the sailors.
Rudakov-s began supporting himself through his art as an illustrator on various periodicals and illustrated books. In 1923 his work began to be seen regularly in magazines like ?Begemot,� ?Smehach,� ?Pushka� and in the evening editions of ?Krasnaia Gazeta.�
Based on the experience he gained during that period, in 1928-1932, Rudakov produced a series of watercolors, lithographs and monotypes using the NEP (New Economic Program) as the common theme. Concurrently with the series on the NEP, Rudakov worked on a collection of watercolors under a single title ?Zapad� (The West) which represented a cycle of open interpretations inspired by the works of French painters of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Because Rudakov contributed his own feelings in those improvisations, new subjects with independent emotional content were born. The series ?Zapad� represents a novel program of dynamic perceptions of life by a painter. It is not by accident that Rudakov used the works of Van Gouge for his interpretations; he felt the works of Van Gouge to be particularly perceptive. While working on this series, Rudakov rejected the restrictions of direct visual perception. He established for himself the worth of a united image based on a realistic analysis of a nature.
In the middle of 1920s, beginning of 1930s, Rudakov painted several portraits of women and children in which a lyrical side of his talent was uncovered. In his lyrical-romantic images, the painter portrayed the innate value of the uniqueness of the individual. In the 1920s Rudakov began doing graphic design, primarily illustrations for children-s books.
From the beginning of the 1930s, book illustrations became the artist-s primary creative interest. The beginning of his intensive work in this area was a result of the burgeoning Soviet book publishing industry. The painters of that time were responsible for creating new, contemporary book designs and illustrations. Many Soviet painters were involved in this, including V.A. Favorsky, Sergey Gerasimov, V.V. Lebedev, N.A. Tyrsa, A.F. Pahomov, A.I. Kravchenko, E.A. Kibrik, D.A. Shmarinow and others. Rudakov took an honorable place among those painters.
Shagal M. Z.
Mark Zakharovich Shagal (1887-1985)
Mark Zakharovich Shagal, known today all over the world as Marc Chagall, was born on July 7, 1887, in Vitebsk, Belorussia. He was the oldest of nine brothers. His father worked in a salt herring factory, his mother took care of the household, and the grandfather taught the boy religion, instilling in him love for religion and the knowledge of the Torah. In 1906, Chagall left the Jewish elementary school he attended and began studying at Yehuda Pen's school of painting in Vitebsk. In the winter of the same year, Chagall decided to move to St Petersburg, hoping that his art would find approval there. However, he failed his first art examination. Putting his pride aside, in 1907 Chagall applied to and was accepted to the school of the Society for the Encouragement of the Arts in St. Petersburg, directed by Nikolai Roerich. Dissatisfied with the school, he transferred to Zeidenberg's private art school and later to Zvantseva's School, where he studied with Mstislav Dobuzhinskii and Lev Bakst. In 1910 he moved to Paris and found a place in the famous "La Ruche" (Beehive) in the Vaugirard district, where he met the poets Blaise Cendrars and Guillame Appolinaire, and the painters Chaim Soutine, Fernand Leger, and Robert Delaunay. Chagall always stressed the importance of Paris for his development: "In Paris, it seems to me, I have found everything, but above all, the art of craftsmanship. I owe all that I have achieved to Paris, to France, whose nature, men, the very air, were the true school of my life and art." Chagall's exposure to Cubism resulted in his attempts to incorporate the Cubist multiple points of view and geometrical shapes into his compositions, as can be seen in two of his best known early paintings, Me and My Village (1911) and Self-Portrait with Seven Fingers (1912-13).
Two years later, Chagall contributed to the Salon des Independants and Salon d' automne as well as to Larionov's Donkey's Tail exhibition in Moscow. In 1913 participated in the Target exhibition and in 1914 had his first one-man show at the Galerie der Sturm in Berlin. The same year Chagall returned to Russia and went to Vitebsk, where he married Bella Rosenberg who would become an inspiration for many of his works. From Vitebsk, the married couple moved to St. Petersburg (at that time Petrograd). Chagall contributed to the Exhibition of Painting, 1915, and a year later sent over forty paintings to the Jack of Diamonds show in Moscow. After the Revolution Chagall was active as an art educator. He moved back to Vitebsk and in 1919 became a founder, director, and the most popular teacher at the Vitebsk Academy. However, because he wanted the school to express all points of view on art, he was ousted by the Malevich fraction (Suprematists) and left Vitebsk for Moscow. In Moscow, Chagall collaborated with the Kamernyi State Jewish Theater and with the Habimah Theatre. He left Russia in 1922 and after a year in Berlin, settled in Paris in 1923. In 1924 he had the first major retrospective at the Galerie Barbazanges-Hoderbart. In the mid twenties produced illustrations to La Fontaine's Fables. Visited Palestine (1931), Holland (1932) Spain (1934-5), Poland (1935), and Italy (1937); in 1941 had to leave Germany and seek shelter in the United States. The death of Bella stopped Chagall's creativity for many months. After his return to France in 1948, the artist decided to move to the south of France and in 1950 he settled in Saint-Paul-de-Vence. Two years later, he married Valentine ("Vava") Brodskii. His new wife was an important factor in Chagall's recovery as a painter. She encouraged him to undertake large artisitc projects, for instance the cycle Biblical Message. Finished in 1966 and installed seven years later in the National Museum of the Marc Chagall Biblical Message in Nice, the paintings (see a selection below) astonish with their vivid colors and their poetic interpretations of the Biblical texts. Among the largest projects was the decoration of the ceiling of the Paris Opera (1964), and the murals for the Metropolitan Opera in New York (1965). He also explored the technique of stained-glass, designing windows for the Cathedral in Metz (1959-62), for the Hadassah Hebrew University Medical Center in Jerusalem (1960-1), for the Cathedral at Reims (1974), and for Saint Etienne Church at Mayence (1978-81). In the West, Chagall had countless exhibitions and retrospectives. In Russia, after many years of silence and disregard for the artist, an exhibition of Chagall's works from private collections was organized in Novgorod in 1968, and five years later Chagall was invited to visit Moscow in connection with a small retrospective of his work. Finally, on the centennary of the artist's birth a large exhibition opened at Pushkin Museum in Moscow, and a Chagall Museum was opened in Vitebsk.
Chagall occupies a unique place in world art. Even though at times he was slighly influenced by the contemporary developments in arts ( when he discovered Cubism, for example), throughout his long life he was an independent artist, often criticized for his lack of "realism" or for his lack of desire to explore non-objective art. The sources of his inspiration are found in his childhood, in the life of a provincial city of Vitebsk and its Jewish community, the Scriptures, and, more surprisingly, Russian folk art and icon painting. He was a poet, and his artistic visions can be considered "poetry in colors and shapes." He populated his pictures with angels, lovers, flying cows, fiddlers, circus performers, and roosters, creating lyrical poems which proclaimed the beauty of all creation, as well as his unwavering belief in the existence of miracles and in the infinite wisdom of the Creator. Despite some dark moments in his personal life, he remained an optimist, and with every brushstroke, every green, blue, or purple face of his violinists, every kiss and every embrace of his lovers, every little house or church of Vitebsk, every image of the Eiffel Tower, his paintings seem to sing the "Ode to Joy."
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October 9, 2017 | by Matt Currill | in News Splash |
Police Responsible for a Gross Breach of Privacy
New Zealand police have been tapping the phones of a prison abolitionist group in what its members say is a gross breach of privacy.
Three members of People Against Prisons Aotearoa (PAPA) discovered through court documents that their communications had been intercepted by the police for an undisclosed period of time.
Permission to monitor communications was granted on November 22, 2016, after an incident between PAPA and the Department of Corrections. The three members occupied a Corrections office, chaining themselves to a desk in protest of a transgender prisoner being kept in solitary confinement. The protesters faced charges of trespassing, but were all discharged without conviction on September 28.
The police statement to the court said that any call made or received by the monitored lines was automatically recorded and stored, available to any direct investigative staff. PAPA members do not how long the phone lines were monitored, or how the information has been used.
PAPA spokesperson Emilie Rākete told VICE that the tap was a “blatant breach to the right of privacy.” She argued that those with beliefs “inconvenient” to the government are as entitled to that right as everyone else, raising questions about the legitimacy of a police investigation into groups like PAPA.
She stated, in a press release, “It demonstrates the lengths to which the police are willing to go to undermine our organisation. This is a politically motivated attack by the New Zealand Police.”
The Search and Surveillance Act, passed in 2012, allows agencies to surveil or search a person if there are reasonable grounds to believe they had committed, or would commit, an offence. At the time the Act was passed, then Police Assistant Commissioner Malcolm Burgess did not believe it to be a significant expansion of police powers.
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Financing Medical Innovation in Africa
"Money v mosquito", The Economist, November 1st 2007.
Malaria remains a huge public health problem. With the development of drug resistance to quinine related drugs, the development of a new curative agent in artemisinin is an important development. However, experience indicates that without care in its application, artemisinin too will become ineffective as the Plasmodia develop resistance to the drug. The use of artemisinin combination therapies (ACTs), which mix the active ingredient with another drug, should prove effective to stave off the evolution of such resistance. Unfortunately artemisinin is expensive, at least in terms of African finances, and the ACTs are more so. Therefore a new financing mechanism is being developed.
A group of donors and international agencies, including the Gates Foundation and the World Bank, is now promoting a plan (which is yet to be funded) for subsidising ACTs. The Affordable Medicines Facility-malaria (AMFm), as the scheme is called, aims to subsidise the purchase of ACTs to the tune of $1.4 billion-1.9 billion over five years. The plan's boosters believe that would make prices competitive with chloroquine. They also think that artemisinin-only drugs—which would not receive the subsidy—would then be priced out of the market. The board of Roll Back Malaria, a group that co-ordinates international efforts against the disease, is due to vote on the matter this month.
Several years ago I wrote in Issues in Science and Technology:
After the creation of the Tropical Disease Research Program in 1975, new institutions were created to further encourage research on global health problems, notably the Global Forum for Health Research, the Council on Health Research and Development, the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative, and the Initiative on Public-Private Partnerships for Health. Still, the key to providing more technological innovations appropriate to developing nations and to building their health science capacity probably lies in creating more public and political support for existing institutions while improving their policies and programs.
I can't predict whether the AMFm will be approved, nor whether it will be effective if approved. But I think it illustrates the kind of thinking that we need. It would be a mechanism that would tap international financing to support a public good, and do so in a way that encourages further innovation by the pharmaceutical industry (which funds 40% of health research worldwide) oriented towards the diseases of poverty.
Labels: Africa, Health, SandT for Development, Science Policy
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Comments on the book, 1912: Wilson, Roosevelt, Taft and Debs--The Election that Changed the Country
My book club met last night to discuss 1912: Wilson, Roosevelt, Taft and Debs--The Election that Changed the Country by James Chase. The election was quite unusual in that Woodrow Wilson (the Democrat( was elected with under 42 percent of the vote, Theodore Roosevelt running for a third party (the Progressive, or the Bull Moose) was second in popular vote with 27 percent, William Howard Taft (the Republican) received 23 percent, and Eugene Debs (the Socialist) received an unprecedented and unmatched 6 percent.
Progressivism may have reached a high mark in this election with Roosevelt running formally as a progressive, Wilson including many progressive elements in his campaign, and Debs if anything to the left of the progressives. I guess that this represented a spirit at large in the country in which many people would have been concerned with the desperate working conditions suffered by many people and the recurrent serious recessions. This was a peak in power of the trusts which monopolized many industries, and indeed of the power of big finance in New York that could form trusts which demolished competition. Indeed, all the candidates seemed to offer platforms that emphasized the need for government to regulate the trusts.
The book focused not on the problems faced by the country so much as the process of politics during the election. (Only Roosevelt and Debs come off in the book as primarily concerned with the welfare of the nation.) Wilson is described as portraying himself as far less conservative than he really was, while allying himself with William Jennings Brian -- who held quite different political positions -- the kingmaker who turned the Democratice convention to Wilson's favor. In the time when primary voting was something of a straw poll not binding on delegations, Taft sewed up the party machines and the Republican nomination; it seems likely that the bosses were more concerned with their own power and the welfare of their financial backers than with ideology or the welfare of the public. Indeed, I inferred from the book that Roosevelt may have been largely motivated by his own pride and his desire for the limelight.
Looking back after nearly a century, it is clear that the world was about to enter World War I, that the United States would play a key role in that war and in the peace negotiations. Chace suggests that had Roosevelt been elected rather than Wilson the outcomes of the war and peace negotiations would have been much different, the evolution of Europe different after the war, and even that World War II might have been averted. Yet, the book suggests that there was very little attention to foreign policy during the campaign, with an emphasis on domestic policy. Politicians seemed unable to foresee the key problems of even the near future.
The book's title describes the election as changing the country. While Chace is not very positive about Wilson, he accomplished a number of things such as the creation of the Federal Reserve system and the Federal Trade Commission to regulate the trusts. His administration introduced the income tax and began military preparations in advance of entering World War I, and of course entered the war. I was impressed by how much more prepared the United States was for the war as a result of things put in place by the Wilson administration.
Yet the eight year Democratic administration, which followed many Republican administrations, was followed by three more successive Republican administrations. The election marked a local high point of socialism and the progressive movement. Certainly there has been long term trends in United States history eliminating slavery, reducing racism against African Americans and Indians, and improving the welfare of industrial workers, and enfranchising women. Yet many of the improvements came during and after the Depression.
The question came up as to the modern counterpart of the progressive movement of 1912. That movement was responsive to the impact of the industrial revolution, to the huge and misused power of the trusts, and to the horrendous problems of workers and the poor, and today/s society is quite different than that of 1912. However, it was suggested that the increased concentration of income and wealth in a small economic elite and the worsening economic conditions and social conditions experienced by most Americans have led to a modern progressive movement, albeit one with much less widespread support than that of the progressivism of 1912.
We also discussed the concept of "national interest". Why, for example, was it in the national interest for the United States to enter the war on the part of the Allies in World War I? Of course, one aspect of the answer is that the pro-war factions succeeded in convincing a majority of the public that the war was in the national interest. On the other hand, the Zimmerman telegram which offered German support to Mexico were Mexico to declare war on and invade the United States (as unrealistic as that proposal seems) clearly implied a national interest to not be invaded. We went on to question to what degree the national interest was in fact threatened in other more recent military interventions.
I note that after World War II, genocide came to be seen in international law and by many Americans as a situation which also demanded military intervention by those nations strong enough to protect those threatened by extermination. The failure to have intervened in Rwanda rankles.
In general, the book seemed easy to read, well written, and interesting, describing a period about which many of us knew less than we wanted to know. While the author might have been well advised to explicitly acknowledge the limitations of his ambition in this short book, it was probably a wise decision to focus on the political machinations of the election in a short book rather than trying to tackle a more holistic discussion of the period (which would have necessarily involved a much longer and probably a much more difficult and confusing book).
Labels: book review, History
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Replacing Neural Stem Cells in the Aging Hippocampus
Thread: Replacing Neural Stem Cells in the Aging Hippocampus
FightAging!
Today I'll point out progress towards an as yet unrealized category of stem cell treatments involving the wholesale replacement of entire stem cell populations and their niches, to remove age-related damage and sustain tissue maintenance for the long term. This will become an essential component for any future rejuvenation toolkit. From a stem cell perspective, rejuvenation has two components: firstly revert the root causes of signaling changes in blood and tissues that result in stem cell populations becoming less active; secondly, replace the stem cells themselves, scores of different types in different locations, to clear out damaged cells. The root cause of signaling changes in old individuals is, collectively, all of the forms of damage listed in the SENS proposals for rejuvenation treatments - a lot of work is yet to be accomplished there to reach even the initial goals of prototype treatments across the board. Nonetheless, it is still the case that replacement of aged stem cell populations with undamaged, pristine stem cells created from the patient's own cells is an important target for future development in the stem cell field.
Most stem cell therapies in use today are actually far removed from this goal: the transplanted cells do not live long, and do not integrate with recipient tissues. They achieve beneficial effects through a temporary alteration of the signaling environment that spurs regeneration and reduces inflammation. In effect the transplant temporarily overrules the evolved reaction to being aged and damaged and puts sleeping cells back to work - but without fixing that low level damage. So there can be some degree of rebuilding of worn tissues and organs, but the causes of aging are still present and continue to cause harm: cross-links, mitochondrial mutations, and so forth.
There are exceptions to the outcome of benefits through signaling mechanisms, however, and these exceptions include types of therapy in which cells are transplanted into the brain. Some of the earliest stem cell transplants trialed in humans aimed to treat Parkinson's disease, for example, and at least some of the transplanted cells survived and integrated into the brains of patients for the long term. This is still a considerable distance removed from a controlled repopulation of stem cell niches in all of the right places and with cells that will pick up tissue maintenance activities in exactly the right ways, but it is a step in the right direction. In the research materials linked below, scientists report on further progress along these lines, and that they were able to create new stem cell niches in brain tissue seems like an important advance:
Regenerating Memory with Neural Stem Cells
Although brains - even adult brains - are far more malleable than we used to think, they are eventually subject to age-related illnesses, like dementia, and loss of cognitive function. Someday, though, we may actually be able to replace brain cells and restore memory. Recent work hints at this possibility with a new technique of preparing donor neural stem cells and grafting them into an aged brain. The team took neural stem cells and implanted them into the hippocampus - which plays an important role in making new memories and connecting them to emotion - of an animal model, essentially enabling them to regenerate tissue.
"We're very excited to see that the aged hippocampus can accept grafted neural stem cells as superbly as the young hippocampus does and this has implications for treating age-related neurodegenerative disorders. It's interesting that even neural stem cell niches can be formed in the aged hippocampus." The team found that the neural stem cells engrafted well onto the hippocampus in the young animal models (which was expected) as well as the older ones that would be, in human terms, about 70 years old. Not only did these implanted cells survive, they divided several times to make new cells. "They had at least three divisions after transplantation. So the total yield of graft-derived neurons and glia (a type of brain cell that supports neurons) were much higher than the number of implanted cells, and we found that in both the young and aged hippocampus, without much difference between the two. What was really exciting is that in both old and young brains, a small percentage of t he grafted cells retained their 'stemness' feature and continuously produced new neurons."
This is called creating a new 'niche' of neural stem cells, and these niches seemed to be functioning well. "They are still producing new neurons at least three months after implantation, and these neurons are capable of migrating to different parts of the brain. Next, we want to test what impact, if any, the implanted cells have on behavior and determine if implanting neural stem cells can actually reverse age-related learning and memory deficits. That's an area that we'd like to study in the future."
Grafted Subventricular Zone Neural Stem Cells Display Robust Engraftment and Similar Differentiation Properties and Form New Neurogenic Niches in the Young and Aged Hippocampus
As clinical application of neural stem cell (NSC) grafting into the brain would also encompass aged people, critical evaluation of engraftment of NSC graft-derived cells in the aged hippocampus has significance. We examined the engraftment and differentiation of alkaline phosphatase-positive NSCs expanded from the postnatal subventricular zone (SVZ), 3 months after grafting into the intact young or aged rat hippocampus. Graft-derived cells engrafted robustly into both young and aged hippocampi. Although most graft-derived cells pervasively migrated into different hippocampal layers, the graft cores endured and contained graft-derived neurons.
The results demonstrate that advanced age of the host at the time of grafting has no major adverse effects on engraftment, migration, and differentiation of grafted subventricular zone-neural stem cells (SVZ-NSCs) in the intact hippocampus, as both young and aged hippocampi promoted excellent engraftment, migration, and differentiation of SVZ-NSC graft-derived cells in the present study. Furthermore, SVZ-NSC grafts showed ability for establishing neurogenic niches in non-neurogenic regions, generating new neurons for extended periods after grafting. This phenomenon will be beneficial if these niches can continuously generate new neurons and glia in the grafted hippocampus, as newly generated neurons and glia are expected to improve, not only the microenvironment, but also the plasticity and function of the aged hippocampus. Overall, these results have significance because the potential application of NSC grafting for treatment of neurodegenerative disorders at early stages of disease progression and age-related impairments would mostly involve aged persons as recipients.
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America, we are all Florida Man
Thursday, June 13, 2019 at 11:12AM
I’ve been meaning to write a Florida Man piece for some time, and while I have a longer piece I am still noodling with, a piece published last week by Bob Norman in the Columbia Journalism Review spurred me on. You should go read it now.
Seriously, it is far better than this. Again, the link is here: https://www.cjr.org/business_of_news/florida-man-news.php.
I tend to joke about being a Florida Man, but I wear the label as a signal of my own state pride. I love the place I call home, for all its many warts and shortcomings. For many, Florida has become a symbol of a dream – for Americans living north of us, that dream is often to live or retire here, in the paradise we call home. For those who come here from the Caribbean or Latin America, Florida in many ways is the New York of the late 19th and early 20th century – the point of entry to begin their own American Dream.
This is such an interesting place, in part, because we aren’t really a place in the same sense as most states. Name a state, and for most, a brand comes to mind. Not so much with Florida. We are geographic distinction, 21 million people bound together by a boundary, sharing very little when it comes to common experience, or culture.
It is why Florida is often considered to be 5 or 6 different states – not just because the state is big both geographically, and in terms of raw population, but those population centers themselves tend to somewhat different. The state isn’t so much a microcosm of America, as it is a state that reflects the places where people come from, and in the sum, we are just a collection of all those experiences.
After the 2018 election recounts, I said to the New York Times: “When people make fun of Florida, I kind of push back. It’s an interesting, bizarre, quirky, whatever-you-want-to-call-it place, but so is America. And we just reflect that in a more magnified way.” This is why, when my friends from outside the state use the term Florida Man as a pejorative, I remind them, stealing the words of Christine O’Donnell, that Florida is not a witch, we are nothing that it seems, America, we are in fact, you.
So back to that thing about state identity, for good or bad, Florida Man is one of those things people think about when they think about Florida, these often ridiculous moments that seemingly only happen here (truth is, they happen everywhere, but Florida’s broad public records laws tend to make them easier to find).
Many of these stories can be chalked up to a few things, one of which is just the sheer numbers game of a state of 21 million people – for example, put enough people in a pot, and you will find someone who thinks it is a good idea to have 7 pet raccoons, or to use his pet gator to reveal the gender of his tenth kid. Also, much of the state is still rural, and in some cases, truly wilderness, so there were always be ‘interesting’ interactions between wildlife, gators, bears, snakes, etc., and people – and sometimes, those interactions impact the narrative the other way. For example, the Florida Everglades is overrun with pythons thanks to some Florida Men who, for some reason, thought owning a python as a pet would be fun, well, until that python grew to 10 feet or more. Other stories are often just the combination of heat and alcohol.
But as Bob Norman points out, there is another, exploitive nature to the Florida Man stories, one that, whether intentionally, or inadvertently, pokes fun at the homeless, mental illness, and substance abuse.
I went through the Leadership Florida program six years ago, and one of the most impactful seminars, was one in Miami with Judge Steven Leifman. The Judge told a story after story of instances early in his career where he realized that many of the petty crimes coming to him where a symptom of the community’s failure to adequately deal with mental illness, and he pointed out that not only was Florida woefully under funding mental health care, but that we also tended have an above average size of population that was dealing with mental illness.
In fairness, on the last point, the data is a bit mixed. According to Mental Health America, when you just look at data that ranks the prevalence of mental illness, Florida tends to be one of the healthier states, but when you look at rankings of states when it comes to access to mental health treatment, Florida ranks 44th. In addition, Florida ranks third in the nation, and 13th per capita, in the number of homeless, and Florida does have a higher than the national average per capita incidence of death from drug overdose. That being said, when you add all those factors up, Florida has a lot of people dealing with mental health and/or substance abuse issues – and if even just a small percentage of those people end up in courtrooms like Judge Leifman’s, we are talking about a lot of actual people.
Again, this isn’t unique to Florida, these problems exist everywhere – and in some cases, even more acutely than they do here.
For example, I went to college in a small town in Tennessee Appalachia. The county where I went to school had, according to the most recent data, opioids prescribed at a rate of 102 prescriptions per 100 people. In the next county over, the number jumps to 141, placing it as one of the worst counties in the nation for abuse. If I took you to places in these counties, these numbers wouldn’t surprise you. Here in Florida, fortunately these rates are falling – statewide, from a rate of 75 to 60 prescriptions per 100 people over the last few years, but this is still a place where prosperity has been uneven, and real problems still exist in every community. For families who are dealing with these issues, or like mine, who have dealt with these issues, the challenges are still real. Again America, Florida is not a witch, we are just like you.
So, what should we do about Florida Man? For one, I think part of living here is embracing the zany, and outright weird. As an old ad campaign about Florida once said, “it’s different here.”
Back in Leadership Florida, one of my classmates told the story of a teacher in a Florida school who was injured when a bird flying out of the everglades dropped a fish, a fish that landed on said teacher. There will be alligators who walk through neighborhoods, as well as people who wrestle them. There’s gonna be some guy who builds a fallout shelter for his pet opossum, and a bear that takes a nap on some lady’s porch. But its more than that. Living here is embracing the diversity of the place, respecting its history, and welcoming others who come through its doors. Our state has been, and will long continue to be, a frontier.
We are 21 million people, coming from literally all corners of the globe, and all the color of life that comes with that. I think we can celebrate those things without at the same time, being exploitive of those who are honestly struggling with life, as any of us could find ourselves. When those people make news, well, we all need to be more thoughtful in how we talk about those stories – me included. And we need to not ever be content being ranked as one of the worst in the nation for access to mental health treatments.
So please go read Bob’s piece. It is more worthy of your time than mine. And if you live here, be proud of it -- but remember, next time you make fun of Florida Man, remember, he or she came from somewhere – and that somewhere, is typically us, America.
Article originally appeared on Steve Schale -- Veteran Florida Man Politico (http://steveschale.com/).
See website for complete article licensing information.
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HomeInternational tradeTTIP: Everything you need to know about the trade agreement between the EU and US
What exactly is TTIP?
It is a framework agreement that seeks to facilitate trade and investment between the US and the EU, to create the largest free trade area in the world with over 800 million citizens/consumers. As tariffs between these two powers are already quite low (around 3%), efforts are focused on what they call “nontariff barriers”. That is, the regulations governing the production and distribution of goods and services, which are quite different and concern in areas such as the manufacture of cosmetics -Europe prohibits the use of 1200 substances while the US only 12. Genetically modified organisms (GMOs) present in over 70% of food in the US and virtually banned in the EU.
What can it bring to the EU?
The Commission estimates that the European economy could grow in the best case, by 0.5% per year, and states that amount “equivalent to about 500 euros per household”. They anger start. Marina Albiol, MEP and spokesman for IU (left wing party) in the European Parliament, believe that we must take “shamelessness” to make this statement, “as if the benefits would be shared with European families. And even if it did, for whom would it be? The chemical industry could have more benefits, but would be for shareholders,” he says. Some experts also note that these forecasting models used by the Commission are the same people who did not see the crisis coming in the US subprime, or those who used the EU to prescribe austerity warn. The alleged generation of job creation does not generate consensus. The best forecasts estimate that 600,000 jobs will be created in 2027.
What’s the secrecy?
In January 2015 the European Ombudsman urged the Commission to improve transparency. “It is acting with complete obscurantism, especially regarding citizenship,” criticizes Marina Albiol, who believes is intentional “because the more people know about the TTIP, the more you stand against.” The European Commission has begun to publish some documents on its website, and go to inform Parliament before and after each round of negotiations.
MEPs have at their disposal some documents (not all) can be found in a small reading room, six square meters without windows. Before entering, they have to leave out mobile, paper, pen and any personal items, and sign a document committing themselves not to disclose information about what to see. Within a pen and they give them a special role, and have an official behind while taking notes.
Who supports the “Yes” vote and the “No”
In favor are the governments of each of the member states of the EU, which drew its mandate to the Commission, and obviously businesses, which were also represented at the Brussels seminar. In the European Parliament the support groups of the European People’s Party (EPP), the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats (ALDE) and the Socialists and Democrats (S&D) having some internal division. They oppose the treated groups United Left (GUE / NLG) and the Greens (The Greens / EFA), and also the extreme right. Civil society has been actively mobilized against TTIP.
Lobbies Say What?
Companies are delighted. Business Services, argues that the TTIP facilitate the Europeans to move to America to work, or that European companies can compete in public contests there. Business Europe believes will help SMEs to access the US market, and as many advocates said that the standards of US and EU are similar, especially when compared to countries like Vietnam, which together can help establish international standards.
COPA-COGECA, the association of European farmers and winers, believes it will be good to facilitate the entry of European products in the US, but says he would not be willing, for example, to allow growth promoters (hormones) in bovine. The European Consumers Association (BEUC), also believed to be positive because it will have a wider and cheaper product offer.
Those who oppose TTIP claim that the meetings that the European Commission had to prepare for negotiations, 92% was with the private sector, and only 4% with advocacy public groups of interest and 4% with other actors such as academic experts and public administrations.
Why is there so much controversy?
There are several thorny issues that ignite all alarms. The European Commission has endeavored to clarify “myths” about the TTIP, by publishing documents and summary sheets. Reading them seems to be nothing to worry about. The Commission ensures no loss of sovereignty of member states, as feared, with arbitration tribunals or the process of regulatory cooperation, that workers’ rights and consumer protection will not be compromised and that public services they will be insured.
Is it undemocratic for citizens?
Arbitration courts are one of the hottest points of the debate. United States has not acted, and is waiting for the EU to reach a common position. These courts (in English ISDS) are private mechanisms to settle disputes between states and investors.
The European left-wing parties go far beyond and is resolutely opposed. They believe that these courts would inhibit not only short term but stably the ability of states to legislate for the rights of their citizens.
What’s left for workers?
TTIP detractors fear that by increasing competition with the US, labor rights, more established in the EU, resently. The United States has ratified only two of the eight core conventions of the International Labor Organization (ILO), and the most critical MEPs see a problem here. The Spanish Rodríguez Piñero believes it will be difficult for Washington to sign them all, because it says that the powers are federal states. It also downplays the ILO Conventions: “You tell me in Romania ILO Conventions … The red line are labor rights, and we will have to see how are they guaranteed”.
Threat to our health? And the Public sector?
The European Commission ensures that only a legislative harmonization where regulation between the US and the EU is similar, as in the automotive industry apply. For the rest, such as genetically modified organisms or cosmetics, it promised that the EU would maintain its high levels regulatory and TTIP not change the treaties establishing the European legislative process.
Tags:tipp, trade, ue, usa
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On this episode we review the album "The God Box" by David Banner, "Neva Left" by Snoop Dogg, "The King & I" by Faith Evans & The Notorious B.I.G., "Revenge" by XXXTENTACION, "Burries" by Che Ecru.
TRC 67 Playlist iTunes
TRC 67 Playlist Tidal
On this weeks episode we review the albums "Ether" by B.o.B., "Back 2 Life" by LeToya Luckett, "Saint Or Sinner" by Sir The Baptist, "Bloom" by Machine Gun Kelly, and "The 7 Series" by Kid Ink.
On this weeks episode we review the albums "Everybody" by Logic, "All The Beauty In This Whole World" by Brother Ali, "There's Really A Wolf" by Russ, "Loverboy" by Pryde, "Mass Ave & Lenox" by Avenue.
On this episode we review the albums "Shine" by Wale, "Strength Of A Woman" by Mary J. Blige, "Kiddo" by Jessie Reyez, "HerStory" by Young M.A., and "My Moment" by Tee Grizzley.
On this weeks episode we review the albums “Playboi Carti” by Playboi Carti, “Dopamine” by Mila J, “At What Cost” by Goldlink, “A Time And Place” by Anoyd, and “Digital Drug Dealer”, by Blackbear.
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