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It’s a website, not a box
This website is pretty tripped out:
http://www.pandora.com
It's a new online music service that provides music streams (like radio, but online) instead of downloads. What stands out about this particular site is that it is based on a project called the Music Genome Project (http://www.pandora.com/mgp.shtml), in which trained musicians evaluate music based on multiple technical characteristics to attempt to extract something akin to DNA of musical style.
You go to the site, enter a song or band you like, and it serves up
songs by other bands that have similar characteristics, and that you
will presumably also like. I put in "The Grudge" by Tool, and so far I
got "Ghost of the Navigator" by Iron Maiden, "Somebody, Someone" by
Korn, and right now it's playing "Break You" by Lamb of God. All
rather different bands, but listening from an analytical perspective I
can certainly hear the similarities. I already knew I liked the Tool
song, and back in high school I was the biggest Iron Maiden fan in the
world (although the song they played is from a more recent album that
I've never heard) and I like that song quite a bit. I've always kind
of thought that I would hate Korn because they're in that sort of
rap-rock nu-metal kind of vein, but the song they played was actually
pretty good. Funny, I kind of enjoyed it more before I knew it was
Korn… I'm so shallow. The Lamb of God song is really heavy, and
pleasingly technical rhythmically, structurally, and in instrumental
part writing. I probably would have been super into them in high
school when I was in a really big metal phase. It was a good song, but
I don't know how much I would listen to it now.
Ooh, update… now they've kicked me way back in time to Soundgarden's
"Rusty Cage!" Crazy. Definitely doesn't seem to fit in character as
much with the other songs, but again, listening analytically, I can
hear why it's in there. I see now that you can also tell it whether
you like a particular song that's playing, and it will alter the
profile of what it plays for you. It will also tell you why it's
playing a certain song with the others… really freaking cool. Too
bad I can't afford to actually subscribe!
Composer of music and sonic art. Percussionist, guitarist, computer musician. Composition/theory/electronic music professor. Husband and father. Catholic. Food and beer enthusiast. Perpetually dissatisfied with the contents of my sock drawer. View all posts by Scott
Posted on October 7, 2005 April 30, 2006 Author ScottCategories music
One thought on “It’s a website, not a box”
Blasco,
Your dang e-mail is not attached to your blog, hence the public reply!
No, you won’t risk my wrath concerning the homosexuality issue, especially since half of what I say on homosexuality (or, at least, half of what I’ve said lately) is me playing Catholic devil’s advocate. Still, I am familiar with the modern exegesis of Scripture which apparently describes a “new teaching” (or, at least, a “new attitude”) on homosexuality. I’m also aware of the counter claims which can be made coming not from the far right of evangelical Bible thumpers but from the pages of critical-historical scholarship on the cultural meaning of texts and the words used. I don’t believe the Christian condemnation of homosexual behavior as sinful–evident in the earliest post-New Testament writings–was predicated upon a misreading or misunderstanding of texts written within their own lifetime.
Perhaps the clearest way to summarize my social views on homosexuality would be to rip a quote from one of my favorite scholars, Harry V. Jaffa, who states: “No civilized person today wants to persecute homosexuals, or to see them suffer and die from horrible diseases. But it is equally true that no civilized person should wish to see homosexuality accepted as an equally valid ‘alternative lifestyle.'”
I have more to write (so much more!), but I’ll let this sit for now. It’s good to see you made it in one piece to sunny California. Take care.
Next Next post: Momentia/Minutia premiere at WMU
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Langues:enesfr
Know the Terrain Vol. 4: The advance French structure
The information explosion has led to a massive increase in opening theory. But how often do you win a game with a prepared line? What gives strong players the edge over their opponents is not some blockbuster novelty, but a deep understanding of the pawn structures to which their openings lead – an understanding that lasts into the middlegame and endgame, and is transferable between different openings with similar structures. In this DVD, Sam Collins looks at the Advance French Structure (white pawns on d4 and e5 against black pawns on d5 and e6, with an open c-file) which, while characteristic of 3.e5 in the French, is also typical of other French variations, the Advance Caro-Kann, the Queen’s Indian, the Catalan, the Slav and various Anti-Sicilians. The blocked centre forces play to the wings. White will normally concentrate on furthering his kingside ambitions, supported by the space advantage conferred by his pawn on e5, either by piece play or by the typical pawn advances h4-h5 and f4-f5. Black, for his part, seeks queenside counterplay, simplification, or a well-timed break with ...f6 leading to a central battle. The relatively closed nature of the positions leads to strategic play where knowledge of typical plans for both sides is of decisive importance. Video running time: 3 hrs. 36 min.
Niveaux: Avancé, Joueur de tournoi
Know the Terrain Vol. 2: The Capablanca Structure
Know the Terrain Vol. 5: The Philidor Structure
The Philidor structure (White pawns on d4 and e4, Black pawns on d6 and e5), is a fundamental position in the open games. In his new training course, IM Sam Collins shows you just how much explosive power is packed into this apparently simple structure.
Know the Terrain Vol.6: Isolated Queen's Pawn
In this DVD, Sam Collins examines the Isolated Queen’s Pawn (IQP) and associated structures. Using games almost exclusively from grandmaster praxis in the last two years, Collins explains all of the major ideas for playing with and against the IQP.
Know the Terrain Vol. 3: Central Majority
Know the Terrain Vol. 1: The Carlsbad
The Queen’s Gambit Declined Exchange Variation
The Sicilian with 3.Bb5
The closed Sicilian
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Tag: R. Kelly Interview Cold Open
R. Kelly Interview Cold Open | Season 44 Episode 15
Gayle King… Leslie Jones
R. Kelly… Kenan Thompson
Cameraman… Beck Bennett
Crisis manager… Chris Redd
[Starts with Gayle King in her interview set]
Gayle King: You’re watching a CBS news special. I am your host, Gayle King. And this is part three of my interview with R&B star Robert Kelly. Also known as R. Kelly. Also knows as individual who number one’s. Thank you for being here Robert.
[Cut to R. Kelly]
R. Kelly:Thank you for having me and please just call me victim.
[Cut to Gayle King and R. Kelly]
Gayle King: I am not going to do that. I guess my first question for you, Robert is, why exactly are you doing this interview?
R. Kelly: Because people think I’m some kind of a monster. I’m here to remove all of that. My lawyer was telling me no. But my ego, my ego was telling me yes.
Gayle King: Robert.
R. Kelly: Please call me victim.
Gayle King: No. [Cut to Gayle King] Tell me some of the things that people are saying about you?
R. Kelly:That I have a harem of young girls and I started a – what’s the word? It starts with a Q.
[Cut to Gayle King]
Gayle King: You mean cult?
R. Kelly:Yeah, that’s it.
Gayle King: Right, and why do you think people are saying that about you?
R. Kelly: Probably because it looks like I have a harem of young girls and I started a cult. Look, I made a lot of mistakes in my life. Maybe I can’t read or write or math. But I’m still a person. I put on my pants one sleeve at a time just like everybody else.
Gayle King: What about the lifetime docu-series that interviewed numerous women, family members and your former tour manager, [Music starts playing in the backgroung] all saying the same thing.
R. Kelly: [Singing] ♪It’s 10 in the morning. And I’m talking to Oprah’s friend.
♪If I can just get through this, everybody’s gonna love me again.
[Music stops] [Cut to Gayle King]
Gayle King: Robert. The docu-series.
R. Kelly: Oh, right. These people made a six part documentary about me, six. That’s almost ten. And not one of them said a nice thing about me. They made it seem like I was the devil. I’m not the devil. And even if I was, you can’t think of one nice thing to say about the devil? I can. Nice horns. Gives good advice.
Gayle King: So why do you think people are making these lines up about you?
R. Kelly:For money, obviously. I’m a very rich man. And people are always trying to take advantage of me.
Gayle King: Well, if you’re so rich, why did it take so long to pay 160,000 you owe back in child support?
[Cut to R. Kelly][Music starts playing]
R. Kelly:[Singing] ♪Damn, that’s a good question, I wasn’t expecting that
♪ Now I got to switch directions and get some sympathy back
Because I’m a very poor man.
Gayle King: But Robert.
R. Kelly:Victim.
Gayle King: No. You sold millions of records and made millions of dollars.
R. Kelly:More than millions. Thousands!
Gayle King: Millions is more than thousands, Robert.
R. Kelly:Okay, my bad.
Gayle King: So, what happened to all the money?
R. Kelly:I don’t know. Ask my—who’s the guy you pay to watch all your money? It starts with a Q.
Gayle King: Your accountant?
R. Kelly:No, my cousin Reggie, that’s it. [Cut to Gayle King and R. Kelly] You know what, this is all great stuff. But maybe we should save some of it for the interview.
Gayle King: What are you talking about? This is the interview.
R. Kelly:For real? Then where are the cameras?
Gayle King: There’s literally one right in front of you.
[Cut to Cameraman behind the camera]
Cameraman: Hey!
R. Kelly:You all just keep your camera out in the open like that? Y’all some freaks?
Gayle King: Just tell me why all those women would say the same things about you if they weren’t true?
R. Kelly: You can start a rumor about any celebrity just like that. All you got to do is push a button on your phone and say R. Kelly did this to me. And then attach a video of me doing that thing. And people will believe you. It’s scary.
Gayle King: I really want to laugh right now. But I can’t tell if this interview is a prank on you or a prank on me.
[Cut to R. Kelly] [Music starts playing]
R. Kelly:♪This interview is going great
♪Oprah’s friend thinks I’m innocent.
♪I should be a lawyer
or maybe I should run for president
Gayle King: Stop singing.
R. Kelly:Oh, you can hear that?
Gayle King: Yes, yes. Now, tell me why were you hanging out at McDonald’s?
R. Kelly:Okay, first of all, I did not go to a McDonald’s.
Gayle King: Boy, we saw you at McDonald’s.
R. Kelly: Okay, fine, I love McDonald’s. It’s my favorite restaurant in the world. They got that burger that I like, what’s it called? Starts with a Q.
Gayle King: Big Macs?
Gayle King: Look, I’m just going to ask you plainly, have you ever held women against their will?
R. Kelly: Why would I do that? That would be stupid. How stupid would it be for me, R. Kelly, with all the crazy legal things I’ve don’t in my past, on tape and gotten away with, Scott Free, to do it again? How stupid do you think I am? Is this a camera? [Cut to Gayle King and R. Kelly. R. Kelly pointing at the plant behind him suspecting there’s a hidden camera.]
Gayle King: No, no. That’s a plant.
R. Kelly: Okay, guys, think for a minute. Use your brains. Why would I do these things? [R. Kelly getting emotional, stands from his chair] For 30 years. I gave y’all trapped in the closet. Feeling on your booty. Age ain’t nothing but a number. And so many other clues. And this is how you repay me? I don’t have anybody left in my corner. 30 Years. [Crisis manager walks in to cool R. Kelly down]
Crisis manager: Okay, brother. Chill.
R. Kelly: That’s almost a decade!
Gayle King: Who the hell is this?
R. Kelly: Oh, this is my crisis manager. How am I doing?
Crisis Manager: Oh, you killing it right now Kells. Oh, you looking real good out here.
R. Kelly: Do I look sympathetic?
Crisis Manager: Damn, specially when you’re screaming at that lady, man, real pleasant. Now, we’re coming down the home stretch, all right? Crisis averted.
R. Kelly:Okay, [Cut to R. Kelly] I am ready to start the interview.
Gayle King: The interview is over. Robert, [Cut to Gayle King] you’ve been combative, defensive and completely unhinged. But somehow you expect us to believe you’re completely innocent.
R. Kelly: That would be ideal, yes. And now, I humbling await your decision, miss Jail King.
Gayle King: What? My name is Gayle King with a G.
R. Kelly:So you’re not the Jail King? Then what am I doing here?
Gayle King: Boy, you are not right.
R. Kelly:So you think I made things worse?
Gayle King: Yes, you definitely made them worse.
R. Kelly:Scale of 1 to 10, how much worse?
Gayle King: 13.
R. Kelly: So is that highest? Okay, fine. I guess there’s only one thing left to say, Jail King. [Cut to Gayle King and R. Kelly. R. Kelly faces the plant where he thinks the hidden camera is] Live from New York—
Gayle King: It’s over fool. Right here. [Gayle King and R. Kelly face the camera]
Gayle King and R. Kelly: Live from New York, it’s Saturday Night.
Author Don Roy KingPosted on May 16, 2019 December 11, 2019 Categories 2019Tags Beck Bennett, Cameraman, Chris Redd, Crisis manager, Gayle King, Kenan Thompson, Leslie Jones, R. Kelly, R. Kelly Interview Cold Open, Season 44Leave a comment on R. Kelly Interview Cold Open | Season 44 Episode 15
SNL Transcripts: Tom Arnold: 12/05/92
SNL Transcripts: Jon Heder: 10/08/05
SNL Transcripts: Dyan Cannon: 05/15/76: Leon & Mary Russell perform “Daylight”
SNL Transcripts: Jimmy Fallon
SNL Transcripts: Robert DeNiro: 12/04/10: The Abacus Conundrum
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Моля обърни внимание: някои страници в момента са достъпни само на английски.
ТВОЯ АКАУНТ, {{loggedInUserFirstName}} {{loggedInUserLastName}}!
Имейлни предпочитания
🌐 Български (bg)
Dr. Dain Heer is an internationally renowned author, speaker and facilitator of consciousness and change. For 15 years now, Dain has been inviting people to embrace their true greatness—people from every culture, country, age and social strata of society.
Originally trained as a chiropractor, he has a completely different approach to healing by facilitating people to tap into and recognise their own abilities and knowing.
He is best known for his powerful energetic transformation process, called The Energetic Synthesis of Being and for being the co-creator of Access Consciousness. Reaching far beyond what people say with words, Dain looks at the energy of what is being presented and is able to invite change at the core of each being he comes across. He invites people to truly live—to live without apology, with total presence, no longer needing to hide their differences and unique capacities from the world.
What if it is our differences embraced rather than judged and made wrong, that will bring about a greater world?
In his talks and workshops, his unique way of facilitating provides step by step energetic processes to get people out of the answers, conclusions and judgments that are keeping them stuck in a cycle of no choice and no change – leading them into the moments of awe that have the power to change anything.
For Dr. Dain, judgment is the biggest killer on the planet, especially the judgment of ourselves. Based on his own life experience, he asks:
What if we could get out of the wrongness of ourselves and see every wrongness, the places where judge ourselves the most, as a strongness? What would be possible then?
Every year, Dain receives thousands of emails from readers who say that his most recent book, Being You Changing the World, inspired them to live. Somehow he is able to lead people out of their self-criticism and innate feeling of never being enough into a sense of question and wonder and gratitude for being alive. Dain comes from a broken family, growing up with his mother in a ghetto area of Los Angeles. During these years, he was exposed to mental, physical, emotional, sexual and monetary abuse. Everything he chose and wanted was taken from him. Very early on, he learned that he didn’t own anything.
Yet, Dain never chose to be a victim. Instead he discovered the power of total allowance, courage, and resilience. He learned to transform life’s challenges into a gift of strength, awareness and continuous questions. Along the way, what came forward in him was a true kindness of being, and a phenomenal knowing that has made him an agent of change rarely seen in this world. Today he is acknowledged worldwide for his unique perspectives on consciousness and personal transformation, that are unlike anything else out there.
Dain is a Doctor of Chiropractic, born and raised in California, USA. He hosts a regular radio show entitled Conversations in Consciousness on Voice of America and has been a guest on hundreds of nationally syndicated radio shows. When Dr. Dain Heer isn’t facilitating classes or speaking at events around the world, he’s busy appearing in various media outlets sharing practical tools that offer greater possibilities and new choices for living. He hosts a regular radio show with Gary Douglas, the Founder of Access Consciousness, entitled Conversations in Consciousness. It’s a show that will literally turn your reality upside down with conversations that will introduce a totally new perspective of what is truly possible.
He also appears regularly on the Dr. Pat Show, Voice of America and is a regular guest on internationally syndicated radio shows. He’s been featured on the cover of Insight and Om Times Magazines and has appeared on numerous TV shows including the Good Morning show in New Zealand, The Circle and Morning Show – Australia, Fox News, Morning Show, Toronto, Breakfast Television Vancouver, Great Day Houston and numerous shows on Gaiam TV.
Being You Facilitator Trainer
If you have the choice between knowing and thinking, which is faster? Knowing or thinking? Knowing, actually. Thinking is a linear construct of your mind. Knowing is instantaneous! The only time difficulties arise is when you go against your knowing. What if when you are being you, when you follow your knowing, the walls to limitation just…dissolve? Here is a video from me about when I discovered that being you is what changes everything.
“What if you, being you, are the gift, the change and the possibility this world requires?”
- Dr. Dain Heer
The Being You, Changing the World Events are about stepping into the amazing possibilities of you and the gift you are here to be in the world. Building on Dr. Dain Heer’s book ‘Being You, Changing the World’, Dr. Heer uses the tools of Access Consciousness in combination with the unique transformational energy process he has developed, called The Energetic Synthesis of Being.
Energetic Synthesis of Being Class
This 3-day class takes you deeper into the wondrous adventure of Dr. Dain Heer's Energetic Synthesis of Being Class (ESB). The ESB is a unique way of transforming limitations into possibilities and healing, for you, the world and the planet.
Symphony of Possibilities
Are you aware that your capacities with energies are unique? This class is truly on the creative edge of Access Consciousness. During this 4-day advanced training with Dr. Dain Heer, you will become intimately aware of energies and learn how to truly utilize them to create your life, living and a totally different reality!
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Li Ka-shing-tied Horizons Ventures: Trends in our food investments
TOPICS:AgricultureFood & BeverageHong KongHorizons VenturesPrivate Equity
Hong Kong currency notes
Posted By: Leslie Shaffer Thursday, 21 November 2019 15:47:59
Solina Chua, a co-founder of Horizons Ventures, said Wednesday climate change is a driver of firm’s interest in food-based investments.
“This is a key moment for food technology. A lot of Asian countries are vigilant about our food security in the backdrop of environmental challenges,” she said at the Asia-Pacific Agri-Food Innovation Week in Singapore.
Horizons Ventures, with at least US$150 million under management across its funds, is a Hong Kong-based venture capital firm which manages tycoon Li Ka-shing’s private investment interests.
Chua said that right now, Horizons Ventures is “all about beverages,” and is examining beverage opportunities, particularly in functional drinks.
She noted that while she was initially “laughed at” over her views on Investments in food technologies such as urban farming, these are now becoming more mainstream, with technological changes.
“It all goes back to security and how do we make sure that cities like us [Hong Kong and Singapore] very reliant on the financial industries and services could morph ourselves into the huge industries of alternate proteins,” she said. “Who could have imagined that together with computing power, AI, [synthetic sciences] can bring forth new yield … and dramatically change cost structure.”
Chua also noted that new food products now have alternative routes to customers.
Previously, start-ups could be stymied from getting into supermarkets by high costs for shelf space and the need to give stores a cut of the profits, she said.
But now new products can get traction by launching prototypes over the internet, with customers often willing to look at the technology and try out the product, she said.
As an example, she cited “cowless milk,” which initially sold out over the internet in mere hours.
Economy and Trade, Stocks
UOB KayHian: China auto play selloff is a buying opportunity
Singapore share buybacks Friday: Stamford Land, Eurosports, Food Empire, CDW, Global Investments
Procurri agrees to non-binding deal to sell TPM business for US$115 million to Park Place
Commodities, Property, Stocks
Singapore share buybacks Wednesday: UOB, OCBC, Olam, Bumitama Agri, POSH
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Bean Stock
Back to Language Selection
About Bean Stock
Your First Grant
Your Grant Vested
What to Do with Your Shares
-- scroll up --
-- scroll down --
SBUX 93.62 (+1.04) 2020-01-17 ET
Starbucks Board of Directors has approved the November 15, 2017 Bean Stock grant. Grants will be viewable to eligible partners at Fidelity’s NetBenefits by December 11 and grant notices will be sent to each eligible partner in late November or early December.
Visit netbenefits.com or call a Fidelity representative toll-free.
Get the most out of your Bean Stock — understand how it works, how you’ll receive value and what to expect.
Eligible partners are granted Bean Stock Restricted Stock Units (RSUs), which turn into shares of Starbucks stock over a two-year period. To receive shares, you must be continuously employed during that waiting period, called vesting.
Simply put, if you stay employed by Starbucks for at least one year from the grant date with no breaks in service, you’ll receive the first half of your Bean Stock. If you remain employed two years from the grant date, you’ll receive the second half. Once you own the shares, you can hold or sell them – it’s up to you.
For each RSU, you get one share of Starbucks stock.
No need to enroll – you are eligible if you:
Are hired by Starbucks as of 1 May of the fiscal year before the grant date,
Are in a position up to, but not including the director level, and
Work in a company owned market (licensed/franchise store are not eligible).
© 2020 Starbucks Coffee Company.
This site highlights the terms of “Starbucks 2005 Company-Wide Sub-Plan to the Amended & Restated 2005 Long-Term Equity Incentive Plan.” If a discrepancy should arise between this information and the official plan documents including your award agreement, the official plan documents govern in all cases. The Company reserves the right at its discretion with or without notice to review, change, amend or cancel the plan at any time. The language on this site does not constitute a guarantee of employment. Nor does any of the material on this site itself in any way constitute a contract of employment or a contract to continue to offer the plan described herein. This site does not constitute an offer or invitation to buy any securities. Any offer to buy securities from Starbucks would only be made by means of a prospectus in accordance with the Securities Act of 1933, as amended.
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Search Console Help
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Starter Guide
Who is this guide for?
If you own, manage, monetize, or promote online content via Google Search, this guide is meant for you. You might be the owner of a growing and thriving business, the webmaster of a dozen sites, the SEO specialist in a Web agency or a DIY SEO ninja passionate about the mechanics of Search : this guide is meant for you. If you're interested in having a complete overview of the basics of SEO according to our best practices, you are indeed in the right place. This guide won't provide any secrets that'll automatically rank your site first in Google (sorry!), but following the best practices outlined below will hopefully make it easier for search engines to crawl, index and understand your content.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is often about making small modifications to parts of your website. When viewed individually, these changes might seem like incremental improvements, but when combined with other optimizations, they could have a noticeable impact on your site's user experience and performance in organic search results. You're likely already familiar with many of the topics in this guide, because they're essential ingredients for any web page, but you may not be making the most out of them.
You should build a website to benefit your users, and any optimization should be geared toward making the user experience better. One of those users is a search engine, which helps other users discover your content. Search Engine Optimization is about helping search engines understand and present content. Your site may be smaller or larger than our example site and offer vastly different content, but the optimization topics we discuss below should apply to sites of all sizes and types. We hope our guide gives you some fresh ideas on how to improve your website, and we'd love to hear your questions, feedback, and success stories in the Google Webmaster Help Forum1.
We hope you will enjoy the content and we hope to hear and integrate your feedback via our Google support Forums
Feel free to save, print off the guide responsibly and re-share it: let's improve the quality of the web.
The Google Search Quality team
Help Google find your content
Tell Google which pages shouldn't be crawled
Help Google (and users) understand your content
Manage your appearance in Google Search results
Organize your site hierarchy
Optimize your content
Optimize your images
Make your site mobile-friendly
Analyze your search performance and user behavior
Appendix: Link URLs used in this paper
Here's a short glossary of important terms used in this guide:
Index - Google stores all web pages that it knows about in its index. The index entry for each page describes the content and location (URL) of that page. To index is when Google fetches a page, reads it, and adds it to the index: Google indexed several pages on my site today.
Crawl - The process of looking for new or updated web pages. Google discovers URLs by following links, by reading sitemaps, and by many other means. Google crawls the web, looking for new pages, then indexes them (when appropriate).
Crawler - Automated software that crawls (fetches) pages from the web and indexes them.
Googlebot - The generic name of Google's crawler. Googlebot crawls the web constantly.
SEO - Search engine optimization: the process of making your site better for search engines. Also the job title of a person who does this for a living: We just hired a new SEO to improve our presence on the web.
Are you on Google?
Determine whether your site is in Google's index - Do a site: search for your site's home URL. If you see results, you're in the index. For example, a search for "site:wikipedia.org" returns these results2.
If your site isn't in Google - Although Google crawls billions of pages, it's inevitable that some sites will be missed. When our crawlers miss a site, it's frequently for one of the following reasons:
The site isn't well connected from other sites on the web
You've just launched a new site and Google hasn't had time to crawl it yet
The design of the site makes it difficult for Google to crawl its content effectively
Google received an error when trying to crawl your site
Your policy blocks Google from crawling the site
How do I get my site on Google?
We offer webmaster guidelines4 for building a Google-friendly website. While there's no guarantee that our crawlers will find a particular site, following these guidelines should help make your site appear in our search results.
Google Search Console provides tools to help you submit your content to Google and monitor how you're doing in Google Search. If you want, Search Console can even send you alerts on critical issues that Google encounters with your site. Sign up for Search Console5.
Here are a few basic questions to ask yourself about your website when you get started.
Is my website showing up on Google?
Do I serve high-quality content to users?
Is my local business showing up on Google?
Is my content fast and easy to access on all devices?
Is my website secure?
You can find additional getting started information on http://g.co/webmasters6
The rest of this document provides guidance on how to improve your site for search engines, organized by topic. You can download a short, printable checklist of tips from http://g.co/WebmasterChecklist7.
Do you need an SEO expert?
An SEO ("search engine optimization") expert is someone trained to improve your visibility on search engines. By following this guide, you should learn enough to be well on your way to an optimized site. In addition to that, you may want to consider hiring an SEO professional that can help you audit your pages.
Deciding to hire an SEO is a big decision that can potentially improve your site and save time. Make sure to research the potential advantages of hiring an SEO, as well as the damage that an irresponsible SEO can do to your site. Many SEOs and other agencies and consultants provide useful services for website owners, including:
Review of your site content or structure
Technical advice on website development: for example, hosting, redirects, error pages, use of JavaScript
Management of online business development campaigns
Expertise in specific markets and geographies
Before beginning your search for an SEO, it's a great idea to become an educated consumer and get familiar with how search engines work. We recommend going through the entirety of this guide and specifically these resources:
Google 101: How Google crawls, indexes and serves the web8
Google Webmaster Guidelines9
How to hire an SEO10
If you're thinking about hiring an SEO, the earlier the better. A great time to hire is when you're considering a site redesign, or planning to launch a new site. That way, you and your SEO can ensure that your site is designed to be search engine-friendly from the bottom up. However, a good SEO can also help improve an existing site.
For a detailed rundown on the need for hiring an SEO and what things to look out for, you can read our Help Center article "Do you need an SEO"11
The first step to getting your site on Google is to be sure that Google can find it. The best way to do that is to submit a sitemap. A sitemap is a file on your site that tells search engines about new or changed pages on your site. Learn more about how to build and submit a sitemap12.
Google also finds pages through links from other pages. See Promote your site later in this document to learn how to encourage people to discover your site.
For non-sensitive information, block unwanted crawling by using robots.txt
A "robots.txt" file tells search engines whether they can access and therefore crawl parts of your site. This file, which must be named "robots.txt", is placed in the root directory of your site. It is possible that pages blocked by robots.txt can still be crawled, so for sensitive pages you should use a more secure method.
You may not want certain pages of your site crawled because they might not be useful to users if found in a search engine's search results. If you do want to prevent search engines from crawling your pages, Google Search Console has a friendly robots.txt generator to help you create this file. Note that if your site uses subdomains and you wish to have certain pages not crawled on a particular subdomain, you'll have to create a separate robots.txt file for that subdomain. For more information on robots.txt, we suggest this Webmaster Help Center guide on using robots.txt files13.
Read about several other ways to prevent content from appearing in search results.14
Avoid:
Don't let your internal search result pages be crawled by Google. Users dislike clicking a search engine result only to land on another search result page on your site.
Allowing URLs created as a result of proxy services to be crawled.
For sensitive information, use more secure methods
Robots.txt is not an appropriate or effective way of blocking sensitive or confidential material. It only instructs well-behaved crawlers that the pages are not for them, but it does not prevent your server from delivering those pages to a browser that requests them. One reason is that search engines could still reference the URLs you block (showing just the URL, no title or snippet) if there happen to be links to those URLs somewhere on the Internet (like referrer logs). Also, non-compliant or rogue search engines that don't acknowledge the Robots Exclusion Standard could disobey the instructions of your robots.txt. Finally, a curious user could examine the directories or subdirectories in your robots.txt file and guess the URL of the content that you don't want seen.
In these cases, use the noindex tag if you just want the page not to appear in Google, but don't mind if any user with a link can reach the page. For real security, though, you should use proper authorization methods, like requiring a user password, or taking the page off your site entirely.
Let Google see your page the same way a user does
When Googlebot crawls a page, it should see the page the same way an average user does15. For optimal rendering and indexing, always allow Googlebot access to the JavaScript, CSS, and image files used by your website. If your site's robots.txt file disallows crawling of these assets, it directly harms how well our algorithms render and index your content. This can result in suboptimal rankings.
Recommended action:
Use the URL Inspection tool16. It will allow you to see exactly how Googlebot sees and renders your content, and it will help you identify and fix a number of indexing issues on your site.
Create unique, accurate page titles
A <title> tag tells both users and search engines what the topic of a particular page is. The <title> tag should be placed within the <head> element of the HTML document. You should create a unique title for each page on your site.
Create good titles and snippets in search results
If your document appears in a search results page, the contents of the title tag may appear in the first line of the results (if you're unfamiliar with the different parts of a Google search result, you might want to check out the anatomy of a search result video17).
The title for your homepage can list the name of your website/business and could include other bits of important information like the physical location of the business or maybe a few of its main focuses or offerings.
Accurately describe the page's content
Choose a title that reads naturally and effectively communicates the topic of the page's content.
Choosing a title that has no relation to the content on the page.
Using default or vague titles like "Untitled" or "New Page 1".
Create unique titles for each page
Each page on your site should ideally have a unique title, which helps Google know how the page is distinct from the others on your site. If your site uses separate mobile pages, remember to use good titles on the mobile versions too.
Using a single title across all of your site's pages or a large group of pages.
Use brief, but descriptive titles
Titles can be both short and informative. If the title is too long or otherwise deemed less relevant, Google may show only a portion of it or one that's automatically generated in the search result. Google may also show different titles depending on the user's query or device used for searching.
Using extremely lengthy titles that are unhelpful to users.
Stuffing unneeded keywords in your title tags.
Use the "description" meta tag
A page's description meta tag gives Google and other search engines a summary of what the page is about. A page's title may be a few words or a phrase, whereas a page's description meta tag might be a sentence or two or even a short paragraph. Like the <title> tag, the description meta tag is placed within the <head> element of your HTML document.
What are the merits of description meta tags?
Description meta tags are important because Google might use them as snippets for your pages. Note that we say "might" because Google may choose to use a relevant section of your page's visible text if it does a good job of matching up with a user's query. Adding description meta tags to each of your pages is always a good practice in case Google cannot find a good selection of text to use in the snippet. The Webmaster Central Blog has informative posts on improving snippets with better description meta tags18 and better snippets for your users19. We also have a handy Help Center article on how to create good titles and snippets20.
Accurately summarize the page content
Write a description that would both inform and interest users if they saw your description meta tag as a snippet in a search result. While there's no minimal or maximal length for the text in a description meta tag, we recommend making sure that it's long enough to be fully shown in Search (note that users may see different sized snippets depending on how and where they search), and contains all the relevant information users would need to determine whether the page will be useful and relevant to them.
Writing a description meta tag that has no relation to the content on the page.
Using generic descriptions like "This is a web page" or "Page about baseball cards".
Filling the description with only keywords.
Copying and pasting the entire content of the document into the description meta tag.
Use unique descriptions for each page
Using a single description meta tag across all of your site's pages or a large group of pages.
Use heading tags to emphasize important text
Since heading tags typically make text contained in them larger than normal text on the page, this is a visual cue to users that this text is important and could help them understand something about the type of content underneath the heading text. Multiple heading sizes used in order create a hierarchical structure for your content, making it easier for users to navigate through your document.
Imagine you're writing an outline
Similar to writing an outline for a large paper, put some thought into what the main points and sub-points of the content on the page will be and decide where to use heading tags appropriately.
Placing text in heading tags that wouldn't be helpful in defining the structure of the page.
Using heading tags where other tags like <em> and <strong> may be more appropriate.
Erratically moving from one heading tag size to another.
Use headings sparingly across the page
Use heading tags where it makes sense. Too many heading tags on a page can make it hard for users to scan the content and determine where one topic ends and another begins.
Excessive use of heading tags on a page.
Very long headings.
Using heading tags only for styling text and not presenting structure.
Add structured data markup
Structured data21 is code that you can add to your sites' pages to describe your content to search engines, so they can better understand what's on your pages. Search engines can use this understanding to display your content in useful (and eye-catching!) ways in search results. That, in turn, can help you attract just the right kind of customers for your business.
For example, if you've got an online store and mark up an individual product page, this helps us understand that the page features a bike, its price, and customer reviews. We may display that information in the snippet for search results for relevant queries. We call these "rich results."
In addition to using structured data markup for rich results, we may use it to serve relevant results in other formats. For instance, if you've got a brick-and-mortar store, marking up the opening hours allows your potential customers to find you exactly when they need you, and inform them if your store is open/closed at the time of searching.
You can mark up many business-relevant entities:
Products you're selling
Videos about your products or business
Your company logo, and many more!
See a full list of supported content types in our developer site22.
We recommend that you use structured data with any of the supported notations markup to describe your content. You can add the markup to the HTML code to your pages, or use tools like Data Highlighter23 and Markup Helper24 (see the Best Practices section for more information about them).
Check your markup using the Rich Results test
Once you've marked up your content, you can use the Google Rich Results test25 to make sure that there are no mistakes in the implementation. You can either enter the URL where the content is, or copy the actual HTML which includes the markup.
Using invalid markup.
Use Data Highlighter
If you want to give structured markup a try without changing the source code of your site, you can use Data Highlighter which is a free tool integrated in Search Console that supports a subset of content types.
If you'd like to get the markup code ready to copy and paste to your page, try the Markup Helper tool.
Changing the source code of your site when you are unsure about implementing markup.
Keep track of how your marked up pages are doing
The various rich result reports26 in Search Console shows you how many pages on your site we've detected with a specific type of markup, how many times they appeared in search results, and how many times people clicked on them over the past 90 days. It also shows any errors we've detected.
Adding markup data which is not visible to users.
Creating fake reviews or adding irrelevant markups.
Correct structured data on your pages also makes your page eligible for many special features in Search results, including review stars, fancy decorated results, and more. See the gallery of search result types that your page can be eligible for.27
Understand how search engines use URLs
Search engines need a unique URL per piece of content to be able to crawl and index that content, and to refer users to it. Different content - for example, different products in a shop - as well as modified content - for example, translations or regional variations - need to use separate URLs in order to be shown in search appropriately.
URLs are generally split into multiple distinct sections:
protocol://hostname/path/filename?querystring#fragment
https://www.example.com/RunningShoes/Womens.htm?size=8#info
Google recommends that all websites use https:// when possible. The hostname is where your website is hosted, commonly using the same domain name that you'd use for email. Google differentiates between the "www" and "non-www" version (for example, "www.example.com" or just "example.com"). When adding your website to Search Console, we recommend adding both http:// and https:// versions, as well as the "www" and "non-www" versions.
Path, filename, and query string determine which content from your server is accessed. These three parts are case-sensitive, so "FILE" would result in a different URL than "file". The hostname and protocol are case-insensitive; upper or lower case wouldn't play a role there.
A fragment (in this case, "#info") generally identifies which part of the page the browser scrolls to. Because the content itself is usually the same regardless of the fragment, search engines commonly ignore any fragment used.
When referring to the homepage, a trailing slash after the hostname is optional since it leads to the same content ("https://example.com/" is the same as "https://example.com"). For the path and filename, a trailing slash would be seen as a different URL (signaling either a file or a directory), for example, "https://example.com/fish" is not the same as "https://example.com/fish/".
Navigation is important for search engines
The navigation of a website is important in helping visitors quickly find the content they want. It can also help search engines understand what content the webmaster thinks is important. Although Google's search results are provided at a page level, Google also likes to have a sense of what role a page plays in the bigger picture of the site.
Plan your navigation based on your homepage
Using ‘breadcrumb lists'
Create a simple navigational page for users
A navigational page is a simple page on your site that displays the structure of your website, and usually consists of a hierarchical listing of the pages on your site. Visitors may visit this page if they are having problems finding pages on your site. While search engines will also visit this page, getting good crawl coverage of the pages on your site, it's mainly aimed at human visitors.
Create a naturally flowing hierarchy
Make it as easy as possible for users to go from general content to the more specific content they want on your site. Add navigation pages when it makes sense and effectively work these into your internal link structure. Make sure all of the pages on your site are reachable through links, and that they don't require an internal "search" functionality to be found. Link to related pages, where appropriate, to allow users to discover similar content.
Creating complex webs of navigation links, for example, linking every page on your site to every other page.
Going overboard with slicing and dicing your content (so that it takes twenty clicks to reach from the homepage).
Use text for navigation
Controlling most of the navigation from page to page on your site through text links makes it easier for search engines to crawl and understand your site. When using JavaScript to create a page, use "a" elements with URLs as "href" attribute values, and generate all menu items on page-load, instead of waiting for a user interaction.
Having a navigation based entirely on images, or animations.
Requiring script or plugin-based event-handling for navigation29.
Create a navigational page for users, a sitemap for search engines
Include a simple navigational page for your entire site (or the most important pages, if you have hundreds or thousands) for users. Create an XML sitemap file to ensure that search engines discover the new and updated pages on your site, listing all relevant URLs together with their primary content's last modified dates.
Letting your navigational page become out of date with broken links.
Creating a navigational page that simply lists pages without organizing them, for example by subject.
Show useful 404 pages
Users will occasionally come to a page that doesn't exist on your site, either by following a broken link or typing in the wrong URL. Having a custom 404 page30 that kindly guides users back to a working page on your site can greatly improve a user's experience. Your 404 page should probably have a link back to your root page and could also provide links to popular or related content on your site. You can use Google Search Console to find the sources of URLs causing "not found" errors31.
Allowing your 404 pages to be indexed in search engines (make sure that your web server is configured to give a 404 HTTP status code or - in the case of JavaScript-based sites - include a noindex robots meta-tag when non-existent pages are requested).
Blocking 404 pages from being crawled through the robots.txt file.
Providing only a vague message like "Not found", "404", or no 404 page at all.
Using a design for your 404 pages that isn't consistent with the rest of your site.
Simple URLs convey content information
Creating descriptive categories and filenames for the documents on your website not only helps you keep your site better organized, it can create easier, "friendlier" URLs for those that want to link to your content. Visitors may be intimidated by extremely long and cryptic URLs that contain few recognizable words.
URLs like the one shown in the following image can be confusing and unfriendly.
If your URL is meaningful, it can be more useful and easily understandable in different contexts.
URLs are displayed in search results
Lastly, remember that the URL to a document is usually displayed in a search result in Google below the document title.
Google is good at crawling all types of URL structures, even if they're quite complex, but spending the time to make your URLs as simple as possible is a good practice.
Use words in URLs
URLs with words that are relevant to your site's content and structure are friendlier for visitors navigating your site.
Using lengthy URLs with unnecessary parameters and session IDs.
Choosing generic page names like "page1.html".
Using excessive keywords like "baseball-cards-baseball-cards-baseballcards.htm".
Create a simple directory structure
Use a directory structure that organizes your content well and makes it easy for visitors to know where they're at on your site. Try using your directory structure to indicate the type of content found at that URL.
Having deep nesting of subdirectories like ".../dir1/dir2/dir3/dir4/dir5/dir6/page.html".
Using directory names that have no relation to the content in them.
Provide one version of a URL to reach a document
To prevent users from linking to one version of a URL and others linking to a different version (this could split the reputation of that content between the URLs), focus on using and referring to one URL in the structure and internal linking of your pages. If you do find that people are accessing the same content through multiple URLs, setting up a 301 redirect32 from non-preferred URLs to the dominant URL is a good solution for this. You may also use canonical URL or use the rel="canonical"33 link element if you cannot redirect.
Having pages from subdomains and the root directory access the same content, for example, "domain.com/page.html" and "sub.domain.com/page.html".
Make your site interesting and useful
Creating compelling and useful content will likely influence your website more than any of the other factors discussed here. Users know good content when they see it and will likely want to direct other users to it. This could be through blog posts, social media services, email, forums, or other means.
Organic or word-of-mouth buzz is what helps build your site's reputation with both users and Google, and it rarely comes without quality content.
Know what your readers want (and give it to them)
Think about the words that a user might search for to find a piece of your content. Users who know a lot about the topic might use different keywords in their search queries than someone who is new to the topic. For example, a long-time football fan might search for [fifa], an acronym for the Fédération Internationale de Football Association, while a new fan might use a more general query like [football playoffs]. Anticipating these differences in search behavior and accounting for them while writing your content (using a good mix of keyword phrases) could produce positive results. Google Ads provides a handy Keyword Planner34 that helps you discover new keyword variations and see the approximate search volume for each keyword. Also, Google Search Console provides you with the top search queries your site appears for and the ones that led the most users to your site in the Performance Report35.
Consider creating a new, useful service that no other site offers. You could also write an original piece of research, break an exciting news story, or leverage your unique user base. Other sites may lack the resources or expertise to do these things.
Write easy-to-read text
Users enjoy content that is well written and easy to follow.
Writing sloppy text with many spelling and grammatical mistakes.
Awkward or poorly written content.
Embedding text in images and videos for textual content: users may want to copy and paste the text and search engines can't read it.
Organize your topics clearly
It's always beneficial to organize your content so that visitors have a good sense of where one content topic begins and another ends. Breaking your content up into logical chunks or divisions helps users find the content they want faster.
Dumping large amounts of text on varying topics onto a page without paragraph, subheading, or layout separation.
Create fresh, unique content
New content will not only keep your existing visitor base coming back, but also bring in new visitors.
Rehashing (or even copying) existing content that will bring little extra value to users.
Having duplicate or near-duplicate versions of your content across your site.
Learn more about duplicate content36
Optimize content for your users, not search engines
Designing your site around your visitors' needs while making sure your site is easily accessible to search engines usually produces positive results.
Inserting numerous unnecessary keywords aimed at search engines but are annoying or nonsensical to users.
Having blocks of text like "frequent misspellings used to reach this page" that add little value for users.
Deceptively hiding text from users37, but displaying it to search engines.
Act in a way that cultivates user trust
Users feel comfortable visiting your site if they feel that it's trustworthy.
A site with a good reputation is trustworthy. Cultivate a reputation for expertise and trustworthiness in a specific area.
Provide information about who publishes your site, provides the content, and its goals. Shopping and other financial transaction websites should have clear and satisfying customer service information to help users resolve issues. News sites should provide clear information about who is responsible for the content.
Using appropriate technologies is also important. If a shopping checkout page doesn’t have a secure connection, users cannot trust the site.
Make expertise and authoritativeness clear
Expertise and authoritativeness of a site increases its quality. Be sure that content on your site is created or edited by people with expertise in the topic. For example, providing expert or experienced sources can help users understand articles’ expertise. Representing well-established consensus in pages on scientific topics is a good practice if such consensus exists.
Provide an appropriate amount of content for your subject
Providing insufficient content for the purpose of the page.
Avoid distracting advertisements
Putting distracting advertisements on your pages.
Use links wisely
Write good link text
Link text is the visible text inside a link. This text tells users and Google something about the page you're linking to. Links on your page may be internal—pointing to other pages on your site—or external—leading to content on other sites. In either of these cases, the better your anchor text is, the easier it is for users to navigate and for Google to understand what the page you're linking to is about.
With appropriate anchor text, users and search engines can easily understand what the linked pages contain.
Choose descriptive text
The anchor text you use for a link should provide at least a basic idea of what the page linked to is about.
Writing generic anchor text like "page", "article", or "click here".
Using text that is off-topic or has no relation to the content of the page linked to.
Using the page's URL as the anchor text in most cases, although there are certainly legitimate uses of this, such as promoting or referencing a new website's address.
Write concise text
Aim for short but descriptive text-usually a few words or a short phrase.
Writing long anchor text, such as a lengthy sentence or short paragraph of text.
Format links so they're easy to spot
Make it easy for users to distinguish between regular text and the anchor text of your links. Your content becomes less useful if users miss the links or accidentally click them.
Using CSS or text styling that make links look just like regular text.
Think about anchor text for internal links too
You may usually think about linking in terms of pointing to outside websites, but paying more attention to the anchor text used for internal links can help users and Google navigate your site better.
Using excessively keyword-filled or lengthy anchor text just for search engines.
Creating unnecessary links that don't help with the user's navigation of the site.
Be careful who you link to
You can confer some of your site's reputation to another site when your site links to it. Sometimes users can take advantage of this by adding links to their own site in your comment sections or message boards. Or sometimes you might mention a site in a negative way and don't want to confer any of your reputation upon it. For example, imagine that you're writing a blog post on the topic of comment spamming and you want to call out a site that recently comment spammed your blog. You want to warn others of the site, so you include the link to it in your content; however, you certainly don't want to give the site some of your reputation from your link. This would be a good time to use nofollow.
Another example when the “nofollow" attribute can come handy are widget links. If you are using a third party's widget to enrich the experience of your site and engage users, check if it contains any links that you did not intend to place on your site along with the widget. Some widgets may add links to your site which are not your editorial choice and contain anchor text that you as a webmaster may not control. If removing such unwanted links from the widget is not possible, you can always disable them with “nofollow" attribute. If you create a widget for functionality or content that you provide, make sure to include the nofollow on links in the default code snippet.
Lastly, if you're interested in nofollowing all of the links on a page, you can add the tag <meta name="robots" content="nofollow"> inside the <head> tag for the page. You can find more details about robots meta tag on the Webmaster Blog39.
Combat comment spam with "nofollow"
Setting the value of the "rel" attribute of a link to "nofollow" will tell Google that certain links on your site shouldn't be followed or pass your page's reputation to the pages linked to. Nofollowing a link means adding rel="nofollow" inside of the link's anchor tag, as shown here:
<a href="http://www.example.com" rel="nofollow">Anchor text here</a>
Automatically add "nofollow" to comment columns and message boards
Use HTML images
Use HTML image elements to embed images in your content.
Use the HTML <img> or <picture> elements.
Semantic HTML markup helps crawlers find and process images. By using the <picture> element you can also specify multiple options for different screen sizes for responsive images. You might also use the loading="lazy" attribute on images to make your page load faster for your users.
Using CSS to display images that you want us to index.
Use the "alt" attribute
Provide a descriptive filename and alt attribute description for images. The "alt" attribute allows you to specify alternative text for the image if it cannot be displayed for some reason.
Why use this attribute? If a user is viewing your site using assistive technologies, such as a screen reader, the contents of the alt attribute provide information about the picture.
Use brief but descriptive filenames and alt text
Like many of the other parts of the page targeted for optimization, filenames and alt text are best when they're short, but descriptive.
Using generic filenames like "image1.jpg", "pic.gif", "1.jpg" when possible—if your site has thousands of images you might want to consider automating the naming of the images.
Writing extremely lengthy filenames.
Stuffing keywords into alt text or copying and pasting entire sentences.
Supply alt text when using images as links
If you do decide to use an image as a link, filling out its alt text helps Google understand more about the page you're linking to. Imagine that you're writing anchor text for a text link.
Writing excessively long alt text that would be considered spammy.
Using only image links for your site's navigation.
Help search engines find your images
An Image sitemap41 can provide Googlebot with more information about the images found on your site. This increase the likelihood that your images can be found in Image Search results. The structure of this file is similar to the XML sitemap file for your web pages.
Use standard image formats
Use commonly supported filetypes - Most browsers support JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP and WebP image formats. It's also a good idea to have the extension of your filename match with the file type.
The world is mobile today. Most people are searching on Google using a mobile device. The desktop version of a site might be difficult to view and use on a mobile device. As a result, having a mobile ready site is critical to your online presence. In fact, starting in late 2016, Google has begun experiments to primarily use the mobile version of a site's content42 for ranking, parsing structured data, and generating snippets.
Understand the difference between devices
Smartphone - In this document, "mobile" or “mobile devices" refers to smartphones, such as devices running Android, iPhone, or Windows Phone. Mobile browsers are similar to desktop browsers in that they can render a broad set of the HTML5 specification, although their screen size is smaller and in almost all cases their default orientation is vertical.
Multimedia phone - These are phones with browsers that are able to render pages coded to meet XHTML standards, support HTML5 Markup, JavaScript/ECMAScript but might not support some of the extension APIs in the HTML5 standard. This generally describes the browser in most 3G-ready phones that are not smartphones.
Feature phones - On these phones, browsers lack the capability to render normal desktop web pages coded using standard HTML. This includes browsers that render only cHTML (iMode), WML, XHTML-MP, etc.
Our recommendations are geared toward smartphones, but we encourage multimedia and feature phones site owners to follow the same advice where they feel appropriate.
Choose a mobile strategy
There are multiple ways of making your website mobile ready and Google supports different implementation methods :
Responsive web design43 (Recommended)
Dynamic serving44
Separate URLs45
After you have created a mobile-ready site, you can use Google's Mobile-friendly test46 to check if pages on your site meet the criteria for being labeled “Mobile-friendly" on Google Search result pages. You can also check out the Search Console Mobile Usability report47 to fix mobile usability issues affecting your site.
If your site serves lots of static content (like blog posts or product landing pages) across multiple pages, consider implementing it using AMP48 (Accelerated Mobile Pages). It's a special flavor of HTML that ensures your site stays fast and user friendly, and can be further accelerated by various platforms, including Google Search.
Configure mobile sites so that they can be indexed accurately
Regardless of which configuration you choose to set up your mobile site, there are key points that you should take note of:
If you use Dynamic Serving or have a separate mobile site, signal to Google when a page is formatted for mobile (or has an equivalent page that's formatted for mobile). This helps Google accurately serve mobile searchers your content in search results.
If you are using Responsive Web Design, use meta name="viewport" tag to tell the browser how to adjust the content. If you use Dynamic Serving, use the Vary HTTP header to signal your changes depending on the user-agent. If you are using separate URLs, signal the relationship between two URLs by <link> tag with rel="canonical" and rel="alternate" elements.
Avoid common mistakes that frustrate mobile visitors, such as featuring unplayable videos (for example,, Flash video as the page's significant content).
Mobile pages that provide a poor searcher experience can be demoted in rankings or displayed with a warning in mobile search results. This includes but is not limited to full page interstitials49 on mobile that hinder user experience.
Provide full functionality on all devices. Mobile users expect the same functionality - such as commenting and check-out - and content on mobile as well as on all other devices that your website supports. In addition to textual content, make sure that all important images and videos are embedded and accessible on mobile devices. For search engines, provide all structured data and other metadata - such as titles, descriptions, link-elements, and other meta-tags - on all versions of the pages.
Make sure that the structured data, images, videos, and metadata you have on your desktop site are also included on the mobile site.
Test your mobile pages with the Mobile-Friendly Test50 to see if Google thinks your website works well on mobile devices.
If you use separate URLs for your mobile pages, make sure to test both the mobile and the desktop URLs, so you can confirm that the redirect is recognized and crawlable.
For more information, see Google's mobile-friendly guide.51
While most of the links to your site will be added gradually, as people discover your content through search or other ways and link to it, Google understands that you'd like to let others know about the hard work you've put into your content. Effectively promoting your new content will lead to faster discovery by those who are interested in the same subject. As with most points covered in this document, taking these recommendations to an extreme could actually harm the reputation of your site.
A blog post on your own site letting your visitor base know that you added something new is a great way to get the word out about new content or services. Other webmasters who follow your site or RSS feed could pick the story up as well.
Putting effort into the offline promotion of your company or site can also be rewarding. For example, if you have a business site, make sure its URL is listed on your business cards, letterhead, posters, etc. You could also send out recurring newsletters to clients through the mail letting them know about new content on the company's website.
If you run a local business, adding its information to Google My Business52 will help you reach customers on Google Maps and web search.
Know about social media sites
Sites built around user interaction and sharing have made it easier to match interested groups of people up with relevant content.
Attempting to promote each new, small piece of content you create; go for big, interesting items.
Involving your site in schemes53 where your content is artificially promoted to the top of these services.
Reach out to those in your site's related community
Chances are, there are a number of sites that cover topic areas similar to yours. Opening up communication with these sites is usually beneficial. Hot topics in your niche or community could spark additional ideas for content or building a good community resource.
Spamming link requests out to all sites related to your topic area.
Purchasing links from another site with the aim of getting PageRank.
Analyzing your search performance
Major search engines, including Google, provide free tools for webmasters to analyze their performance in their search engine. For Google, that tool is Search Console54.
Search Console provides two important categories of information: Can Google find my content? How am I performing in Google Search results?
Using Search Console won't help your site get preferential treatment; however, it can help you identify issues that, if addressed, can help your site perform better in search results.
With the service, webmasters can:
See which parts of a site Googlebot had problems crawling
Test and submit sitemaps
Analyze or generate robots.txt files
Remove URLs already crawled by Googlebot
Specify your preferred domain
Identify issues with title and description meta tags
Understand the top searches used to reach a site
Get a glimpse at how Googlebot sees pages
Receive notifications of quality guidelines violations and request a site reconsideration
Microsoft's Bing Webmaster Tools55 also offers free tools for webmasters.
Analyzing user behavior on your site
If you've improved the crawling and indexing of your site using Google Search Console or other services, you're probably curious about the traffic coming to your site. Web analytics programs like Google Analytics are a valuable source of insight for this. You can use these to:
Get insight into how users reach and behave on your site
Discover the most popular content on your site
Measure the impact of optimizations you make to your site, for example, did changing those title and description meta tags improve traffic from search engines?
For advanced users, the information an analytics package provides, combined with data from your server log files, can provide even more comprehensive information about how visitors are interacting with your documents (such as additional keywords that searchers might use to find your site).
Webmaster Central Blog56
Get the latest information from our Webmaster Central blog. You can find information about updates to Google Search, new Search Console features, and much more.
Webmaster Help Forum57
Post questions about your site’s issues and find tips to create high quality sites from the product forum for webmasters. There are many experienced contributors in the forum, including Top Contributors58 and occasionally Googlers.
Google Webmasters Twitter59
Follow us for news and resources to help you make a great site.
Google Webmasters YouTube Channel60
Watch hundreds of helpful videos created for the webmaster community and get your questions answered by Googlers.
How Search Works61
See what happens behind the scenes as you search for something in Google Search. You’ll learn some really cool facts!
Get Your Business Online62
Register a free website if you have a small business in the US. GYBO is a partnership between Google and Homestead to help small businesses register a free website for one year.
The following URLs are referenced in this paper:
https://g.co/WebmasterHelpForum
https://www.google.com/search?q=site:wikipedia.org
https://support.google.comwebmasters/answer/70897
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35769
https://search.google.com/search-console
http://g.co/webmasters
http://g.co/WebmasterChecklist
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=piSvFxV_M04
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/156184
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6062608
https://support.google.com/webmasters/topic/4598466
https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2014/05/understanding-web-pages-better.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOfhHPp5sWs
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2007/09/improve-snippets-with-meta-description.html
https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2017/06/better-snippets-for-your-users.html
https://developers.google.com/search/docs/guides/intro-structured-data
https://developers.google.com/search/docs/guides/search-gallery
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/data-highlighter
https://www.google.com/webmasters/markup-helper/
https://search.google.com/test/rich-results
https://developers.google.com/search/docs/data-types/breadcrumbs
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/10/webmaster-tools-shows-crawl-error.html
http://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/93633
https://ads.google.com/home/tools/keyword-planner/
https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/marketing-resources/better-ad-standards/
https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2007/03/using-robots-meta-tag.html
https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2016/11/mobile-first-indexing.html
https://developers.google.com/search/mobile-sites/mobile-seo/responsive-design
https://developers.google.com/search/mobile-sites/mobile-seo/dynamic-serving
https://developers.google.com/search/mobile-sites/mobile-seo/separate-urls
https://search.google.com/test/mobile-friendly
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-usability
https://www.ampproject.org/
https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2016/08/helping-users-easily-access-content-on.html
https://developers.google.com/search/mobile-sites/
https://www.google.com/business/
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/home
https://www.bing.com/toolbox/webmaster
https://support.google.com/webmasters/go/blog
http://www.google.com/get/topcontributor/
http://twitter.com/googlewmc
http://www.youtube.com/GoogleWebmasterHelp
http://www.google.com/insidesearch/howsearchworks/thestory/index.html
http://www.gybo.com/
Secure your site with HTTPS
Keep a simple URL structure
Qualify your outbound links to Google
Tag site for child-directed treatment
Make your links crawlable
Best practices for website testing with Google Search
New to Search Console?
Never used Search Console before? Start here, whether you're a complete beginner, an SEO expert, or a website developer.
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SD Elements Process Consulting
Customization for Success: Extending SD Elements Functionality
In large organizations, you will sometimes encounter situations where users want to extend the functionality of SD Element to meet specific needs. There are four options for extending SD Elements functionality. We cover each at a high level here, however a detailed description of each is out-of-scope for this documentation.
SD Elements provides a RESTful Application Programming Interface (API) to extend SD Elements functionality. This is the preferred way of extending SD Elements functionality and can be done by anyone with access to an SD Elements server.
You can review API documentation by logging into SD Elements and navigating to Support->API Documentation.
SD Elements provides functionality for creating custom project reports. Unlike APIs, these reports reside within the application itself. Security Compass engineers can create these reports as part of SD Elements, sold as SD Elements services.
In certain cases, users may wish to extend functionality beyond what’s available from the API. For example, bulk importing data, such as existing security policies. In these cases, Security Compass engineers can create special ‘management commands’, which are manually executed scripts that interact directly with the SD Elements database. Since these commands are not necessarily restricted to using the API, they are more susceptible to behind-the-scenes programming changes and should only be used as stop-gap solutions when an API solution is not available. Contact your Security Compass representative for more information about building a management command.
Customers can also formally request a feature be added to the product. While we do our best to accommodate customer needs, we cannot act on every feature request. Every time we receive a feature request we first determine if it aligns with our production direction. If the feature request is consistent with the overall direction of SD Elements, we compare it with existing requests and determine how many other customers are requesting the same need. This helps us determine which features to focus on for a given time period. It's important to note that we take an agile approach to product planning, which means we do not commit to specific timelines but rather we assign priorities to requests on a relative basis.
For these reasons, feature requests should be a last resort when the other methods for extending functionality won’t work.
Customization for Success: Extending Beyond Application Security
Customization for Success: Frequently Customized Content
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Tech1 Media
Bridging Technology to you
Astros’ Luhnow, Hinch fired after MLB gives ban
7 days ago Joseph Livesay
Astros GM Jeff Luhnow and manager AJ Hinch were fired Monday after MLB issued one-season suspensions for their role in a…
Jeff PassanESPN
ESPN MLB insider
Author of “The Arm: Inside the Billion-Dollar Mystery of the Most Valuable Commodity in Sports”
Houston Astros general manager Jeff Luhnow and manager AJ Hinch were fired by owner Jim Crane on Monday after Major League Baseball’s announcement of discipline following the sign-stealing scandal.
A league investigation confirmed the Astros had cheated by using a camera-based sign-stealing system during the regular season and playoffs of their World Series-winning 2017 season and during part of the 2018 regular season.
Luhnow and Hinch were suspended for the 2020 season, but Crane said the team wanted to go beyond that ruling.
“Neither one of them started this, but neither one of them did anything about it,” Crane said.
He added: “We need to move forward with a clean slate.”
Crane said that he did not think the Astros’ World Series title in 2017 was “tainted.”
As part of the league’s penalty, the Astros will also lose first- and second-round draft picks in 2020 and 2021, and the organization was fined a record $5 million. MLB said in its statement that if Luhnow or Hinch “engage in any future material violations” of MLB rules, they will be placed on the league’s permanently ineligible list.
Crane gave no timetable for naming replacements for Luhnow and Hinch.
Boston Red Sox manager Alex Cora, who was implicated in the schemes, was not disciplined but is expected to receive a similarly harsh penalty upon the completion of an investigation into illicit use of a video replay room by the 2018 Red Sox. Cora was the Astros’ bench coach during the 2017 season.
While the scheme to steal signs and relay them to batters by banging on a garbage can was “player-driven,” MLB commissioner Rob Manfred wrote in a nine-page summary of the investigation that no players were disciplined — including New York Mets manager Carlos Beltran, who played for the 2017 Astros and was implicated by Manfred as one of the players involved in decoding signs. Manfred wrote that disciplining individual players was “impractical given the large number of players involved, and the fact that many of those players now play for other Clubs.”
The Mets and Beltran declined to comment, spokesman Harold Kaufman said.
Crane also said that players will not be disciplined. MLB’s investigation found that Crane was unaware of the sign-stealing activities by his team.
In a statement Monday, Lunhow accepted responsibility for the sign-stealing happening on his watch but maintained that he’s “not a cheater.”
“I did not know rules were being broken…The sign-stealing initiative was not planned or directed by baseball management; the trash-can banging was driven and executed by players, and the video decoding of signs originated and was executed by lower-level employees working with the bench coach.
“I am deeply upset that I wasn’t informed of any misconduct because I would have stopped it.”
Hinch also apologized and accepted responsibility in another statement issued Monday.
“While the evidence consistently showed I didn’t endorse or participate in the sign stealing practices,” the statement read, “I failed to stop them and I am deeply sorry.”
The league discipline is among the harshest ever delivered by a commissioner, with Luhnow and Hinch banned until the day after the final game of the 2020 World Series despite neither having involvement with the scheme — and Hinch twice protesting by trying to damage the monitor used in the scheme. Manfred nevertheless held the two responsible, citing a “failure by the leaders of the baseball operations department and the Field Manager to adequately manage the employees under their supervision, to establish a culture in which adherence to the rules is ingrained in the fabric of the organization, and to stop bad behavior as soon as it occurred.”
The commissioner also pointed to a Sept. 15, 2017, memo regarding the Red Sox’s illicit use of an Apple Watch that promised severe discipline for teams that run afoul of MLB’s rules against using technology during games.
The scheme itself, Manfred wrote, began in 2017 and evolved throughout the course of the season. After initially using video-replay personnel to decode the opposing catcher’s signs via a center-field camera and relaying the information to the bench via phone or text message, Cora “arranged for a video room technician to install a monitor displaying the center field camera feed immediately outside of the Astros’ dugout,” according to the report. Players watched the camera live and, upon decoding the sign, hit the trash can with a bat — and sometimes a Theragun — to signal to the hitter which pitch was coming. Initially, they had tried clapping, whistling or yelling, Manfred wrote, but players determined the trash can was the best use of relaying the sign.
While the banging scheme was discontinued before the 2018 season, Manfred wrote, “the Astros’ replay review room staff continued, at least for part of the 2018 season, to decode signs using the live center field camera feed, and to transmit the signs to the dugout through in-person communication.” That practice ended during the 2018 season when players believed it was no longer effective.
The investigation, which found no use of illicit technology during the 2019 season, was initiated after former Astros pitcher Mike Fiers told The Athletic of the scheme for a story published in November.
No World Series odds changed as a result of the Astros’ punishment at Caesars Sportsbook, as no players were suspended. Houston remains tied for second-best odds at 6-1 with the Los Angeles Dodgers. The New York Yankees are favorites at 4-1.
Also Monday, former Astros assistant GM Brandon Taubman was suspended through the World Series for his conduct during last year’s AL Championship Series, when his profane remarks directed at female reporters led to his firing by Houston, which at first denied the incident and later apologized.
Taubman can apply to Manfred for reinstatement after the World Series, and any future violations of Major League Rules would lead to a lifetime ban.
In referencing the Taubman investigation, Manfred noted that the investigation led him to have concerns about the Astros’ baseball operations in general. “While no one can dispute that Luhnow’s baseball operations department is an industry leader in its analytics,” Manfred wrote, “it is very clear to me that the culture of the baseball operations department, manifesting itself in the way its employees are treated, its relations with other Clubs, and its relations with the media and external stakeholders, has been very problematic.”
He added that the culture of the Houston baseball operations department led “to an environment that allowed the conduct described in this report to have occurred.”
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What is Data Protection as a Service (DPaaS)?
September 3, 2019 by Sandeep
Every organization has sensitive, confidential information in its possession. This includes personally identifiable information (PII), credit card information, transaction records, employee files and protected health information (PHI). This data is supplied by customers, created by business process, kept in a wide range of storage media, retrieved by various enterprise applications, used by employees and accessed by authorized third parties.
The challenge for every modern enterprise is to keep this information secure whether the data is at rest, in use or in transit. This challenge grows ever more formidable thanks to the ever-increasing scale and complexity of enterprise data. For many organizations, procuring and recruiting the resources needed to stay on top of this problem eventually becomes out of reach and beyond their budget. This is a key reason for the emergence and growth of data protection as-a-service (DPaaS). One DPaaS market forecast projects an astonishing 30 percent growth year-on-year through 2026.
Among the major cloud-based service delivery options (i.e. Software-as-a-Service, Infrastructure-as-a-Service, Platform-as-a-Service, Database-as-a-Service and DPaaS), DPaaS is a relatively recent entry. As one would expect with a new area of cloud computing, what DPaaS actually comprises isn’t yet universally agreed upon.
One school of thought sees DPaaS as comprising backup-as-a-service (BaaS), disaster recovery-as-a-service (DRaaS) and storage-as-a-service (STaaS). Another theory views DPaaS as a separate concept from disaster recovery and offsite backup. We’ll look at both.
1 DPaaS as Comprising BaaS + DRaaS + STaaS
1.1 BaaS
1.2 DRaaS
1.3 STaaS
2 DPaaS as the Third Pillar of Data Protection
2.1 Offsite Backup
2.2 Disaster Recovery
2.3 DPaaS
DPaaS as Comprising BaaS + DRaaS + STaaS
In the first school of thought, BaaS, DRaaS and STaaS are the main DPaaS offerings.
BaaS entails third-party operated software that manages the backup of the client organization’s data into a cloud repository. It may rely on an on-premise cache to speed up backup restoration but is primarily designed to stored data via a web-based application.
DRaaS is the replication of entire servers, virtual machines and enterprise applications to the cloud. Ergo, if disaster strikes the client organization’s production environment and on-premise data center, operations can resume without the need to restore the on-premise data center.
STaaS
STaaS is similar to but not synonymous with BaaS. It supplements conventional backup solutions with cloud-based storage in order to ensure there’s a copy of enterprise data in the cloud that harnesses the advantages of cloud computing.
DPaaS as the Third Pillar of Data Protection
The second school of thought sees DPaaS as the third element of a data protection strategy. The other two pillars are offsite backup and disaster recovery.
Offsite Backup
In this context, offsite backup means making a daily or weekly copy of enterprise data, then storing it elsewhere, such as the organization’s own data center or a third-party data center.
Disaster recovery, on the other hand, means establishing a replica of your production environment in a site remote enough to not be affected by natural disasters, enterprise-wide technology failures or human errors.
When a disruptive event occurs that renders production infrastructure unusable, the organization would fail over its operations to this remote site in order to maintain business continuity. Disaster recovery may be conventional recovery or DRaaS where the cloud is leveraged to speed up the restoration of services.
DPaaS
As the third pillar in this arrangement, DPaaS is devoted to the protection of data within enterprise applications; specifically, at the database and application layers. For instance, if a user makes an error when entering information in a database or unintentionally applies certain changes to a file, DPaaS creates a mechanism for faster data restoration when compared to the other two data protection pillars.
A DPaaS gives the organization the leeway to specify shorter recovery windows (such as hourly as opposed to the daily or weekly regimen of a conventional offsite backup process). As a result, DPaaS delivers more granularity and control.
DPaaS is especially important for mission-critical systems. A business could probably afford to restore a 2 or 3-day old version of their email and web server following a disaster, but that would be catastrophic for a mission-critical system such as a core banking application.
DPaaS, disaster recovery (including DRaaS) and offsite backup are all tools of business continuity. While DRaaS and offsite backup seek to protect infrastructure and data, DPaaS is devoted to maintaining the safety and integrity of the data that rests on business systems. You need all three to guarantee seamless business continuity.
Whereas most modern enterprise environments will have some form of cloud computing as part of their overall technology infrastructure plan, it’s important to remember that cloud-based solutions are simply a means of delivering technology services.
Like any other solution therefore, their suitability and applicability will vary from ‘hardly useful’ in some organizations to ’hugely beneficial’ in others. For that reason, businesses should evaluate DPaaS in the context of their own needs to determine whether and how it can be applied for their maximum gain.
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Meet Hazel Gibbens: our Scotland Entrepreneur Engagement Manager
Kane Fulton, July 15, 2019 ⏱ 2 min read
At Tech Nation we’re creating a national network connecting ambitious digital tech entrepreneurs across the UK.
Whether you’re a founder looking for connections or support, a stakeholder embedded in a local community or are simply interested in what’s going on in a region, our Entrepreneur Engagement Managers (or ‘EEMs’ for short) are on the ground in towns and cities and ready to help.
In this series of articles, we’re telling you more about our EEMs’ roles and views about tech in the country. Here we speak to Hazel Gibbens, our Scotland Entrepreneur Engagement Manager based in Glasgow and Edinburgh.
Hazel Gibbens: I’m originally from Devon, where I headed up a print magazine and worked in publishing and editing. My love of Scotland and its people brought me north in 2017 and I’ve never looked back.
I’ve spent the last couple of years working in communications roles in Scotland’s entrepreneurial ecosystem, including for FutureX, who run some of the largest entrepreneur-focused events in the country. I am thrilled to now be Scotland’s Entrepreneur Engagement Manager!
What excites you about tech in Scotland?
Scotland is such a fantastic place to start and grow a tech company. The country is incredibly receptive to innovation and has strong support agencies. What excites me the most is that Scotland is a key player in Tech For Good; so many companies here are driven by a purpose rooted in social causes.
Scotland is lifted by a variety of entrepreneurship support agencies who genuinely champion collaboration – I think that’s incredibly unique and I’m proud to get to play a small role in all of that!
What companies in the region have impressed you?
One of the growing companies I’ve got my eye on are Good-Loop, cofounded by Amy Williams and Dan Winterstein, which has revolutionised advertising and uses it as a force for good. I’m also really inspired by Gavin Neate, Founder of Neatebox, whose focus is on inclusivity and accessibility.
Every year, Scotland’s calendar is jam-packed with events for entrepreneurs and their teams. This year, I’m excited for Turing Fest, Scottish EDGE, and Startup Summit, and next year I’m already looking forward to Data Fest, in addition to Engage Invest Exploit (EIE) by Informatics Ventures. I’ve seen world-class speakers and companies showcased at these events and they’re only growing bigger and better each year.
What challenges are founders facing in Scotland?
Scotland’s ecosystem is diverse and comes with a nuanced set of challenges. For founders in Glasgow and Edinburgh, it’s tough to find time and space for meeting, sharing, and collaboration. The problem of siloing goes deeper: despite the incredible talent and potential up here, it can be hard for Scottish companies to break past the border.
For founders outside of the core hubs, there are challenges around understanding and utilising the resources and opportunities that are available to them – but hopefully, that’s where I come in!
Community, Scotland
How founders are avoiding burn-out over Christmas
By Kane Fulton, December 23, 2019
Announcing the 20 tech startups set to pitch at the Rising Stars 2.0 Grand Final
By Esme Caulfield, January 20, 2020
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Pause, rewind, record and store all your favourite shows.
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You can also watch live and on-demand TV - and set up recordings - on the move with the Virgin TV Anywhere app.
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Student One Stop
Leadership and Career
Commencement—June 15, 2015
When Peter Hollens graduated from the UO back in 2006, he could have never imagined that he’d be on the Commencement stage— especially as the graduation speaker! Peter co-founded the male a capella group On the Rocks in 1999 and went on to perform on NBC’s The Sing Off in 2010, has become a YouTube phenom and recently signed with Sony Masterworks.
At commencement, Peter spoke about being bullied as he was growing up and how finding his love—both in a capella and in life (he married his college sweetheart who was one of the founders of UO’s female a capella group Divisi) changed and enriched his life.
Peter built his commencement speech around his belief that “the best way to achieve success in any profession is to help build up every aspect and individual involved in that profession.” He went on to say “I believe that in most cases, nurturing a collaborative environment will create more opportunities for us all.“ According to one proud parent watching Peter’s speech, “he knocked it out of the park.” Check it out on the UO Channel to see for yourself (his speech starts at 44:44).
Division of Student LifeDivision of Student Life
University Career Center
Erb Memorial Union
Department of Physical Education and Recreation
5216 University of Oregon
Eugene , OR 97403
Office: Oregon Hall
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‘AstRONomical experience’: SymphRONica review
By Maisy Hallam
• August 27, 2019
Maisy Hallam
By day, Maisy is the editor-in-chief of The Student and a fourth-year student of Linguistics and English Language at The University of Edinburgh. By night, she is an environmental activist and avid crime fiction reader. Follow her on her slowly developing Twitter, @lostinamaiz.
5 starsMaisy Hallamedfringe 2019edinburgh fringejazzreviewron davissymphronicathe StudenttheSpace
A showcase of ‘jazz for the playlist era’, SymphRONica aims to change preconceptions about jazz and bring it up to standard for modern ears. Made up of the classical pianist, electric guitarist and drummer, but also a string quartet and double bassist, this eight-piece band certainly does succeed in subverting the layman’s expectations of a jazz group. And when they start to play, it’s clear that jazz-lover or no, we’re all going to be taken for a wild ride.
The eponymous Ron Davis on keys is also the composer of most of SymphRONica’s groovy and bubbly tunes. With a wide range of inspirations from North African influences in one piece to the combination of Johan Sebastian Bach and metal music in another, Davis’ work is not only unique but hardly imaginable until you hear it with your own ears. Although the addition of strings to a jazz band is quite the twist for the uninitiated, who might have been expecting the more conventional set of brass, when you take into account this massively varied set of influences, it all falls into place. This is no elevator jazz – it’s avant-garde, it’s experimental, it’s absolutely captivating.
Quick glances and grins between the performers only solidify that they’re having as much fun playing as we’re having listening. There isn’t much that’s more heartwarming than watching musicians really feeling the music and enjoying themselves on stage. That the tunes are brilliantly crafted and expertly played is the cherry on the cake, but a huge part of what makes SymphRONica – and all good jazz – great is the laid-back, intimate feeling of sharing good music in good company.
In all, SymphRONica is an evening of jazz like you’ve never heard it before. It’s an astRONomical experience, this reinvention of jazz for modern ears, well worth a listen even for jazz novices and especially for seasoned musicians looking for a change of pace.
SymphRONica was on at TheSpace Niddry Street – Lower Theatre
Run ended
Image: Douglas Robinson
SymphRONica
In all, SymphRONica is an evening of jazz like you’ve never heard it before.
Piff the Magic Dragon Review
Limb(e)s review
In conversation with Nathaniel Brimmer-Beller, writer and director of Chagos 1971
‘Passionate and explosive performance’: From the Wind Review
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AUSSIE KISS 15 - Post event
Last weekend, over 300 students descended on Roadford Lake for the biggest Student Windsurfing Festival worldwide: Aussie Kiss 15.
Ran by the Student Windsurfing Association, this weekend combines beginner tuition, competition, and legendary parties to create the highlight of the windsurf calendar.
Friday night saw students travel from as close as Exeter and as far as Leeds to arrive in the (slightly muddy) fields of Roadford. This year, for the first time ever, the weekend embraced its full festival potential, with the students pitching their tents at the lakeside (with varying levels of success!)
Aussie Kiss 15
Ladies and gentlemen, windsurfers of all ages, it is time for the greatest show on earth. Yes that’s right, the most anticipated, amazing and astounding adventure has arrived! From the 14th-16th October, the circus is in town, so abscond from academia and attend...
BUCS is over
The weekend of 22nd-24th April saw over 130 students flock to the Weymouth and Portland National Sailing Academy for an intense weekend of competition. It was all to play for – as results counted for both the students overall rankings across the SWA series, as well as BUCS points up for grabs for their universities. We’ll look at what happened in both competitions – kicking it off with the BUCS competition.
Advanced Racing – Division 1
With the potential to earn BUCS points for their universities, 41 competitors took to the water on Saturday morning for the advanced racing. There were 5 races, with one discard, with the course building in difficulty to a figure of 8 slalom course as the races progressed. Competitors in the advanced division were allowed a maximum 7.5m2 sail, and many chose to team this with longboards to take advantage of the 15 knot conditions. Coming out on top of the fleet was Rob York of Bournemouth, who was joined on the podium by Matt Barton (Exeter) and Nathaniel Warren (Southampton). First female was Saskia Sills of Bournemouth, who managed to finish 4th overall.
Rob York – Bournemouth
Matt Barton – Exeter
Nathaniel Warren – Southampton
Intermediate Racing – Division 2
With 23 competitors taking the start line, the intermediate competition was going to be close. With consistency over several races key to success, it was a tough race. Coming out on top was Benjamin Wall of UWE who managed to hold off the competitors from rival club Bristol – Juliet Cairney bagging 2nd with Pablo Tarodo in 3rd.
Benjamin Wall – UWE
Juliet Cairney – Bristol
Pablo Andres Andalaft Tarodo – Bristol
Beginner Racing – Division 3
The conditions on Saturday were ideal for the beginner racing, with the competitors taking part in heats throughout the morning. The top 5 competitors made it through to the final on the Saturday afternoon, giving them some time to perfect their gybes before the final. Top of the podium was Josh Wilkins from Swansea, who edged out his team mate Nick Harman. Rounding out the podium was Lucinda Wilkinson (Imperial)
Josh Wilkins – Swansea
Nick Harman – Swansea
Lucinda Wilkinson – Imperial
Team Racing
Sunday saw the ultimate competition – the team racing event, run on the one-design kit of RRD FireRace 120L freerace boards and Tushingham Concept 7.5m2 sails. There were 17 teams entered from 13 universities, so teams were split into 3 heats, with just the top two advancing to the final. With the wind constantly shifting, it was a battle upwind to the buoy. In the end the top 6 teams, advancing to the final were Cardiff, Swansea, Durham, Birmingham, and two teams from Bristol.
With everyone watching on, Bristol 2 and Birmingham got off to a rough start, meaning it was four teams battling for the podium. Some excellent gybing from the Bristol competitors made the difference, and they bagged the top place with Cardiff not far behind. It was a separate fight for 3rd, with Swansea and Durham going back and forth as each team changed over competitor. Swansea just pipped them on the line to take the final podium position.
Team Race Results:
=7 Nottingham, Exeter, Southampton 1
=10 Southampton 2, Birmingham 2, Cambridge
=13 Imperial, Sheffield, UWE
=16 Liverpool, Imperial 2
Thank you to everyone who helped out making the event a success, including Colwyn Bay Watersports, Boardwise and Weymouth and Portland OTC.
A massive congratulations to everyone who competed, and particularly those taking home BUCS points to their universities. Check back for the next article, when we’ll look at who came out on top of the overall SWA series – the ultimate test of windsurfing across the year!
SWA Series - It's a wrap
The weekend of 22nd-24th April saw 130 students flock to the Weymouth and Portland National Sailing Academy for an intense weekend of competition. It was all to play for – as results counted for both the students overall rankings across the SWA series, as well as BUCS points up for grabs for their universities. We’ve previously looked at who managed to win the BUCS points, and now we’ll see who came out on top in the SWA series across the year.
The SWA series consists of 8 events throughout the year – we kicked off the season at Aussie Kiss Student Windsurf Festival in Bude back in October, and have then travelled across the country to Plymouth, Birmingham, Cardiff, Bangor, Bristol and Nottingham – before rounding off the competitive season in Weymouth this weekend. Each event carries vital points as students battle for top prizes from sponsors.
Fitting with the theme of ‘The Great Migration’ students arrived in Weymouth from across the country on the Friday night, to set their tents up to form their territory for the weekend. An evening spent catching up in the pub was followed by an early start on Saturday morning as the sunrise woke the competitors somewhat bleary eyed.
The competition kicked off with the racing, with the results counting for the overall racing standings.
The race series was one of the most competitive, with the final standings all coming down to the results at Nationals in Weymouth. Alex Parker from Cardiff showed consistency across the year, and managed to pinch the top spot from fellow Cardiff competitor Amy who couldn’t make the final event. Series sponsor Patrik Diethelm rewarded Alex with a sponsorship for the next year.
In the Intermediate Fleet, Pablo of Bristol had a very successful day – with a 3rd place finish on the day enough for him to win the series overall. In the beginner series, Josh Wilkins took the title for the year, with a tie for 2nd place. A thumb war seemed the obvious way to break the tie – but after a stale mate it was called evens.
Advanced Race Series – sponsored by Patrik Diethelm
1. Alex Parker – Cardiff
2. Leo Calnan – Southampton
3. Matthew Duffin – Bristol
Alex Parker - "There’s been some really good competition and it was a close race for the top 3 at the end, I’m super excited to win sponsorship with Patrik and Sailloft to become part of Team xplg and looking forward to the future with them!”
Intermediate Race Series – sponsored by Horizon Watersports
1. Pablo Tarodo – Bristol
2. Georgina Stewart –
3. Dominic Kay - ??
Beginner Race Series - sponsored by Lagoon Watersports
1. Josh Wilkins – Swansea
=2 Alice Lyons – UWE
=2 Elizabeth Milbank - Liverpool
Exhausted from all the racing on Saturday, the students headed back to the campsite to refuel on some well earned fish and chips, before getting into costume for the evening entertainment. Deer, parrots and some questionable penguins were all in attendance as the students partied like they know how for the final night of the SWA series.
Sunday morning saw the conclusion of the freestyle and team racing series, as well as the final chance to grab points in the overall series.
Freestyle Series – sponsored by Boardwise & K66
Conditions for the freestyle series have encompassed both high and low winds – and it was the competitors who thrived in both that came out on top. Last year’s champion, Charlie Wilson of Southampton, had a fantastic competition on the day, allowing him to retain his crown, and in doing so bag a new boom.
1. Charlie Wilson – Southampton
Wave Series – sponsored by Puravida/Ion
The wave series saw some high level wave riding at both Bangor and Plymouth – we reported on how Matt clinched the title (link to Boards article), and in doing so won £250 of ION vouchers to spend on any of their products. New for this year, the wave series also rewards the most improved competitor. Ben Bulson of Bristol went home with a brand new Vandal sail after showing some serious grit and progress throughout the year.
1. Matt Cox – Plymouth
2. Sara Kellett – UWE
3. Tom Bennett-Lloyd - Bangor
Overall Series Results
King of the Wind - Men's Series - sponsored by Supersaturated
The overall series combine the results across all disciplines – race, freestyle and wave sailing – across all events – testing the students in all conditions. Combining his podium positions from racing and freestyle, Leo of Southampton just squeezed out Alex of Cardiff for the title and kudos.
Leo Calnan– “King of the Wind "absolutely stoked I won the title, it was close between Alex Parker and I so it could have gone either way!
Queen of the Wind - Men's Series - sponsored by Rushingham
In the female series, the top three had been super close coming in to the weekend – they knew it would all come down to the final competitions. With Amy not making it to Weymouth, it was a battle between two – with Sophie managing to edge Jane by a couple of points and take home a new mast courtesy of Tushingham.
1. Sophie Harvey – Birmingham
2. Jane Paddison – Liverpool
3. Amy Robinson – Cardiff
Sophie Harvey - "This year has definitely been the most competitive women’s series I can remember, so I was super excited to come away with the top prize! Going into the final weekend there was only a couple of points between Jane and myself so we knew that it was all down to the final race and freestyle. We had our share of collisions on the course (sorry Jane!!) but somehow I managed to get the advantage! Thanks to Tushingham for the mast!”
Jane Paddison - "Defending the title this year has not been easy! After Amy won the advanced racing at the Bristol event, beating all the boys as well, I was certain she was destined for the title of Queen of The Wind. Being of a similar standard, Sophie and I have had a friendly rivalry throughout the season, both ensuring we attended all the events as the points all add up! However she would always come out on top and the best gal won - congratulations Sophie!"
Team Series – sponsored by Boardwise
The team race series is arguably the one all clubs want to win for ultimate glory. Going into the final event of the series, Cardiff were leading the way with Southampton and Durham hot on their heels. With their 2nd place finish in Weymouth, Cardiff did just enough to cement the title, and take home £250 Boardwise voucher. Bristol managed to climb up the leaderboard to 2nd with their victory in Weymouth, and were rewarded with £100, whilst Southampton took home £50.
1. Cardiff
3. Southampton
5. Swansea
6. Imperial
Thank you to Weymouth and Portland OTC and North Down Farm for hosting us for the weekend, and thank you to all the sponsors for supplying fantastic prizes – Boardwise, Patrik, Horizon Watersports, Lagoon Watersports, Tushingham, Puravida/ION, K66, Supersaturated and Colwyn Bay Watersports.
A massive congratulations to everyone who competed, and particularly those taking home the titles. The next event for the SWA is Aussie Kiss Student Windsurf Festival in October – be sure to watch out for the date!
BUCS National Championships 2016 - Announcement
Spring is coming, temperatures are rising to dizzying levels and the stage is set for the world famous climax to the SWA year: BUCS National Championships 2016; The Great Migration!
Vast movements of ocean and air currents bring dramatic change throughout the year and in a few special places, these seasonal changes create some of the greatest wildlife spectacles on earth.
One of the most awe inspiring events, takes place in the great open plains of Portland. Once a year 300 student windsurfers gather in the small corner of south England, this is the greatest concentration of wild windsurfers on the planet. But the herds only stay for one weekend before continuing on their epic journey.
The northern edge of the island, is dominated by mount WPNSA, known to the indigenous people as the land of lashtionals. It's one of the many landmarks, that has shaped the windsurf landscape here for centuries.
Prides of Lions, a bind of salmon and a sloth of bears, a spectacle of sorts is set for the annual congregation of the SWA BUCS Nationals: The Great Migration.
Student windsurfers from herds across the lands will group, to hunt their prey, in the avid search for BUCS Medals. There will of course be a fancy dress party of which only the fittest will survive.
The venue is set in the shadow of the wondrous mount Portland at the Weymouth and Portland National Sailing Academy. The date is 22nd-24th April, come and join the SWA for this celebration of everything great about windsurfing!
Bring your tents/vans/yurts/mud huts to occupy a small territory in the wild SWA short grass plains at Northdown Farm, Osmington, Weymouth, Dorset DT3 6ED. Once your accommodation is constructed then head to the Friday night watering hole; where the stocks may dry off, making hunting what few animals remain even more difficult. The pride must keep moving to find food, but gradually the stumbling cubs weaken. Beware, younger, freshers cubs may fall into poor condition, and may not keep up with the adults, and their fate seemingly sealed. However, when the pride is relocated the following morning, the cubs will have somehow survived and been reunited with the adults.
The herd will face a further challenge as the active volcano mountwindsurferous erupts for the first time since 2015, raining crests down on the plains. Saturday and Sunday will see competition for the strongest of the groups.
These cyclical eruptions play a crucial role in the SWA ecosystem. With the arrival of the first storms, the plains become green and lush. The wildebeest herds return and compete for final points in the SWA series, reuniting at watering holes alike, where the pride can enjoy the good times again.**
Tickets are £36 each!
Dig out your fancy dress, polish your raceboards and we’ll see you there!
**Actual serious & important information to be circulated in Presidents Pack!
Facebook event @ https://www.facebook.com/events/1521833528122021/
Cardiff Wave - Surfing, Fish & Chips and the end of the wave series
Nottingham Pond Life XII - End of the World
BrUWE VII - Wildest Fantasies - The Lowdown
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Home > Case Law > Constitutional Law > Adult Business Zoning
Adult Business Zoning Cartoons
Adult Business Zoning
City of Los Angeles v. Alameda Books, Inc.; zoning ordinance prohibiting adult businesses to be in close proximity; adult book store; adult video; also applies to strip clubs.
Least Restrictive Means Test
Dean Milk co. v. Madison. A health and safety ordinance that discriminates against interstate commerce will be invalid if reasonable and adequate non-discriminatory alternatives are available.
Voting Restrictions In School District Elections
Kramer v. Union Free School District No. 15; Restriction of voting in school district election to parents and property owners or lessors is a violation of equal protection.
Permitted Free Speech Regulations
United States v. O'Brien; A governmental regulation may restrict speech if the goal is unrelated to the suppression of free speech, and the incidental restriction on alleged First Amendment freedoms is no greater than essential to legitimate interest.
Public Employee Speech
Connick v. Myers; When a public employee speaks not as a citizen but as an employee upon matters of personal interest, and that speech may cause disruption in the employee's office, the First Amendment usually does not protect.
Least Restrictive Means for Personal Liberties
Gibson v. Florida Legislative Investigation Committee; Impinging on the right of free association, free speech, press and petition requires convincing showing of substantial relationship between restriction and overriding and compelling state interest.
Reporters Must Testify Before Grand Jury
Branzburg v. Hayes; The First Amendment freedom of the press does not protect news reporters from the obligation to testify before a grand jury.
District Attorney's Office for the Third Judicial District v. Osborne; exonerating DNA testing; no post-conviction constitutional right to access DNA evidence; due process.
Religious Monument
Pleasant Grove City, Utah v. Summum; park is a traditional public forum, but the display of a monument is not expression to which forum analysis applies, and instead is a form of government speech not subject to Free Speech strict scrutiny.
Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire; name-calling, epithets, personal abuse are not protected by the First Amendment; Constitution will not protect fighting words or hate speech; incite violence.
Dred Scott v. Sandford; slave could not become a citizen by living in the North; Constitution did not apply to the enslaved black African race; purchase freedom offer refused; diversity jurisdition.
Child Pornography Law
New York v. Ferber; adult books and adult videos with children are not protected by the First Amendment or Free Speech; no redeeming value and obscenity standard does not apply; sexual exploitation of minors.
Rosenberger v. Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia; Viewpoint-based distinctions in public spending violate the First Amendment; Establishment Clause.
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Head of IOC inquiry into Russian doping steps down
By STEPHEN WILSON
Home » Switzerland » Head of IOC inquiry into Russian doping steps down
International Olympic Committee, IOC, President Thomas Bach speaks the opening of the first day of the executive board meeting of the IOC in Lausanne, Switzerland, Tuesday, Dec. 6, 2016.(Laurent Gillieron/Keystone via AP)
International Olympic Committee, IOC, member Sergei Bubka, center, of Ukraine sits next to Willy Kaltschmitt, right, of Guatemala and IOC member Gian-Franco Kasper, left, from Switzerland at the opening of the first day of the executive board meeting of the IOC in Lausanne, Switzerland, Tuesday, Dec. 6, 2016. (Laurent Gillieron/Keystone via AP)
By: STEPHEN WILSON (AP)
LAUSANNE, SwitzerlandCopyright 2020 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
46.5166.63282
LAUSANNE, Switzerland (AP) — The former French judge heading an IOC investigation into Russian doping stepped down on Tuesday, three days before the release of a new report into systematic cheating at the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi.
Guy Canivet, a former judge of the Constitutional Court, resigned purely for "personal reasons," the International Olympic Committee said.
Canivet leaves as vice chairman of the IOC ethics commission and as chairman of the inquiry commission looking into evidence of state-backed Russian doping, a position he began in July.
Canivet will be replaced as head of the IOC inquiry panel by former Swiss president Samuel Schmid, who is also a member of the IOC ethics commission.
IOC spokesman Mark Adams said the change should not hamper or slow down the investigation.
"Mr. Canivet has strong personal reasons for resigning," Adams said. "The succession and handover has been assured and I don't see any particular delay."
Canivet's resignation precedes Friday's publication of the latest report by World Anti-Doping Agency investigator Richard McLaren into alleged state-sponsored Russian doping.
The Canadian lawyer's first report, issued in July, led WADA to recommend Russia's exclusion from the Rio de Janeiro Olympics. The IOC rejected the call, instead allowing international federations to decide which Russians could compete.
Friday's report is expected to focus on evidence of organized Russian doping centered on the Sochi Games, including allegations that tainted samples of Russian athletes — including medalists — were swapped for clean ones through a concealed hole in the wall of the drug-testing lab.
Adams said the IOC has not been given any access to McLaren's report ahead of Friday's release at a news conference in London.
Without knowing the contents, the IOC executive board is expected to issue a statement this week setting out how it will deal with the new findings — including the possibility of stiff sanctions ahead of the 2018 Winter Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea.
The report will be sent to two IOC inquiry commissions. Canivet's panel has been looking into the Russian system as a whole, while Swiss member Denis Oswald leads a commission focusing on the Sochi doping samples.
"It will be done in a timely fashion that will work for Pyeongchang," Adams said.
IOC President Thomas Bach said last month that once the investigations and hearings are completed, the IOC will take "the necessary measures and all the sanctions because if only part of this would be true, it would be an unprecedented attack on the integrity on the Olympic Games and on the Olympic competitions."
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Tenindewa Town
Bob Desmond
On behalf of Faye Keeffe, this is Bob Desmond’s story as he told it called “Looking Back Down the Dusty Track”, written in April 1999.
Robert (Bob) Desmond’s Diary
Bob as a baby
Well here it is – as much of my life a I can remember, exciting and not so exciting, good and not so good, down on paper.
I was born on the 26th of May 1918, at the Maternity hospital in Geraldton. The eldest son of Robert Phillip and Josephine Mary Desmond. I had four brothers, Gerald (Digger), Peter, Augustine (Gus) and Paul, no sisters.
My first home was Binnu, where my father was share farming. From there we went to a farm my father brought from his brother James, it was called Mt Hill Springs, a few miles out of Walkaway.
Brother Digger Standing & Bob
When I was just 5 years old I fell into a shallow well full of water. I was dipping a little bucket in to help my mother get water out for the garden. I remembered being pulled out of the well by the seat of my pants. A few moths later I was with my father, he was putting up a new windmill. I was running around playing and fell on the fans, cutting my hand very badly. I flaked out and Dad carried me home where mum stopped it from bleeding and tied it up. It would have been too far to travel to Geraldton by horse
and cart to get it stitched, I am still wearing the scar today.
I can remember waiting and listening at night for my father to come home. He was contract carting with his horse team. My mother must have had a lonely time out many miles in the bush, all day and half the night.
We shifted into Walkaway to live so I could go to school. I went to the State school for about two years then over to the Greenough Convent. I boarded here for about a year until my cousin Alma Rutherford started school then we drove over in a horse and cart every day as day pupils.
The Grennough Convent as it is today in the Historical Greenough Hamlet
Greenough Convent in Bob’s day
I had to help Mum milk the cows, as Dad was away share farming. My first chore each morning was to go over to the shed and get feed for the cows and horse. This one morning when I opened the door, there was a wool bale just inside the door, freshly put there over night. So I had a look inside and saw a dead man’s body in the bale. What a shock!! He had been shot at a place called Ellendale by a chap called Tom Shaw. My uncles had brought the poor chaps body in, through the night. Shaw was working with my uncles, and this Englishmen for Logues. As they were getting ready to get on their horses and go back home, Shaw shot the Englishman. The police and my uncle Peter went out the next day and Shaw was caught, and jailed at Geraldton. I don’t remember remember what happened after that, but I do remember the cows didn’t get any chaff that morning.
The depression was starting to be felt, work was hard to get and Dad went to work on the main roads. He worked two weeks on and one week off (without pay). I used to set a few traps for rabbits and sell the skins for pocket money. When the skins dried they were very light, it took about 8 hours to 10 good skins to make a Ib. I got 6 pence a pound (5 cents).
I saved up enough cash to buy a second hand bike for £1-10-0 ($3.00). It was very handy going down to check on my traps in the mornings, it saved me a lot of time. I was in a hell of a hurry one morning when my dog ran across in front of me and I came a lovely buster, gravel rash and very little skin left at all. I was very sore for a weeks, never hurt the damn dog.
In the depression years we had some pretty tough times, my Dad strained his heart lifting a scoop when he was doing some road work with his teams. The doctor told him he couldn’t do anymore hard work. He had to sell all his horses and plant and the doctor arranged that he receive a pension, which was a very small amount in those days. He used to get a very bad pains, swelling in the chest, and eventually pass out. Sometimes he was unconscious for a few minutes, occasionally it seemed much longer before he came to. My mum has some very anxious and worrying times.
Mum had to go out to work, she did washing and ironing or any domestic chores for big families, anything helped to be able to keep the home going. She earned £1-0-0 ($2.00) for a long hard days, washing and ironing. I remember some Friday nights, if we had been good kids, mum would give us 6d (5 cents) to go to the little store and buy some lollies. We shared them between the three of us, Digger, Peter and myself.
I can also remember our parents used to take us over to the beach called the flat rocks for a two week holiday every year. We looked forward to this, we would go swimming and fishing. We would be a day getting the camp ready, we would build a shack, it had bags sewn together for the sides and cut bush for the roof, we thought it was great. We had to take several spring cartloads of water in drums. We would pick up some big pieces of collie coal that sometimes fell off the steam trains. A large lump would last for a day and night for cooking, which was done mainly in camp ovens. We caught plenty of crayfish on these trips.
Mum used to make bread in the oven or a quick damper or cook fish. We used to trap rabbits and gather shellfish for cray bait. We cooked our crayfish in a kerosene bucket. These buckets were made out of 4 gallon kerosene tins, which made a good bucket. I remember my mothers baking dish was one of these tins cut down. She always used it when she had roast turkey on Christmas Day. You could cook about thirty crayfish at a time in the bucket, and it took about 20 minutes in boiling water. Dad used to do most of the fishing. We also had a couple of uncles who lived close that caught quite a lot of fish. The crabs used to come up to the camp at night, and they would often give you a fright, they would crawl over your bed and make a scratching noise. The Rutherfords used to come over sometimes, while we were at the beach. Bob Rutherford caught a big Jew fish there one year. It was very heavy, probably weighed about 30 lbs (13.5 kgs), and certainly would have taken some landing over the rocks. Lots of people used to come over to the beach for the night, in the cool, and go home early next morning. There was always somebody coming or going, you were never lonely camped there. We used to be able to paddock our horse just over the hill about a mile away. There was plenty of water and feed, and it belonged to Mr Bill Criddle, Dad knew him very well. My brother Digger and I used to walk over the hill every few days to check that the horse hadn’t got away and walked back to Walkaway. We also had to keep a check on the water for the horse.
We shifted to Bradley’s to live where I went to school for two years. I left school at 14 years of age and went working with Dad for a while. We did whatever work we could get, like fencing or working of any kind in the shearing sheds.
I started working for Tom Levett, for a big pay of 7/6 (75 cents) per week. I worked ten hours a day starting all times in the mornings. They used to have us up so early, one bloke said about his cereal “Is this oats wild, that we have to sneak up on it in the dark?”
Tom Levett used to share farm at two places at Logue’s one block over the river and the other this side. We had to do a lot of carting across the river. One old chap, Peter Snotgrass had his dingo traps up the river and he used to take me on the horses to look at the traps. I used to enjoy that, it was very interesting. You had to keep well away from where they were set, as the dingoes could smell if humans had been around.
One night we were taking a load of wheat into the siding and while crossing the river one of the young horses that Tom Levett was breaking in got a fright from the river running over the stones. He choked down kicking and really playing up. So the boss said here, take this pocket knife, hop down and try to cut the haimes strap. I got it undone after a battle, I was as wet as a shag and shivering with fright. I was very lucky I didn’t get trampled on, or kicked in the dark.
We finished at that place and shifted over to the other crop and after a week there Tom Levett went into his own place to harvest his oats. He left me to feed and water the horses. We also had a load of hay by the horse yard. I used to sleep up on the load, as there was a big snake track in the shed. One night the dingoes were barking and howling, as we weren’t far from their watering spot on the river. In the night the horses broke out and pulled the side out of the load of hay. Then both the hay and I hit the ground as it slid down, I finished up under the lot with hay all over me. I didn’t know whether the dingoes or the horses had me. Without a light, it took me a long time to get them all back in the yard. I had to shift some of the hay away from the fence or yard. About a week after, we shifted back home to Walkway.
It was mostly casual and seasonal work, a few months at a time. I got a job at Hugh Hamersley’s for the season cropping, driving a team of horses, had a few young ones a bit hard to handle. While feeding them one night, one silly bugger bit my shoulder. He grabbed me and lifted me clean off the ground. They took me over to the house, and a chap called Don Broad cleaned the wound up and put some Flavene on it. I had a crook shoulder for a while. When that job finished, I went cutting wood with Dad and getting a few roos in between, which helped a lot.
The Historic Hammersley House at Walkaway as it is today.
Robert’s brought a farm at Georgina and I got work there. They came from Waddi Forest, at Coorow. Mr Robert’s was married to a Ruddick girl. They were slave drivers, buggers to work for, only paying one pound a week and you had to supply your own tucker; I also had to feed the cattle on Sundays so it was 7 days a week. I couldn’t play any tennis or cricket, so that job wasn’t any good and I smartly left there.
I went to a few farms for the shearing, then my uncle Peter gave me a shed at Edah (later owned by Colin Broad) across the road from Wagga and just out of Yalgoo, doing work as a rouseabout. He had the contract for that shed.
The sheep were very poor on the station that year. The cook couldn’t even bake meat because there wasn’t anything on a leg, so it was stew and curries or mince all the time. The hills used to be just white with goats, they were getting all the sheep feed. A shearer and I went out shooting one Sunday. The goats were all colours and the roos were thick. I would have liked to have been there kangaroo hunting for a living. It was fairly quiet place.
After finishing there, I got a job at Eves’s at Walkaway. He sent me to Elena to bring back a mob of cattle. Norm Criddle a good mate of mine came with me, he was later killed while at war. We had to muster the cattle in one day and drive them down at night, as there weren’t any yards to hold them in so it was pretty hard going. On the way down we had trouble as some cattle were trying to go back to their calves, so we had a busy night. My mate lost his good cowboy hat in thick bush as he went in after the cattle, we searched everywhere for it but we didn’t find it. After we came down towards the coast we could see some lights a long way away. As we got closer, it looked like a big ship out to sea. It didn’t seem to be moving, it seemed to stay in the one place. The next day we found out it was actually a ship and it was stranded on a reef out from the flat rocks. “Calligaros” bought it and were able to salvage a lot of gear off it before it broke in half. The crew were all saved, but I think the captain would have been fired for being that much off course. If he had gone a little further off course I think he would have run into the Walkaway pub.
After a few days I was sent to Northern Gully to fix a mill that had stopped pumping. I went down the well which had an old rusty ladder that didn’t look too safe. Phil Desmond was working with me, and he was at the top of the well sending anything that I wanted down, in a big bucket. There was a bit of bumping going on at the top and the next thing, they yelled out “LOOK OUT!” and down came a big jam post. The top had been covered over with posts and as it fell it hit the old ladder breaking it just above my head. Down the well I went, with a very sore shoulder. They got me out with a rope and bucket and I was able to help by coming up the pipe. My arm and shoulder were very sore for a few days. I was lucky the old ladder took most of the fall.
Tenindewa Store & Office When I was about 17 years old I got a job working for Harry Eves, Post on a farm south west of Mullewa, towards Walkaway. I was working with his nephew George Eves, who later owned this farm. George would take me into Tenindewa each week to play football, as they needed footballers for the Tenindewa Club. I met Robbie and Wally Weir on those trips. I remember kicking two goals during a game which left me feeling pretty good. In later years, I played for Federals Football Club in Mullewa .Rob and Mel Weir History
George and Grace Eves
I went down with Bob McAullife fencing and clearing at a place called Mininooka. We were camped out in the bush, the cook house was a tent and we had another tent to sleep in. It was a pretty good set up. We got our stores and meat from Readheads, the only problem was that to get the meat I had to go in on my bike and kill the sheep and go back again the next morning to cut it up (a few miles each way).
A few weeks after they started shearing Bob and I went to work in the shed where he worked there year. It was a big shed, about 10,000 to shear. After about a week the wool chaps come up from Perth; Jack Prevo was one of the big boss’s from the Woolstore. He was a top wool man and they stayed all day looking at the wool. I had been given the job as piece picker and they came up and asked a lot of questions about where I had worked with wool before. Bob came to tell me they wanted me to go to Fremantle Stores. At smoko time Readhead brought them over to where I was and asked me if I would be interested in a good job down at the stores. I had to let them know if I would take it. But at that time I had started to become very friendly with a lass called Rita. So there you are. I was sticking to her then and I’m still sticking to her now. I must have made the right decision.
Tom Readhead’s was a good place to work and the meals were the best of all the places I worked at. There would be three choices for each meal including breakfast. Mrs Readhead and her daughters were wonderful cooks. I got a job at their station at Mingenew when they started shearing. After that finished, Bob McAuliffe and I went fencing for Charlie Readhead at Melera, (also in the Mingenew area) so we camped in tents again, out about six miles. Every Sunday I used to ride into the homestead for a few stores and a letter from my sweetie. I took a contract clearing for £1-0-0 ($2.00) an acre and I cut the wood out for 7/6 (75 cents) a tonne and sold it to the Brick Kiln at Bootenal. There were a hundred acres all told, but I only made tucker. I worked for Major Logue for the harvest and in those days, you had to grade your wheat with the old wino machine. It was turned by hand, very slow going, you had to take the radish out before you could sell it. A few years after that they put engines on them and it was a lot easier and faster. A few farmers in those days had an old Chev Ford truck that could carry about 25 bags into the siding.
It was still depression days and things were still pretty tough. So I’d go kangaroo hunting, taking my kangaroo dog and a young horse I was breaking in for Tom Levett for £5-0-0 ($10.00). One time I was about 12 miles out when the dog bailed up a big boomer. The dog had a long run to catch him so he laid down exhausted under a tree and left it to me. I tied my horse to a blackboy and the roo came at the horse. I grabbed the roo by the tail to stop him and he turned on “Bobby Boy” so the game was on. I got out my pocket knife and opened it up and by this time he had me down and looked like winning. Then I managed to cut one of his hamstrings and he got savage, tearing my shirt off and cutting my arm. He was still kicking me with his good leg. The dog never even looked, he was too exhausted to help. Finally, I got the other hamstring cut so the battle was over. My horse was very frightened and stirred up by all this going on. I finished up with 3 skins that day and a very tired dog. I just couldn’t let the roo get away as it was a days wages. Sometimes I would have to carry my dog home on the horse, he would be so worn out.
On the weekends Oscar Criddle and I used to take the kangaroo tails to a chap at the hotel who he paid us 2/- (20 cents) each for them. It was 1936 that I started doing a bit of shearing in some small shed. Then I got a stand at “The Grange” at Irwin where we knew the manager there, Rod Piper, who was a distant relation of my mother. He married a “Cary”. I think it is strange because when I got the farm at Indarra, through the war service, he was our field supervisor and a very nice chap. The sheep on “The Grange” were very big wethers to start with, so that made it a bit tough on my back. A shed hand, Ray Baguley, and myself had our meals at Rod Piper’s house. Rod used to give my back a rub every night which was a big help. The other shearers and shed hands had their meals at the station home.
I used to ride my bike home, to Walkway on Saturday afternoon and back on Sunday. Sometimes I got a lift on the road workers trucks, which was good as it was about 40 miles.
After that shed cut out, I went to Mullewa shearing for Mick Loughnan at Urawa, were we stayed for nearly a month. When we finished I caught a train home and met Rita at Narngulu. Peter, my brother and Rita were waiting for me with a horse and cart and I was so pleased to see them, as I had thought I might have to walk and carry all my gear back to Walkaway.
Bob after Tennis at Walkaway
There used to be some casual work around the loco, at Walkaway. Coaling up the steam engines, a lot of shift work. There were trucks of coal to be unloaded up into the stage. The pay wasn’t very good, but it was a job, we got 2 shillings (20 cents) a tonne. It was very hard on your back. Steel bottom trucks were good to unload but boards were terrible as there used to be nails sticking up, giving your wrists hell, jarring all the time.
I was getting seasonal work at Jones’s Bros farms at Belay. After I had been there a few times, they put me on permanently. I stayed there until it was nearly time to go into the army in 1942.
While working at the Jones Bros I used to train their race horse. It was a beautiful looking filly, called Black Princess, from a half Arab race mare and an Arab stallion. She was very fast and won quite a few races at the Walkaway races, in pretty smart company. I had to rise very early to train the horse in the dark before work as it was hay carting time when the races were run, and hay time was a very busy time.
Belay Farm Homestead today.
They used to cut about a 100 tonnes of hay, as they supplied Boogardie station, (also owned by the Jones’s) plus their own horse teams. They also sold chaff which was all steam cut with a steam engine. It used to be fed up through the steam elevator to the cutter. When hay carting, and making haystacks they had two builders and two pitches making two big hay stacks every year. It would be all gone by the next season. They also ran a lot of cattle and used to bring them down from the station to two (fatten) them up for market. Each week they killed 2 sheep, and I had to cut the meat up the next morning and deliver it to the cook. I had to have the fresh chops in the kitchen early enough for the cook to have them ready for 7am breakfast, another very early start. My pay here was £2-0-0 ($4.00) a week.
Bob stooking hay
Rita & Bob Wedding Day 31 January 1942
On the 30th of January I got married. While waiting to go to the church that day I remember the Iceworks blew up making a big bang. There were 44 gallon drums flying sky high. After we were married in the lovely little broom room, of St Francis Xavier Catholic Cathedral, Geraldton (in those days mixed marriages were not allowed to be held in front of the main altar) we went out to Rita’s people (Patience family) and had a very nice reception. Just the two families, as it was war everywhere at that time. We went back to Geraldton to live until the 3rd March 1942, the call up time.
I worked on the wheat silos and on the wharf, digging air raid shelters for about a month. We then went out to Mum’s. I caught the train from Walkaway to Claremont Army camp and Rita went home to her people, one of the saddest days in our life. Later Rita came down to Midland and stayed at Aunty Jean Rutherford’s where at least I could visit her occasionally.
She went back home to her mothers before Allan was born on the 28th November 1942.
We arrived at Claremont Army camp to be fitted out with our army gear. We were there about a week, then sent to a Northam camp, the coldest spot in the West. The huts were about 2ft high from the ground. Our mattress was just a bag with a few pieces of straw in it. The wide cracks where the floorboards joined made it even colder. A few chaps got sick while in Northam. I finished up in the army hospital called the 188, at Northam.
Rita and Aunty Jean Rutherford came up on the visitors train to see me, the train ran up in the morning and back at night of a Sunday. I think I was over it pretty well by then, I remember they brought a picnic lunch. There was a Yank in the bed next to me who had been shot down up the top end by the Japanese. They would give you the world and they had everything you could wish for. They would almost need their own plane to carry all their gear around. They were looked after much better than we were. Rita came up and stopped at Northam in a boarding house for a few weeks but it was a terrible place then, overrun by soldiers. You had a job to buy a nice meal, it was just over populated.
I used to shoot through at night every chance I got. I was caught a few times but it was worth it. You needed eyes in the back of your head all the time, as if you got caught your pay would stop and you had to do a few days of heavy pack drill.
Bob in the Army
One time a few of us cleared out in the afternoon, from our camp about 20 miles out of Northam. A truck loaded with a big high load of chaff came along. He stopped and put us on top where we couldn’t be seen and let us off just out of town in case the M.P’s (Military Police) got us. We then found out that a train left at midnight to go out our camp way, so we had to be up in the railway yard before midnight to find the right train. We finally got on and hid pretty low til it pulled out. We knew when to jump off, it had to be going up a hill and around a bend, (this part of the railway line was built up about 8ft high). At night you had to judge when you thought it was going slow enough around the bend. You had to take a long jump to clear the tracks and roll down the bank. The train picked up speed when it straightened up, if you left it too late then the harder you fell, but it didn’t seem to worry us then. I wouldn’t like to try a jump today, there could be a few sore patches. Then you had to sneak into camp because there would be guards on duty.
When I first went into the army I was put into the signallers, cable laying for morse code, but I didn’t like it. So I put in for a truck drivers job and within a few weeks I was allocated the rations and leave personnel truck. That was a good job picking up stores of all kinds and carting soldiers into the railway to go on leave. I didn’t have to do much marching.
I had been sick (with diarrhoea) when camped at Jurien Bay and was in the Army Hospital for about a week. When I got out I was sent to the Moora rest home, a big home that belonged to the Le Steere family, to recuperate for a few weeks and that was real good.
Then we shifted back to Swan View again, back to the truck driving. Before we arrived at this camp the Eastern states mob had camped there and done a lot of damage to the adjoining grape vines. I was away with the truck getting people that had been off on leave one night and some of the boys thought they would get a few grapes to eat. They asked a land army girl tending the vines could they have some grapes and she just walked away. The next thing they knew there was a shot fired over their heads. So they took off back to camp, they were still scared when I arrived back. I was pleased I was on the leave truck that night, there was never anymore said about it.
On March the 20th some good news came through, there was a big shortage of shearers for the farmers everywhere in the North West. Christopher Thomas O’Brien, Tom had applied to get me out, as he had been talking to Dad. Dad had told him I would like to get out for shearing. They got onto their member for parliament, that was Vic Johnson, and after a few weeks I was called up to see Major Humphries with about 10 others. About a week later we were out. Some chaps had to go up north, where-ever they were needed. It was April 1st, the day we walked out of camp to get the train, and I remember one of the boys saying “Don’t look back, it is April Fools Day” they might call us back. I went straight to Tom O’Brien’s, and he lent me his shearing plant which I used for about 3 years. Then I was able to buy my own plant and continued on shearing until going onto the farm. I was earning one pound and six shillings ($2.60) per sheep.
The gregarious Tom O’Brien
Annette Joy, our first daughter was born 7th June 1944.
I went to Mullewa shearing first, I had no vehicle, only a push bike and at that time the roads were only sand and gravel, very rough going. I remember riding out to Brenkley’s,about 20 miles, in the dark on Monday mornings. I arrived in time for breakfast. I nearly got bowled over by kangaroos and ducks. The ducks were nesting on the side of the road and they got a ‘start’ as I peddled past. Sometimes I would stop for a bit of a rest on Tom Forster’s verandah. Occasionally you could catch an early goods train, but you had to make sure you had the right train. One time Eric McCagh and I decided to give it a a go. We climbed into a carriage about 4am on the Monday morning, and fell asleep while we waited. When we woke up the other train had gone and our carriage hadn’t moved an inch. We were lucky enough to get a ride on the School Bus to Tenindewa. We then set out walking to Troy’s at Indarra and fortunately Tom O’Brien came along and gave us a lift, but we had a very late start that day. This wasn’t good enough, so it was back to pedalling the next Monday morning.
Bob, Keith Bone, Eric and Mrs McKay and Frank Fumic
I could nearly always get a lift into town from the farms, on Saturday afternoon after shearing. It had to be a ute or a truck to get my pushbike home, ready for Monday morning. My old bike was just about worn out from the rough roads and long trips, it was a hard battle sometimes on the bike, especially on rainy days. In my shearing days we struck some very rough camps, dreadful beds and mattresses and no facilities to have a good wash. One place we went to, Archie Olman’s, The Olman’s camp was made of long poles and lined with bags. There were two beds made out of bush rails and bags, and just enough space in the room to move in between the two beds. They weren’t even long enough to lay out straight to sleep. There was sheet of tin for the door, and the only room for any of our gear was under the bed. One night Eric stretched out and the end of his bed fell out, so he had to sleep the rest of the night with his feet on the ground and his head up high. This was one shed we didn’t like much.
Archie’s Camp
Mrs Eva Dunkin (nee Stafford) was the first teacher at Tenindewa school
The Dunkin Family or Dick’s was a rough shed, but we had very good conditions in the house. Mrs Duncan (nee Stafford) couldn’t do enough to help. She even made our beds and would give us an extra rug if the weather was very cold. At some of the sheds you had to get some wool from the shed and put it in a bag for a mattress, because there wasn’t a mattress on the bed. There certainly were some rough old places, and I couldn’t carry much because I only had a push bike for most of the early days. I finally brought an old ute £50.0.0 ($100.00) which had been a studebaker car, cut down to a ute. It had belonged to Ernie Rumble years earlier and had been run on kerosene and the motor had no power. My bother Digger, who did a lot of shearing with me, used to tell everyone that he pushed it up the hills and jumped on and got a ride down the hill. A salesman up from Perth offered me £75-0-0 ($150.00), so I gladly accepted and loaded it onto the railways. I then brought an old international ute from Wally Smith. This was a much better vehicle and it lasted a long time. We still had it on the farm for quite a few years afterwards.
I remember some of the early happenings in and around Mullewa in the 1945 – 46 years. It was said about that time if you put up a big marquee over the town you could have the best circus in the west. One humorous incident that happened was when a drover named Ned Ridley came to town, with a mob of cattle and his team of camels. He had killed a bullock that afternoon and wanted to put it in the butchers cool room. Being unable to find the butcher he asked his mate the local policeman if he knew here he might find him. So along they went to the local drinking spot and tapped on the door. It was 10pm and the pub should have been closed; the publican said “its the police.” There were about 10 to 12 people in the bar at the time, this included the butcher and the local draper called Jim. Jim thought he would quickly hide away from the police and climbed up the fire place chimney, as far up as he could go. When the policeman came in, he said “Haven’t you lot got a bed to go to?” At that time Jim couldn’t hold on any longer and crashed down to the floor. The cop said “Who’s that?” and Jim replied “Father Christmas”, so they all got told off and the butcher left with the drover and the policeman to put the bullock in the cool room.
Our second daughter, Dolores Faye was born on 4th February 1946.
In 1947 when I was shearing around the Mullewa district, I was still paying off our house at the time. The house was just across from Mullewa hospital and is still there today. I purchased it off Mr Page for £450. At the time, Mr Page owned the power station in Mullewa. He was pretty good to me and offered me a bit of extra work at the power station whenever I had any spare time. I used to go down to the station and pack ice, to be sent up to the sheep stations either by road or train. The money I earned, he would deduct from the amount I still owed on the house. A few years later when we moved out to the farm I sold the house to Al Brand. Around this time I was offered S.B.P (starting price bookmaker) for a chap on a commission basis, running a book on the races each Saturday. It was all a help, a little bit extra to help pay off these payments. Once I moved out to the farm I had any amount of work to do, so I didn’t have enough spare time to continue with these odd jobs.
This is the original Indarra Siding Shed.
In 1960 Bob purchased it and “sledded it” as one to Kaluwirri.
The Desmond family donated it to the Lions Club in 1990 and it was put back on site
It was 1948 when I went share farming with Troy’s at Indarra. It was a very poor year for crops and feed. We only
Tom Moore MLC and Indarra farmer
had 591 points or rain, and in 1949 I was allocated the farm “Kaluwirri” at Indarra. Thomas James Moore affectionately known as Tom helped me to get the farm as he knew quite a few people on the War Service Board. Baron-Hay was the chairperson at the time and he had been talking to Tom Moore about the farm. I had to go before the board in Perth and be interviewed. About a week later, I received a letter to say I had been successful. We were very happy about this, Rita and I and our three children, Allan, Joy and Faye were off to start farming.
[Kaluwirri was the name assigned by Troy to the farm. In the book “A Varied and Versatile Life” on the famous pastoralist, Frank Wittenoom, Kaluwirri is the aboriginal name of a Hill Wallaby which just might be the explanation]
Michael Francis Troy
MLA (Member for Murchison) and Indarra farmer the previous owner of Kuluwirri
To put in a crop, I had to get some machinery so I went to Michael Troy’s clearance sale. Frank Troy as he was widely known was an extremely successful politician and in being the member for Murchison it was most unusual that he lived and farmed at Indarra so many miles west of his electorate. He was of course the person that I had managed to purchase the farm from.
In those days ploughs, combines and tractors were very scarce. You had to put your name in a hat with a lot of other names and be in the draw. I got both the ploughs, so Eric McCagh took one of them, they had quite a lot of repairs done to them. They needed discs and bearings and it cost quite bit to do them up. The main thing though was that I had a plough to start with. Then I had to get something to pull the plough with. You couldn’t get tractors after the war, not even a second hand one. So I went along to the R&I bank in Geraldton and the Manager Bart Lindsay told me I could buy a team of six horses, whippletrees and all the harnesses I needed at Tom Ahearn’s place at Eradu, for thirty five pounds ($70.00). So, that was another stroke of luck my way.
Bob at Horse Yards at Kaluwirri
Team of horses at Kaluwirri
The problem was getting the horses up to the farm, as I had no horse to ride. So a chap named Hoppy Edwards (he only had one leg) said he could ride one of the horses I had bought. We got them in the yard after a battle, then we asked Tom what horse he thought was quickest to ride. He said they had never been ridden so Hoppy picked one out and managed it okay. We got them to the farm after a battle, put them in the yard and fed them for a few days to settle them down. I had brought the haystack at the sale. I had another spot of trouble, I didn’t know which horse was used to working on the rein. I got everything ready to go ploughing and the paddock was very dry and hard. When I got the horses into the plough, they bolted straight back to the shed. I couldn’t steer them, as one had no mouth for a rein horse, all I could do was hang on. The caretaker, Cyril Fogarty, ran out of the shed and waving a wool bale at them. They stopped long enough to get them out and back to their yard.
Hay carting at Kaluwirri
Arthur Hunter, a salesman from Geraldton, sold me a Fordson tractor and Fletcher Waldeck helped me arrange finance for it. In those days the tractor had no head lights and if I needed to work during the night, I would take a kerosene lantern and hang in front of the tractor. The same year I brought an older header from Vince McGuinness on time payment. To add to the bad year the emus came down from the station country. They were very bad, they came in big mobs and we had to chase them everyday. I caught 78 emus before harvest with a dog and rifle. I stayed on the farm looking after the crops and never went shearing at Bullardoo as there wouldn’t have been any crop left if I had gone. 1949 was a vert light season again for rain and feed was very poor. I brought 840 young sheep for 30/- per head ($3.00) which was very cheap at the time. Crops averaged about 12 bushells. (.8/tonne per hectare)
I brought a sixteen run combine as the older seeder was getting a bit shaky. It was a fair season with 1180 points, wet June and July.
Bob & Rita after trip to Carnarvon
Was a good year for both crops and feed. I brought a new harvester as the older header had had the bomb by this. This was the year Allan had his appendix out.
When we were first out at the farm, we tried to get a car. We need something more reliable, as Rita was expecting Pam at the time. We finished up getting a holden. While we were waiting to be allocated one from Sidney Atkins, the holden dealers, the price went up about £75 ($150.00). About a week later we got the message ours was ready. The I went down to pick it up I saw a chap I was in the army with and asked him how long the cars had been there and he told me about 3 months. There must have been 25-30 cars everywhere. So they must have been hanging on for a rise in price. It made it ever so much more to pay, over four hundred pounds, but I cant remember the exact figure.
Bob and Rita’s house at Indarra and that FB Holden Car (note the multi-lined telephone pole. This indicates the fact that the Indarra Telephone Exchange operated out of the Telephone Room associated with this house for many years)
There weren’t any lights in the house when we shifted out to the farm. We battled on for about 12 months with what we had, a hurricane and an Aladdin kerosene lamp. Electric wiring was pretty costly, so I thought I’d have a go at doing it myself. I found out a fair bit about it from a chap I knew, Bill Barden. He had a business in Mullewa and was a big help when I needed him. Graeme Fisher put a new Mc Donald 32v lighting plant in; he worked for the McDonald company. This served us very well until the SEC came through (mid 1970’s). That was one of the best things that ever happened to us farmers at the time.
Our third daughter arrived 10th August 1951, Pamela Maree.
Kaluwirri homestead in about 1920 just after MF Troy had completed it (side view)
The house from the front view today
Very wet year, 1450 points over 4 inches for May gave a great start to the season. I was still shearing at a few sheds at this stage in the slack times.
Our fourth daughter arrived 10th November 1953, Dianne Mary.
I gave shearing away in 1953 as there was too much work needing to be done on the farm. I had an old chap called Arty Kember working for me who used to do a lot of jobs looking after the sheep and pigs, and he was a big help. He had been on farms all his life and he could do a shift on the tractor if he was needed. I remember one time we had spent the weekend cutting fire wood with the circular saw and the Fordson tractor. Allan woke in the middle of the night and could see a roaring fire where our pile of wood had been. We rushed over to try and push the tractor away from the pile of burning wood and after many tries we realized the handbrake was on. We think Arty had a cigarette in that area before going to bed (Christine Kember and Harry Townsend )
The year of the Meckering earth tremor in 1968, I was over at the soak fixing the windmill. I was standing on some sleepers that were covering the top of the well when they started rocking, shaking and tipped me over, and I fell into the well. I couldn’t work out what had happened, but when I arrived home for lunch, Rita said there had been a bad earth tremor, so that explained the sleepers shaking!! (14th October 1968)
Bob with son Allan in Geraldton
The year Allan was hurt (1964) was a very wet year and we got three tractors and a truck bogged. Paul came over to help and got his tractor in the same mess. We decided to go home and wait for the ground to dry out. It was so wet the water was running out of the ground. I went over into the york gums and found the longest stick I could find. They asked me what I was going to do with the stick and I said “Push it into this mud so we can find the tractors when we come back”. Robert McDonald laughed all the way home about finding the tractor.
We sure had some ups and downs on the farm, but it was a good life, very interesting. We had good years and bad years, but never a dull moment. In the bad years, you just about had to give your cattle and sheep away for very little, then the next year you had to start all over again. Together with Clem Keeffe, we sent away a trainload of cattle. They were paddocked and fed down south, but it hardly paid its way. We had 102 head of ours that we couldn’t even sell. (The Flock Reduction Scheme)
The biggest blow to us was when Allan had his accident, to all the family, we never ever got over it. After he got hurt, it was an uphill battle for a few years. We were very lucky we had a lot of help from some neighbours and people from Devils Creek. Phil Keeffe came down and helped us put in a crop which we were very thankful for. Clem’s father, Glen Keeffe was often down to see if we needed any help.
About 1984 we retired to Geraldton, as I had hurt my back and we had a chance of getting a very good workman in Fred Shultz, so we let them have our house on the farm. Fred was the best man we had, you could go away and leave him and he would be okay.
When Allan fractured his leg in the sharing shed, I was over at the Abrolhos Islands fishing with my brother Peter. When I got home, I went back up to the farm to help Fred. The spear grass was bad in the wheat crop and it had to be graded. The machine to grade the speargrass was very slow, every time the header got a full box, he wasn’t very happy being held up waiting to get his load off. That weekend he made another bin for the old Acco, so he had some more storage. He really had a smile on his face when I arrived back at the farm on Monday morning. He didn’t even go to his tennis that weekend, just kept working.
While we were fishing at the Islands that time, we found a tube made of steel, it was about 6ft long and 2ft wide, and very heavy. It was washed up into the shallow water. It was grey and had a very strange top on it and it looked like a depth charge. It was there for several days and we tried to get it onto Vick’s (Newton) boat, but it was just too heavy. It looked like something off a warship. A few days after we came home we heard that the bomb squad had gone over and blown it up. It was bomb of some kind, so just as well we didn’t play around with it too much. Gary Desmond was with us and he would have liked it as a souvenir. It must have washed off a Navy ship and floated in between the Islands, and into the shallow bay. If a big boat had run into it, it might have blown up or put a hole in whatever it hit. When we used to fish around the Islands, we used to go very close to the old Dutch wrecks. One wreck was about halfway up on the reef and the big boiler was right up on the reef. It must have been pushed up there with high seas. Still there after all those years.
There are lots of very small Islands, the largest is called “Long Island”, and that’s where all the different kinds of sea birds nest. Bishop Thomas used to love going over to Ding Island and they would take him to Long Island, to watch the birds. Long Island is a very long and narrow island. They used to ship the bird manure from there for years, it was used to make fertiliser. The old ramp is still visible were they loaded the rock. Because the water was very shallow, they used a small boat to ferry the rock out into deeper water ship, to take it to the mainland. There are still little heads of manure rock in dumps (approx. 2 tonne). They used this rock through the war years, I don’t know how they ever broke it up, as it was pretty hard. It was rock hard, just like hard super. The North Islands are the same as the South. Manure has been there for hundreds of years. When I started going over to the Islands fishing, we used to go up to the first island, just up from Vic’s camp and we would catch about 20 to 30 groper, enough to fill a couple of wheat bags.
Bob in his retirement years
As the years went by the fish got less and less. You had to move around to find them in the shallow water, inside the reef. When they went out on the big boat, it was different. Fish are very cunning, we used to watch them in the clear shallow water. They would swim up to the baited line, have a look and then swim away, not hungry I suppose. It was very interesting over there, the only trouble was it was very windy, the wind blows all day and night. It is a real treat to have a fine, calm day as it is so open. Lots of days you just couldn’t go out fishing. When it’s windy, it’s a long hard trip back to the mainland, Geraldton. For all that, it is something different and very enjoyable while you’re over there.
Rita, Mel Weir and Mary Critch (1985)
Family L-R Allan, Joy, Faye, Pam, Dianne, Bob & Rita
Dianne Desmond, Geraldine Critch, Josephine Critch, Judy Foster, Pauline Critch, Pam Desmond at Tenindewa 1962
Bob with his poinciana tree
Tony Critch
Thanks for taking the plunge Carmen and sharing with us this story
Its a wonderful tribute to a wonderful pioneering family
Kevin Weir
Valuable history recorded in Bob’s story. The Desmonds were great neighbours and friends.
September 4, 2018 Reply
Liz Fernandez
Dear Faye my name is Liz Fernandez my sister Alice Norton (nee Cunningham) was showing me your article on Bob Desmond and noted our maternal grandfather’s name was incorrect he was Michael Loughnan known as Mick. In the story it is quoted as McLouglin from Urawa. If you are able to amend the spelling to Loughnan we would appreciate it. It was a great story we enjoyed teading it. Regards Liz Fernandez nee Cunningham.
Anthony Critch
All done Liz
Thanks so much for the interest and the feedback.
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Home Los Angeles Public Library Photo Collection Dog honored for saving four
Dog honored for saving four
Title Dog honored for saving four
Collection ID Valley Times Collection
Location/Accession HCNVT_d053_f10_i23
Description Photograph caption dated May 7, 1957 reads "Baron, boxer dog whose barking aroused four members of household of Charles Burke, 20450 Moberly Pl., Canoga Park, when fire destroyed home, gets big hug from his young master, Barry Burke, 9. Looking on at City Hall ceremonies are firemen Sid Fisher, left, and Stanley Ripple, who assisted at rescue."
Subject Los Angeles (Calif.).--Fire Department--Officials and employees.
Men--California--Los Angeles.
Boys--California--Los Angeles.
Fire fighters--California--Los Angeles.
Boxer (Dog breed)--California--Los Angeles.
Dogs--California--Los Angeles.
Pets--California--Los Angeles.
Rescues--California--Los Angeles.
Downtown Los Angeles (Los Angeles, Calif.).
Valley Times Collection photographs.
Coverage 1951; 1952; 1953; 1954; 1955; 1956; 1957; 1958; 1959; 1960
Credits This project was supported in whole or in part by the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act, administered in California by the State Librarian.; Made accessible through a grant from the John Randolph Haynes and Dora Haynes Foundation and Photo Friends.
Sub-Collection Name Valley Times Photo Collection
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Gauteng Finance MEC tables R132 billion budget
tgcomnews24 March 5, 2019
Gauteng Finance MEC Barbara Creecy has tabled a R132 billion budget. The biggest crunch of the budget, about R50 billion, will go to the Health Department.
The money will be used to secure new office premises after its building caught alight in September 2018 resulting in the deaths of three firefighters.
The other portion of the health budget will be used to pay the families of the Esidimeni victims.
Creecy tabled the budget in the Gauteng legislature in Johannesburg.
“R150.1 million is allocated over the MTEF for the department to obtain a suitable office accommodation following the fire incident in the Bank of Lisbon building and R300 million is made available through the Office of the Premier to compensate the families of mental health care users, who have been approved by the Master of the High Court, as a result of the Life Esidimeni tragedy,” explains Creecy.
Western Cape introduces incentive grant
The Western Cape provincial government says it has introduced an incentive grant for good performance in municipalities, which it says is the first for the country.
Provincial Minister of Finance, Ivan Meyer, tabled his R68 billion budget on Tuesday afternoon. Meyer says while 95 percent of the budget is allocated to service delivery, they also want to reward excellence. He says R10 million has been set aside to incentivise good performance in municipalities.
“We believe we must reward good governance. Look at Emfuleni in Gauteng, that place is in a mess, they stole the money. The place is absolutely a disaster, they don’t provide services, and what does the national treasury do and the Gauteng government, they give them a finance recovery grant. In other words, the more you mess, the more the national government steps in. And what we try to do in this budget is to show the contrast of bad governance and rewarding good governance.”
Limpopo increases budget for education
Limpopo Treasury MEC Rob Tooley says expenditure in the province has been better managed in the past financial year. He was tabling the 2019 provincial budget at the Legislative Chambers in Lebowakgomo.
Tooley says the provincial allocation to departments has increased to R69 billion.
“The provincial budget allocation to departments is increasing from 65.3 billion in 2018/2019 to 69.5 billion in 2019/20 and further increasing to 72.8 biliion in 2020/21 and to 77.9 billion in 2021/22 financial year.”
The Limpopo Education Department has been allocated R32,3 billion for the 2019 and 2020 financial year. Treasury MEC Rob Tooley presented the provincial budget and expenditure overview at the Legislative Chambers in Lebowakgomo.
Tooley says the budget for education has increased by more than 4%.
“The Department of education receives an allocation of 32.3 billion in 2019/20, 34.1 billion in 2020/21 and 36.3 billion in 20121/22 financial year. The 2019.20 allocation includes 2.5 billion for conditional grants and 594.2 million from own revenue. The allocation increases by 4.7 percent in 2019/20 and 6.4 percent over the same period.”
Free State to assist struggling municipalities
The Free State treasury says the budget speech is in line with what Premier Sisi Ntombela outlined in her state-of-the-province address a week ago.
MEC Elsabe Rockman will present the provincial budget speech in Gariep, south of the Free State. Ntombela mentioned among others the importance of assisting struggling municipalities in the province during her address. The Treasury Department says their budget will also focus on economic growth of the province.
Provincial Treasury Chief Executive Officer Godfrey Mahlatsi elaborates, “We need to be resilient. We need to spend government funds effectively. We need to ensure we grow economy and create employment. We need to eradicate poverty within our country.”
The post Gauteng Finance MEC tables R132 billion budget appeared first on SABC News – Breaking news, special reports, world, business, sport coverage of all South African current events. Africa's news leader..
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Grim Sweepers
2010, Society 24 Comments
Grim Sweepers follows Christian Cadieux and his company Crime and Trauma Scene Cleaners Inc. as they set out to clean and decontaminate multiple death and decomposition scenes.
Described as CSI meets Trailer Park Boys, Grim Sweepers tackles cleaning challenges left over from murders, suicides, drug labs, animal infestations and disease.
The crew faces messes, odours, stains, larva and bodily fluid, all while balancing professional conflicts and personal relationships.
It takes a special kind of personality to head up Canada’s most colorful, quirky and eccentric cleaning business.
With the stress of growing a revolutionary business and competition on the rise, there’s never a dull moment for Cadieux and the intriguing cast of employees he counts as friends.
The Living BodyNature - 111 min - ★7.58 With meticulous and startling detail, The Living Body...
Big Brother, Big BusinessConspiracy - 70 min - ★7.31 Every day technologies are being used to monitor Americans...
Mark Zuckerberg: Inside FacebookSociety - 60 min - ★6.14 In just seven years, Mark Zuckerberg has gone from his...
History's Turning PointsHistory - 175 min - ★6.63 History’s Turning Points is a thirteen part series (here...
Sandra - 09/12/2017 at 20:05
This is just about the drama between the workers and almost nothing about the actual work that they do. Disappointed!
Rudolph Rip - 01/08/2017 at 02:00
Interesting Work Field. Some of the staff are grossly immature. Disappointing!
Elizabeth Wesley - 02/25/2013 at 19:07
Where do I apply for a job?
Mark Rhodes - 09/15/2012 at 06:44
Don't waste you time on this. It has the feel of a VH1 D List actor program instead of a documentary.
unisapien - 09/07/2012 at 07:26
i liked it
ranii02 - 05/07/2012 at 02:16
so why do shannon and victoria need "training". nothing about the other guys being pros.
It's not really so much about being a pro as it is an experience issue. There are some very strict safety procedures you need to make a habit of in order to keep you from exposing yourself to dangerous substances. The guys just seem to have been going about it longer, and so know what they're supposed to do.
Melanie Chipman - 04/19/2012 at 08:30
What abunch of man children, Immature, unprofessional disorganized sorry group of bastards. Those girls gotta find a more respectable place to work.
felicity0118 - 04/11/2012 at 03:44
would've been a very interesting programme.shame about the staff, the production, the editing, the music, the company and pretty much everything about this 'documentary'
Regan Johnston - 02/09/2012 at 20:24
i think there is something going on between the owner and the pathological liar that embalms people yet has no resume....like really?
Figure.10 - 02/09/2012 at 01:29
The whole this is like a 'you had to be there' joke. Not nearly enough about the profession and the science behind it and way too much manchildren goofing off.
Alex Braz - 02/01/2012 at 04:53
Well, I checked the comment section only AFTER I've already watched 20 minutes and boy, I'm sorry I didn't do it before. This 'documentary' is utterly stupid and more of a reality show than a doc, showing intrigues and boring personal details of CSC employees instead of educating us about what they actually do. Waste of time.
blahblahbob - 01/30/2012 at 20:14
god bless reviews, i think they just saved me a half hour of life i may have wasted on this program... cheers!
zaphodity - 01/29/2012 at 16:16
I would have knocked the fat **** with a beard out in 5 minutes.
john Palermo - 01/29/2012 at 13:12
First 5 minutes this guy worries about a bubbles in his coffee but uses splenda in it, expert?
Kirsten McEncroe - 01/29/2012 at 11:27
if i was Shannon or Victoria i would consider a lawsuit for sexual harassment and work place bullying
Jack Troughton - 10/31/2012 at 21:36
lol you obviously have no idea what real sexual harassment is.
I once went to visit an apart in Montreal following an ad in the paper about a rental. When the guy opened the front door a bad smell came to my attention but i didn't say anything, and then we entered the bedroom which had not been repainted yet, i couldn't hold it any longer and asked about the smell, an old man had died in the bed and wasn't found for a few days....
That made me cross that address off my list instantly.
KooKookaChoo - 01/28/2012 at 18:28
hmmm, not so gross -- more about the people doing the job, less of the actual job. They seem to be a bunch of characters, so it's funny at times, but nothing enthralling. It's Canadian, so that's neat for me.
I actually liked larry, he's a hardass and someone I would bug on purpose! (I call them pseudo-grumps, they just act grumpy)
eww, sounds gross...gotta watch it! lol
geamala - 01/28/2012 at 13:14
Lame, Reality TV shite.... Why?....
Mcnuts Suckem - 01/28/2012 at 12:33
Show was fine and it was a full ep.
Edward Richtofen - 01/28/2012 at 10:57
this video sucks and is just a commercial
lary in the video is an ***hole
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Japan: Memoirs of a Secret Empire
2004, History - 165 min 35 Comments
Commanding shoguns and fierce samurai warriors, exotic geisha and exquisite artisans - all were part of a Japanese renaissance between the 16th and 19th centuries when Japan went from chaos and violence to a land of ritual refinement and peace.
But stability came at a price: for nearly 250 years, Japan was a land closed to the Western world, ruled by the shogun under his absolute power and control. Japan: Memoirs of a Secret Empire brings to life the unknown story of a mysterious empire, its relationship with the West, and the forging of a nation that would emerge as one of the most important countries in the world.
The Way of the Samurai. Tokugawa Ieyasu unifies Japan and establishes a dynasty that will rule Japan for over 250 years.
The Will of the Shogun. The grandson of Ieyasu, Tokugawa Iemitsu, tightens control over Japan's warlords and expels all foreigners.
The Return of the Barbarians. Isolated from the West, 18th century Edo flourishes culturally and economically, becoming one of the liveliest cities in the world. But foreign forces are coming.
The SamuraiHistory - 55 min - ★8.09 They were the knights of medieval Japan, an elite warrior...
Battling the YakuzaCrime - 25 min - ★7.82 Organized crime syndicates are deeply entrenched in...
Satoyama: Japan's Secret WatergardenEnvironment - 110 min - ★8.00 Each home has a built in pool or water tank that lies...
Samurai Sword: Making of a LegendTechnology - 50 min - ★8.65 Few weapons achieve iconic status, but the samurai sword...
Deborah DeSnoo - 10/30/2019 at 14:16
I am the owner of this film... So what the eff is going on? I am tired of people stealing from me.
It is exotic but not of much consequence that 'traditional' Japanese culture is almost identical to the traditional Chinese culture on which it was built. What is alarming is the flippant attitude of scholars that assert that Japanese culture and society developed in isolation. Nearly every single detail of 'traditional' Japan can be traced to China. Not only are we not told of this, the fact is suppressed. And the average Japanese person would probably vehemently deny its truth. I realize that this is historical documentary- and perhaps that's the point. If people want to accuse Japan of having an attitude of superiority over its Asian neighbors, they would do well to remember that the West encouraged this attitude and continue to do so to this day, as this documentary does, despite the overwhelming evidence that Japan grew and developed using Chinese technology and knowledge. There is no shame in that, China was such a great power on such a vast scale that many other Asian countries did as well, but Japan's uniqueness is a total myth.
Ossa25 - 11/27/2012 at 12:22
God's punishment?!
You belittle a culture then say you want to visit and need a guiding buddy?!
Lol you are so annoying, shut up.
Juci Shockwave - 08/15/2014 at 06:54
1.) A realist. One who doesn't put on a show to win brownie points, as some of you fakers are. Tell the truth, do you really care for those other nations and such? I bet you you are more in tuned with your work and family than over the woes of humanity.
2.) Gesh, you online wankers clearly know nothing about figure of speeches.
3.) Clearly, I'm not as blind as some of you folks are at the dangers of foreign places. Hell, I don't even visit other cities within my own state on my own. I do my research and find out the trash and the good.
LMFAO!!! If you want to be in denial and only see the good ... boy, are you going to be in for a surprise and extreme disappointment when *beep* gets thrown at you. :P
Kateye70 - 01/25/2012 at 17:22
Getting ready to watch this doc, and of course reading comments before hand. So...
I'm a little surprised by all the hating on Yusiley S. If anyone bothered to read both posts, they would see an enthusiastic person who has a few caveats about a country they admittedly have never been to, but have an obvious admiration for--and would like to visit. Maybe their phraseology could have been better, but no one's perfect.
Sheesh, be a hater if you want, but at least hate on someone after you've read their whole post, not the first two sentences. Did anyone bother to read all the way to the last paragraph?
Edit: Finished the doc. It's interesting, well-done and gives a nice overview of about 500 years of Japanese history, ending with the arrival of Admiral Perry in the mid-1800's. It does a good job of setting the stage for Japan's expulsion of Westerners and eventual re-admittance.
By no means a definitive study, yet does a nice job of presenting a broad overview.
I admire the many fine qualities of Japanese culture and feel fortunate to be exposed to them, even if I never go there. I don't feel compelled to criticize it's failings--it's through them that we see our shared humanity.
*hugs, tons of hugs* Someone online with actual intelligence and understanding of the concept of reading whole posts, thank you for that. People take things out of context because quite frankly they can't read passed 3 sentences nor can they think and ask questions. Personally, I think these haters are a bunch of weeaboo children who think Japan is the greatest and such... and they all had the audacity to call me patronizing... LMAO!!!. XD These folks just want to broom the flaws of humanity under some rug and I wouldn't let them, so they hate. :/ That is on them and not on me.
BTW I agree with your final EDIT post on the part that this video has very interesting broad overview, but has no definitive study. I also agree to your last statement, except that I would criticize the failings of humanity. If we don't critic and point out the flaws of our species, how can we ever improve and avoid those flaws from ever occurring again?
Matuvo Namikaze - 09/17/2014 at 21:26
the comment wasn't all smiles either. he was directly insulting japan and its people based on flawed generalizations and half baked information.
terryrret - 12/31/2011 at 09:14
Yusiley S a teacher ...... that`s terrifying
Oh yes... because I don't sugar bull to people. I don't act as if all is great. Way too many BS folks pretending like they care... when in reality every and each one of you all really don't give two flying *beep* about those around you, much less those in other countries. If people did actually cared and did something about the miseries of the world... it would had ended long... long... very long time ago.
wjhall1980 - 12/08/2011 at 09:15
Yusiley S I live in Japan as a foreigner and you could not be any further from the truth in respects to how the Japanese view foreigners.
Oh yea... because YOUR experiences are so much like every other foreigners experiences, right? >_> There are quite more bad cases than good ones of foreigners visiting Japan.
Netuza - 11/16/2011 at 05:48
Yusiley, be careful with overgeneralizations about peoples you don't know in depth. Your view disregards shades of gray that exist in the perception of human diversity. It is dualistic, judgmental, and vindictive. Before criticizing others, why don't look at yourself and try to identify your biases, assumptions, and prejudice?
Oh please stop acting all better than thou... every human being on Earth, inlcuding yourself has biases, assumptions, and prejudices... no one is special. >_>
Yusiley S - 10/21/2011 at 04:25
As wonderful as Japan is... I wouldn't want to live there and its not just because of their strict immigrations and the sort of blunt hatred towards foreigners (they even have a derogatory name for foreigners)... I just have difficult issues with societies that have total disrespect or inequality towards people with disabilities. At least in the U.S. we acknowledge people with disabilities and they have opportunities to better themselves. They even have various acts and policies to protect their rights.
Also Japan is pretty behind in their methods and ways to teach students with special needs. As a teacher who teaches and guides students with special needs, I find it odd and almost humiliating that such advanced civilization nations like Japan still have a disregard and ignorance towards with people with disabilities. I can forgive them for their blunt racist attitudes towards foreigners. I can understand their frustrations towards outsiders, outsiders are weird people to them, but having that same distaste and disrespect for their own people just because they have some form of disability or disabilities.... I would be embarrassed over that.
Going back to the disrespect and hatred over foreigners... hmmm I think the earthquake and tsunami are Gods' way of punishing the Japanese for mistreating outsiders who are looking for a new way of life. Now many of those same people who trash talked about foreigners and immigrants of their society are becoming immigrants and foreigners themselves. Karma is wonderful. Anyways to me... a foreigner who comes to visit my country is a sign of honor and total respect. It's like... "Wow you're interested to know more about my country and are curious about the cultures that are presented, otherwise you wouldn't bother coming here." That's my sincere belief in foreigners who visit... and for immigrants its like "YEEEEEAY... more workers... more citizens to back up our way of life... aka more homies." I mean really. Immigrants don't only work here but they protect the very nation in which they work in. We'll have not just a powerful military force, but a larger one at that.^_^ Just look at the Argentine ants... truly the dominate species on the planet. You can take one of these ants from one nation and place it into a completely different colony in the other side of the world and that new colony will accept that foreign ant as one of their own in a few seconds. It's amazing... why can't we humans do that? I look up to the Argentine ants as guiders for a better humanity.
Moving back to the topic of Japan.... Don't get me wrong, I would love to visit the nation before I die, especially their older capitol Kyoto... Heian era is my third favorite time period of human history and would love to visit the capitol of that time period. The first favorite time period are that of ancient and classical eras from Egypt and Greek (I put them together because I just love'em both equally). :) Later comes Ancient India, especially the time of Siddh?rtha Gautama (aka Buddha). Anyways I would like to visit and really get to know the real Japan... not just what is shown on television. Some times the real thing is more amazing than what the media portrays. Hopefully some of the people are open minded and sincere towards outsiders/foreigners, especially a quite, sensitive one such as myself. I do speak loudly at times and use my hands to express myself a lot, but that's due to my personality change. I'm very expressive and open. I just hope I don't scare anyone away... I need a guiding buddy upon my visit. :D
Melissa Scholefield - 12/13/2011 at 22:48
I usually stop thinking of people as 'sensitive,' as you like to think of yourself as, when they start calling natural disasters 'God's Punishment' for biased, unfair generalisations of a country which they've never even visited. Even if there are some people in Japan with the issues you describe in your post you can't even begin to think that some sort of 'divine retribution' is warranted - you're not sensitive in the least.
Sarah Donaldson - 12/23/2011 at 06:30
Ya, because you can better a r****d. R****ds are only bettered with euthanasia. Seriously, never compare Japan and the U.S. again. Actually stop pretending you understand anything, that's soooo American of you. Stop listening to your gun toting father. Join the Army, learn something for yourself, recognize the awful joke billionares are playing on your country's citizen serfs. By the way - China owns you 'Merica and if I was Chinese I would hire any and every Jap before I hired a s****d lazy fat American. The great thing about Japan is how kind, polite and welcoming they truly are. Japan LOVES white people. Japan treats rude white people - like yourself Yusiley - as rockstars, they are so nice that they actually incourage your insluting behaviour as it is so foregin to them that you're laughable and entertaining. You are very wrong on a lot of foregin matters. So many to pick apart and develop - so little time.
Oh and one more thing before I am totally bored of your close minded god fearing ideas - you're right about the karmic natural disasters that God uses specifically against the countries that deserve payment for thier actions. New Orleans got what they asked for! Those loving drunkards. 9/11 too! That was God, right? Ya, I had to throw 9/11 in your face too.
Your whole argument is contraditive to your message of peace and understanding of others. Bravo in proving and strengthen my post on how humanity still has a long way to go before it can declare itself superior. :P
Michael K. - 04/12/2015 at 02:30
You are only partially right in regards to how they treat children with
disabilities, as they put kids with both physical and mental
disabilities in the same schools, separate from other kids. Other than
that they do treat people with disabilities with respect and don't draw a
line between them and other people. You should get a proper research
As for your other comments, it's just clear you've never
been to Japan, not to say lived in Japan. If you've never eaten kangaroo
meat, how can you write a detailed post on how it tastes? Hello, any common sense?!
PatricktheAtheist - 10/15/2011 at 07:34
This is my favorite documentary.
TonyIII - 04/18/2011 at 03:32
Entertaining and at the start quite Historical.. However once the Shogunate is established, it goes rapidly downhill. It becomes a progressive exersize not unlike a crusade illustrating the American tendency to de-legitimatize all foreign social structure which is perhaps a hangover from American hatred for the Indian and certain immigrants. .
We are left with a heathy dose of "progressive" theory of how "the people" are the ultimate and infallable authority. Sound familiar?The world is heading toward infallable "democracy." Yeah of course.
The trouble is that it is too academic ; but it wont hurt to watch. it is well done.
I cannot see the writing as I write so please forgive spelling errors.
"It becomes a progressive exersize not unlike a crusade illustrating the American tendency to de-legitimatize all foreign social structure which is perhaps a hangover from American hatred for the Indian and certain immigrants"
please elaborate, as it stands its unintelligible...
Yes, no matter how you try to spin it, democracy will always be superior to feudalism. Terrible things happened to Japanese serfs under Tokugawa rule- many more terrible things than are mentioned here. But terrible things were done to serfs everywhere; Japan was no different than anywhere else in the world under feudalism. Their isolation simply denied them the opportunity to advance socially, but this doesn't make japan inferior to any other country. Indeed, Russia did not liberate its serfs until the early 1860s! I would love to hear you try to make a case for feudalism over democracy.
Would you rather be a serf or a citizen? There is a reason why the US says it wants democracy for all: it sounds altruistic. I'm not saying that the US does what is says, but I am saying that democracy for all would be a good thing.
My father always did say that the U.S. is one of the greatest nations on Earth due to its government and economy. Though I could name quite a few flaws with its current government and economy. However, compare to other nations I agree with him 100% and I agree with you that I rather be a citizen than a peasant or a serf.
I would also like to point out that I wouldn't call the U.S. government a true Democratic government. It's more of a Republic, but even with that said it is a way better system of government than say Communism, Socialism, Nazism, Militarism, Feudalism and Monarchy (there are few other systems of government but I can't name them off the top of my head :) sorry about that).
ThisDarkChestOfWonders - 02/21/2012 at 20:34
Its still the monatery system regardless if its Democratic or feudalistic. We live under the illusion that we need the economy, but its the most evil thing smothering the human race. Its the same barter and trade system human beings have been using for thousands of years. We think we are so much more clever with the democratic for of government, but its still ran by the monatery system. Never listen to anyone who talks about how we have so much freedom in the US. Its all a lie. We have the freedom to pick from 50 ice cream flavors, but you cannot choose who will make the decisions who effect your way of life. If you think poloticicians are different from eachother, and not controlled by the same source then i feel bad for you. Democracy waould be good if people COULD choose what is important for them, but sadly it has been changing since ww2. Now only the rich and powerful make decisions. Sounds kind of like Feudualism doesnt it?
Harry Dowdeswell - 10/18/2012 at 01:44
haha totally agree, its good to know there are other people out there who arnt blind to the truth!
Poignant observations. I like your comment.
Manch - 02/15/2011 at 21:57
Loved it, great stuff!
hossana - 10/24/2010 at 07:15
thanks! awesome documentary.
Beast - 09/29/2010 at 16:30
Good documentry 4 stars
Kosuke - 09/25/2010 at 15:46
Very well edited video from the Japanese point of view! I respect for the presence of Dr.Michael Cooper throughout the video. Thank you.
coale - 04/01/2010 at 12:20
feel asleep 3 times, great documentary.
Willis - 03/16/2010 at 17:54
Woot! Thx for the link.
overdoze79 - 02/05/2010 at 09:18
amaizing ... big up
Tom - 01/26/2010 at 05:56
wow. Thanks for this documentary!
johnphilippines - 12/27/2009 at 06:05
Vlatko, Arigato Gozaymas :)
You are welcome @johnphilippines.
The War You Don't SeePolitics - 97 min - ★8.67 A powerful and timely investigation into the media's role...
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← “Chin Yong-Yun Stays at Home” by S. J. Rozan
“Multi-Tasking” by Dale Berry →
Strength of Character (March/April 2017)
Crime is character building, at least in crime fiction, because it is characters, their dark psychologies and questionable motivations, that drive compelling stories—as the tales in this issue amply demonstrate.
What compels a model prisoner, in Tony Richards’s “Magpie Man,” to burst out of jail just before he is to be lawfully released? What motivates a desperate woman, in Dale Berry’s graphic story “Dead Air,” to strike up a conversation with a radio DJ? Why does a detective, in Wayne J. Gardiner’s “Bygones,” return home for the funeral of his high-school adversary?
Interpersonal entanglements complicate Charles John Harper’s police procedural “The Echoes.” A man seeking invisibility is driven from the dangerous shadows in Bob Tippee’s “Underground Above Ground.” Susan Oleksiw’s “How Do You Know What You Want” is a poignant story of a teen in foster care and the woman who tries to connect with her, and Martin Limón’s P.I. Il Yong pursues a case that takes him to the remote reaches of the Himalayas, where survival may depend on the uncertain kindness of othes, in “hominid.”
Social institutions and conventions are questioned in Alan E. Foulds’ “Razor’s Edge” when a reporter revisits a long-ago cold case, and in Mitch Alderman’s “Bleak Future” when P.I. Bubba Simms looks into extortion among central Florida’s genteel society. An old injustice gets a fresh look in “Rough-Hewn Retribution,” Nancy Pauline Simpson’s historical set in the early twentieth century South. A homicide detective and suspect match wits in the interview room in Chris Knopf’s “A Little Cariñoso.” And a land dispute is complicated—and deadly—in Gilbert M. Stack’s British historical whodunit “Greed.”
Watch out, these complicated characters will steal your attention—and perhaps your sympathy.
Tagged as alan foulds, Alfred Hitchcock, Bob Tippee, charles john harper, chris knopf, crime, Dale Berry, detective, gilbert stack, graphic, historical, issue, magazine, martin limon, mitch alderman, mystery, nancy pauline simpson, susan oleksiw, thriller, tony richards, wayne gardiner
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About Mark Aldrich
The Gad About Town
All posts copyright 2013–2020 by Mark Aldrich.
Daily Prompt, History, Political History, Politics
Disagree to Agree
Posted on March 15, 2015 by Mark Aldrich
“I am wrong about almost everything.”
“Heh. You’re right about that.”
If you are interested in the horse-race nature of American politics, the drop-everything-every-four-years-so-we-can-fill-all-the-jobs-in-Washington-DC portion of our public life, you could do no worse than live in either New Hampshire or Iowa for the entire year before Election Day. That means this year is a good year to move to Nashua, New Hampshire, or Des Moines, Iowa, if you are a politics addict.
The reasons for this are obscure and boring, unless you live in either state. In that case you might be passionate about your community’s role in selecting our next President. In our game of politics, Iowa is the first state in the country to hold a vote for President, in January of election year, and New Hampshire is the second state, usually a week later. (Through the spring and summer of election year, the major political parties conduct state-by-state votes, and the winner of the most votes is sometimes … uh, often … well, usually … that party’s candidate for the national election in November.) Because Iowa and New Hampshire vote in January, and because these are the first two contests (albeit in two very sparsely populated states), undue attention is paid to the voters in those states for most of the year before January. This year, both parties are going crazy.
The candidates and the news media descend on the states like a plague of locusts with thick wallets. They rent rooms, cars, restaurants. The local business owners love the year before election year.
Thus the two states fight very hard every four years to hold their place as first, fight so hard that both states always claim to be The First each and every time, even though Iowa comes first and New Hampshire a week later. Iowa uses one type of voting system and New Hampshire a completely different one, so they are both always first. It comes down to money: because they are each first, both states receive a quadrennial economic boost unlike any other, with political candidates and their support teams and journalists and their support teams needing food, shelter, and television time (not in that order of importance) for months before January. Some nationally famous politicians have rented houses in Iowa to live in and signed year-long leases for the year of door-to-door campaigning they will do. Other states would love to be first in the nation, to attract those millions of dollars, but these two small-population states put up a winning fight with both the Democratic and the Republican parties every four years and get to be first in the nation to cast ballots.
From 2000 to 2004, I lived in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, a city of about 125,000 in a state of three million. Iowa is geographically larger than New York State but possesses one-sixth of the population. So that means that in 2003, I was in the second-largest city in the first of the two “First in the Nation” small-population vote-casting states for Election 2004: Bush v. Kerry. With George W. Bush running for re-election unopposed that year, it meant that almost every Democrat elected to any office anywhere in the country was campaigning for President in Iowa. So many were there that I remember waiting on line at my coffee shop behind a U.S. Congressman who was running for President; at that moment he was just someone else taking too long to order his latte. There was no media covering this fiasco.
Cedar Rapids, Iowa. In the foreground is a Quaker Oats factory. My apartment building is the red brick building smack in the middle of the photo, behind the elevated highway from Quaker Oats. My apartment looked towards the Cedar River.
I am a progressive voter, to the left of most Democrats but tending to vote for members of that party. But I also fall head over ballot for every candidate who claims to be the representative from the “Land of New Ideas.” Rarely do we hear what those New Ideas might be or how much he or she may think they will cost, but I love the idea of New Ideas.
Selling New Ideas is an Old Idea, but I am a happy customer every time. Thus my life’s list of candidates I have rooted for while they were running for the next office higher than the one they already possessed includes several people named Kennedy, Gary Hart, the late Paul Tsongas, Bill Bradley, and, in 2003, a North Carolina senator named John Edwards. There are others, but I am blushing with embarrassment while typing this.
I should retire my political instincts. Then-Senator Edwards was one of the few politicians I have ever heard speak about rural as well as urban poverty as a blight, a blight because it is a problem that can be easily tackled and quickly remedied if the country’s political will can be inspired. I was inspired. From 2004-’08, it could be said that he pushed the bigger-name candidates further to the left (some might think that a good thing and some might not), but from 2004-’08 it could also be said that he was doing some other (um, scandalous) things.
And I met him! Great. And my immediate, instinctual, in-person reaction to the man was: “I do not like him.” Oh, the inner conflict.
In January 2004, days before us Democratic Party-affiliated Iowans were to cast our first-in-the-nation votes, our so very first votes that New Hampshire was going to be the second first, so stuff it, New England!, just days before that, I saw him speak. He gave a great speech: People are poor. We must do something. Speech over. In the crowded room, we all discovered that that single-door entrance way over there was now the single-door exit for everyone, including the candidate and his handlers, who must hate situations like this when they come up all the time in Iowa and New Hampshire. Edwards had to leave along with the crowd of 500. No bodyguard. No announcement requesting that we wait for the senator to leave first. I was next to him—pressed against him—for the five minutes it took us to traverse the ten yards to the door. He shook my hand; he shook everyone’s hand within reach.
I have met a few politicians, and I have met quite a few people who ought to run for office, but I have never been rendered invisible quite as quickly as I was by that man. It may qualify as the single most bizarre social encounter I have ever had: I have been dismissed mid-conversation plenty of times, even made to feel that I offended someone by entering their consciousness, but I’ve never been looked at like I was the fog covering a man’s bathroom mirror and he was about to clear me away with his washcloth.
Perhaps he was anxious from the overwhelming crowd and irked by the fact that I did not immediately produce the magical way out of the room while he was looking for a way out of the room, or perhaps it was the attractive woman immediately behind me. Perhaps it was because, a bright man, a good reader of courtroom juries in his lawyer life, he had picked up on my instinct to not like him. Or perhaps it was the shoulder-length head of hair behind me who wanted and received his autograph. I have no idea. No clue.
What did I do with this instinct to not like John Edwards? I convinced myself to ignore it because I agreed with his message, and I gave a speech for him at my caucus site on election night that swung our district over to him. My gosh, I agreed to disagree—with myself.
(I did not reach out to the former Vice Presidential nominee and former Senator, who is now one of the more disliked men in America, for comment.)
(This column originally ran on December 6, 2014, under the name, “Listen When I Tell You Not to Listen to Me.”)
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sparkyplants · March 15, 2015
Too bad it takes big money to run for President. I would vote for a normal, working slob like the rest us, someone grounded in reality, someone surviving paycheck to paycheck, not going on vacations, wearing 4 year old sweatpants with holes and bleach stains. I would vote for THAT person, if I knew they were running. Perhaps someone could campaign entirely through social media. Wouldn’t cost a dime.
By the way, does that Quaker Oats factory still stink as much as it did when I was there? I saw that photo and had an olfactory flashback.
Mark Aldrich · March 15, 2015
When I lived in CR, the Quaker Oats factory sometimes dominated the city’s aroma, like you remember. I assume it is still the case. Friday was said to be the day they made Count Chocula/Frankenberry and whatever the other flavor breakfast cereal-slash-dessert they make is. On some Fridays the downtown definitely smelled like fake strawberry, everywhere. Some days the downtown didn’t smell so good, as I think you remember. The worst was the ADM plant 15 or so blocks further south of where I worked on 33rd Ave. Sometimes, even deep in my factory, it smelled like burnt damp broccoli, if such a thing exists. Like something vital had gone very wrong in there, a whole 15 blocks away from where our factory was.
An awful, pervasive smell. Burnt popcorn and moldy dog food.
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Who is your most influential writer? Who do you always go back to for inspiration?
When it comes to writing weird fiction, especially something like ‘String’, I always return to Robert Aickman. I may turn the day I found out who Robert Aickman was into a national holiday actually. In my second year of university, I was on a module called ‘The Weird’ and was introduced to his work via his short story ‘The Swords’ and ever since then, should I need inspiration, advice, or just words, I return to him.
What inspired your piece?
An amalgamation of things really, but the main source of light and inspiration was my own family. Both paternal and maternal. Drawing on both elements to create something inspired by them. I try to keep myself and my writing separate, which isn’t always easy to do so, and here there is some crossover between the two. To delve into the macabre and melancholy for the moment, on my Dad’s side of the family, near the village where he grew up, there is a church graveyard where nearly all of our past family members are buried. The grandad I never met, my grandma, cousins, great aunties and uncles, the lot, and me and my Dad, in our typical fashion, occasionally head over there to ‘visit’. I wanted to explore how you can connect the dead to the living. How those family ties never truly leave you, and that there is peace to be found in going somewhere usually so full of sadness. This is particularly true when I visit that graveyard, as I’m looking at names of people I’ve never met, and yet, they are blood, so I feel a connection to them. The ‘string’ in the story acting as a physical way to represent that.
Away from my Dad, and towards my Mum, the woman in the story, ‘Mrs. Welch’ was conjured up from a conversation we were having over pizza and wine. I was telling her about my plans for ‘String’, and that I was struggling to conjure something I felt authentic. True to life in terms of who Mrs. Welch was, how she dressed, and the house she lived in. In steps my mum with a wealth of ideas and information about her Nanna Lillian. From the carpet she had in her house to the clothes she wore. It gave me so much more to work with, and the name ‘Mrs. Welch’ was my mum’s old school teacher from when she was young.
Tell people about your ideas, you never know how they may help!
What do you want readers to take away from your piece?
To be forgiving to those around you, and their privacy – and know that everyone has a personal story to tell, which doesn’t always need to be aired for all to hear. Small stuff, really…(ha)
Do you find writing invigorating or exhausting?
Both. Equally. But sometimes the exhaustion I feel after writing is quite invigorating.
Do you have a favorite line or lines from your piece?
Perhaps “curiosity doesn’t wait to be absolved of guilt.” – I’m pretty fond of that one.
Do you keep any snacks around while you write? If so, what’s your favorite?
Coffee (is that a snack?) and a pic ‘n’ mix from my local shop. My sugar intake when I write is dangerous.
Do you ever create soundtracks for the piece you’re writing?
Yes (sort of). I listen to music for inspiration. For ‘String’, it was Dusty in Memphis by Dusty Springfield, especially ‘No Easy Way Down’, written by the sublime Carole King.
What is your ideal writing environment?
I do well in cafes, ever the cliché. At home, I distract myself. In a café, I manage not to.
Do you have any future writing plans?
Keep writing. Enter a few competitions and see where it all takes me. A very close friend and I are also trying to get a poetry chapbook of the work we did at university published, so that too.
You can read Emily Harrison’s piece “String” in Issue Five of The Ginger Collect.
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POODLE SSL Vulnerability Now Attacking TLS Security Protocol
POODLE, a critical SSL flaw discovered in October that was patched and fixed by webmasters around the world after Google alerted software and hardware vendors, has again made its way and this time the vulnerability affects implementations of the newer Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol.
Yes, the serious POODLE vulnerability that affected the most widely used web encryption standard Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) 3.0 has once again returned and is likely to affect some of the most popular web sites in the world — including those owned or operated by Bank of America, the US Department of Veteran's Affairs, and Accenture.
POODLE (Padding Oracle On Downgraded Legacy Encryption) flaw, disclosed two months ago by Google security team, allowed attackers to perform Man-in-the-Middle (MitM) attack in order to intercept traffic between a user's browser and an HTTPS website to decrypt sensitive information, like the user's authentication cookies.
Now, the dangerous flaw has turned out to some versions of TLS — the seemingly secure successor of SSL. The new vulnerability (CVE-2014-8730) affects TLS version 1.2 which fails to handle padding, which was the target of POODLE. Researchers at security firm Qualys says, "some TLS implementations omit to check the padding structure after decryption."
"The impact of this problem is similar to that of POODLE, with the attack being slightly easier to execute–no need to downgrade modern clients down to SSL 3 first, TLS 1.2 will do just fine," Ivan Ristic, Qualys's director of application security research, wrote in a blog post titled POODLE bites TLS.
"The main target are browsers, because the attacker must inject malicious JavaScript to initiate the attack. A successful attack will use about 256 requests to uncover one cookie character, or only 4096 requests for a 16-character cookie. This makes the attack quite practical."
Qualys has provided a free test, SSL Server Test, that showed some of the Internet's leading websites including Bank of America, VMware, the US Department of Veteran's Affairs, and business consultancy Accenture, are affected by the bug. The vulnerability is very serious as the most recent SSL Pulse scan showed that about 10 percent of the servers are vulnerable to the POODLE attack through TLS.
Till now, load balancers and similar devices which are used to handle the TLS connections sold by two different manufacturers, F5 Networks and A10 Networks, are found vulnerable to the attack. Basically, the recent versions of TLS calls for the encryption padding to be closely checked for Oracle attacks, which was skipped by both the companies during implementation, which makes them vulnerable to POODLE attacks.
F5 Networks agrees that their F5 kit is vulnerable to the attack, and believes that A10 should also be releasing updates for patches in coming hours. "Everything less than TLS 1.2 with an AEAD cipher suite is broken", Google's Adam Langley notes. "I'm not completely sure that I've found every affected vendor but, now that this issue is public, any other affected products should quickly come to light."
Website administrators who want to check if their servers or load balancers used in front of their servers are vulnerable to this newly discovered POODLE attack through TLS can use the Qualys SSL Labs server test, which has been updated on its website in order to detect the problem.
encryption, hacking news, HTTPS, Man-in-the-Middle, network security, POODLE, POODLE SSL Attack, Vulnerability
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Hack Leads to Extortions and Suicides! Ashley Madison puts $500,000 Bounty on Hackers' Head
August 25, 2015Swati Khandelwal
It's been a rough week for cheating website Ashley Madison, whose slogan is "Life is short, have an affair."
Last week, the Impact Team, who claimed to hack Ashley Madison, posted 10GB of personal data for tens of Millions of its customers, including their names and email addresses.
The hackers made things even worse by releasing another 20GB of company's internal data, including personal emails from the CEO of Ashley Madison parent company Avid Life, Noel Biderman, along with the source code for Ashley Madison's website and mobile apps.
However, regardless of how you respond to the Ashley Madison hack, the bottom line is that what the hackers, who called themselves The Impact Team, did was highly illegal.
Not just illegal, but now the Ashley Madison hack has become a reason for suicides, blackmail and multiple cases of extortion.
"Two unconfirmed reports of suicides due to #AshleyMadisonHack, says Acting Staff Superintendent Bryce Evans at Aug 24 press conference," Toronto Police (@TorontoPolice) tweeted.
Ashley Madison offering $500,000 Reward
These are precisely the reasons why Ashley Madison, the popular extramarital affair website, is offering a CA$500,000 (About $379,000 USD) reward to anyone with information that leads to the arrest of the hackers responsible for the embarrassing leak of users' data.
The bounty offer was announced by Toronto police's acting staff Superintendent Bryce Evans at the televised and Webcast news press conference in Toronto Monday morning.
While announcing the reward, Evans noted that The Impact Team's actions "have a long-term social and economic impact" and appealed to the public and white-hat hacker community to help authorities in tracking down the Impact Team.
Evans also issued the following statement to warn the Impact Team:
"Team Impact. I want to make it very clear to you. Your actions are illegal, and won't be tolerated. This is your wake-up call."
Moreover, Evans noted if any of the Ashley Madison customers is being extorted by the hackers should immediately contact their local police department.
You can watch the full press conference video here.
Ashley Madison, data breach, hacking news, hookup website, Married Dating site, online dating site, The Impact Team
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theinkbrain
literary and other thoughts
Archive for the ‘Translations’ Category
Delmira Agustini, Alfonsina Storni, Félix Luna, and Mercedes Sosa
Posted in Poems, Poets and Poetry, Translations, tagged Alfonsina Storni, Ariel Ramiréz, Delmira Agustini, Félix Luna, Nana Mouskouri, South American Poetry, Spanish Poetry on 29 September, 2012| 10 Comments »
Delmira Agustini (October 24, 1886 – July 6, 1914)
Su idilio fue una larga sonrisa a cuatro labios…
En el regazo cálido de rubia primavera
Amáronse talmente que entre sus dedos sabios
Palpitó la divina forma de la Quimera.
En los palacios fúlgidos de las tardes en calma
Hablábanse un lenguaje sentido como un lloro,
Y se besaban hondo hasta morderse el alma!…
Las horas deshojáronse como flores de oro,
Y el Destino interpuso sus dos manos heladas…
Ah! los cuerpos cedieron, mas las almas trenzadas
Son el más intrincado nudo que nunca fue…
En lucha con sus locos enredos sobrehumanos
Las Furias de la vida se rompieron las manos
Y fatigó sus dedos supremos Ananké…
Los cantos de la mañana, 1910
Their idyll was a smile of four lips…
In the warm lap of blond spring
They loved such that between their wise fingers
the divine form of Chimera trembled.
In the glimmering palaces of quiet afternoons
They spoke in a language heartfelt as weeping,
And they kissed each other deeply, biting the soul!
The hours fluttered away like petals of gold,
Then Fate interposed its two icy hands…
Ah! the bodies yielded, but tangled souls
Are the most intricate knot that never unfolds…
In strife with its mad superhuman entanglements,
Life’s Furies rent their coupled hands
And wearied your powerful fingers, Ananké*…
*Ananke: Goddess of Unalterable Necessity
Translation Valerie Martínez
Al Claro de Luna
La luna es pálida y triste, la luna es exangüe y yerta.
La media luna figúraseme un suave perfil de muerta…
Yo que prefiero a la insigne palidez encarecida
De todas las perlas árabes, la rosa recién abierta,
En un rincón del terruño con el color de la vida,
Adoro esa luna pálida, adoro esa faz de muerta!
Y en el altar de las noches, como una flor encendida
Y ebria de extraños perfumes, mi alma la inciensa rendida.
Yo sé de labios marchitos en la blasfemia y el vino,
Que besan tras de la orgia sus huellas en el camino;
Locos que mueren besando su imagen en lagos yertos…
Porque ella es luz de inocencia, porque a esa luz misteriosa
Alumbran las cosas blancas, se ponen blancas las cosas,
Y hasta las almas más negras toman clarores inciertos!
El libro blanco, 1907
In the Light of the Moon
The moon is pallid and sad, the moon is bloodless and cold.
I imagine the half-moon as a profile of the dead…
And beyond the renowned and praised pallor
Of Arab pearls, I prefer the rose in recent bud.
In a corner of this land with the colors of earth,
I adore this pale moon, I adore this death mask!
And at the altar of the night, like a flower inflamed,
Inebriated by strange perfumes, my soul resigns.
I know of lips withered with blasphemy and wine;
After an orgy they kiss her trace in the lane.
Insane ones who die kissing her image in lakes…
Because she is light of innocence, because white things
Illuminate her mysterious light, things taking on white,
And even the blackest souls become uncertainly bright.
Alfonsina Storni (May 29, 1892 – October 25, 1938)
Palabras a Delmira Agustini
Estás muerta y tu cuerpo, bajo uruguayo manto,
Descansa de su fuego, se limpia de su llama.
Sólo desde tus libros tu roja lengua llama
Como cuando vivías, al amor y al encanto.
Hoy, si un alma de tantas, sentenciosa y oscura,
Con palabras pesadas va a sangrarte el oído,
Encogida en tu pobre cajoncito roído
No puedes contestarle desde tu sepultura.
Pero sobre tu pecho, para siempre deshecho,
Comprensivo vigila, todavía, mi pecho,
Y, si ofendida lloras por tus cuencas abiertas,
Tus lágrimas heladas, con mano tan liviana
Que más que mano amiga parece mano hermana,
Te enjugo dulcemente las tristes cuencas muertas.
Words to Delmira Augustini
You are dead and your body under an Uruguayan mantle
Rests from its fire, cleansed of its soul
Since now solely from your books does your red tongue call
As when you lived, to love, and to enchant.
If today, a soul among the many judgmental and dark
Comes to bleed your ear with ponderous words
Huddled in your poor crumbling little casket
You cannot answer it, from your grave.
But upon your breast, undone forever
My breast ever keeps tender vigil
And if offended your empty sockets should weep
Your frozen tears such a delicate hand.
A hand more than that of a friend, but the hand of a sweetheart*
Will wipe them sweetly away from the sad dead hollows.
*The word hermana used here indicates a relationship deeper than friends but not quite that of lovers.
Translation Dia Tsung
Alfonsina y el mar
Por la blanda arena que lame el mar
su pequeña huella no vuelve más,
un sendero solo de pena y silencio
llegó hasta el agua profunda,
un sendero solo de penas mudas
llegó hasta la espuma.
Sabe Dios qué angustia te acompañó
qué dolores viejos calló tu voz,
para recostarte arrullada en el canto
de las caracolas marinas
la canción que canta,
en el fondo oscuro del mar, la caracola.
Te vas Alfonsina con tu soledad
qué poemas nuevos fuiste a buscar,
una voz antigua de viento y de sal,
te requiebra el alma y la está llevando,
y te vas hacia allá como en sueños,
dormida Alfonsina, vestida de mar.
Cinco sirenitas te llevarán
por caminos de algas y de coral,
y fosforescentes caballos marinos
harán una ronda a tu lado,
y los habitantes del agua
van a jugar pronto a tu lado.
Bájame la lámpara un poco más
déjame que duerma, nodriza en paz,
y si llama él no le digas que estoy
dile que Alfonsina no vuelve
y si llama él no le digas nunca que estoy,
di que me he ido.
una voz antigua de viento y de sal
que requiebra el alma y la está llevando,
y te vas hacia allá, como en sueños,
Félix Luna lyrics
Ariel Ramírez music
Ariel Ramírez (4 September 1921 – 18 February 2010)
Félix Luna (September 30, 1925 – November 5, 2009)
Alfonsina and the Sea
To the soft sand which is lapped by the sea
your little footprint return no more,
only a path, a trail of pain and silence
reaching up to the deep water,
only a path of silent torment
reaching up to the foam.
God knows what anguish accompanied you
What ancient suffering silenced your voice,
to lean back, lulled in the song
of the seashells
the song which they sing
on the deep darkness of the sea, the conch.
You went, Alfonsina with your solitude
To find what new poems are left to be found,
An ancient voice of the wind and the salt,
to shatter your soul and convey you,
and you go yonder as in dreams,
Alfonsina asleep, adorned with the sea.
Five little sirens will bear you
on paths of algæ and coral
and phosphorescent sea horses
encircle your side,
and the inhabitants of the water
soon come to sport beside you
Lower the lamp for me, slightly
Let me sleep, o nurse, in peace
and if he calls, tell him I’m not here
tell him Alfonsina will not return
And if he calls, tell him nothing about me
simply say I have gone away.
Alfonsina y el mar, sung by Mercedes Sosa
These ripples of remembrance and commemoration, are tributes which spread out from the life of Delmira Agustini, an Uruguayan poet of Italian descent, who was murdered by her husband Enrique Reyes, a month after she had divorced him. Agustini had been married to Reyes for a month when the divorce was granted.
Agustini was emphatically a modern poet, who asserted her female voice in a time and place when women were not supposed to publicly assert either themselves or their work. Her poems were powerful, personal and lyrical, and brought her both fame and notoriety. Fortunately many of her poems, together with English translations, can be found on the web, and they are well worth finding and reading. This is a list of her published work.
1907: El libro blanco
1910: Cantos de la mañana
1913: Los cálices vacíos, pórtico de Rubén Darío
1924: Obras completas “Complete Works”: Volume 1, El rosario de Eros; Volume 2: Los astros del abismo, posthumously published, Montevideo, Uruguay: Máximo García
1944: Poesías, prologue by Luisa Luisi Motevideo, Claudio García & Co.
1971: Poesías completas, prólogue and notes by Manuel Alvar, Barcelona: Editorial Labor
Alfonsina Storni, an Argentinian writer and poet of Italian descent, commited suicide by walking into the sea (the Mar del Plata) in 1938, a year after the suicide of her close friend and fellow writer, the Uruguayan/Argentinan (both countries claim him) Horacio Quiroga. She had been suffering from breast cancer. There are many articles on her work and life to be found on the web. This is a link to the Britannica thumbnail listed under her name.
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/567660/Alfonsina-Storni
Félix Luna is listed in Wikipedia as “a prominent Argentine writer, lyricist and historian.” Luna was born on September 30th 1925, Happy Birthday five hours from now Mr. Luna.
I don’t know how coincidences occur, but when I decided to post a couple of poems by Delmira Agustini today, I was led to a tribute to her written by Alfonsina Storni. From there I was led to the poem dedicated to Storni written by Félix Luna. I then found the poem had been set to music by Ariel Ramírez, and found the beautiful version of the song sung by Mercedes Sosa.
Autumn Leaves: selected versions
Posted in Music, Poems, Translations, tagged Andrea Bocelli Christina Aguilera, Autumn Leaves, Bill Evans, Jacques Prévert, Jo Stafford, Johnny Mercer, Joseph Kosma, Les feuilles mortes, Nat King Cole, Oscar Peterson, Patricia Barbour, Stéphane Grappelli, Yves Montand. on 17 September, 2012| 8 Comments »
The words to the original version of this classic “Les feuilles mortes” (the dead leaves) were written by the wonderful French poet Jacques Prévert. This is only a partial version of his poem, in fact only the refrain, but the complete version, performed by Juliette Greco can be found on Youtube and the complete text can be found on the web.
Joseph Kosma composed the melody forever associated with all versions of this song.
The English lyrics “Autumn Leaves,” was written by Johnny Mercer in 1947.
https://theinkbrain.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/15-autumn-leaves.mp3
The falling leaves drift by the window
The autumn leaves of red and gold
I see your lips, the summer kisses
The sun-burned hands I used to hold
Since you went away the days grow long
And soon I’ll hear old winter’s song
But I miss you most of all my darling
When autumn leaves start to fall
Las hojas muertas
https://theinkbrain.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/10-les-feuilles-mortes-autumn-leaves.mp3
Andrea Bocelli and Christina Aguilera
Esta canción se nos parece,
me amaste tú y yo te amé,
la vida así, la compartimos
me amaste tú y yo te amé
Mas la vida al fin nos separa
sin más rumor con suavidad,
y la mar borrará de la arena
los pasos que dió nuestro amor
Mais la vie sépare ceux qui s’aiment
(la vida al fin…)
Tout doucement, sans faire de bruit
(nos separará…)
Et la mer efface sur le sable
(yo también te amé…)
Les pas des amants désunis
(con suavidad)
Mas la vida al fin nos separá
los pasos que dió nuestro amor.
This song seems like us
I who was loved by you, and I who loved you
that love we shared
but in the end life separated us
without a sound and with sweetness
and the sea will erase on the sand
the footprints taken by our love.
Spanish translation Dia Tsung
https://theinkbrain.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/09-autumn-leaves1.mp3
C’est une chanson qui nous ressemble
Toi, tu m’aimais et je t’aimais
Et nous vivions tous deux ensemble
Toi qui m’aimais, moi qui t’aimais
Les pas des amants désunis.
This is a song that seems like us
You, you were loving me, and I was loving you
And we were living, both of us together
You who were loving me, and I who was loving you
But life separates those who love each other
Completely sweetly, without making any sound
And the sea erases on the sand
The footprints of lovers no longer together.
French translation Bev Noia
Stéphane Grappelli
Sergey Yesenin: Selected poems
Posted in Poems, Poets and Poetry, Translations, tagged Russian Poetry, Russian Poets, Sergey Yesenin on 11 September, 2012| 24 Comments »
Sergey Aleksandrovich Yesenin (September 21 1895 – December 27 Dec. 1925)
Sergei Aleksandrovich Yesenin, Sergey Yesenin or Serge Isenin was born on September 21st 1895 or October 3rd 1895. He died by committing suicide, or was bumped off by the government a few months after his 30th birthday, having the week before sent a farewell poem to a friend or former lover, no one knows for certain. He was married six – or eight – times, depending on the source of information. The attachments he formed with the women in his life never lasted more than a year, after which time he abandoned them. One of his wives was Isadora Duncan, and another (the last) Sophia Andreyevna Tolstoya was the granddaughter of Leo Tolstoy. He had four children by three different women; the last, whom he never saw, was his son by the poet Nadezhda Volpin: Alexander Esenin-Volpin, was later to become a mathematician of note and a Soviet dissident.
Yesenin had longer, and perhaps more durable relationships with men than with women. His liaison with Nikolai Kliuiev lasted two years, and the one with Anatoly Mariengof, with whom he cohabited and to whom he dedicated many of his works, lasted four. Yesenin took up with Mariengof a year after his marriage (his second) to actress Zinaida Raikh in 1917. Despite substantial and undeniable evidence of his homosexuality or bisexuality, (he was very close ‘friends’ with openly gay poets Riurik Ivnev and Leonid Kannegiser, who promoted his career), these facts seem to be ignored in all the popular sources I came across on the web.
Yesenin’s suicide-note, written in blood, was addressed to a young Jewish poet Wolf Ehrlich in whose company he had recently spent the night, Yesenin has never been considered by the Russians, who revere his work, as anything but heterosexual. This should come as no surprise, since Russian society, then, as now, was virulently homophobic, and to acknowledge a ‘national’ poet as being anything but dedicatedly heterosexual would be pure anathema.
Yesenin was a debauchèe from a very young age, given to drinking, and later, drug-taking. He was a philanderer, a wrecker of hotel-rooms, a hooligan by his own admission, who once scrawled obscene graffiti on a convent wall in the name of poetic innovation and, shamefully, he was a batterer of women. He was mentally unstable, having been admitted to mental institutions at least five times during his short life. He doubtless suffered from what we today think of as bipolar disorder, absence of impulse-control, depression, narcissistic disorder, borderline personality disorder and episodes of medium to severe psychosis complete with hallucinations.
He was a poseur, given to costuming himself opulently in pseudo-peasant garb of silk shirt, red boots and gold belt. He relished being accorded what amounted to a semblance of royal patronage when he was asked to read his poetry to the Tzarina. He supported the revolution and applied for (and was refused) membership in the communist party, because he was considered “too individual and alien to any and all discipline.” Later on he was to denounce the revolutionaries as frauds, and there is a suggestion that unnamed and unidentified functionaries of the state compelled him to commit himself into the mental institution from which he ‘escaped’ a few days before his death. His work was banned by Stalin, but secretly devoured by the masses. His poetry is considered quintessentially Russian, and despite his violent behaviour and many other serious human defects, he is still considered a hero by the Russian people. Part of the cover-up of Yesenin’s homosexual relationships is the questionable account of the suicide note entrusted to Elisaveta Ustinova, with the directive that she should not read it immediately. In fact the note was given to the young Jewish poet Wolf Ehrlich, in whose company he had spent the night two days prior.
Anyone who reads Yesenin’s poetry and fails to feel the tectonic mood shift from ordinary sense into entranced melancholy has to be singularly unfeeling and insensitive, or even in a sense dead. His poems are powerful, compelling, evocative, persistent, haunting, inducing the mind to take flight and enter the places to which it is effortlessly conveyed. This can sometimes feel like a transplant of mood and emotions – a kind of possession: such intense feelings, such losses, confusion and despair….
One feels that Yesenin’s poetical modus was that of a hunter who was able to snatch the wild denizens of his symbolic brain from their forest-dwelling in his intuitive self, and to convey the essence of their potent and shadowy existence into poems, while keeping their wildness even as they are tamed by language. He was able to effect their forcible conversion into language, fix them on paper, and there to make them move again, and resume their lives in other minds.
Yesenin is an aberration. His are disturbing poems, with their dark emotions, and jaunty rhythms, some of which express a kind of insolence, but most if not all, possessing a powerful and seductive beauty. It is clear that he was able to see into the soul of things. His love of nature and animals, the Russian countryside and its people, rings strong and clear. Yet, he resembles in many ways what Robert Graves referred to as the anti-poet. The anti-poet is someone who falsely puts on a poet’s cover, who has an avocation as opposed to a vocation: someone who seduces women rather than reveres them, and who, far from being devoted to a mystical art, is merely a writer of poems. The anti-poet’s muse is an object of desire until it has been captured and claimed, but afterwards becomes a mere possession and a plaything, to be used and abused, degraded and then discarded. A genuine poet is certainly not given to battering the women who inspire his poetry, betraying them, humiliating them, exploiting them and deserting them. A genuine poet is never a misogynist: an anti-poet always is. Yesenin’s behaviour certainly bore this out. His heartless comment about his marriage to Isadora Duncan whom he battered and humiliated throughout their brief relationship, was that he “married her for her money, and for the chance to travel.” Even after his death, Yesenin continued to be a fatal blight on many of the women who loved him. In 1926, a year after his death, Galina Arturovna Benislavskaya, who had been his secretary of sorts for several years and who Yesenin had cast aside to marry Sofia Andreyevna Tolstaya, hanged herself on a tree growing by Yesenin’s grave. Isadora Duncan, in a weird echo of Yesenin’s death, was killed in a tragic motor accident when the scarf around her neck was caught in the wheel of the car in which she was riding. Zinaida Reikh, Yesenin’s second wife was murdered by the KGB in 1940.
So it is confusing – this ambivalence I feel, which compels me to examine the grey area where one finds what seems to be genuine poetry written by a dipsomaniacal cad, a drunk, and a mental case. Yesenin’s poetry moves me, but I cannot repress the feelings of disgust and revulsion which Yesenin’s character inspires in me. I think I now understand a little better how Christians feel who must for their own peace of mind distinguish the works of the holy spirit from those of the devil, particularly when their manifestations mimic each other. The works, the signs, the marvels which are his poems, are wonderful to contemplate, but they exist in the shadow of something quite monstrous – his outrageous and often contemptible behaviour.
Perhaps in his repeated seductions and betrayals of women Yesenin was re-enacting the desertion he felt when he was abandoned by his parents, who left him with his grandmother when they went off to live in the city. His boisterous uncles treated him roughly – and we cannot be sure if the roughness was altogether good-natured. He was stripped naked and thrown into the water in order to learn to swim, and later on made to serve in lieu of a dog to retrieve game when the uncles went duck-hunting. They ‘taught’ him to ride by setting him off bare-back on a galloping horse. All these apparently rough- and-tumble experiences could have been felt, even if they were well-intentioned, by a sensitive child to be jarring and sadistic, and the damage they may have caused could have led to a permanent lack of mental balance. It has even crossed my mind that Yesenin might have been illegitimate, or of uncertain paternity – for why was he the only one of his parents’ children to have been cast-off in this fashion….?
It occurs to me that one possible way in which to resolve the paradox of contemptible poet and beautiful, seeming ‘true’ poetry, is to conclude that some of the poetry was genuine, whereas the ‘poet’ was not. This speculation leads directly to another, which is, that we are contemplating not one, but two people. One of these dual personalities is a deeply flawed human being, tormented by mental illness, addiction, conflicted sexuality and a deeply ravaged character with violent and sadistic tendencies. The other produced ravishing beautiful poetry.
Narcissistic personalities, depending on their level of intelligence (and Yesenin was highly intelligent) are able feign empathetic behaviour while completely lacking the genuine feelings that inspire it. The dual personality speculation is supported by Alexandr Voronsky who attempted to get treatment for Yesenin’s chronic alcoholism. Voronsky states that”On the one hand, he was polite, calm, restrained, reasonable and distant. On the other, he was arrogant, boastful and rude.” Voronsky goes on to describe an incident where “Yesenin, extremely drunk, climbed on a chair and began an incoherent, boastful speech. But then a little later, he recited his poetry from memory… It was masterful, hypnotizing. Yesenin was one of the best at reciting poetry in all of Russia. The poems came from his very core, and any excesses came from his heart.”
One wonders about how Yesenin’s life might have been different if he had lived today, when a diagnosis of manic depression, and possible treatment might have provided some relief from his mental torment, and perhaps provided some sense of stability. But it is also very likely that treatment, like the lethal combination of mental illness, alcohol and drugs which fueled his rush to perdition might also have dampened his creative impulse. We cannot know to what extent his dual personality, narcissistic disorder, alcoholism, drug abuse, lack of impulse control, his violent outbursts, grandiosity, promiscuity, and homosexuality might have been the engine of his genius. Was he an injured and abandoned child or a monster? Was he a pure soul afflicted by mental illness, or a sociopath? An opportunist, or merely an unsuccessful survivor? Or was he all of these things coexisting in a bedlam of tottering personality?
In the end, above all Yesenin remains a symbol of how perhaps Russians wish to think of themselves. His vigorous strain of melancholy, his blazing talent, his deep love of nature, his vivid and tragedy-infused sense of life, are all things we associate with the Russian ethos. The photograph of Yesenin in his coffin shows stark evidence of the undertaker’s art – the tamed hair, the steps taken to keep the eyeballs from sinking as they are prone to soon after death, all speak of a hopeless attempt to salvage a memory which begs to be retained, but which also must be sanitised, if it is not to be not expunged. The picture of a ruined life can be endured only if it is rotated to an unfamiliar angle. In the end persists the touching detail that Yesenin did not use a hangman’s noose to end his life, but that he “wound the cord around his neck like a scarf.”
Here are some recollections gleaned from the web of people who knew Yesenin personally:
Vladimir Mayakovsky ‘s description of his first meeting with Sergei Yesenin.
The first time I saw him he was dressed in a shirt embroidered with some crosses and had bast moccasins on his feet. Knowing how eagerly a genuine – as opposed to a theatrical – peasant changes his attire to town jackets and shoes, I did not believe Yesenin. He seemed to me put-on and showy. All the more so because he was already writing successful poetry and could certainly afford shoes.
Victor Serge: Memoirs of a Revolutionary (1945)
When I saw Yesenin for the first time, I disliked him. Twenty-four years old, he mixed with the women, ruffians, and ragamuffins from the dark corners of Moscow. A drinker, his voice was hoarse, his eyes worn, his handsome young face puffed and polished, his golden-blond hair flowing in waves around his temples. Dressed in a white silk smock, he would mount the stage and begin to declaim. The affectation, the calculated elegance, the alcoholic’s voice, the puffy face, everything prejudiced me against him; and the atmosphere of a decomposing Bohemianism, entangling its homosexuals and exotics with our militants, all but disgusted me. Yet, like everyone else, I yielded in a single instant to the positive sorcery of that ruined voice, of a poetry which came from the inmost depths of the man and the age.
Ilya Ehrenberg
Yesenin was always surrounded by satellites. The saddest thing of all was to see, next to Yesenin, a random group of men who had nothing to do with literature, but simply liked (as they still do) to drink somebody else’s vodka, bask in someone else’s fame, and hide behind someone else’s authority. It was not through this black swarm, however, that he perished, he drew them to himself. He knew what they were worth; but in his state he found it easier to be with people he despised.
Vladimir Mayakovsky about his meeting with Sergei Yesenin just before his death in 1925.
My last meeting with him made a depressing but great impression on me. By the Gosizdat cashier’s office a man with a swollen face, twisted tie, and cap only by a miracle holding onto his head, caught by a fair lock of hair, threw himself at me. He and his two horrid (to me at least) companions smelled from alcohol. With the greatest difficulty I recognized Yesenin. With difficulty, too, I rejected the persistent demands that we go for a drink, demands accompanied by the waving of a fat bunch of banknotes. All day long I had his depressing image before me, and in the evening, of course, I discussed with my colleagues what could be done about Yesenin. Unfortunately, in such a situation everyone always limits himself to talk.
Vadim Gabrielevich Shershenevich
Everywhere in his verse the single theme began to appear: the theme of death – We thought it was only a literary theme. We thought it was only a poetic device, and yet it turned out to be the terrible truth.
Olga Hasty
Although his suicide was shocking and theatrical, critics and commentators found in his verse no dearth of material for retrospective proof of its inevitability. A fear of losing his poetic abilities was a widely accepted explanation for his suicide and the images of death in his latter poetry.
Leonid Leonov speaking of of all of Esenin’s last poems
He foretold his end in every theme, cried out about it in every line: One merely needed ears to hear him.
Victor Serge account upon entering Sergei Yesenin hotel room soon after he committed suicide.
They found him hanging with a suitcase-strap around his neck, his forehead bruised by falling, as he died, against a heating-pipe. Lying there washed and combed on his death-bed, his face was less soft than in life, his hair brown rather than golden; he had an expression of cold, distant harshness.
Thirty years old, at his peak of glory, eight times married. He was our greatest lyrical poet, the poet of the Russian campaigns, of the Moscow taverns, of the Revolution’s singing Bohemians. He spawned lines full of dazzling images, yet simple as the language of the villages.
He plumbed his own descent into the abyss: (quoting Yesenin) “Where have you led me, you, my reckless head?” and “I have been loathsome, I have been wicked – and all so that I could blaze more brilliantly.”
He had tried to be in tune with the times, and with our official literature. (quoting Yesenin again) “I am a stranger in my own land; My poems are no longer needed now, and myself I am unwanted.”
Regarding Yesenin, his former lover Anatoly Mariengof remarked
If Sergei decided to leave us, he must have somehow come to doubt his own creative powers. There could not be any other reason for his death, just as he had no other aim in life save his poems.
The events leading to Yesenin’s suicide recount a tragic inevitability. An article I found about him on the internet states:
“The last two years of his life were filled with constant erratic and drunken behavior, but he continued to produce quality works of poetry. In the Spring of 1925, a highly volatile Sergei Yesenin met and married his fifth wife, Sophia Andreyevna Tolstoya, a granddaughter of Leo Tolstoy. She attempted to get him help but he suffered a complete mental breakdown and was hospitalized for a month. On his release at Christmas, two days later he cut his wrist and wrote a farewell poem in his own blood, then hanged himself from the heating pipes on the ceiling of his St. Petersburg hotel room.”
Yesenin was released – some say escaped – on December 27th, and checked into room #5 at the Hotel Angleterre, and soon thereafter spent the night with Wolf Ehrlich. Yesenin hanged himself on the morning of December 28th 1925. He was 30 years old at the time of his death.
The police report reads:
“…Arriving on the spot I discovered hanging from a pipe of the central heating system a man in the following state: his neck was not held tight in a loop, but only on the right side of the neck, his face was turned toward the pipe, and the wrist of the right hand had caught hold of the pipe. The corpse was hanging just beneath the ceiling, and the feet were about 1 1/2 meters from the floor. Near the spot where the man was hanging there lay an overturned night table, and the candelabrum standing on it lay on the floor. When the corpse was taken from the rope and examined, a cut was found on the right arm above the elbow on palm side, there were scratches on the wrist of the left arm, and a bruise beneath the left eye. He was dressed in grey trousers, a white shirt, and black patent-leather shoes.”
Georgy Ustinov, probably the husband of the Elizaveta Ustinova who was said to be the recipient of Yesenin’s suicide note, (by yet another account the note was also said to have been found beside his dead body) speculated about Yesenin’s death:
“The corpse was holding with one hand on to the central heating pipe. Esenin had not made a noose, he had wound the rope around his neck just like a scarf. He could have jumped out at any moment. Why did he seize hold of the pipe? In order not to fall out or in order to avoid the possibility of dying? People say that the autopsy established that his death was instantaneous, from a broken spine. Perhaps he had miscalculated the force of his fall when he kicked the stool away from under him and died by accident, wanting merely to play with death? All this is as yet an insoluble mystery. The doctor who carried out the autopsy said: in answer to my question whether autopsies can reveal anything about the last mental experiences–‘Science is powerless here. We can establish only the physical anomalies, but the psyche flies away together with the last breath.’
In Yesenin’s own words, “Generally speaking, a lyric poet should not live long.”
Yesenin’s farewell poem.
Goodbye, my friend, goodbye.
My dear, you are in my heart.
Predestined separation
Promises a future meeting.
Goodbye, my friend, without handshake and words,
Do not grieve and sadden your brow,-
In this life there’s nothing new in dying,
But nor, of course, is living any newer.
There’s the silly elation,
The garden the windows look on!
Soundless sunset reflection
Swims in the pool, like a swan.
Greetings, golden serenity,
Shadows of trees, black as tar!
Crows on the roof, in sincerity,
Hold vespers in praise of the star.
Timidly, over the garden
Where the guelder-rose springs,
A girl in a snow-white garment
A beautiful melody sings.
Like a blue gown, the evening
Cold from the meadow sweeps…
Happiness, sweet silly feeling!
Virginal blush of the cheeks!
You were crying on a quiet night,
Those tears in your eyes you weren’t hiding,
I was so sad and so depressed inside,
And yet we couldn’t overcome misunderstanding.
Now you are gone, I’m here, on my own,
My dreams have faded, losing tint and colour,
You left me, and again I am all alone,
Without tenderness and greeting, in my parlour.
When evening comes I often, crowned with rue,
Come to the place of our dating here,
And in my dreams I see the sight of you
And hear you crying bitterly, my dear.
What is Gone Cannot be Retrieved
Lovely night, I will never retrieve it,
And I won”t see my sweet precious love.
And the nightingale”s song, I won”t hear it,
Happy song that it sang in the grove!
That sweet night is now gone irrevocably,
You can”t tell it: please come back and wait.
Autumn weather has now set in locally,
With perpetual rains, all is wet.
Fast asleep in the grave is my sweetheart
Keeping love, as before, in her heart.
And however it tries, autumn blizzard
Cannot wake her from sleep, flesh and blood.
So the nightingale”s singing has ended,
As the song-bird has taken to flight,
And I can”t hear the song now, so splendid,
Which it sang on that sweet chilly night.
Gone and lost are the joyous emotions
That I had in my life and conceived.
All I have now is chill in my conscience.
What is gone can’t be ever retrieved.
I do not regret, and I do not shed tears,
All, like haze off apple-trees, must pass.
Turning gold, I’m fading, it appears,
I will not be young again, alas.
Having got to know the touch of coolness
I will not feel, as before, so good.
And the land of birch trees, – oh my goodness!-
Cannot make me wander barefoot.
Vagrant’s spirit! You do not so often
Stir the fire of my lips these days.
Oh my freshness, that begins to soften!
Oh my lost emotions, vehement gaze!
Presently I do not feel a yearning,
Oh, my life! Have I been sleeping fast?
Well, it feels like early in the morning
On a rosy horse I’ve galloped past.
We are all to perish, hoping for some favour,
Copper leaves flow slowly down and sway…
May you be redeemed and blessed for ever,
You who came to bloom and pass away…
The tired day droops, slowly waning ,
The noisy waves are now tranquil.
The sun has set, the moon is sailing
Above the world, absorbed and still.
The valley listens to the babbles
Of peaceful river in the dale.
The forest, dark and bending, slumbers
To warbling of the nightingale.
The river, listening in and fondling,
Talks with the banks in quiet hush.
And up above resounds, a-rolling,
The merry rustle of the rush.
It’s sad to look at you, my love,
And its so painful to remember!
It seems, the only thing we have
Is tint of willow in September.
Somebody’s lips have outworn
Your warmth and body trepidation,
As if the rain was drizzling down
The soul, that stiffened in congestion.
Well, let it be! I do not dread.
I have some other joyous gala.
There’s nothing left for me except
For brown dust and grizzly colour.
I’ve been unable, to my rue,
To save myself, for smiles or any.
The roads that have been walked are few
Mistakes that have been made are many.
With funny life and funny split
So it has been and will be ever.
The grove with birch-tree bones in it
Is like a graveyard, well I never!
Likewise, we’ll go to our doom
And fade, like callers of the garden.
In winter flowers never bloom,
And so we shouldn’t grieve about them.
Poems 1 –6 Translated by Alec Vagapov
Now all is set, and I forsake
My homeland’s woods and sunlit glare.
No longer will the poplars cleave
Their winged foliage in my hair.
The low house stoops without my height,
My faithful dog has long licked sod.
On crooked Moscow streets at night
I am to die, so promised God.
This town of elms, I love it well,
Decrepit, flabby – be it so.
And drowsy golden Asia’s swell
Has died upon the rounded domes.
And when the moonlight gilds the sky
Who knows just how it got that far!
My head hung down, I then espy
Across the street a well-known bar.
In foulest lair of noise and grime,
Through all the night until day’s brink,
To hookers I will read sweet rhyme,
And heat my bones with thugs and drink.
My heart will rise as throbbing sun,
Then I will say, in whispered shout:
“I’m just like you, O fallen one
I also have now no way out.”
On crooked streets in Moscow bright,
My loving dog has fled the rod;
My measly house has stooped in fright:
I am to die, thus deemed my God
Translation Hadi Deeb
http://hadideeb.com/journal/2009/9/6/esenin.html.
To Kachalov’s Dog
Come, Jim, give me your paw for luck,
I swear i’ve never seen one like it.
Let’s go, the two of us, and bark
Up the moon when Nature’s silent.
Come, Jim, give me your paw for luck.
Stop licking me, pet, and please do
At least heed this advice I’m giving.
Of life you haven’t got a clue,
You do not realise life is worth living.
You master’s kind a man of note,
And visitors his home are thronging,
They all admire your velvet coat
Which smilingly they love to fondle.
You’re devilish handsome for a dog,
So charming, trusting, un-suspicious,
Not asking if you may or not,
Like a drunken pal, you plaster kisses.
Dear Jim, I know a great variety
Of visions of all sorts call,
But have you seen her here, the saddest
And the least talkative of all?
I’m sure she’ll come here. In my absence
Please catch her eye. Go kiss her hand for me,
For all my real or fancied errors asking
Forgiveness of her in humility.
“What do you need?” I pleaded
With the blizzard, “Please depart.
You summon sadness and dread
And worries that sicken my heart;
Why do you howl at my window?
Let me be now, I’m praying;
Move away, or stay and blow,
But don’t listen – I’m crying.
In hot prayers at this hour
I confess my sins to God,
My soul joins the Power;
Lost spirit, forgive me God.
I’ll be in a grave soon; blow hard,
Moan over me then, blizzard,
But now, please go away,
Or, for my sinful soul, please pray.”
The grove of golden trees has fallen silent,
Shorn of its gay leaves, in mute silhouette,
And so the cranes in sad file past it flying
Have no cause any more to feel regret.
For whom, for what? We are all rovers, starting
Out, coming home awhile, then traveling on.
The hemp field’s dreaming of all who departed
And there’s a full moon gazing at the pond.
I stand alone, the bare expanses viewing,
While on the wind the cranes are borne away.
Remembrance of my merry youth pursuing,
I find nothing I would relive today.
I don’t regret the years that I have wasted,
I don’t regret the lilac time of life.
A rowan fire is in the orchard blazing
But none shall from its brightness warmth derive.
Red rowan-berry clusters cannot scorch you,
The grasses will no yellow and decline.
As leaves fall softly from a tree in autumn
So I let fall these mournful words of mine.
And if time with its breezy broom should pile them
Into a heap to burn without regret…
Just say this … that the golden grove fell silent,
Shorn of its leaves, in pensive silhouette.
Letter to Mother
Still around, old dear? How are you keeping?
I too am around. Hello to you!
May that magic twilight ever be streaming
Over your cottage as it used to do.
People write how sad you are, and anxious
For my sake, though you won’t tell them so,
And that you in your old-fashioned jacket
Out onto the highroad often go.
That you often see in the blue shadows
Ever one dream, giving you no rest:
Someone in a drunken tavern scuffle
Sticks a bandit knife into my chest.
Don’t go eating your heart out with worry,
It’s just crazy nonsense and a lie.
I may drink hard, but I promise, mother,
I shall see you first before I die.
I love you as always and I’m yearning
In my thoughts for just one thing alone,
Soon to ease my heartache by returning
To our humble low-roofed country home.
I’ll return when decked in white the branches
In our orchard are with spring aglow.
But no longer wake me up at sunrise,
As you used to do eight years ago.
Do not waken dreams no longer precious,
Hope never fulfilled do not excite.
Translation poems 9 – 11 by K.M.W. Klara
And this, perhaps the most hallucinatory of Yesenin’s poems
My friend, my friend,
I am very sick. Nor do I know
Whence came this sickness.
Either the wind whistles
Over the desolate, uninhabited field,
Or as September strips a copse,
Alcohol strips my brain.
My head waves my ears
Like a bird its wings.
Unendurably it looms my neck
When I walk.
The black man,
The black, black,
Sits by me on the bed all night,
Won’t let me sleep.
This black man
Runs his fingers over a vile book,
And, twangling above me,
Like a sleepy monk over a corpse,
Reads a life
Of some drunken wretch,
Filling my heart with longing and despair.
Oh black man.
“Listen, listen”–
He mutters to me –
The book is full of beautiful
Plans and resolutions.
This fellow lived
His life in a land of most repulsive
Thieves and charlatans.
And in that land the December snow
Is pure as the very devil,
And the snowstorms drive
Merry spinning-wheels.
This man was an adventurer,
Though of the highest
And the best quality.
Oh, he was elegant,
And a poet at that,
Albeit a slight
But useful gift.
And some woman,
Of forty or so,
He called his “naughty girl,”
His “love.”
Happiness–he said–
Is a quickness of hand and mind.
Slow fools are always
Known for being unhappy.
heartaches, we know,
From broken, lying gestures,
At thunder and tempest,
At the world’s cold-heartedness,
During times of heavy loss
And when you’re sad
The greatest art on earth
Is to seem uncomplicatedly gay.
“Black man!
Don’t you dare!
You do not live as
A deep-sea diver.
What’s the life
Of a scandalous poet to me?
Please read this story
To someone else.”
The black man
Looks me straight in the eye
And his eyes are filled
With blue vomit–
As if he wants to say,
I’m a thief and rogue
Who’d robbed a man
Openly, without shame.
Ah friend, my friend,
I am very sick. Now do I know
Over the desolate uninhabited field,
The night is freezing
Still peace at the crossroads.
I am alone at the window,
Expecting neither visitor nor friend.
The whole plain is covered
With soft quick-lime,
And the trees, like horsemen,
Assembled in our garden.
Somewhere a night bird,
Ill-omened, is sobbing.
The wooden riders
Scatter hoof-beats.
And again the black
Man is sitting on my chair,
He lifts his top hat
And, casual, takes off his cape.
“Listen! listen!”–he croaks,
Eyes on my face,
Leaning closer and closer.
I never saw
Any scoundrel
Suffer so stupidly, pointlessly,
From insomnia.
Well, I could be wrong.
There is a moon tonight.
What else is needed
By your sleep-drunken world?
Perhaps, “She” will come,
With her fat thighs,
In secret, and you’ll read
Your languid, carrion
Verse to her.
Ah, how I love these poets!
A funny race!
I always find in them
A story known to my heart–
How a long-haired monster
Profusing sexual languor
Tells of worlds
To a pimply girl-student.
I don’t know, don’t remember,
In some village,
Kaluga perhaps, or
Maybe Ryazan,
There lived a boy
Of simple peasant stock,
Blond-haired
And angel-eyed…
And he grew up,
Grew up a poet
Of slight but
Useful talent,
Most odious guest!
Your fame has long resounded.”
I’m enraged, possessed,
And my cane flies
The bridge of his nose.
The moon has died.
Dawn glimmers in the window.
Ah, night!
Look, night, what have you done?
I stand in a hat.
No one is with me.
And the mirror is broken.
Translated by Geoffrey Hurley
Luis de Carrillo y Sotomayor: Sonnet on how time flees and is lost
Posted in Poems, Poets and Poetry, Translations, tagged Baroque Poetry., Luis de Carrillo y Sotomayor, Siglo de Oro, Sonnets, Spanish Poetry, Spanish Poets on 6 September, 2012| 7 Comments »
Luis de Carrillo y Sotomayor (circa 1582 – January 22, 1610).
A la ligereza y pérdida del tiempo
¡Con qué ligeros pasos vas corriendo!
¡Oh cómo te me ausentas, tiempo vano!
¡Ay, de mi bien, y de mi ser tirano,
cómo tu altivo brazo voy siguiendo!
Detenerte pensé, pasaste huyendo;
seguíte, y ausentástete liviano;
gastéte a ti en buscarte, ¡oh inhumano!:
mientras más te busqué, te fui perdiendo.
Ya conozco tu furia, ya, humillado,
de tu guadaña pueblo los despojos;
¡oh amargo desengaño no admitido!
Ciego viví, y al fin, desengañado,
hecho Argos de mi mal con tristes ojos
huir te veo, y veo te he perdido.
On how time flees and is lost
With what light steps I see you running by!
Oh how you forsake and leave me, Time so vain!
Aye, tyrant of all my goods, and of my self,
Oh how your high-handedness now makes me feel!
I thought to detain you, but you fled away,
To follow you, but blithely you went speeding.
In seeking I squandered you, Oh inhuman one!
The more I sought you, the more of you I lost.
Now I know your fury, now admit I’m humbled,
By your scythe’s sweep is made a town of the despoiled,
Oh harsh disappointment, I still cannot accept!
Blind did I live, now at last being undeceived,
An Argus made of my ills, with saddened eyes
I see you flee, see now that you are lost.
Luis de Carrillo y Sotomayor, who wrote this sonnet, has been associated with the style referred to as Culteranismo, which in turn is classed as a development of the style called Góngorismo, after Luis de Góngora, one of the foremost poets of the Siglo de Oro, the golden age of Spanish literature.
Comparing de Carrillo y Sotmayor to Góngora seems to me inept and unfair, since Góngora’s style is overly-embellished, wordy, windy and bloated. It is replete with worthless classical conceits, and quiet bereft of real emotion and real meaning. De Carrillo’s is decidedly not.
I have not, by any means, read all of Luis de Carrillo y Sotomayor’s work, but the poems I have read do not reveal any of the vanity and prolixity so typical of Góngora, so I am left figuratively scratching my head, and wondering why I am unable to see what common characteristics (besides language) are to be found in the work of these two men.
The genuine sense of distress, and regret and frustration in this poem, which sounds and feels as if it had been written by a much older man and not one in his twenties, seems difficult to fathom. Francisco Quevedo y Villegas gives the year of Carrillo’s birth as 1582, which means de Carrillo was only about 28 years old when died, and a young man by any account.Though I could find no mention of any physical infirmity in any of the biographical material about him I came across on line, I wondered if de Carrillo might have had a premonition of his early death. Why else would he feel so acutely the sense of being imposed upon and cheated by time?
Did this man feel he had arrived at the end of his life without having achieved his goals and ambitions? Or was there some other cause for great unhappiness?
There is insufficient information in the historical record to answer these questions, and precious little personal information. So it seems, we must satisfy ourselves by trying to understand the state of mind in which this poem was composed and written.
These seem to me to be the words of a man who is unable to see himself in time’s reflection. There is a sense of something more than loss, which to me resembles rejection and erasure. He is absented – he cannot move out of time – yet time speeds away without him. He seems to be in a state of shock, as he realises that there is no temporal fixity. He on the other hand has been fixed by time, in such a wise, that the distance between him and that fast receding figure of Time grows ever longer.
Time is forever, and he is made of the mortal stuff which soon returns to dust. There is a real sense of mortality, and of desperation, and of a painful realisation, which seems likely to have been based on an event, about which we have not been given any hints.
Nor is there any hint of him reaching reflexively for the religious consolations normally resorted to in such moments of exigency. One gets the feeling that he knows it would do him no good to reflect on the fact that he is made in God’s image, if that image is only too susceptible to decay. It would seem that when Time disappeared into the unfathomable distance, de Carrillo found himself staring into the void.
Time is a thing that clocks measure, but we ourselves are clocks – we are the measure of time, even though our parts, unlike the works of clocks, wear out much sooner. We are the battleground of flux and fixity, and even as we try to hold our place in space and time, they recede and leave us behind. Flux always wins. The question which seems to be asked in this poem, though it is not made explicit, is, “if matter does not matter, what is left that does matter?”
And if the answer is “nothing”, then what is there left to do but despair?
With Other Eyes: Luigi Pirandello
Posted in Authors, Stories, Translations, tagged Con altri occhi, Italian Short Stories, Luigi Pirandello, Sicillian Short Stories, Sicillian Writers, With Other Eyes on 1 September, 2012| 11 Comments »
Luigi Pirandello (28 June 1867 – 10 December 1936)
Through the large window that opened onto the house’s little hanging garden, the pure, fresh morning air made the pretty little room cheerful. An almond branch, which seemed to be all a-blossom with butterflies, projected toward the window; and, mingled with the hoarse, muffled gurgle of the small basin in the center of the garden, was heard the festive, peal of faraway church-bells and the chirping of the swallows intoxicated with the air and the sun-shine.
As she stepped away from the window, sighing, Anna noticed that her husband that morning had forgotten to rumple his bed as he used to do each time, so that the servants couldn’t tell that he hadn’t slept in his room. She rested her elbows on the untouched bed, then stretched out on it with her whole torso. bending her pretty blonde head over the pillows and half-closing her eyes, as if to savor, in the freshness of the linens, the slumbers he was accustomed to enjoy there. A flock of swallows flashed headlong past the window shrieking.
“You would have done better to sleep here….,” she murmured languidly after a moment, and got up wearily. Her husband was to set out that very evening, and Anna had come into his room to prepare for him the things he needed for the trip.
As she opened the wardrobe, she heard what seemed to be a squeak in the inner drawer and quickly, drew back, startled. From a corner of the room she picked up a walking stick with a curved handle and, holding her dress tight against her legs, took the stick by the tip and, standing that way at a distance, tried to open the drawer with it. But as she pulled, instead of the drawer coming out, an insidious gleaming blade emerged smoothly from inside the stick. Anna, who hadn’t expected this, felt an extreme repulsion and let the scabbard of the sword stick drop from her hand. At that moment, a second squeak made her turn abruptly toward the window, uncertain whether the first one as well had come from some rapidly passing swallow.
With one foot she pushed aside the unsheathed weapon and pulled out, between the two open doors of the wardrobe, the drawer full of her husband’s old suits that he no longer wore. Out of sudden curiosity she began to rummage around in it and, as she was putting back a worn-out, faded jacket, she happened to feel, in the hem
under the lining, a sort of small paper, which had slipped down there through the torn bottom of the breast pocket; she wanted to see what that paper was which had gone astray and been forgotten there who knows how many years ago; and so by accident Anna discovered the portrait of her husband’s first wife.
At first she had a start and turned pale; she quickly ran her hand, which was shaken by a shudder, through her hair, and, with her vision blurred and her heart stopped, she ran to the window, where she remained in astonishment, gazing at the unfamiliar image almost with a feeling of panic.
The bulky hair style and the old-fashioned dress kept her from noticing at first the beauty of that face; but as soon as she was able to concentrate on the features, separating them from the attire, which now, after so many years, looked ludicrous, and to pay special attention to the eyes, she felt wounded by them and, together with her blood a flush of hatred leaped from her heart to her brain; a hatred as if caused by posthumous jealousy; that hatred mingled with contempt which she had felt for that other woman when she fell in love with Vittore Brivio, eleven years after the marital tragedy that had at one blow destroyed his first household.
Anna had hated that woman, unable to comprehend how she had been capable of betraying the man whom she now worshiped, and in the second place, because her family had objected to her marriage with Brivio, as if he had been responsible for the disgrace and violent death of his unfaithful wife. – It was she, yes, it was she beyond a doubt! Vittore’s first wife: the one who had killed herself!
She found the proof in the dedication written on the back of the portrait: “‘To my Vittore, his Almira – November 11, 1873.” Anna had very vague information about the dead woman: she knew only that Vittore, when the betrayal was discovered, had, with the impassivity of a judge, ordered her to take her own life.
Now with satisfaction she recalled that terrible sentence issued by her husband, and was irritated by that “my” and “his” of the dedication, as if the other woman had wished to flaunt the closeness of the mutual ties that had bound her and Vittore, solely to spite her.
That first flare-up of hatred, ignited, like a will-o’-the-wisp by a rivalry which by now existed only for her, was succeeded in Anna’s mind by feminine curiosity: she desired to examine the features of that face, although she was partially restrained by the odd sorrow one feels at the sight of an object that belonged to a person who died tragically – a sorrow that was sharper now, but not unfamiliar to her, because it permeated her love for her husband, who had formerly belonged to that other woman.
Examining her face, Anna immediately noticed how entirely dissimilar it was to hers, and at the same time there arose in her heart the question of how the husband who had loved that woman, that girl, whom he must have found beautiful, could ever have later fallen in love with her, who was so different.
It seemed beautiful; even to her it seemed much more beautiful than hers – that face which from the portrait looked swarthy. There ! – those lips had joined in a kiss with his lips; but now that sorrowful crease at the corners of the mouth? And why was the gaze in those intense eyes so sad? The entire face spoke of deep suffering; and Anna was moved and almost vexed by the humble and genuine kindness expressed by those features, and after that she felt a twinge of repulsion and disgust, when all at once she believed she had observed in the gaze of those eyes the same expression her own eyes had, whenever, thinking of her husband, she looked at herself in the mirror, in the mornings, after arranging her hair.
She had barely enough time to thrust the portrait into her pocket: her husband appeared, fuming, on the threshold to the room. “What have you been doing? The usual thing? Every time you come into this room to straighten up, you rearrange everything. . . ”
Then, seeing the unsheathed sword stick on the floor: “Have you been fencing with the suits in the wardrobe?”
And he laughed that laugh of his which came only from the throat, as if someone had tickled him there; and, laughing in that fashion, he looked at his wife, as if asking her why he himself was laughing. As he looked, his eyelids constantly blinked with extreme rapidity against his sharp, black, restless little eyes.
Vittore Brivio treated his wife like a child capable of nothing but that ingenuous, exclusive and almost childish love with which he felt himself surrounded, frequently to his annoyance, and to which he had determined to pay attention only on due occasion, and even at those times displaying an indulgence partially mixed with light irony, as if he meant to say: “All right, have it your way! For a while I too will become a child along with you: this, too, must be done, but let’s not waste too much time!”
Anna had let the old jacket in which she had found the portrait drop to her feet. He picked it up, piercing it with the point of the sword stick; then, through the garden window he called the young servant who also doubled as a coachman and was at that moment harnessing the horse to the cabriolet. As soon as the boy showed up, in his shirt sleeves, in the garden in font of the window, Brivio rudely threw the dangling jacket in his face, accompanying the handout with a: “Take it, it’s yours.”
“This way, you’ll have less to brush,” he added, turning toward his wife, “and to straighten up, I hope!” And again, blinking, he uttered that stentorian laugh of his.
On other occasions her husband had traveled out of the city, and not merely for a few days, also leaving at night like this time; but Anna, still extremely shaken by the discovery of the portrait on that very day, felt a strange fear of being left alone and wept when she said goodbye to him.
Vittore Brivio, in a great rush of fear of being late and evidently preoccupied with his business, reacted ill-manneredly to those uncustomary tears of his wife.
“What! Why? Come on now, come on now, that’s so childish!” And he left in hot haste, without even saying goodbye.
Anna jumped at the sound of the door that he closed behind him with force; she remained in the little room with the lamp in her hand and felt her tears growing cold in her eyes. Then she roused herself and hurriedly withdrew to her room, intending to go to bed at once.
In the room, which was already prepared, the little night light was burning. “Go to bed,” Anna said to the maid who was waiting for her. “I’ll take care of things myself. Good night.” She extinguished the lamp, but instead of putting it on the shelf, as she usually did, she put it on the night table, with the feeling – actually against her will – that she might need it later. She started to undress hastily, gazing fixedly at the floor in front of her. When her dress fell around her feet, it occurred to her that the portrait was there, and with acute vexation she felt herself being looked at and pitied by those sorrowful eyes, which had made such an impression on her. With determination she stooped down to pick up the dress from the carpet and, without folding it, she placed it on the armchair at the foot of the bed, as if the pocket that hid the portrait and the tangle of the fabric should and could prevent her from reconstructing the image of that dead woman.
As soon as she lay down, she closed her eyes and forced herself to follow her husband mentally along the road leading to the railroad station. She forced this upon herself as a spiteful rebellion against the feeling that had kept her alert all day long, observing and studying her husband. She knew where that feeling had come from and she wanted to get rid of it.
In this effort of her will, which caused her an acute nervous agitation, she pictured to herself with an extraordinary second sight the long road, deserted at night, illuminated by the street lamps projecting their wavering light onto the pavement, which seemed to palpitate because of it; at the foot of every lamp, a circle of shadow; the shops, all closed; and there was the carriage in which Vittore was riding: as if she had been lying in wait for it, she started following it all the way to the station: she saw the gloomy train beneath the glass shed; a great many people milling about in that vast, smoky, poorly lit, mournfully echoing interior: now the train was pulling out; and, as if she were really watching it move away and disappear into the darkness, she suddenly came back to herself, opened her eyes in the silent room and felt an anguished feeling of emptiness, as if something were missing inside her. She then felt confusedly, in a flash, becoming bewildered, that for three years perhaps, from the moment in which she had left her parents’ home, she had been in that void of which she was only now becoming conscious. She had been unaware of it before, because she had filled that void with herself alone, with her love; she was becoming aware of it now, because all day long she had, as it were, suspended her love in order to look and to observe.
“He didn’t even say goodbye to me,” she thought; and she started to cry again, as if that thought were the definite reason for her tears.
She sat up in bed: but she suddenly held back the hand she had stretched out, while sitting up, to get her handkerchief from her dress. No, it was no longer any use to forbid herself to take another look at that portrait, to reexamine it! She took it. She put the light back on.
How differently she had pictured that woman Now, contemplating her real likeness, she felt remorse for the feelings that the imaginary woman had aroused in her. She had pictured a woman rather fat and ruddy, with flashing, smiling eyes, always ready to laugh, enjoying common amusements . . . And instead, now, there she was: a young woman whose clean-cut features expressed a profound, sorrowful soul; whose eyes expressed a sort of all-absorbing silence; yes, different from herself, but not in that earlier vulgar sense: just the opposite; no, that mouth looked as if it had never smiled, whereas her own had laughed so often and so gaily; and surely, if that face was swarthy (as it seemed to be from the portrait), it had a less smiling air than her own blonde and rosy face. Why, why so sad?
A hateful thought flashed across her mind, and all at once with violent repulsion she tore her eyes away from that woman’s picture, suddenly discovering in it a snare threatening not only to her peace of mind, to her love, which, as it was, had received more than one wound that day, but also to her proud dignity as an honest woman who had never allowed herself even the remotest thought hostile to her husband.
That woman had had a lover And perhaps it was because of him she was so sad, because of that adulterous love, and not because of her husband!
She tossed the portrait onto the bedside table and put out the light again, hoping to fall asleep this time without thinking any more about that woman, with whom she could have nothing in common. But, closing her eyes, she suddenly saw, in spite of herself, the dead woman’s eyes, and sought in vain to dispel that sight. “Not because of him, not because of him!” she then murmured with frenzied persistence, as if by insulting her she hoped to be rid of her.
And she made an effort to recall everything she knew about that other man, the lover, as if compelling the gaze and the sadness of those eyes to look no longer at her but at the former lover, whom she knew only by name: Arturo Valli. She knew that he had married a few years later as if to prove his innocence of the blame that Vittore wanted to ascribe to him, that he had vigorously declined Vittore’s challenge to a duel, protesting that he would never fight with a mad killer. After this refusal, Vittore had threatened to kill him wherever he came across him, even in church; and then he had left the town with his wife, returning later as soon as Vittore, remarried, had departed.
But from the sadness of those events which she now brought back to mind, from Valli’s cowardice and, after so many years, from the way the first wife had been completely consigned to oblivion by her husband, who had been able to resume his life and remarry as if nothing had happened, from the joy that she herself had felt upon becoming Vittore’s wife, from those three years she had spent together with him with never a thought about that other woman, unexpectedly a cause of pity for her spontaneously forced itself upon Anna; she saw her image again vividly and it seemed to her that with those eyes, intense from so much suffering, that woman was saying to her:
“But I’m the only one that died as a result! All of you are still living!”
She saw, she felt, that she was alone in the house: she got frightened. Yes, she was living; but for three years, since her wedding day, she hadn’t seen her parents or sister, not even once. She who adored them, a dutiful daughter, a trusting sister, had had the courage to oppose their wishes out of love for her husband; for his sake, when he was rejected by his own family, she had fallen seriously ill, and would no doubt have died if the doctors hadn’t induced her father to accede to her desire. And her father had yielded, but without giving his consent; in fact, he swore that after that wedding she would no longer exist for him or for that household. Besides the difference in age, the husband being eighteen years older than the wife, a more serious obstacle for the father had been Brivio’s financial position, which was subject to rapid ups and downs because of the risky undertakings on which this most enterprising and extraordinarily active man was accustomed to embark with foolhardy confidence in himself and his luck.
In three years of marriage Anna, surrounded by comforts, had been able to consider as unjust, or dictated by hostile prejudice, her father’s prudent misgivings as to the financial means of her husband, in whom, moreover, in her ignorance, she placed as much confidence as he had in himself; then, as for the difference in their ages, up to then there had been no manifest cause of disappointment for her or surprise for others, because Brivio’s advanced years produced in him not the slightest impairment to his small, highly animated and robust body and even less to his mind, which was endowed with tireless energy and restless eagerness.
It was something totally different that Anna, now for the first time, looking into her life (without even realizing it) with the eyes of that dead woman depicted there in the portrait on the bedside table, found to complain of in her husband. Yes, it was true: she had felt hurt at other times by his almost disdainful indifference; but never so much as on that day; and now for the first time she felt so frighteningly alone, separated from her family, who at that moment seemed to her to have abandoned her there, as if, upon marrying Brivio, she already had something in common with that dead woman and was no longer worthy of anyone else’s company. And her husband, who ought to have consoled her, it seemed that even her husband was unwilling to give her any credit for the sacrifice of her daughterly and sisterly love that she had offered him, just as if it had cost her nothing, as if he had had a right to that sacrifice and therefore had no obligation to make it up to her. Yes, he had a right, but it was because she had fallen so totally in love with him at that time; therefore he now had an obligation to repay her. And instead . . .
“It’s always been like that!” Anna thought she heard the sorrowful lips of the dead woman sigh to her. She lit the lamp again and once more, contemplating the picture, she was struck by the expression of those eyes. So then, it was true, she too had suffered on his account? She too, realizing she wasn’t loved, had felt that frightening emptiness?
“Yes? Yes?” Anna, choking with tears, asked the picture. And it then seemed to her that those kindly eyes, intense with passion and heartbreak, were pitying her in their turn, were condoling with her over that abandonment, that unrequited sacrifice, that love which remained locked up in her breast like a treasure in a casket to which he had the keys but would never use them, like a miser.
Translation Stanley Applebaum
When I first read Luigi Pirandello’s “With Other Eyes”, my thoughts flew immediately to Horacio Quiroga’s “The Feather Pillow”. The parallels are undeniable – a naive and inexperienced young woman is shut in a trap of marital disquiet with an unsympathetic older man. Having unwitting swallowed the poison pill of matrimony, both women find themselves isolated in echoingly large houses, far away from family and friends, with no apparent means of escape, and only their maids for company.
Quiroga proceeds to develop a gothic tale, reminiscent of Edgar Allan Poe, in which a blood-sucking insect becomes the means and symbol whereby the life and life-blood of the young woman is gradually and fatally drained away. The young woman never realises the cause of her debilitating disease. Quiroga leads his readers to the inevitable conclusion that it is the marriage itself which is the life-destroying ‘insect.’ We are allowed into the secret from which the protagonists are excluded, but he does not permit us access to their inner awareness – or rather the absence of such an awareness.
Pirandello is much more nuanced and more subtle. From the very outset we are privy to Anna’s thoughts, and to the process of the rapidly growing realisation of her predicament. Pirandello delves into, and allows us to eavesdrop so that we hear, the actual unfolding of Anna’s internal conversation and her insights and feelings, rather than make us rely on a plot-driven narrative, as does Quiroga.
By a mere accident, Anna finds a photograph of her husband Vittore’s first wife, and literally overnight, she becomes chillingly conscious of her situation and indeed her fate. She has spent the entire three years of her marriage placidly drifting downstream, never looking below the surface of the water, content that her little boat afforded her a reasonable view of the embankments, and perhaps an occasional glimpse of the sky. She has passed through the pools of light and shadow, trailing her hand in the water, never noticing its murkiness or wondering about what lay, or lurked, beneath the surface.
It is reasonable to suppose that Anna married Vittore for love and security, and in this she resembles most of the women of her era. Most had reason to believe that their marriages stood on a firm and enduring foundation. These marriages were meant to last a lifetime, which is why Vittore compelled his first wife to end her life as a means of ending his marriage to her. So what can we suppose will unfold in Anna’s future?
When a crack in the underground appears, hitherto concealed and long repressed forces break through, and can no longer be denied. The outcome for Anna was earthshaking.
The little jolt of Vittore’s abrupt departure on a business trip becomes a persistent tremour when it is compounded by the accidental discovery of the photograph, with the result that a dangerous and irremediable rift tears open the foundation of Anna’s life. She had permitted herself to be seduced by the superficial appearance of stability, the fiction of solid ground, the seemingly placid surface beneath which nature conceals her shifty proclivities.
Could it have been that until that very moment, in all of those three years, there had been no evidence, no hint, no suggestion even of a shaky foundation? It must have been that the awareness of something was so deeply buried under such a profound and impermeable stratum of ignorance – or denial – that no expression of it was permitted to rise to the surface.
Pirandello does not tell us directly, or in any great detail, what Anna saw when she stared into the fissure: but he doesn’t have to. She is marooned in a desolate wasteland. She has no family, and no children, and there is the strong suggestion that she will have none. Pirandello has deftly added a hovering cloud of ruin in the future, due to Vittore’s habit of reckless financial speculation. Anna may have had three years of relatively untroubled slumber, but now she is awake. She is trapped, isolated in a loveless marriage, in which the gradual decay of any previous happiness is inevitable, and death the most probable means of escape.
In other stories with which we are familiar, Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre and Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca come to mind, first wives are represented as sinister and dangerous artifacts of the past, whose resurgence into the present signals the incipience of a severe threat, or even the possible destruction of the second marriage. The sub-text, however, suggests that they represent hidden parts of the second wives’ psyches. I find myself concluding that this theory also finds its application in Pirandello’s story.
Anna’s happiness thus far has been procured at the cost of a deadened awareness, as forgotten and concealed as an old photograph in the pocket of an old suit belonging to someone else. From its place of concealment between the suit and lining, it has now emerged into the light of a lovely spring day. She has been unconscious, but now the protection offered by that unconscious state has been stripped away. Now her only ally, the only one who shares her understanding of her predicament, is a face in an old photograph. It bears a mute witness to her newly dawning realisation that all is not as it had seemed. Two women, one dead and one who risks a living death, are each other’s only allies. They share the knowledge of their deception by a ruthless man, a brute, a vulgar little bounder with eyes like a rodent’s, whose humanity is as vestigial as a human tail.
I had supposed when I first read this story, that Quiroga’s version was the darker, and Pirandello’s the softer and kinder, but now I am not so sure. I must suppose that Pirandello’s Anna is made of sterner stuff than either his Almira, or Quiroga’s Alicia (“rubia, angelical y tímida”), and that she is better equipped to resist than the other two. Quiroga’s provision determined that Alicia’s suffering was to be of a relatively brief duration, and death provided her an expeditious and permanent end to it.
The only basis for any trace of optimism in a speculation of how her future might turn out, is that Anna, unlike the others, was awakened from her sleep. She has been warned by Almira, that taking a lover will not be a good option. She must constrain her emotional needs, and devise a way to negotiate the odium of all the empty years that lie ahead of her, however blighted they might be. She will have to mature, to grow wise, to rely on her own strengths, even though her only weapon appears to be one of negation, that is, to refuse to allow her heart and mind to be corrupted. I hope that she will succeed, because, I think, she must. It is imperative that she be able to find a way in which she will not merely endure, but survive a loveless life, and to go on living in spite of its horror.
There is an art, I believe, of finding a measure of freedom even within the confines a prison, and so the gaoler’s more advanced age must be allowed to count in Anna’s favour.
Juana Inés de la cruz: Soneto 164
Posted in Poems, Poets and Poetry, Translations, tagged Juana Inés de la Cruz, Lesbian Poetry, LGBT, Love poetry, Soneto 164, Sonnet 164, Spanish Poetry on 22 August, 2012| 6 Comments »
Juana Inés de la cruz (12 November 1651 – 17 April 1695)
Soneto 164
En que satisface un recelo con la retórica del llanto.
Esta tarde, mi bien, cuando te hablaba,
como en tu rostro y tus acciones vía
que con palabras no te persuadía,
que el corazón me vieses deseaba;
y Amor, que mis intentos ayudaba,
venció lo que imposible parecía:
pues entre el llanto, que el dolor vertía,
el corazón deshecho destilaba.
Baste ya de rigores, mi bien, baste:
no te atormenten más celos tiranos,
ni el vil recelo tu inquietud contraste
con sombras necias, con indicios vanos,
pues ya en líquido humor viste y tocaste
mi corazón deshecho entre tus manos.
Sonnet 164
In which she allays mistrust with the rhetoric of tears.
This evening, my love, as I with you I was speaking,
When on your face, your feelings I observed,
And when my words I saw could not persuade you
To see whereof it was my heart desired,
Love came to my aid, to help me with my cause
And win what seemed to be beyond achieving.
Then between the ache and flooding tears
Was the essence of my dismantled heart distilled.
Enough my love, be done with harshness: Cease!
Neither let tyranny and jealousy torment you
Nor let vile suspicions your concern obstruct
With foolish shadows tinged with vanities,
When now in liquid form you see and touch
My heart unmade, undone, within your hands.
Translation Dia Tsung.
It is late afternoon or evening somewhere in the Colonial Mexico of over three centuries ago. Dusk has not yet fallen, and two young women are locked together in the grip of shared emotion. Tears are shed, words, exchanged, and a lovers’ quarrel or lovers’ misunderstanding is being intently addressed. One of the women is a noble of the viceregal court, in fact she is married to no less a personage than the viceroy of Mexico himself. The other is a nun and a poet.
Perhaps the evening light pouring through the window finds them ensconced in a quiet room, the nun’s private quarters, a large room filled with hundreds books and several scientific instruments, or perhaps they are in a secluded spot in the palace grounds or a convent garden. They are alone in each others’ company.
The nun is speaking urgently and sincerely, trying to persuade and convince the lady that she has no need to feel tormented. In fact, it is the nun who has the most cause to be jealous and suspicious, because it is the lady who has other calls on her affections. But since it is the nun who happens to be the gallant in this pairing, it is she who must minister to the other’s need.
It may appear to an onlooker – if indeed there was one to watch the scene form behind a tree or a curtain (as we the readers do now) – that the scene is simply of one woman pleading with another to not be upset. But what we are really seeing is a highly skilled emotional operation – that of open-heart surgery.
The chest is cut open, and delved into. It must be so, because all the symptoms of lovesickness so dictate. Acute longing, ardent emotions, jealousy, insecurity, anxiety, tears and pent-up emotion have brought about a crisis. It is a tender but dangerous moment, and must be handled with the greatest care. The cause of all the trouble, jealousy, mistrust, disquiet and suspicion, must be found, and lovingly addressed.
Everyone longs for this – to not have to speak or explain, but to have one’s expressions, one’s feelings, perfectly intuited, one’s mind read, one’s heart seen into and touched, the vulnerary applied, the wound soothed and dressed and set well on its way to healing. Does the lover exist who who does not fervently long for this – For her lover to see what is worrying and disturbing her and to tenderly and gently administer the remedy?
And all this must be accomplished before the lady will consent to wipe away the tears of the nun, for the tears are a required propitiation, the price that must be paid. The nun’s tears are the proof of her devotion and of her surrender.
Therefore she must be assiduous. She must enter and delve into the lady’s heart, leaving nothing undone to appease it and heal it, to reassure and restore calm. She must not seem detached, but be fully engaged in every instant. Her skill as a lover and a psychologist must exceed even her skill as a poet. All, and not just some, of the ingredients of healing an emotional wound must present, a wonderfully deft treatment and a profound understanding of female psychology must be brought to bear if the destructive event is to be made to pass peacefully. Complete healing is required, and not mere amelioration.
As we watch, we see that such is her perfection of insight and comprehension she that she is able to formulate and express the other’s feelings, to speak for her. She knows the torment of jealousy is corrosive, and with her unwonted skill she must catch it at its inception and lead the way from confusion to comprehension, and from the heavy sense of unknowing within the clouds of feeling into a peaceful clarity, yet remain within the ambiance of the cloud. She must understand the nature of limmerance (a ‘psychosis’ of sorts, related to falling in love, of limited duration and a word which will not be invented for several centuries), and reason must be so sweetened as to please, and to not be rejected.
The nun seems to have succeeded in assuring the doubter of her love and of her constancy. It was as if Thomas did not even have to lift a finger to have his doubts and suspicions allayed, but that Christ had himself tenderly taken the hand of the doubter and placed it on the wound. The one with a greater wound heals the one with the lesser. Surely the lady, though married, possessed a vastly more ample freedom than the cloistered nun, and far less cause for jealousy. Nevertheless, she is the one who now receives the other’s care and comfort.
This is a profound feat of healing, requiring a perfect touch, almost an excess of skill, like a surgeon, a doctor, diagnosing, opening up the body, removing the obstruction, applying the remedy, closing the wound, and then caring for the post-operative trauma of the patient.
Nor, I surmise, was the lady disappointed. Her emotions were read and sedulously interpreted. She was reassured and comforted. The storm has spent itself into a gentle rain. The last line with its erotic tinge suggests that thirst has been quenched and all is refreshed with he tears which have been shed onto her palms. It is as if though at first, in the kind of at-sea-ness of love, she has been safely guided to the shore.
This is one of Juana Inés’s best-known poems, I wonder if it is it a scene from the past she recalls, or is it more immediate? An old memory? Did she present the lady with this sonnet the following day, or did she dispatch a servant of the convent to carry it to the viceregal court, accompanied perhaps with a box of the best convent confections? Or did she write it years later, when the lady had long since left for Spain, and when the news of her death reached Juana Inés in Mexico?
The poet is a secret jeweller and goldsmith, who is well able to recognise a gem, to hold it until the right moment, which may come years later, and cut and polish it and persuade it to reveal its inherent brilliance and glory in a setting of her apt devising. It demands seemingly mutually exclusive skills, those of complete immersion and complete objectiveness. But if not objective but still in love, at what pains was she to achieve the distance to create this accurate account and set it in a sonnet from like a gem in an elegant ring?
Perhaps it is the inspiration of the personal transcending Muse who is able to transmute the variegated mass of personal feeling into the clear colour of flawless poetry.
“Love came to my aid,” writes Juana Inés, but what was ‘Love’, if not her own intuition, and her own virtuosity in matters of love?
Giovanni Pascoli: August 10th
Posted in Poems, Poets and Poetry, Translations, tagged August 10th, Giovanni Pascoli, italian poetry, X Agosto on 16 August, 2012| 2 Comments »
Giovanni Placido Agostino Pascoli (December 31, 1855 — April 6, 1912)
X Agosto
San Lorenzo, io lo so perché tanto
di stelle per l’aria tranquilla
arde e cade, perché si gran pianto
nel concavo cielo sfavilla.
Ritornava una rondine al tetto :
l’uccisero: cadde tra i spini;
ella aveva nel becco un insetto:
la cena dei suoi rondinini.
Ora è là, come in croce, che tende
quel verme a quel cielo lontano;
e il suo nido è nell’ombra, che attende,
che pigola sempre più piano.
Anche un uomo tornava al suo nido:
l’uccisero: disse: Perdono ;
e restò negli aperti occhi un grido:
portava due bambole in dono.
Ora là, nella casa romita,
lo aspettano, aspettano in vano:
egli immobile, attonito, addita
le bambole al cielo lontano.
E tu, Cielo, dall’alto dei mondi
sereni, infinito, immortale,
oh! d’un pianto di stelle lo inondi
quest’atomo opaco del Male!
Saint Lawrence, I know why so many
shooting stars in the tranquil air
blaze and tumble: it is because of the great weeping
in the glittering vault of heaven.
A swallow was retuning to the roof:
they killed her – she fell among thorns.
She held in her beak an insect,
the dinner for her little ones.
Now she is yonder – as on a cross –
proffering the worms to the distant sky
and in the shadows of her waiting nest,
the chirping grows ever fainter.
Likewise a man, also returning to his nest,
they killed him – he said “I forgive.”
And in his open eyes there was stuck a cry:
he was carrying two dolls as a gift.
Now over there, in the lonely house
they await him, but await him in vain.
He immobile, in dazed surprise,
the dolls pointing to far-away heaven.
And you, heaven, from on high,
above the worlds, serene, infinite, immortal,
Oh, with a single lament of the stars,
you flood this opaque atom of evil.
The tenth of August is when Italians commemorate the martyrdom of Saint Lawrence. It is the night when meteor showers are expected to be most intense, and a magical night, when it is believed that such wishes as are ‘wished upon a star’ are likely to come true.
For twelve year-old Giovanni Pascoli, the tenth of August was a night on which his wishes were blighted. His father was killed while on his way home from a local fair, and the mare came home pulling the cart with the dead man in it. The murderers were never apprehended.
This poem was (and perhaps still is) standard fare for generations of Italian school-kids, many of whom are likely to cry their little eyes out when they first read it. It also serves as an excellent way in which to introduce these hapless mites at an early age, to the fact that life is uncertain, unpredictable and unfair.
The sense of tragedy and grief that pervades this poem was something Pascoli carried with him for the rest of his life. His father was killed in 1867, and several bereavements followed. His sister Margherita died in 1868, and soon thereafter, his mother and three brothers. One of these brothers was the oldest, who had been supporting the family, and after his death the family fell into severe financial difficulty.
I cannot help comparing Pascoli with another Italian ‘poet of pessimism’ Giacomo Leopardi. I admit this is unfair to Pascoli and no doubt unjust, but it is exceedingly tempting to compare the work of these two tormented men, erudite philologists who both loved nature, were preoccupied by loss, and who lived darkly unfulfilled lives.
Pascoli’s particular strain of melancholy clearly lacks the mordant acerbity of Leopardi’s. Pascoli, due to his academic credentials and success as a latinist, (he was a university professor, and won a significant sum in prize-money for his Latin publications) was professionally and financially successful during his lifetime, whereas Leopardi barely managed to scrape by.
Leopardi, by far the greater intellect, was brilliantly despairing and clear-eyed about his deformity and doomed existence, but Pascoli, with his fervent idealisation of childhood and without Leopardi’s capacity for falling in love, seems to have sunk into a stupour of weak pessimism and resignation, from which no sparks seemed to fly. His alcoholism – and perhaps his success – seemed to have diverted him from taking the next step of staring unblinkingly into the abyss, something that Leopardi repeatedly and unflinchingly did throughout his literary life.
One wonders about the internal emotional traumas Pascoli sustained, that prevented him from finding any satisfaction – or consolation even – in his life. Though his appearance suggests a jolly, portly, country-gentleman, his writing is full of grief and loss and bereavement, and an unassuageable unhappiness with his life and what it had to offer. Pascoli dismissed religion as well as science, and deprecated politics. He fostered his affinity with the natural world, and dwelt lovingly on the beauty of nature, but this love was never sufficient to sustain him. To read his poetry is to feel muddled and sad and damply depressed. I prefer the salt and acid Leopardi seems to revel in pouring into the same sort of wound.
The religious symbolism in this poem – and the sense of passive resignation to the gratuitous cruelties and vicissitudes of existence – belie the fact that Pascoli was an atheist. His uneasy mind seems to have been held the captive of a profound and troubled melancholy throughout his life. He never married, perhaps due to a reluctance to disrupt the ‘family’ life he had contrived to foster with his two sisters Ida and Maria, who had at first been intended for convent life, though neither took religious vows.
It has been elsewhere suggested that Pascoli’s attachment to his sisters was not altogether filial, a suggestion that finds some support in Pascoli’s description of the year preceding his favourite sister Ida’s marriage, as being the most terrible of his life. His almost hysterical outpourings at the prospect of their separation and the thought of forfeiting her affection, attest to an intense attachment and a profound sense of loss.
In 1895 he set up house with his sister Maria (Mariù), in Castelvecchio, in Tuscany, where he lived for the next 17 years, until his death of liver cancer in 1912.
Mariù survived him by some forty years, and the two share adjacent tombs in the Castelvecchio cemetery.
http://sauvage27.blogspot.com/2009/10/assai-meno-vistosa-ma-piu-penetrante-di.html
http://sauvage27.blogspot.com/2009/04/giovanni-pascoli.html
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Park MGM’s Mama Rabbit and Bellagio’s Mayfair Supper Club
Park MGM wasn’t expected to become the nightlife stronghold that it is. But MGM Resorts fortified the updated restaurant and entertainment offerings at the renovated resort with innovative afterhours programming and experiences at the NoMad Bar, Juniper Cocktail Lounge and On the Record Speakeasy & Club, the latter a collaboration with Houston Hospitality.
On the Record has been a particularly refreshing success thanks to its versatility. It’s an intimate alternative to the Strip’s popular megaclubs, the de facto Park Theater concert afterparty and an ideal bounce-between with hip restaurant neighbor Best Friend by chef Roy Choi. And MGM capitalized on the synergy between the two LA-born concepts by putting another one right between them—vibrant mezcal and tequila bar Mama Rabbit.
The 4,400-square-foot space celebrated its grand opening last month during Mexican Independence Day weekend, inviting curious visitors to explore its double-sided bar, a striking mural by Okuda San Miguel, gaming and live entertainment in the back room and a nimble menu of cocktails and light bites. It’s a surprising new take on the Las Vegas lounge, splashed with Oaxacan soul and style from partner Bricia Lopez of the acclaimed LA restaurant Guelaguetza.
“Vegas moves really, really fast,” she says. “I’ve never worked in any sort of corporate environment like this—only in the family business—so I’m learning so much from every person on the [MGM] team. I’m great friends with Roy Choi and his team … but in LA to build a restaurant takes two years. Vegas is Vegas. It’s fast, and it’s amazing.”
Mama Rabbit and On the Record are the initial results of a new approach for MGM Resorts, which has reaffirmed its presence in the nightlife scene by operating its own new venues instead of bringing in a nightclub partner such as Hakkasan Group. Now that Park MGM has been completed, the Strip will see more of these innovations at Bellagio.
“They’re all very different experiences,” says Sean Christie, MGM Resorts’ president of events and nightlife. “On the Record is a club with several different environments served in a unique way that does not rely on typical nightclub talent, even though you get that energy. Mama Rabbit was the next step, inching toward something we’re going to do at Bellagio with live music. It’s not a restaurant but there is food along with the robust cocktail program led by Bricia.”
The Mayfair Supper Club is that next step, set to open around New Year’s Eve weekend at the fountains-fronting former site of Hyde Bellagio. It will be a restaurant first, Christie says, with a carefully curated and constantly changing entertainment lineup created in collaboration with bicoastal company No Ceilings Entertainment.
Beyond its cuisine, the Mayfair is designed to be a live entertainment venue you won’t want to leave after dinner. It could be clubby. There could be a bit of a show. There will be music. The energy will ramp up as the evening moves along, ideally paralleling that of its guests.
“You have to come up with concepts for the environment you’re in, and it was apparent Hyde in some way, shape or form wanted to be something else. We wanted to flex our resources to come up with something new,” Christie says. “The other thing was this has to have the tone and tenor of the clientele of Bellagio, which is more sophisticated and well-heeled, but also appealing to younger folks in the sense that it has to have a certain adrenaline to it later in the evening.”
Nick Jonas recommends male striptease show to Priyanka Chopra, Sophie Turner
Many Changes on the Las Vegas Strip
The Best Las Vegas New Year's Parties You’ll Actually Enjoy
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Latest On DAPL -- February 28, 2017
Over at Francais Express:
hearing held earlier today; this is the last lawsuit (for now)
judge hopes to decide on/about March 7, 2017, "final" decision
wants operator to give him 48 hours notice if oil were to flow sooner than March 7, 2017, so he could issue ruling before oil flows
Judge Boasberg: questioned how the water could be harmed since the pipeline is being built under the Lake Oahe and oil would not likely touch the water in the event of a spill.
Native American reply: the pipeline would spiritually degrade the water on the Missouri River because of its presence and that would prevent tribes from carrying out ceremonies because other nearby water sources had been contaminated from decades of mining.
And exactly how would the pipeline "spiritually degrade" the water? To think this $3.9 billion
pipeline was held up over that "level" of argument.
Soulmates and Shoalmates
I did not know this until yesterday.
Most fish are said to swim in schools. There is an exception.
Quick! Without looking it up, herring do not swim in schools. They swim in ......?
I came across that factoid while reading about the history of salt (previously posted).
I never would have posted that bit of trivia in a million years except I'm listening to the soundtrack to the Coen brothers movie, Inside Llewyn Davis. The song: "The Shoals of Herring."
From wiki:
In biology, any group of fish that stay together for social reasons are shoaling, and if the group is swimming in the same direction in a coordinated manner, they are schooling.
In common usage, the terms are sometimes used rather loosely. About one quarter of fish species shoal all their lives, and about one half shoal for part of their lives.
Fish use many traits to choose shoalmates. Generally they prefer larger shoals, shoalmates of their own species, shoalmates similar in size and appearance to themselves, healthy fish, and kin (when recognized).
Fish can be obligate or facultative shoalers. Obligate shoalers, such as tunas, herrings and anchovy, spend all of their time shoaling or schooling, and become agitated if separated from the group. Facultative shoalers, such as Atlantic cod, saiths and some carangids, shoal only some of the time, perhaps for reproductive purposes.
And I probably would not have even noticed any of this except a reader, a long time ago, introduced me to one of my favorite DVDs: Muscle Shoals.
Fare Thee Well, "Inside Llewyn Davis, Oscar Isaac
Labels: Pipeline_DAPL
Fox Business News Slamming CNBC -- February 28, 2017
I knew it was startling, but not this startling! I saw the headline earlier and linked the article, but it is quite amazing:
FBN averaged 218,000 viewers during the hours between 9:30 a.m. and 5 p.m. in February, an increase of 59 percent over February 2016. CNBC, meanwhile, dropped from 212,000 to 182,000 in the same measurement, Nielsen Media Research said.
That's a startling change for a marketplace where CNBC was once considered the unquestioned leader. But CNBC has suggested those raw numbers are deceptive: the network stopped using Nielsen as a basis for advertising sales two years ago because the service did not measure viewership in offices or anyplace out of the home, and also short-changed its count of wealthier viewers that CNBC targets. Nielsen says it will begin counting out-of-home viewership starting in April.
Fox Business Network traces its surge to a decision in 2015 to load its daytime lineup with more of its most prominent hosts: Maria Bartiromo, Stuart Varney, Neil Cavuto, Trish Regan and Liz Claman — all CNBC alumni. The network also takes a broader view of business news than its competitors; during Regan's show on Tuesday, most of the talk was political, discussing President Donald Trump's upcoming speech before Congress.
The network also takes a broader view of business news than its competitors" -- also less fake news on Fox Business News.
Futures Look Good Going Into Tomorrow
All indices are up right now, after the presidential address to Congress.
Whiting With Two More Bakken Permits -- February 28, 2017
Active Rigs 40 38 119 192 183
Two new permits:
Operator: Whiting
Field: East Fork (Williams)
Comments: the last consecutive sixteen permits have all been Whiting permits; all permits from February 21st through today have been Whiting permits; of the 125 permits issued by NDIC to date, this calendar year, fifty (50) have been Whiting permits
Three producing wells (DUCs) reported as completed:
28991, 2,120, CLR, Radermecher 2-22H1, Camel Butte, t2/17; cum --
31639, 2,640, BR, Old Hickory 43-32 MBH-R, Sand Creek, 4 sections, t2/17; cum --
Meanwhile, Stark County has approved a very, very contentious wind farm. Bismarck Tribune:
Brady Wind Energy Center I
northern Stark County near Dickinson
$250 million project; 150 MW ($1.7 million / MW; I don't know if that includes the transmission line)
NextEra Energy Resources
PSC voted unanimously to approve it
includes a 19-mile transmission line
longest wind farm hearing in state history; 15 hours of testimony, March 31, 2016
sounds like most area residents were against it except for the landowners that gain financially; I could be wrong; that was my impression
Labels: Bakken_Economy, CostIntermittentEnergy, Wind_ND
Random Update Of A Hess Re-Frack: HA-Mogen, Hawkeye Oil Field -- February 28, 2017
The well, API 33-053-02811:
16694, 348, Hess, HA-Mogen-152-95 0805H-1 ST2, Hawkeye, t12/07; cum 310K 12/16;
Production profile around time of re-frack (no production from 2/12 to 10/14):
BAKKEN 4-2015 30 7066 7087 79 12819 12819 0
BAKKEN 3-2015 25 7407 7556 145 22875 22875 0
BAKKEN 2-2015 28 10109 10103 163 32622 32622 0
BAKKEN 12-2014 31 13636 13753 779 29851 29851 0
BAKKEN 9-2014 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
BAKKEN 12-2013 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
BAKKEN 10-2013 0 0 0 0 0 0
Original frack production data:
BAKKEN 2-2008 29 4852 4852 1453 8746 8746 0
BAKKEN 1-2008 31 7220 7220 1575 10270 10270 0
BAKKEN 12-2007 31 7779 7779 1404 12254 12254 0
BAKKEN 11-2007 29 10670 10670 1443 15322 15322 0
Labels: Hess_Refracking, Re-Fracking
Random Update Of An MRO Re-Frack: Bottleson 34-22H, Reunion Bay -- February 28, 2017
The well, API, 33-061-00548:
16687, 600, MRO, Bottleson 34-22H, Reunion Bay, t11/08; cum 376K 12/16;
Production profile around the time of the re-frack:
BAKKEN 10-2014 31 6129 6063 1202 5661 4527 295
BAKKEN 9-2014 30 6869 6890 1277 6335 5101 319
BAKKEN 5-2014 31 15204 15238 3726 13389 10893 685
BAKKEN 4-2014 26 9934 9993 2640 11618 6085 4327
BAKKEN 2-2014 28 14115 14270 5123 13039 9753 1611
BAKKEN 1-2014 11 8399 7982 476 7400 274 6163
BAKKEN 10-2013 9 466 866 51 592 404 136
BAKKEN 9-2013 30 1608 1323 160 1724 1402 143
BAKKEN 2-2013 28 1687 1583 163 1263 623 472
Labels: MRO_Refracking, Re-Fracking
The Trump Economy, T+39, Off The Chart; Making It Illegal To Hire A Person With Limited Skills -- February 28, 2017
Consumer confidence soars to 15-year high (that would encompass both the Obama administration -- hope and change -- and the Bush administration -- more of the same). One wonders where we would be if Hillary were president.
February's reading of 115 topped the 15-year high of 113.7 set back in December after Donald Trump's election victory. Best reading since July, 2001.
So, what's the market doing? Flat, crawling back from a negative opening. Yesterday: twelve consecutive days of record-setting closes -- ties record.
Back to the Oscars. My hunch -- the conspiracy theorists are correct on this one.
Worth repeating: As Nobelist Milton Friedman correctly quipped, “A minimum wage law is, in reality, a law that makes it illegal for an employer to hire a person with limited skills.”
Neanderthal Man: In Search of Lost Genomes
Svante Paabo
DDS: 569.986 PAA
The author: director of the Department of Genetics at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. In 2009, Time names him one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World. Most likely just behind President Obama.
I never thought about this before:
Each of us carries only one type of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), which comprises a mere 0.0005 percent of our genome. Since we carry in each cell thousands of copies of just the one type, it is particularly easy to study, unlike the rest of our DNA -- a mere two copies of which are stored in the cell nucleus: one copy from our mother and one copy from our father.
Neanderthal bones first discovered in a small cave in a quarry in Neander Valley in 1856, a few years before the US civil war and three years before the publication of Darwin's The Origin of the Species.
Neanderthal disappeared some 30,000 years ago.
Most common type of damage to DNA:
occurs spontaneously
whether nuclear DNA or mtDNA
the loss of a chemical component
the chemical component that is loss: an amino group
an amino group on the cytosine nucleotide (C)
the loss of that amino group on C turns C into uracil (U)
U is not naturally found in DNA (it is found in RNA)
enzymes remove the U's from DNA; excreted in urine
about 10,000 C's per cell morph into U's each day, only to be removed and replaced
and, this is just one of several types of chemical assaults our genomes suffer.
Polymerase chain reaction (PCR): technique invented by the maverick scientist Kary Mullis in 1983
from a single DNA fragment, it is possible, in principle, to obtain a trillion copies after forty cycles
awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1993
Early on:
We compared our 379-nucleotide Neanderthal mtDNA sequence to the corresponding mtDNA sequences from 2,051 present-day humans from all around the world. On average, twenty-eight (28) of the positions differed between the Neanderthal and a contemporary person, whereas people alive today carry an average of only seven (7) differences from one another. The Neanderthal mtDNA was four times as different.
Figure 1.3 on page 13: the mtDNA tree of all humans alive today --
all trace back to one common mtDNA ancestor ("Mitochondrial Eve")
Neanderthal does not trace back to "Mitochondrial Eve"
Mitochondrial Eve: lived between 100,00 and 200,000 years ago
the common ancestor linking Mitochondrial Eve and Neanderthal Man lived about 500,000 years ago
Independent lab chosen to confirm:
Mark Stoneking
Stoneking had been a graduate student and then a postdoc with Allan Wilson at Berkeley
author knew him when the author was a postdoc at Berkeley in the 1980s
Stoneking: one of the people behind the discovery of Mitochondrial Eve
Stoneking: one of the architects of the out-of-Africa hypothesis of modern human origins: the idea that modern humans originated in Africa some 100,000 to 200,000 years ago, then spread around the world, replacing all earlier forms of humans, such as Neanderthals in Europe, without admixture
Anne King also in Mark Stoneking's lab
Background regarding three journals:
Nature, British
Science, US
Competing with out-of-Africa theory: the multi-regional model
paleontology-based
modern humans evolved on several continents, more or less independently, from Homo erectus
Other names mentioned at this time:
Chris Stringer, Natural History Museum in London; paleontologist; early adapter of the out-of-Africa theory
Milford Wolpoff, University of Michigan, a multi-regionalist paleontologist
Beautiful, beautiful day for biking. A thunderstorm is forecast for mid-morning but then the rest of the day should be overcast, humid, and very warm.
I wish Sophia could have been with me this morning. The cows and calves were right up along the fence and she would have loved walking up to them. The cornfield -- plowed under from last year -- was filled with Canadian geese. I saw one blue jay. As a kid, I drew a lot of blue jays and squirrels in art class but I never saw a squirrel or a blue jay in Williston until I was in middle school (we called it "jr high") and I would each lunch at Central? Park. I forget the name of that park. But it was the park near Central Jr High. My lunch usually consisted of a Kraft Velveeta processed cheese-on-processed-white-bread that apparently is now considered bad for one's health. If I was lucky, I might also have an apple. I don't recall what I had to drink; maybe a little thermos with water. I know it wasn't milk; I hated milk. Maybe apple juice. Whatever.
Yesterday, I saw a flock of robins -- so I knew spring was here, and then a few minutes later, a most gorgeous cardinal. It appeared to be a young cardinal so maybe a year old? I don't know. Does a one-year-old cardinal look any different than a 5-year-ld cardinal?
But a great day for spring. And, Sophia and I saw at least a dozen turtles down at the creek at the park.
Last evening, when it was pitch black, about 7:45 p.m. Central Time, I pointed to the bright object almost overhead, to the west-south-west, telling 2 1/2 year-old Sophia that was the evening star. She said one word: "Venus."
I swear on a stack of bibles that's exactly what happened. I pointed to the bright object in the sky, pointed it out telling Sophia it was the "evening star" and said it was "Venus."
I had forgotten that we often look at the stars and I always point out what little I know. It's amazing what young minds remember.
Labels: NotesToTheGranddaughters
The Political Page, T+39 -- February 28, 2017
Already at work: Trump / Fox News interview at 6:00 a.m. I do not recall any president in modern history with this 24/7 work ethic. And that's why he is not attending the correspondents' dinner -- he takes the office too seriously to engage in frivolous activities.
Cabinet: Wilbur Ross confirmed as Secretary of Commerce overnight. Trump's cabinet remains on track to be confirmed by the end of his second term. Sub-cabinet positions are on track to be confirmed in Mike Pence's first term.
How difficult can self-ordering kiosks be? For more of this, go to YouTube and google Boston Dynamics:
This robot can lift at least 100 pounds for warehouse work. It can go up and down stairs. It can go down snow-covered hills.
The Energy And Market Page; Saudi Arabia In Deep Doo-Doo, T+39 -- February 28, 2017
In deep doo-doo: if Saudi Arabia "hopes" to see $60 oil in 2017, the country is in deep doo-doo. Oil slumped again today, down almost 1.5% and now below $53 again (10:43 a.m. Central Time).
Pipeline: New Jersey OKs gas pipeline through protected Pinelands. The only thing I have a problem with is all this emphasis on jobs in such contentious affairs -- unless they are permanent jobs, perhaps: energy projects should be decided based on need, not jobs.
The company said the vote "recognizes the energy reliability challenges facing southern New Jersey and the balanced solution this project offers. The careful construction of this pipeline will address the energy demands of 142,000 customers in Cape May and Atlantic counties, protect and create jobs, and provide a meaningful opportunity to significantly reduce air emissions."
US electricity: generating capacity increase last year (2016) -- largest net change since 2011. It appears when you subtract the NG retirements from the NG additions, both wind and solar additions (there were "no" wind/solar subtractions) beat out NG last year. That's fine. One last hurrah.
SRE: beats by 3 cents. Revenues beat. A big whoop. Shares in pre-market trading: up a whopping penny on a $108/share stock. Whoopie.
Not a bull's eye: Target shares down 13% in pre-market trading. Story over at The WSJ. From my perspective, Target's problems began with the security breach and then a series of missteps from there. All big-box stores are struggling, but between Wal-Mart and Target, the latter seems to be lagging on many levels. From $66 yesterday to $58 today; apparently the biggest drop since the company went public decades ago.
GDP: 4Q16 - revised: at 1.9%. Unchanged from "first look."
GDP: 1Q17 -- forecast, at GDPNow -- latest forecast: 2.5 percent — February 27, 2017, yesterday.
The GDPNow model forecast for real GDP growth (seasonally adjusted annual rate) in the first quarter of 2017 is 2.5 percent on February 27, up from 2.4 percent on February 16.
The forecast for first-quarter real residential investment growth increased from 7.8 percent to 10.8 percent after the housing data releases last week from the National Association of Realtors and the U.S. Census Bureau.
Canadian Oil Sands: add Shell to the short list of operators who shun the Canadian oil sands --
Exxon Mobil Corp. slashed reserves after removing the $16 billion Kearl oil-sands project in Athabasca from its books last week. A day earlier, ConocoPhillips said that erasing oil-sands barrels had reduced its reserves to a 15-year low. In 2015, Shell itself took a $2 billion charge as it shelved an oil-sands project in Alberta, and last year sold other assets in the area for about $1 billion.
The oil-sand mines in the region are among the costliest petroleum projects because the raw bitumen extracted must be processed and converted to a synthetic crude before being transported to refineries, mainly in the U.S. In addition, Canadian oil sells for less than benchmark U.S. crude because of the cost to ship it and an abundance of competing supplies from shale fields.
Hope springs eternal: via Twitter -- Saudi Arabia "wants" oil to reach $60 in 2017.
More On Target
From Fortune:
The discount retailer on Tuesday reported its third straight quarter of comparable sales declines, as a 34% surge in its digital business was not enough to make up for shoppers' exodus from its stores during the holiday season. And Target expects its struggles to persist this year while it figures out how to re-tool its business.
For the full fiscal year that started on February 1, Target expects a low-single digit decline in comparable sales, coming off a worse than expected 1.5% drop during the fourth quarter.
In contrast, Walmart U.S. last week reported its comparable sales were up 1.8% during the same period.
Some of the initiatives that Target will disclose in detail at its annual meeting with Wall Street analysts later on Tuesday include launching in the next two years 12 new house brands it thinks can eventually garner $10 billion in annual sales, and, perhaps more crucially, lowering its prices on many goods so as to be competitive in the price wars with Walmart and Amazon.com.
Perhaps one of the "12 new house brands" needs to be the "Trump" brand, or the "Ivanka Trump" brand. Just saying.
Labels: SaudiPerspective, SaudiReserveAssets
Television Is Training Me To Not Watch Television -- Scott Adams -- February 28, 2017
RBN Energy: will natural gas production in SCOOP/STACK be "OK"?
Scott Adams: television is training me to not watch television.
And right on cue, via Twitter:
Later, 7:57 p.m. Central Time: Fox Business surges in ratings competition with CNBC. Yes, I don't watch CNBC any more during the day; it's all Fox Business for me except first thing in the morning, 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. (if I'm up that early), when I flip between Fox Business and CNBC. Whenever Becky Quick comes on with Warren Buffett, I immediately switch networks. When Maria Bartiromo gets into a long segment I generally switch networks.
I agree with what Scott Adams had to say (see link above).
Right after the Trump election, I started watching MSNBC "Morning Joe" but that lasted about ten days. I no longer watch MSNBC. Same old stuff. Same old talking heads. I don't get up early to watch Fox Business News or MSNBC "Squawk Box" any more. In fact, I don't turn on our television set any more.
I now watch television -- if I watch it at all -- on an old MacBook Pro. I have an app that immediately mutes every commercial. The great thing -- the app is free and needs no special effort to install. The app is my left index finger, hitting the mute button on the computer. No remote device and therefore I never "lose" the remote device.
I won't be watching
Fox Business News Slamming CNBC -- February 28, 20...
Whiting With Two More Bakken Permits -- February 2...
Random Update Of A Hess Re-Frack: HA-Mogen, Hawkey...
Random Update Of An MRO Re-Frack: Bottleson 34-22H...
The Trump Economy, T+39, Off The Chart; Making It ...
The Energy And Market Page; Saudi Arabia In Deep D...
Television Is Training Me To Not Watch Television ...
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Archives for posts with tag: The Time Jumpers
Rhonda Vincent Only Me Dual Disc Warms Up January
Rhonda Vincent decided to make it easy on all her fans by releasing a Double EP package entitled Only Me available on Upper Management Music toward the end of January with one disc of Bluegrass and another Country separated like The Hatfields and McCoys in different pews in the same church on a Sunday morning with more in common than they want to lay claim on.
Rhonda’s voice is strong and clear throughout the two discs that not only separates genres, but were recorded also with two different lineups showing contrast between fiddlers Hunter Berry on the acoustic filled Bluegrass set and Tim Crouch on the Trad – Country with a twist of the best of Texas approach to disc two.
Willie Nelson shares vocal duties as well as trading licks on the break with his old Martin on the title track, “Only Me” well into the middle of the Bluegrass CD.
photo courtesy Webster PR
Rhonda shows her ability to take different approaches on different songs with some strong George Jones meets Patsy Cline torch meter over the slow rockin’ “I Need Somebody Bad Tonight” which could have easily fit on the Country side with a little more bass, drums and some steel guitar.
The second duet comes after with Daryle Singletary and Rhonda on “We Must Have Been out Of Our Minds” again showing that Bluegrass and Country are just a stones’ throw apart with more than enough Blues and Country on the Bluegrass side of the fence.
While the Bluegrass disc does not disappoint, the Country disc seems to be the stronger cousin of the two with an all-star lineup that also features a prominent Mike Johnson on steel guitar sharing space with Catherine Marx and Michael Rojas on piano giving a nice bed for fiddler Tim Crouch and Mike Johnson to spar over. The Country disc is all about fiddle and steel.
This is definitely not AC/DC or Fleetwood Mac inspired Country that instead has a feel of an RCA Studio B Session of maybe the mid 60’s or early 70’s underscore going on. Fans of traditional Country are the big winners here especially on track two, “Once A Day” with a driving Buck Owens country rockin’ swing that features Gospel Quartet inspired back-up vocals supporting Rhonda on what would be the radio track on this set.
There is plenty of weeping steel guitar and strong vocals on “Teardrops Over You” and “Beneath Still Waters” that would fill up quarters in a jukebox alongside “Behind Closed Doors” and “Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue” and reminds one how cool brown naugahyde and low amber lights are with a glowing Seeburg jukebox by the back door that keeps playing music until morning comes.
The biggest jam takes place on the Bob Wills Texas Swing Honky Tonk flavored “Bright Lights & Country Music” with a lead- in fiddle fill sojourning into some jazzy guitar licks by James Mitchell before the fiddle and steel shiver some notes together. A whole CD could have been built around this song.
Rhonda slows it down on “When The Grass Grows Over Me” before throwing on some more Bob Wills inspired fiddle and jazz guitar licks while Rhonda takes off with “I’m just drivin’ nails in my coffin, drivin’ those nails over you.”
This collection could have been divided by “ready-to-cut-a-rug” dance tunes and then a CD of tear jerkers which would have worked as a disc to wake up to in the morning or for dancin’ boots down at Robert’s and another for when the lights are low and the feel of melancholy has set in.
Rhonda proves that she didn’t have to decide on one or the other genre as her voice soars and ebbs and flows through brilliant dynamics but the backing band on the Country CD leaves one wanting more Time Jumpers style outings. One can only hope that when it comes time to cut it up live they get the chance.
The strongest cuts prove to be the jam filled “Once A Day,” “Bright Lights & Country Music” and “Drivin’ Nails” where Rhonda just cuts loose with a hot band.
Tags Bob Wills, Brad Hardisty, Buck Owens, Catherine Marx, Daryle Singletary, George Jones, Hunter Berry, Michael Rojas, Mike Johnson, Patsy Cline, RCA Studio B, Rhonda Vincent, The Time Jumpers, Tim Crouch, Willie Nelson
Categories Americana Music, Bluegrass Music, Country Music, Music, Uncategorized
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Home > Cruises > Ocean cruises > Our ships > Saga Sapphire > Saga Sapphire blog > Algiers, Algeria
The weather en route from Palermo to Algiers was unfortunately adverse. We were passing south of a weather system that had flooded Sardinia a few days before and was still hanging around Northern Italy but its effects are being felt as far south as the Tunisian coast. So we had gale force winds and heavy swell but again I marvel at the sea keeping qualities of this ship. As a mariner I know how ships react and having been Master on Saga Rose and Saga Ruby for many years, sailing in adverse conditions and being chased by hurricanes up the Eastern Seaboard, I know a good sea ship when I sail on one. So I am pleased with the way Saga Sapphire was handling. Anyway through the night as we approached Algiers, the weather eased and we had a comfortable night. We embarked the pilot just outside the breakwaters at the harbour entrance as there was still a bit of a swell, so the pilot asked us to proceed on our own which I am always pleased to do. Once inside the shelter of the breakwater, we had to carry out a very tight 100 degree turn to port then another 90 degrees to starboard to line up with our berth. These manoeuvres I enjoy, pushing a 40000T ship around through her paces. Once lined up with the quay, there was a cargo ship across the end of the quay with his bow protruding into my line of approach so I had to stay off the berth a little then when the officer aft told me we were clear of the bow of the ship, I used the engines to force the ship upwind towards the berth. The wind was blowing quite fresh from the north but again the old Sapphire did what I asked of her and we were soon all fast alongside. This morning we were greeted with glorious sunny weather which is always welcomed as well as the port authority who quickly gave us clearance, so we were able to start sending the guests off on tour, come 8.30am this morning. Eager to see what this country has to offer, I suspect it will be one of those ports today which is a real eye opener for many. Unfortunately Algiers is a port in which going on tour is required if you want to visit this city, due to their rules and regulations. Once again police escorts were on hand to divert the traffic away from our coaches which were passing through the city. Being a rather large port the last of our coaches this morning seemed to get lost in the port vicinity delaying the final tour which was not only frustrating for the guests but for the Shorex department, who endeavoured to get the tours off and away from the ship smoothly.
Algiers, with a total population of 2.9 million inhabitants, is the largest and most important city in Algeria, little wonder then that it is also the country’s capital city. There are many interesting things to see and do in Algiers, and visitors can learn a lot about Algeria’s history and culture. With many staying onboard today to enjoy the company of the crew, there was still plenty to do of course. Many came up to the Bridge to visit us this afternoon, having a tour of the Bridge with the officer on the watch. An afternoon tea dance saw many of the keen dancers on the dance floor with not only the dance instructors, dance hosts but cruise department.
On sailing, the wind had picked up considerably, so on departure we swung the ships stern to windward. We moved astern until the ship was level with the entrance and breakwater, then gave her the gun to get up to speed quickly and get steerage in order to get through the breakwaters before the wind had a chance to blow us towards the breakwater. This is a normal routine and as always with a great bridge team giving me excellent information on how we are progressing while I am on the bridge wing.
Due to the strong winds we experienced yesterday, the church service we postponed to this afternoon. The worship was then at 5.30pm led by myself; we of course also featured the Filipino Choir, with all the offerings donated to Saga Sapphire Crew Disaster Fund. Also Resty, one of our Cruise Staff and a very proud Filipino asked if he could sing a solo of “You'll Never Walk Alone” as a way of thanking the passengers for their support and donations towards the crew and the Philippines. I have to say, being a hardy sailor of some 30 years, it gave me a lump in my throat and I felt very proud to be head of such a fine crew.
Tonight we welcomed The Chapman Brothers into the Britannia Lounge for main show time, presenting a Soul and Motown show; it was one really not to be missed this evening. Following the performance the identical brothers signed copies of their CDs. Keeping the guests entertained up in the Drawing Room this evening was ‘The Perfect Mood Duo’. In Cooper’s playing some late night musical melodies was Malcolm Aldridge.
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Johnnie Walker ‘A Song of Ice or Fire’ Whiskies
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Author: - October 16, 2019 0 Hunter Biden blasts Trump's 'ridiculous conspiracy idea' on Ukraine dealings
Hunter Biden spoke to ABC News about his professional life and the lies about him and his father being lobbed by Donald Trump and his family as the president faces an impeachment inquiry over a phone call in which he pressured Ukraine's leader to investigate the Bidens.
Author: - October 16, 2019 0 Democrats seek to question Trump budget chief in Ukraine impeachment probe
While interviews have focused on the interactions with Ukraine, the probe could broaden as soon as next week to include interviews with White House budget officials who may be able to shed light on whether military aid was withheld from Ukraine as Trump and his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, pushed for the investigations.
Author: - October 16, 2019 0 Prince William and Kate arrive in Pakistan
Kate arrived at the college dressed in a royal blue classic kurta with pants and dupatta by Pakistani designer Maheen Khan . They will be taking part in a five-day tour of the country. They then visited the Margallah Hills National Park on the edge of Islamabad , which is under threat from poaching, wildfires, invasive species and littering.
Author: - October 15, 2019 0 Biden's son resigns from Chinese firm amid Trump furore
President Trump continues to call for transparency from Hunter and Joe Biden regarding their business dealings with companies in China and Ukraine . "Folks, do you understand the president of the United States could just say he's covering this [up] by executive privilege and it would never see the light of day?" he asked.
Author: - October 15, 2019 0 Erdogan says Turkey's Syria operation to protect rights of all Syrians
Turkey has said the military intends to move 9 miles into Syria and that its operation will last until all " terrorists are neutralized". "It isn't that U.S. 12, 2019. "Is it all simply because we are Kurds? ". Without elaborating, he said the United States was "going to possibly do something very, very tough with respect to sanctions and other financial things" against Turkey.
Author: - October 15, 2019 0 Russia's Putin visits Saudi Arabia on Mideast trip
Last month, after the attack on Saudi Arabia's oil facilities, Putin jokingly suggested at an event in Ankara with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan that the kingdom should have purchased the weapons. "As far as Russian Federation is concerned, we will do everything possible to create the necessary conditions for a positive dynamic", Putin said in the interview broadcast Sunday.
Author: - October 14, 2019 0 'Repugnant': US judge blocks Trump immigration rule
The controversial U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) regulation would give immigration caseworkers even more leeway to deny applications for green cards and visas filed by legal immigrants who use certain government benefits or whom authorities determine will rely on welfare programs in the future.
Author: - October 14, 2019 0 Tunisia starts 2nd round of presidential election
The official results are expected Monday, but news of the projected victory triggered celebrations at the retired law professor's election campaign offices in central Tunis, as fireworks were set off outside and supporters honked vehicle horns.
Author: - October 14, 2019 0 Trump defends Giuliani in tweet after report of federal probe
Trump seemed as if it would strive to create get 22 situation between himself and Giuliani on Friday when reporters requested if Giuliani used to be light representing him. Mr. Giuliani has acknowledged that he and two of his associates, who were arrested on campaign finance charges on Wednesday, worked with Ukrainian prosecutors to collect potentially damaging information about targets of Mr.
Author: - October 14, 2019 0 Prime Minister wants to talk to European leaders about Brexit deal
If the stalemate is not broken at this point, a law recently passed by the parliament dictates that London must ask the European Union to extend the October 31 deadline to January 31 - a period in which a national election may be held to try to break the Brexit deadlock.
Author: - October 14, 2019 0 1st LD: Any attempt to split China will end in vain -- Xi
A stable, open and prosperous China will always be a development opportunity for Nepal and the rest of the world, the Chinese leader added. During discussions, speakers said that Nepal should take independent decision on economic cooperation with China amid western country's warning about what they claimed "debt trap" from China.
Author: - October 14, 2019 0 Syrian gov't rules out communication with Kurdish forces amid Turkish assault
Turkey pursued its four-day-old, cross-border offensive in opposition to a Syrian Kurdish militia regardless of an outcry from america and European Union and warnings of attainable sanctions except Ankara known as off its assault. After the Islamic State group swept across the region in 2014, the Kurd-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) mounted a fierce defence of their heartland and became the US-led coalition's main partner on the ground.
Author: - October 14, 2019 0 Turkish-led forces enter Syrian border town Ras al Ain, fighting rages
On Friday , the Pentagon said USA troops came under artillery fire from Turkish emplacements though none of its soldiers were wounded near the Syrian border town of Kobani, 60 km (37 miles) west of the main area of conflict. "Every kind of precaution was taken so no damage came to the USA base", he said. Turkey launched airstrikes and ground incursions targeting Kurdish forces along the Turkey-Syria border on Wednesday after Trump announced Sunday - following a call with Turkish leader ...
Author: - October 13, 2019 0 'There was no blackmail': Volodymyr Zelensky weighs in on impeachment discussion
More than 300 journalists were scheduled to get time with Mr. Zelensky during the all-day event. According to ABC News , Zelensky reiterated there was " no blackmail " during his phone call with President Trump, which formed the basis of House Democrats' impeachment inquiry .
Author: - October 13, 2019 0 Loss of a Space Pioneer: Alexei Leonov Dies at 85
Leonov made history in 1965 by exiting his capsule for 12 minutes, Russia Today reported. The Russian space agency Roscosmos made the announcement on its website Friday but gave no cause for his death. In July 1975, Leonov commanded the Soyuz capsule, which set a standard of global cooperation in space when it docked for two days with NASA's Apollo capsule.
Author: - October 13, 2019 0 More trouble for Trump on Ukraine
Democrats leading the impeachment inquiry in Congress believe Trump held up the aid to use it as leverage to pressure Ukraine and advance his domestic political interests. election but stressed Ukraine was an independent country with independent law enforcement agencies whose work he had no right to influence. This real-time concern by officials in the White House directly contradicts Trump's repeated claim that the call was considered "perfect", and precede by more than two weeks the ...
Author: - October 13, 2019 0 One confirmed fatality in hotel collapse, officials evacuating nearby buildings
As reported by nola.com, an eyewitness said: "It was a deep, rumbling sound , like an airplane maybe". He asked that people stay away from the area and refrain from using drones for either personal or media purposes to view the damage. NEW ORLEANS (AP) - A large portion of a hotel under construction in New Orleans has suddenly collapsed. Surrounding buildings, including condominiums, were being evacuated.
Author: - October 13, 2019 0 Kevin McAleenan out at Homeland Security
Trump never officially nominated McAleenan, keeping him in an "acting" role, which is now commonplace for a president who said he prefers the "flexibility". He was vocal in declaring that the USA immigration system was at a breaking point earlier this year as a crush of Central American migrant families streamed to the border seeking asylum, and he has advocated for agreements with other countries that would shift the burden of accepting asylees away from the United States.
Author: - October 13, 2019 0 Advance polls open early for voters
When are advance polls open? Both the Lakeland (Alberta) and Battlefords-Lloydminster (Saskatchewan) ridings will learn who their Member of Parliament is on October 21st. Find where your nearest advance polling station is here ! The qualification for voting in an election is simple. Keep in mind that in a federal election, you're voting for the Member of Parliament for your riding as well as the Prime Minister.
Author: - October 12, 2019 0 READ: Prepared Testimony Of Ukraine Ambassador Ousted By Trump
She will likely be asked about USA military aid to Ukraine and details about the administration's decision to withhold that aid. In her written deposition to Congress, Yovanovitch gave a description of the events surrounding her surprise removal from her post in Kyiv, weeks after having been told in March that the state department wanted her to extend her posting till 2020.
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Microsoft’s new education push plays to its strengths, the cheap and familiar
Loknath Das 0 May 2, 2017 4:29 pm
Microsoft never mentioned Chromebook by name, but it’s clear that Google’s browser-based hardware offering was at the front of everyone’s mind at today’s education event in New York City. The company has managed to control much of the market internally, but the Chromebook has swiftly eroded marketshare here in the States.
Microsoft’s solution is playing into the company’s strengths of low cost hardware running familiar software. That’s precisely what Windows 10 S is all about. Unlike recentl education plays from the company that centered around the Surface, Microsoft has returned to its roots, focusing on what made it a hit during the rise of netbooks: the low barrier of entry.
The company’s focus on Surface in education was a rejection of that appeal. Microsoft clearly learned from the rise of the iPad in education that the best solution was a premium one, hoping the highest end experience would be a lasting one that students would take with them as they graduated and entered the real world.
That focus allowed Google to sneak in. Much maligned at launch, Chromebooks have ultimately proven a hit in education due in no small part to their extremely low barrier of entry, coupled with software features focused at the IT departments that make many of the purchasing decisions for schools and districts.
When the company announced Intune for Education paired with hardware systems starting at $189 back in January, it was clear that the company had learned its from its missteps. The percentage of schools that can afford a truly premium one-to-one hardware solution is limited to small private schools and the like. And those school often opt for the iPad for its premium hardware/software solution.
For everyone else, cost is paramount. Windows 10 S is an acknowledgement of this fact. Due out this summer on a slew of systems from hardware partners like Dell and HP, the streamlined OS plays into this, and by delivering a familiar software experience, it may well maintain some of the market abroad, as it delivers familiar productivity solutions like Office, coupled with new additions like mixed reality and 3D content creation.
And, of course, the company will be able to maintain a fuller offline experience than many Chromebooks, which are still largely browser based. With more complete offline functionality, these devices can help the company stay ahead in other parts of the world where school WiFi is a luxury, rather than a given.
Sure, Surface will continue to be part of the company’s solution in education. The company even used today’s event to announce a new device in that space. But if that system has success in education, it will be of the higher variety – high school, perhaps, but even more likely college.
If the company is really going to retain and regain classroom desk space, it’s going to do so with the simple, the familiar and the affordable.
EDUCATION 245 and 562 Cheap 7 education 96 familiar 1 Its 118 Microsoft's 15 New 293 plays 4 push 8 strengths 1 the 538 to 1184
Annual Colorado Creative Industries Summit gets underway this week
Cassini’s First Dive Between Saturn and Its Rings Successful, Says NASA
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« Wand Brought Their Sweet “Plum” To DC9, And Played The Most Exciting Show In Memory
Scenes From The 2017 High Heel Race »
Kelley Stoltz Keeps Mining Gems And His Latest,”Que Aura,” Gleams Like A Diamond
The cover photo of what Kelley Stoltz calls his “proper new album,” Que Aura, looks like something you’d see in a Kusama Infinity Room, all dots of light in a psychedelic space. Like Kusama, Stoltz for the most part works alone, assembling true solo albums with painstaking craftsmanship, each track capturing an instrument played only by him.
Unlike Kusama, who resides in an asylum, Stoltz gets out of the house to play with bands, including touring as a sideman with his heroes Echo and the Bunnymen. But in his own studio, over the past decade, he’s created an eccentric but exceptionally important and delightful body of work. As a recording artist, he deserves to be mentioned in the same sentence with the Beatles, David Bowie, Alex Chilton, and Ray Davies. Que Aura, released in August, is his best album since 2008’s Circular Sounds, which we would nestle alongside Rubber Soul, Radio City, and Lodger in the Go Bag that, one step ahead o’ the apocalypse, we’d take to the proverbial desert island.
Listening to Que Aura back-to-back with Below The Branches, the 2006 album that was our introduction to him, is instructive. Back then, Stoltz was like a one-man version of the Fab 4 + George Martin, crafting intricate pop classics on acoustic piano and guitar, backed where needed by steady bass playing, what sounds like a Rickenbacker 6-string, and solid, unobtrusive drumming. This was an era in which Stoltz says he was using a microphone propped in a sock drawer for wont of a proper studio and equipment. The music is gorgeous, thrilling, inspirational, the seeming influences all from the ’60s.
A little more than a decade later, Que Aura sounds like it was recorded in a German studio with this generation’s George Martin twiddling the knobs. As a singer, Kelley’s affect is effortless, but here he sounds like he’s fronting a really fantastic band whose rhythm section can swing. And of course, it’s all him — an incredibly difficult trick to pull off.
Over his previous three albums — 2010’s To Dreamers, 2013’s Double Exposure, and 2015’s In Triangle Time — Stoltz has moved away from the delicacy of his earlier work to bring in New Wave influences, to thicken the sound a bit with horns and synths, and clearly Will Sergeant’s guitar sound (Echo + Bunnymen) and mid-period Bowie have inspired him in recent years. Like a craftsman who, after years of creating one-of-a-kind designs… pushing his needle and thread through fabric under a solitary light bulb… who has succumbed to such labor-saving devices as the sewing machine, Stoltz has rolled a bank of electronic keyboards into his atelier. Keyboards have ruined many a solo practitioner’s studio work, from Prince to Tame Impala, but even though we miss the Rickenbacker and acoustic piano sound of yore, on Que Aura, he makes it all work. He’s still creating gems, but much as I love the pre-2010 work, these shine brighter.
The songwriting as a whole is stronger than on any album since Circular Sounds. “I’m Here For Now” ranks with Double Exposure’s “Still Feel” and the most infectious rockers of his career. “Tranquilo” is the closest thing Stoltz has produced to a hit you could see coming out of the Motown basement, and it has the quirks and charms of his greatest songs before culminating with psychedelic panache. On “Same Pattern,” it’s clear that Kelley has had a conversation about synths with his label, Mr. John Dwyer. Out of 11 songs, there are two we don’t think we’ll be listening to a decade hence. This is a glorious clutch of songs, rendered with enough analog guitars, bass, and drums to prevent the electronic keyboards from ever smearing the delicacy, like a surfeit of Hollandaise on poached eggs.
Speaking of John Dwyer, there’s a reason why the progenitor of Thee Oh Sees, not to mention Jack White, would be the “label heads” putting out Stoltz’s most recent work. In days of yore, some A&R chap at Warner Bros would have figured out how to slide a Kelley Stoltz contract past Mo Ostin. But without a generous label afloat on a pontoon of CD sales taking a flyer on a talent like his, Stoltz is embraced by his fellow artists who know brilliance when they hear it. Just as, gentle reader who has journeyed this far, we know you do too.
We already have raved about Kelley Stoltz a time or two, given his records the highest marks on our 2010 and 2008 Top Ten Lists. Somehow, even with all our raving, we have failed in getting him to perform at Madison Square Garden. We’re not done trying. And based on Que Aura, Kelley Stoltz is not done appearing at the top of Tulip Frenzy’s annual Top 10 List.
This entry was posted on October 19, 2017 at 8:55 pm and is filed under Music with tags "Que Aura", Castle Face Records, John Dwyer, Kelley Stoltz. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
One Response to “Kelley Stoltz Keeps Mining Gems And His Latest,”Que Aura,” Gleams Like A Diamond”
SHOCKER: Tulip Frenzy Jurors Deadlock, as Kelley Stoltz’ “Que Aura” and Wand’s “Plum” *TIE* for 2017 Album Of The Year | Tulip Frenzy Says:
[…] In October, when we caught up to Kelley Stoltz’s magnificent ninth album, Que Aura, we wrote: […]
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LMC’s new panel to decide on rents of Kalyan Mandap
TNN | Jan 17, 2018, 09.30 AM IST
LUCKNOW: The decision on increasing the rents of community centres run by Lucknow Municipal Corporation will be taken soon.
LMC will conduct elections for appointment of executive committee members on January 19. The committee’s formation is integral to lay down the budget for the next year and take a call on various important decisions. One of these is the proposal to increase the rent of Kalyan Mandaps or community centres.
According to the proposal, rent of Kalyan Mandaps will go up by 100% and in some cases, even by four times.
The move was enforced in September 2017 for a few days but was soon withdrawn owing to stiff opposition from various resident welfare societies.
Community halls of Mansarovar Yojna and that of Mankameshwar ward in Daliganj had seen a jump of four times.
LMC owns about 10 Kalyan Mandaps in the city. Their rent is lesser than other private community halls.
Additional municipal commissioner PK Srivastava said, “Even after adopting the raise, the rent of our Kalyan Mandaps will be lesser than the market rate of private halls. The rates were last increased five years ago. It is now difficult to maintain them with such less revenue.”
LMC claims that incorporation of GST has forced it to adopt such an increase in rents. The proposal will be presented to the new committee after January 19 for approval. Once approved, it will be sent to the full house for final nod for implementation from the next financial year.
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Tag Archives: Prince memes
Purple Reigns — How Social Media Honored Prince
If you want to know the power of a brand, just watch how other brands try to emulate it. That’s exactly what’s happened in the tragic passing of music icon Prince.
In the moments after the news of his death spread on social media, social media itself became the channel by which brands tried to create their own memes in tribute. Some in self promotion. Therein lies extreme risk.
With a few exceptions, most brands weren’t just thoroughly thoughtful, they were creatively evocative, and dare I say it—shareable. After all, that should be one of the top goals.
Among the most shared was a simple tweet from Chevrolet. It’s classic Corvette forever drives one of Prince’s most classic songs. The six words of copy were as powerful as high-octane fuel.
pic.twitter.com/y2EoqU9wYh
— Chevrolet (@chevrolet) April 22, 2016
Perhaps no one did it better than a government agency—NASA. The very folks whose job it is to shoot for the stars paid tribune to one of pop-culture’s brightest stars in a way that only they could do. Their post on Twitter was metaphorical brilliance.
A purple nebula, in honor of Prince, who passed away today. https://t.co/7buFWWExMw pic.twitter.com/ONQDwSQwVa
— NASA (@NASA) April 21, 2016
The creative minds at advertising agencies are pre-programmed to make the metaphoric connection between values, emotion, and motivation. The team at Minneapolis’ Carmichael Lynch not only made that emotional connection, they have a physical connection. Their offices are across the street from the First Avenue night club where Prince filmed “Purple Rain.” On a rainy day in Minneapolis, their post proved the power of minimalist design to speak volumes.
Farewell dear #prince
A post shared by Carmichael Lynch (@carmichael_lynch) on Apr 21, 2016 at 12:20pm PDT
Simplicity also defined the post from Caribou Coffee. The homegrown Minnesota company didn’t waste words or images. The message was unmistakable.
#RestInPurple #MNLove #Prince
A post shared by Caribou Coffee (@cariboucoffee) on Apr 21, 2016 at 10:54am PDT
In contrast, brands risk scrutiny and backlash when they try to participate in social events by making the conversation—even subtlely—about themselves. Minnesota brand 3M took that leap. Its post with a redesigned purple logo and a tear drop in the center was creatively clever, but makes the viewer question what their true motivation was.
A post shared by 3M (@3m) on Apr 21, 2016 at 10:52am PDT
The Minnesota Vikings football team went there as well. In its attempt to jump on the Prince bandwagon, they too made the conversation about themselves. How much more powerful and meaningful would have their post been if their social media team had simply dropped the Vikings logo?
Purple Rain. #RIPPrince
A post shared by Minnesota Vikings (@vikings) on Apr 21, 2016 at 3:18pm PDT
In contrast, the Minnesota Twins took a different approach. The team’s veterans each year try to connect the rookies to the club and the community by making them sing Prince songs. Their montage of outtakes wasn’t just a tribute to Prince but an invitation to viewers to enjoy the best of Prince and the memories he’s created for them, too.
This is a #MNTwins tradition. Veterans make sure rookies know the words to "Little Red Corvette."
A post shared by Minnesota Twins (@twins) on Apr 21, 2016 at 1:53pm PDT
It only takes one summer of living in Minnesota to understand the most powerful cultural institution in the state is the Minnesota State Fair. It is the single camp fire by which people from every corner of the state gather to celebrate summer, music, food, and each other’s company. The State Fair’s post reinforced how culture honors culture.
💜 #Prince
A post shared by Minnesota State Fair (@mnstatefair) on Apr 21, 2016 at 2:23pm PDT
Star Tribune photographer Jeff Wheeler has become a brand in his own right. The images he shoots for Minnesota’s largest newspaper are often filled with metaphorical emotion that ooze from the frame. His image of Prince’s star at the First Avenue night club needs no caption.
After kissing his fingers, a fan touched Prince's star on the wall of First Ave. Thursday afternoon. @startribune #ripprince
A post shared by Jeff Wheeler (@jeffersonwheeler) on Apr 21, 2016 at 1:39pm PDT
Finally, MTV proves how sometimes it’s best to simply make the message about the subject. In this case, Prince’s own words.
You will be missed, @prince 💜 We're honoring him today on MTV and Facebook Live right now.
A post shared by MTV (@mtv) on Apr 21, 2016 at 12:07pm PDT
#RIPPrince. The world Tweeted over 6M times today paying tribute to the music legend. A visualization of the Tweets: pic.twitter.com/SgOsHrVQY4
— Twitter Data (@TwitterData) April 22, 2016
The power of social media is how it can stimulate conversation, emotion, and reflection. The artist we knew as Prince certainly accomplished that with his music. The fact that millions of fans world wide shared their grief and reflections speaks volumes not just of Prince’s own brand but how he became a part, ever so small, in the story of our own lives.
Tags: Pince tributes, Prince, Prince Carmichael Lynch, Prince Chevrolet, Prince Instagram, Prince memes, Prince memorials, Prince NASA, Prince Red Corvette, Prince social media, Prince Twitter
Categories Branding, Social Media Trends
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Cumberland County Announces the Hiring of Noah Repasky as New Football Coach
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Player of the Week Poll Results – Championships
Davidson County Sponsored by Infiniti of Cool Springs Griffin Swinea, RB, Davidson Academy Robertson County Sponsored by Dairy Queen Gabe Kelly, WR, Springfield Williamson County Sponsored by Brent...
Tennessee High School All Star Games Primer
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Elizabethton’s Witten Named 2019 Tennessee Titans Coach of the Year
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Gary Murray Resigns at Hixson
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2019 BlueCross Bowl Recap
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Robertson Co. Player of the Week – Championships
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Class 2A, 4A and 6A Blue Cross Bowl Capsules
Class 2A, 4A and 6A Blue Cross Bowl Capsules Saturday, December 7 Class 2A Meigs County Tigers (13-1) vs. Peabody Golden Tide (14-0), 11 a.m. CST Playoff Appearances- Meigs County- 24; Peabody- 24...
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Latest acquirings
Desks, Secretaries
Consoles, Tables, Center tables
Columns, Stands
Candelabra, Torcheres
Chandeliers, Lanterns
Vases, Centerpieces, Planters
Architecture and Garden statuary, Tapestries
Boxes, Caskets, Inkwells
Neo-Egyptian
Neo-Greek
Neo-Renaissance
Title.
ref. 1155/0
C. Balny
Cabinet-maker
(End of the 19th Century)
Japanese Style Games Table
Bearing the inscription C. Balny – Bté S.G.D.G
Marquetry, mother-of-pearl
Height: 73,5 cm (28,9 in.); Width: 60,5 cm (23,8 in.); Depth: 60,5 cm (23,8 in.)
Ingenious and creative Japanese style games table in carved wood. Topped by four foldable panels decorated with flowers, fans, dragonflies and butterflies with a precious wood veneer and mother-of-pearl inlay.
Camille Balny, third generation of cabinet-makers, founded the “Balny jeune” Manufacture around 1876. He participated at the Paris Universal exhibitions of 1878 and 1889 where he received several silver medals.
The roots of the artistic movement known as “Japonism” not only came from Japanese art, but also from Chinese art. Following the Franco-English military campaign led in 1860 against the Imperial army in China, the French troops of Napoleon the IIIrd brought back from the Summer Palace, a part of the Chinese Imperial court treasure, which made up the famous Chinese Museum of Empress Eugénie at the Fontainebleau Palace. The French artists quickly took inspiration from those exotic and sumptuous objects for their creations, as they used to do in the 18th century, when the best French cabinet-makers adapted the Chinese lacquers on the luxurious royal chests.
Many Japanese and Chinese objects and prints were imported to France and all Europe, for which some collectors spent fortunes. England and France contributed actively to the development of this exotic art. At the Universal Exhibition of London in 1862, Sir Rutherford Alcock, the first representative of the British Crown in Yedo (Tokyo), led the Japanese section. In France, with the generation of the Impressionists, the enthusiasm for Japanese art became a true fashion. Architects, painters and interior designers were obviously requested to work on that matter. London and Paris shared that common artistic market: Murray Marks, a renowned London dealer, sold since 1864 in Paris a collection of Chinese and Japanese ceramics. During this period, the South Kensington Museum in London (now the Victoria & Albert Museum) enriched its collections of Japanese artefacts, like l’Union centrale des Arts décoratifs in Paris.
Copyright 2012 Tobogan Antiques - Privacy policy - Web design Liquid Factory
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GrieFault Backfire?
Posted on July 31, 2014 July 31, 2014 by Todd Tucker
Could the US face WTO sanctions for the recent Argentina bonds debacle?
A quick recap of where we are. US Judge Griesa recently ruled that Argentina cannot pay off its restructured bondholders without first paying a group of “vulture fund” holdouts. Those restructured bondholders were due their payments last night, but US banks were enjoined from making the payments on Argentina’s behalf (despite having Argentina’s money to do so). This prompted Standard & Poors to declare Argentina in technical default. Financial reporter Felix Salmon is referring to the mess using the hashtag #GrieFault on Twitter, distinguishing a judicially determined default from one where a government doesn’t have the economic resources to meet its payment obligations.
Argentina prefers a different nomenclature, noting that the US is “internationally responsible” for its judiciary, which it accuses of “transfer restrictions“.
In the world of international law, thems are fighting words. Back in 2011, the WTO ruled that the US court rulings are “a priori capable of constituting a measure attributable to the United States, which may be challenged in dispute settlement proceedings under” the WTO. And a decade earlier, a WTO panel noted that – if US prosecutors or courts moved to block payments and transfers to offshore gambling sites – it risked violating its WTO obligations.(Indeed, Argentina just announced that it might pursue action at the International Court of Justice, although it is not clear on what basis.)
It would be ironic if the Obama administration, which supported Argentina’s positions in US court filings, now finds itself on the hook for judicial actions it disagrees with. But them’s the rubs when it comes to international law (as I write in this piece for UNCTAD).
Here’s a bit more detail on how I see such a claim playing out:
The US took pretty wide commitments in the area of financial services. Looking at its schedule under the General Agreement on Trade in Services, one sees that (Page C-16, with a little hop over to (B)(3)(c) here) the US took nearly unlimited commitments in the cross-border provision of financial services. (The most identifiable exception to this is that it carved out is an onion derivatives ban.)
These commitments require, among other things, free transfer flows (i.e. no banning of financial flows) and non-discrimination.
In the Internet gambling case, the WTO ruled that the ban amounted to a prohibited “quota of zero”, the panel additionally noted that the US has obligations under Article XI of the WTO’s General Agreement on Trade in Services to “not apply restrictions on international transfers and payments for current transactions relating to its specific commitments” and “not impose restrictions on any capital transactions inconsistently with its specific commitments regarding such transactions”. The way the US enforced the ban was through court injunctions similar to the ones Griesa ordered.
The panel noted that:
Article XI plays a crucial role in securing the value of specific commitments undertaken by Members under the GATS. Indeed, the value of specific commitments on market access and national treatment would be seriously impaired if Members could restrict international transfers and payment for service transactions in scheduled sectors. In ensuring, inter alia, that services suppliers can receive payments due under services contracts covered by a Member’s specific commitment, Article XI is an indispensable complement to GATS disciplines on market access and national treatment.
Then there is the potential of a discrimination claim. At the eleventh hour, Judge Griesa has ruled that some bondholders that have fine print attaching them to Argentine (rather than US) law can be paid, but that European debt holders cannot be.
Why this discrimination, which smacks of a violation of most-favored nation requirements? Because Griesa could not block the select Argentine payments without also blocking payments by Argentina related to an oil deal made earlier this year.
Explaining this aspect of the cluster requires a step back. Repsol is a Spanish oil company that had invested in Argentina, and then been expropriated. They then launched a claim under an Argentina-Spain investment treaty, which Argentina settled earlier this year by giving Repsol a bunch of Argentine bonds. (The country has few other means of payment, as it is blocked from most international finance since its real default in 2001-02.) Repsol then sold its bonds to JP Morgan, which hoped (not unlike the vulture funds) to get more on them that what they had to pay. Griesa wanted to ensure that the holders of Repsol’s bonds (i.e. JP Morgan) could get paid, so had to greenlight the select Argentine payments.
It’s pretty easy to imagine a discrimination claim here (either under the WTO, investment agreements, or both), especially given the past preferential treatment by Obama of the US-based JP Morgan bank. Moreover, under investment treaties, an argument could definitely be made that Griesa’s hamhanded handling of the whole case – where he did not even appear to have a clear understanding of what he was ruling on, according to the NYT – constituted arbitrary and unfair treatment.
Not that there wouldn’t be some challenges to the case. Defining precisely which investors or service sectors were damaged would be a hurdle, as would figuring out the jurisdictional issues and standing issues related to that.
But as the Obama administration notes here, however, a complainant may not need to get even that specific, since some of the threshold GATS language requires that a challenged
measure at issue “affects” trade in that service. The term “affect” has been and should be interpreted broadly in the context of Article I.1 of the GATS, similar to its interpretation in Article III of the GATT, to include any measure that has “an effect on” trade in services. Given the language of Article I.1, the Appellate Body in EC – Bananas III found that “there is nothing at all in these provisions to suggest a limited scope of application for the GATS.”… In the U.S. view, Argentina’s argument that Panama must identify actual services and service suppliers in or to the Argentine market being affected by the challenged measures would import requirements into Article I.1 that are not there. The Article defines the scope of the GATS in terms of measures “affecting trade”, rather than actual services and service suppliers.
Noting that the WTO Appellate Body has ruled that it does not not need to base its analysis “on empirical evidence as to the actual effects of the measure”, the US urged the WTO to “reject the view that a Member may challenge measures under GATS only when there is evidence that its suppliers are actually trading, or attempting to trade, in services with the Member in question.”
(Side note on an additional irony: The reference to Argentina in that quote is because the US has largely taken the tax haven Panama’s side in a dispute that Panama brought against Argentina’s anti-tax haven policies. Panama accuses Argentina of violating its WTO financial services obligations. Argentina made some pointed remarks in this regard, saying that undermining sovereign debt restructuring while allowing tax havens to exist undermines the move to re-regulate the financial sector and is pure “gatopardismo” (a situation where change is more apparent than real).)
There are a variety of defense provisions that the US has the right to invoke, including prudential measures defenses and balance of payments defenses. On their face, however, none of these seem to comport with the requirements for these defenses, which I explore in this article and this book chapter. Whatever the scope of these prudential defenses (and that is much debated), I haven’t heard anyone make an argument that the Griesa rulings are necessary or even make a contribution towards financial stability or integrity. Indeed, quite the opposite, as some of these economists warn.
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What is Flying Ant Day?
Flying ants often seem to appear on the same day in different locations in the UK – flying ant day. Most ant colonies start with a flying ant - when young queens leave the nest to found their own colony.
However, our citizen science project, the Flying Ant Survey, has found that there is not actually one day where these ants all appear all at once, but that, depending on weather conditions, the ants can start emerging and flying at almost any point during the summer months, and won't all necessarily appear only on one day either.
The Royal Society of Biology Flying Ant Survey
Starting in 2012 and continuing for three years, Professor Adam Hart from The University of Gloucestershire and the Royal Society of Biology ran an annual online Flying Ant Survey to find out where and when people were seeing flying ants.
One of the primary findings from the survey was that there is certainly not only one flying ant day; the frequency in which the flying ants appear changes each year and is dependent on the weather.
Colonies also don't exhibit any significant geographical co-ordination when it comes to taking to the skies; one garden may see flying ants on one day, with neighbours seeing them weeks or even months later.
Weather was confirmed to be absolutely critical when it came to flying ants emerging however, only emerging if it is warmer than 13C and when wind speeds are less than 6.3 metres per second. During the course of the study, every day in the UK summer that had a mean temperature above 25C had ants flying somewhere.
The findings have since been published in the journal Ecography, and a summary of our findings can be read on the BBC.
Flying Ant Day FAQs
Why does flying ant day occur?
This is a day when males and new queens leave the nest to mate, with many ant colonies doing so on the same day when the conditions are just right. It is the way that many ant species, including the black garden ant Lasius niger,leave their previous nest to begin new colonies.
Our survey found that there is often not just one flying ant day but on as many as 96% of days between the start of June and the start of September flying ants are spotted.
The pattern of flying ants differed massively between years. For example, in 2012 there were just a few days in late July and a few more in mid-August where around 80% of the flying activity was focused.
Sometimes the same ant colony may produce flying ants more than once over the course of the season.
Are flying ants all of the same species?
After the first year running our survey, we asked some people, "super-engagers" who were keen on doing more, to send us samples of the flying ants from their sightings. Using the thousands of ants returned to us we were able to determine that close to 90% of flying ants were from just one species - the black pavement ant Lasius niger.
What are the conditions needed to encourage flying ants to appear?
Weather turns out to be an absolutely critical factor in triggering ants to fly. By comparing records of flying ants with the nearest weather station data, we were able to untangle some of the factors that trigger ants to take to the sky.
Ants only flew when the temperature was above 13C and when the wind speed was less than 6.3 metres per second but overall ants like it calm and warm. During the course of the study, every day in the UK summer that had a mean temperature above 25C had ants flying somewhere.
The records sent in by the public also showed that ants are excellent at short-term weather forecasting. By examining the changes in weather in the days before and after each flying ant event, we discovered that ants were more likely to fly on days that were warmer and had lower wind speeds than the day before.
How do ants mate during this period of the year?
Ant colonies start with a female flying ant that will have left their previous colony to begin a new one. Unlike the female worker ants we see throughout the year, the queen starts her adult life with wings, and is noticeably larger.
Both males and females take to the skies, travelling away from their nest in a bid to find mates from other colonies and settle down in suitable conditions to begin their own colony.
When far enough away, the females and males commence breeding, with mating taking place during flight and the male dying shortly after. The fertilised female then lands, chews off her wings, then goes about creating a new colony or finding an existing one and starts to produce offspring.
What do flying ants contribute to the environment?
Ants contribute a lot throughout their lifespan, including aerating the soil they burrow into and recycling nutrients and returning detritus back into the earth. Their activity allows for more oxygen and water to reach the roots of plants and they can even improve soil fertility and help control pests.
When in flight, they can be a target for larger predators; emerging in large numbers increases the likelihood of at least some ants surviving predation and being able to mate but does mean they can be a quick and easy source of food for birds like gulls too.
Are they harmful and should I try and get rid of them?
Flying ants are not harmful, so if some emerge in your garden or elsewhere it’s best to leave them alone as they’ll disappear once they fly off within a few hours.
Results from 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015 were announced during Biology Week. The results of our formal three year survey (2012-14) will be published in 2017.
The Royal Society of Biology and The University of Gloucestershire would like to thank everyone who takes part in the flying ant survey.
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Nelsons leads Boston Symphony in belated “Bohème” debut at Tanglewood
Kristine Opolais and Jonathan Tetelman perform in Puccini’s “La Bohème” with Andris Nelsons and the BSO Saturday night at the Tanglewood Festival. Photo: Hilary Scott
Vestiges of Leonard Bernstein’s legacy are everywhere at the Tanglewood Festival this summer. As part of the season-long celebration of his centennial, the Tanglewood Visitor Center is displaying a special archival exhibit that documents the composer-conductor’s historic connection with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Bernstein’s music also peppers many BSO and Boston Pops’ programs at Ozawa Hall and the Koussevitzky Shed, including productions of Candide, West Side Story, and On the Town.
On other programs, Bernstein’s long shadow is less obvious but no less present. That was the case Saturday night at the Koussevitzky Shed, where Andris Nelsons, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and a starry cast of soloists paid tribute to Bernstein’s life and artistry with a work that was close to his heart: Puccini’s La Bohème.
Puccini’s tale of starving artists and their passionate and tragic love affairs remains the most popular tearjerker in the operatic repertoire. And though the BSO has offered select arias from the opera in concerts over the years, the orchestra has, surprisingly, never performed La Bohème in its entirety.
As in previous summers, Saturday’s semi-staged production featured singers who have sung their respective roles at the Metropolitan Opera, English National Opera, Teatro alla Scala, and other high-profile venues.
Kristine Opolais garnered critical acclaim after she stepped into the role of Mimì as a last-minute replacement for Anita Hartig for a Met matinée performance of La Bohème in April 2014. Since then, the role has become one of the Latvian soprano’s most visible ones. Saturday night, Opolais brought a graceful stage presence, darkly inflected tone, and wide emotional arc to the tragic figure. Her singing of “Si, mi chiamano Mimì” was fluid, with high notes ringing like a bell. In Act 3, her voice swelled with anguish when she sang of Rudolfo’s jealousy. In her final duet with Rudolfo, with its hints of “Che gelida manina,” her soprano faded gently to touching effect in the last breath of a dying woman.
Polish tenor Piotr Beczala was scheduled to perform as Rodolfo, but he pulled out of the performance earlier this month to take on the role of Lohengrin at the Bayreuth Festival. Filling in for him was Jonathan Tetelman, who is a relative newcomer to the punishing role. With a charming demeanor and ripe though fitfully light voice, he managed to float a plush and resplendent “Che gelida manina.” By Act 4, his voice had grown in strength, and his singing of “O Mimì, tu più non torni” had just the right touch of aching nostalgia.
As Marcello, Franco Vassallo sang with a deep, chocolaty baritone. He had a fine partner in Susanna Phillips, who played the coquettish Musetta. Her singing of “Quando m’en vo’” (Musetta’s waltz) was coy and effervescent, and together Phillips and Vassallo made a cute and at times humorous on-again, off-again couple.
The ensemble numbers, early in this performance at least, suffered from balance problems. The singing of Tetelman, Vassallo, Elliot Madore (as Schaunard), and Luca Pisaroni (as Colline) in the opening scene was sometimes lost beneath the waves of Puccini’s thick orchestration. Madore’s low notes had additional difficulty cutting through the texture in his brief solo moments. Pisaroni fared better in Act 4, when he projected his aria “Vecchia zimarra” with bold conviction. As for Tetelman and Opolais, it didn’t help that the sounds of a passing thunderstorm swamped their otherwise impassioned singing of “O soave fanciulla.”
Balance issues also plagued veteran bass Paul Plishka, who, in dual roles as Benoit and Alcindoro, was almost entirely drowned out whenever he sang. But tenor Neal Ferreira and bass David Cushing sang fully and smoothly over the orchestra as Parpignol and the Customs Sergeant respectively.
The Tanglewood Festival Chorus and Boston Symphony Children’s Chorus, prepared by James Burton, delivered their featured moments as street merchants and the bustling crowd in Paris’ Latin Quarter with energy and crisp diction. A small band of trumpets, piccolos and drums marched up one of the shed isles to bring martial pomp to the chorus at the end of Act 2.
Andris Nelsons led Puccini’s sumptuous orchestral score with fleet tempos to bring punch and excitement to the action onstage. Elsewhere, his direction resulted in a tasteful ebb and flow to the music; Musetta’s waltz, in particular, curved in supple arcs. In the chamber-like textures of Act 3, John Ferrillo’s oboe and Jessica Zhou’s harp were delightful solo highlights.
Daniel Rigazzi’s stage direction kept the story moving swiftly as the actors used the stage and shed floor to good effect. Tables, chairs, small stove, and couch were just enough to transform the space into a garret and café in the Latin Quarter. As has been the case with previous semi-staged operas at Tanglewood, simple props go a long way.
Friday night’s BSO program of Austrian and German masterworks, led by Moritz Gnann, brought additional moments of lyricism and drama to the Koussevitzky Shed.
The solo spotlight fell upon pianist Paul Lewis, who offered Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 27. In his final piano concerto, Mozart turns away from fiery technique and towards tranquility. An orchestra of strings and woodwinds accompany the soloist delicately, and pregnant pauses and warm, resonant harmonies are the frameworks upon which Mozart hangs his intimate melodies.
Lewis is a consummate classicist, having won accolades for his recordings of the sonatas of Schubert and, recently, Haydn. His Mozart flows like friendly conversation. Throughout he played with a pearly tone that brought depth to the trickling lines of the first movement, which barely registered above mezzo forte. In the final movement, Lewis’ soft runs blossomed into flourishes that were mirrored by flute and oboe. The cadenzas, Mozart’s own, flowed freely. His phrases in the second movement swelled before fading suddenly. Gnann led a sensitive accompaniment well attuned to Lewis’ lead, and the music rose and fell away.
Gnann is completing his third season as BSO assistant conductor, and in his time with the orchestra he has prepared scores with Andris Nelsons. Like his Latvian boss, Gnann leads with a keen eye to musical detail. His reading of Schumann’s Symphony No. 3, Rhenish, heard Friday night, revealed a firm, multi-dimensional sense of orchestration.
Gnann approached the outer of the symphony’s five movements with sweeping energy, though he lingered on the songlike themes of these movements. The second movement’s ländler flowed like the water of the eponymous river of the symphony’s subtitle.
Leading with sweeping gestures and crouches, Gnann coaxed soft, reverential lines from the ensemble in the third movement. Wind melodies dissolved into soft sonorities, and solo cello wove a burnished melody through the texture. The fourth movement, long thought to be Schumann’s depiction of a processional in the Cologne Cathedral, was as somber and solemn as an ancient ceremony, to which the organ-like brass brought grand solemnity.
Friday’s opener, Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll, had the searching intimacy of a lullaby. The brief impassioned moments of the score surged without the musicians sacrificing the underlying vocal quality, and elsewhere Gnann drew lines that wafted in the air like before coming to rest on faintly glowing harmonies.
Andris Nelsons will lead music of Mendelssohn, Bernstein, and Beethoven, with pianist Yuja Wang 2:30 p.m. Sunday at the Koussevitzky Shed. bso.org; 888-266-1200
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The Clinton Partnership
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Driven by a burning bright passion to help wild tigers
Our CEO, Simon Clinton, talks to the Environmental Investigation Agency about his passion for conservation and what inspired him to set up Save Wild Tigers…
I was recently asked, in a live radio interview in Kuala Lumpur why an Englishman from London, with a background in marketing & advertising, producing TV ads for brands such as The Happy Egg Co, had come to Malaysia to help save wild tigers?
For me the answer was simple – I grew up in Malaysia; indeed, my first exposure to tigers was here as a child in the early ’70s and, like so many people, I have been captivated by their magnificence ever since.
I have always been passionate about conservation; however, around five years ago I was asked to help market and launch Europe’s first-ever tiger art exhibition, here in London at Asia House. Only then did the irony hit me, that this stunning tiger-inspired art exhibition, with some of the pieces dating back thousands of years, could soon be the only way in which we see tigers. Art and pictures … could this really be the legacy we leave our future generations if we do not act, and act quickly?
My reaction was to set up Save Wild Tigers in 2011 as a non-profit organisation, bringing big marketing thinking and creativity to the cause globally. No spin here – the situation is desperate; there are now fewer than 3,500 tigers left in the wild and 95 per cent of their traditional habitat has been destroyed. Having roamed the planet for over two million years, we now face the prospect that we have 10 years left to save the wild tiger, or 10 years until possible extinction. We need to act now, to cut through the negativity, the scepticism and sometimes the simple lack of interest and move forward to inspire and capture the public’s (and core stakeholders’) imaginations. We need to convert that enthusiasm into action and essential, critically required funds. Working very closely with our NGO partners, the Environmental Investigation Agency and the Born Free Foundation, we are forging a powerful team.
Read the full blog here: http://www.eia-international.org/driven-by-a-burning-bright-passion-to-help-wild-tigers
- See more at: http://www.savewildtigers.org/#sthash.JsgymxH9.dpuf
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We have been working with the Clinton partnership for 4 years – testament in itself to the high standard of work they continuously deliver. The Clinton partnership is a reliable agency, willing to flex their style to our ways of working and able to respond to tight deadlines – all qualities we highly value and expect from a shopper agency operating in this fast paced environment. They add value through their creative ideas and pro-active behaviour and are a real life saver to me on a regular basis!
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I’ve always had a clear philosophy when it comes to agencies. They must deliver on two key things: Firstly and most importantly, results. We expect great strategic and creative thinking, with the ability to deliver every time, particularly in terms of ROI. Secondly, relationships. It’s essential for us to build great, long term relationships with our agencies so we can work collaboratively. Our relationship with the Clinton team is instrumental, as they continue to deliver great results for us with their TV work
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The Clinton partnership has given an enormous amount of marketing support to Born Free’s work keeping animals in the wild. They produced a truly wonderful Christmas TV campaign that was “top of the range”. The team, their approach and their commitment are fantastic and hugely appreciated
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The launch of the happy egg co. was a real game changer for Noble Foods and the egg category as a whole. The success to date has been outstanding. I`d like to thank the Clinton team for their invaluable contribution to our journey so far and long may this continue
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The Clinton partnership has worked with us on three very different projects in the course of less than a year: a five year “stock take” on our positioning; a customer service proposition agreed and supported across the supply chain; and a new sub brand for St. Pancras International Station. I have no doubt that we’ll work on further projects together too. Why? Quality; responsiveness; creativity
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Tiger range initiative
The Environmental Investigation Agency thanks Simon Clinton and his team for all the fantastic work they are doing to raise the profile of the crisis facing the worlds remaining wild tigers. With only 3,500 left, the clock is ticking. The Clinton partnership is helping in this race against time by supporting global efforts to end the illegal tiger trade.
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InterviewNews
Interview with Principal Steven Hargreaves: Part 2
Changes to NCEA, the Uniform Shop, and TV show recommendations
by Grace Baylis and Justin Hu
Part One of The Collegian’s interview with Principal Steven Hargreaves can be read here.
The Collegian: Interview with Principal Steven Hargreaves: Part 1, education reforms and the teachers shortage
Read on for the full part two of the interview where the principal discusses the government’s proposed draft changes to NCEA, the second hand uniform debacle and his autumn binge watch recommendations.
“In August 2018, yourself along with nearly 40 other principals purchased a full-page newspaper ad criticising some of the government’s proposed changes to NCEA. Critics describe the changes as radical.
Do you think NCEA even needs to change. And why have you chosen to take this action – dropping Level 1 and IGCSE – now before all other schools”
There are two separate things there really, because we made the decision as a school to drop NCEA Level 1 and IGCSE independent of the NCEA review.
My concerns with the NCEA review were that they had some proposals that were going to make the qualification worthless at Level 1 in particular. They were talking about project-based learning, 40 credits, having to go into the community and tee up practical work to go alongside the work in schools — incredibly difficult to administer, you’re going to get great variation up and down the country, and you know, a 40-credit qualification which you could get in so many different ways would mean it wasn’t a genuine national qualification.
They also had plans at the other levels to include things like citizenship and financial literacy and their definition of literacy, and I couldn’t see the value in that when I know that universities already have major concerns about English literacy.
Read more (article continues below):
NZ Herald: NCEA reforms: external exams in Year 11 go, ‘pathway’ courses required at Levels 2 and 3
Principals NCEA Coalition (Press Release): Secondary School Principals Challenge Minister Over NCEA
Stuff: A new approach to education consultation, and not everyone’s happy
Now, the other thing is – we spoke about was Macleans College not assessing Level 1 or IG, you said “before other schools”, quite a few schools, as it turns out, don’t do Level 1 already.
Anyway, we would’ve done it anyway, because we think that we can better prepare students for Year 12, by writing our own course.
We can get more teaching done, we can drop the curriculum material which doesn’t carry on into Year 12, we can avoid in the NCEA pathway, the continual internal assessment that puts workload on to teachers, which puts a lot of stress on to students.
I think we can do some deeper learning on the IG stuff, it seems to be a really jammed curriculum – a lot of superficial learning and we think we can get some good depth and better conceptual understanding of the material, and content that does carry into Year 12.
How can a Year 11 course properly prepare them for a multitude of different pathways? For instance, in English, it’s not just the Level 1 and Cambridge, but there’s AS Literature and AS Language.
So the courses do have to be cleverly written, but as you’ll know, a student can do IG English, Lit, and then pick up AS Language.
In fact, a student could do AS Language and then the next year they could do AS English Lit, so the skills in the Year 11 course that we provide will be applicable to both and then obviously the skills you need within AS Lit or AS Language can be taught during that year.
I don’t think you need to worry unnecessarily that students won’t be prepared. Most subjects provided have got good numeracy and good literacy skills and if you apply yourself, you can pick them up at AS level.
On another note, the last time… there was a Collegian interview, you said that you were watching Breaking Bad. Have you finished Breaking Bad? And if so, do you have any new recommendations?
Yes I did watch Breaking Bad and I’ve probably watched one that’s worse, I’ve been watching Ozark. It’s about a highly dysfunctional family, and there’s a theme here because Breaking Bad was a chemistry teacher gone wrong cooking P and Ozark of course is a businessman laundering money for a Mexican drug cartel. So, there you go
Anyway, because of the straight-laced ordinary safe and secure lifestyle, I get a kick out of watching these sorts of dangerous programmes. I can’t recommend them to students!
So, what can I recommend what else have I been watching. I don’t watch very much TV at all really, other than sport, I did watch plenty of rugby and cricket and basketball, anything that’s going really.
So, people who want your recommendations should just watch some Sky Sport…
While we’re here, could you expand on the story in the NZ Herald which talked about the Jayson Fong and his second hand uniforms?
I mean, he’s a clever boy, and he manipulated that situation really really cleverly.
Was he really threatened with what he says he was threatened?
Look I’ve asked around the office here and over in the international department and nobody will own up to it, in fact, nobody can remember knows of anybody who said it.
This is my take on it – the phone call that he recorded of me telling him to stop spamming the system; I had told him, do you realise that you have stolen an email and are spamming the students, that’s liable to a fine of whatever it was, I just read the Department of Internal Affairs website. He said, don’t threaten me! and I said I’m not threatening you, I’m just telling you that you need to know the facts.
So I would imagine what happened is somebody in the department said to him, you can’t run a second-hand uniform business on a student visa, you could get deported and he’s taken that as a threat. That would be my view of it given how he responded to the quote that I read.
Look the whole thing was like I said, manipulated perfectly, he is not a poor student. Now he’s completely untrustworthy, dishonest — he recorded a phone call with me without telling me he was recording me,
I mean that’s an alarm bell straight away, people who do that.
This all started a year or so ago, when he setup a website that was using the Macleans logo and he was in the secondhand uniform shop handing out his business cards.
Like of course, we’re not going to have somebody coming to our second-hand uniform shop pretending to be a Macleans authorised dealer, when he’s not.
So of course, he got told to leave, but at the same time, he also had some other business going and he had ripped off another burger company’s logo and he was using that as well. So, he doesn’t deal in honest and upfront ways, which is the point I was making on the phone to him. That phone call that he recorded.
We ordered the accounts for a board meeting just to have a look at it, we made $2000 out of the second-hand uniform shop last year. So we’re not getting rich.
Nobody’s getting rich out of second hand uniforms and we’re not going to run our own uniform shop for new uniforms just because it’s a specialist business. And as you can see, there’s about 15 schools that have uniforms distributed by John Russell because we’ve tried to do it ourselves, you end up with odd sizes, obsolete items, out of stock pieces, and it gets expensive, so you just let the professionals do it.
I would dearly have loved to say he’s not poor, there’s no money in second-hand uniforms for school, he’s stolen an email and admitted to it, he’s illegally spammed students twice, he did rip off our logo, he’s ripped off a burger firm’s logo, but you know that’s just we’d look like the big [man against the machine]
Stuff: Former Macleans College student accused of ‘spamming’ students over second-hand uniforms
NZ Herald: Ex-student scraps with school over uniforms
After the devastating events in Christchurch and other parts of the world, everyone’s looking for a way to feel better about what’s going on in our country, and the world. Do you have any advice?
I’d like to come up with some pearls of wisdom. I just want to say, let’s be grateful for what we have, actually just need to pause and look around us and think, we’re in a beautiful country, we’re in a wonderfully well-equipped school, we have shelter, we’re all clothed, we’re all well fed, we’ve got the world of the opportunity in front of us there for the taking, let’s just reflect on that and be grateful.
Interview by Grace Baylis and Justin Hu. Transcript lightly edited for enhanced clarity. Published on 30/04/2019. Header image courtesy Macleans College News Committee
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Is Fish Mox really amoxicillin?
Can I Use Fish Antibiotics to Treat My Own Infections? Are They Safe &Cheap Meds or Risky DIY Drugs?
Fish Mox® (Amoxicillin Trihydrate) from Thomas Labs is a broad-spectrum antibiotic that controls gram-positive and some gram-negative bacteria in fish.
It works by halting the multiplication of bacteria associated with both fresh and salt water ornamental fish diseases.
Are Fish Antibiotics Safe for Humans?
Previous QuestionWhy does my breath smell like fish?
Next QuestionWhat causes kidney and liver failure in dogs?
Is Fish Mox the same as human amoxicillin?
Yes, fish antibiotics. Fish are given many of the same antibiotics as humans—amoxicillin, ciprofloxacin, penicillin and more—sometimes even in the same doses.
Is Fish Mox safe for dogs?
Amoxicillin is a general "all purpose" antibiotic but does not knock down Staph infections. Fish Mox is effective in dogs, cats, ferrets, horses, rabbits, birds and other small animals. Used to treat pneumonia and bacterial skin wounds. Dose is 9-18 mg per 1 pound every 8-12 hours.
Can people take fish MOX?
Yes, fish antibiotics. Fish are given many of the same antibiotics as humans—amoxicillin, ciprofloxacin, penicillin and more—sometimes even in the same doses. These pills, which are intended to be dissolved in fish tanks and be absorbed through fishes' skin, can also look extremely similar to the human versions.
Self-Medicating with Fish Antibiotics?
What is fish MOX used for?
A. Fish antibiotics such as Fish Mox Forte are used to treat bacterial infections in fish. The antibiotics that are used to treat fish are the same or similar as the antibiotics that are provided for human use from antibiotic manufacturing companies, depending on type of antibiotic and form.
Can dogs take fish MOX?
Does Walmart sell fish MOX?
Thomas Labs Fish Mox Amoxicillin 12 Bottles of 100 500mg Capsules - Walmart.com.
Can you give fish MOX to dogs?
The oral dosage for amoxicillin is 10 mg per pound of dog, given every 8 to 12 hours, depending on the severity of the problem. The fish-version of amoxicillin (Fish-Mox) can be ordered in 250 mg capsules without a prescription from Revival Animal Health or any other online pet store.
Is fish amoxicillin the same as human?
Fish are given many of the same antibiotics as humans—amoxicillin, ciprofloxacin, penicillin and more—sometimes even in the same doses. Yet no ornamental fish antibiotics are approved by the FDA.
Fish Mox Amoxicillin Compared to a Doctor Prescribed Amoxicillin. Are they different? Any Surprises?
Is fish amoxicillin safe for dogs?
Amoxicillin is a general "all purpose" antibiotic but does not knock down Staph infections. Fish Mox is effective in dogs, cats, ferrets, horses, rabbits, birds and other small animals. Dose for a 50# dog would be 2 capsules. Always contact your veterinary for information or an appointment for your pet.
Can you give fish amoxicillin to dogs?
Will fish amoxicillin work for humans?
Can fish really hear you?
People hear by detecting sound vibrations. Our ears and brain translate vibrations into sounds and language. Fish hear, but their "ears" are on the inside. Bony fishes detect vibrations through their "earstones" called otoliths.
Does fish oil really work?
"The review provides good evidence," she adds, "that taking long-chain omega-3 (fish oil, EPA, or DHA) supplements does not benefit heart health or reduce our risk of stroke or death from any cause."
Fish Mox antibiotics actually work!!
Is MOX a Scrabble word?
MOX is not a valid scrabble word.
Is amoxicillin trihydrate the same as amoxicillin?
Amoxicillin trihydrate is a hydrate that is the trihydrate form of amoxicillin; a semisynthetic antibiotic, used either alone or in combination with potassium clavulanate (under the trade name Augmentin) for treatment of a variety of bacterial infections. It contains an amoxicillin.
Is dog amoxicillin the same as human amoxicillin?
Human Amoxicillin Not the Same as Pet Amoxicillin. If your dog requires amoxicillin or a similar antibiotic to treat an infection, says Dr. Mahaney, veterinary-specific medicines are the best option. Xylitol is a sugar substitute that can be toxic to dogs.
Is cat amoxicillin the same as human amoxicillin?
According to VetInfo.com, only three human antibiotics can be safely administered to cats: Amoxicillin - a penicillin-type drug and the most frequently prescribed antibiotic for cats.
Is human amoxicillin the same as dog amoxicillin?
Human Amoxicillin Not the Same as Pet Amoxicillin. If your dog requires amoxicillin or a similar antibiotic to treat an infection, says Dr. Mahaney, veterinary-specific medicines are the best option. Pet owners also need to be on the lookout for xylitol in medications, Mahaney says.
Is amoxicillin dangerous for dogs?
Amoxicillin is a penicillin antibiotic that is used to treat bacterial infection in dogs as well as humans. Some side-effects like vomiting and diarrhea are fairly common with amoxicillin. Allergic reaction is rarer, but can be more serious.
What is amoxicillin good for?
Amoxicillin is a penicillin antibiotic that fights bacteria. Amoxicillin is used to treat many different types of infection caused by bacteria, such as tonsillitis, bronchitis, pneumonia, gonorrhea, and infections of the ear, nose, throat, skin, or urinary tract.
Is amoxicillin a strong antibiotic?
Amoxicillin is often the first antibiotic prescribed for common infections like ear infections and strep throat. Amoxicillin is effective against both gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria. This refers to the physical structure of a bacteria and determines which drug may be more effective in eradicating it.
Is amoxicillin bad for dogs?
Amoxicillin is available in 250mg and 500mg capsules. The recommended dose of amoxicillin in dogs and cats is 5-10mg/pound every 12-24 hours. Amoxicillin can be given with or without food as it is stable in gastric conditions.
Is amoxicillin OK for dogs?
Is amoxicillin safe for dogs?
Is dog amoxicillin the same as human?
Is human amoxicillin safe for dogs?
Which is stronger amoxicillin or cephalexin?
Keflex (cephalexin) and Amoxil amoxicillin are both antibiotics prescribed to treat bacterial infections. Keflex is a cephalosporin antibiotic and amoxicillin is a penicillin-type antibiotic. Brand names for amoxicillin include Amoxil and Moxatag.
Is amoxicillin safe for pregnant dogs?
Antimicrobial agents that have been shown to be safe for use during pregnancy include betalactam antibiotics (penicillin G, ampicillin, amoxicillin, amoxicillin-clavulanic, carbenicillin, ticarcillin, and cephalosporins), macrolides, and lincosamides (clindamycin, erythromycin, and lincomycin).
Is pet amoxicillin the same as human?
Is there an over the counter amoxicillin?
Amoxicillin is a widely-used antibiotic drug. It belongs to the penicillin group of drugs and is prescribed to treat certain infections that are caused by bacteria. You can buy amoxicillin over the counter in our online pharmacy. We offer the lowest prices and highest quality antibiotic amoxicillin online.
What is the cost of amoxicillin?
A common dose of amoxicillin for an adult with a mild to moderate ear, nose, or throat infection is 500 mg every 12 hours or 250 mg every 8 hours until the prescription is finished. For a more severe infection, a common dose of amoxicillin is 875 mg every 12 hours or 500 mg every 8 hours.
Is dog amoxicillin safe for humans?
This is why some antibiotics are labeled “For dog use only,” or “For human consumption only.” Other antibiotics work well in many species and can be used at different dosages to fight the same kind of diseases in different species. For instance: dogs, horses, guinea pigs, and humans can all take doxycycline.
Is it really good or really well?
While you can say, "you dress very well" (where the verb is dress), you would say "your dress looks really good" (where the verb is looks). "Good" is an adjective. "Well" is normally used as an adverb, but can also be used as an adjective when referring to someone's state of health.
Which fish is a true fish?
Dog fish is a true fish.Jelly fish is not a fish , it belongs to a group called invertebrates while fishes are vertebrates.
Will amoxicillin treat BV?
Clindamycin (Cleocin), orally or in vaginal cream, for 5 days is also effective for BV (SOR: A). Other antibiotics that have shown in vitro efficacy for treating the spectrum of microbes associated with BV are amoxicillin-clavulanate (Augmentin), imipenem (Primaxin), and cefmetazole (Zefazone) (SOR: C).
Is cuttle fish a true fish?
Devil fish is actually a true fish which belongs to sharks in having cartilage not bones. Cuttlefish is not fish they are belong to phylum Molusca. Hippocampus or sea horses are actully true fish belongs to bony fishes.
Can amoxicillin treat parvo?
Antibiotics such as Amoxicillin are usually used. 5. Immunity – Strengthening your puppy's immune system, ideally before catching Parvo but also after infection, can help him fight it. The good news is that about 80% of treated puppies with Parvovirus will live.
Does amoxicillin kill parvo?
Can amoxicillin cure chlamydia?
A randomized trial of azithromycin versus amoxicillin for the treatment of Chlamydia trachomatis in pregnancy. Women were randomlyassigned either 500 mg amoxicillin orally three times per dayfor 7 days or a single dose of 1 g azithromycin orally.
Will amoxicillin treat pyometra?
All patients being treated for pyometra should immediately begin empiric bactericidal antibiotic therapy. Amoxicillin-clavulanate, or a combination of a penicillin and a fluoroquinolone, is a good antibiotic choice based on historical bacterial causes of uterine infection.
Is leasing really cheaper?
The payments are cheaper, you can get a new car every few years, and a lease is often easier to get than financing for an auto loan. Leases have several aspects that make them good choices over buying a new car -- like the fact that up-front out-of-pocket expenses are generally lower.
Can amoxicillin kill dogs?
Serious allergic reactions to amoxicillin are rare, and most dogs will make a complete recovery with veterinary treatment. There is no cure for an amoxicillin allergy however, so your dog will need to avoid amoxicillin and other penicillin antibiotics throughout his life.
Can amoxicillin treat chlamydia?
Will amoxicillin treat a UTI?
As an antibiotic, amoxicillin is used to treat infections caused by bacteria. Conditions that amoxicillin can treat include: bronchitis. urinary tract infections.
How quickly does amoxicillin work?
Antibiotics begin to work right after you start taking them. However, you might not feel better for two to three days. How quickly you get better after antibiotic treatment varies. It also depends on the type of infection you're treating.
Can dogs take amoxicillin capsules?
The usual dose of amoxicillin in dogs and cats is 5-10 mg/lb every 12-24 hours. Contact your veterinarian immediately if your pet develops severe or bloody diarrhea. Give all of the amoxicillin that is prescribed for your pet, since symptoms may begin to improve before the infection is completely treated.
Is height really genetic?
The short answer to this question is that about 60 to 80 percent of the difference in height between individuals is determined by genetic factors, whereas 20 to 40 percent can be attributed to environmental effects, mainly nutrition.
Is Vegan really healthier?
The biggest issue with vegan diets is it doesn't provide all the nutrients you would normally get from a balanced diet. The average vegan diet lacks iron, zinc, vitamin B12, calcium and other essential nutrients. Vegan diets are healthy but they're not the ultimate diet. Eat your meat, you'll be fine.
Is MySQL really free?
This is false; MySQL is not an open-source database. That assertion is a fact, not an opinion. MySQL is Free Software, licensed under the GNU GPL. People frequently use the two phrases “Free Software” and “Open Source Software” as synonyms, but there are very large, very important differences.
Is Pergo really waterproof?
Laminate isn't water-proof, but it comes pretty close. Pergo says that their laminate is water resistant, giving you a 30 minute window to clean up spills.
Is Moodle really free?
Moodle is an open source solution, which means organizations are free to download it. Pricing plans are also available for additional services and features, as well as cloud hosting. Moodle for Free—While Moodle is free to download, hosting the solution comes with additional expenses separate from the product itself.
Is popcorn really corn?
It resembles corn-on-the-cob in appearance and cultivation, although only popcorn kernels have the ability to pop. Popcorn, like all six types of corn, is a cereal grain and originates from a wild grass. Its scientific name is Zea mays everta, and it is the only type of corn to actually pop.
Is Pitbull really dangerous?
“There is not any breed of dog that is inherently more dangerous,” said Marcy Setter of the Pit Bull Rescue Center. “That's simply not true.” But critics say that pit bulls are inherently dangerous no matter how they're treated, because violence is in their DNA. “Why do herding dogs herd?
Is Switzerland really neutral?
This policy is self-imposed, permanent, and armed, designed to ensure external security and promote peace. Switzerland has the oldest policy of military neutrality in the world; it has not participated in a foreign war since its neutrality was established by the Treaty of Paris in 1815.
Does amoxicillin treat ear infections?
Antibiotics, such as amoxicillin, are used to treat severe ear infections or ear infections that last longer than 2–3 days.
Can amoxicillin kill a dog?
Will amoxicillin treat kennel cough?
However, clavamox is often given for kennel cough which is mix of amoxicillin/clavulanic acid. It treats a variety of infections as most dogs are resistant to just amoxicillin treatment alone.
Is fishing cruel?
Catch-and-release fishing is cruelty disguised as “sport.” Studies show that fish who are caught and then returned to the water suffer such severe physiological stress that they often die of shock. When fish are handled, the protective coating on their bodies is disturbed.
How do you take amoxicillin?
Amoxicillin comes as a capsule, a tablet, a chewable tablet, and as a suspension (liquid) to take by mouth. It is usually taken every 12 hours (twice a day) or every 8 hours (three times a day) with or without food. The length of your treatment depends on the type of infection that you have.
Can Amoxicillin 500mg treat UTI?
Single-dose cure rates with amoxicillin are approximately 80 percent. Those with asymptomatic bacteriuria can be treated with a single dose of an antimicrobial to which the organism is susceptible. For those with symptomatic UTI, we recommend amoxicillin 500 mg tid for three days.
Will amoxicillin treat eye infection?
For pink eye caused by bacteria, the treatment will usually be antibiotic eye drops or ointment. For more stubborn infections, an oral antibiotic may be prescribed. Oral antibiotics are prescribed for highly unusual cases of pink eye caused by gonorrhea or chlamydia.
Does amoxicillin make dogs constipated?
Metronidazole can cause your child to develop diarrhea. Both infection and constipation and then, includes amoxicillin and aluminum may not serious. Amoxicillin. Both infection and constipation or constipated, can cause antibiotic-associated diarrhea.
Will amoxicillin treat ear infection?
or ibuprofen to relieve pain or fever. Ask your healthcare professional or pharmacist what medications are safe for you or your loved one to take. Antibiotics, such as amoxicillin, are used to treat severe ear infections or ear infections that last longer than 2–3 days.
Does amoxicillin help with parvo?
Are dogs allergic to amoxicillin?
Dogs and cats can have an allergic reaction to penicillin, including amoxicillin. Symptoms to watch for include difficulty breathing, rapid heartbeat, rash, hives, seizures, heavy drooling, vomiting, fainting, unusual bruising or bleeding, and swelling of the lips, face or tongue.
Can dogs take human amoxicillin?
Can amoxicillin treat bacterial vaginosis?
The antibiotics clindamycin and metronidazole are both effective treatments for bacterial vaginosis. If it does produce symptoms, antibiotics can be used as an effective treatment, even during pregnancy. Treatment can help lower the slightly increased risk of miscarriage due to the infection, too.
Is declawing really that bad?
People often mistakenly believe that declawing their cats is a harmless "quick fix" for unwanted scratching. They don't realize that declawing can make a cat less likely to use the litter box or more likely to bite. Declawing also can cause lasting physical problems for your cat.
How painful is childbirth really?
This pain can be felt as strong cramping in the abdomen, groin, and back, as well as an achy feeling. Some women experience pain in their sides or thighs as well. Other causes of pain during labor include pressure on the bladder and bowels by the baby's head and the stretching of the birth canal and vagina.
Is pet insurance really necessary?
If you have a pet like Guinness with a costly condition or illness you want to treat, we found that pet insurance may pay out more than it costs you. In our exercise, a Healthy Paws plan was the only one that paid more than it cost. But if his owner continues to cover cancer treatments, all three plans may be worth it.
Is Goofy really a dog?
Goofy is a funny-animal cartoon character created in 1932 at Walt Disney Productions. Goofy is a tall, anthropomorphic dog with a Southern drawl, and typically wears a turtle neck and vest, with pants, shoes, white gloves, and a tall hat originally designed as a rumpled fedora.
Does amoxicillin give you diarrhea?
Nearly all antibiotics can cause antibiotic-associated diarrhea. Antibiotics most commonly involved include: Cephalosporins, such as cefixime (Suprax) and cefpodoxime. Penicillins, such as amoxicillin (Amoxil, Larotid, others) and ampicillin.
How much does amoxicillin cost?
Generic amoxicillin is covered by most Medicare and insurance plans, but some pharmacy coupons or cash prices may be lower. The lowest GoodRx price for the most common version of amoxicillin is around $5.00, 70% off the average retail price of $16.94.
Is eating fish cruel?
There's no nice way to put this: Eating fish is incredibly cruel. Scientists worldwide have demonstrated that fish and other animals feel pain and are capable of suffering. Fish are even similar to dogs, cats, and other animals in the way they feel pleasure.
Is duck a fish?
Ducks are mostly aquatic birds, mostly smaller than the swans and geese, and may be found in both fresh water and sea water. Ducks are sometimes confused with several types of unrelated water birds with similar forms, such as loons or divers, grebes, gallinules, and coots. DuckFamily:AnatidaeSubfamiliesSee text8 autres lignes
What is fish meal?
Fish meal, or fishmeal, is a commercial product mostly made from fish that are not generally used for human consumption; a small portion is made from the bones and offal left over from processing fish used for human consumption, while the larger percentage is manufactured from wild-caught, small marine fish; either
Is keeping fish cruel?
So, no. They aren't cruel, unless the keeper is cruel, by society's definition. Just Like has been said many times as long as you take care of your fishes water, fish compatibility, proper tank size and don't starve them i dont think its cruel at all.
Is my fish autistic?
Autism signs in fish 'astonishing' Signs of autism have been found in fish swimming in water contaminated with psychoactive medications. Scientists identified patterns of gene activity in the fathead minnows that mimicked those seen in susceptible humans with the developmental disorder.
What is kosher fish?
Kosher. According to the chok or divine decrees of the Torah and the Talmud, for a fish to be declared kosher, it must have scales and fins. When a (kosher) fish is removed from the water, it is considered "slaughtered," and it is unnecessary to ritually kill it in the manner of kosher livestock.
Why is fishing bad?
Fish Feel Pain. When fish are yanked from the water, they begin to suffocate. Their gills often collapse, and their swim bladders can rupture because of the sudden change in pressure.
Why is fishing good?
Fishing increases your vitamin D. Even when skies are grey – which they often are – being outside means your body can top up on critical Vitamin D reserves. Vitamin D helps regulate the amount of calcium and phosphate in your body, keeping your bones and teeth healthy.
Is fish skin healthy?
Salmon skin can make a delicious and healthful addition to the diet. It contains more of the same protein and essential omega-3 fatty acids contained in the fish. The body cannot make omega-3 fatty acids, so people must get them through their diet. Leaving the skin on may provide some additional nutrients for the body.
Is all fish halal?
Hunting animals can but in a manner way. Pork is forbidden. Fish that has scales is halal, but animals that live both in the water and on land are not permissible (for example, frogs may not be eaten). For example, Shellfish is haram because it does not have scales.
Is coconut flour really healthy?
The high fiber content provides coconut flour with many of its health benefits including a healthy gastrointestinal tract and blood sugar regulation. Coconut flour has a relatively low glycemic index of 45 and is comprised of 60% dietary fiber (2). Compared to wheat flour, coconut flour contains 5 times more fiber!
Is Blue Buffalo really good?
Blue buffalo is a good dog food, it contains limited ingredients such as only one meat and one carbohydrate which is goof for the dogs with digestive problems. Many veterinarians recommend it along with other good quality foods. Different types, so see what works best for you.
Is puppy food really necessary?
Puppy food is formulated to give puppies everything they need to grow into healthy, happy adult dogs. Feeding a puppy a diet of adult dog food every day, however, is robbing them of important nutrients. You run the risk of delaying their development and causing permanent health concerns.
Is friends really leaving Netflix?
Friends Will Stay on Netflix Throughout 2019—But There's a Catch. Update (2:57 P.M.): According to the New York Times, Netflix will pay $100 million to stream Friends throughout 2019. The deal is non-exclusive, leaving Warner Bros. the ability to add the series to its upcoming streaming service by 2020.
Is orange chicken really chicken?
Origin. The variety of orange chicken most commonly found at North American Chinese restaurants consists of chopped, battered and fried chicken pieces coated in a sweet orange-flavored chili sauce, which thickens or caramelizes to a glaze.
Is Pergo outlast really waterproof?
Pergo Waterproof Laminate. Unlike other laminate floors on the market, select Pergo laminate floors feature complete waterproof protection. This revolutionary technology withstands against splashes, spills, and pet accidents to ensure maximum waterproof durability.
Is my dog really smiling?
Many experts believe that dogs have learned to smile because they've seen humans do the same or because we reward them for doing so, Stilwell said. Woodard said the doggy smile is also known as a submissive grin, or a sign that your dog wants to appease you.
Is crate training really necessary?
Crate training can be a necessary training tool, yet it need not be a lifestyle. A crate can also be very damaging to the psyche of a growing puppy or an adult dog if they haven't been properly trained with one. A crate is just a less harsh name for a cage.
Is Fiji water really untouched?
Well, Fiji Water actually comes from an aquifer in Fiji. It's true. But this week Fiji Water nearly lost its claim to fame. The military government in that country upped its tax on water extraction from one-third of a Fijian cent to 15 Fijian cents.
Is pizza really a pie?
Pizza is the Italian word for pie. So if you hear someone saying they are going out to get a cheese pie, or maybe even get a couple pies to go, it's not slang. It's the English translation for pizza. Most likely because a pizza is round like a pie and came to be served in wedges like a pie.
Is Smart Chicken really humane?
Smart Chicken is committed to sustainable, humane practices that reduce stress on animals and provide better working conditions for employees. Our certified organic chickens are also free-range, which means they have access to outdoor pastures.
Is space really a vacuum?
Outer space has very low density and pressure, and is the closest physical approximation of a perfect vacuum. But no vacuum is truly perfect, not even in interstellar space, where there are still a few hydrogen atoms per cubic meter.
Is grain free really better?
However, some of the carbs used in grain-free pet foods are better options for your dog's food, because they're generally healthier than corn or wheat. Grain- or gluten-free wet dog food can be higher in protein and contain fewer carbohydrates, so that may be a better (but more expensive) option.
Is a colonoscopy really necessary?
When done as recommended, alternatives to colonoscopies can be just as effective as a colonoscopy in detecting colon cancer. However, if any abnormalities are found, people may require a colonoscopy anyway. It is necessary for all people to understand the importance of getting a colon screening past the age 50.
Is dog fish oil the same as human fish oil?
Fish oil for dogs has lots of benefits according to pet health studies. It is known to combat health problems in the heart, kidneys, skin, and joints with the help of omega 3 fatty acids. Hence, fish oil is one of the main supplements added to your dog's diet. However, is it the same as fish oil for humans?
Is heartworm medicine really necessary?
In fact, if a dog has a mild heartworm infestation, a veterinarian might recommend treating it with a heartworm preventative over a course of several months. But there are many pet owners who do not use heartworm preventatives on their dogs.
Is chemotherapy really worth it?
Suffering through cancer chemotherapy is worth it -- when it helps patients live longer. But many patients end up with no real benefit from enduring chemo after surgical removal of a tumor. Going in, it's been hard to predict how much chemo will help prevent tumor recurrence or improve survival chances.
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« Evidence, Schmevidence
A Kind Of Immortality »
Friday, May 4, 2012 by Daz
Creationists and other dunces pour scorn on this, pointing out such inconsistencies as the number 7 being completely unchangeable, meaning the same thing even if crossed-out—when it ought, they say, to become zero if evolvomaticicists are right—and that the written №4 is completely different from its printed version. Only a creator, they say, would produce such illogical and downright dumb inconsistencies, while wholly natural forces alone would have led to every number being as mutable as its neighbour. (And it was much better, they tell us, before all this science stuff came along, back in the (7 × 2)th Century. And they should know—they still live there.)
Only in the sub-field of geomolometry (lit. measurement of the Earth—current research puts it at 'pretty damn impressively big' ) has little progress been made until recently. It's long been hypothesised that all gemolometricical shapes evolvomatuted from the simplest known form—the triangle—with the circle as the ultimate predicted outcome. Creationists scoff at the circle being a product of evolvomatution, pointing out that an infinite number of sides would take an infinite time to evolvomatute, and infinity is, they claim, a ridiculous concept. Geomolometricians just point at the infinite queue outside the door of (or the local entrance to, as the case may be) the nearest (erm… whatever) Hilbert's Hotel. Then they laugh derisively. Until recently, however, the link between triangles and circles has remained hypothetical.
The discovery of the structure of GMA (GemoetrologicalMygodthatsabigmoleculelofstupifyinglylongnamedAcid), and the subsequent mapping of the trinangular geomone helped somewhat—by providing a concrete mechanism by which a shape which mutatifies to gain an extra side can pass it on to its offspring—but geomefossilical evidence was still lacking. Creationists, ever known for their ability to point out what they see as weak spots in other people's theories, whilst ignoring the bloomin' great chasms in their own, have constantly eluded to the failure of geomolometricians to find a single transitionalical form which would show a physical change from a fewer-sided figure to a morer-sided figure. Until a few months ago, the field of geomological evolvomatutics looked much like the figure below:
'Look,' the Biblically-minded morons would say, 'all you have is a bloody huge gap in the geomefossimilogical record. You have nothing! We don't need to force a god into that gap. We could park an entire fleet of Hilbert's Infinitological Tour Buses™ * full of gods in it, no problem.'
*No passenger left standing—there's always one more empty seat.
Enter one Marcus du Sautoy, at one time a top infinitologist, but recently a resident at the Simonyi Home for Bewildered Scientiboffinologists, Quantum Yamaha-Mechanics and Allied Trades, where he sleeps, the trivia buffs amongst you may be interested to know, in the Irreverend Richard Dawkins' old cell. He was committed in 2008, following a breakdown due to overwork, when friends noticed him praying to a picture of David Icke. On partially recovering his senses, he decided that the cutting-edge of infinitology was 'too freaking mind-blowing,' and has since paddled in the more cerebrally serene waters of geomological evolvomatutics—a sad loss for the former field, but a huge gain for the latter. The only demur has come from comedian and actor Alan Davies, who complained, 'I was just getting the hang of those fractal thingies.' According to du Sautoy:
"The chemically-enforced bed-rest has really done me good, along with the nutritious diet of lukewarm Horlicks and Vegemite. Well, that and not being bothered every five minutes by that bloody Davies bloke with his stupid piece of string he wants measured. Anyway, with lots of rest and a change of pace, the old brain-box really started to fire up again; so when I started to look at the Polygon Problem, I saw right away that I could make some headway."
Just six months ago, du Sautoy announced the discovery of a strange new figure with eight sides. He calls it, logically enough, an eightsidedogon. While it's still very far from the infinitological number of sides needed to form a perfect circle (but then, it's as close to infinitological as we could possibly get, too—just try not to think about it), du Sautoy points out that studies of its GMA clearly show vestiges of the original trinangular gene sequences, which together with the obvious similarityness of it having sides and angles, provide the first piece of concrete evidamence that Darling's theory works in geomological figures just as it does in the other fields of mathematology. "There is grandeur in this view of shape," he said in a recent interview. "With its several powers, having been originally breathicated into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautifulishious and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolvomatuted."
And that's not the end of it. Rumours are just surfacing about an alleged discovery in China, of three lines carved into a tree. They are, if the rumours are true, all of the same length, and each is joined to the next at an angle of 108°. Du Sautoy, after some tentative work with a protractor and a pencil, cautiously states that if the pattern is continued, a 'fivesidedogon' might be produced. Good news if true but "It's early days yet," he warns. "Did you just drink my Horlicks!? Nurse!"
When contacted, Ken Bacon-Buttie, leading creationist and founder of the Answers In A Bronze Age Book Of Goat-Herders' Mythology website, said, "Well, I reckon it's a gain for us. Every so-called transitionalical form they find creates another gap. They had one gap, now they have two. If they manage to pretend this Chinese thing fits their theory, they'll have three gaps. There'll be an extra gap every time they add another so-called link, so we'll always have more gaps to shove a god into. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a replica of Noah's Arc to finish building. We're making it out of real gophers, you know."
Coming next week: (or, more probably, not) I talk to leading idiot James Delingpole about why 97% of the world's climatologicalical scientiboffinologists are so obviously lying about climate change. 'Cause that's what they do you know, scientiboffinologists. They join up in huge conspiracities and lie to us. It's in the contract, along with the obligatorary bendy glassware and the evil cackle.
Posted in General | Tagged atheism, creationists, fundies, global warming, humour, loons, math, maths, religion, science | 7 Comments
on Friday, May 4, 2012 at 10:18 Recovering Agnostic
How sad. Edwin Abbott discovered a number of transitional forms in the 1880s, and postulated a plausible mechanism for evolvomatutics, one which is still broadly in line with current research. It’s all there in Flatland.
Unfortunately, the dismissive attitude of the time and the unfortunate rumours of an affair with a triangle meant that he never got the recognition he deserved.
on Friday, May 4, 2012 at 11:32 5ecular4umanist
Fascinating. Are there any good books on evolvomatutics that you could recommend?
This is an area of science that is sadly lacking on the secular atheist interweb. Have you considered doing some videos on the subject? It’s clearly an important field and people should know about it.
on Friday, May 4, 2012 at 12:01 remigius
…by providing a concrete mechanism
Concrete is totally unsuitable for making a mechanism. A much better material would be brass.
Or stainless steel.
on Friday, May 4, 2012 at 16:12 Daz
5ecular4umanist
As Recovering Agnostic says, Flatland is a much overlooked classic. I’d also recommend Climbing Mount Improbamability-Theory by the Irreverend Richard Dawkins.
Remigious
Point taken. Can you recommend a good metamalurgist?
Damnit, the whole thing started because a friend came up with the word ‘paleogeometrist’ but I completely failed to actually use it.
Daz, have you read Flatterland by Ian Stewart? It’s a very witty and engaging sequel, which introduces some very interesting mathematatical concepts in a way that’s faithful to Abbott’s original. Stewart’s a good writer anyway, but I think this is possibly his best work.
Recovering Agnostic
I haven’t. Thanks for the recommendation.
For anyone interested, Flatland is available free on Project Gutenberg. I like to give 'em a plug now and then. 🙂
And that link, done proper, like: Flatland
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Image For Representation (IANS)
India’s richest 1% holds over 40% of national wealth: Report
India January 20, 2020January 20, 2020 0 Comments
Mumbai: A recent report on Monday showed that India’s richest 1 per cent of the population hold 42.5 per cent of national wealth while the bottom 50 per cent, the majority of the population, owns a mere 2.8 per cent. According to an Oxfam report, India’s top 10 per cent of the population holds 74.3 […]
Kolkata: The West Bengal government is planning to pass a resolution in the state Assembly against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act in the next three-four days, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said on Monday. Banerjee also appealed to other states, particularly those in the North-East, to pass such resolutions. “We have also passed a resolution against NRCA […]
Karti Chidambaram (File Photo/IANS)
ED quizzes Karti Chidambaram on buying assets abroad via shell firms
New Delhi: Karti Chidambaram, son of former Finance Minister P. Chidambaram, here on Monday, appeared before the Enforcement Directorate (ED) for questioning as summoned in connection with alleged violation of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) in the INX media case. An ED official said Karti was summoned following new developments regarding his association […]
Twitter erupts after Deputy Collector in MP gets heckled
New Delhi: A video showing Madhya Pradesh’s Rajgarh district Deputy Collector Priya Verma indulging in a street fight is doing the rounds on the Internet. A pro-CAA rally, organised by the BJP at Rajgarh, took a violent turn on Sunday when participants allegedly attacked police and officials present following which officials took on the ‘unruly’ […]
SC accepts govt proposal for new board to take over Unitech
India January 20, 2020 0 Comments
New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Monday accepted Centre’s proposal recommending a seven-member Board to take over the management of real estate company Unitech. A bench headed by Justice D.Y. Chandrachud approved the appointment of former IAS officer Yudhvir Singh Malik as its CMD. Last month, the apex court had asked the Centre to take […]
Robert Vadra probe: Questions that Thampi evaded
New Delhi: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has claimed that NRI businessman C.C. Thampi who was arrested in connection with the money laundering probe against Robert Vadra has “failed” to answer various questions during the interrogation. “Thampi during questioning failed to explain why Sanjay Bhandari (a close aide of Vadra) was monitoring the purchase of properties […]
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos drives e-rickshaw; video goes viral
New Delhi: Amazon Founder and CEO Jeff Bezos on Monday posted a video on his official twitter handle in which he drove an e-rickshaw with Amazon’s delivery partners. Taking a Climate Pledge, the video by Bezos revealed that Amazon is rolling out its new fleet of fully electric delivery rickshaws. Hey, India. We’re rolling out […]
File Photo: IANS
Shaheen Bagh protestors look to Jan 22 SC hearing
New Delhi: The Shaheen Bagh protest entered 37th day here on Monday as protestors are not willing to quit without a concrete result on the new Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA). Except appeals by some low-rung police officers, no serious effort has been made to persuade the activists to leave the spot. The number of protestors […]
Arvind Kejriwal misses deadline for filing nomination
New Delhi: Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Monday missed the deadline for filing his nomination because of his massive roadshow and will now file it on Tuesday. The filing of nominations was allowed between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m., but the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) chief was not able to reach the office of […]
Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath (File Photo/IANS)
All well with Yogi, but his MLAs remain upset
Lucknow: Resentment is brewing against the Yogi Adityanath government in Uttar Pradesh, especially among the BJP’s own legislators, sources said. “It began shortly after he was sworn in, when Yogi Adityanath told officers that they need not work under pressure from MLAs. Since that day, the bureaucracy has gone berserk. The officers do not listen […]
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NBA in London: Two CNN features and one Yahoo podcast
Two NBA features and one NBA podcast in five days. Bam. Now that’s what I call a busy week. But that’s what happens when the NBA comes to London; everything stops and I’m scrambling to go to open practices, conduct interviews, and eventually go to the big game itself — which was a thriller. Toronto beat Orlando in overtime at the O2 on Jan 14.
Both articles were Toronto Raptors related and featured an in-depth interview with team president and GM, Masai Ujiri. Ujiri was born and raised in Nigeria, played low-level college and pro hoops, yet is running an NBA team. Wow.
I don’t want to get all cliche, but honestly, he’s inspiring. If he can do that, then anyone can do anything if you work hard enough and set your mind to it. Seriously, the man overcame some massive obstacles, but had persistence and smarts to get to the top — and good on him.
First feature focuses on the Raptors being the NBA’s first truly global team (one Nigerian GM, seven international players, and one Sikh superfan: the Turbinator):
Click here to read CNN Story
The second feature is on Ujiri’s vision for an NBA populated with talented Africans — much like today’s European soccer leagues:
Click here for the story
Finally, last but certainly not least, is my podcast with the legendary Elissa “Big E” Walker Campell from Yahoo Sports Radio. We’re talking all things Raptors, New York Knicks (IE Porzingis) and Eastern Conference basketball in 10 minutes of riveting dialogue.
Listen to the podcast stream here:
https://areyouselling.files.wordpress.com/2016/01/big-e-show-jan-2016.mp3
Between Michael and I, we’ve racked up 6 rings.
Filed under Media/Press Tagged with Kirstaps Porzingis, Masai Ujiri, Nav Bhatia, NBA, new york knicks, Sikh Superfan, toronto raptors
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Louisiana Children's Books
Acadian History and Culture
Louisiana History
Memoir and Biography
Charles Frederick D’Arensbourg: And the Germans of Colonial Louisiana
And the Germans of Colonial Louisiana
by Reinhart Kondert
Charles Frederick D'Arensbourg was a fascinating figure who played an important role in the history of colonial Louisiana. His important role as leader of the Germans who settled in this distant French hinterland is remarkable and inspiring. His steadfast leadership, so often recognized by his contemporaries, undoubtedly contributed to the success of the German colony. And its success helped Louisiana to become both more livable and viable as a French outpost.
Charles Frederick D'Arensbourg and the Germans of Colonial Louisiana takes readers from D'Arensbourg's early years in Europe to the founding of the German colony, to his family's assimilation into French society and his years as chief civilian officer of the German coast and military commander, through the Rebellion of 1768 and his death.
Softcover, 96 pages, ©2008
© 2020, UL Press Powered by Shopify
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2020 First Looks
Adventure / Dual-Sport
Motocross / Off-Road
Gear / Parts
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Ultimate Motorcycling
Motorcycle Racing News Isle of Man TT 2014 Isle of Man TT | Penz13.com BMW Racing Confirms Andrews
2014 Isle of Man TT | Penz13.com BMW Racing Confirms Andrews
Simon Andrews
2014 Isle of Man TT
Rico Penzkofer’s Penz13.com BMW Racing team has confirmed that Simon Andrews will ride for the German outfit at the 2014 Isle of Man TT Races fueled by Monster Energy.
Andrews will ride a BMW HP4 S1000RR prepared by the Penz13.com BMW Racing Team, supported by the BMW HP Race Support team, at the Isle of Man TT as well as the North West 200 and Macau Grand Prix.
He also has the potential to represent the Penz13.com Franks Autowelt Racing Team in the FIM World Endurance Superstock Cup races. Andrews will be the reserve rider at the Bol d’Or and the legendary Le Mans 24 hours with the opportunity to be selected for the team during qualifying.
Andrews’ TT record has included four top fifteen finishes including 11th place in last year’s RL360 Superstock Race. He made his TT debut in 2011, taking 11th in both the Superstock and Senior Races, also finishing as the fastest newcomer with a lap of 125.134, the third fastest newcomer in the all-time list. He has a fastest lap to date of 126.001mph around the TT Mountain Course. He also finished third in the 2012 Macau Grand Prix.
The 29-year old from Evesham is now recovering from his injuries sustained in last year’s accident while competing in the World Endurance at Le Mans and is expected to have his first test on the bike later this month.
Simon Andrews says: “I’m pleased to sign with Penz13.com BMW Racing Team for the Road Racings in 2014. I’ve raced against Rico and know his bikes are well built. I’ve had some success with BMW already when I started on the roads earlier in my career. With the help and support of BMW I believe the team will give me a good competitive bike. I’m looking forward to meeting all the team and really seeing what we can do together.”
Rico Penzkofer (Penz13.com Team Principal) says: “We’ve been in negotiations with Simon for a while and he was scheduled to ride for us in last year’s Macau Grand Prix before his accident at Le Mans last year so I’m really pleased that we’ve now signed him.”
“The Isle of Man or Macau has been my greatest passion, my life, if you like. Over recent years we’ve built a special wealth of experience as a team and focused on the TT – not least because I raced the TT myself. I now want to use this experience and get closer to the sharp end. Steve Mercer delivered our team’s best TT result last year with an 8th spot. I am happy that we’ve signed Simon and that he has faith in our team as he’s a really talented road racer.”
Penz13.com BMW Racing
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2016-2020 Triumph Thruxton Recall: Side Stand Issues
Ron Lieback - January 20, 2020
Triumph Motorcycles America has recalled 3,244 of its 2016-2018 Thruxton, 2016-2019 Thruxton R, and 2020 Thruxton TFC motorcycles due to side-stand issues.
2019-2020 Triumph Speed Twin Recall: Gear Shift Lever Issues
Triumph Motorcycles America has recalled 1,304 of its 2019-2020 Speed Twin motorcycles due to gear shift lever issues. Triumph says the gear shift lever linkage...
AMA Supercross/Motocross
2020 Anaheim 2 Supercross Results and Coverage: 3 Races, 3 Winners
Don Williams - January 19, 2020
Eli Tomac made it three winners in three races on three brands in the 2020 Monster Energy Supercross Championship Series as he overcame a...
Dakar/FIM Cross Country Rallies
2020 Dakar Rally Results: Honda’s Brabec Claims 1st Win for USA (Video)
For the past 18 consecutive years, KTM has dominated the Dakar Rally, winning each event in dominating style. Two legendary names are associated with...
2020 Triumph Thruxton RS Review (17 Fast Facts)
Nic de Sena - January 16, 2020
The new top-spec 2020 Triumph Thruxton RS is the latest addition to the British marque’s storied line, which also includes the standard Thruxton and...
America’s Brabec Leads 2020 Dakar Rally with 1 Stage Remaining
Though he struggled to a 10th-place finish during stage 11 of the 2020 Dakar Rally, Monster Energy Honda Team's Ricky Brabec holds the overall lead with one stage remaining.
If it has two wheels, Ultimate Motorcycling has the inside scoop. From the latest motorcycle and apparel reviews, to MotoGP results and OEM sales reports, Ultimate Motorcycling covers it all. Our small but passionate staff works endlessly to deliver quality and enjoyable motorcycle content.
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Margaret Atwood's Alias Grace gives Netflix a murder mystery with a mind of its own
Grace Marks (Sarah Gadon) seldom if ever rests easily. Netflix photo
Premiering: All six episodes begin streaming Friday, Nov. 3rd on Netflix
Starring: Sarah Gadon, Edward Holcroft, Zachary Levi, Anna Paquin, Rebecca Liddiard, Kerr Logan, Paul Gross, Stephen Joffe, David Cronenberg
Produced by: Sarah Polley, Noreen Halpern, Margaret Atwood, Marla Boltman, D.J. Carson, Lori A. Walters
Abused by her drunken father and then brutalized in a women’s prison, Irish immigrant Grace Marks perhaps has gone mad in the process.
Or might she be more or less completely sane -- or driven by a dual personality?
The absorbing Alias Grace, a new Canadian miniseries imported by Netflix, doesn’t irrefutably provide all of the answers during its six episodes. It delves deeply, though, as novelist Margaret Atwood invariably does in her tales of repressed, subjugated women in situations and systems controlled by men.
Unlike her futuristic The Handmaid’s Tale, which became a major success story for Hulu earlier this year, Alias Grace is based on grisly, real-life events. But a trio of key fictional characters are woven into this mid-1850s murder mystery. And believe it or not, two of them are empathetic men acting on Grace’s behalf.
Atwood’s novel was first published in 1996, a decade after Handmaid’s Tale hit bookstores. Sarah Gadon (Hulu’s 11.22.63) plays central figure Grace Marks, who’s spent 15 years in Canada’s Kingston Penitentiary after being co-convicted of the murders of house master Thomas Kinnear (Paul Gross) and his head housekeeper, Nancy Montgomery (Anna Paquin), with whom he was rather creepily intimate.
Grace’s years behind bars have been marked by beatings, sexual assaults and occasional solitary confinements in a severely cramped, coffin-shaped “cell” with a small round hole in it. As with Handmaid’s Tale, the narration is a little top-heavy at first. Things begin to jell, however, when young Dr. Simon Jordan (Edward Holcroft) is hired to probe Grace’s psyche in hopes of determining her culpability. A Methodist Reverend (David Cronenberg) is hopeful that she’ll be found mentally deficient, and thereby eligible to be freed.
“Are you afraid of me, Grace?” he asks in their first meeting.
“It’s too early to tell,” she replies.
Their sessions are held in the nearby penitentiary governor’s mansion, where Grace has resumed her nearly lifelong occupation as domestic servant. It’s there that she spins out her oft-tragic story while Dr. Jordan is increasingly mesmerized.
Left to fend for herself at age 15 after a storm-tossed, diseased-ravaged, two-month ship cruise from hell, Grace finds employment at a “fine house in Toronto” run by an authoritarian, condescending dowager. But she also finds the best of friends in fellow domestic Mary Whitney (very compellingly played by Rebecca Liddiard). Mary is a lively rebel who basically distrusts men but intends to find a good and honorable one for marriage purposes. This doesn’t go so well.
During their time together, Grace, Mary and the rest of the servants greatly enjoy a visit from a dashing peddler named Jeremiah (Zachary Levi from NBC’s Chuck). He’ll later play a pivotal role in an entirely different guise.
After being traumatized anew, Grace reluctantly takes another domestic servant job proffered by Nancy Montgomery, who offers to raise her monthly pay from $2 to $3. It’s there that she also meets surly but strapping stable hand James McDermott (Kerr Logan) and gentle, wide-eyed errand boy Jamie Walsh (Stephen Joffe). In due time, the drama’s key questions come down to this: Did Grace and McDermott together conspire to murder Montgomery and Kinnear? Or did he act alone before forcibly roping her in? Or might she have been in effect possessed by a spirit force?
Dr. Jordan eventually entertains another possibility. “She could be insane,” he says, “with the devious plausibility of the experienced maniac.” Now there’s something to consider.
Alias Grace doesn’t wrap everything up tidily -- and at times can be a bit messy and far-fetched. A subplot involving Dr. Jordan’s abandoned and suddenly amorous, ad hoc landlady easily could be excised. A climactic hypnosis session also seems rather cockamamie.
The performances are uniformly first-rate, though, and viewers will get closure rather than any dangling cliffhangers. Unlike Handmaid’s Tale, now in production for a second season, Alias Grace is strictly one and done. And in the end, it leaves much to think about in terms of a mind’s tangled webs -- and the intersection between true happiness and accepted contentment.
GRADE: A-minus
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Ascension Rise of the Vigil ($40.00)
From Around 30 minutes For 2 to 4 players aged from 13 years
Ascension: Rise of Vigil is a deck-building game in which players acquire cards from a central pool, then place those cards in their discard pile to be shuffled into their deck for later use; creatures also show up in that shared card pool, and players can combat them to earn victory points (VPs) and possibly other benefits, such as the ability to remove less useful cards from their deck or to banish cards from the pool that others might find useful. The game ends once all the available VPs have been claimed or the shared deck of cards runs out.
Ascension: Rise of Vigil, part of the Ascension deck-building game series, is both a standalone game for 2-4 players and an expansion that can be combined with any other Ascension game to support up to six players.
Rise of Vigil introduces treasure cards to the game system, with all treasure cards in this set being "Energy Shard". When a treasure card is drawn from the shared deck, you place it in the empty space in the shared pool, then continue to draw until you reveal a hero, monster or construct to cover the treasure. When you acquire or defeat that top card, you also gain the treasure, which is added to your deck like hero and construct cards. When you play a treasure from your hand, you immediately draw another card from your deck; more importantly, you can use the energy on these cards to activate special powers on certain heroes, constructs and monsters. (Non-treasure cards can also provide energy, but they are usually worth VPs whereas treasure is worthless aside from the energy.) Energy available on a turn can be "spent" more than once, so if you have, say, two energy, then you can power up all cards with an Energize cost of two or less.
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Typeset In The Future
Typography and Design in Science Fiction Movies
Posted on December 4, 2018 December 6, 2018 by Dave Addey
From a trash-filled Earth to the futuristic Axiom and back again, WALL·E is a finely crafted balance between consumerist dystopia and sixties space-race optimism. Please join me, then, for a detailed dive into the uniquely robotic future of a remarkably human film, as seen through the eyes of its eponymous hero, WALL·E.
[This article is from the Typeset in the Future book, which is really very good and you’re probably going to want to buy a copy of. If you’d rather read the article first, don’t worry—I’ll remind you again later on.]
Before we get started, there is an important detail we must clear up. Our hero’s name is not, as you might think, WALL-E. Moreover, it definitely isn’t WALL•E. His name is WALL·E, and that dot is an interpunct, not a hyphen or a bullet.
WALL·E’s front plate, clearly showing his interpunct.
An interpunct is, of course, a vertically centered dot originally used to separate words in Latin and ancient Greek. (Spaces weren’t invented until several centuries later.) The interpunct is still in use today—it’s the official decimal point in British currency (£9·99), and is used to represent the dot product of two vectors in mathematics (x · y). Most relevantly, it’s used in Japanese to separate titles, names, and positions, as in “課長補佐 · 鈴木” (Assistant Section Head · Suzuki). It is therefore entirely appropriate as the separator in WALL·E, which is short for Waste Allocation Load Lifter · Earth Class.
The bold extended typeface seen on WALL·E’s front plate is Gunship, designed by Dan Zadorozny, one of the unsung heroes of modern sci-fi type design. Dan is an amateur type designer from Texas whose Iconian Fonts website features more than six hundred free hand-crafted typefaces, many of which have been used by sci-fi movies, TV shows, and book designers.
In addition to WALL·E’s front plate, Gunship is seen on Earth and aboard the Axiom, the flagship spacecraft of megacorporation Buy n Large (BnL, for short), most notably for robot-facing wall and door typography. Its upper- and lowercase variants include different combinations of cutouts and curve orientations, giving designers flexibility when crafting robot signage. (Strictly speaking, this means that our hero’s name, correctly capitalized, is “waLL·e,” with the interpunct as a further customization—Gunship’s own interpunct is rectangular.)
Gunship (lowercase characters).
Gunship (uppercase characters).
The movie begins with an insight into WALL·E’s typical workday, which is spent building gigantic piles of trash by compacting waste into neat, stackable cubes. After a hard day’s crushing, we follow him on his journey home, learning some useful exposition along the way. This includes a bank of electronic ads for BnL, promoting everything from liquid air to quadruple-patty burgers. Common throughout these ads is an insistence on immediate consumption—“DRINK NOW,” “HUNGRY NOW,” “RUN NOW,” “CONSUME.” And if consuming a product once isn’t enough, you can repeat the experience a second time—the signage seen below includes ads for both “100% Reused Food” and “Regurgi-Shake: Twice the Flavor.”
We’ve seen how corporate mergers, such as Alien’s Weylan Yutani and Blade Runner’s Shimata-Dominguez, are an inevitability in sci-fi futures. WALL·E’s Buy n Large is similar, except that this company was formed by a merger between a frozen yogurt manufacturer (Buy Yogurt) and a maker of suits for the larger gentleman (Large Industries). Clearly a marriage made in heaven, this corporate combination led to a rapid expansion, culminating with Buy n Large owning every company and government in the world.
The Buy n Large logo is an over-italicized customization of Futura Extra Bold Oblique, as demonstrated by a super-distinctive capital G in the BUY N LARGE BANK logotype that WALL·E passes early in the movie.
Futura Pro Extra Bold Oblique, released by Berthold. Original Futura design by Paul Renner.
“BUY N LARGE BANK” signage, set in Futura Extra Bold Oblique, showing its distinctive capital G.
If the red-and-blue logo feels familiar, it shouldn’t be a surprise—it’s because BnL uses the exact same typeface and color scheme as real-world retail giant Costco Wholesale Corporation.
The Costco Wholesale Corporation logo, in Futura Extra Bold Oblique.
There’s another curious BnL subsidiary to be found among the city’s electronic ads, on a beaten-up billboard advertising “Eggman Movers (Creating More Space).” This company is an Easter-egg reference to WALL·E production designer Ralph “Eggman” Eggleston, and it shares the name of the moving company from 1995’s Toy Story, for which Ralph was art director.
Eggman Movers, from 2008’s WALL·E.
Eggman Movers, from 1995’s Toy Story.
The presence of a Buy n Large–branded bank means Buy n Large–branded banknotes, which are unusual for being strewn across the floor of the deserted city. If you look closely at the notes, you’ll see that some of them have “106” in the corner, and are marked “ten million dollars.” Others look to be marked “996,” suggesting that Buy n Large stores continued the classic $9.99 pricing trick even after adding six zeroes to the end of everything. (Indeed, it says much about the Buy n Large approach to consumerism that it prints notes with the 99s already included, to avoid customers having to receive any change.)
$10 million and $99 million bills lie abandoned on the ground near a Buy n Large Bank.
We discover later in the movie that the Axiom left Earth in the year 2105. This suggests that in the preceding years of overconsumption there was a period of severe hyperinflation, making a $10 million note a necessity. This is not without historical precedent—Earth’s most extreme example of hyperinflation occurred in Zimbabwe in November 2008, just a few months after WALL·E’s release, when the inflation rate for the Zimbabwe dollar reached a staggering 79,600,000,000 percent per month. At this point, a single US dollar was equivalent to 2,621,984,228 Zimbabwe dollars. The largest-denomination note printed during this time was the $100 trillion note, which makes Buy n Large’s $10 million bill seem like small change by comparison.
A $100 trillion bill from the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, showing some impressively pointy Futura.
WALL·E leaves the bank behind and continues his journey via the disused tracks of the BnL Transit monorail system. In the absence of working trains, these concrete tracks provide a convenient route through the middle of the deserted city.
WALL·E climbs an escalator to a BnL Transit monorail station.
Despite their association with aspirational futures, monorails have been failing to become a global mass-transit system for almost two hundred years. The first passenger monorail opened in 1825 in Cheshunt, England, primarily to transport bricks, though it was also utilized for transporting people, mostly for novelty purposes. Unlike the top-of-rail system seen in WALL·E, Cheshunt’s monorail consisted of carriages suspended beneath an overhead track, and was powered by a single horse.
The Cheshunt style of monorail—with suspended carriages hanging beneath a single rail—was also adopted by the Wuppertal Schwebebahn, which began operation along the Wupper River in Wuppertal, Germany, in 1901. The Wuppertal’s suspended system is still in operation today, carrying more than sixty-five thousand passengers on an average weekday.
A Wuppertal Schwebebahn monorail train arrives at the Werther Brücke station in Wuppertal, 1913.
The monorail seen in WALL·E is of the style popularized by Swedish entrepreneur Axel Wenner-Gren, whose prototype ALWEG (Axel Lennart Wenner-Gren) monorail system came to the attention of Walt Disney after a family visit to Wuppertal gave him monorail fever. Disney saw the potential for a monorail attraction at his new Disneyland theme park in California, and the Disneyland-ALWEG Monorail System opened in June 1959. The system remains in operation today (under the name Disneyland Monorail), and there are similar attractions at Disneyland Tokyo and Walt Disney World in Florida. In total, Disney monorails have transported more than one billion passengers into an aspirational transportational future.
The Disneyland-ALWEG Monorail System at Tomorrowland station, 1963. Photograph by Robert J. Boser, CC BY 3.0.
The Disneyland-ALWEG Monorail System at Disneyland Hotel station, 1963. Photograph by Robert J. Boser, CC BY 3.0.
It’s not entirely clear what US city WALL·E lives in, but the presence of a monorail network certainly positions it as a location that was once optimistic about the future. This mid-century futurism is borne out by other architectural features of the city, most notably a curved building seen among the billboards encountered earlier. This building is strongly reminiscent of the Space Needle observation tower in Seattle, Washington, which was built for the city’s 1962 World’s Fair, together with an ALWEG monorail system that is still in operation today.
Seattle’s ALWEG monorail passing in front of the city’s Space Needle, 2008. Both were built for Seattle’s 1962 World’s Fair. Photograph by Smart Destinations, CC BY-SA 2.0.
A remarkably space-needle-like building seen close to the monorail in WALL·E’s home city.
Near the monorail, WALL·E passes a promotional poster for himself, with the caption “Working to dig you out!” This poster has definite communist propaganda undertones, showing a stylized army of WALL·Es working together to build a brighter future. The implication of this design choice—that communist values are the solution to decades of rampant consumerism—is a pretty bold political statement for what is only the fourth minute of the movie.
Buy n Large poster for WALL·E robots, with the caption “Working to dig you out!”
The future to which these WALL·Es aspire is apparently just above and behind the viewer—a common trope for communist propaganda, where the aspirational group gaze is almost always in this direction.
Chinese communist propaganda poster with the caption “To go on a thousand ‘li’ march to temper a red heart.” A “li” is about 500 meters, so a thousand-li march is about 310 miles.
Soviet communist propaganda poster, with the caption “Let’s raise a generation utterly devoted to the cause of communism!” Designed by Victor Ivanov, 1947.
North Korean propaganda poster, with the caption “The party calls! To important construction!”
Indeed, this gaze is such a common trope that it became the primary styling of the promotional poster for 2014’s banned comedy movie The Interview, in which two Americans travel to North Korea to interview the country’s leader, Kim Jong-un. (The WALL·E poster’s bottom-edge caption, punctuated by an exclamation mark, is a recurring design feature in North Korean propaganda posters.)
Promotional poster for The Interview, with the Korean-language caption “Don’t believe these American bastards!”
This aspirational style is an example of socialist realist design, the officially sanctioned visual aesthetic of the Soviet Union, which positioned broad-shouldered, purposeful workers as the true heroes of the age. As a robot who is literally a rectangle, there is surely no worker more broad-shouldered and purposeful than our movie’s eponymous hero, WALL·E.
WALL·E’s self-promotional poster is also a fine example of Handel Gothic, one of the movie’s supporting typefaces. Originally designed in 1965 by Donald J. Handel, the font has become a mainstay of design futurism. (Indeed, it is quite possibly the originator of one of our rules for futuristic type: Make straight things curved.)
Handel Gothic Com Bold, from Linotype. Handel Gothic was originally designed in 1965 by Donald J. Handel for FotoStar.
My favorite use of the typeface in WALL·E occurs later in the movie, when we see the distinctly curved E of some Handel Gothic… on a handle. (I refuse to believe this is anything but a deliberate typographic joke.)
“Handle” Gothic.
Handel Gothic enjoyed a particular resurgence when the type family was expanded in the 1980s, and will be immediately familiar to anyone who visited EPCOT Center at Walt Disney World in Florida, which opened in 1982. (Later in this article, we’ll look in detail at the theme park, which is now named simply Epcot.) The original EPCOT Center logo was Handel Gothic all the way, making particularly good use of a lowercase n in “Center” to bring some extra curviness, and choosing a font variant with a curved leg in its R for consistency. (It also added letter joining and slicing for good futuristic measure.)
Original logo for the EPCOT Center theme park at Walt Disney World, Florida.
Handel Gothic will also be familiar to Star Trek fans, from its appearance in the credits for both Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1993–99) and Star Trek: Voyager (1995–2001).
Opening credits from the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode “Emissary,” showing some shiny metallic Handel Gothic (in this case, with a straight-legged R).
Opening credits from the Star Trek: Voyager episode “Unimatrix Zero: Part II,” showing Handel Gothic with a similarly straight-legged R.
The movie that made Handel Gothic synonymous with sci-fi, however, was almost certainly Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind, released in 1977. Close Encounters used the typeface for its theatrical poster and for its opening credits, with the very words “Close Encounters” offering not one but three opportunities to recognize Handel Gothic’s trademark E.
Opening credits to 1977’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
But back to WALL·E’s journey. Toward the end of his trek home, he passes many more WALL·E units, all of them rusted and dead. The sole remaining WALL·E happily cannibalizes a Caterpillar track from a nearby broken unit to replace his own damaged part, and motors onward with the new track in place.
It’s an easy detail to miss, but WALL·E’s home is a broken-down “BnL WALL·E Transport” vehicle, which may once have housed all the dead units he just passed. When he reverses himself into a WALL·E-size bin in a rotatable storage rack a few minutes later and rocks himself to sleep, his loneliness as the last robot on Earth is made all the more acute by the uninhabited bins around him, now filled with ordered trash.
Defunct WALL·E units litter the landscape, becoming part of the trash they once existed to clear.
A hulking WALL·E TRANSPORT, ironically rendered immobile by the piles of trash surrounding it.
WALL·E tucks himself into a transportation bin, as the last remaining unit still able to do so. Where there once would have been many more WALL·E’s, there is now simply ordered trash.
Before he climbs into bed, WALL·E retrieves his favorite VHS cassette from a nearby toaster, and pops it into a VCR. It turns out this is a beaten-up copy of Hello, Dolly!—1969’s awkwardly punctuated Jerry Herman musical. Delightfully, the typography of this cassette is taken directly from the movie’s 1991 VHS release, though the identity of its non-futuristic title font—half Century Schoolbook, half Benguiat Caslon—has sadly eluded my detective skills.
WALL-E’s much-watched copy of Hello, Dolly!
The front cover of 1991’s US VHS release of Hello, Dolly!
WALL·E watches his Hello, Dolly! cassette via a small, portable device that looks almost exactly like an Apple iPod Video. I say “almost,” because the real-world iPod Video had a smaller click wheel than the one seen in WALL·E, had white labels on its buttons, and did not support external playback from a VHS cassette player. Nonetheless, this iPod is just one example of many in WALL·E’s home that evoke nostalgia for gadgets past, reinforcing that WALL·E himself is the discarded, unwanted technology that humanity left behind.
WALL·E’s iPod, showing Hello, Dolly! on its LCD color screen.
To work around the tiny scale of his iPod’s screen, WALL·E uses a plastic Fresnel lens as a magnifying device to enlarge the image to several times its original size. In doing so, he follows a trend started in Terry Gilliam’s similarly dystopian Brazil, in which employees at the Ministry of Information Retrieval huddle around tiny CRT screens to watch westerns through Fresnel lenses when their boss isn’t looking.
WALL·E watches a movie on his iPod’s small screen through a rectangular Fresnel lens.
In 1985’s Brazil, Ministry of Information employees watch movies on a small CRT screen through a rectangular Fresnel lens.
WALL·E awakes from robotic sleep on day two of the movie, low on power and dynamism. The fact that his head is a big pair of binoculars gives a great opportunity for a visual gag, as we see him literally bleary-eyed before activating the zoom lock on first his left eye, then his right, to reveal an eye-test chart in the opposing rack.
From his bleary beginnings…
…WALL·E focuses first his left eye…
…and then his right, locking in on an eye test chart in the distance.
WALL·E’s binocular form is mimicked in the shape of his heads-up display (or HUD), which has the classic “two circles” shape used in many movies to indicate that we are looking from a character’s viewpoint through a pair of binoculars. This HUD raises an interesting question, however. Why does WALL·E have a heads-up display, with information overlaid on a video stream? A heads-up display really makes sense only if you are a human who has eyes; for a robot, any video input is combined with additional metadata from environmental sensors (such as direction, zoom, and power), and fed directly into the robot’s processor. Overlaying environmental information on a video stream implies that the robot has cameras that look at the world, and then more cameras that look at the augmented output of those cameras, which doesn’t make sense at all.
The answer, of course, is that WALL·E has a HUD because movie robots have HUDs, and movie robots have HUDs because they enable the viewer to visualize what the robots are thinking, even if it makes zero sense in technical reality. This trope began in 1973’s Westworld, whose final act shows us the world from the vantage point of Yul Brynner’s gun-slinging robot. Although Brynner’s HUD is not augmented with data, it is nonetheless the first use of computer-generated imagery in a feature film. Director Michael Crichton cuts several times from a real-world scene to the robot’s pixelated version of the same, including a thermal image when Brynner chases his prey in the movie’s final act.
A canyon in Westworld…
…and Yul Brynner’s pixellated view of the same.
Yul Brynner’s gunslinging robot tracks its prey with a thermal imaging interpretation of its video input.
Westworld’s “robot viewpoint” trope was codified by 1984’s The Terminator and 1987’s RoboCop, both of which augmented their HUDs with additional data and text. Following these two movies, a heads-up display pretty much became the de facto expectation for any on-screen robot whose motives need to be understood.
A HUD screen from the T-800 Terminator, in 1984’s The Terminator. Here, the T-800 is determining an appropriate auditory response to a question from its apartment’s superintendent.
A HUD screen from the OCP Crime Prevention Unit 001, in 1987’s RoboCop. Here, RoboCop’s visual tracking system is being put through its paces by detecting the location of a pen. (Note that RoboCop’s HUD has highly visible scan lines, to make sure we know we are watching a live video stream in a movie.)
Pixar’s robot HUDs tend to include the shape of the robot’s eye(s) within the heads-up display, to help us associate the HUD with the character it represents. The Incredibles’ Omnidroid predates WALL·E’s binoculars in this regard. Other WALL·E robots—M-O, SECUR-T, and EVE—also follow suit.
The Incredibles’ Omnidroid has a HUD that makes the droid’s desire for self-preservation clear via some on-screen Eurostile Oblique. It also demonstrates the Pixar trend (continued in WALL·E) for HUDs to match the shapes of their robots’ eye(s).
The SECUR-T sentry robot’s eye in WALL·E is explicitly a camera, as reinforced by a SLR (single-lens-reflex)-camera-like HUD when taking a CAUTION photo of WALL·E’s rogue robots.
EVE’s curved, lined HUD mirrors the curved, lined styling of her eyes and face.
M-O’s wide, flat eye-panel shape is mirrored in his wide, flat on-screen HUD display. This shape, of course, requires his HUD to use a certain wide, flat typeface for its informative text.
Pixar’s neatest variation on the robot HUD trope occurs all the way back in 1999’s Toy Story 2, where a plastic toy’s marketing gimmick (plus some clever camera framing) enables us to literally see through the eyes of the movie’s robotic bad guy.
Evil Emperor Zurg, arch-enemy of Buzz Lightyear, in 1999’s Toy Story 2.
As Buzz runs away from Zurg, a camera move brilliantly subverts the robot HUD trope…
…turning a plastic toy’s “LOOK HERE” scope…
…into the bad guy’s evil robot HUD…
…complete with ZURG VISION logo in Eurostile Bold Oblique.
There is one further question raised by WALL·E’s binocular HUD. How does his directional compass—seen at the top center of his HUD—continue to work when he is aboard the Axiom? Lots of planets may have a north, but the same is not true of spacecraft—north, south, east, and west make sense only when you’re on the surface of a sphere.
A detail from WALL·E’s binoculars when onboard the Axiom. This compass direction indicator, from the top of the viewport, updates as he rotates, despite the notable absence of a planet.
Day two (and act two) of WALL·E see a Buy n Large scout ship arrive on Earth, disrupting WALL·E’s routine. Most importantly, it introduces us to EVE, who is everything WALL·E is not. EVE’s shiny white design is technologically advanced; she’s the curvy iMac G4 to WALL·E’s boxy Mac 128K. Her design evokes sleek Apple products of the 2000s, with her head, in particular, highly reminiscent of a 2002 iMac G4’s base. Even her reboot sound is a futuristic take on Apple’s famous startup chime, whereas WALL·E’s post-charge chime is the version Apple introduced in 1998 and removed altogether in 2016.
WALL·E sees EVE for the first time, as she is released from her transporter pod to begin scanning Earth.
Side view of an iMac G4,
released in 2002, with an EVE-head-like base.
An Apple Macintosh 128k, released in 1984, with a WALL·E-like beige body. Photograph by Ian Muttoo, CC BY-SA 2.0.
EVE’s evocation of Apple product design is not entirely coincidental. In a 2008 interview with Fortune magazine, director Andrew Stanton stated: “I wanted EVE to be high-end technology—no expense spared—and I wanted it to be seamless and for the technology to be sort of hidden and subcutaneous. The more I started describing it, the more I realized I was pretty much describing the Apple playbook for design.” This led to a 2005 call to Steve Jobs—at that time, both owner of Pixar and CEO of Apple—which in turn led to Apple design head Jony Ive spending a day at the Pixar headquarters in Emeryville, consulting on the EVE prototype. (It is surely entirely coincidental that EVE’s wireless arms and hands are reminiscent of Apple’s wireless Magic Mouse, released the year after WALL·E.)
Eve’s wirelessly-connected fingers and hands, as seen in 2008’s WALL·E.
Apple’s wireless Magic Mouse, released in 2009. Photograph by Yutaka Tsutano, CC BY 2.0.
During a dust storm, WALL·E takes EVE back to the safety of his home, where he presents her with a small multicolored cube. In the three seconds the camera pans away for WALL·E to retrieve Hello, Dolly!, EVE solves the Rubik’s Cube and returns it to her astonished host.
WALL·E presents EVE with a Rubik’s Cube from his trash collection.
EVE’s cube-solving time would be impressive for a human; the current world record is 4.22 seconds, set by Feliks Zemdegs in May 2018. Sadly, because of the camera pan, we’ll never know if EVE broke the world record for a robot, which currently stands at a mind-boggling 0.637 seconds. This record was set in November 2016 by Sub1 Reloaded, a cube-solving robot built by German engineer Albert Beer. Six high-performance stepper motors turned the cube twenty-one times to complete the task, averaging just 0.03 seconds per rotation.
Sub1 Reloaded, the world-record-holding Rubik’s Cube robot, in November 2016.
Spare a thought, then, for poor WALL·E. His surprise at EVE’s accomplishment is understandable—he lacks color vision and has only three digits on each hand, which means that Rubik’s Cubes are really not his specialty. (There’s a reason Guinness doesn’t have a “fastest dog” Rubik’s Cube category.)
One other point of note: This scene is the only time the color green appears in WALL·E in a scene unrelated to a plant. While this breaks the movie’s careful color scripting, it’s worth it for a good gag.
All seems to be going well with WALL·E and EVE’s introductions, until they are rudely interrupted by EVE’s spotting a plant that WALL·E has excavated from the trash. She subsumes the plant, as per her “directive,” and enters hibernation mode. WALL·E’s attempts to wake her invariably end in comedic pain, though one of them does reveal EVE’s serial number, 051682, set in Handel Gothic. (I can’t help but wonder whether someone in Pixar’s art department was born on May 16, 1982.)
EVE’s serial number, seen on the inside of the door above, is 051682.
WALL·E gives up on reviving EVE and disconsolately returns to his trash-crushing routine. Shortly afterward, the Axiom’s scout ship returns to Earth and collects EVE to take her home. Desperate not to lose his new friend, WALL·E hitches a ride on the outside of the scout, causing him grief when the ship blasts through Earth’s surrounding satellite trash. As the satellites fall away, we see that WALL·E has a Soviet-era Sputnik 1 satellite on his head. This is impressive, especially given that Sputnik 1—the first man-made object to orbit Earth—burned up on reentry to Earth’s atmosphere in 1958.
As the Axiom scout ship breaks through Earth’s satellites…
…WALL·E is briefly left with Sputnik 1 on his head.
A replica of the Sputnik 1 satellite, showing its 58cm-diameter aluminum sphere and four spindly antennas
We see Sputnik 1 again later in the movie, as a model in Captain McCrea’s display cabinet. This model is accompanied by a NASA space shuttle launch/entry helmet, as worn by space shuttle astronauts between 1982 and 1986 during launch and return from space.
A space shuttle launch/entry helmet and a Sputnik model in Captain McCrea’s display case.
Payload specialist Sharon Christa McAuliffe is briefed on the space shuttle’s launch/entry helmet during training for the January 1986 launch of flight STS-51L.
This “retro space tech” theme can also be seen on Earth during EVE’s scan for plant life. After scanning a Toy Story Pizza Planet truck and a portable lavatory, EVE checks a rusting Apollo command module before slamming the door shut in disgust at its absence of plant-based life.
A BnL-branded Apollo-style command module in a pile of trash on Earth.
The Apollo 14 command module, nicknamed “Kitty Hawk,” at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Photograph by gordonplant, CC BY 2.0.
Showing recent space technology as trash or as museum pieces positions our personal experiences of space as archaic and quaint in comparison to the Axiom’s futuristic styling. This further reinforces WALL·E’s own obsolescence as a discarded piece of technology, and sets us up neatly for a transition to the shiny futurism of the Axiom.
The Axiom paints a vision of the future where every menial task, no matter how small, has a dedicated robot created expressly for the purpose. Like 2001: A Space Odyssey’s HAL and Alien’s MU/TH/UR, all these robots have cute acronyms to make them human-friendly.
SAUT-A (chefbot).
Microbe Obliterator, or M·O.
VAQ-M (vacuumbot), BUF-4 (bufferbot), and SPR-A (spraybot).
HAN-S (massagebot), and PR-T (beauticianbot).
SR-V (tennisbot).
BIRD-E (golfbot).
SECUR-T (stewardbot).
BURN-E (maintenancebot), shortly after being locked out of the Axiom by WALL·E and EVE.
GO-4 (gopherbot).
Waste Allocation Load Lifter · Axiom Class, or WALL·A.
NAN-E (nannybot).
Of particular note is VN-GO, the painterbot, whose acronym perpetuates a common yet incorrect pronunciation of Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh’s surname. (According to the BBC Pronunciation Unit, it is “van Gokh,” with the kh pronounced like the ch in the Scottish word loch.)
VN-GO (paintbot).
EVE’s acronym, sadly, is even worse. Her denomination as Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator could not be more inaccurate, given that her entire reason for existing is to evaluate vegetation on the planet Terra (as Earth is known in Latin). Presumably, her moniker was chosen for cuteness rather than linguistic accuracy—after all, this movie is about WALL·E and EVE, not WALL·E and TVE.
Also of note is TYP-E, a typingbot who is designed solely to press keys when someone approaches the elevator shaft to the captain’s quarters. TYP-E provides an excuse for one of the movie’s best visual gags—as a robot, he has a keyboard made entirely, of course, from ones and zeroes.
TYP-E (typingbot).
In a brief over-the-shoulder shot, we see that TYP-E’s keyboard is made entirely from keys labeled 1 and 0.
M-O’s cleaning colleagues (VAQ-M, SPR-A, and BUF-4) may bring back memories for fans of 1997’s The Fifth Element. In Luc Besson’s over-the-top vision of the future, evil industrialist Zorg demonstrates his own array of task-specific robots by dropping a glass tumbler on the floor to trigger their “lovely ballet.” As two sentrybots stand guard, a sweeperbot, a spraybot, and a bufferbot clean up his mess before returning to a nearby storage station.
The Fifth Element pre-empts WALL·E’s cleaning robots with its own sweeperbot…
…spraybot…
…and bufferbot.
The Axiom’s robots travel around the ship via their own dedicated corridors, separate from the craft’s passenger areas. These passenger areas are split into three classes—economy, coach, and elite—each of which has a distinct architectural style. The classes themselves do not play a functional role in the movie’s plot, but one has to wonder what they mean for the Axiom’s society. Are children born into the classes their ancestors originally purchased, as if into some kind of futuristic caste system? Would the Axiom have its own Titanic moment if a passenger from economy bumped hover chairs with someone from elite? One thing’s certain: The styling of each class is extremely useful for helping viewers orient themselves within the ship’s overall structure as the action moves back and forth along its length.
Our introduction to the passenger area starts with the economy deck, which is compact, angular, and concrete in texture and color. Its palette is deliberately sparse, rarely moving outside the Buy n Large blue, red, and white, and making extensive use of the corporation’s Futura Extra Bold Oblique.
The economy deck, as seen by WALL·E shortly after his arrival on the Axiom. Apart from a few hints of yellow, it follows the BnL corporate color scheme exclusively, with plenty of Futura Extra Bold Oblique.
The economy deck, as seen when Captain McCrea announces the Axiom’s 700-year anniversary.
The deck’s design is highly reminiscent of the interior of the Contemporary Tower at Walt Disney World Contemporary Resort, whose A-frame concrete-and-steel structure was so futuristic when it opened in 1971 that it even had a monorail running through the middle. (As anyone who has stayed at the Contemporary can attest, however, its rates can hardly be considered “economy.”)
Interior of the Contemporary Tower at Walt Disney World Contemporary Resort, as it looked in 2011. The blue raised platform on the right is a monorail station with a green-line monorail currently boarding. Photograph by Sam Howzit, CC BY 2.0.
The coach deck, unlike the economy deck, is curved, eclectic, and spacious, with brightly colored holo-ads scattered everywhere. It mimics Las Vegas’s Strip in gaudiness and style, with artificial neon colors used extensively and every sign encouraging Axiom passengers to spend more money. (How the ship’s financial economy continues to function after a seven-hundred-year flight continues to remain a mystery.)
The central mall area of the Axiom’s coach deck, with garish, over-saturated holographic ads and signs.
A section of the Las Vegas Strip at night, showing a similar palette of over-saturated cyan, purple, pink, and yellow hues, combined with omnipresent ads encouraging consumption. Photograph by rabbit75_ist.
The ceiling of the coach deck is a gigantic animated screen that can switch between day and night, complete with a BnL-branded sun or moon. The ceiling’s relationship to actual time is somewhat tenuous, as we see when Captain McCrea winds the sky back from 12:30 p.m. to 9:30 a.m. in order to make his morning announcements. In this regard, the ceiling is essentially an amalgam of two Las Vegas landmarks: the painted cloud ceilings of the Forum indoor arcade at Caesars Palace, whose lighting ebbs and changes without ever making it nighttime enough for you to want to stop buying things, and the four-block-long overhead screen of the Fremont Street Experience—the world’s largest video screen—whose 12.5 million LEDs illuminate Vegas partygoers every night. The result is an entirely fake sky for the Axiom’s population, allowing finely tuned control over their artificial environment.
The coach deck’s sky dome ceiling, transitioning from midday to early morning.
The painted, vaulted ceiling of the Forum Shops arcade at Caesars Palace, Las Vegas. Photograph by anokarina, CC BY-SA 2.0.
The four-block-long LED ceiling of the Fremont Street Experience, Las Vegas. Photograph by dconvertini, CC BY-SA 2.0.
The coach deck leads to the elite deck, whose styling resembles that of a high-class lido or spa. Despite their very different palettes, the coach and elite decks share a curved, futuristic environmental styling that unifies their overall architecture. According to production designer Ralph Eggleston, the architecture of this shared area is inspired by the work of architect Santiago Calatrava, whose signature curved supports and arches can be seen throughout both decks’ central concourse.
Close-up of the arched supports in the central coach deck plaza.
Transitional area between the coach and elite decks, showing arched supports around the central transportation line.
Café Calatrava, Milwaukee Art Museum, Wisconsin. Designed by Santiago Calatrava, completed in 2001. Photograph by Peter Alfred Hess, CC BY 2.0.
Concourse and roof supports, Lyon–Saint-Exupéry Airport Railway Station, Colombier-Saugnieu, France. Designed by Santiago Calatrava, completed in 1994. Photograph by Ingolf, CC BY-SA 2.0.
An arched glass half-dome in the coach deck’s food court.
Close-up of the base of the captain’s control tower, showing its arched, glass-fronted entrance.
Exterior detail, Milwaukee Art Museum, Wisconsin. Designed by Santiago Calatrava, completed in 2001. Photograph by joevare, CC BY-ND 2.0.
Arched exterior of the Adán Martín Auditorio de Tenerife, Santa Cruz de Tenerife. Designed by Santiago Calatrava, completed in 2003. Photograph by Rick Ligthelm, CC BY 2.0.
The other main influence for the Axiom’s architecture is the design of the Tomorrowland area of Disneyland, in California. According to production designer Ralph Eggleston, during the movie’s production WALL·E’s design team visited an exhibition of Tomorrowland concept art and took inspiration from the designs therein. Perhaps the most obvious of these influences is the presence of a PeopleMover transportation system running through the middle of the club and elite decks, in a style very similar to the PeopleMover at Tomorrowland. (Do check out DaveLandWeb’s fantastic PeopleMover photo page for some great examples of the original in action.)
The club deck’s circular PeopleMover loading area.
Raised PeopleMover tracks running along the length of the club deck.
The evolution of Disney’s PeopleMover concept began with the 1964–65 New York World’s Fair, for which the Ford Motor Company asked Disney to design an attraction to compete with General Motors’ Futurama II exhibit. The resulting Magic Skyway gave fairgoers an opportunity to ride in a driverless Ford convertible—including the just-launched Ford Mustang—through a diorama that transported them from prehistoric times to a futuristic space city.
Following its success at the World’s Fair, the traction system behind Magic Skyway was adapted into a new feature for Tomorrowland’s 1967 relaunch. The new attraction, known as the WEDway PeopleMover, enabled Walter Elias Disney to follow Axel Lennart Wenner-Gren (of ALWEG monorail fame) in naming a futuristic transportation mechanism with his initials. It also provided an ideal inspiration for the Axiom’s central transport system.
The Axiom’s PeopleMover has much in common with its WEDway counterpart. Both are focused on a main circular loading area in the heart of a central plaza, with a long, straight stretch of track extending away from the loading deck. Both give passengers a tantalizing view of surrounding attractions as they are transported from one area to another. Indeed, I am sure Walt Disney would have been delighted to see his dream of future transportation integrated into the Axiom’s space-age environment, especially given that Disneyland’s PeopleMover was a prototype for Walt’s grander vision of futuristic living. Walt planned to build a larger PeopleMover installation as part of his Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow, or EPCOT—a new and futuristic city to be created from scratch at his planned Disney World Resort in Florida.
In October 1966, Walt recorded a short film pitching his “Florida Project” to industrialists and legislators, including a detailed description of EPCOT’s transportation system. In this new city, cars and trucks were to be pushed underground, with the community’s twenty thousand residents instead traveling by WEDway and monorail to work, play, and socialize. The concept images below from Walt’s EPCOT film give an idea of just how much imagination the creative brains at WED Enterprises applied, under Walt’s careful guidance, to everyday living challenges.
EPCOT’s transportation was planned on a radial system, as this schematic from Walt’s EPCOT film demonstrates. City residents use a series of PeopleMover systems (shown here as light blue spokes) to travel from their homes on the outskirts of the city to the central transport hub. Should they need to travel to other parts of Disney World, they then transfer to a high-speed monorail system (shown here in red).
Concept art showing one half of EPCOT’s main transportation lobby. The longer-distance monorail service (right) runs through the center of the lobby, with shorter-distance WEDway PeopleMover services departing from the edges of the lobby (left). Cars and trucks are pushed underground into lower levels of the city’s transportation network (bottom).
Concept art from the EPCOT film, showing a PeopleMover and Monorail passing through the city’s central shopping district.
In Walt’s EPCOT proposal, the city’s WEDway PeopleMovers (shown here as light blue spokes) transport residents through the city’s greenbelt, past sports facilities and schools…
…to residential areas in the city’s suburban districts, complete with footpaths and children’s play areas.
Tragically, Walt Disney died less than two months after his EPCOT introduction was filmed, passing away before the pitch was screened and before New Tomorrowland opened to the public. His ambitious vision of a prototype community did not become a reality, but its name lives on in the Epcot theme park (formerly “EPCOT Center”) at Walt Disney World in Florida—although the eventual EPCOT park became more of a permanent World’s Fair than a real-life city of the future. The WEDway PeopleMover did not realize its potential, either: The Disneyland attraction closed in 1995, to be replaced by the faster (but short-lived) Rocket Rods ride, which itself closed in 2001.
Disneyland park-goers can still see the PeopleMover’s abandoned tracks snaking through Tomorrowland, displaying curved, arched supports that Santiago Calatrava would surely approve of. (Thankfully, a PeopleMover can still be experienced at the Magic Kingdom park at the Walt Disney World Resort in Florida, where the Tomorrowland Transit Authority PeopleMover continues to provide a leisurely tour of nearby attractions.)
An overhead section of the now-disused PeopleMover track in Tomorrowland, seen in 2009. Photograph by Loren Javier, CC BY-ND 2.0.
Of course, the PeopleMover also lives on via the Axiom, whose reimagining of the concept is almost a microcosm of Walt’s vision for EPCOT. Aboard the Axiom, it’s a PeopleMover (not a monorail) that fulfills the role of high-speed arterial transport, with individual BnL hover chairs completing the “final mile” of the journey via preset illuminated paths (blue for humans, white for robots, red for stewardbots). It may not match the scale of Disney’s EPCOT dream, but it’s nonetheless fitting that Walt’s vision of a transportational future made the trip into space.
Illuminated paths provide hover-chair routes throughout the Axiom…
…defining a “final mile” pathway to each passenger’s room. Here, the normally blue “human” pathways have turned bright green to indicate that plant life has been found and the Axiom is preparing to return to Earth.
During WALL·E’s tour of the passenger decks, we discover that the Axiom’s computer is voiced by none other than Alien’s Ellen Ripley. Casting Sigourney Weaver as the disembodied voice of a space-based computer is clearly ironic, especially given her experience with such voices in Alien and Aliens. WALL·E ups the irony by having Weaver narrate not one but two scenes that would feel all too familiar to her xenomorph-hunting counterpart, triggering bonus space-peril associations for Alien fans. (Weaver also plays a disembodied voice in Andrew Stanton’s Finding Dory, aping her narration of nature documentaries.)
“Twenty seconds to self-destruct,” says Ripley, as WALL·E tries in vain to stop his LifePod’s self-destruct sequence.
Ripley knows what she’s talking about—she was counted down to self-destruction herself in Alien.
“Activating airlock disposal,” says Ripley, as EVE and WALL·E try to avoid being sucked out of an industrial-sized airlock…
…with spinning red lights around the sides.
Ripley knows what she’s talking about—she narrowly avoided airlock doom herself in Aliens.
Alien and Aliens are not the only sci-fi movies to get a nod from WALL·E. On the Axiom bridge, we meet AUTO, the ship’s autopilot robot. It might be hard to believe just by looking at him, but AUTO is actually an Evil Space-Based Computer. His design is clearly influenced by a certain other ESBC—that central red eye is a direct reference to 2001: A Space Odyssey’s HAL, giving an immediate signal that this robot is not to be trusted.
AUTO, the Axiom autopilot. Aspects of his design may be familiar to those of you who have read the 2001 article.
HAL, the Discovery One autopilot. Aspects of his design may be familiar to those of you who are reading this WALL·E article.
AUTO’s physical similarity to HAL gives him a practical similarity, too. On the rare occasions we see the world from AUTO’s vantage point, we get an extreme fish-eye view of the surrounding area, just as we did for HAL in 2001. WALL·E combines HAL’s fish-eye view with The Terminator’s red HUD hue, making AUTO’s evil intent doubly clear to any discerning fan of sci-fi.
AUTO’s fish-eye view, from WALL·E.
HAL’s fish-eye view, from 2001: A Space Odyssey.
AUTO and HAL belong to a long-standing tradition of sci-fi automata whose glowing red eye(s) give away their evil nature. They really are everywhere in sci-fi movies—from the Model 101 in The Terminator, via the replicants in Blade Runner, to the evil wriggly thing inserted into Neo’s belly button in The Matrix.
After having all of its skin burnt off in a fire, The Terminator’s T-800 displays some impressive evil red eyes.
The evil wriggly thing that works its way into Neo’s belly in The Matrix has a trademark evil red eye.
The sentinels in The Matrix take evil red eyes to a whole new level.
That red glow has its benefits, however. You can always tell when an evil robot has been finally defeated from the fact that its red eye(s) slowly fade to black. The Terminator’s T-800, The Matrix’s wriggly thing, and WALL·E’s AUTO all follow this trope when deactivated.
As The Terminator’s T-800 is squished beneath the sheets of an industrial steel press, its evil red eye fades slowly to black.
After removing the wriggly thing from Neo’s belly, Trinity discards it in the rain, where its evil red eye fades slowly to black.
After switching the Axiom from autopilot to manual control, AUTO’s evil red eye fades slowly to black.
AUTO may look like the movie’s bad guy, but his actions are simply an example of artificial intelligence following its programming too literally. To understand his motives, we must remember that BnL’s original plan was for its star liners to return to Earth as soon as an EVE probe found proof that life was once more sustainable. Five years after their departure, however, BnL autopilots were sent a directive by CEO Shelby Forthright telling them to keep their craft in space indefinitely, because the cleanup process on Earth was not going to succeed. Six hundred and ninety-five years later, with no subsequent instructions to the contrary, AUTO is simply following this command to the letter, blocking any and all attempts to return to Earth.
In this regard, AUTO is eerily similar to 2001’s HAL, whose murderous tendencies aboard the Discovery were similarly driven by an inability to reconcile a contradiction in his programming. In the movie’s sequel, 2010: The Year We Make Contact, we learn that the basic purpose of HAL’s design was “the accurate processing of information without distortion or concealment.” We also discover that HAL was instructed (via Directive NSD 342/23) to lie to Dave and Frank about the real reason for the Discovery’s mission. After lip-reading that they planned to disconnect him, HAL determined that the only logical way for him to both keep processing and avoid lying was for Dave and Frank to die.
AUTO’s own instruction is Directive A113, whose numbering may sound familiar to Pixar fans. “A113” appears in every Pixar film, from a family license plate in Toy Story to an underwater camera model in Finding Nemo. (Indeed, it’s even in Brave, where the roman numerals ACXIII appear carved just above the front door of a witch’s hut.) The reason for its repeated inclusion is that room A1-13 was the classroom for the Character Animation Program at the California Institute of the Arts, where Pixar alumni John Lasseter, Pete Docter, and Andrew Stanton studied. (This explains why it’s also the number on the door of Riley’s classroom in Inside Out, and on the Scaring 101 classroom door in Monsters University.) WALL·E may be its highest-profile outing, but it’s there in every Pixar movie if you keep your eyes peeled.
AUTO triggers Directive A113.
The majority of WALL·E’s robots are voiced by Ben Burtt, the Academy Award-winning sound designer and creator of R2D2’s bleeps. AUTO’s voice, however, is provided by MacInTalk, a speech synthesis technology first used to announce the Apple Macintosh computer in January 1984. (You may also recognize MacInTalk as the lead vocalist on Radiohead’s “Fitter Happier,” from 1997’s OK Computer album.)
MacInTalk’s inclusion in WALL·E makes it one of only two Apple voice synthesis technologies to star in a feature film; the other is Siri, who provides the voice for ’Puter, Batman’s high-tech assistant in The LEGO Batman Movie.
“‘Puter”, Batman’s Siri-based computer assistant, from The LEGO Batman Movie. (The Batmobile’s interfaces are, perhaps inevitably, set in Eurostile Bold.)
Despite the technology’s age, I’m happy to report that MacInTalk voices still ship with macOS today. If you’d like to turn your Mac into an Evil Space-Based Computer, simply open the System Preferences application, select Accessibility and then Speech, and enable the “Ralph” system voice.
In addition to AUTO, there are two more nods to 2001: A Space Odyssey in WALL·E, both of which take advantage of preexisting associations for dramatic or comedic effect. The first is WALL·E’s brief escapade in a LifePod, the design of which seems clearly inspired by 2001’s EVA pods. That iconic ball-like shape immediately triggers an association with interstellar peril, which WALL·E soon discovers is entirely justified.
One of the Discovery’s EVA pods is activated in 2001: A Space Odyssey.
One of the Axiom’s LifePods is activated in WALL·E.
The pod design in 2001 has many similarities with its WALL·E counterpart…
…though it does not (as far as we know) include an optional satellite dish, parachute, flare set, or inflatable life raft.
The second 2001 reference is a knowing usage of Richard Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra, when Captain McCrea becomes the first human to stand up and walk in possibly hundreds of years. It’s an appropriate enough use of the music—2001’s monoliths oversee (and supposedly trigger) several leaps in mankind’s evolution, so it’s entirely valid to hear those famous chords when the captain makes his first steps (even though this is technically a regression, not an evolution).
Determined to tackle the mutinous AUTO, Captain McCrea steadies himself…
…and drags himself to his feet, to the tune of Also sprach Zarathustra.
Of course, WALL·E is not alone in riffing on Strauss’s classic melody. It is similarly parodied in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (as a 2001 monolith turns into a bar of chocolate) and Zoolander (as Hansel considers smashing Mugatu’s iMac with a nearby bone). If that’s not enough, it’s also in Pixar’s Toy Story 2 and Cars 3, plus other animated movies including Kung Fu Panda 3, The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists!, and The Simpsons Movie. On the live-action front, it’s in Man on the Moon, Catch-22, Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb, Clueless, Turner & Hooch, and Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle, to mention just a few.
In 2005’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Willy Wonka transports a bar of chocolate via television to the tune of Also sprach Zarathustra…
…transforming 2001’s famous monolith into a bar of Wonka Nutty Crunch Surprise.
In 2001’s Zoolander, non-evolved male models Derek Zoolander and Hansel smack an iMac chimpanzee-style to the tune of Also sprach Zarathustra…
…before Hansel grabs a handy bone to use as a tool.
Despite AUTO’s best efforts, McCrea manages to switch him to MANUAL and sets the Axiom on a hyperjump trajectory back to Earth. The hyperjump looks exactly like you’d expect, which is exactly like the USS Enterprise engaging warp drive in Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
The Axiom makes a hyperjump toward Earth in WALL·E.
The Enterprise engages warp drive toward “thataway” in Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
Once again, WALL·E is sneakily using prior sci-fi art as a shortcut, re-creating familiar effects so that the Axiom’s quick journey home can be explained without exposition. (It might also account for why everyone aboard the Axiom experiences a brief stint of The Motion Picture’s wormhole effect during the jump.)
The Enterprise bridge goes all “wormhole effect” when it engages warp speed while still within the solar system.
EVE and WALL·E go all “wormhole effect” when the Axiom hyperjumps back to Earth.
As these homages show, WALL·E is not afraid to borrow from its predecessors to gain some free sci-fi association. Indeed, such references are celebrated and elevated, drawing on the production team’s clear fondness for vintage sci-fi to create a movie that is both a love letter to the classics and a worthy addition to the list. WALL·E capitalizes on our existing associations with the future to communicate complex plot points and motives with minimal dialogue and text. It is, to my mind, Pixar’s most realistic vision of an internally consistent world, despite the polar opposites of its Earth- and space-based environments. It’s political and satirical, representing utopia and dystopia with enough humor to poke fun at the downsides of both. In short, WALL·E envisages a future that could so easily be bleak and pessimistic—but is instead inspired by the naïveté of its inhuman heroes to re-create the optimism that took man into space in the first place.
Wow! That was good, wasn’t it? What an amazing article! So amazing, in fact, that you probably want to impulse-buy the Typeset in the Future book it comes from, right this very second. Here are some convenient links to buy it from Amazon or Barnes and Noble, or you can head down to your local bookstore (which it is much harder for me to link to) when the book is released on December 11 2018.
The book also includes an interview with Pixar designers Ralph Eggleston and Craig Foster about the making of WALL·E, plus six more equally amazing movie studies, alongside interviews with Paul Verhoeven (Total Recall) and Mike Okuda (Star Trek). You can read more about it here if for some reason you’re still not convinced.
– Dave Addey
Categories: 2000s, Eurostile
22 thoughts on “WALL·E”
Tulse says:
While the red eye of AUTO is certainly inspired by HAL, the white shiny plastic body and black metal frame seems very reminiscent of another malevolent AI, GLaDOS from the Portal computer games (first released in 2007, a year before WALL·E). The “Anger Core” in that game has the same “red eye surrounded by a white plastic sphere with black metal scaffolding” (http://ru.halflife.wikia.com/wiki/Файл:GLaDOS%27_Emotion_Core_attached.jpg). (The gun turrets in the game have a similar aesthetic [https://www.gamingheads.com/portal-2-turret-statue.html].)
A tremendous article as always! (My only wish would be for more frequent pieces, but I am sure that such detailed research and clever writing is not easy to produce.)
Reblogged this on Annabelle's Reading Den.
Paul D. says:
“…after all, this movie is about WALL·E and EVE, not WALL·E and TVE.”
Underrated pun right there.
Dave Addey says:
Thank you. I cannot begin to describe how much this pun amused me when I wrote that section.
krupk4 says:
I believe that HUD displays in robots are made for people developing a robot. So they can see exactly what the robot is doing and debug it.
Great article anyway, buying the book right now.
ℑℌ (@JackHagley) says:
Sigourney Weaver was also in Galaxy Quest. Her character’s main job on the show within the movie is to repeat what the on-board computer says.
Ross Burton says:
I’d usually hate to be a pedant but this blog is pretty much 50% awesome pedantry, so I’ll point out that SECUR-T’s HUD is more rangefinder than SLR. The faded circles are a focus aid using some incredibly clever optics that I still don’t understand.
fraencko says:
Thanks for the writeup! Just a little correction: Werther Brücke is actually a Schwebebahn station in the city of Wuppertal, formerly Barmen, and not in Cologne.
Oops – not quite sure how I got that so spectacularly wrong. I mean, the clue’s kinda in the name… Thanks for the spot – fixed!
Lukas Grebe says:
The Wuppertaler Schwebebahn “hovers”(german:schwebt) over the river called Wupper in the city of Wuppertal (wupper vally) – hence the name.
The city of cologne is about 60km away from wuppertal on Rhine river.
Love the article but reading about the Wuppertaler hover train located in Cologne made me jump to the bottom to comment. 😊. Off to read the rest!
Fixed – thank you!
ASD says:
Wuppertal is a city in Germany, where the Wuppertaler Schwebebahn is located. Cologne does not have a Schwebebahn, and the depicted station is most certainly within Wuppertal.
Ach, that’s a research fail on my part. Fixed. Thank you!
dominictarget says:
The Wuppertal Schwebebahn is in Wuppertal, which is a city of 300k inhabitants, and not in Cologne.
Thank you – fixed!
Maybe i missed it… are all Hud Fonts Handel Gothic?
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jock123 says:
Just out of interest, there was something odd-looking about the Costco logo use of Futura Bold Oblique, so I used Illustrator to overlay the graphic used above; I found that the characters had been scaled horizontally by 120%, and the “T” had been made even more oblique, by individually shearing it a further 7º.
Undermatic says:
Super amazing post, really inspiring ❤
Howard Bowers says:
While Epcot Center’s typeface has nods to Handel Gothic, it’s a distinct face named “World Bold,” which was designed by Deborah Lord. More info here: http://www.rudyanddebbie.com/epcot.html
Hi Howard! Thanks for the info and link. I’m pretty sure that the EPCOT Center logo itself is Handel Gothic – the N and R have different shapes to World Bold, and the C and E are just a bit curvier, suggesting Handel is more likely. I hadn’t discovered World Bold before, however, and it’s a great design – thank you for introducing it to me!
David Kunkel says:
Regarding the headline on the Hello Dolly VHS tape, up until the 90s there were large type setting houses in every major city, and most of them maintain their own library of headline font film strips to be used in their photo-typositor (R) machine.
Because of a quirk of copyright law, typefaces cannot be trademarked, only their names. So these headline type sets, which were usually limited to numbers, alphabets and punctuation only, often had one-off names and slight variations from other people’s design work sufficient to establish a distinction only.
If I’m correct, that’s why you may never find the name of that typeface: it only exists in one company’s catalog, and that company is long since defunct.
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Your book is well overdue!
We have all, at one time or another, forgotten to return a borrowed book, or hung on to one lent to us for longer than we ought. Indeed, despite the best of intentions all manner of tomes and texts may at times holiday among our own collections for weeks, months or even years. Such is the case with the 18th century manuscript which resides now in the archives of the National Folklore Collection, University College Dublin, and which eventually found a home there after some years away on a sojourn among the books of a noted Celtic scholar.
The look you get when your book is overdue by 50 plus years!
The scholar, as a young student visiting his father in the 1950s, spent some time in the library of a church nearby, and, having become interested in an 18th century manuscript held there, was granted permission by the librarian to borrow it in order to catalogue its contents. While it was kept quite safe among his own personal collection of books for years thereafter, it was never catalogued, being returned in 2003 to the congregation from which it was borrowed, who later donated it to the National Folklore Collection, where it now resides.
The manuscript in question consists of two separate texts bound together: a version of Geoffrey Keating’s Foras Feasa ar Éireann (‘History of Ireland’) and the earliest known copy of Leabhar Gearr na Pailíse (‘The Short Book of Pallas’). Leabhar Gearr na Pailíse (named from the townland of Pallas which lies between Listowel and Tralee in county Kerry) is a seventeenth century history of Munster (the original of which is lost) attributed to one Eugenius Carti (Eóghan Mac Carthaigh) and is thought to have been written in 1648, being influenced in style by Geoffrey Keating’s aforementioned History of Ireland, which was completed in 1634.
Page from manuscript copy of ‘Foras Feasa ar Éirinn’ (A History of Ireland, by Seathrún Céitinn (Geoffrey Keating) in National Folklore Collection.
These two texts appear to have been kept together as a single unit by their first owner since the 18th century. While Leabhar Gearr na Pailíse is the work of one scribe, this copy of Foras Feasa ar Éireann bears the mark of many hands, none of which are named in the text. It is perhaps no surprise that Keating’s History of Ireland should bear the signs of many hands, for as Associate Professor Meidhbhín Ní Urdail has noted in Seoda Scripte (the pamphlet accompanying the exhibition of Ireland’s Manuscript heritage currently displayed at UCD Special Collections), it was one of the most sought after works for transcription by scribes of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
The manuscript is 29cm in height, 20cm wide, 5.5cm thick and consists of four hundred and eight leaves. Barring the presence of minor decoration in the form of ribbon-like capitals, the manuscript is largely plain and unadorned, being written in Gaelic script (with Latin words appearing in an Italic hand). While there is no pricking or ruling (a practice involving the creation of a template upon which scribes could work with accuracy in coherency) visible on the manuscript, catchwords (written at the foot of a page, and which anticipate the first word of the next page to assist in binding) are visible throughout the text.
Pages from ‘Leabhar Gearr na Pailíse’ held in the National Folklore Collection.
‘Leabhar Gearr na Pailíse’
While of great value for scholars of Irish, palaeography and historiography, one particular page in Foras Feasa ar Éireann holds a particular interest for the folklorist, as Keating’s text provides us with the one of the earliest recorded instances of the Irish language word meaning ‘traditional oral instruction’ and which we use today as a cognate of the English language term folklore, namely, béaloideas. The word in question appears on page 125 of Foras Feasa ar Éireann:
Excerpt from ‘Foras Feasa ar Éireann’ showing one of the earliest uses of the word ‘béaloideas’.
Agus gidhbé adéaradh nách raibh Fionn ann, ní fíor do é. Oir atáid againn, re suidheamh na Féinne do bheith ann, na trí neithe lé ndéarbhtha fírinne gach staire san mbith leath amuigh don Bhíobla, mar atá beal oideas na sean, seannscríbhne agus séadchomharthaí da ngorthear a Laidean Monumenta. Óir atámaoid da chlos ó bhéal go béal go raibhe Fionn agus an Fhian ann, agus fós atáid scríbhne go foirleathan ag admháil, agus dá fhaisnéis.
‘And whoever should say that Fionn and the Fian never existed would not be stating truth. For, to prove that the Fian existed we have the three things that prove the truth of every history in the world except the Bible, namely, oral tradition of the ancients, old documents, and antique remains, called in Latin Monumenta. For it has been delivered to us from mouth to mouth that Fionn and the Fian existed; and, moreover, there are numerous documents that testify to this.’
The literal meaning of béaloideas is oral instruction, being a compound of the Old Irish bél (meaning mouth) and Old Irish aittes meaning (teaching). It appears in the work of 18th century lexicographers from 1732 onwards, though it may have been Keating himself who coined the term, in a curious interplay of both the oral and the written in the Irish tradition. The copy of Leabhar Gearr na Pailíse and Foras Feasa ar Éireann held at the archives of the National Folklore Collection offers scholars a chance to explore that tradition in greater detail, though as well know, finding the time to do so can pose another challenge altogether!
Leabhar Gearr na Pailíse / Foras Feasa ar Éireann, The National Folklore Collection, University College Dublin
Nic Úrdail, Méidhbhín: ‘Cath Cluana Tarbh: The Battle of Clontarf’ in Irish Texts Society Volume 64 (2011)
Nic Úrdail, Méidhbhín: Seoda Scripte – A Glimpse Into Ireland’s Manuscript Heritage UCD Library (2018)
Ó hÓgáin, Dáithí: ‘Béaloideas – Notes on the History of a Word’ in Béaloideas 70 (2002)
Ó Murchú, Liam P.: Cath Cluana Tarbh, ‘The Battle of Clontarf’ in Zeitschrifte für Celtische Philologie Volume 61, Issue 1 (2014)
Tagged: 'History of Ireland', 'The Short Book of Pallas', aittes, béaloideas, Eóghan Mac Carthaigh, Eugenius Carti, Foras Feasa Ar Éirinn, Gaelic scholars, Geoffrey Keating, histiography, Irish language, Irish manuscripts, Leabhar Gearr na Pailíse, librarians, manuscripts, Meidhbhín Ní Úrdail, National Folklore Collection, overdue books, palaeography, Seoda Scripte, UCD Library, UCD Special Collections
Should I see a doctor?
The Beauty of Greek Vases
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Virginia Oral Health Coalition is now Virginia Health Catalyst! Learn more about the next phase of our work.
Legislative Action Day
Regional Oral Health Alliances
Statewide Workgroups
Oral Health Integration
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Virginia Oral Health Summit
Introducing Virginia Health Catalyst: The Intersection of Overall Health and Oral Health
By Sarah Bedard Holland | August 21, 2019
I’m excited to announce the next era of the Virginia Oral Health Coalition - Virginia Health Catalyst. This is a pivotal moment for our work, and the decision to change our name to Virginia Health Catalyst came from collaborative and thoughtful discussions with our board, staff, and partners. As we began to update our strategic plan a year ago, we asked ourselves what we need to do better and differently to meet our mission to ensure all Virginians have equitable access to comprehensive health care that includes oral health. Our new name reflects our collective understanding that good oral health doesn’t occur in a vacuum; to improve the overall health of Virginians, we must address the clinical, environmental, and social factors that impact a person’s health.
Our strategic vision for comprehensive health care that includes oral health
Our focus remains oral health; it is our expertise and is at the heart of our programs and advocacy efforts. To meet our mission as Virginia Health Catalyst, we are introducing a strategic framework that creates a foundation for comprehensive health care based on four interconnected systems, or pillars: public health, policy, clinical and community care, and public awareness.
The pillars will guide our work and shape the lens through which we can advance health in the Commonwealth:
Public Health: Community, environmental, and social factors equitably contribute to improved oral and overall health.
Policy: Laws, policies, and regulations at all levels of government support positive oral and overall health outcomes and health equity.
Clinical and Community Care: Care provided by all health care providers and lay health workers including clinicians, community health workers, and home visitors, is equitable, high-quality, coordinated, and integrated.
Public Awareness: Awareness of the importance of comprehensive health and the integral relationship between oral and overall health informs all aspects of the health care system.
Water fluoridation is a great example of how all four pillars work together to improve health. We know community water fluoridation is one of the greatest public health achievements of the 20th century and a cost-effective way to improve health outcomes. Some Virginians, however, believe tap water is unsafe or live in a locality that does not fluoridate its public water. To ensure everyone in Virginia can access fluoridated tap water and trust its safety, Virginia Health Catalyst works with partners to ensure that state and local policy supports fluoridation, and partners have the resources and tool to advocate for water safety and equitable infrastructure improvements and promote water as a substitute for sugar sweetened beverages. We also engage clinical and community care partners to build public awareness around the benefits of fluoridated water and address individual fears or concerns.
Our evolution to Virginia Health Catalyst
Together we’ve accomplished great things to improve health in Virginia; from adding a comprehensive dental benefit for pregnant women enrolled in Medicaid, to protecting fluoridated water in communities across the Commonwealth and enabling clinicians and lay health professionals to provide integrated care to those they serve. These accomplishments contributed to a paradigm shift in the way people think and talk about oral health. Our progress makes all of us at Virginia Health Catalyst even more excited for what lies ahead.
What you can expect from Virginia Health Catalyst
Our core programs, like the regional oral health alliances, learning collaboratives, and the community water fluoridation rapid response team remain integral to our work. As Virginia Health Catalyst, we’ll bring a stronger focus on public health issues that impact individual and population health to all of our programs and advocacy efforts.
Beginning today, you’ll find new resources on our website, such as our white papers elevating the importance of fluoridated tap water and health integration, that are designed to help our partners advocate, and implement equitable comprehensive health care. You can expect an updated print and online integration toolkit in early October. If you haven’t already, I encourage you to join our email list to stay up-to-date on our latest resources and events.
I can’t think of a better way to celebrate our work as Virginia Health Catalyst than with our Virginia Oral Health Summit on November 7 - I hope you will join us for this annual event.
As we move forward as Virginia Health Catalyst, I encourage partners, both new and existing, to reach out to me directly with questions, concerns, or opportunities to partner more closely moving forward. We would not be where we are today without our incredible partners, and through collaboration across Virginia we can create comprehensive health care for all.
Here’s to an exciting future as Virginia Health Catalyst!
Posted in Home Page News
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Read Next: China Box Office: Enduring 'Sheep' Leads Weekend, as Netflix's 'Extinction' Makes Theatrical Debut
April 29, 2013 2:53PM PT
Relativity Hires Richard Potter As Exec VP
Veteran Exec overseeing development and production
Relativity Media has hired veteran executive and screenwriter Richard Potter as exec VP of production and development.
Potter will report to president Tucker Tooley and president of production Robbie Brenner. He will oversee creative development and production of features.
Potter was a screenwriter on “Diary of a Car Salesman,” “The Most Haunted House in England” and a remake of “The Boys from Brazil.” Before that, he was a senior VP at Miramax as head of the story department of Dimension Films, where he oversaw “Scream,” “Scream 2,” “The Faculty” and “Nightwatch.”
Relativity’s upcoming slate includes “Paranoia” (opening Aug. 16), Luc Besson’s “Malavita” (Sept. 20), “Out of the Furnace” (Oct. 4), “Don Jon” (Oct. 18) and “Free Birds” (Nov. 1). Relativity is also in production on the thriller “Three Days to Kill” with EuropaCorp.
Antoinette Kalaj
Daniel Ponickly
Ed Richards
Relativity Television
Richard Black
Stacey Mooradian
Tucker Tooley
Vicki Zhao
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Swear Word List
Vulgarities» Swear words. English terms that are used to swear, such as to express strong anger or frustration. Appendix:Fictional English curse words. We had to end off our list of English curse words with this idiosyncratic one. The word “sav” is short for saveloy, or a red, seasoned sausage. Warning: This list of dirty words from 10 different languages comes with an There's something compelling about learning swear words in another language.
Thanks to your submissions our bad word list has grown bigger than we ever thought it would. Due to the amount of swear words submitted, we've broken the. Hyperhero's list of swearwords. During his long and successful career of crime- fighting Hyperhero was often confrontated with rather dirty swearwords. Every swear word in the English language has been ranked in order of offensiveness. The UK's communications regulator, Ofcom, interviewed.
A new Harris poll has all the data on how moviegoers respond to swear words you never thought to ask about. According to the study's findings. Our full list of bad words includes; List of swear words, Offensive words list, List of curse words, List of insulting words, Rude words list, List of. Here is a list of great words and phrases that you can use instead of swearing! Feel free to to use any of these with your own kids and add.
Profanity is socially offensive language, which may also be called curse words, cuss words, .. challenged in Maine because of the "f" word. ^ Ben MacIntyre ( ). "The American banned list reveals a society with serious hang-ups" .
Profanity means swear words. The adjective is 'profane'. Profanities can also be called curse ("cuss") words, dirty words, bad words, foul language, obscenity.
That's the most popular swear word on Facebook, according to an analysis Slate conducted using a new Facebook developer tool that. List of Russian swear words that your parents woudn't like you to use. Needless to remind you, that these curse words are not recommended in decent society. The list contains some words that many people won't find offensive, but it's a good start for Tags: Bad words, offensive words, profane words, profanity.
Bint – n., derogatory synonym for woman appropriated from the Arabic word for daughter or girl. Avoid, on the whole. 6. Blimey, blimey O'Reilly. i cant believe he just said swear words! what did he say? shit piss fuck cunt NOTE: THIS PERSON IS NOT RACIST JUST LISTING WORDS oh clarence, you . By Dan Slee and Louise Gibson A list of swears one comms officer came up with to keep the language on a page family-friendly. Caution: not.
Did you know the Spanish have a rich vocabulary of swear words? Here's a list of my favorite Spanish swear words — learn them and you'll fit.
No time to read now? Download the Spanish Curses Lesson PDF and MP3 now. Click on the button below to.
To help you better understand (or impress) your token Aussie friend who slips back into native slang, here's a brief list of swear words I've encountered, broken . Every language has its own swear words, and Italian is no exception. Italian swear words, or parolacce, or are used in everyday conversations, especially the . A javascript filter for bad words. bad-words. • Public • Published 4 months ago. Readme · 1Dependencies · 16Dependents · 25Versions.
Here is a list of popular Swedish swear words. How to Learn A “nice” swear word you could say without feeling any guilt: sjutton – seventeen. Thus, it's the perfect time to unveil our expletive curse word bracket to determine the finest curse word of all time. Now, a couple of things. Unlike Muggle swears, wizarding curse words are intended more for dramatic emphasis than to offend – although Molly Weasley might not agree. These range .
Here is an extensive list of Portuguese bad words, its meaning, translation into English, and an audio file. You can hear a Portuguese native speaker from Porto . Expanding Swear-cabulary. If you magically traveled back to Shakespeare's time, you'd find that people were no less potty-mouthed then than they are today;. You can almost always find a substitute for a curse word. . Psychologist approved! ?list=UUfNT-I0R7Vh3uuUdaJUMe5g.
The main thing about swearing in Russian is the attitude. If you haven't got the right attitude, using swear words can be very dangerous in. Discover the French swear words, insults and curse words the French Here is a handy a list of the major French swear words (yes, there are a lot) and. So we've decided to compile an uncensored Croatian swear words list, which includes the feedback we have received from you guys.
A comprehensive list of Italian Swear Words, Curse Expressions, Slang and Expletives. There's nothing like knowing the local insults and. literally swearing an oath); from the end of the 18th Century, the list of words considered obscene (and concomitantly to be used in vain oaths) transforms into . This isn't even a swear word and I'm annoyed that I've included it in the list to be honest. It's the most fire album of thanks to Kendrick Lamar, and I refuse to.
A list of German swear words and insults including Fuck You and Kiss My Ass. English meanings are given for each German cuss word listed.
All you need to know about the best of the worst Arabic swear words and phrases used!. We tend to think of swear words as one entity, but they actually serve several distinct functions. Steven Pinker, in The Stuff of Thought, lists five. If you are curious what Dutch swear words mean and how to swear in Dutch, you can check out the list below. If you want to use some of the.
Full List of Bad Words and Top Swear Words Banned by Google as they closed it - RobertJGabriel/Google-profanity-words. Everyone wants to learn the bad words when studying a language, how to unsubscribe from our contact list, please review our Privacy Policy. The Russian language is perfect for swearing. In Russia, there are a list of words that are called мат (mat), which is short for ма́терный язы́к.
In Japanese, not using polite language may be considered insulting enough by itself. See What is Japanese respect language? Anyway, here is a list. You can download a list of bad words here. Plus, once people realize you have a swear-word filter, it may become a game to figure out how to thwart it, which. For centuries and millennia long before we all pretended we liked each other, the people of Ireland spent the long, rainy days hurling abuse at.
Take a list of eighty-four commonly used swear words. Of the eighty-four words, twenty-nine are spelled with four letters. By this count, then, just.
If you want to learn a new language, one of the most fun and informative parts is learning the swear words. These 50 Spanish curse words will.
While most swear words in English are sexual or have to do with your parentage, German leans more towards the scatological (having to do with excrement or. Let's look at the origins of several swear words. The word Swadesh list of common, basic words is 10% French: animal, because, count. Presumably chain-swearers are desensitized to their swearing, and so are not particularly aroused by it. It remains unclear whether some swear words are more .
led the swearers of years past to come up with creative substitutions that From an Dictionary of Northamptonshire words: "Consarn you! Lists Words.
Wordnik List: swear-words-of-johnny-dangerously. A list of 16 words by alexz. A to Z, Z to A, Newest First, Oldest First. Tip: Add several words or phrases at.
If you're reading this you're probably American, British, Australian or Canadian and you are therefore probably bored of using the same old swear words. F*ck.
Using a carefully selected list of swear words—ranging from standard f*ck to Internet-y @$$–the researchers found that Twitter users curse. It's impossible to list every Czech swear word here so if you want more you'll find a pretty exhaustive list (with examples) in the Dirty Czech. Turkish has a rich variety of swear words and other types of slang. Because of words with multiples meanings even a simple word could mean seriously vulgar in.
Swearing is a great way to learn a foreign language and even achieve fluency. If you ever wanted to swear like a Spanish master, I've got you. We broke down the data into four graphical treatments — a list of every curse word and how many times it was said, a chart showing just the. swear word definition: 1. a rude or offensive word: 2. a rude or offensive word. Learn more.
48 :: 49 :: 50 :: 51 :: 52 :: 53 :: 54 :: 55 :: 56 :: 57 :: 58 :: 59 :: 60 :: 61 :: 62 :: 63 :: 64 :: 65 :: 66 :: 67 :: 68 :: 69 :: 70 :: 71 :: 72 :: 73 :: 74 :: 75 :: 76 :: 77 :: 78 :: 79 :: 80 :: 81 :: 82 :: 83 :: 84 :: 85 :: 86 :: 87
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Last Week’s Comics 6/18/2014
By Ian Gonzales, Sal Lucci, Michael Edwards and Jill Scharr • June 18th, 2014
Edgar Allan Poe’s Morella and the Murders in the Rue Morgue #1
(Dark Horse – writer: Richard Corben; art: Richard Corben)
Morella and the Murders in the Rue Morgue collects adaptations of two classic Edgar Allan Poe tales. The first one, “Morella,” is a gothic tale of love, loss and black magic. The second is fiction’s first detective story, “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.” In both stories, Richard Corben uses Poe’s tales as inspiration to create something more sinister.
In Corben’s take on “Morella,” the title character is learned in mysticism and witchcraft as opposed to German philosophers Fichte and Schelling like her literary counterpart. The black magic in this tale is more overt. Instead of a reference to Presburg (Morella’s birthplace and Poe’s clever way of insinuating a black magic tie), we see Morella outright performing a spell on the comic’s second page. Her husband, Myron, grows tired and wants a divorce. Instead of dying and willing her soul into their newborn daughter, Morella instead creates a “daughter” from a previous relationship. So taken with his stepdaughter’s beauty, Myron begins a sexual relationship with her that is, of course, interrupted by the local judge and priest. It’s just a wee bit different than Poe’s short story, right?
In “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” Corben’s adaptation of the classic tale is particularly brutal, though surprisingly similar until the final act. Corben is in his proverbial element while Dupin and the police investigate the murder scene. It’s savage and gruesome. Madame L’Espanaye’s head is clearly cut and torn from her neck and Mademoiselle L’Espanaye’s corpse is contorted and ragged like a discarded child’s plaything. It’s grotesque and classic Corben. As the story continues, Dupin sets his trap for the killer by placing an advertisement in the paper. And this is where the story diverts a bit.
In Poe’s original story, the killer is revealed to be an orangutan that a sailor captured in Borneo. The orangutan accidentally killed Madam L’Espanaye while imitating the sailor’s morning shaving routine and then freaks out at the sight of blood and winds up killing her daughter, too. It’s horrible, but it is arguable that there is no malice in the act. You can’t say the same thing about Corben’s orangutan. The beast was tortured by the sailor. And the sailor? He is a grade-A scumbag who deserves the savage beating the criminally-insane orangutan ultimately gives him.
Edgar Allan Poe’s Morella and the Murders in the Rue Morgue is pure Richard Corben! Whether drawing Mike Mignola’s Hellboy, Harlan Ellison’s Vic and Blood or Edgar Allan Poe’s C. Auguste Dupin, Richard Corben’s aesthetic and storytelling chops are unmistakable. This book flows with such an ease that the reader is caught off guard by horrifying images of a bloody straight razor or a crazed orangutan with gnarled teeth!
Where else are you going to see two masters of horror defy the grave and join forces?
– Ian Gonzales
Detective Comics #32
(DC – writer: Brian Buccellato and Francis Manapul; art: Francis Manapul)
I’ve been seriously considering dropping Detective Comics from my monthly buy list. Detective and Batman are the flagships of the Bat-empire, the constant titles, the two I go to first when I take my periodical sabbatical from comic books. But each month, Detective ranks lowest in quality of my Bat-purchases.
Now there’s a new team at the helm of Detective. Brian Buccellato and Francis Manapul are really turning things around. The title lacked oomph out of the New 52 gate under Tony Daniel (Mr. Toxic, anyone?), and John Layman wasn’t any better (Wrath was worthless; the “Gothtopia” storyline had promise in theory but failed miserably in execution.) Jason Fabok’s art never sat right with me (his depiction of Batman’s nose bothers me more than anything, and his faces often had strange proportions and unrealistic contortions.)
As for this book’s art, the colors are fantastic, with a watercolor-esque vibe. Both the cool and warm tones actually add to the overall darkness of the story. Page layouts are creative, effectively handling scenes that are too big for one panel, and saving splash pages for real emphasis.
I’m not sure how long the current story (“Icarus”) will last. A new wonder drug has made it to Gotham from Central City and the land of the Flash (like the above-mentioned creative team.) Issue 32 slows things down a bit, but the cliffhanger ending promises big things for the next chapter. Batman does tangle with a giant squid, which has the makings of an Adam West adventure, but Buccellato and Manapul keep things to the right side of the silliness line.
I’m excited to see what the two have in store for the rest of this arc and what they’ll come up with next. Hopefully DC keeps this top-tier team on the Detective title for the indefinite future.
– Sal Lucci
(Marvel – writer: Chris Claremont; art: Todd Nauck)
I want to be more excited about this series. While I feel like the many current X-Men comics have drifted away from me, this seemed like a good way to jump back in. For starters, it has Chris Claremont writing it, and you can’t get more classic than that!
But three issues in and I only feel invested in Nightcrawler doing Nightcrawler things and little else about the overall plot involving the larger X-Men universe. I think it’s because so much of the overall X-Men story needs to be explained every time before it can move forward. Chris Claremont, for all the good that he’s done for the X-Universe, is also partially to blame for the murky and complicated X-Men backstory.
Ian mentioned in his great Amazing X-Men review from last week how wonderful the reunion scene between Nightcrawler and Colossus was. This issue features another heartwarming reunion over a six-pack between Nightcrawler and Wolverine. Moments like these will keep me coming back to each issue, not so much Storm and Beast being imprisoned in printing paper by the horned sorceress (and Kurt Warner’s adopted mother) Margali Szardos. Yes, that happens in this issue. Not only that but with any X-related comic I always fear the impending crossover ruining the story I’m reading, because I simply don’t have the money to buy four or five more comics a month. So far it’s just evil robots, which is fine because mutants and evil robots are peanut butter and jelly for an X-Men comic.
With only three issues down anything can happen going forward. Claremont can still deliver with X-Men character moments since he helped co-create so many of them. His stories are what worry me, though, ever since his dicey run on Uncanny X-Men back in the ’00s. Todd Nauck has been doing great work with the art, at times evoking the late great artist and Nightcrawler creator Dave Cockrum. Rachelle Rosenberg has also been wowing with her dynamic coloring. So long as Claremont can keep his impulses at bay, Nightcrawler could be one of the most fun comics on the rack. As of now, it’s still working its way to that point, one Bamf at a time.
– Michael Edwards
Lumberjanes #3
(BOOM! Studios – writer: Noelle Stevenson and Grace Ellis; art: Brooke Allen)
The adventures of Mal, Molly, April and Ripley continue in Lumberjanes #3, in which the girls find themselves trapped in a mysterious cave beneath the forest, far away from the Lumberjanes’ summer camp.
As this is the third issue in a book with five main characters, we’re still learning each Lumberjane’s personality, skills and relationships. But as they move through the cave, every girl gets a chance to use one of her unique skills to solve a problem. It’s slightly contrived, and some of the obstacles work better than the others, but the story tackles this “cave of trials” trope with the same great balance of heartfelt enthusiasm and easy silliness.
It’s the same with the dialogue. The Lumberjanes talk the way most Tumblr posts read: pop culture references, lines like “the most bad thing,” puns like the “Everything Under the Sum” badge or even the book’s habit of using all caps and no punctuation to represent a line spoken loudly and without premeditation. That’s exactly how young Tumblr users – usually members of one Tumblr “fandom” or another – talk to each other. It’s a slang expressly crafted for being both intensely excited and humorously self-aware, and it fits perfectly in Lumberjanes.
I’m a big fan of stories with ensemble casts rather than a single main character, as they open up even more opportunity for interesting interactions. The girls aren’t all equally best friends – Jo and April appear to be the leader and the lancer respectively, and Mal and Molly obviously have mutual crushes on each other that result in adorably awkward interactions to which anyone, gay or straight, can relate. But the book also leaves time for little character moments between the other girls, too.
The art looks simple, with mostly solid colors and simple lines, especially on characters’ faces. But the backgrounds are always detailed, and I love that each character is drawn with her own unique facial features, expression and body type in every panel. My one quibble is that the girls’ heights are often inconsistent, especially April’s.
Before reading Lumberjanes, when I thought of summer camp stories, I thought of weird, kind of awkward ’90s movies. Miss Quinzella Thiskwin Penniquiqul Thistle Crumpet’s Camp for Hardcore Lady Types is a summer camp for modern readers of any age or gender.
– Jill Scharr
BOOM!, Brian Buccellato, Brooke Allen, Chris Claremont, Dark Horse, DC, Detective Comics, Edgar Allan Poe’s Morella and the Murders in the Rue Morgue, Francis Manapul, Grace Ellis, Lumberjanes, Marvel, Nightcrawler, Noelle Stevenson, Richard Corben, Todd Nauck
Comic Books, Last Week's Comics, Review
Last Week’s Comics 4/16/2014 Last Week’s Comics 8/20/2014 Last Week’s Comics 10/15/2014 Last Week’s Comics 11/19/2014
A Game of Casting
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Best Sports Experts This Month
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Top 10 NHL Handicappers
Below are a list of the 10 Best NHL Hockey Handicappers based on results over the last 30 days. We track sports picks daily and rank experts for each game they've picked. Picks must be entered into our system before the start of the game.
#1 Riley Peterson
Sports Investor Central
Verified since 7/23/2008
7 Day:
+$2,000
30 Day:
With a background in economics and MBA in Marketing, I have had many career paths in my life but none as excited as working with Sports Investor Central. I will bring a hard work ethic to my clients and will always be searching for an advantage. While sports handicapping was once an extension of my life, these days it has become my primary focus. I relish the opportunity to provide members of SIC with a dedicated approach that will bring value to the customer.
View on Sports Investor Central
#2 Dawhiz
Verified since 9/6/2018
View on PicksLogic.com
#3 Jacob Smith
Documented Handicappers
Jacob Smith is an NFL football specialist that got his start betting football through a fantasy football league he started with his friends. Fast forward 10 years and Jacob has successfully completed the past three NFL seasons at a win rate of 59%, 61% and 60% respectfully. Jacob is a full believer in fading the public opinion when the opportunity presents itself. Like some of the best professional handicappers, Jacob understands the public's love interest with certain teams inflates their odds which will provide an opportunity to win big. Jacob expects to provide members with consistent NFL winners this season.
View on Documented Handicappers
#4 Peter Billingsley
#5 Lyle Clark
ATS Experts
My experience as a sports betting analyst is almost 15 years long. It started in early 2000 in Vegas after I lost my first job out of college due to downsizing. I was working as a waiter and betting sports on the side. The action was irrelevant to me, it was about the thrill of gambling. Fast forward 15 years and I have the opportunity of a lifetime advising clients through ATS Experts. My handicapping style has changed since 2000 but my desire to win will never leave me.
View on ATS Experts
#6 Tyler Samuels
Tyler Samuels, AKA Jarhead, received his education from the US Marines. Tyler enlisted in the service when he was 18 and was stationed over seas for 3 years. Upon returning home after a 4 year stint in the Marines, Tyler was unable to land a secure career and found side jobs working on local dairy farms. It was very common for Tyler and other member of his platoon to play poker or gamble on just about anything possible to kill time. This was a way for Tyler to get extra money or smokes but it also helped him harness his competitive nature. Tyler now spends his free time, what very little he has, playing cards. Tyler admits that his life lessons learned in the service have helped his mind remain strong and the stress of looking for work in his early years reminds him of the drive to succeed. Tyler no longer has to look for work as he has found his niche sports handicapping. SIC is proud to employ Tyler and look for him to provide winning sports picks for all major sports.
#7 Tony Sargeant
#8 Vincent King
King Sports Picks
Over 30 years of Handicapping Experience Founder, CEO of King Sports Picks
I'm proud to have built KingSportsPicks.com into one of the most reputable sports touting agencies online today. I have built this reputation with honesty and hard work, and putting together a team of touts that is second to none. The same principle that applies to any business also applies to betting on sports. There will be winning days and losing days, but as long as you win more than you lose you will always come out on top. In our many years of experience, we can guarantee the following four statements: there are no 'get-rich-quick' schemes. There are no 'locks'. And even the matchups with favorable margins will lose from time to time. You can't handicap turn-overs, poor performances and lucky breaks. And you will, unfortunately, have your losing days, but as long as you win more than you lose you will always come out on top.
Winning is still what it's all about. With hard work, discipline, money management, and a network of insiders, sports betting can be an exciting and profitable form of entertainment. Using these principles is how we make a living. So, how does King Sports Picks consistently for over 20 years? Simple - Team Effort. While most services or handicappers have one person making the picks for every sport, we have a team of expert handicappers that share information and trade secrets, thus allowing our team to aggregate valuable data that is used to bring down the house. I spend my days working side by side with some of the sharpest minds in this business. For the specialized experts who focus exclusively on each individual sport, the work and research never ends. And why do they work so hard? Because they have to as they do not get paid unless they win.
I welcome you to King Sports Picks and have you join me or any of the other King Sports Handicappers. If you are looking for more a more enjoyable and more profitable season this year, then give us a try - I know you and your bankroll won't be disappointed.
View on King Sports Picks
#9 Peter Trell
9 years as a Professional Sports Handicapper Joined a Sports Handicapping Syndicate at the age of 25 which was responsible for a mult-million dollar portfolio Was once cut off from making wagers at an off shore sportsbook after a successful streak - then contracted by the same sports book to serve as a sports betting consultant Expert Sports Predictions for MLB, NFL, NCAAF, NBA & NCAAB, NHL
Sports betting gives you a 50/50 chance of winning each wager - very similar to flipping a coin. This is essentially what the average square will do, flip a coin. However, if you were to narrow down your focus to only few games on the board which you have deducted a mathematical edge then you have increased your chances of winning by 20 to 30%. This is the value I bring to my clients on a daily basis with my sports handicapping expertise. There are many ways to breakdown a particular matchup and come to a conclusion on a pick. Some handicappers prefer statistical analysis, regression analysis, team stats, team trends etc. I like to incorporate any system or stat that can provide an edge or provide insight to allow me to reach a conclusion. It's a more methodical approach but I feel that my success has come from uncovering the details. I have seen a lot of handicappers run into problems when they commit to a single approach to handicapping or follow trends too closely. Trends are just a piece of the puzzle but in certain sports, such as college, there is a high turn over rate of players each year. How a team performed in 2014 may not correlate with the 2015 team and a new crop of players that are mostly underclassman with no experience. You must be able to determine which piece of information is relative to that particular game.
I understand that in order to be successful in any venture you must surround yourself with people that are smarter than you. With over 9 years as a professional sports handicapper I have been surrounded by some of the best the industry has to offer and this is the value that I provide for my clients. Whether you are a novice bettor vacationing in vegas or a whale that only gets excited from a six figure payout, my services will be an asset to your investment.
#10 Joel Rockman
Joel's prudent achievements include helping his high net worth client reach six figure profits in three of the past four MLB seasons. Joel is a believer that value lies in the quality of picks and not the quantity of picks. Expose the line and extract the profit. Joel will be advising clients in MLB and NHL predictions.
View the complete list of experts on the Interactive Handicapper Leaderboards
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Season 32 Season 31 Season 30 Season 29 Season 28 Season 27 Season 24 Season 23 Season 18 Season 16 Season 10 Season 6
Former slaves who battled prejudice & oppression to sing their way into a nation’s heart.
The Feud
The most famous family conflict in American history, the Hatfield-McCoy feud.
They came to hear the concert of their lives, but experienced something far more profound.
S31 Ep6 | 1h 39m 1s
Chasing the Moon, Part 3
“Chasing the Moon,” a film by Robert Stone, premieres July 8 on PBS.
Sealab
The little-known story of the daring program that revolutionized undersea exploration.
The history of the Everglades is a story of humanity’s attempt to conquer nature.
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Robert Shaw Was an Early Champion of Civil Rights
Clip: Season 33 Episode 7 | 2m 7s
Robert Shaw's integrated chorales were among the first to break the color barrier in the American South. He took his inspiring music on the road, bringing his ensembles to small towns across America and to several continents.
Major support for American Masters is provided by AARP. Additional funding is provided by Rosalind P. Walter, The Philip and Janice Levin Foundation, Judith and Burton Resnick, Ellen and James S. Marcus, Lillian Goldman Programming Endowment, The Blanche & Irving Laurie Foundation, Vital Projects Fund, Cheryl and Philip Milstein Family, The André and Elizabeth Kertész Foundation, Lenore Hecht Foundation, Michael & Helen Schaffer Foundation, and public television viewers.
Robert Shaw – Man of Many Voices
Follow the journey of one of the greatest choral music conductors, Robert Shaw.
Preview: S33 Ep7 | 2m 43s
Choral Music Conductor Robert Shaw Was Self-Taught
Despite a lack of formal training, Shaw inspired generations of musicians.
Season 33 Season 32 Season 31 Season 30 Season 27 Season 26 Season 23 Season 17
N. Scott Momaday: Words From a Bear
Delve into the enigmatic life of Pulitzer Prize-winning author and poet N. Scott Momaday
S33 Ep12 | 1h 23m 6s
Rothko: Pictures Must Be Miraculous
Discover the art world giant whose color fields changed art history and now fetch millions
Raúl Juliá: The World’s a Stage
Explore a versatile Puerto Rican actor whose work on stage & screen shook the world.
S33 Ep10 | 1h 23m 32s
Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin
Explore the legacy of the feminist author who transformed U.S. literature with her science
Terrence McNally: Every Act of Life
Explore four-time Tony-winning playwright Terrence McNally's work in theater.
Trace the journey of one of America’s greatest choral music conductors.
Garry Winogrand: All Things are Photographable
Discover the life and work of Garry Winogrand.
Joseph Pulitzer: Voice of the People
Discover the man behind the award.
Holly Near: Singing for Our Lives
Experience the power of song in the struggle for equality through feminist Holly Near.
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The prevalence and risk factors of cytomegalovirus infection in inflammatory bowel disease in Wuhan, Central China
Fengming Yi1,
Jie Zhao2,
Rishi Vishal Luckheeram2,
Yuan Lei2,
Changgao Wang2,
Sha Huang2,
Lu Song2,
Wei Wang2 &
Bing Xia1,2
The etiology of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is not clear and cytomegalovirus (CMV) infection is often associated with IBD patients. The etiologic link between IBD and CMV infection needs to be studied. The objective of the present study is to investigate the prevalence and risk factors of CMV in a cohort of IBD patients from Central China.
Two hundred and twenty six IBD patients (189 ulcerative colitis (UC) and 37 patients with Crohn’s disease (CD)), and 290 age and sex matched healthy controls were recruited. CMV DNA was detected by nested PCR, while serum anti-CMV IgG and anti-CMV IgM was determined by ELISAs. Colonoscopy/enteroscopy with biopsy of diseased tissues and subsequent H&E stain were then conducted in IBD patients with positive anti-CMV IgM. Finally, we analyzed the prevalence and clinical risk factors of CMV infection in IBD patients.
The prevalence of CMV DNA and anti-CMV IgG positive rate in IBD patients were 84.07% and 76.11%, respectively, higher than those in healthy controls (59.66% and 50.69%, respectively, P < 0.05), However, anti-CMV IgM positive rate was no different with healthy controls (1.77% vs 0.34%, P = 0.235). In univariate analysis of risk factors, the recent use of corticosteroid was associated with increase of CMV DNA and IgM positive rate in UC (P = 0.035 and P = 0.015, respectively), aminosalicylic acid drug therapy was correlated with positivity of CMV DNA and IgG in UC and CMV DNA in CD (P = 0.041, P < 0.001 and P = 0.014, respectively), the treatment of immunosuppresent was correlated with CMV IgM (P < 0.001). Furthermore, patients with severe UC were significantly associated with CMV DNA and IgM (P = 0.048 and P = 0.031, respectively). Malnutrition (albumin < 35 G/L) was also found to be related with CMV recent infection (P = 0.031). In multivariate analysis of risk factors in UC, pancolitis was significantly associated with CMV DNA positivity (P = 0.001). Severe UC and pancolitis seemed to be related with IgG positivity. For CD, there was just single factor associated with CMV positive in each group, multivariate analysis was unnecessary.
CMV positive rate in IBD patients was significantly higher, than in healthy controls. The use of aminosalicylic acid, corticosteroid, immunosuppressants, pancolitis and severe IBD patients seemed to be more susceptible to CMV infection in univariate analysis of risk factors. However, no risk factor was found to be significantly correlated with CMV infection in multivariate analysis of risk factors.
Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) including ulcerative colitis (UC) and Crohn’s disease (CD), consists of chronic, non-specific inflammatory diseases of the gut with unknown etiology. According to a retrospective survey, the incidence and prevalence of IBD in China are on the rise[1], and IBD is gradually become one of the refractory intestinal diseases. Even though the etiology of IBD is unknown, recent studies have shown that the pathogenesis of IBD is related to susceptible genes, immune dysregulation and microbiota of the gut.
Cytomegalovirus (CMV) is a β herpes virus with double-stranded DNA. Worldwide the current infective rate ranges between 40% and 100%[2]. Two studies in USA demonstrated that CMV positive rate in patients with acute severe colitis was 21–34%, in corticosteroid-refractory cases was 33–36%, and in active UC was 10%[3, 4]. In Egypt, the CMV positive rate was 34.8% in corticosteroid-refractory IBD patients[2]. However, the prevalence of CMV in Chinese patients with IBD has not been reported in the literature till now.
CMV infection in IBD patients often makes clinical diagnosis and treatment complex. Maher et al.[2] have shown that IBD patients with CMV-positive were more likely to get fever, cervical lymphadenopathy, splenomegaly, leucopenia, thrombocytopenia, and pancolitis as compared to CMV-negative ones. Kandiel et al.[3] used antiviral drugs for the treatment of acute severe CMV-positive colitis, and achieved a remission rate of 67–100%. However, Lévêque et al.[5] found no relationship between CMV viral load and disease severity in patients with active IBD. Out of 7 CMV-positive patients treated with immunosuppressants and no antiviral therapy, remission was achieved in 5 patients. de Saussure et al.[6] treated 3 CMV-positive IBD cases with antiviral therapy, and only 1 patient got remission. Recently a study on cytomegalovirus infection in IBD undergoing treatment of anti-TNF-αantibody demonstrated that active CMV infection did not progress to CMV infection/disease following infliximab therapy, the response to infliximab therapy did not appear to be influenced by, or influence the course of, CMV infection/disease[7]. These studies aided in proving a link between CMV infection and refractory IBD. However, due to the small cohorts in some studies, further studies with larger cohorts need to be conducted in order to find a conclusive relationship between CMV and IBD.
Nested PCR of CMV-UL93 is considered to be a highly sensitive method for the detection of CMV[8]. Serum anti-CMV IgG and IgM are widely used in practice. The detection of IgG antibodies against CMV should be detected at the first visit, when the diagnosis of IBD is confirmed, in order to clarify whether the patient is at risk of displaying primary infection (IgG negative) or reactivation/reinfection (IgG positive). However, IgM antibodies to CMV are systematically detected in primary infection, reactivation or reinfection, it indicates CMV infection is in active stage. With primary infection, an early IgM antibody rise occurs and becomes detectable in the blood within the first week of infection. Anti-CMV IgM increases within 2 weeks of infection, and can remain positive for 3 months to 2 years. Its sensitivity and specificity for CMV infection could reach up to 100% and 98.6% respectively[9].
In this study, PCR detection of CMV DNA, and serological determinations of IgG and IgM were used to investigate the prevalence of CMV infection in IBD patients from central China. Moreover, risk factors for CMV infection in IBD patients were analyzed to find relationship between IBD and CMV infection.
Patients and healthy controls
From 2006 to 2011, 226 IBD patients (189 UC and 37 patients with CD) were recruited from Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University School of Medicine. The diagnosis of UC and CD was based on clinical, laboratory, imaging, endoscopic and histological examinations, and in accordance to the Chinese Medical Association diagnostic criteria for IBD[10]. Clinical disease activity of UC and CD was assessed by Truelove and Witts criteria[11] and Crohn’s disease activity index (CDAI) respectively[12].
Simultaneously, 290 sex and age matched healthy volunteers (controls) were recruited in Zhongnan Hospital Medical Center of Wuhan University, who attended this center for constitutional examination of health. All volunteers were unrelated to each other from Hubei province, and had no history of IBD, chronic infectious diseases, immune-mediated, ischemic and radiation-induced diseases. Subjects with history of use of corticosteroids and immunosuppressive agents, of drug abuse and unhealthy living were excluded from the study.
The patients and controls were classified as current smokers if they had smoked more than 1 cigarette per day within 6 months before recruited, and nonsmokers if they never or rarely smoked. As for definition of alcohol drinking before the onset of symptoms, 3 categories were included: frequent drinking, light drinking and former drinking. Frequent drinking was defined as alcohol drinking 3 days or more per week for continuous 6 months before recruited, excluded drink everyday to alcoholic intoxication. Light drinking was defined as alcohol beverages less than 3 days per week. Former drinking was defined as patients who had quit drinking for more than 6 months before recruited. They were all defined as drinking. Non-drinking was defined as never or rarely drinking. Mixed food was defined as the composition of diet include vegetable and meat for at least 6 months before recruited. The severity of UC was assessed by Truelove and Witts criteria[11]: Severe diarrhoea (six or more motions a day) with macroscopic blood in stools. Fever (mean evening temperature more than 37.5°C, or a temperature of 37.8°C, or more on at least two days out of four). Tachycardia (mean pulse rate more than 90 per minute). Anaemia (haemoglobin 75% or less-allowance made for recent transfusion). ESR much raised (more than 30 mm in one hour). Mild diarrhoea (four or less motions a day) with no more than small amounts of macroscopic blood in stools. No fever. No tachycardia. Anaemia not severe. ESR not raised above 30 mm. in one hour. Moderately-Intermediate between severe and mild[11]. The severity of CD was classified by Best CDAI: Index values between 150 and 220 are associated with mild disease; values between 220 and 450 are moderate disease; and values above 450 are seen with severe disease[12]. Drugs use was defined as taking related drugs for a period of at least 2 months to the time recruited.
The ethic committee of Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University approved the study. Consent was written by all subjects. Consent informed in current ethics statement was obtained from all participants involved in this study.
Extraction of DNA
5 ml venous blood was taken in anticoagulated tubes with ethylenediamine tetraacetic acid (EDTA) from all subjects, followed by centrifugation. 2 ml of sera was taken and stored at −80 degrees for further anti-CMV IgG and IgM assay. Genomic DNA was extracted using proteinase K and phenol/chloroform method, which was then subsequently stored at −80 degrees.
CMV-UL93 fragment detection
The CMV-UL93 fragment was retrieved from NCBI and BLAST, and was imported into Primer 5.0, according to the primer design principle. Lateral primers consisted of an upstream primer 5′-GGCAGCTATCGTGACTGGGA-3′, and a downstream primer 5′-GATCCGACC CATTGTCTAAA-3′. PCR conditions included 40 cycles of 95°C for 10 min, 95°C for 30 s, 57°C for 30 s, 72°C for 60 s, and then followed by 72°C for 10 min. Inner primers were an upstream primer 5′-TTAGCGCGT GACCTGTTACG-3′, and a downstream primer 5′-TCTAAATTGTTACGCAGTCCG-3′. PCR conditions included 40 cycles of 95°C for 10 min, 95°C for 30 s, 58°C for 30 s, 72°C for 60 s, and finally followed by 72°C for 10 min. Then electrophoresis using 2.5% agarose gel, of the medial segment was done to identify the products of PCR. Direct sequence for PCR products was done for detection of positive and negative PCR products. DNA-PCR+ was according to the result of electrophoresis of nested PCR, and ensured the result by DNA sequencing.
Serum anti-CMV IgG and IgM detection
ELISA kit (DIESSE Diagnostica senese, Italy) was used to detect serum anti-CMV IgG and IgM in IBD patients and healthy controls. CMV IgG+ and CMV IgM+ were according to the kit: Positive defined as optical density (OD) ratio of sample to standard threshold value greater than 1.1, negative below 0.9.
Histology and hematoxylin and eosin (H&E) staining
Colonoscopy and/or enteroscopy were conducted in anti-CMV IgM-positive IBD patients, and biopsies from pathological sites were taken. H&E staining for the detection of CMV was done.
SPSS 13.0 software (SPSS for Windows version 13.0, Chicago, IL, USA) was used to conduct the statistical analysis. Measurement data are presented as mean ± standard deviation (SD), and numeration data are expressed as percentage and the number of cases. Independent samples were analyzed by Levene’s test. χ2(Chi-square) test with Yates continuity correction or Fisher’s exact test was performed to compare frequencies of risk factors between the IBD patients and healthy controls. Multiple logistic regression analysis was performed to evaluate multiple risk factors for IBD. Odds ratio (OR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) were calculated. All calculated P-values were 2-sided and P < 0.05 was considered significant.
Demographic and clinical profile
As shown in Table 1, Patients with inflammatory bowel disease and heathy controls were age- and sex-matched (P > 0.05), demographic and clinical profile were included in this table.
Table 1 Demographic and clinical profile of the inflammatory bowel disease patients and healthy controls
CMV-UL93 fragment, and CMV IgG, IgM detection
As shown in Table 2, prevalence of CMV-UL93 and anti-CMV IgG were significantly higher in IBD patients, than in healthy controls (84.07% vs 59.66%, P < 0.001; 76.11% vs 50.69%, P < 0.001), However, prevalence of anti-CMV IgM was no different with healthy controls (1.77% vs 0.34%, P = 0.235). For UC patients, CMV-UL93 and anti-CMV IgG were all significantly higher than in healthy controls (P < 0.001 and P < 0.001, respectively), While there was no difference between UC and healthy controls for anti-CMV IgM (P = 0.344). For CD patients, CMV-UL93 and anti-CMV IgG were higher than in controls (P = 0.027 and P < 0.001, respectively),while anti-CMV IgM was not increased as compared to healthy controls (P = 0.540).
Table 2 Prevalence of cytomegalovirus (CMV) in patients with inflammatory bowel disease and healthy controls
However, in biopsies taken from the pathological sites of intestinal mucosa of anti-CMV IgM positive IBD patients, no inclusion bodies were detected in H&E stain.
Univariate Analysis of Risk factors for CMV positive in patients with IBD
In UC patients, elevated CMV-DNA was mainly associated with the severity of disease activity (P = 0.048), use of ASA/SASP (aminosalicylic acid/salicylazosulfapyridine) and corticosteroids therapy (P = 0.041 and P = 0.035, respectively), while other factors, such as age, sex, smoking, alcohol consumption, type of diet, fever, anemia, albumin level, disease location, treatment with immunosuppressive agents had not shown significant association (P > 0.05). As for CD patients, CMV DNA positive was positively associated with use of 5-ASA/SASP (P = 0.014), as seen in Table 3.
Table 3 Univariate analysis of risk factors for CMV DNA positive in patients with inflammatory bowel disease
In UC patients, anti-CMV IgG level was associated with the use of 5-aminosalicylic acid (P < 0.001) as shown in Table 4. CD patients on vegetarian diet had much lower anti-CMV IgG positive rate, than those on non-vegeterian diet (P = 0.010). Other factors had no statistically significant impact on anti-CMV IgG positive rate (P > 0.05).
Table 4 Univariate analysis of risk factors for CMV IgG positive in patients with inflammatory bowel disease
The positive rate of anti-CMV IgM in UC patients, was associated with low albumin level (P = 0.031), severe UC (P = 0.031), use of corticosteroids (P = 0.015), and the use of immunosuppressive agents (P < 0.001), while other factors did not cause any statistically significant changes in anti-CMV IgM positive rate (P > 0.05). In CD patients, no statistically significant association with anti-CMV IgM was found, as shown in Table 5.
Table 5 Univariate analysis of risk factors for CMV IgM positive in patients with inflammatory bowel disease
Multivariate analysis by logistic regression for CMV positive in IBD
As shown in Table 6. In multivariate analysis of risk factors in UC, pancolitis was significantly associated with CMV DNA elevated (P = 0.001). Severe UC and pancolitis seemed to be related with IgG positive (P = 0.021 and P = 0.017, respectively). For CD, there was just single factor associated with CMV positive in each group, multivariate analysis was unnecessary.
Table 6 Multivariate analysis by logistic regression for CMV positive in ulcerative colitis
CMV is an opportunistic pathogenic microorganism. In vivo it can proliferate in epitheliums, white blood cells and sperm cells, and it is prone to cause latent infection of salivary gland, mammary gland, kidney and white blood cells. In IBD patients, immunosuppressive therapy, impaired absorption of nutrients, dysfunction of the immune system, render them susceptible to CMV infection[13], which is consistent with the high infective rate of CMV in immunosuppressed individuals, such as acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), transplant recipients, cancer, chemotherapy, but rare in immunocompetent individuals.
The detection methods of CMV infection in IBD patients included DNA detection, serological tests (serum anti-CMV IgM, IgG), histopathology (inclusion bodies detection) in this study. Body fluids or tissue sample was feasible to CMV culture, but it was time-consuming and also had low sensitivity, which limited clinical application[14]. The detection of CMV-DNA was considered as the most sensitive method[15], but it was associated with false positive results, thereby decreasing its specificity. Increase in serum anti-CMV IgM level occurred in recent CMV infection and it had high sensitivity and specificity[9], while anti-CMV IgG indicated past CMV infection. Sensitivity of H&E was 10% to 87%[3], CMV inclusion bodies could be found in biopsy specimens from colon with inflamed and ulcerated mucosa[16]. We used CMV-DNA specific fragment UL93, anti-CMV IgG and IgM to detect CMV infection in IBD patients and healthy controls. Positive rates in IBD patients were 84.07%, 76.11%, 1.77% for CMV DNA, anti-CMV IgG and IgM respectively, and 59.66%, 50.69%, 0.34% for healthy controls. CMV-UL93 and anti-CMV IgG were significantly higher in IBD patients as compared to controls, thereby indicating the association between IBD and CMV.
The positive rate of CMV UL-93 or anti-CMV IgG in the healthy controls was about 50–60%, whereas in IBD patients it was around 70–80%. A research conducted in India showed the CMV DNA positive rate was just 12.70% in IBD patients[17], which was remarkably lower than in our country. The small number of subjects enrolled (63 IBD patients) could account for the low positive rate in the Indian study. Another research done in France showed 60% positive rate in IBD patients[18], which was consistent with our research. In developed countries, the anti-CMV IgG positive rate was found to be above 70%[19].
Anti-CMV IgM positive rate is only 1.77% in our research, which was lower as compared to an Indian study, including IBD patients with both active disease and in remission[17], where the rate was 9.52%. Anti-CMV IgM positive rate in healthy controls (0.34%) was no different with IBD patients (P = 0.235), which was related with small amount of people included.
Presence of anti-CMV IgM indicated recent infection of CMV. However in biopsies taken from the pathological sites of intestinal mucosa of anti-CMV IgM positive IBD patients, no inclusion bodies was detected. This was probably due to the low sensitivity of histological examination. The site from where the biopsy was taken, and the amount of tissue retrieved, may also influence the sensitivity of finding inclusion bodies. Next stage we should recruit enough biopsies and screen CMV by immunohistochemistry.
In a model of multivariate analysis adjusting for multiple factors for UC. Disease location seemed to be significantly associate with CMV infection or re-activation, this may be associated with the theory that CMV was prone to proliferate in granulation tissue[20]. Pancolitis involved with larger areas of ulcerative mucosa, which promote proliferation of CMV. Some researches[21] found that CMV was readily discovered in granulation tissue and tissue from deep ulcers, which suggested that CMV could penetrate inflamed mucosa via mononuclear cells, and then proliferate in the mucosa. A recent study[22] showed that the murine CMV (MCMV) could not induce acute colitis, but the latent MCMV infection could increase the severity of the dextran sulfate sodium (DSS) induced colitis. Moreover, acute MCMV infection could significantly increase the serum and intestinal natural killer cells, interleukin (IL)-6, TNF-α, IFN-γ, indicating that CMV infection can modulate mucosal immunity, thereby increasing susceptibility to inflammation. CMV infection can also activate oncogenes, kinases, transcription factors inducing tumorigenesis, which may be one of the reasons of the higher incidence of colorectal cancer in IBD patients[23]. CMV played a role in the initiation and progression of inflammation in IBD. The treatment of 5-ASAs, corticosteroids and immunosupressents were no longer significant associated with CMV infection in multivariate analysis.
Currently there is no absolute indication for antiviral therapy in CMV-positive IBD patients. However Eddleston recommends antiviral therapy in immunocompetent[24]. Pfau[21] found out that ganciclovir could reduce mortality rate and surgical intervention rate, while de Saussure P[6] showed that antiviral therapy had no effect on the disease course.
In summary, as compared to healthy individuals, IBD patients have a predisposition to CMV infection. No risk factor was found to be significantly correlated with CMV infection in risk factors analysis.
CMV:
IBD:
UC:
PCR:
Polymerase chain reactio
CI:
Alb:
H&E:
Hematoxylin and eosin
CDAI:
Crohn’s disease activity index
Aminosalicylic acid
SASP:
Salicylazosulfapyridine.
Jiang L, Xia B, Li J, Ye M, Yan W, Deng C, Ding Y, Luo H, Hou W, Zhao Q, Liu N, Ren H, Hou X, Xu H: Retrospective survey of 452 patients with inflammatory bowel disease in Wuhan city, central China. Inflamm Bowel Dis 2006, 12: 212-217. 10.1097/01.MIB.0000201098.26450.ae
Maher MM, Nassar MI: Acute cytomegalovirus infection is a risk factor in refractory and complicated inflammatory bowel disease. Dig Dis Sci 2009, 54: 2456-2462. 10.1007/s10620-008-0639-6
Kandiel A, Lashner B: Cytomegalovirus colitis complicating inflammatory bowel disease. Am J Gastroenterol 2006, 101: 857-2865.
Kim JJ, Simpson N, Klipfel N, Debose R, Barr N, Laine L: Cytomegalovirus infection in patients with active inflammatory bowel disease. Dig Dis Sci 2010, 55: 1059-1065. 10.1007/s10620-010-1126-4
Lévêque N, Brixi-Benmansour H, Reig T, Renois F, Talmud D, Brodard V, Coste JF, De Champs C, Andréoletti L, Diebold MD: Low frequency of cytomegalovirus infection during exacerbations of inflammatory bowel diseases. J Med Virol 2010, 82: 1694-1700. 10.1002/jmv.21877
de Saussure P, Lavergne-Slove A, Mazeron MC, Alain S, Matuchansky C, Bouhnik Y: A prospective assessment of cytomegalovirus infection in active inflammatory bowel disease. Aliment Pharmacol Ther 2004, 20: 1323-1327. 10.1111/j.1365-2036.2004.02273.x
D’Ovidio V, Vernia P, Gentile G, Capobianchi A, Marcheggiano A, Viscido A: Cytomegalovirus infection in inflammatory bowel disease patients undergoing anti-TNFα therapy. J Clin Virol 2008, 43: 180-183. 10.1016/j.jcv.2008.06.002
Roback JD, Hillyer CD, Drew WL, Laycock ME, Luka J, Mocarski ES, Slobedman B, Smith JW, Soderberg-Naucler C, Todd DS, Woxenius S, Busch MP: Multicenter evaluation of PCR methods for detecting CMV DNA in blood donors. Transfusion 2001, 41: 1249-1257. 10.1046/j.1537-2995.2001.41101249.x
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Truelove SC, Witts LJ: Cortisone in ulcerative colitis; final report on a therapeutic trial. Br Med J 1955, 2: 1041-1048. 10.1136/bmj.2.4947.1041
Best WR, Becktel JM, Singleton JW, Kern F Jr: Development of a Crohn’s disease activity index.National cooperative Crohn’s disease study. Gastroenterology 1976, 70: 439-444.
Papadakis KA, Tung JK, Binder SW, Kam LY, Abreu MT, Targan SR, Vasiliauskas EA: Outcome of cytomegalovirus infections in patients with inflammatory bowel disease. Am J Gastroenterol 2001, 96: 2137-2142. 10.1111/j.1572-0241.2001.03949.x
Boeckh M, Boivin G: Quantitation of cytomegalovirus: methodologic aspects and clinical applications. Clin Microbiol Rev 1998, 11: 533-554.
Numata S, Nakamura Y, Imamura Y, Honda J, Momosaki S, Kojiro M: Rapid quantitative analysis of human cytomegalovirus DNA by the real-time polymerase chain reaction method. Arch Pathol Lab Med 2005, 129: 200-204.
Hinnant KL, Rotterdam HZ, Bell ET, Tapper ML: Cytomegalovirus infection of the alimentary tract: a clinicopathological correlation. Am J Gastroenterol 1986, 81: 944-950.
Kishore J, Ghoshal U, Ghoshal UC, Krishnani N, Kumar S, Singh M, Ayyagari A: Infection with cytomegalovirus in patients with inflammatory bowel disease: prevalence, clinical significance and outcome. J Med Microbiol 2004, 53: 1155-1160. 10.1099/jmm.0.45629-0
Pofelski J, Morand P, Roblin X, Gratacap B, Nicod S, Bargues G, Seigneurin JM, Bonaz B: Caractérisation moléculaire du cytomégalovirus dans le maladies inflammatoires cryptogénetiques de l’intestin. Gastroenterol Clin Biol 2005, 29: A9.
Dimitroulia E, Spanakis N, Konstantinidou AE, Legakis NJ, Tsakris A: Frequent detection of cytomegalovirus in the intestine of patients with inflammatory bowel disease. Inflamm Bowel Dis 2006, 12: 879-884. 10.1097/01.mib.0000231576.11678.57
Yee YK, Wong SW, Szeto ML: Ulcerative colitis exacerbation associated with cytomegalovirus infection. Hong Kong Med J 1998, 4: 437-439.
Pfau P, Kochman ML, Furth EE, Lichtenstein GR: Cytomegalovirus colitis complicating ulcerative colitis in the steroid-naive patient. Am J Gastroenterol 2001, 96: 895-899. 10.1111/j.1572-0241.2001.03672.x
Onyeagocha C, Hossain MS, Kumar A, Jones RM, Roback J, Gewirtz AT: Latent cytomegalovirus infection exacerbates experimental colitis. Am J Pathol 2009, 175: 2034-2042. 10.2353/ajpath.2009.090471
Harkins L, Volk AL, Samanta M, Mikolaenko I, Britt WJ, Bland KI, Cobbs CS: Specific localisation of human cytomegalovirus nucleic acids and proteins in human colorectal cancer. Lancet 2002, 360: 1557-1563. 10.1016/S0140-6736(02)11524-8
Eddleston M, Peacock S, Juniper M, Warrell DA: Severe cytomegalovirus infection in inmmunocompetent patients. Clin Infect Dis 1997, 24: 52-56. 10.1093/clinids/24.1.52
We thank the numerous individuals who volunteered to participate in this study. The study was supported by Hubei Clinical Center & Key Laboratory of intestinal & colorectal diseases (2008BCC002), National University Students Innovation Training Project of China (S2009406), and the Ministry of Public Health of China (200802156, 201002020). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Department of Gastroenterology, Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University School of Medicine, Donghu Road 169, Wuhan, 430071, P.R. of China
Fengming Yi
& Bing Xia
The Hubei Clinical Center &, Key Laboratory of Intestinal & Colorectal Diseases, Wuhan, 430071, P.R. of China
Jie Zhao
, Rishi Vishal Luckheeram
, Yuan Lei
, Changgao Wang
, Sha Huang
, Lu Song
, Wei Wang
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Correspondence to Bing Xia.
The authors declare that they have no conflict of interests.
FY, JZ, YL and BX conceived the study, participated in its design and coordination, and managed the preparation of the manuscript. CW and SH carried out the nested PCR, FY and LS carried out ELISAs, All authors participated in the recruitment of specimens and clinical data of patients and healthy controls. RL and FY participated in the manuscript writing. BX and FY performed the statistical analysis. WW participated in the manuscript revision. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
Yi, F., Zhao, J., Luckheeram, R.V. et al. The prevalence and risk factors of cytomegalovirus infection in inflammatory bowel disease in Wuhan, Central China. Virol J 10, 43 (2013) doi:10.1186/1743-422X-10-43
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/1743-422X-10-43
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The impact of illegal waste sites on a transmission of zoonotic viruses
Darja Duh1,
Sandra Hasic2 &
Elena Buzan ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-0714-53012,3
Illegal waste disposal impacts public health and causes aesthetic and environmental pollution. Waste disposed in places without permitted and controlled facilities can provide a ready source of nutrition and shelter for rodents and thus promote the spread of their ecto- and endoparasites. The presence of two distinct zoonotic viruses, lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus (LCMV) and tick-borne encephalitis virus (TBEV), was searched at illegal waste sites. The aim of this study was to determine the prevalence of infection with both viruses in rodents and to discuss the virus-rodent relations in such environments.
Rodents sampled between October 2011 and April 2013 at 7 locations in the Istrian peninsula, were identified morphologically and genetically to minimize misidentification. Serological and molecular techniques were used to determine seroprevalence of infection in rodents and to detect viral RNAs. Serological testing was performed by immune fluorescence assay for detection of LCMV and TBEV specific antibodies. Real-time RT PCR was used for the detection of LCMV nucleoprotein gene and TBEV 3′ non-coding region. Data were statistically analysed using SPSS statistic v2.0.
Out of 82 rodent sera tested, the presence of LCMV antibodies was demonstrated in 24.93%. The highest prevalence of LCMV infection was found in commensal Mus musculus (47.37%), followed by 11.53%, 19.04% and 25% prevalence of infection in A. agrarius, A. flavicolis and A. sylvaticus, respectively. The highest prevalence of infection in rodents (53.33%) was found in locations with large waste sites and high anthropogenic influence. LCMV seroprevalence was significantly lower in rodents sampled from natural habitats. Viral nucleic acids were screened in 46 samples but yielded no amplicons of LCMV or TBEV. In addition, TBEV specific antibodies were not detected.
Illegal waste sites have considerable impact on the area where they are located. Results have shown that the transmission of human pathogens can be significantly increased by the presence of waste sites. However, the pathogen must be endemic in the environment where the waste site is located. The introduction of a human pathogen as a consequence of the waste site in the area of interest could not be proven.
One of the unpleasant by-products of urban living is municipal solid waste. A landfill is one of the major methods used for waste disposal. It is defined as the deposition of waste in a specially designated area, which consists of a pre-constructed ‘cell’ lined with an impermeable layer (man-made or natural) and with controls to minimize emissions [1].
Many urban areas cannot effectively manage their waste, which leads to continuous creation of new illegal waste sites. Worries about the effects of dumped waste on human health motivated numerous studies to investigate possible influence on human reproduction, cancer development and respiratory illnesses including asthma. Several systematic reviews have assessed the controversy over possible health effects of waste management on the public due to differences in risk communication and risk perception [1,2,3]. Despite that controversy, we should be more concerned about the negative impacts of illegally disposed waste upon human health and the environment. Namely, when waste such as used tires, construction debris, old appliances and furniture, as well as general household, commercial and industrial waste, is disposed in places without permitted and controlled facilities, it can provide a ready source of nutrition and shelter for rodents and consequently for their ectoparasites [4]. All of them play crucial role in the maintenance and spread of zoonotic pathogens. The waste is usually dumped on vacant lots, along utility right-of-ways, on public and private lands, and at other normally unattended locations. Because of the lack of control at illegally dumped waste sites, the threat to human health, wildlife and the environment is much higher than in controlled municipal landfills.
In the study presented here we focused on the presence of two distinct zoonotic viruses, lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus (LCMV) and tick-borne encephalitis virus (TBEV) at illegal waste sites. Although both viruses are well-known zoonotic pathogens, their ecology and epidemiology differs significantly.
LCMV is a rodent-borne prototypic member of the Arenaviridae family discovered in 1933 [5]. Even though it was among the first isolated human pathogenic viruses; clinically, LCMV remained less attractive for years because the infection of healthy humans with LCMV usually results in non-specific febrile illness. Nevertheless, the ability of causing a severe and permanent brain injury and dysfunction in foetuses and new-borns, and recent association of LCMV with several clusters of organ transplant transmissions makes the neurovirulent LCMV the important human pathogen [6,7,8]. Zoonotic exposure to LCMV occurs worldwide through aerosolized excreta or by direct rodent contact. The natural host and reservoir of LCMV is a commensal house mouse, Mus musculus, but the virus can be also carried by other wild rodents, pets and laboratory rodents. TBEV, on the other hand, is one of the most important tick-transmitted zoonotic pathogens, first isolated only 6 years later than LCMV. It is the aetiological agent of a potentially fatal neurological infection affecting humans in Europe and Asia [9]. Over the past 3 decades an enormous increase in tick-borne encephalitis (TBE) morbidity has been observed in Europe [10], and TBEV can now be found in regions that were previously unaffected. Extrinsic features of the environment (abiotic, biotic and human) and intrinsic biological features of the virus are described as a driving force behind the rapid spread of TBE [11]. The most important and frequent way of TBEV transmission is by tick bite, although TBEV can also be transmitted to humans with unpasteurised milk. In nature, TBEV is maintained in the zoonotic cycle involving ticks and vertebrate hosts amongst which rodents are the most important [12].
Since illegal waste sites can present optimal conditions for rodents to breed with abundant supplies of food, we were interested whether such sites with higher commensal rodent population densities also affect the occurrence of rodent-borne LCMV and TBEV. These two viruses were selected because their life cycle includes rodents; however, rodents play a distinct role for viral replication and transmission. Although 5.9% seroprevalnce of LCMV infection in wild rodents was described in Slovenia, there is a lack of data about LCMV presence in the Istrian peninsula [13]. Slovenia is endemic for TBE but the prevalence of infection with TBEV in Slovenia varies depending on the rodent and tick species and the region of trapping [14]. The incidence of TBE in Istrian Peninsula is low [15].
The aim of the study was to determine the prevalence of infection with LCMV and TBEV in Mus and Apodemus species sampled from i1llegal waste sites in the Istrian peninsula including Slovenia and Croatia and to compare the findings with the seroprevalence data obtained from natural sites. The virus-rodent relations are also discussed herein.
Rodents were sampled between October 2011 and April 2013. Sampling was done in the warmer part of the year from April to November in eight locations in Istria, a peninsula in the northern Adriatic, shared by Italy, Slovenia and Croatia. The sampling sites differed significantly according to the anthropogenic impact. Tree groups of sites were identified (Fig. 1, Table 1): group A: natural habitats with low anthropogenic impact, group B: habitats with medium anthropogenic impact and small waste sites and group C: sites with high anthropogenic impact, large waste sites and human settlements.
legend: Group A: Sites with little to none anthropogenic influence. Group B: Sites with medium anthropogenic influence and small waste sites. Group C: Sites with large anthropogenic influence, large waste sites and human settlements
Table 1 The summary data on sampling sites in Istria. Sites A1-A3 had little to none anthropogenic influence. Sites B1-B5 had medium anthropogenic influence and waste sites smaller than 0.85 ha. Sites C3 and C5 were under high anthropogenic impact, waste sites were larger than 0.85 ha and they also contained human settlements on site or nearby
Traps, containing bait made of peanut butter and oatmeal or bread crumbs, were placed in the evening and examined for rodents early the next morning for five consecutive days. Animals were captured in live traps Sherman type (H.B. Sherman Traps inc. USA) of two dimensions (small Sherman traps: 50.08 × 6.35 × 22.86 cm; and large Sherman traps: 7.62 × 8.89 × 22.86 cm). In the laboratory, trained personnel euthanized the rodents using carbon dioxide. To aid identification, animals were weighed and total head-body length, tail, ear and hind foot lengths were measured. The blood, collected from the axillar artery, was centrifuged and sera were labelled and stored at −80 °C. Internal organs were labelled and stored at −80 °C until further use. Permits to work with animals and animal tissues were issued by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Croatia (No. 532–08–01-01/1–11-03) and the Veterinary Administration of the Republic of Slovenia (No. 34401–36/2012/9).
The immune fluorescence assay (IFA) was performed with 2-well slides for LCMV provided by dr. Remi Charrel (EVA FP7 CAPACITIES Project GA No. 228292) and commercially available slides for TBEV (Anti-TBE virus IIFT, EUROIMMUN Medizinische Labordiagnostika AG, Germany). Test sera were diluted to a ratio of 1:10. To detect antibodies against LCMV, 20 μl of each dilution were loaded on the slides, incubated at 37 °C in a humidity chamber for 30 min and washed 3 times for 5 min in PBS. Anti-Mouse IgG (whole molecule-FITC, Sigma) conjugate was used at a dilution of 1:32. 20 μl of conjugate was pipetted on the slides, incubated at 37 °C in a humidity chamber for 30 min, and washed 3 times for 5 min in PBS. Slides were than dyed with Evans Blue for 5 min and washed with distilled water. Antibodies against TBEV were detected using commercial IFA slides following the instructions of the manufacturer. The exception was Anti-Mouse IgG (whole molecule-FITC, Sigma) conjugate used at dilution 1:32 instead of FITC-labelled anti-human IgG reagent provided in the kit. The fluorescence was examined with an Olympus BX51 microscope (Olympus, United Kingdom) using 40 X objective and 10 X ocular.
Molecular identification
We used RTP DNA/RNA Virus Mini Kit (Invitek, STRATEC Biomedical AG, Germany) for the extraction of nucleic acids. In short, 1 mm3 large pieces of spleen were manually homogenized in 400 μl of water (molecular biology grade). The sample was afterwards processed as instructed by the manufacturer. In the final step, DNA/RNA was eluted in 200 μl of pre-warmed elution buffer.
Identification of rodents based only on morphological characteristics can lead to misinterpretations of species, especially for the juvenile individuals [16]. Therefore, we used amplification of mitochondrial cytochrome b gene for species validation.
The partial cytochrome b gene (500 base pairs) was amplified using universal primers and the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) protocol outlined in Jaarola and Searle (2002) and Jaarola et al. 2004 [17, 18]. Kappa 2G PCR multiplex kit (Kappabiosystems) was used with primers L14727- SP (5′ GACAG GAAAAATCATCGTTG’ 3) and H15497-SP (T(AG)TAATT(AG)TCNGGGTCTCC) [17, 18]. Cycling conditions consisted of an initial stage of 95 °C for 3 min followed by 30 cycles of denaturation (15 s at 95 °C), primer annealing (30 s at 60 °C) and extension (1 min at 72 °C). Final extension was performed at 72 °C for 10 min. 3 μl of DNA was used in PCR reaction for molecular identification of species. Sequencing reactions were done on ABI 3130 Genetic Analyser (Life Technologies) using BigDye Terminator Chemistry. Species were later determined using BLAST algorithm (NCBI).
A real-time RT PCR for the amplification of a 116 bp long fragment of LCMV nucleoprotein gene was performed using LCM_TM_NP1 (5′-TCATGTGGCARRATGTTGTG-3′) and LCM_TM_NP2 (5′-AAAAAGAAIAARGARATCACCCC-3′) primers, combined with a probe LCM_MAR_NP (5′-FAM-ATGATGCAATCCATAAGTGCGCAGT-DB) [19].
67 bp long fragment of TBEV 3′ non-coding region was used for the detection of specific viral RNA using F-TBE 1 (5′ GGG CGG TTC TTG TTC TCC 3′) and R-TBE 1 (5′ ACA CAT CAC CTC CTT GTC AGA CT 3′) primers combined with TBE-probe-WT (5′ FAM-TGA GCC ACC ATC ACC CAG ACA CA 3′-DB) [20].
For both reactions, we used Qiagen OneStep RT-PCR (Qiagen, Germany) reagent kit. Primers and probes were synthesized at TIB MOLBIOL (TIB MOLBIOL GmbH, Germany). The protocol of both reactions was described previously [19] [20].
Preceding the sequencing, a nested PCR was used to generate approximately 400 bp long amplicons of LCMV nucleoprotein gene. Primers used in 1st round were 1817 V–LCM (5′-AIATGATGCAGTCCATGAGTGCACA-3′) and 2477C–LCM (5′TCAGGTGAAGGRTGGCCATACAT-3′), primers for the 2nd round nested PCR reaction were 1902 V–LCM (5′-CCAGCCATATTTGTCCCACACTTT-3′) and 2346C–LCM (5′-AGCAGCAGGYCCRCCTCAGGT-3′). Total of 5 μl RNA was used for the RT-PCR reaction using Qiagen OneStep RT-PCR Kit (Qiagen, Germany). Cycling conditions were as follow: 50 °C - 30 min, 95 °C - 15 min, 45 cycles 95 °C - 10 s, 56 °C - 30 s, 68 °C - 20 s.
2 μl of PCR product was used in nested PCR performed under following conditions: 95 °C - 15 min, 45 cycles 95 °C - 20 s, 58 °C - 30 s, 72 °C - 40 s and 72 °C – 5 min. [19]. All sequencing reactions were done on ABI 3130 Genetic Analyser (Life Technologies) using BigDye Terminator Chemistry.
The statistical analysis was carried out using SPSS statistic v.20 (IBM Enterprise).
We screened 19 M. musculus, 21 A. flavicolis, 26 A. agrarius, 16 A. sylvaticus. Gender and stage ratios are available in Additional file 1. Most of the rodents trapped during the field sampling were not the typical host species for the viruses of interest, LCMV and TBEV, and were therefore excluded from the study.
A total of 82 rodent sera were tested with LCMV and TBEV IFA and 46 were screened for the presence of viral nucleic acids using real time RT-PCR. Serological screening of rodents for the presence of TBEV specific antibodies revealed no positive animals. Results are in concordance with the low level of TBEV endemicity in the region where rodent sampling was conducted. The level was based on TBE incidence determined according to 2000–2009 TBE incidence data [21]. It was shown recently, that detection of TBE foci can be done by testing antibodies in small mammal sera. It is less time-consuming and less expensive than molecular tools and can be an alternative approach for TBEV detection in the environment [22]. Nevertheless, molecular tools for TBEV detection were employed. They also produced negative results for all samples tested. The absence of TBEV in the region based on the serological and molecular screening was expected and confirmed [11, 21].
Specific antibodies against LCMV were detected in 20 sera (24.93% of total). The highest prevalence of LCMV infection was found in commensal M. musculus (47.37%). For the other wild rodent species, A. agrarius, A. flavicolis and A. sylvaticus, the prevalence was 11.53%, 19.04% and 25%, respectively.
Considering that all animals were trapped in a short period of time and that the animal density was low (the habitats suitable for rodents in Istria are rare and limited), the only correlation we observed was at the individual level. Results of seroprevalence indicated a possible positive correlation with weight, but statistical analysis did not confirm this trend (F = 2.565, p > 0.001), possibly due to the small sample size and low prevalence. LCMV prevalence was not influenced by sex (p > 0.001). Our results are in in agreement with data published by Tagliapiestra et al. (2009) [23] but further analysis on a larger scale should be conducted.
The seroprevalence rate was highest in the B1 location (53.33%). This site was cleaned after the first monitoring in 2011 but the seroprevalence remained high, which indicates a possibility of long-term impact on increased prevalence of LCMV even after the waste site remediation. Furthermore, the highest prevalence of LCMV was detected in habitats with high anthropogenic influence containing large waste sites and human settlements (group C: 38. 46%), and habitats with medium anthropogenic influence (group B: 36.36%), opposed to habitats with low or non anthropogenic impact (group A) which showed 17.39% prevalence of LCMV infection. Statistical analysis also confirms the trend of higher prevalence of LCMV in areas with larger waste sites and a higher anthropogenic influence (group C), opposed to smaller landfills or natural habitats (χ2 = 5, 256; p < 0,05).
According to our study LCMV appears to be less common in natural areas than in illegal waste sites. The impact of illegal solid waste disposal upon communities of small mammals and the potential for spreading of rodent-related diseases at the outskirts of the cities and towns has not yet been shown [24]. Cavia et al. (2009) reported that accumulated organic waste and litter provide food and harbourage for rodents. We agree that the human impact through waste disposal almost certainly changes the local species community [24, 25].
The occurrence of the commensal house mouse in the majority of illegal waste sites was proven by Buzan et al. 2013 [25]. House mouse (M. musculus) is a commensal species that comes to dump sites with human waste and can take the advantage of potentially rich food resources provided by such habitats. The occurrence of wild rodents was influenced by habitat and the area where waste was deposited. A. agrarius prefers moist river-valleys and areas with wet and dense vegetation [26] and proved to be the dominant species in natural groups of habitats and in waste sites near to water bodies [25]. The forest and dense shrub stands, where there is sporadic occurrence of fallen woody material, however, are preferred by A. flavicollis [27]. Its occurrence dropped evidently towards habitats with large waste sites or human settlements where it was trapped only once. The Apodemus species (A. sylvaticus) was more frequent in waste sites than other two [25]. The overall prevalence of LCMV infection among rodents in the natural environment is comparable to that reported in similar studies in Europe, where the prevalence ranged between 3% and 17% [28,29,30,31]. These results also coincide with the study from Slovenia where Bizimoska (2008) indicates 5.9% natural prevalence of LCMV in M. musculus, A. flavicollis, Myodes glareolus, Sorex araneus and Glis glis [13].
Moreover, in our study, waste sites were recognised as a possible refuge for commensal and native rodent species, which enables integration and increases possibilities of spreading rodent-related diseases. Results obtained in this study suggest that illegal waste sites can significantly contribute to the spread and circulation of the virus among their hosts. One explanation can be found in the occurrence of an edge effect. Most species were recorded in sites with medium anthropogenic impact [25] where in our case habitat was changed due to inappropriate waste disposal. The mixture of different environments at these sites and potential food resources within the landscape units around these sites allowed the species present in the region to occupy the urban ecosystem [32].
Population density also likely correlates with prevalence of LCMV infection. Despite high seroprevalence of LCMV infection in trapped rodents, real time RT-PCR for LCMV yielded no amplicons. This is in agreement with the transmission patterns of LCMV. Horizontal infections, which are acquired through direct contact with infected rodents or indirect contact with contaminated fomites and are most likely to occur on waste sites, can lead rodents to shed infectious viruses for a few weeks to a few months before virus is cleared from the animal. Only when mice are exposed in utero to LCMV, they become persistently infected and shed the virus throughout their lives [24]. Increases in population density also increase the overlap between neighbouring home ranges, the number of contacts, and conflict between rodents and thus increase the potential for virus transmission [23, 33].
Our results were consistent with Taglineapietra et al. (2009) and Laakkonen et al. (2012), who showed that the sex of the mouse does not affect LCMV prevalence. However, our results suggest that weight and sex interact and show a correlation with antibody prevalence in host populations [23, 34]. This is an indication of a horizontal transmission of LCMV by a mechanism that involves mainly males, such as infection by bite wounds inflicted during fighting [35]. This hypothesis is supported by previous reports that male mice have a greater home range than females, and their home ranges overlap more than those of more territorial females [36]. There are also studies indicating that males in sites with higher food resources become more aggressive in the group compared to those males in the group with scarce food resources [37].
Another possible explanation is that the virus might be spreading due to the deterioration of the immune response, caused by exposure to heavy metals and toxins found at illegal waste sites. Long term exposure to such factors can lower the immune protection of the host organism and thus increases the possibility of infection and transmission of the virus. However, illegal waste sites pose a risk of spreading the virus only when it is naturally present, but does not solely increase the possibility of introduction of a new virus, previously unknown to the area, as confirmed by our data. Further investigation is needed to determine the reasons for this difference.
The prevalence and transmission rates of rodent-borne viruses in host populations vary in time and space and among host-virus systems. Improving our understanding of the causes of these variations will lead to better understanding of changes in risk of disease to humans.
As a consequence, agriculture and urbanisation with the connected waste disposal activities will put humans at risk of contracting a series of rodent-related diseases [38]. Moreover, improper waste management is driving the native species to local extinctions and replacing them with invasive commensal rodents, thereby reducing biodiversity and ecosystem health [39] and bringing commensal species in contact with native rodents. Introducing commensal rodents to waste sites enables them to colonize the regions that are otherwise inhabited by native rodents, and gives them additional abilities for transmission of infectious agents from commensal rodents to native ones.
A survey of rodent ectoparasites showed that prevalence and their intensity differed significantly between natural and illegal waste sites [40]. Among all rodents.
33% of rodents were infested by ticks in illegal sites and 14% in natural sites. Despite Ixodes ricinus was common in illegal sites, TBEV was not detected in rodents. The increase in rodent population did not have an immediate impact on spread and increase of TBEV in the study site. Namely, rodents alone do not play a crucial role in TBEV life cycle as this is the case for LCMV. For TBEV to be present in the certain environment, complete life cycle including ticks and well as rodents and large mammals needs to be established. Understanding rodent ecology and gene flow, including movement of commensal rodents with respect to human expansion in urban landscapes, is critical for understanding the dynamics of rodent-borne pathogens and is valuable for mitigating human disease outbreaks [41].
Illegal waste sites have an unavoidable and considerable impact on the area where they are located. The consequence of the illegally dumped waste on the presence and spread of human pathogens was examined. We have shown that the spread of pathogens already endemic in the environment, where the waste site is located, can be significantly increased. Namely, the seroprevalence of LCMV infection of rodents trapped at illegal waste sites was higher compared to the LCMV infection of rodents from their natural environment. The introduction of a human pathogens as a consequence of the waste site in the area of interest could however not be proven.
Immune Fluorescence Assay
LCMV:
Lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus
RNA:
Ribonucleic acid
RT PCR:
Reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction
TBEV:
Tick-borne encephalitis virus
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The authors would like to thank Matthew Schwarzkopf (University of Primorska) who kindly reviewed the manuscript and improved English. We would like to thank our colleagues from the Department of Biodiversity and Institute for Biodiversity studies at the University of Primorska, Peter Maričič, Katja Kalan, Toni Koren, Felicita Urzi, Peter Glasnović and our students from the Faculty of Mathematics, Natural Sciences and Information Technology: Domen Trkov, Mitja Črne, Barbara Horvath, Tjaša Zagoršek in Urban Kunej for help with field and laboratory work.
This study was funded by the DIVA project (co- financed within the IPA CBC Operational Programme SLO-HR 2007–2013). The support of COST Action TD1303 “European Network for Neglected Vectors and Vector-Borne Infections (EURNEGVEC)” is also acknowledged.
The datasets generated and/or analysed during the current study are not publicly available but are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
Department for Medical Microbiology Maribor, Centre for Medical Microbiology, National Laboratory of Health, Environment and Food, Prvomajska 1, 2000, Maribor, Slovenia
Darja Duh
Department of Biodiversity, Faculty of Mathematics, Natural Sciences and Information Technologies, University of Primorska, Glagoljaška 8, 6000, Koper, Slovenia
Sandra Hasic
& Elena Buzan
Institute for Biodiversity Studies, Science and Research Centre, University of Primorska, Garibaldijeva 1, 6000, Koper, Slovenia
Elena Buzan
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EB and DD designed research; DD, EB and SH conducted research; SH, EB and DD analysed data; and DD, SH and EB wrote the paper. EB had the primary responsibility for final content. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
Correspondence to Elena Buzan.
Permits to work with animals and animal tissues were issued by Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Croatia (No. 532–08–01-01/1–11-03) and Veterinary Administration of the Republic of Slovenia (No. 34401–36/2012/9).
Not applicable to this study.
No competing financial interests exists.
Gender and stage ratio of captured animals on locations. (DOCX 13.8 kb)
Duh, D., Hasic, S. & Buzan, E. The impact of illegal waste sites on a transmission of zoonotic viruses. Virol J 14, 134 (2017) doi:10.1186/s12985-017-0798-1
Illegal waste sites
Lcmv
Tbev
Anthropogenic influence
Pathogen transmission
Veterinary RNA viruses
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Artists+
Exhibits+Events
ALTERNATE ENDINGS: New Museum Screening and Discussion with Tom Kalin, My Barbarian, and Glen Fogel
Friday, December 5, 2014 from 7:00pm–9:00pm
Price: FREE, Open to the Public
Visual AIDS Event
Join us for ALTERNATE ENDINGS, a new video program for the 25th anniversary of Day With(out) Art featuring provocative work about the ongoing HIV/AIDS pandemic, focusing on the issues of today.
On December 1, 1989, Visual AIDS organized the first Day With(out) Art—a national day of action and mourning in response to the AIDS crisis. To honor the 25th year of Day With(out) Art, Visual AIDS is commissioning seven artists/collaboratives—Rhys Ernst, Glen Fogel, Lyle Ashton Harris, Hi Tiger, Tom Kalin, My Barbarian, and Julie Tolentino/Abigail Severance—to create new short videos to be screened internationally on/around December 1, 2014.
Day With(out) Art will be screened at the New Museum on December 5 beginning at 7pm, FREE and open to the public. A post-screening discussion featuring artists Tom Kalin, My Barbarian (Malik Gaines, Jade Gordon, and Alexandra Segade), and Glen Fogel. Videos of the post-screening discussion can be viewed HERE.
The short videos in ALTERNATE ENDINGS use a mix of found footage, live performance, still photos, and robotic cameras to weave together connections between personal stories and public memories. They share tales of love and breakups, sing songs of defiance, celebrate action, and remember those whom we have lost. Through these diverse stories we are invited to reflect upon our complex past as we envision divergent narratives and possibilities for the future, because AIDS IS NOT OVER.
ALTERNATE ENDINGS Synopses
Tom Kalin, Ashes, 2014, 5:49
For the 25th Anniversary of Day With(out) Art, Tom Kalin photographed thousands of high resolution still images and "stitched" them into a moving image. While borrowing library books for research on another project, Kalin discovered, glued to the endpapers, ordinary "due date" ledgers stamped with dates spanning three decades. Inspired by these tiny ledgers—like skin or palimpsests that recorded an analogue history, an accumulation of many gestures—Kalin combines quotidian pictures snatched from his daily life with an evocative musical track by ongoing collaborator Doveman (Thomas Bartlett). The film layers dates and moments from Kalin's personal world with the public and global history of AIDS.
Rhys Ernst, Dear Lou Sullivan, 2014, 6:16
This new work by LA-based artist Rhys Ernst invokes the story of Lou Sullivan, the trans man and AIDS activist largely responsible for establishing the distinction between gender identity and sexual orientation. Cut with images of Ernst’s own examination of this figure and trans history, the video is structured by the search for and desire to identify transmasculine elders and an intergenerational exploration of gay transmasculine identity. Utilizing interview footage, excerpts of Sullivan’s book Information for the Female-to-Male Crossdresser and Transsexual, VHS gay porn, and Grindr chats, Dear Lou Sullivan is a meditation on the life of the late trans man and AIDS activist that explores the bodily intersection of transmasculine gay and HIV+ identity.
My Barbarian, Counterpublicity, 2014, 7:12
My Barbarian's Counterpublicity is a staged video performance based on an essay about Pedro Zamora, AIDS activist and star of the Real World: San Francisco, written by José Esteban Muñoz in his book, Disidentifications. The three members of My Barbarian re-perform scenes from The Real World in an alienated style, resisting the affect of "reality tv" even as they interrogate its politics, contrasting these scenes with the embodied performance of 90s-inspired music videos, with lyrics adapted from Muñoz's theory of Queer counterpublic spheres that operate against the dominance of racism and homophobia.
Julie Tolentino/Abigail Severance, evidence, 2014, 4:17
In evidence, Julie Tolentino’s naked, moving body articulates backward on her hands and knees, balancing a cluster of Asian medicine cups. The piece, originally made in 2010 in collaboration with Abigail Severance, was remixed for Visual AIDS in 2014. Tolentino's self-made sound piece was added and initiates the video with a queer list of loved ones living and lost, recognizable or not, as both invocation and provocation of individuals who deeply shifted her perspective. As the listed names blur and are archived in Tolentino's body, evidence opens up to the list's potency through a female, brown, artist/activist body in the unseen yet held spaces of relationship, memory, sex and loss.
Hi Tiger, The Village, 2014, 6:41
Hi Tiger, the Portland, Maine based art-punk band fronted by visual artist and performer Derek Jackson, recreates the song "The Village" by New Order. Originally, New Order recorded the song as an upbeat new wave tune in 1982. With Hi Tiger's re-imagining some 30 years later, The Village becomes a torch song that meditates on themes of love and loss, complicity and defiance. In the context of HIV and AIDS, the song becomes a love letter to those that have passed and a call to arms for the ones who remain.
Lyle Ashton Harris, Selections from the Ektachrome Archive 1986–1996, 2014, 7:23
Lyle Ashton Harris' Selections from the Ektachrome Archive 1986–1996 is a snapshot from 1986–1996, chronicling the moments—now memories—of this charged decade. This selection features over one hundred images taken by Harris from his extensive archive of Ektachrome photographs. Harris captures creatives and intellectuals including Nan Goldin, Samuel R. Delaney, Stuart Hall, Essex Hemphill, bell hooks, Isaac Julien, Catherine Opie and Marlon Riggs among others in both intimate settings as well as now-historic events such as the Black Popular Culture Conference (1991), the opening for the Whitney’s landmark Black Male exhibition (1994), and his travels from New York to London and Los Angeles to Rome. In Selections from the Ektachrome Archive 1986–1996, bedroom scenes and personal mementos punctuate public presentations and social gatherings, as a register of Harris' life during the height of the AIDS crisis and its impact. Moreover, this archive takes the temperature of America’s recent past and charts its radical epistemological shifts.
Glen Fogel, 7 Years Later, 2014, 4:19
For 7 Years Later, Glen Fogel visited his ex-boyfriend Nathan Lee in Providence, RI and videotaped a conversation between the two of them. They discuss the events that led to their breakup seven years ago, while a robotic camera autonomously scans the apartment. The video is edited to look as though it is a seamless single take, a time warp in which Fogel and Lee appear in multiple places in the apartment at the same time.
Day With(out) Art 2014: ALTERNATE ENDINGS
ALTERNATE ENDINGS: Brooklyn Museum Screening, Performance and Discussion with Hi Tiger & Glen Fogel
Saturday, December 6, 2014 from 8:30pm–10:00pm
ALTERNATE ENDINGS: Studio Museum Screening and Discussion with Lyle Ashton Harris and Tom Kalin
Sunday, December 7, 2014 from 4:00pm–5:30pm
ALTERNATE ENDINGS: Queens Museum, Screening and Public Programs
Saturday, December 6, 2014 from 12:00pm–5:30pm
526 W 26th St #510
Donate to Support
Visual AIDS Today!
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Di Resta pleased by speculation
Some drivers may feel that speculation about their future is unwanted.
In regards to Felipe Massa at Ferrari, Michael Schumacher at Mercedes or Bruno Senna at Lotus, recent speculation has been somewhat negative and understandably could just act as an added level of pressure on them.
For drivers like Red Bull’s Mark Webber or McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton, the speculation is easily brushed off, Webber recently denying claims he had signed a pre-contract agreement with Ferrari, while Hamilton remains tight lipped regarding his ongoing talks with McLaren.
But Force India driver Paul di Resta has admitted that he has actually quite enjoyed the speculation regarding his future.
‘Of course. You can’t help it and, if it’s true, I’m thankful. But the task at the moment is with Force India.’ di Resta told the BBC.
The British driver has been linked with a move to Ferrari and received the backing of former three time F1 World champion Jackie Stewart to partner Fernando Alonso at Ferrari in 2013.
While Mercedes Chief Executive Officer Nick Fry has recently said that Mercedes are keeping a close eye on di Resta as a possible replacement for Michael Schumacher.
The Force India driver continued: ‘There’s been good press, which is nice to hear and nice to see that people are watching and their eyes are open, It’s no secret that I want to be in a car that is winning races and winning world championships.
‘But I have a contract with Force India and that’s where my driving duties are committed to at present.’
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INDUSTRY DAY
Air Force plans Open Mission Systems industry days
By Matthew Weigelt
The Air Force is hosting an industry event in November to discuss the details of its Open Mission Systems/ Unmanned Aerospace Systems Command and Control Initiative (OMS/UCI).
The event will be Nov. 15 and 16 in Dayton, Ohio.
The Air Force’s goal for industry is to understand the technical details of the OMS/UCI standard and how to begin using these tools in system developments.
The Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office leads the OMS initiative. OMS is for developing and demonstrating a consensus-based, non-proprietary, open architecture for integrating subsystems and services into airborne platforms.
The Air Force announced the industry days Sept. 22.
Matthew Weigelt is a freelance journalist who writes about acquisition and procurement.
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Health Information at Your Fingertips Since 1998 Webhealth has been a leading gateway to complementary health on the Web.
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Zero Balancing and Stress
Home / Case Studies / Zero Balancing and Stress
By Tim Newman
One of the assumptions of ZB theory is that when a person’s energy fields are organised, more harmonic, and holding less vibratory residue of passed stress or trauma, then that person will be clearer of surplus/disruptive tension, (and better able to ‘throw off’ new stresses that they encounter).
For instance, an over-stressed bone held in a chronically uncomfortable orientation within the skeletal structure, is more likely to crack or rupture on impact than one that is able to transmit forces through and out of it: Or, a person struggling with financial
commitments, work overload, family problems, (i.e., at the limit of their ability to absorb the combined stresses), is less likely to manage a further crisis (sudden illness, death of a close friend) than someone less chronically overloaded, or someone who deliberately engages in activities/therapies that support them in clearing stress on a regular basis.
Very often a combination of the above stresses are found in the same individual – feeling at or over our limit is a commonly heard complaint.
A lot of our stresses come from lifestyle; too many demands, too much choice, over stimulation of our energy fields by electrical appliances and environmental stresses, general over doing combined with a lack of appreciation that rest and recuperation are part of the natural health cycle.
For many people, lying still for the first time on a therapist’s couch, is an extraordinary pause in the constant activity of their day; and some people use such a session as the “One time in the month that they truly come to rest”. More is gained however from regular attention and repetition than very occasional treats.
Re-education is not usually learnt in an instant – and especially when dealing with dense tissues, such as bone, it takes time to establish new and more functional patterns. This is as true of self-help disciplines such as yoga and Tai Chi as it is of bodywork therapies such as Zero Balancing.
In the case of S. she had been inadvertently terrified by well-meaning
over-protectiveness from her mother, which left her cowering in fear of ‘something happening’ (a neighbour attacking her), whenever she was left
on her own at home.
She would be locked in the house afraid of any and every noise. At some point she internalised this mortal fear and managed to forget the experience Later, when she became pregnant with her daughter she was seized with inexplicable dread and tried to abort the foetus – unsuccessfully.
Her child, now grown up, has just entered prison and S. feels that it is her fault for not having wanted her earlier. She also had picked up the idea, incorrectly, that her father didn’t love her because he had “wanted a boy”, and she only found out on his deathbed that he really had loved her.
This caused a huge feeling of loss and regret for the misperception that he hadn’t loved her when in fact he had. S. has currently stopped sleeping with her husband and wants to separate from him.
All these different fears and emotions have become one great bundle of tension – when one is touched all are affected and S. doesn’t know how to deal with it. She defines herself as a bad person and bad mother.
A major part of a Zero Balancing session in this case is to support and reinforce her ability to remain stable whilst under seemingly impossible pressures. Another part of the work will be to allow such tension as can be released through respectful touch to be contacted and eased away.
By engaging and stretching her energy field in relation to her body and then holding it in neutral balance for a number of moments (FULCRUMS) – the ZB’er allows the chaos and overlay of events and responses to start separating out at a vibrational level, into their respective parts, and to reorganise themselves into a less disruptive configuration.
Each time the expanded field to allowed to return to normal, it will still hold aspects of her personal history, but in such a way that individual parts can be processed and completed in due course: Some just fade out or into the background: others may present themselves for attention in the order of priority that best suits her.
S. had already had a number of ZB sessions, which had begun the process of supporting and recognising her current crises: however she was unconsciously afraid of the old childhood fear which she had managed to contain and only related her current state to more recent events.
In the last ZB session she received, almost from the first fulcrums, she began to tremble as the release of tension held in the lower back and sacrum touched into the deeper events of her early childhood; and she quickly passed, (without any intention on my part), from the known regret and anguish of recent events to the nameless terror of something that had never actually happened to her – but only might have. At this point I stopped working and just sat with her, ‘holding the space’ as the wave of memory/emotion passed through her.
It is not usually the concern of the Zero Balancer to interpret or work the content of such spontaneous moments, and we are especially careful not to give undue attention to the ‘excitement’ of dramatic release.
Our aim is to stabilise the person as the wave of release travels through their system without them ‘collapsing’; They then have the added satisfaction of having been able to ‘stand in the storm’ and survive.
In this case S. came to a number of important realisations on her own without any direction from me.
We then completed the session with some integrating fulcrums and she got down from the couch in great peace and clarity and with a real sense of achievement.
Tim Newman : Acupuncturist (Lic.Ac.) & Zero Balancer (Cert.ZB.)
I practise near Penzance in West Cornwall and sometimes in London. I teach about half-a-dozen 28 workshops from my home on a residential basis each year, as well as about the same number in various European countries. I also run individual retreats from time to time in the exceptionally quiet and beautiful village that is Perranuthnoe(with the option of bodywork on the spot combined with nestling in) I can be contacted at:
“West Cottage”
Perranuthnoe
TR2O 9N0
Copyright © WebHealth.co.uk
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Armchair Development Finance
Buyers Agency
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Sussan Ley’s Portfolio Pathway To Disaster
Posted by Grace Mackay 19th January, 2017
A lot of media attention over the past few weeks has focused on Federal Health Minister Sussan Ley after it was alleged she used taxpayer funded flights to the Gold Coast to purchase an investment property. Ley has since resigned from her position.
What hasn’t received much attention are the details of the property she purchased. Ley paid $795,000 for a two-bedroom unit in a high-rise apartment block in Main Beach (just north of Surfers Paradise).
If Mrs Ley has purchased the unit to live in or to use as a private holiday house, then the decision to purchase comes down to personal circumstances and preferences. Emotions play a large part in such decisions.
However, if the unit was purchased as an investment property, that is a different story. Facts and figures are the priority and emotions only serve to cloud decision making. At We Find Houses we help investors looking to take control of their financial circumstances to take the emotion of out of purchasing an investment property and to focus on what really matters.
Let’s take a closer look at the unit Mrs Ley purchased.
It would attract a rent of around $700 per week. Body corporate (strata) fees, rates, water and insurance would cost around $200 per week, leaving a net return of approximately $500 per week.
This equates to a net yield of just 3.27%. This figure will reduce further once vacancy rates and property management fees are taken into consideration.
With this type of return, strong capital gains are required to make this type of investment feasible. However, historically, high-rise units on the Gold Coast have provided poor capital growth in the long term. This looks set to continue as dozens of high-rise blocks in the 10km strip between Southport and Broadbeach are currently under construction or in the planning stages.
At the time Mrs Ley was winging her way up and down Australia’s east coast at our expense (allegedly), We Find Houses also had clients who were keen to invest in property on the Gold Coast. Our clients didn’t have the same budget as our former Health Minister, but they will still finish way in front. The reason being is we sought and secured properties based on our clients’ individual needs that would provide the best long-term results.
As an example, in the same month that Mrs Ley purchased her Main Beach unit, we secured a three-bedroom duplex half at Palm Beach (on the southern end of the Coast) for one of our clients. The purchase price was $481,000 with a rental return of $500 per week. After taking into consideration all the outgoings, this investment came out to be neutrally geared. Due to high demand and extremely tight vacancy rates, the rental return on the duplex has increased since the purchase, so now the property provides a slight positive cash flow for the owner.
Despite this, the major benefit to our client has been achieved through capital growth. Current estimates value our client’s Palm Beach duplex half at around $590,000 with further growth projected throughout this year.
Had Sussan Ley spoken to Paul Wilson and the team at We Find Houses before purchasing, she could have paid for her own first class flights to the Gold Coast, stayed at one of the premium hotels, had an extra $300K to put into another investment and still been more than $100,000 in front!
To find out how we can help you to avoid the unnecessary pitfalls of investing in property call We Find Houses on 1800 600 890.
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MS MR / Jack Garratt at Varsity Theater, Minneapolis (15 Oct 2015)
MS MR Setlist
No Guilt in Pleasure
Salty Sweet
Tripolar
Think of You
Wrong Victory
Dark Doo Wop
-- Encore --
NYC duo MS MR came to Minneapolis “for the first time as a band and as people” ...and ‘rocked it like a ‘Hurricane’. ‘Hurricane’, of course, refers to their infectious single of the same name…
British singer, multi-instrumentalist, and producer Jack Garratt is currently on tour with Mumford and Sons, but on his off days with the massive band, he's booked a few smaller side gigs - including one at 7th …
MS MR recently headlined the Varsity Theater in Minneapolis on Thursday.
Full review to follow... this is just a post to get setlist and photos online as soon as possible.
British artist/producer Jack Garratt opened up the show, we previously caught him in August 2015. At the time, he only had eight songs... but recently Garratt announced details of his debut album. Set for release on 19th February 2016 through Island Records. The record features recent single "Weathered" and previous EP tracks "The Love You’re Given" and "Chemical". It was predominantly recorded at Limbo Studios in London, and produced by Jack, with additional production credits by Mike Spencer (Weathered/Surprise Yourself), and Bastian Langebæk (Weathered/Worry).
Music duo MS MR (Lizzy Plapinger and Max Hershenow) is touring in support of How Does It Feel The record came out July 17 on Columbia Records and featured energetic new single “Criminals.”
More details later...
MS MR tour dates:
10/17/15 Englewood, CO Gothic Theatre
10/19/15 Vancouver, BC Commodore Ballroom
10/20/15 Seattle, WA The Neptune
10/21/15 Portland, OR McMenamins Crystal Ballroom
10/23/15 Oakland, CA Fox Theater
10/24/15 Mesa, AZ Mesa Amphitheatre
10/25/15 San Diego, CA House Of Blues
10/27/15 Los Angeles, CA The Wiltern
11/06/15 Brighton, United Kingdom The Arch
11/07/15 Manchester Club Academy
11/08/15 Glasgow Glasgow School Of Art
11/10/15 London Electric Brixton
11/12/15 Brussels, Belgium Orangerie
11/13/15 Paris, France Le Trabendo
11/14/15 Amsterdam, Netherlands Melkweg
11/16/15 Zurich, Switzerland X-TRA
11/17/15 Munich, Germany Tonhalle
11/18/15 Frankfurt, Germany Batschkapp
11/19/15 Cologne, Germany Gloria
11/21/15 Hamburg, Germany Mojo Club
11/22/15 Berlin, Germany Huxleys Neue Welt
Jack Garratt Tour dates:
10/21/15 Portland, OR McMenamins Crystal
10/30/15 Manchester Manchester Cathedral
10/31/15 Sheffield The Leadmill
11/02/15 Bristol Trinity Centre
11/03/15 Birmingham Library Theatre
11/04/15 London O2 Shepherds Bush Empire
11/07/15 Club To Club Festival
11/10/15 Amsterdam Melkweg
11/12/15 Festival Les Inrocks Philips
11/13/15 Luxembourg Sonic Visions
11/14/15 Brussels, Belgium Botanique
11/17/15 Berlin, Germany Gretchen Club
11/28/15 Nottingham The Capital
11/29/15 Sheffield Sheffield Arena
11/30/15 Birmingham Genting Arena
12/02/15 Dublin, Ireland 3Arena
12/05/15 Cardiff Motorpoint Arena Cardiff
12/06/15 Manchester Manchester Arena
12/07/15 Liverpool Echo Arena Liverpool
12/09/15 London The O2 - London
12/12/15 Leeds First Direct Arena
12/13/15 Glasgow The SSE Hydro
MS MR at Varsity Theater, Minneapolis (15 Oct 2015)
john (johnc@weheartmusic.com) ♥ weheartmusic.com ♥ twitter.com/weheartmusic ♥ itunes.apple.com
Posted by W♥M on Saturday, 17 October 2015 at 06:37 AM in Jack Garratt, John, Minneapolis, MS MR, Varsity Theater | Permalink | Comments (0)
Rocktober: October 15, 2015
Peaches, in her bold style, exclaimed, "We're Peaches & Gonzales. We were personally asked by Elastica to open up the show!" That got my attention, I mean, why would Elastica go out of their way …
The so-called "Moon Block Party presents Deap Vally & Friends" shows will start on September 16 in Seattle and ending on a boat cruise with Lynyrd Skynyrd. …
Here are some shows taking place in the Minneapolis/St Paul area on October 15, 2015.
Read more Minneapolis Music Guide.
at First Avenue
Thursday, 10/15/2015, 7:30pm ($15)
This is a true story, but after I saw Peaches in September 2000, I had to see her again. Between the period of 2000 and 2002, we must have seen her at least four times! Every time she would appear, she had gained a bigger audience (and we started to recognize some of the same people at these shows!)
Peaches is currently tour in support of her latest album Rub (I U She Music).
Our favorite ladies Deap Vally (who we saw in June 2014 and June 2013) and Shannon Blowtorch (who we just saw in September 2014) will open the show.
10/15/15 Minneapolis, MN First Avenue
10/16/15 Madison, WI Majestic Theatre
10/17/15 Chicago, IL Metro / Smart Bar
10/18/15 Pontiac, MI Crofoot Ballroom
10/20/15 Toronto, ON Phoenix Concert
10/21/15 Montreal, QC S.A.T.
10/23/15 Boston, MA Paradise Rock Club
10/24/15 New York, NY Irving Plaza
10/25/15 Philadelphia, PA Trocadero Theatre
10/26/15 Washington, DC 9:30 Club
10/28/15 Carrboro, NC Cat's Cradle
10/29/15 Atlanta, GA Terminal West
10/31/15 New Orleans, LA One Eyed Jacks
11/04/15 Houston, TX Numbers
11/06/15 Fun Fun Fun Fest
11/07/15 Dallas, TX Trees
11/09/15 Denver, CO Summit Music Hall
11/10/15 Salt Lake City, UT Urban Lounge
11/11/15 Las Vegas, NV Brooklyn Bowl
11/13/15 Los Angeles, CA Regent Theater
at Varsity Theater
varsitytheater.org
We just previously caught New York's MS MR at Go Fest 2015 in August... and with only two months, the band is back. This upcoming show is also sponsored by Go 96.3... so they have a special deal, if you put in "GO" on the code line, your ticket price is only $9.63 (additional details on go963mn.com).
Opening will be Jack Garratt, who we just saw also in August 2015. With only eight written songs, Garratt had to carry the headlining burden, so he was incredibly nervous (and grateful!) for seeing so many strangers coming to see him play live. Hopefully, as an opener, the weight of a full-length show will be lifted.
10/10 – Toronto, ON – Danforth Music Hall
10/12 – Columbus, OH – Newport Music Hall
10/15 – Minneapolis, MN - Varsity Theater
10/17 – Denver, CO – Gothic Theatre
10/19 – Vancouver, BC – Commodore Ballroom
10/20 – Seattle, WA – Neptune Theatre*
10/21 – Portland, OR – Crystal Ballroom*
10/23 – Oakland, CA – Fox Theatre*
10/25 – San Diego, CA – House of Blues*
10/27 – Los Angeles, CA – The Wiltern*
11/06 – Brighton, UK – The Arch
11/07 – Manchester, UK – Club Academy
11/08 – Glasgow – Art School
11/10 – London, UK – Electric Brixton
11/12 – Brussels, Belgium – Orangerie
11/13 – Paris, France – Trabendo
11/14 – Amsterdam, Netherlands – Melkweg
11/16 – Zurich, Switzerland – X-Tra
11/17 – Munich, Germany – Technikum
11/18 – Frankfurt, Germany – Batschkapp
11/19 – Cologne, Germany – Gloria
11/21 – Hamburg, Germany – Mojo
* w/ Jack Garratt, Tigertown
Great Good Fine OK
In contrast, Brooklyn's Great Good Fine Ok had a slightly longer 40-min set. Highlight of their set, was midway into their song ‘By My Side’ as Luke "the Shredmaster" Moellman …
Los Angeles duo Girlpool (Cleo Tucker on guitars and Harmony Tividad on bass) have recently shared their song "Alone At The Show", taken from the The Le Sigh Vol. II …
at Various Venues
news.weheartmusic.com
As usual, there are too many shows in Rocktober.
Additional shows on this date:
Vacationer is headlining the 7th Street Entry. We previously saw Vacationer in February 2012. Great Good Fine OK to open.. we previously saw them in March 2015 (7:30pm/$13).
Los Angeles' Girlpool to arrive at Triple Rock Social Club. Locals Kitten Forever and Half Tramp will open (8pm/$10).
Dan Smyers and Shay Mooney, aka Dan + Shay will be at Mill City Nights. Kelsea Ballerini to open (7:30pm/$29.50).
Jazz, funk, rock, samba, Afro-beat, Gypsy brass band MarchFourth! is playing Cedar Cultural Center. Sister Species to open (7:30pm/$18).
Chance the Rapper is headlining the Myth. Metro Boomin, D.R.A.M, and Towkio to open (6:30pm/$39.95).
Ed Schrader's Music Beat will be at Turf Club. Special guests Yoni Yum, Animal Lover, Weakwick, and Gay Henry, to appear (8pm/$8).
vu (vu@weheartmusic.com) ♥ weheartmusic.com ♥ twitter.com/weheartmusic ♥ itunes.apple.com
Posted by W♥M on Friday, 09 October 2015 at 06:21 PM in Animal Lover, Chance The Rapper, D.R.A.M, Dan and Shay, Deap Vally, Ed Schrader, Girlpool, Great Good Fine OK, Half Tramp, Jack Garratt, Kelsea Ballerini, Kitten Forever, MarchFourth!, Metro Boomin, Minneapolis, Minneapolis Music Guide, MS MR, Peaches, Rocktober, Shannon Blowtorch, Sister Species, Towkio, Vacationer, Vu, Weakwick, Yoni Yum | Permalink | Comments (0)
Go Fest '15
poster: Coley Lind
Matt & Kim Setlist
w/ snippet of "Party Up" by DMX)
I'm A Goner
Hoodie On
Ignition (Remix) (R. Kelly cover)
w/ intro "No Sleep 'Till Brooklyn" by Beastie Boys
w/ intro "Push It" by Salt-N-Pepa
Just a Friend (Biz Markie cover)
w/ intro "Bring Em Out" by T.I.
Cold War Kids Setlist
Loner Phase
One Song at a Time
We Used To Vacation
Louder Than Ever
Hot Coals
Hang Me Up to Dry
I've Seen Enough
Drive Desperate
Something Is Not Right With Me
Yelawolf Setlist
Box Chevy V
Growin' Up in the Gutter
Push 'Em
Friends in Low Places (Garth Brooks cover)
Pop the Trunk
I Wish / Whole Lotta Love / War Pigs
American You
Big Data Setlist
Big Dater
Private Eyes (Hall & Oates cover)
The Business of Emotion
Meg Myers Setlist
A Bolt From The Blue
Heart Heart Head (partial; cut off)
Go 96.3
We were really impressed with Go 96.3 FM's first Go Show #1 (featuring New Politics and Banks at Aria on Mar 2015). We were wondering how they can top that debut show …
Matt & Kim
This is one of the best band to see live is Matt and Kim. The duo is returning to Minneapolis at the Mill City Nights next, next Friday …
It's the big 10 year anniversary of local radio station The Current, and they've been selling out all their shows. I believe most, if not all, of their shows will be broadcasting live ....
I was only given a link to the video for Yelawolf's new video "Let's Roll" (watch it in HD on vevo.com). The song is from his latest album, Radioactive, which came out November of last year. ....
The inaugural Go Fest at the Target Field last Friday. We were already impressed with their first ever Go Show #1 earlier in March 2015, but was absolutely blown away at the size and scale and production of Go Fest '15.
The festival took place in the new baseball open field. Only portions of the stadium seats (no access to the green) were opened to view the concert stage. There was a small standing-only section in the front for VIP access... which Go Radio was more than generous in giving away upgrade passes to fans who showed up early.
Prices ranged from $9.63 to $96.30, which I think was a great price for these bands. Even if they lost a ton of money, it was money well spent for promotion of the new radio station, Go 96.3 FM.
There was a lot of planning and thought involved in orchestrating this music festival... but not everything was set in stone. For example local band Enemy Planes was added last minute (the day of) as first band on the bill with a brief twenty-minute set, and MS MR was switched with Big Data. Otherwise Allan Kingdom (who we previously saw with thestand4rd at Rock the Garden) went on as planned at 4:30.
In between bands RAC (André Allen Anjos) played his DJ sets.
Meg Myers
The first non-local band to play was Los Angeles, by the way of Tennessee, Meg Myers, who we previously saw with Royal Blood at Mill City Nights in 2014. Like her last appearance, she is accompanied by her four-piece band (including a cellist), and she sang dark and delicate songs about relationship and desires.
While we liked her songs, unfortunately most people will likely remember that she was literally played off the stage when she started playing her closing song "Heart Heart Head". Everyone was operating under a very tight schedule, so we were not surprised that they cut off her mic.
New York's Big Data was up next. The band was previously in town at the Fine Line Music Café earlier in March 2015. This music project is lead by Alan Wilkis, who teamed up with a variety of artists for their 2.0 album (including guests White Sea, Joywave, Jamie Lidell, Kimbra, Rivers Cuomo, Jenn Wasner, Dragonette, Bear Hands, and Twin Shadow). When they play live, Wilkis had plenty of vocal help from singer Lizy Ryan.
Their set had bookend pre-recorded robotic announcements, and they played it safe by covering Hall & Oates' "Private Eyes" and ending it with their most popular song, "Dangerous"... which is a really catchy song.
We've been covering MS MR since 2012, and was happy to be there for them on their first ever Minneapolis appearance in 2013.
The duo Lizzy Plapinger (MS) and Max Hershenow (MR) was happy to announce that they have released a second album How Does It Feel (Columbia Records), which incidentally landed at #1 on Billboard's Top Heatseekers chart. Their new single, "Painted" sounded great live and you can easily see why the song is showing strong support on Top 30 Alternative radio.
They ended their set with their first single "Hurricane", which they kindly note that if you wanted to hear more from them, that they'll be back in Minneapolis at the Varsity Theater on October 15th. Immediately the couple next to me said they'll buy tickets to see them again.
Based on the biker leather jackets, the tattoos, and hip-hop/rap sound of Yelawolf... they surely stuck out like a sore thumb. Despite being the odd band out, they definitely had their dedicated fans.
Apparently they did not play by the rules. They were slightly rude, spitting, spraying beer in the audience, lighting their setlist on fire and destroying a microphone, and giving the fingers to all the ladies in the audience. After hearing them talk about how they love the south, Hank Williams, and the confederate flag (which is a hot button at the moment), you get the feeling they do and say whatever the f*** they want and they don't care what you think.
After playing "Heartbreak" per request from a fan and ending their set with "American Youth", the band pulled out an autographed baseball and threw it into the audience.
We've been covering Cold War Kids since 2008, they are always a good solid live band. In 2013, we saw the band three times (First Avenue (09/26/13), First Avenue (4/5/13), and Target Center (05/31/13)) and didn't feel heartbroken when we didn't see them in late January 2015. Still, we were excited to see them again at Go Fest; it was like seeing an old friend.
By the time CWK took the stage on their first ever baseball field show, it had gotten dark, but the stage direction kept the band in bare minimal lighting (dark blues and dimmed reds).
Songs on their set featured some new songs from their latest Hold My Home ("All This Could Be Yours", "Hot Coals", "Drive Desperate", and "First"), but throwing in fan favorite "Hang Me Up to Dry".
The first time I read about Matt & Kim, they had opened up for Weezer in New York in 2009 and again in 2010. They were described as "dance party", and it wasn't until I saw them in person in Minneapolis in 2012 that I absolutely believed it. Of all the shows I saw in 2012, that one stood out as easily one of my highlight. We've seen them again at Rock the Garden in 2014, and a couple of things you should know about this party band: 1. Kim does this walking on people bit, 2. They go from zero to one hundred percent, 3. They have potty mouths (esp Kim), 4. Plenty of confetti, and 5. Just have a good time. Don't over analyze their songs or question their singing abilities, you're missing the point if you do.
I had a lot of fun, and I think the audience did too. Some new gimmick they did tried for this show was getting everyone to blow up balloons and then tossing them up in the air. They also brought out a parachute and had people holding it up (wasn't quite sure this one worked as well as they intended).
The various snippets of DMX's "Party Up", Beastie Boys' "No Sleep 'Till Brooklyn", Salt-N-Pepa's "Push It", went over really well with the crowd, who seemed to know the material. The introduction to "Ignition (Remix)" was pretty funny, Matt explained, "R Kelly was supposed to play Arizona, but he didn't because he wasn't going to get paid... So if R. Kelly won't play R. Kelly songs, Matt and Kim will play R. Kelly songs!"
Seeing as there was only a few minutes until closing time of 11:30, I was surprised to see that the band came back for a quick encore at the eleventh hour. At first with a prerecorded T.I.'s "Bring Em Out" and then they covered Biz Markie's "Just a Friend", which got the crowd singing along. Their finale "It's Alright" ended their set with a couple of audience body surfing with plenty of beach balls that was released by the stage hand.
Go Fest '15 was an experience. They're already talking about doing another one (before the end of the year???), and honestly I can't wait to see how they are going to top this show. Given that the event was nearly 8 hours long, I think perhaps next time, they can have the Go Fest to fall on a Saturday (when most normal people don't have work or school).
Matt & Kim at Go Fest, Target Field (07 Aug 2015)
Posted by W♥M on Saturday, 15 August 2015 at 03:17 AM in Allan Kingdom, Big Data, Cold War Kids, Enemy Planes, Go 96.3, Go Fest, Go Radio, Lizy Ryan, Matt and Kim, Meg Myers, MS MR, RAC, Target, Target Field, Vu, Yelawolf | Permalink | Comments (0)
Photos: Go Fest '15 at Target Field, Minneapolis (7 Aug 2015)
While we work out the setlists and review, here are some photos from Go Fest '15. For the entry price of $9.63 (for 96.3 FM), this served as a nice promotion for the new radio station Go 96.3.
We've previously seen MS MR, Cold War Kids and Matt and Kim as headliners for their own shows, and seeing them all together in one bill is simply unbelievable.
Lineup and Set Times
4 p.m. - Gates Open
4:05 p.m. - Enemy Planes
4:30 p.m. - Allan Kingdom
5 p.m. - Meg Myers
5:50 p.m. - Big Data
6:40 p.m. - MS MR
7:30 p.m. - Yelawolf
9 p.m. - Cold War Kids
10:30 p.m. - Matt and Kim
11:30 p.m. - End of Show
I don't honestly know how Go Radio will top themselves for their next Go Show.
Matt & Kim at Go Fest '15, Target Field (7 Aug 2015)
Posted by W♥M on Sunday, 09 August 2015 at 02:51 PM in Big Data, Cold War Kids, Go 96.3, Go Fest, Go Radio, Go Show, John, Matt and Kim, Meg Myers, Minneapolis, MS MR, Target Field, Vu, Yelawolf | Permalink | Comments (0)
Minneapolis: August 7, 2015
I attended the Go 96.3's first concert (dubbed Go Show #1) at the Aria in Minneapolis on Friday the 13th. For the young radio station's very first show . …
Here are some concerts taking place in the Minneapolis/St Paul area on Friday, August 7, 2015.
at Target Field
Friday, 08/07/2015, 4:30pm ($9.63)
go963mn.com
We were really impressed with Go 96.3 FM's first Go Show #1 (featuring New Politics and Banks at Aria on Mar 2015). We were wondering how they can top that debut show... and they've completely done it by booking Target Field with this incredible band lineup.
We've previously seen covered most of these bands, but to see them all on one bill is simply unbelievable. The kicker? Nosebleed tickets are under $10 each, so you can bring all your friends (well, restricted to a 20-ticket maximum) and hang out in the green.
Allan Kingdom (from thestand4rd)
Plus: DJ Sets by RAC
Irish Fair
First of all, I think we're definitely going to be doing the Irish Fair this year. I know St Patrick's Day was in March, but who cares when it's free in August! The two main attraction seems to be California's Young Dubliners .…
at Harriet Island (St Paul)
08/07/2015-08/08/2015, 7pm (FREE)
irishfair.com
The free annual Irish Fair will start next Friday, August 7th and ending on Sunday, August 9th, at Harriet Island. Headliner for the first two nights will be Los Angeles' Young Dubliners.... currently touring in support of their latest album Nine. We previously caught Young Dubliners when they headlined the Irish Fair in 2010, so I'll be good to have them back in the Twin Cities.
NOTE: The Irish Fair fans should know that there is a $20 Kickoff Party event on Thursday, August 6th, featuring local Irish band Wild Colonial Bhoys.
Young Dubliner's tour dates:
08/07/15 Irish Fair Minnesota
08/09/15 Crestone Music Festival
08/14/15 Santa Rosa, CA Annie O's Music Hall
08/15/15 Paso Robles, CA Private Function
08/16/15 Los Osos, CA Sea Pines Golf Resort
08/21/15 Hopefest
08/22/15 Lodi, CA Private Function
08/27/15 Colorado Springs, CO Thirsty Parrot
08/28/15 Denver, CO The Oriental Theater
09/11/15 Sisters Folk Festival
09/16/15 Somerville, MA Johnny D's
09/17/15 Newton, NJ The Newton Theatre
09/18/15 Annapolis, MD Rams Head On Stage
09/19/15 Irish 2000 Festival
09/20/15 Get Shamrocked Festival
09/26/15 Treasure Valley Celtic
10/02/15 Chicago, IL Beverly Arts Center
10/03/15 Huntsville, UT Snowbasin
10/04/15 Blues, Brews & BBQ
10/08/15 Wilmington, DE World Cafe Live
10/09/15 Leesburg, VA Smokehouse Live
10/10/15 Alexandria, VA John Strongbow's Tavern
10/14/15 Jim Thorpe, PA Mauch Chunk Opera House
10/15/15 Philadelphia, PA World Cafe Live
10/16/15 Macungie, PA Private Function
10/17/15 Chesapeake Roots Festival
10/18/15 Harrisburg, PA The Abbey Bar
11/05/15 Phoenix, AZ The Crescent Ballroom
11/06/15 Tucson Celtic Festival
11/13/15 Grants Pass, OR Rogue Theatre
11/14/15 Portland, OR Melody Ballroom
11/19/15 Sturtevant, WI Route 20 Outhouse
11/20/15 South Bend, IN Club Fever
11/21/15 Joliet, IL The Tree
Do you know what's funny? Social D was one of the first bands I saw when I was living in Fresno, California. They were huge back then just coming off their big hit single "Bad Luck"..…
Friday, 08/07/2015, 7pm ($35/Sold Out)
Our new writer Langen will be seeing Social Distortion at First Avenue. Not to brag, but I saw Social D in 1992(?) in Fresno, California. They played a tiny club and changed the line in "Ball & Chain" from "county jail" to "Fresno County Jail" and got a huge roar from the audience.
Mike Ness and company are on tour at the moment because their debut self-titled album turned 25 in 2015 (originally released in 1990). Expect the punk band to play the entire album, plus throwing in some old favorites from Somewhere Between Heaven & Hell, etc.
Drag the River and Nikki Lane to open the show.
07/31/15 Austin, TX Austin City Limits Live
08/01/15 Houston, TX House Of Blues
08/02/15 Dallas, TX House Of Blues
08/05/15 Sturgis Rally
08/08/15 Milwaukee, WI Eagles Ballroom
08/09/15 Chicago, IL House Of Blues
08/14/15 Indianapolis, IN Egyptian Room
08/15/15 Royal Oak, MI Royal Oak Music Theatre
08/16/15 Cleveland, OH House Of Blues
08/18/15 Buffalo, NY The Town Ballroom
08/19/15 Philadelphia, PA Festival Pier
08/21/15 Pittsburgh, PA Stage AE
08/22/15 Asbury Park, NJ Stone Pony Summerstage
08/23/15 Boston, MA House Of Blues Boston
08/25/15 Silver Spring, MD Fillmore Silver Spring
08/27/15 Raleigh, NC The Ritz
08/28/15 Charlotte, NC Fillmore Charlotte
08/29/15 Nashville, TN Ryman Auditorium
09/02/15 Denver, CO Fillmore Auditorium
09/03/15 Salt Lake City, UT The Depot
09/05/15 Portland, OR Roseland Theater
09/06/15 Bumbershoot Festival
09/07/15 Bend, OR The Century Center
09/11/15 Paso Robles, CA Vina Robles Amphitheatre
09/12/15 Los Angeles, CA Greek Theatre
09/13/15 Santa Ana, CA The Observatory
Posted by W♥M on Friday, 31 July 2015 at 05:41 PM in Allan Kingdom, Big Data, Cold War Kids, Drag the River, Go 96.3, Go Radio, Go Show, Irish, Irish Fair, Matt and Kim, Meg Myers, Minneapolis, Minneapolis Music Guide, MS MR, Nikki Lane, Punk, RAC, Social Distortion, thestand4rd, Vu, Wild Colonial Bhoys, Yelawolf, Young Dubliners | Permalink | Comments (0)
Born Cages
Afterparty for Radio 104.5's Winter Jam
flyer: facebook
Born Cages is an alternative rock band, lead by singer/guitarist Vlad Holiday. The band is currently signed to Razor & Tie.
We are covering Born Cages in a private showcase on Wednesday (Jan 22nd) in New York, so expect some photos and a report after the date.
If you live in Philadelphia, check out their show this Saturday (Jan 25) at Gunners Run. They are part of Radio 104.5's Winter Jam, featuring twenty one pilots, MS MR, New Politics, and Switchfoot.
Born Cages wrote:
Next Saturday is Radio 104.5's Winter Jam with twenty one pilots, MS MR, New Politics and Switchfoot - and we're playing the after-party! It's happening right after the show (7pm) at Gunners Run, which is located directly to the right of the main stage. Philly, let's party!
The Sidelines
Razor & Tie
Expect Born Cages to play some tracks from their recent The Sidelines EP, which came out Jun 18, 2013, on Razor & Tie. You can stream the entire EP over at Soundcloud, plus various other oddities, including their remix of Arcade Fire's "Afterlife".
Hear "Cover My Band's Song":
Born Cages live schedule:
01/25 Afterparty for Radio 104.5's Winter Jam
02/07 Asbury Lanes - Asbury Park, NJ
02/13 Mercury Lounge - New York, NY
02/14 MilkBoy Philly - Philadelphia, PA
02/17 Great Scott - Boston, MA
vu ( ) ♥ weheartmusic.com
Posted by W♥M on Monday, 20 January 2014 at 12:42 PM in Born Cages, MS MR, Razor and Tie, Vu | Permalink | Comments (0)
MS MR w/ Wildcat! Wildcat! 7th St Entry, Minneapolis (09/28/13) concert review
No Trace
BTSK
Time Of My Life (Patrick Wolf cover)
Head Is Not My Home
Ash Tree Lane
Dance Yrself Clean (LCD Soundsystem cover)
09/30/13 Chicago, IL Lincoln Hall
10/02/13 Tulsa, OK The Vanguard
10/04/13 Austin City Limits Music
10/08/13 Houston, TX Warehouse Live
10/09/13 New Orleans, LA House Of Blues
10/12/13 Corona Capital Festival
10/13/13 Austin City Limits
10/15/13 San Francisco, CA Independent
10/17/13 West Hollywood, CA Troubadour
10/19/13 San Diego, CA Soda Bar
10/23/13 Vancouver, BC Venue
10/24/13 Seattle, WA Crocodile
11/02/13 London Calling
11/03/13 Luxembourg Den Atelier
11/05/13 London, UK O2 Shepherds Bush Empire
11/06/13 Paris, France Alhambra Theatre
11/08/13 Electronic Beats
11/09/13 Frankfurt, Germany Gibson Club
11/10/13 Cologne, Germany Live Music Hall
11/12/13 Hamburg, Germany Kampnagel
11/13/13 Berlin, Germany Astra
11/14/13 Munich, Germany Theatre Fabrik
11/16/13 Brighton, UK Old Market Theatre
11/17/13 Bristol, UK Trinity Centre
11/18/13 Nottingham, UK The Rescue Rooms
11/20/13 Glasgow, UK Oran Mor
11/21/13 Leeds, UK The Cockpit
11/23/13 Dublin, Ireland The Academy
11/24/13 Manchester, UK Academy 2
11/25/13 Oxford, UK O2 Academy Oxford
11/26/13 Norwich, UK Waterfront
New York City-based duo MS MR has had a very busy year since WeHeartMusic last covered them and have just embarked on their first North American headlining tour. In support of their full-length debut, Secondhand Rapture …
Wildcat! Wildcat!
We previously mentioned Wildcat! Wildcat! before, but this time it's to announce their Fall touring schedule, kicking it all off in Minneapolis' Triple Rock Social Club. …
NYC duo MS MR came to Minneapolis “for the first time as a band and as people” ...and ‘rocked it like a ‘Hurricane’. ‘Hurricane’, of course, refers to their infectious single of the same name, the opening track from their debut album, Secondhand Rapture (Columbia Records). If their weekend gig at a sold out 7th Street Entry is any indication, it’s the last time the band will be playing small venues for quite some time.
Los Angeles trio Wildcat! Wildcat! started the evening with a well-received set of chilled, harmonic indie pop. Bassist Jesse Taylor and keyboardist Michael Wilson backed by drummer Jesse Carmichael, used their tenor voices and bristling melodies to incite the receptive crowd to songs from their just released self-titled ep (Downtown Records). Mentioning it was their “first trip east” and wisely postponing their own dates to act as tour opener, expect the band to return and headline on their own sometime next spring.
Lizzy Plapinger
Lizzy Plapinger (MS) and Max Hershenow (MR) started their 53 min. set rightly, with the dark thumping beats of ‘Bones’, most recognized from the HBO series ‘Game of Thrones’. Their brooding blend of atmospheric pop was counter-balanced live by the pure joy and additional energy the band emoted from the sequin-backdropped stage. Fans of Phantogram, Polica, Florence and the Machine, and Marina and the Diamonds should stand up and take notice of the Brooklyn duo, who were backed by a live drummer and bassist. Assertive vocals over pulsing synth beats, they are a band that thoroughly seems to enjoy themselves on stage- a rarity for those acts dabbling in their spirited brand of dark electro pop.
In addition to songs from their debut, a couple of cover versions sprinkled into the set went off extremely well, and fit very seamlessly into the overall fabric of the performance. ‘Time of My Life’, a Patrick Wolf cover, was re-worked with more gusto and depth than the original and a faithful version of LCD Soundsystem’s ‘Dance Yrself Clean’ whipped the crowd up for the set crescendo of ‘Hurricane’, the sultry mid-tempo album opener, that you can’t get out of your head once you hear it.
There’s a reason the critical acclaim is building and the band was invited to play high-profile international festivals (Lollapalooza, Glastonbury, Reading, Outside Lands, Melt, and ACL to name a few), most before a full album had even been released. On Saturday night, 250 of us bore witness to why we were fortunate enough to get a small-club sized glimpse of MS MR, so clearly on the rise to greater and larger heights.
MS MR at 7th Street Entry, Minneapolis (09/28/13)
mrvu + mrjohn ( ) ♥ weheartmusic.com ♥ msmrsounds.com ♥ wildcatwildcat.com
Posted by W♥M on Monday, 30 September 2013 at 05:36 PM in 7th Street Entry, John, MS MR, Podcast, Vu, Wildcat! Wildcat! | Permalink | Comments (0)
Ms Mr Mrs
MS MR is an electro-pop duo from New York. Their latest EP, Candy Bar Creep Show, is available now. You can check the songs out via streaming on their msmrmusic.tumblr.com page. …
msmrsounds.com
New York City-based duo MS MR has had a very busy year since WeHeartMusic last covered them and have just embarked on their first North American headlining tour. In support of their full-length debut, Secondhand Rapture (IAMSOUND/Columbia Records) the tour includes a Saturday night stop at Minneapolis’ 7th Street Entry, for an already sold-out show.
Lizzy Plapinger and Max Hershenow have picked up much additional international buzz after successful festival appearances this summer at Lollapalooza, Glastonbury and Outside Lands. The HBO series Game of Thrones including their song ‘Bones’ probably didn’t hurt things either. The chillwave duo brings the grandeur of their brand of cinematic pop to a live setting, which should include a few choice cover versions, including one from LCD Soundsystem, so do what you can to locate a ticket.
09/27 - Kansas City, MO @ KRBZ
09/28 - Minneapolis, MN @ 7th Street Entry *
09/29 - Madison, WI @ Majestic *
09/30 - Chicago, IL @ Lincoln Hall *
10/02 - Tulsa, OK @ Vanguard
10/06 - Austin, TX @ Austin City Limits
10/07 - Dallas, TX @ House of Blues
10/08 - Houston, TX @ Warehouse
10/09 - New Orleans, LA @ House of Blues
10/12 - Mexico City @ Corona Capitol
10/17 - Los Angeles, CA @ Troubadour #
10/19 - San Diego, CA @ Soda Bar #
10/23 - Vancouver, BC @ Venue #
* with MØ
# with Wildcat! Wildcat!
MRS. MAGICIAN
mrsmagicianband.wordpress.com
Thrill Me Records wants you to stream their latest Mrs. Magician's B-Sides album right now on Soundcloud.
As the title of their record suggests, this is a B-Sides compilation of the entire Mrs. Magician's singles discography.
Frontman Jacob Turnbloom commented about the release, "I'm excited these songs are coming out on a physical release, in true Mrs Magician fashion. It's honest and self deprecating, everything I love about real pop-punk. It shows where Tommy Garcia (guitar) & I were when we started this band. It's a documentation of our friendship turned eventually into a band. It shows our growth as song writers and producers. I'm proud of the record no matter how imperfect it may seem, it's real and the lyrics reflect that."
11/05 Los Angeles CA @ Satellite*
11/06 San Francisco CA @ The Chapel*
w/ Cymbals Eat Guitars
john + vu ( ) ♥ weheartmusic.com ♥ podcast.weheartmusic.com ♥ twitter.com/weheartmusic
Posted by W♥M on Thursday, 26 September 2013 at 04:44 PM in John, Mrs Magician, MS MR, Vu | Permalink | Comments (0)
MS MR: Candy Bar Creep Show
MS MR at Man Made Music's Primetime Salon at Soho House, New York (10/03/12).
Photo credit: Marisa McGrody
MS MR is an electro-pop duo from New York. Their latest EP, Candy Bar Creep Show, is available now. You can check the songs out via streaming on their msmrmusic.tumblr.com page.
Attention DJs: they are making it super easy for you to play around with their songs by offering downloads of all their songs from Candy Bar Creep Show EP in individual "stems" format. These are basically all the layers and tracks to produce the final song. For instance, you can just get the isolated vocal tracks and dub it with other beats if you don't care for their version.
If you decided to remix their songs, send it in to them (their email is listed in your download) by October 31st. Winners will get their remix on MS MR's official album next year.
Earlier this month, Man Made Music featured MS MR as part of their "Primetime Salon" at Soho House in New York. The television/brand industry event included guests from American Express, ABC, Universal Music, MTV, Fiji Water, Lippincott, Sony Music, National Geographic and DirecTV.
Man Made Music founder, Joel Beckerman explained why he loves MS MR, "They infuse real emotion into the often cold electronic music realm in ways that really touch us. We expect big things from this band! It was a pleasure to bring them to the attention of all our friends in media and branding."
I did listen to their free streaming songs and I have to say it's pretty chill. I was expecting more upbeat powersongs, especially because I saw their touring mates Grouplove a few years ago and called their music "happy and cheerful." It should be interesting to see how MS MR's downbeat songs compare to Grouplove's more upbeat songs.
Dates with (*) indicates with Grouplove.
10/17 Knoxville, TN @ Bijou Theater *
10/18 CMJ @ Bowery Ballroom at 10PM
10/19 CMJ @ Public Assembly at 4PM
10/23 Nashville, TN @ Cannery *
10/24 Norfolk, VA @ NorVA *
10/26 Pittsburgh, PA @ Altar Bar *
10/27 Rochester, NY @ Water St Music Hall*
10/29 Washington, DC @ 930 Club *
11/01 Philadelphia, PA @ Electric Factory*
11/02 New York, NY @ Terminal 5 *
11/03 Boston, MA @ Royale *
vu ♥ weheartmusic.com ♥ msmrsounds.com
Posted by W♥M on Wednesday, 17 October 2012 at 12:00 AM in Grouplove, Man Made Music, MS MR, Vu | Permalink | Comments (0)
PSYCHIC TWIN
facebook.com/PsychicTwin
Psychic Twin just released "Gonna Get Her", a special 7" from Lefse Records as part of the label's single series. Check out their video directed by Alessandra Hoshor and Addison Adams, it premiered on Paste.
Psychic Twin will be heading out on tour tomorrow, starting with Minneapolis. I will swing by to check out her set at 7th Street Entry … but she probably knew that.
10/03 Minneapolis, MN 7th Street Entry *
10/05 Madison, WI High Noon Saloon *
10/06 Iowa City, IA Blue Moose Tap House *
10/16 New York, NY Pianos (CMJ Showcase)
10/18 Urbana, IL Canopy Club #
10/23 New York, NY Mercury Lounge $
* = w/ Hundred Waters
# = Blitzentrapper
$ = Damien Jurado
New York's duo MS MR recently remixed Twin Shadow's "Hurricane." You can check it out on their Tumblr. Use the link since it's impossible to search for anything on their page.
Personally, I'm not a fan of Tumblr or Pinterest, because of their limitations, but loads of bands and casual bloggers love it. MS MR explained their love for the website, "We like to think of it as a cultural collage and feel like it's the perfect platform for what we want to present with this EP [referring to Candy Bar Creep Show]. It has been such an incredible source of inspiration and support…"
Their debut 4-track EP is Candy Bar Creep Show, which you can pick up on amazon.com.
MS MR is heading on tour with Grouplove:
10/14 - New Orleans, LA @ HOB *
10/16 - Atlanta, GA @ Masquerade *
10/17 - Knoxville, TN @ Bijou Theater *
10/18 - 22 New York, NY @ CMJ Festival
10/23 - Nashville, TN @ Cannery *
10/24 - Norfolk, VA @ NorVA *
10/26 - Pittsburgh, PA @ Altar Bar *
10/27 - Rochester, NY @ Water Street Music*
10/29 - Washington, DC @ 930 Club *
11/01 - Philadelphia, PA @ Electric Factory *
11/02 - New York, NY @ Terminal 5 *
11/03 - Boston, MA @ Royale *
* with Grouplove
PS, I think we can do coverage on their New Orleans show - I'll keep you posted.
VOLTAIRE TWINS
voltairetwins.com
Remember Voltaire Twins? They were the subject and song of the show for W♥M116: Animalia
These real-life Australian twins (Jaymes and Tegan) just recently wrapped up their "Apollo EP National Tour", in support of their latest EP of the same name.
Apollo EP was released four months ago, you can stream the entire EP on their soundcloud.com.
TWIN CABINS
Twin Cabins (the solo project from Nacho Cano) was recently was interviewed by prefixmag.com, where they also premiered the video for "Lakelove."
Twin Cabins' debut album, I'm Sure, came out last August.
RED CLOVER GHOST
Virginia Beach's Red Clover Ghost is a folk duo with real life twin brothers, Clint & Gibb Cockrum. With family bands, expect a lot of vocal harmonies as only siblings can produce.
Red Clover Ghost's self-titled LP will be coming out on CD/vinyl/digital on October 23rd, 2012, via Good Soil Records.
Posted by W♥M on Wednesday, 03 October 2012 at 12:10 AM in Grouplove, MS MR, Psychic Twin, Red Clover Ghost, Twin Cabins, Voltaire Twins, Vu | Permalink | Comments (0)
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Pizza – The global favourite
1 Comment / Continental Cuisine, Cuisine, Italian Cuisine / By Atul Vijay
What is a pizza?
Pizza is a very famous dish of Italian origin. Its a round bread topped with various toppings and mozzarella cheese which melts deliciously in the oven. The pizza that we know today has evolved overtime. The evolution of the pizza is so vast that today the pizza that’s available in the market globally is very different from the original pizza from Italy.
The traditional Italian Pizza – Neapolitan Pizza
The traditional Italian Pizza is the Neapolitan pizza, Neapolitan refers to the cuisine of Naples. Pizzaiolo/ pizzaioli refers to the person who cooks pizza. The Italian pizza was cooked in wood fired ovens that had intense heat, as a result the traditional pizza is soft in texture. The traditional Italian pizza is all about the dough as opposed to the modern pizza, which is about the toppings.
In December 2017, UNESCO listed Neapolitan schiaffo (pizza-twirling) as an “intangible cultural heritage”, alongside Spanish flamenco.
The pizzaiuolo of naples follows these traditional steps in the making
The art of the Neapolitan ‘Pizzaiuolo’ is a culinary practice comprising four different phases relating to the preparation of the dough and its baking in a wood-fired oven, involving a rotatory movement by the baker.
The element originates in Naples, the capital of the Campania Region, where about 3,000 Pizzaiuoli now live and perform. The traditional pizza is made by specialised people known as Pizzaiuolo/ Pizzaiuoli (plural).
There are three primary categories of bearers – the Master Pizzaiuolo, the Pizzaiuolo and the baker. The families in Naples also reproduce the art in their own homes.
The traditional pizza is topped with Passata, the sauce/ spread made with tomato, olive oil, red onion, garlic, basil, black pepper and salt. Mozzarella cheese and basil leaves. Due to the high heat of the wood oven, the crust balloons and displays the right amount of charred leopardo – leopard-spotting.
Here is a short video on the making of Neapolitan Pizza
The evolution of Pizza
The pizza margherita we’re all familiar with; the one with tomato sauce, fresh tomato, mozzarella cheese, and basil did originate in Italy. Specifically, baker Raffaele Esposito from Naples is often given credit for creating the first such pizza pie. Historians note, however, that flatbreads with a variety of toppings had been sold by street vendors and eaten by the poor workers of Naples for many years.
Legend has it that Esposito was called upon to make a pizza for Italian King Umberto I and Queen Margherita when they visited Naples in 1889. That pizza, which featured fresh tomatoes, mozzarella cheese, and basil, is still known as Pizza Margherita today.
Though the margherita is definitively Neapolitan, the cooking of flatbreads dates back to neolithic times. The word itself may derive from pita (or pitta), which means pie in Byzantine Greek, making a nonsense of the American term “pizza pie”. It has been assimilated into countless cuisines.
In Turkey, you can eat lahmacun, flatbread topped with minced lamb and tomatoes; in Nice, pissaladière includes onions and anchovies.
Over the time, the pizza became popular across the globe and each pizzaiolo kneaded the original recipe into a new shape in response to local tastes and available produce.
Roman, Florentine and Sicilian pizzas had different densities of crust. In Argentina, which by 1900 was home to 2m Italians, meat was cheap and abundant, and so found its way into toppings.
It was in America that pizza was adapted most dramatically. According to Daniel Young, author of “Where to Eat Pizza” and a self-confessed pizza obsessive, “The immigrants got it the wrong way round: they made their spaghetti soft and their pizza al dente.”
In Chicago, it was deep pan, piled high with toppings; the New York pizza had a thinner crust and was typically sold by the slice; in Detroit, the toppings were put on before the tomato sauce (which was pre-cooked, unlike the fresh passata used by Neapolitans); in California, they piled on eccentric choices such as barbecued chicken and fresh coriander; a Hawaiian pizza (apparently invented by a Greek-Canadian in Ontario) controversially featured pineapple.
In the decades following the end of the second world war, American pizzas made a bid for global domination through chains such as Pizza Hut, which was founded in 1958 in Kansas and offered low-cost fast food on an industrial scale. Domino’s, born two years later in Michigan, cornered the delivery market. Ready-to-cook pizzas appeared in supermarket fridges and freezers. The fruits of this imperial expansion were not always happy. “In the worst hands,” says Young, “pizza is a salty, fatty, greasy, denatured heap of processed food thickly piled onto rubbery, spongey rafts of absorbing bread substance.”
The quality of the raw materials available, the type of oven used and the choice of toppings added has made varieties of pizza in permutation and combinations. The retail pizza outlets have come up with bizzare toppings such as biryani topped pizza and named it “Birizza”, yet another one made pizza rolled into cone shape and named it conizza. Thus the pizza has evolved in various forms across the globe.
1843magazine.com
History of Pizza - Wikipedia
Who invented Pizza - Wonderopolis
Intangible cultural heritage UNESCO- Art of Neapolitan Pizza
1 thought on “Pizza – The global favourite”
Atul Vijay
Reblogged this on The Connoisseur Club.
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by Karen Malevich
Logan Kendrick ran as if her life depended on it.
If not her life, then perhaps her sanity.
Two kilometers of a gentle warm-up jog had got her to the point of serious effort without the risk of injury. The long, flat beach at Taratoa presented just enough of a challenge to keep her mentally alert. The driftwood, piles of shells and the odd barking dog determined to join her sprint, reminded her of a beginner’s level on a video game.
The clean air filled her lungs as her intake increased to match her exertion. As Logan got comfortable at this speed, she kicked it up a gear, her long black hair floating out behind her. The trouble with a comfort zone was that it allowed you space to think. And thinking was not what she wanted. She wanted not thinking. Thinking and feeling had got her into this predicament.
Through the small stream that deterred most casual walkers, she dropped her pace to a jog again to let her breathing calm down. Concentrating on her breathing and the burn in her leg muscles, she slowed to a walk and then to a stop.
As she started a full set of stretches, she looked out to sea, past the looming bulk of Kapiti Island. No ships, no boats, no swimmers. This western coastline always seemed deserted – the main shipping routes traveled up the east side of the long, narrow island, slightly sheltered from the dominant westerlies and the stormy southerlies. That other coast also had more people.
Looking north, Logan strained to see past the sparkle reflected off the water, to the volcanoes she knew were there. The pile that was Mt. Ruapehu and, further west, the perfect cone that was Mt. Taranaki. But the haze that had covered the North Island for the last year thwarted her again. For the three months she had been sprinting up and down the beach, she had not seen the mountains clearly once.
The stretches complete, the tall woman started north again, running at a steady pace. She would go about another two kilometers until the path that took her inland past the hydroponics glasshouses and back towards the main settlement and her car.
The inland path was not marked at all, and on her early runs she had missed it and just run back down the beach. But now she enjoyed the variety of the run, the resistance of the sand, the up and down of the sand dunes, the verdant green of the inland pathway back to the car. More to look at and concentrate on. Mindless running just freed up her brain to think.
As she turned off the beach on to the inland path, she noticed two things. The first was a new chain link fence. A really serious fence. This fence said ‘keep to your own damn side’. Well, well. Maybe someone was actually making money out of hydroponics and was looking to protect their investment.
The second thing was that she had company. For the first time in three months she was not the only person running on the path. A couple of runners were ahead of her, also running southwards. They were really sprinting. The woman was in front but her companion was catching up. Damn, he was chasing her! And catching her. As Logan rounded a corner underneath a macrocarpa tree, she saw the man leap forward and tackle the woman to the ground. She screamed and struggled, desperately trying to scrabble away. As he drew his fist back to strike her, Logan barreled into his kneeling form, knocking him off the prone figure.
The man flew forward, landing face down in the dirt. They scrambled to their feet at the same time. He charged her, his face red with exertion and fury. Logan’s defensive stance bore the brunt of his attack. Arms swinging wildly, the man forced her back down the path.
As she fended him off, Logan was puzzled. He wasn’t saying anything. Not shouts or curses. He was clearly a professional something – perhaps a security guard? Finally an opening presented itself and she went on the offensive. Planting her foot, she caught him with a thrusting kick to the midriff that winded him and knocked him to the ground.
Having taken care of the thug for the time being, she caught her breath, panting from the unexpected effort. The adrenaline still racing through her, Logan turned to look for the woman. She was still lying where she had been pushed. She was crying and had her arms clasped across her chest, holding her left shoulder.
Logan knelt beside her. “Are you all right?” she asked. The woman looked up through long blondish hair.
“Where’s that bastard?” she gasped. “I’ve got to get out of here!”
“Is it your shoulder? Can you get up?”
The woman climbed to her knees, then, levering herself on Logan’s shoulder, to her feet. She staggered off down the path.
“Hey! Wait up! What’s hap— oooof!”
The question was left unfinished as she was rushed from behind and sent sprawling. A swift kick in her side had her gasping.
She looked up at the triumphant man, stunned and waiting for the next blow.
But a man beaten by a woman sometimes feels the need to dispense a little extra punishment. The further the foot goes back, the more damaging the kick. Unfortunately it also leaves more time for recovery, evasion or counterattack.
As he drew his foot back, Logan swept her leg around his other ankle, dumping him to the ground again. This time she did not hesitate. She hauled herself up on one knee as he groggily shook his head and struck his forehead with the heel of her palm.
He was out for the count.
Logan checked his pulse quickly. He was still alive. She rolled him on to his back and surveyed his uniform. The badge sewn on said KCS. The military style pants and shirt and heavy army boots looked the business. But what business? KCS possibly stood for something like Kapiti Coast Security. It was not a firm she knew, and she had lived on the Kapiti Coast as a child and more recently, for the past few months. His pockets were empty except for a set of keys and a packet of cigarettes and a lighter. She pocketed the keys but left the cigarettes. One habit at a time was bad enough.
“They’ll kill you if you let them, mate,” she muttered. She rolled him on to his front and put him in the recovery position. “No point dying if you’re going to puke.”
Turning to look down the path, she could not see the blonde woman anywhere. Swearing under her breath, she started off at a jog.
After five hundred meters or so, she caught up with her. The woman was walking quickly, still clutching her shoulder. Logan drew up alongside her. As the blonde woman turned around in alarm and flinched away, Logan jerked back, her hands raised calmingly.
“Are you okay?” she repeated her question. The woman glanced apprehensively back up the path over Logan’s shoulder.
“Is he…?”
“Not conscious and will have a headache when he comes around,” answered Logan.
“Thank god,” the woman said. “That prick would have beaten me up. So much for public relations.”
Despite her little voice saying ‘Don’t get interested, Logan, that’s real trouble’, Logan was interested.
“Whose public relations?” she asked.
The woman suddenly turned to her. “Look,” she said, “my bike is back on the dunes, but I don’t want to go and get it. I’m not sure if he was on a regular patrol. What if he has buddies who will be looking for him and me by now? Can you give me a lift into town, or to a phone at least?”
“No worries,” said Logan. “My car is in the carpark.”
As they walked towards the carpark, Logan found herself wondering whether she should introduce herself. She had been getting into the habit of being a recluse. No names, just cash at the supermarket and gas station. But after three months of near silence she felt the urge to talk and listen. To talk about something other than herself. She had talked so much to her counselor about herself that even she was tired of it.
“I’m Logan —,” she stopped, then made herself go on. “Logan Kendrick.”
The woman shot her a sharp glance. Logan caught the look and regretted not having lied.
“Frith.”
“Frith?”
It looked for a moment that she was only going to give a first name. But no.
“Frith Buchanan.”
“Well, Frith Buchanan, you were getting yourself into a bit of trouble back there.”
They came into the carpark and Logan led the way over to her car. As Logan fished in her pants for the key, Frith looked carefully inside the beat up yellow Mazda. She didn’t see a car-phone, but that was no surprise considering the state of the twenty year-old rusty heap.
“Yes, it was a bit dicey,” she replied. “Thanks for coming along and being my white knight. But I think I need to use a phone to continue my rescue in progress.”
They climbed into the car. As they buckled up, Logan took a better look at Frith.
Long blonde hair with just a hint of red. Pert nose. Greeny-blue eyes. Smooth skin, a few soft freckles. ‘Definitely cute, but is she family? Maybe. Definitely a maybe.’
“Have you got a cellphone?” asked Frith.
“Not in this piece of fine automotive engineering,” replied Logan. “But my house isn’t far… unless you want me to drop you in the township?”
“Your house would be fine. There’s something I’d like to talk to you about.”
As the tall woman drove the little car along the road leading away from the beach, Frith took the opportunity to assess her new companion.
So this was the infamous Logan Kendrick. Close-up, she hadn’t expected her to be quite so … tall. The photos that had accompanied her articles in the New Business Age paper were in black and white and quite tiny. The television cameras had loved her in colour, but the few times she had featured, they had not shown more than her head and shoulders. She had seen her only once in person.
Tall, yes. And beautiful too. All New Zealand knew that, as did half the world. Logan Kendrick had achieved fame (or notoriety) across the Western World for her investigative series outlining corruption in an international chain of Christian charities. Money donated by little old ladies in Auckland, Manchester and Cleveland had ended up in a failed speculative share deal, not in the food bowls of poor villagers in unspecified third world countries. The suicide of the principal fraudster, a high profile televangelist, and his murder of his family had made the news all over the world.
It had been the pinnacle of a glistening career in exposing the tawdry side of public do-gooders. Her paper, the New Business Age, and its right-of-Genghis-Khan global owner, YJ Holdings, had sold a lot of copies and a lot of advertising space on the basis of Logan’s skill in ripping some poor bastard’s life apart.
And now she was being driven by this woman, of all people, along the back roads of a small North Island town.
Logan, meanwhile, was busy trying to mentally place Frith. Wellington, definitely. Greenpeace? The New Business Age had once targeted Greenpeace for accepting kickbacks. After coming out of a meeting with the Director, she had glanced around the Greenpeace office, memorising faces for future reference. Frith had perhaps been one of them. Darryl Booth, the weaselly Director, had been as white as a sheet by the time she left.
His subsequent resignation, nervous breakdown and committal to a psychiatric facility had stymied the Fraud Squad’s prosecution attempt.
They had pulled up into the foothills near the beach, up a long driveway to a modest beach house, perched on a steep slope, surrounded by pine trees and some native bush. Logan parked the car under the overhanging deck. As the engine noise died away and the car doors were firmly shut, Frith breathed deeply. The silence was lovely. Only the sounds of magpies, calling out to dissuade potential competitors for nesting sites, were audible. The sea was too distant now to be heard.
She winced as she jarred her shoulder getting out of the car.
The taller woman slung a jersey over her shoulders. “So, the phone?” she asked.
“Right,” said Frith. The only words exchanged since the beach carpark.
Logan led the way up the steps into the rear of the house. Inside the house Frith looked around in unabashed curiosity. She was sure Logan Kendrick would have been able to afford something more upmarket. This house seemed typical of beach houses built in the sixties. And not redecorated since then. A kitchen, which had patterned Formica benches and yellow wooden cupboards, went through to a livingroom that looked out over a view of the coastline and out to the island.
Logan handed her a phone. She took hold of it with her left hand, forgetting her injury. It reasserted itself with of flash of pain and she dropped the phone with a clang.
The dark haired woman knelt quickly to pick it up.
“Would you like…. a cup of tea?” she asked. Suddenly a cup of hot, sweet, milky tea was exactly what Frith craved.
“Yes, thank you.”
“Sit down, then, before you fall down.”
Frith suddenly felt rather unsteady and a bit stupid. God, who was she going to call? Whose phone number did she have? She found herself unexpectedly sitting down on the tatty sofa. Logan’s arm was around her waist, helping her down.
“Leave that – put your head between your legs for a minute, while I make some tea.”
“Right,” she mumbled, as she leaned forward, holding her throbbing head in her hands.
Shock. A delayed reaction to the chase and fight on the beach. She felt again the man’s bulk crash into her and saw the grassy path rise up to strike her in the head. No wonder she had said barely more than two words to her rescuer.
As she sat remembering the assault, her stomach churned and she realised she was going to throw up. Frith staggered up and across the room to the glass doors that opened on to the deck. As she reached the railing, she vomited over the edge. Feeling like death, she hung on grimly to the top rail.
Logan heard the glass door open and came out of the kitchen just in time to see the small woman, Frith, throw up off the edge of her deck.
‘I hope the Mazda isn’t right underneath,’ she thought.
Some ten minutes later, Frith and Logan sat down at the battered wooden dining table. The tea was strong and hot. The familiar act of stirring and sipping tea calmed Frith’s head and stomach.
Logan looked at her curiously.
“So, Frith,” she began, “What is a Greenpeace member doing getting beaten up on Taratoa Beach?”
Frith was impressed. Those famed journalistic talents weren’t just a PR beat-up.
“I’m not exactly working for Greenpeace today,” she said.
Logan’s eyebrow quirked, inviting more.
“That guy scared me today. I’m sorry I ran off and left you to him.”
“Not half as sorry as he is,” Logan smirked in reply.
Frith smiled back, uncertainly. With a deep breath, she continued.
“I think I need to consult you professionally. Are you… umm… available for a … consultation today?”
The other eyebrow joined its mate under dark bangs. She composed her face as she thought about it. Curious – well she was always curious. Interested in the young woman? Oh yes. Maybe this would be a pleasant diversion from the exile to which she had sentenced herself.
“Okay,” she said, cautiously. “Tell me some more.”
She could see the blond woman struggle for where to start. To make the conversation easier, she asked, “Tell me something about yourself first. I only know your face from that day in Greenpeace. That was at least a year ago. How did you end up there and what have you been doing since?”
The tale that emerged was one familiar to many her age. After finishing University, Frith had looked around for something useful, interesting and hopefully fun to do. Greenpeace had seemed like a worthwhile place that didn’t hire only experienced people. The culture was one of politics, youth and striving. People sacrificed personal lives for the greater good. Petty courtesies were less important than the environment.
Her double major in English and Politics was put to immediate use – writing pamphlets and notices for local papers and their web-site. But as with many not-for-profit organisations, the culture also involved exploiting the emotional and physical energies of the young, inexperienced, highly motivated kids attracted to the cause. Burn out happened quickly. Frith found herself tired and depressed. An unhappy and frustrating affair had only exacerbated matters.
Thanks to a timely chat with her sister, she had jumped ship with her self-esteem bruised but largely intact. Ignoring the pressure from her parents to take up a socially-acceptable career, she found a job with a web-publishing firm, designing and building web-sites for local businesses and smaller government agencies. Wellington was a government town and even companies that primarily targeted private business found themselves doing work for one government agency or another.
As with so many breakdowns in security, it was a fortuitous coincidence that led to her discovery.
“I was working on an Intranet security protocol for…” she hesitated, then plunged on, “Tall Trees, when I saw they had some pages for a hydroponics place out here on the Coast.”
Logan was immediately intrigued. Tall Trees Limited was a large international company which would seem to have little connection with a small horticultural concern north of Wellington.
“Did the pages indicate the nature of the relationship?”
“Not exactly. But some of the dummy pages sent over by TTL had some URL links to a laboratory in Texas.”
Logan sat back and poured herself another cup of tea. It tasted very strong, so she added a couple of teaspoons of sugar. She really wanted a cigarette about now.
“Could have been some TTL employee mucking around with a personal interest on the company’s time,” she observed.
“That’s what I thought. An employee who also had an incomplete, maybe partially deleted phrase on that same page which read Department of Sec. As in Security,” she added.
“Oh, you’re kidding!” Logan burst out, with a grin.
Frith’s eyes sparked.
“No, I am not kidding. Why would I kid? I figured that it was easiest to check out the hydroponics farm before tackling the other players. But then that idiot jumped me while I was climbing over the fence.” Frith stopped talking. Should she lay it all out? Or was this enough to intrigue the journalist?
Logan kept her smile, despite the impassioned outburst.
“C’mon. The Department of Security involved with TTL? Those butt-scratchers couldn’t organise a conspiracy in an X-files convention! And I’ve had some dealings with Tall Trees, enough —” she broke off. ‘Enough to last me quite a while,’ she thought.
“Well, no doubt you’d know,” Frith said sarcastically. “But I know what was on those pages and I know that arsehole at the farm tried to knock me into next week.”
“So why are you interested? You still got a connection at Greenpeace?” Logan asked.
“My … um … sister … volunteers at Greenpeace in Auckland. She says that TTL is still on Greenpeace’s list for animal testing in cosmetics.”
Logan got up and wandered out on to the deck. She pondered the young woman’s story as she gazed out over the bush and paddocks leading down from the house towards the road. The sunny day had given way to overcast skies making the green bush somber and dull. The island drew her eye as it always did.
Logan’s view – Kapiti Island
The tale was barely more than snippets. Small fragments that did not, as yet, go anywhere. But some of her best stories had started as tiny co-incidental facts which had landed right in front of her under some very odd circumstances.
What was certain was the unidentified violent, aggressive guard she had knocked unconscious.
Logan knew that Tall Trees had recently considered involvement in genetic engineering. It had not been relevant to her work at the time.
Had they branched out into bio-engineering? How did that fit in with New Zealand’s firm resistance to the importing of genetically modified foods and experimental organisms? And what was the New Zealand Department of Security doing? Were they involved or was that just a coincidence?
Logan hated coincidences.
Frith was… interesting, attractive, but was she telling the truth? She was definitely holding something back. Why was Frith so interested on the basis of rather tenuous information? Should she press her?
Frith joined her against the railing.
“So, Frith,” she turned and looked down at the woman standing next to her. “What do you want from me?”
Frith was not entirely sure. Logan was known for her work for large corporate news media companies. She had caused the breakup of several not-for-profit organisations and rumour was she was responsible for the suicide of her last exposed do-gooder and his slaughter of his family. But standing next to this woman who had saved her, this tall, strong, lovely woman, she was still not thinking clearly. ‘Good grief Frith, get a grip. If you want a date, just ask her out.’
She looked up into blue eyes and swallowed.
Logan smiled gently. She knew she often had an effect on people, but something about this woman made her want to earn her regard, not rely on hormones.
“Do you want my advice? Or my help?”
“Your help. Your contacts. Your judgment. All of that. I don’t know exactly what this is all about. But I know something is screwy. Meeting you today is too good an opportunity, a coincidence, a something that I need to take advantage of,” Frith got it out at last.
Logan laughed.
“The last time I was taken advantage of, all hell broke loose on the Tokyo stock market for at least 24 hours. But for you I could make another exception.”
Frith blushed and turned away.
Logan moved close behind her, nearly touching. She leaned down and spoke softly in Frith’s ear.
“Leave it with me for a couple of days. I’ll see what I can find out without stirring up too much muck.”
Logan had driven Frith down to the station to catch a local train into Wellington. They had swapped numbers and email addresses and arranged to meet at Logan’s house again in two days time.
Instead of driving home, Logan detoured past the front entrance of the hydroponics farm. Other than a shiny new gate, all looked pretty much as it always did. Half a dozen cars outside the largest glasshouse, a truck near the gate, a security guard’s car coming around the corner… oops! Time to leave.
Well, THAT was new. Since when did this farm need security patrols, a new fence and gung-ho guards beating up women at said fence? Out here, well off the beaten track?
Maybe something was rotten in the state of Denmark. Something worth sniffing at.
On the way back to her house, the inevitable argument started up in her head.
‘This is not what you decided.’
‘Oh yeah remind me what was that again?’
‘Turning my back on someone who asks for my help?’
‘If she knew what kind of bastard you were, she would… ‘
‘Go on I’m interested now, she would what?’
‘Run a mile, not fall gratefully into your bed.’
‘You think this is about sex? Loneliness? Remorse?’
‘You ARE lonely.’
‘I AM sorry.’
‘Shit, you are full of shit.’
‘But she doesn’t know that.’
‘Oh yes she does, you saw that look she gave you. And that scene at Greenpeace….’
‘He deserved it.’
‘He deserved worse.’
‘No he didn’t. Not like ….’
‘Oh he deserved it and he got it.’
‘Yeah but he took his wife and kids with him and that’s down to you.’
‘Face it, you just fancy her.’
‘Got a problem with that?’
‘There’s a puzzle here anyway.’
‘Riiiiight.’
The mental maelstrom continued all the way home.
Logan parked the car under the deck and sighed. Thinking. It was highly over-rated. Some action was required. She ran up the stairs to the back door and blew through the kitchen into the livingroom.
Right. Laptop. Modem. Where’s the damn phone jack? Cell phone. It was around here somewhere. It took ten minutes before Logan had assembled the tools of her trade. The tea mugs were shoved to the side of the old dining table, all the single plugs in the room now occupied by power leads and the guitar shoved back in its case.
As the laptop powered up, she mentally reviewed her options. Alan? Well, that would be a trip into the lion’s den. Maybe as a last resort. Sarah? Way too dangerous. Jack was a good bet. He still fancied her, she was sure. And who was he working for now? Three months ago he had implied that he had been seconded from the Fraud Squad into something more secret-squirrel.
Jack McKechnie it was.
She opened her contacts database. Home phone or mobile? Home first probably.
“Jack? It’s Logan. Call me on 021-623-6512. Urgent.” She left the same message on Jack’s mobile.
Time for some heavy-duty net browsing, maybe even a spot of hacking. It is a capital offence to theorise in advance of the facts and she needed facts. And maybe a few wild hunches to try out while she was at it. She had loved Sherlock Holmes but theory and observation drove each other in her experience. This approach had its share of deadends but some of them paid off in quite surprising areas.
To work. At last!
Frith found herself back at work the next day, staring blankly at her screen. Her shoulder and head were still tender, but her thoughts were not on her physical state. Not entirely. She turned the few pieces of the puzzle over in her mind, but as Logan had pointed out, it wasn’t much to go on.
Logan. As often as she thought about the events of the previous day, she thought about Logan Kendrick. Nothing coherent, that was the trouble. Just images of her face, her hair, her long legs, her smile. Frith sighed. Anyway she looked at it, trouble. Getting involved with Logan Kendrick, in any capacity, was trouble. But that smile, when it had arrived, was dazzling. Those blue, blue eyes in combination with the black hair….. her strong arm around me ….. Frith was caught in a powerful daydream.
“Hey! Ms. Buchanan? You going to be finished with that prototype any time this century?” Wiremu Kale’s face peered around the doorframe.
Wiremu was the co-owner of Solaris Consulting, a small web-design company making a living on the edges of the corporate internet/intranet market in the nation’s capital. Maori owners of such companies were rare. In his late thirties, he was slight and not much taller than Frith, dressed in the ubiquitous dark gray, almost black, suit that was the current corporate uniform in Wellington. Thankfully his funk quotient was saved by groovy glasses and more jewelry than most New Zealand men would own in entire lifetimes.
He came further into Frith’s workroom, his attention drawn by the purpling bruise on her face. “Babe! What caused that?”
Frith turned her face away, towards the window. She slid off her chair.
“You know, Willy,” she said thoughtfully, “mountain biking is a dangerous sport for the uninitiated. I took my bike up to beach yesterday and suffice to say the sand dunes proved treacherous.”
“As long as your hands are okay and you can you still use a mouse? No worries then,” Wiremu grinned. “Come and keep me company for five minutes while I have a fag.”
“But the prototype…,” protested Firth, half-heartedly.
“The TTL project manager just rang. Another delay at their end. Some kind of security problem.”
“Jesus, if they don’t get their butts into gear, we’re not going to meet the deadline.”
“Well, it’s time for the old drill,” said Wiremu. “I document everything and move higher up the food chain.”
Frith considered for a moment. “I have another project I can spend some time on, if you want to play tough guy,” she said. “You’re the boss, you know. Gotta earn that inflated salary.”
“What project’s that, babe?” Wiremu asked as they climbed the fire stairs to the rooftop garden.
“Personal stuff,” Frith replied.
The pair walked to the balcony and looked across the harbour, north towards the Hutt Valley. Wiremu turned his back to the breezy northerly and lit his cigarette.
“You’ve just about used up all your contracted hours for this month already, and it’s only the 21st. If TTL is going to be on the backburner for at least two days – how much left to go on that prototype once you get the final stuff? Maybe fifteen hours?”
“Fifteen is about right,” she replied. “But I need a beta-tester right now for the current build and Joan is off with the school holidays.”
“Bugger. I’m already using all the hours Simon and Elise can spare for the Ministry of Commerce gig. Do you know anyone likely?”
Frith thought immediately of Logan.
“Yes,” she said cautiously. “This ex-journo I met yesterday might be available.”
Wiremu calculated the remaining hours for TTL.
“Okay. Line them up for 6 hours. Usual rate. Allow at least two hours for going over the testing regime with them. And get Joan to process the paperwork when she gets back.”
“Right, then. I’ll pack it in here for today then and get her started. It’s too nice a day to be stuck inside slaving over a hot processor.”
“Sure. That’s right. You toddle off and have fun while I figure out how to afford you full-time.” As Frith protested half-heartedly, Wiremu interrupted her.
“No, seriously Frith, I appreciate the quality of your work, you know. If this TTL job goes okay, we might get some work on their US web-site. And who is this ex-journo?” Wiremu’s partner was a staff writer for the Dominion newspaper.
“Um… Lo- … Lois … um… Kennedy. She’s Australian, I think.”
“Well, let’s do it then. There’s money out there just waiting for us!”
They halfheartedly chorused the punchline together. “Let’s go get it!”
Logan had woken that morning feeling … feeling good. Feeling something other than tired and stupid. Maybe her therapist’s suggestion of taking a break after the events of April had not been the best option. Or maybe it had done the trick. Certainly Frith Buchanan was making her feel good, without even being here.
She spent the rest of the afternoon of the previous day browsing the Web and sneaking into the few sites where the access details she had accumulated still worked. Some organisations really needed to update their system security more than once a year. She also made a few bogus calls, posing as anything from an old friend to a photocopy service bureau updating client contacts to a radio-station giving away free lessons at the local judo school.
The local security company had been slightly useful – the electrician was away up north for a week. No major new alarm systems had been installed then. The others had drawn blanks.
Waiting for Jack to call back was irritating, and to be honest, rather unusual. It was out of character for him to have his cell phone off anyway, but she had never known him to go more than a couple of hours without clearing his messages. Maybe it was the possibility he was now undercover.
In the evening she had strung up a heavy punching bag and had a good time beating the living daylights out of it. After a session of kenpo drills she had lit a fire and bemoaned the lack of a television. Well, she had wanted to be left alone and not have the world bother her and it had worked. But now, with an puzzle which may involve the government, she regretted not knowing what was going on in New Zealand and the outside world. It reduced her effectiveness. Much of her success as an investigative journalist had come from putting together disparate facts that were seemingly unrelated.
At least the web-sites for newspapers and news organisations still had the last three months worth of information. She spent the evening catching up with the living.
Her early morning run along the beach had been much less eventful than the previous day. As she ran along the path beside the farm and its new fence, a remote CCTV camera turned to follow her as she jogged along nonchalantly. Suspecting they would have beefed up security, she had worn a baseball cap and tied her long hair up. She usually enjoyed the feeling of it whipping around her face as she ran. It made running fast seem even faster. Until that moment where it stopped being fun and started being irritating.
As she passed the spot where the tussle had taken place, she slowed slightly but nothing out of the ordinary presented itself to her. She suddenly remembered the set of keys she had taken off the creep yesterday. ‘Dammit,’ she thought, ‘I should have tried them last night. Before he reported them missing, if his brain is working yet.’ Even if he had not thought of it, whoever had picked him up and gotten him medical attention would have. ‘Maybe it’s still worth a shot.’
After lunch, when it seemed no more progress could be made unless she talked to Jack, and while she wasn’t prepared to make contact with Alan or Sarah yet and tip her hand, Logan moped around the house. The downside of a high energy level was that she was frustrated with nothing to do. Although she enjoyed the research, it was the thrill of the chase which really energised her. In a battle of wits and sometimes fists the adrenaline, flooded her system and made her feel truly alive. Other forms of stimulation had never come close. She enjoyed sex but it paled with the thrill of the hunt.
It had been a while since her last sexual relationship. It had ended badly. Not surprisingly, as it hadn’t started in auspicious circumstances. The plump woman had eyed her up at a Tall Trees corporate affair. Logan had been undercover and in disguise, waiting table at an annual stockholders meeting, trying to get a line on one of the executives she suspected was insider trading … well, it had been complicated. Sarah had slipped her business card into Logan’s breast pocket. Logan had torn it in two and handed it back. Sarah had just laughed and caught Logan in the woman’s loo later. They nearly consummated the relationship then and there, only the arrival of the catering supervisor stopping them.
Perhaps it was because the sex had been an integral part of the hunt. She has used Sarah’s position as the Communications Manager at the company to dig out the facts she needed. When the hunt was over and the article published, Sarah had been bitter, furious and hurt. She had also thrown Logan’s clothes out of her 10th floor apartment’s window. She took revenge by screwing Logan’s lover, the Chief Executive, Alan Gadsby. That, too, was complicated.
Logan sighed. Was she better off staying well away from Tall Trees? Her recent messy entanglements with Alan and Sarah clouded the picture and a journalist sought clarity above all.
She was also better off out of the romantic arena. Frith was, no doubt, a gentle soul who would run a mile rather than get involved with a self-hating, violent, manipulative…. and whatever else Sarah had screamed after her that night. All characteristics she agreed with. Her therapist had nodded quietly and written them down.
A noise outside caught her attention. She wandered out on the deck and looked down the driveway. A green Suzuki 4-wheel drive emerged from under the trees. Logan glimpsed a flash of golden hair. Frith? She wasn’t due until tomorrow.
A small frisson of anticipation ran through her.
“Here. Take my hand.”
“Here. No, that’s my ….”
“Oh. Sorry.”
With a grunt of effort, Logan pulled Frith up to the top of the brick wall. She had spotted this possible way to bypass the new fence when she had driven past yesterday. Now, under the cover of darkness, the two women were going to break into the hydroponics farm and see what they could see.
Frith and Logan had argued over which target to attack first. Frith had pushed for the TTL offices in central Wellington. Logan had countered with the jingle of the set of keys. In truth, she was too apprehensive to tackle that company first. A warm-up in the provinces would get her back in the saddle. Maybe she’d even stop mixing her metaphors.
It was a calculated risk whether the locks had been changed. With the worst scenario of tripping an alarm or being discovered by a patrol, the pair could easily escape into the surrounding countryside. They had parked the old Mazda, not in the carpark near the beach, but hidden under a macrocarpa hedge in an adjoining property. The street it was on ran at right angles to the beach road, and any pursuer was likely to concentrate on that road.
But now it was the doorway to the farm’s office that had her attention. Logan was betting that the new additions to the farm’s security had started with the fence and had not infiltrated into the office yet. Earlier in the day she walked into the open office, posing as a courier delivering flowers, briefly checked for cameras and pressure pads. Her hunch that there was not much internal security seemed to be correct, otherwise she would not have suggested this approach.
Carefully she pulled the keys from her pocket. Frith switched on her small pen-light and trained the beam on the lock. Her pale face reflected in the light underneath the black woolen hat Logan had lent her. Logan tried each of the keys – success on the fourth one.
The door opened slowly outwards. The two woman squeezed together to let it open. Inside the reception area was dimly lit by the light from a tall fish tank.
Logan motioned with her head and walked quietly towards an inner office. Once they were inside, she quickly shut the curtains at the window which appeared to overlook an enclosed courtyard, and switched on the desk lamp.
Moving close to Frith, she murmured, ” Keep an eye out. Close the front door nearly all the way. Use your eyes and ears. Whistle if you see something.”
Frith looked resentful at being excluded from search of the office.
“Go!” Logan whispered harshly.
As she left the room, Logan got to work. Starting with the manager’s desk, she rifled through the intray. What was she looking for? At this stage she didn’t always know. Anything odd, anything linking the farm to the Texas laboratory or to Tall Trees or to the Department of Security.
This guy was organised, and stupid enough to print out some of his emails. At least she wouldn’t have to attempt to hack into anything tonight. Her skills in that area were adequate but no more. Interpersonal extraction of information was more her style.
She turned to the filing cabinet. Working up from the bottom drawers, which held a set of trainers and a half bottle of whiskey and a spare power cord – she flicked through the top drawer. After 5 minutes she had a small stash of papers which looked promising.
At the front door Frith crouched, hidden in the shadows, peering out the tiny crack she had left. She shifted to ease her protesting muscles. The slight sounds of the search in the office reached her. As she turned her head to look at the inner office door, her peripheral vision caught….. something…. What was that? Her straining ears caught the sound of footsteps crunching along the path leading up from the beach. She turned her head and whistled softly. Had she been heard? There was no response from the inner office. As she pursed her lips to whistle again, she saw the flash of car headlights turn off the road and into the car-park.
Panicked, she stood up abruptly, only to find her face sandwiched into Logan’s chest. Her squawk of surprise was muffled by a large hand over her mouth. Logan’s eyes gleamed as she mouthed, “Out the door, go left, behind the pot plants and wait.”
She gave Frith a gentle shove and mostly closed the door behind her. She saw the shadow of Frith scrambling along in front of the reception window towards the planters.
The sound of bootsteps on gravel grew louder but were drowned out by the approaching car. The vehicle drew to a stop less than 50 feet from the door. The man in the boots was at the car window, talking to the driver. Her eyes narrowed as she tried to hear what they were saying. Suddenly the man turned to follow the pointing arm of the driver, towards the office. Damn! What has he seen? She glanced around – shit! she had left the light on in the office. The door was slightly ajar and the beam of light was a beacon to watchful eyes.
The driver got out of the car and the two men walked briskly towards the office door. One pulled out a powerful torch, the other pulled out his gun. As they closed in on the door, the man with the gun went first. He pulled out his keys and inserted one in the lock. Turning it gently, he was smashed in the face as the door exploded outwards.
He went tumbling backwards, knocking over the second man. They fell in a heap, swearing profusely. Logan rocketed out of the doorway, leaping over the two men and running for the car. Her aim was to disable the car so they couldn’t pursue her, but she had not noticed a second person sitting in the passenger seat. He… no she, was reaching over to the driver’s door to hit the central-locking button. Logan wrenched the door open before she could push it and thumped her in the temple with her fist. The woman slumped in her seat as Logan ripped out the two-way radio microphone and then removed the keys. With a grunt she threw them into the neighbouring field.
As she turned back to the buildings she was tackled by a shadowy figure. They rolled together on the gravel, scuffling for advantage. The second man staggered over, still winded from the first knock down. Pointing the gun at the struggling pair he screamed, “Stop! Stop or I’ll shoot!” But he hesitated to fire as the dark clothing of both people merged into the darkness. One of the pair was thrown off with a mighty shout of effort. As he lay motionless on the driveway, the other staggered up and towards the guard, now holding the pistol rather unsteadily. Fuckfuckfuckfuck! This wasn’t what he signed up for! Backing away, he fumbled with the safety on the gun. “Stop!” he cried again, uncertainly. “Hands up! Get down on the ground or I’ll…..” What he was proposing never passed his lips, as he was struck from behind by a wooden planter.
Frith stood revealed as the guard slumped lifelessly to the ground. Her hat had come off and her long pale hair shone like a torch in the dim light. Logan thought she had never seen a lovelier sight.
Frith grabbed Logan by the arm. “Did you get it?” she hissed.
Logan nodded.
“What what?”
“Let’s get out of here first.”
No longer needing the helpful wall, they jogged towards the main gate. As they reached the road, the sound of sirens floated towards them, disturbing the quiet night air.
“Crap!” Logan muttered. “She must have got a message out.”
“Who’s she?” asked Frith.
“Never mind. Just run for that set of trees!” Logan broke into a dead run, with Frith right on her heels. As they reached the safety of the trees, two police cars turned off the main road and neared the gates of the farm. They screeched to a halt, men pouring out and shouting for the shapes lying on the ground to stay down! stay down!
Logan smirked at Frith. “I hope they enjoy explaining this tomorrow. Should stir up the nest a bit.”
As they turned to walk through the cypresses towards the car, they heard the rapid thud-thud-thud of a helicopter approaching, a spotlight searching out the figures in the carpark. Fortunately the groggy guards had not seen which direction the women had run off, so all they could do was gesture helplessly.
Not wanting to be caught in a search pattern, Logan pulled Frith into a run again, over a fence, through a field filled with sleepy cows and along the road towards the Mazda.
They jumped into the car and Logan gently eased it out on to the street, leaving the headlights off and driving slowly towards the main road.
“Can you still see the ‘copter?” she asked.
Frith was peering anxiously out the side window.
“Yes. It’s heading out towards the beach.”
“Spotlight on?”
“Great,” said Logan. “Hold on!”
She flipped on the lights and floored it. Frith grabbed on to the safety belt as the ancient car careened around a corner.
“Jesus, Logan,” she shouted, “I thought we were trying for discreet!”
Logan just laughed. She felt alive at last!
As the car pulled up at the end of the long drive way to Logan’s house, Frith was buzzed. Logan had turned on the decrepit car stereo full blast and driven like a rally sprint maniac, almost side-swiping the gate-post at the entrance to the lane.
Logan’s laugh, the sound deep and sexy, had an electrifying effect on Frith. Her body, in a sexual hibernation for the past year, was waking up in the presence of the enigmatic journalist. The proximity of the beautiful woman, combined with the adrenaline still coursing through her body was extremely arousing.
She briefly debated clamping down on her feelings and getting the hell out of this messy situation. But with a single sideways glance at the near perfect profile of tall, dark and dangerous, her natural inclination to go for what she wanted reasserted itself. Turning in her seat she braced herself with a hand on the other woman’s shoulder. She closed the small space between them, tracing the curve of Logan’s ear with her tongue and finishing with a none too gentle bite of an ear-lobe.
The look of surprise on Logan’s face turned to one of sheer lust as Frith made her intentions perfectly clear.
“I want to take you inside and fuck you senseless,” she whispered.
In the uncomfortable space between the seats and over the park-brake the two women fused their mouths together. There was nothing gentle about their first kiss. Tongues, lips and teeth fiercely, quickly, aquainted themselves. Logan threaded her hand through the smaller woman’s blonde hair, her hand cupping the shape of her head, adding pressure to the kiss. Finally she pulled back, her chest rising and falling as she tried in vain to get her breathing under control.
“For Christ’s sake, let’s go inside….”
The blonde woman, her face flushed, nodded fervently.
Having successfully extricated themselves from the car, the two women met again, their bodies pressed into each other. Standing, the contrast in their height became an erotic point of difference, as again the enthusiasm for each other’s body was signaled. Logan bending her head down even as Frith stretched upwards.
Frith reveled in the feel of Logan’s body against her, her hands becoming relentless in their exploration, cupping firm buttocks, then running up a long back, coming around to knead shapely breasts, thumbs dragging over hard nipples. All the while a searing hot kiss continued, tongues exploring the intimate space of the other’s mouth.
Frith considered pushing the taller woman up against the hood of the car and taking her then and there, but even in her state of intense arousal, the bite of the cool night air was a sufficient deterrent. She grabbed Logan’s hand and, breaking the kiss, issued a short two word command.
“Inside – now.”
They made it up the path to the back door, Logan fumbling in the pocket of her leather jacket for the house key. The simple task was made complex by the distracting hands pulling her T shirt out of the waistband of her jeans and the groan of pleasure from the blonde woman as she ran her hands over Logan’s smooth skin for the first time.
“God, you feel good.”
After a short eternity they made it inside. Frith pushed Logan against the wall next to the kitchen table, her compact strength surprising the woman, who took pride in her own physical prowess.
“I want you right now, I want to taste you, I’m going to run my tongue over your wet cunt until you scream.” The words whispered into the dark woman’s ear were clearly statements of fact, not a hypothesis up for debate.
With one last lingering look into pale eyes rendered colourless in the in the half light of the kitchen, Frith sank to her knees. Her hands deftly made short work of the buttons of the well worn 501s and, grasping them by the waistband, she pulled Logan’s jeans and underwear down over her hips to her knees in one abrupt movement.
“Oh sweet jesus,” Frith moaned at the sight of the flat plane of stomach, which segued into a trimmed covering of black pubic hair, framed between thighs that would have had Anita Bryant deciding to bat for the home team.
‘Got to get rid of these jeans,’ Frith mumbled to herself, as she bent to unlace Logan’s sturdy boots. Boots and socks out of the way, the jeans were unceremoniously lowered to her ankles.
“Lift your foot for me, sweetheart.” Logan, a little dazed, did as she was told, the slight movement having the double benefit for Frith as not only were the constricting clothes finally out of the way, but it also offered the first glimpses of a beautiful cunt between slightly parted legs.
Frith leaned forward and with both hands stroking muscled hips and thighs, she kissed Logan’s mons, dragging in a deep breath and absorbing the fragrance of her arousal. Her tongue swirled through pubic hair, saliva and salty moistness mingling in an erotic cocktail.
Logan moaned, leaning back against the kitchen wall as she parted her thighs and tilted her hips forward, an unsubtle and insistent invitation to the woman kneeling at her feet. Frith was no reluctant party goer. Using her thumbs she parted the lips of Logan’s vulva and, moving closer, she ran her tongue along the length of dark woman’s cunt.
“Oh god!” Logan’s exclamation was strangled and unusually high pitched for the woman with the deep chocolate-timbred voice.
The blonde woman began consuming her, the tendons in her neck taut as she used her tongue to sweetly torture Logan. Lips, tongue and occasionally gentle teeth, were at turns deployed in the pursuit of the journalist’s pleasure. Using the point of her tongue she circled the base of Logan’s clitoris then sucked it gently into her mouth.
“Got … to … lie … down … legs … won’t … work … ” Logan’s body was trembling, her left hand tangled in Frith’s hair, her right flat against the wall, trying unsuccessfully to get some purchase to bolster her failing legs.
Frith came to the rescue. Standing, she guided Logan to the kitchen table and laid her down on it. The cruel shock of the cold formica against her ass was instantly forgotten as two strong fingers unceremoniously and easily penetrated her.
Frith, looking down, savoured the sight of Logan naked from the waist down, laid out on the kitchen table, slick cunt filled with two fingers of her right hand. Logan’s hips were moving rhythmically, intensifying the sweet friction of Frith’s hand as it moved in and out of her.
Frith again lowered herself to her knees, careful to maintain the contact of her fingers inside of Logan. Lifting Logan’s left leg over her shoulder, she bent her head and again tongued her clitoris, quickly finding a complementary rhythm to her fingers.
The tension deep inside of Logan was reaching crisis point, the sensations sourced from the blonde woman’s fingers and tongue at once too much but not quite enough.
“Fuck me harder Frith … please … hard ….”
Frith instantly obliged and adding a third finger she flexed her right arm, short rapid movements counterpointed by her tongue.
Logan raised her hips off the table, her thighs tensed as a crashing orgasm overtook her body. The knuckles of her hands were white as she grabbed the table’s edge, the chrome trim cutting into her palm. Delicious spasms continued for some time around Frith’s fingers as Logan slowly returned to earth.
Frith raised her head, but began hopefully to move her fingers again.
“Oh Jesus … stop … please.” Logan shot up to a sitting position and grabbed the smaller woman’s hand. Her chest heaved as she tried to suck in enough air to restore some semblance of calm. It was a futile effort as another spasm convulsed in her cunt.
Frith took pity on Logan and rising to her feet she slowly and gently withdrew her fingers. She pressed her body into the space between Logan’s legs and enfolded the woman in her arms. Frith tilted her head and placed the softest of kisses on the journalist’s lips.
“Come on, let’s go to bed.”
Logan nodded her agreement. Her wits were returning to her slowly. She got off the table and flipping on a light, walked across the kitchen to the refrigerator, grabbed some water, taking several large gulps from the bottle.
Frith, who had enjoyed the sight of the woman’s tight buttocks peeking out from beneath the leather jacket, declined the offer of a drink, a cheeky grin on her face.
“You look pleased with yourself,” Logan said as she returned to stand inches from Frith, staring down into shining green eyes.
“Well, why wouldn’t I? You were fucking amazing. Come on, where’s the bedroom? I want you again.” Frith moved her hand forward sliding it under Logan’s rumpled T shirt and luckily happening upon a smooth round breast that just needed a firm squeeze.
“We’ll see about that …” Logan grabbed Frith’s hand and led her through the living room to the bedroom door, which she kicked open impatiently.
“You, my little blonde-haired friend, have way too many clothes on. I want to see you.” Logan shrugged off her jacket and set about divesting Frith of her clothes.
A dark sweater was pulled up and over Frith’s head and flung on the floor. Two pairs of hands dealt to the buttons of her shirt, surprisingly only one uncooperative button on the cuff sacrificed in the process.
“Fuck …” Logan breathed. Not the most romantic of compliments but fully expressive as she eyed Frith’s body, breasts exquisitely captured by the red lace bra. Soon Frith’s shoes and pants were also history.
Logan sat on the edge of the bed and gazed at the woman in front of her. Broad planes of flesh shaped by muscle, colours subtle and complex. It was as if the most captured subject in the history of painting was presented to her, simultaneously representative and abstracted.
“Take your underwear off.”
Frith wasn’t quite sure how she had lost the initiative in this encounter, but for her following had as many merits as leading. She reached around and undid her bra, slowly sliding the straps down her arms until she held the item in her hand. She dropped it gently to the floor.
Frith took two steps towards Logan. “You can deal with the panties.”
Logan leaned forward and kissed the skin between Frith’s breasts.
“My pleasure,” she hummed slightly as she slid her hands between the lacy fabric and the blonde woman’s hips, lowering them over thighs, until gravity took over and they too landed on the carpet.
Frith leaned down and grasping the bottom of Logan’s T shirt, dragged it up and over her dark head. Finally the two women were naked. Obviously the only way to do justice to this new state was to achieve as much skin on skin contact as possible.
Logan stood and drew Frith into her arms, breasts, bellies and thighs melded together. With strong hands she massaged her way down the smaller woman’s back until she reached a very pert bottom, which she captured, the fit in her large hands perfect.
Her hands descended even lower and without further hesitation she grasped Frith’s thighs and lifted, the inevitable result was the smaller woman’s legs wrapping around her waist, her cunt quietly slick against her stomach.
Frith, surprised to find herself no longer directly connected to the earth, felt nonetheless safe in Logan’s strong arms. Her own arms had wended their way around Logan’s neck. A kiss was definitely in order and again their lips met. Their bodies were entwined in such a way that the kiss went on for some moments. Frith’s arousal was evident, her hips began undulating as she stroked her cunt against Logan’s stomach.
“Hang on lover, not yet.” Logan turned towards the bed, knelt and deposited Frith on to it. Logan was on all fours above her, her hair falling forward, breasts swinging enticingly.
“Come down here, I want to feel you on top of me,” Frith instructed.
Logan lowered herself, her long length settling on the smaller woman’s body and between her parted legs. Frith spread her legs wider and bent them, both her feet flat on the bed. The women rocked together, Frith’s cunt sliding smoothly against Logan’s groin, their position one that only the most progressive of missionaries would have approved.
Logan raised herself on her forearms to begin tasting whatever flesh she could find. Frith’s lips, face, neck, shoulders, breasts were bestowed with fluttering kisses, small bites and swipes of her tongue. As the blonde woman groaned underneath her, Logan thrust her pelvis forward hard into Frith’s cunt and latched her mouth hotly around a breast sucking intently, knowing that she was leaving marks on the flawless skin that would still be there tomorrow.
Logan reached down between their bodies to introduce her fingers to the hot slippery flesh between Frith’s legs. She shifted her body slightly to create room and began exploring. Planting her thumb on Frith’s clitoris she began to insert her index and second finger. The blonde woman stiffened and gave a strangled cry of no.
Logan stopped moving and looked down concern on her face.
Frith gave a small smile. “Just not in me… please not now … anything else is fine …”
“You sure you want to carry on?”
“God yes.”
Logan’s fingers gently retreated a little but took up position on the blonde’s clit. Slowly and surely they began moving, building a rhythm gently. Frith moaned and matched the rhythm with her hips, grasping the tall woman’s shoulders ferociously.
Logan kissed Frith gently on the lips and whispered “I need to see your body.”
Raising herself gently off Frith’s body, she propped several pillows under the blonde woman’s shoulders so her head and torso were slightly raised off the bed. Logan then repositioned herself at the end of the bed on her stomach, lying between Frith’s legs, her shoulders even with Frith’s knees. Logan’s hand moved forward and resumed its task of pleasuring.
“You’re so beautiful Frith, I needed to see all of you.” Logan’s eyes roamed over the woman’s face, hair, breasts, skin, cunt all displayed before her, completely open to her gaze.
If Frith felt at all vulnerable, it did not show, her eyes closing as Logan’s hand kept up its relentless stroking, the intensity of feeling growing all the time.
Logan bent her head and began suckling the tender skin where thigh met torso, her tongue wetly exploring, nose occasionally nuzzling soft pubic hair.
The added sensations were more that Frith could bear, her legs tensing against the resistance of Logan’s shoulders. Her hips rose completely off the bed, Logan having the wherewithal to maintain her contact with the quivering woman.
It was all Logan could do not to laugh when the finale of Frith’s orgasm was a stream of four letter words not usually heard in polite society, nor, for that matter, making much in the way of grammatical sense.
Frith, however, was reveling in the intense sensation of her orgasm, exploring that internal space in her brain – an infinite fourth dimension – where all that counted was delicious feeling, sourced from the elimination of tension. This was no petit mort. In this space, Frith lived.
Slowly calm was close to being restored and Logan withdrew her hand from between Frith’s legs. She climbed up the bed and drew Frith into her arms, kissing her on the top of her head. She soon became aware that the shoulders she was holding were shuddering as Frith quietly wept.
“Hey, what’s the matter? I didn’t hurt you, did I?”
Frith shook her head, uncertainly looking up at Logan and making eye contact.
“No, it was great. It’s just … I don’t usually orgasm with other people. I mostly get myself off.”
“Oh.” Logan wasn’t sure if she was up for this conversation just yet.
Frith caught her uncertainty and sighed a little.
“It’s okay Logan, I’m not looking for therapy. It’s just a fact of life for me. It’s not that I don’t like sex, it’s just I generally get other things out of it. Tonight’s been a bit of a surprise. Actually, a fucking great surprise.” Even as there were tears on her face, she grinned. “Sorry, I’m a bit all over the place.”
Logan, thankful that she wasn’t in for a ‘deep and meaningful’, grinned back and decided to lighten things up even further.
“Well, some sort of celebration is in order then, isn’t it?” Logan kissed Frith briefly on the lips, then left the bedroom. She returned moments later, a plastic container and two spoons in her hand.
“Ice-cream. Come on … under the blankets.”
The two women resettled themselves in the bed and, taking a spoon, they began feeding each other.
For Logan, the sight of Frith’s tongue cleaning her spoon brought to mind other possible activities for the body part in question. She leaned over, confiscated the spoon and the tub of ice-cream and put them on the floor beside the bed. Sliding down the bed, dragging Frith with her, she began kissing the small woman again, her hand cupping a breast.
Sexual tension, that for a few minutes had been at a simmer, was soon at a rolling boil again.
Logan awoke to the sun sneaking in between the curtains. She stretched, cat-like, the movements those of a woman whose body has been well loved. Eyes still closed she did a quick inventory of her body. The odd twinge in her muscles, a dull but pleasant ache between her legs. Her head felt a little fuzzy, no doubt the result of an endorphin overload combined with a lack of sleep. Her mind began surveying the previous night’s activities, quickly discarding the action at Tall Trees in favor of the marathon of sex that had kept both women awake until just before dawn.
Her pleasant reverie was interrupted by the sound of a gentle thud of a car door being quietly shut. She clambered out of the disheveled bed and went over to the window. Drawing the rest of the curtain aside, she saw Frith’s car disappearing under the trees. Not a good sign.
The thirty miles into Wellington flew by quickly as Logan treated the Mazda with even more disregard than usual.
The morning had passed in a sleepy daze. She had crawled back into bed after Frith had left and dozed until the late morning sun woke her with its heat. Once fully awake, she stared at the ceiling of her bedroom for a while, thoughts and feelings and memories of the night swirling through her mind. How had this happened? ‘The usual way,’ she snorted to herself and with that she dragged herself out of bed and into her day.
She remembered the small pile of documents she had stolen from the farm and searched the house and the car for them. She realised Frith had probably taken them.
So, to progress she needed several things. Frith. Those documents. A meeting with Jack, her missing source. An entry into Tall Trees. And all four things were in Wellington.
Some quick searching of the on-line white pages and she had Frith’s home address narrowed down to two possible choices. Had she mentioned which web company she was working for? A quick visit to the dot-co-dot-nz TTL website revealed the name of the web design company. Frith, then Jack. She almost convinced herself that was a sound investigative tactic.
Parking was its own usual torment. A city like Wellington, which is crammed into a very small space between steep hills and the busy harbour, relies on public transport to facilitate the movement of worker drones into the paper-consumed bureaucracies of central government.
Logan turned into a car-parking building near Te Papa, the new national museum. Allen Street was right across the road and she could easily see the sign for Solaris Consulting. The old three-story stone masonry building did not boast a lift, so she bounded up to the top floor reception area.
Not surprisingly, for a small company, there was no receptionist – just a bell inviting her to ring it. As she reached out to tap the bell, she heard a familiar voice from a meeting room adjacent to the foyer. She snatched back her hand and stood frozen in place. God, there were two familiar voices and she had no trouble in placing both of them. Frith’s warm alto tones and Sarah’s higher pitched voice. Logan cursed under her breath. The rumble of a male voice entered what was apparently turning into an argument.
“Ms. Harris! How can we investigate a potential breach of security when you can’t tell us anything about it?” That must be Wiremu Kale, the owner, thought Logan.
“Wiremu,” Sarah purred, “you must see our dilemma. Investigating something ….. delicate, can as easily do the damage the troublemaker sought in the first place.”
“So, you can’t tell me why you are taking all the Tall Trees development work back? Are you giving it to another company? Is this really about dissatisfaction with our work?”
Frith’s voice floated through the doorway. “Is it me in particular?” she asked.
“Well, Ms Buchanan, your involvement with Greenpeace IS potentially a factor, minor, I admit. But TTL is reviewing security as part of a world-wide project towards e-commerce. You know how it is – head office twitches and we all get jerked around,” Sarah laughed lightly. “With any luck, we’ll be able to restart the work in a couple of weeks. And we WILL come back to you, I promise. Now, is this everything?”
Papers and disks were now being shuffled and obviously being placed in briefcases. The meeting was ending. Logan glanced around the reception, but there was nowhere to hide. She opened the glass door on the opposite side of the foyer from the meeting room and slid into the first doorway.
Wiremu and Frith said their farewells to the Tall Trees Communications Manager. As soon as she had disappeared down the stairs, they looked at each other and, by common understanding, headed for the roof stairs.
“Friiiiiiith……” Wiremu dragged her name out. “What’s going on?”
Frith waited until they were up on the roof. The winter sun made her shade her eyes as she considered what to tell her employer. Could he be of help? Or would he just be royally irritated?
“Well,” she said cautiously, “She didn’t take the work away, not really. We still have a contract and she made no mention of varying that.”
“Not that!” he snapped. “What’s this deal with Greenpeace?”
“I have no idea,” she said. “I used to do volunteer work with them. Got out a year or so ago. I can’t recall anything wildly outrageous about Tall Trees – I certainly wasn’t involved in the research or investigations or anything. I just wrote their local propaganda.”
“SHE clearly thinks it’s an issue.”
“It sounded like bullshit to me.”
“But she’s obviously done a background check on you. Christ, maybe she’s done one on me, too.” Wiremu’s worried face looked even more anxious. “If she thinks you having worked for Greenpeace is a problem, then the fact that Brian works for the Dominion might be just as bad.”
Seeing the possibility of the potentially lucrative TTL contract about to go down the toilet, Wiremu frowned and hauled out his packet of cigarettes. Lighting one, he absently offered a cigarette to Frith. She took one, equally absently. Only when she put her hand out for the lighter, did he register the unusual fact.
“Frith! I thought you didn’t smoke?”
“Willy, there’s a lot of things about me you don’t know,” she replied. “Some things even I didn’t suspect.”
“I’m beginning to see that. Care to enlighten me?”
“Know thyself. I’ll let you know when I’ve figured it out myself. So I guess there’s no more work for me this month? I’ve got a life to organise.”
“A social life?” he asked. “You don’t mean of the romantic variety, do you? Oh my god! You do! At last! Details, details!”
Logan waited patiently, hidden behind the heating unit, as they extinguished the cigarettes and vanished down the stairs, Frith audibly fending off Wiremu’s curiosity.
Greenpeace. Sarah. And a journalist named Brian. The mix was slowly mutating. But she really needed to find Jack, and soon. She hated flying blind and suspected that a big piece of the puzzle would be illuminated by her secret-squirrel friend.
She descended the stairs. Should she see Frith now or was she more a part of the mystery than she had let on so far?
‘I want those documents,’ she thought.
Once again in the reception area, Logan firmly struck the bell. As the sound died away, both Wiremu and Frith appeared from different offices.
Logan dazzled Frith with a broad grin. The blonde woman blushed furiously. Wiremu caught the smile and the blush, and grinned himself.
“I’ll leave you to it,” he smirked and disappeared back into his office.
Frith and Logan stood staring at each other for a moment, until Frith remembered where she was.
“Come on in,” she invited, standing beside her office doorway.
Logan walked in, trying to wipe the grin from her face and failing miserably.
“I… um … was after those papers,” she muttered. She was not sure how to act. Last night had been primal, intense, exciting, amazing. But was it purely situational? How did she feel about this woman? How did Frith feel about her?
Frith followed her in, closing the door behind her. She simply walked up to Logan, put her arms around the taller woman’s waist and hugged her. Logan nearly wept in gratitude, her eyes filling with unshed tears. She returned the hug. As the hug lasted, it became an embrace. Logan bent her head, searching out Frith’s eyes.
Frith melted as she saw the emotion in the other woman’s eyes. She lifted her face. Lips met and lingered. Hands touched and explored. Tongues stroked and caressed. Before they fully realised it, Frith’s shirt was open and Logan was bending to kiss her breasts. Stooping, she lifted Frith on to the desk and slipped her hands around Frith’s back, fumbling with her bra.
“No!” panted Frith. She slipped off the desk and out of Logan’s embrace. Logan’s flushed features stilled.
“Not here,” Frith continued.
“But Frith….” Logan murmured, as she advanced on the blonde woman, “You know you want to…” The smile was more salacious this time.
Frith felt her willpower rapidly evaporating. At that moment, just as Logan was reaching out for her, Wiremu’s voice sounded on the other side of the door.
“Frith? You presentable?”
Logan raised an eyebrow as Frith fumbled her clothes back into a semblance of order.
“Sure, come on in,” she called, as she turned and walked towards the window.
Wiremu sidled into the room. One look at the faces of both women and the slightly disheveled state of Frith’s top, left Wiremu in no doubt that he had interrupted Frith’s ‘social life’.
“Sorry, girls,” he said, fighting to keep a straight face.
Another look at Logan’s face and he stiffened.
“Logan Kendrick?” he stammered.
Frith moved forward to introduce her boss, but Logan smoothly held out her hand and said, “Wiremu Kale, I presume?”
The blonde woman’s jaw dropped.
Turning at her slight gasp, Logan smirked.
“I believe you’re a friend of Brian Cowley. At the Dominion?”
“So….” he muttered, “there is something going on.”
The women glanced at each other.
Wiremu caught the look.
“C’mon, Frith. Tall Trees security shut-down. Sarah Harris in here – smarmy, intimidating bitch. You and Greenpeace … and
A deep voice behind them interrupted, ” – and now, Logan Kendrick.”
Three heads snapped toward the doorway. A tall, brown-haired man stood in the frame.
“Well, well, well. Jacky-boy, as I live and die,” drawled Logan. “I was just coming to see you.”
“Oh yeah,” said Wiremu. “Frith, there’s someone here to see you.”
Frith groaned and held her head.
“Does anyone else have a headache?” she asked.
Everyone started to talk at once. As the gabble of voices rose, Logan walked over to the whiteboard on the wall and wrote in big letters HAS SARAH BUGGED THIS OFFICE?
That shut them up.
LET’S GO TO …..?
They stared at one another. Frith took the pen and wrote her address. Jack and Logan looked at each other and nodded.
Logan retrieved the pen. SPLIT UP. 60 MINUTES.
Jack took up the conversation. “Well, I better be going,” he said. “Frith, it was lovely to meet you. Logan, let’s meet at the Paradiso Bar in, say, ten minutes?”
“Great idea, Jack,” Logan practically cooed. Frith shot her a very surprised look. “We have so much catching up to do.” The tone in her voice shouted the implication that the catching up would be in the bedroom.
Wiremu and Frith did their best in ‘remembering’ appointments that would take them out of the office. As they were about to head down the stairs, Logan grabbed Frith by the hand.
“Let them go first and draw whatever tail Sarah may have left out there,” she murmured quietly in Frith’s ear. “Is there a back way out of this place?”
Frith nodded, and they waited as first Jack, then Wiremu left the building.
Down the stairs, Frith led Logan behind the staircase and out a rear door into a tidy alley. Logan was impressed, the gentrification of this part of town even extended to the alleyways.
She took the lead then and within minutes they were at Logan’s Mazda.
“Get in the back and lie down.”
“Oooh – just the invitation I’ve been waiting for,” Frith half-joked as she slid into the back seat.
They waited in the car-park for a good five minutes, Logan scanning the surrounding area for any sign they had been followed. In total silence.
Finally, Frith spoke. “How much longer?”
“Now should be okay.”
Logan drove out of the car-park and turned north along Oriental Parade. The Parade was popular with pedestrians, roller-bladers and joggers at lunchtime, as well as many trades-people eating their home-packed lunch in vans and work-cars. She kept an eye in the rear-vision mirror, looking for any following vehicles. None were apparent.
She drove fairly directly to Frith’s house, high up on Mt Victoria. The twisting, winding, narrow streets of Roseneath meant they traveled slowly, but it still only took them another few minutes. As she parked (illegally on the sidewalk, of course) Logan considered the next step.
Turning to Frith, who was levering herself upright, she said, “I’m going in first to make sure there are no unwelcome visitors. Gimme your house keys.”
Frith pulled them out of her satchel. “Here. It’s this one, in the top lock,” she said. “How long should I wait before coming in?”
“If I’m not back in five minutes, skedaddle. Head back to your office and wait for me or Jack to contact you.”
“He’s a spy,” Logan grinned. “And, I’m pretty sure, one of the good guys.”
“Be careful,” Frith reached out and touched Logan’s arm. Logan grabbed Frith’s hand and kissed it.
“I will,” she promised. “Don’t move.” And with that she was out of the car and jogging up the steps.
She slowed to a walk as the path to Frith’s house turned off from its neighbours. Wellington suburbs were worse than rabbit warrens. A watcher could be up any of these other paths, or even clear across the central city on the Kelburn hill, watching with high-powered equipment. Privacy was much sought-after but seldom achieved in this town.
Frith’s house was well hidden from its neighbours – the judicial use of trees, shrubs and the natural curve of the hill allowing a modicum of separation. It was a 1920’s weatherboard house, painted white with a dark green trim on the windowsills and door frames. The path leveled out as it approached the house and crossed a small grassed area with some early daffodils and a late flowering daphne bush giving off its sharp perfume.
Up the last few steps to the front door, Logan peered in the stained-glass surrounds. Nothing obvious. She walked around the house as best she could, making the acquaintance of an elderly black and white cat at the back door.
She returned to the front-door and let herself in.
Inside, the hallway was wood paneled, kauri timber Logan guessed. White plaster walls contrasted with the golden wood, reaching high to the ceiling some twelve feet above. Three rooms opened off the hall. Quickly she looked in each room.
Two were bedrooms, one obviously a spare room. The other door led into a living room.
Everything looked in place. At the end of the hall, with a door into the living room, was the kitchen. It was modern within the constraints of the era of the house – new benches, cupboards and appliances. Off the kitchen was the laundry and bathroom, and a porch for the back door. The black and white cat poked its head in the cat door but scurried off when Logan tested the back door lock.
She felt guilty (that she checked) and yet relieved that it was apparent that only one person lived here – one toothbrush, one towel on the towel-rail, one coffee mug in the drying rack.
Time to get Frith, before she took off.
As she walked quietly down the path, she stopped dead in her tracks as she heard footsteps coming up. She ducked behind a large hydrangea and waited. ‘Oh for christ’s sake,’ she groaned to herself, as Frith walked past her. ‘Can’t you follow simple instructions?’ Logan knew she was being a little unreasonable. Unless you had experienced the down-side of the cloak-and-dagger life, it always seemed preposterous that people could be hurt, or worse, by blundering in unawares.
A quick mental flash of the screams of a middle-aged woman, clutching her young child to her as they died at the hands of her assailant. The smell of blood filled her senses. The sickening sound of metal in flesh …..
Logan swallowed hard – the nausea from the too-vivid memory threatening to overwhelm her.
“Frith!” she hissed, and had a slight satisfaction in seeing the younger woman jump. “I told you to wait for me.”
She jumped down from her hiding place and they walked the remaining distance together.
Back inside the house, Logan quietly said, “Let’s go on to the verandah.” As Frith went to answer, Logan placed her finger on her lips and gestured – ‘show me’.
She led the way out though the living-room, with its high stud and tall sash windows, on to a generous verandah looking out over a breath-taking view of Wellington harbour. The house was not as exposed as it might have been, partially obscured by the pine trees and macrocarpas of the city’s green-belt.
Once outside, Logan closed the french-doors and talked more normally. Her frame of mind was shaken, her normal resilience to surprises was corroding under the weight of her memories.
“Jack will bring some bug-scanners,” she said. “Until then it is best to wait out here. Now – are you going to tell me everything?”
Frith looked at her in shock.
“What do you mean?” she gasped.
Logan snorted. “I’m not a strong believer in coincidences,” she stated. “First, Sarah Harris at Solaris. Then Jack. And me – was that just an accident too? What do you want from me?”
Her grip on Frith’s arm grew tighter. She cried out, “Logan! You’re hurting me!”
“Sorry,” snapped Logan, but her grip slackened only slightly. “Well?”
Just then a gentle knock at the door interrupted the tense scene.
“That’ll be Jack. Let him in.” Logan released Frith’s arm abruptly. She rubbed at it, looking away, unable to meet Logan’s eyes.
Jack had a black sports bag with him. Once inside the front-door, he motioned for Frith to be quiet. Working quickly, he checked the two phones, lightfittings, tables, and door and window frames with a scanner.
Frith followed him from room to room, anxious for the moment not to be alone with Logan.
Logan stayed out on the balcony, glowering. Fear for Frith flooded through her, so apparently unsuited to be playing this kind of game, mixed with suspicion about her motivation for being in the game at all. Logan had been prepared to accept the way they met, but hearing Sarah’s voice had shaken her.
Was Frith being played by an expert? Did Frith know she was being played? Surely not, her heart pleaded.
She considered Sarah Harris, the Communications Manager for Tall Trees. Last seen, or more accurately heard, by Logan, screaming obscenities and hurling clothes as the depth of the betrayal became apparent. Logan knew about betrayal from personal experience. She had deceived others – a thousand times.
The last time had had consequences so horrific that she had just packed up and walked away. And spent the next three months in therapy and exile, trying to find absolution.
Jack finished his work and joined Logan on the verandah. She was leaning on the railing, gloomily staring out over the harbour. He recognised this mood and knew enough not to irritate her. All her beauty, intelligence and spirit hid a violence he had witnessed several times and did not particularly wish to see again.
He leaned beside her, not speaking for a long moment, planning his approach. This meeting with Logan needed to go exactly right.
“You wanted me?” he eventually asked. It was their old joke, based on his long standing desire to be more than friends and her decision to remain merely comrades. Jack McKechnie had been her contact in the Fraud Squad as Logan investigated do-gooders, usually with their hands in the till. Her ability to move without some of the procedural constraints of the Police Department complemented his access to intelligence data. Together they had made a formidable, though unofficial, team. Until three months ago.
Three long months ago, when her world had shattered around her. Jack had been first on the scene and witnessed the carnage. He had whisked Logan away to the safety of a private clinic, where no questions were asked. He had seen her only once since that dark day. The woman he had met with then had not been the same vibrant woman he loved. She had been a shadow, a wraith. Defensive, haunted and subdued. His heart had cried for his friend, but he had walked away. She had not wanted him, even then.
“Yes,” she finally replied, turning towards him. “And I suspect you know why.”
“Tall Trees,” he said simply.
“Is it serious?” she asked.
Although Logan was tall, Jack still towered over her. His unremarkable, good-looking face was at her level as he stooped. Logan thought idly, as she had many times, ‘Must make being undercover a bitch.’ She waited for him to continue.
“So, what’s the deal with you and Ms Buchanan?” His slightly snarky questioned intimated he suspected more than a professional relationship.
Logan ignored his implied question.
“I ran into her out at a hydroponics place up the Kapiti Coast.” She noticed his tiny reaction, quickly controlled. “She had a bit of trouble with a security guard.”
“I guess you know about the involvement of her company, Solaris, with Tall Trees? Of course you do, you were there.”
Logan returned her gaze to the city.
“Let’s wait until Mr Kale gets here, shall we? I only want to hear this story once,” she said, evenly.
As if on cue, Wiremu’s dark head appeared, bobbing up the path.
“Okay inside?” she asked.
“Sure, nothing there. And no sign of any surveillance, though in this neighbourhood it’s way too easy to set up a directional mike or telephoto camera in any of those houses,” he gestured at the surrounding villas and apartments.
Most of the houses in Roseneath were wooden villas built in the 1910’s and 1920’s. They were old but well cared for – the sunny aspects, the views, the beautiful trees of the green-belt and the proximity to the city made it the most desirable locale in the city.
Logan frowned. How could Frith afford to own a house here? Or even rent one without a room-mate?
Inside, Frith let her employer into the hall. She motioned him to precede her into the livingroom. Taking a steadying breath, she followed him in as Jack and Logan came in through the french-doors opposite.
“Right,” said Jack. “It’s safer in here – no bugs and away from prying eyes.”
“Why don’t you start, Jack?” suggested Logan. “I don’t believe Mr Kale or Ms Buchanan have any idea who the fuck you are.” The bitter note in her voice startled Jack. He raised his hands in a calming gesture.
“I’m Jack Wilson. I’ve worked with Logan before, on fraud investigations. Now I’m seconded somewhere a bit more security conscious …. let’s just say …. for the government.”
Logan was not surprised to hear Jack use a false name. But it did indicate a lack of trust of some or all of their companions. ‘Including me?’ she wondered cynically. Perhaps he was going to use this meeting to tempt some information, or someone, into the open.
“It seems that someone in the New Zealand government is assisting Tall Trees to break our border control for genetically engineered organisms. What exactly they are sneaking in the back-door …. well, we don’t know precisely what yet. But my information is that a hybrid has been created of a common grass and what was once a disease carried only by insects. An contagious epidemic disease. It’s adapting from an arthropod vector to an organic one.”
He paused, inviting reaction or comment.
“My god,” exclaimed Wiremu, “You don’t mean biological weapons? Here in New Zealand?”
“It’s not certain that they are biological weapons, not exactly,” replied Jack.
“Then what?” asked Logan, curtly.
“Rather than biological terrorism, like setting off a canister of anthrax in New York, this seems to be more like biological sabotage. Longer term damage rather than short-term devastation. But, as I said, we don’t know for certain.”
Wiremu looked pale. “And why would anyone in their right minds want to unleash something like that here in New Zealand?” He turned to Frith in appeal. “We haven’t got up anyone’s noses lately, have we? I mean, like the French blowing up the Rainbow Warrior?”
Frith was silent. She was too aware of the cold suspicion pouring off Logan’s presence. Suspicion aimed directly at her.
Jack answered him. “It may not be directed at us. We may be being used as some kind of laboratory or testing ground. For an assault on a similar type of country.”
BINGO! If Frith could have gone any paler, she would have. In fact, she looked like she was about to …….
Wiremu leapt to the blonde’s side and supported her on the couch. Logan and Jack exchanged glances over his head as he held her, rubbing her back gently. “C’mon Frith. Snap out of it. Pull yourself together, babe.”
He turned to the others. “A glass of water would help,” he suggested firmly.
Logan walked into the kitchen, looking for the elusive cupboard with the glasses. Jack joined her in the search.
As the faucet ran, Logan asked, “What’s going on with Frith? What’s your interest in her?”
Jack did not seem surprised by the quiet question. His voice, equally quiet, was urgent and rapid.
“Wonder how she can afford this place on a part-time contract with a small computer company? She’s only 25. She has strong contacts with Greenpeace – no, more than just her sister – it’s Darryl Booth in particular. He has some kind of hold over her. Combined with the fact her parents are major shareholders in -”
He was interrupted by Wiremu opening the living room door. “Good god, how long does a simple glass of water take? If this is the state of efficiency in our secret services…..” he trailed off as he disappeared into the other room, glass firmly in hand. They heard the murmur of voices.
“Shareholders? In what – not Tall Trees?”
“Yup. Major players too. Her dad used to be on the Board, until a year ago or so.”
“Fuck,” swore Logan. “And the Greenpeace thing? What about that slime, Booth?”
“She was having an affair with him,” Jack said. “Usual story, I guess. She wanted the thrill of a grown-up affair. He panted over her in front of everyone. Even his wife, I heard.”
It was Logan’s turn to go pale. She leaned back against the kitchen bench.
The investigation she had started into Darryl Booth, the local New Zealand head of Greenpeace, had come to an abrupt halt when the embattled Director had suffered a nervous breakdown. She had moved on to more promising stories, leaving the investigation up to the authorities – up to Jack.
She tried to turn her thoughts from the mental image of Frith with Darryl.
“Where did that thing go? After I ditched it, I mean,” she asked.
“It turned into a criminal case, rather than a fraud investigation,” he replied. “Not accepting kickbacks, as we initially figured. More like extortion.”
She saw Frith’s passion flushed face, half hidden by a man’s naked shoulder.
“Extortion?” she muttered weakly.
“He had something on Tall Trees, something big. And she was involved. Not just sexually, though I’m sure it was hot and heavy.”
Frith’s naked body moving against his urgently..
“This bio-weapon thing?” Logan was feeling sick now.
“Maybe,” replied Jack.
She closed her eyes, but the vision remained.
Frith was being fucked from behind by the man, her body arching in ecstasy.
He leaned closer. Time for the kill. “Logan ….. he had something tangible. Evidence. I don’t know what. And it’s gone. She must have it.”
Logan turned the faucet on full and splashed a handful of water into her face.
“I’ve been waiting for her to make a move for nearly twelve months. And look who she just happens to run in to. You. She’s using you, Kendrick. She’s just fucking your brains out like she did that shit-head. I hope she’s dynamite in the sack.”
The sounds of Frith’s voice raised at the moment of orgasm, and the animalistic grunts of her lover, filled Logan’s mind.
“Something the matter, lover girl?” Jack sneered.
“You PRICK!” she shouted, as she swung her fist viciously, hitting Jack flush on the jaw. The big man went down in a heap.
As the thud echoed around the surfaces of the kitchen, the door swung open and two inquisitive faces peered cautiously in. Eyes widened as they saw Jack on the floor and Logan vigorously rubbing her hand.
“What the heck is going on?” asked Frith. She was still pale.
Logan controlled herself with an effort. She swung around to face the two workmates.
“Just a difference of opinion,” she said, coolly.
Frith’s expression was skeptical.
“Riiight. And I’m the Queen of Sheba.”
“Well, your majesty,” came Jack’s voice, “if you’ll just move your pretty backside….?” He raised himself off the kitchen floor. “Nice clean floor,” he commented. “Good cleaning lady?”
“Jack!” snarled Logan, warningly.
“Playtime over?” he asked lightly. “I’m outta here, then.”
He went into the hallway, grabbed his bag of tricks and left. His mission accomplished, Logan was now primed and ready to explode. And all he needed to do was stand back and wait for the smoke to clear. Somewhere in the debris would be the missing piece he needed to finish this business.
In the ten seconds his departure took, Frith and Wiremu stared open-mouthed at Logan. She looked nonchalant, or attempted to. Frith noted the damp hair and ashen face.
Turning, she dragged Wiremu into the living room.
“Boss ….. why don’t you head off back to work? Nothing’s going to happen here.”
He protested, but allowed Frith to bundle him out the front door. In a few moments, he found himself standing on the steps outside the firmly shut front door of Frith’s house.
By the time Frith got back into the kitchen, Logan had gone. There was no sign of her in the living room, nor on the deck. The hallway and spare bedroom were empty. As she walked into her bedroom, the door swung shut behind her and she was grabbed firmly and shoved against the wall. Logan’s body pressed against her, driving the breath from Frith’s body.
“What have you done to me?” hissed Logan. “You’ve told me nothing but lies. You made me hit my best friend.” Her voice cracked. “I’ve known you for forty-eight hours and ….”
“And what?” Frith fought to draw breath. “Did I touch you … as deeply as you’ve touched me? Logan …. I…. what do you want from me?”
The grip around her arms tightened convulsively.
“Tell me the truth. That’s all I need. The truth.”
The proximity of Logan’s body began working its magic on Frith. Despite, or maybe because of, the barely suppressed violence emanating from the taller woman, Frith was almost instantly in a state of high arousal. Fighting for a little space, she managed to free her arms, snaking them around Logan’s body and holding the dark angry woman close to her. She sought out now familiar blue eyes and, maintaining eye contact, kissed Logan. The kiss was surprisingly gentle, lips exploring softly.
Logan was struggling with her emotions, one part of her relishing the surprising tenderness, wanting to let herself be gentled by the small blonde woman who was holding her tight, as if her life depended on it. But the adrenaline in her body was not so easily soothed. Her hand still throbbed dully, a reminder of having punched Jack. And the memory of punching Jack was enough for her mind to play even crueler games on her vulnerable psyche. The image of Frith, naked, on all fours, being fucked from behind by that bastard Darryl Booth, flooded her mind.
Logan shook her head, trying to erase the unwelcome picture in her head. Her doubts about Frith’s motives were too present and too threatening for gentleness. Using her body to keep Frith still, she reached behind her back and grabbed Frith’s wrists and forced them above the blonde woman’s head, pinning them against the wall effectively immobilising the smaller woman. Strong enough to hold Frith’s wrists with one hand, with the other she ripped her shirt open and pushed her bra up and over her breasts. Logan bent her head and sucked a nipple into her mouth – hard. After a short time she raised her head, her teeth grazing over the hard nipple as her mouth retreated.
It was Logan’s turn to make eye contact, her gaze hard, drilling into the blonde woman’s eyes.
“So, what will it be? You ready to talk, or shall I take you now? You’d like it a little rough, wouldn’t you? I bet you’re already wet for me. If I keep your mouth busy, at least it won’t be able to tell any more lies.” Logan pressed Frith’s hands a little harder against the wall for emphasis. She reclaimed a breast, roughly massaging it.
By now Frith’s anger was on the rise.
“For Christ’s sake Logan, cut the macho bullshit and cool it. If you would behave like a rational human being for a second I’ll tell you whatever you want to know. Let me go.” She struggled against the hold Logan had on her. It was to no avail, her strength being no match for Logan’s.
Frith was now really pissed. Serious action was required. Dredging up lesson two of the YWCA’s self defence class she raised her foot, and jammed it down on Logan’s instep.
“Ow! Fuck, fuck, fuck and double fuck”. The pain in Logan’s foot instantly cleared the journalist’s head and she released Frith’s hands.
Frith, enjoying the victory for a moment, rammed home the point, spitting out her words.
“Don’t you ever do that again. I will not stand for it. How dare you behave like some testosterone-laden jerk? I have had enough of those in my life. I do not need another one. I don’t give a fuck who you are or what you think of me. Got it?”
Frith stood, hands on her hips, glaring up at Logan, taking in short sharp breaths.
Logan, however, was made of tough stuff, used to staring down politicians and captains of industry. She also knew when retreat was the best strategic option.
“I don’t suppose I’d get away with telling you that you are beautiful when you’re angry?” A crooked half-smile sketched across Logan’s face in an apology of sorts.
Frith’s temper, as impressive as it was, was quick to arrive and equally quick to disappear. Taking in another deep calming breath, she gave a small smile.
“If that’s as close as you are going to get to saying sorry, I guess I’ll take it.”
“No, you get a proper apology. I’m sorry a behaved like a ‘testosterone-laden jerk’. I do that sometimes. I’m sorry you found out this soon. I’m really sorry if I hurt you, Frith.”
The look of genuine regret in Logan’s eyes was all that Frith needed. She reached out for Logan and took her in her arms, giving her an almost chaste peck on the lips.
She smiled again.
“A few useful bits of information for the journalist. One. You didn’t hurt me. Two. You did piss me off. Three. I was wet for you. Four. I think I probably would like it rough with you, just another time when you are not angry. Five. I forgive you and six, what we need to do now is talk. Come with me.”
Frith gave Logan a quick kiss on the cheek and left the tall gobsmacked woman, heading for the bathroom. She adjusted her disheveled clothing as she went.
Fifteen minutes preparation and the two women were ensconced in the old fashioned claw foot tub, the fragrance of bath oil carried on steam filling the room. Logan was seated between Frith’s legs, leaning back against the other woman even as she leaned back against the bath.
No significant conversation had been exchanged, rather the two women had given into the charms of undressing each other and slowly submerging themselves in the hot water, finding their current comfortable position.
Frith decided it was time to get on with the hard stuff. She ran a cloth over Logan’s broad shoulders and kissed her on the temple.
“So, you ready to hear the sordid details of the life and times of Frith Buchanan? What would you like to know?”
Logan weighed up the possible questions, pissed off with herself that the first one to pop into her head was whether or not Frith had enjoyed fucking Darryl. Jesus, a few months out of circulation and she was behaving like a jealous schoolgirl. Safer territory was needed, at least to start.
“Tell me about your parents.”
“It’s all a bit banal, really. Your classic poor, little, rich girl story. My family is rich, they own property, this house. The one they are currently living in is in Milan. An apartment in Manhattan, a farm in Ireland and probably a couple others I have forgotten about. Anyway, you get the idea.
“My parents care a lot about money and position and knowing the right people. My mother still hasn’t recovered from being seated four down from Jackie Onassis at a lunch sometime in the mid seventies. It’s been like that all my life, the right schools, the right languages, the right clothes, for Christ’s sake, even ballet lessons and I’ve got two left feet”.
Logan reflexively stretched her bruised foot, wincing slightly. The move did not escape Frith’s notice and she lent down and kissed her shoulder.
“Sorry about your foot. Anyway, my sister and I both went to boarding school from about age seven. We looked out for each other, mum and dad were usually away somewhere. There’s one good thing about being bought up the way we were. You get independent fast, learn to think for yourself. By the time Serena and I were teenagers we understood where all the money came from, inherited blue chip stocks mostly in companies with really shaky environmental records. Exxon, Union Carbide, BP, Tall Trees – you name it, if it fucked up the environment, we had it,” Frith laughed mirthlessly.
“That’s why I got involved in Greenpeace, trying to make up for it I guess. God, that sounds so naïve now. My parents found that out after I was arrested in a demonstration. They threatened to cut me off, we had a huge fight. Looking back the Greenpeace thing was just the straw that broke the camel’s back. We’re just so different, different values…everything. Now I try and live as independently as I can, although this is still their house. I’m as much of a hypocrite as they are.”
Logan stroked Frith’s thigh, encouraging her to continue. “You’re not a hypocrite, you’re trying to live as best you can. It’s pretty much what everyone does. Is that why you drive that old Suzuki Samurai?”
Frith laughed quietly again, but with some amusement this time. “Yeah. Dad wanted to buy me a Land Cruiser. A year or so ago they decided to retry buying our affection. Christmas present that time, I think. I wanted a RAV4, but I could only afford a ten-year-old Sammy. It’s cute and functional –”
“Like you?”
“Gee, thanks,” said Frith. “Functional, huh?”
“Cute,” said Logan affectionately.
Frith blushed slightly.
“I’m saving up to buy a new one – a Vitara. Those RAV4’s are still too pricey. Anyway, when I was at Greenpeace, one of the guys, well, Darryl Booth actually, was doing some work on Tall Trees, thinking there was maybe something shady going on. It was public knowledge that one of their subsidiaries was still logging native forests. Dad was on the board of directors at that point. He owned about 15% of the company. Darryl wanted me to get information from him.”
Logan was confused. She was sure she knew all the main players on the Tall Trees board from her previous investigations into insider trading and there wasn’t a Buchanan among them.
“What’s your father’s name?”
“Alexander Richardson. I use my maternal grandmother’s name. Another futile attempt at independence I guess.”
On hearing the name Logan immediately conjured up a picture of the man in question – blond, short, rugged, good looking in impeccably cut suits. Sandy Richardson was probably on the periphery of the insider trading that had been going on at Tall Trees but had got out just in time, resigning his directorship and divesting quite a large percentage of his shares. Logan had tried but none of the dirt that had taken down two other office holders would stick on the very slick Mr Richardson.
Logan gave no hint that she knew who Frith’s father was as the blonde woman stretched a little to get comfortable and continued her story.
“There’s not a lot else really. I was stupid enough to believe Darryl was investigating for the greater good, so I agreed to help him, digging up what I could about Dad which wasn’t much. I eventually figured out that Darryl’s motives were somewhat more basic …. and after he …. well, I was silently cheering when you came into the Greenpeace office that day and did him over. I’ve never seen anyone go so white. And I thought I loved him. Jesus…” Frith sighed and wound her arms around Logan tightly, drawing comfort from the feel of her skin.
Logan nodded. “Darryl was in way too deep. He didn’t have the balls to play games with the big boys and extortion is a big boys game.” A pause, then she casually continued, “So what did Darryl have on Tall Trees?”
“I never knew. But he used to make nasty jokes about American farms. When Jack said that thing …. about a country like New Zealand … I wondered if that … if… that was what …..” she trailed off.
“Come on, enough of this. Let’s get out of the bath or we are both going to be like prunes.”
Logan stood, the water cascading down her body and stepped out of the bath. Reaching down she offered a hand to Frith, helping her to her feet. She grabbed a large fluffy bath towel, still warm from the heated rail and wrapped the smaller woman up in it, patting her gently dry.
Frith’s openness about her family and about Darryl had disarmed Logan. She wasn’t used to such honesty. The people she had lived and loved with generally wanted something from her, which meant that exchanges of information or body fluid were generally conditional, part of a complex system of barter that Logan no longer found tenable.
Wrapping another large towel around herself she lead Frith from the bathroom and back into the bedroom. Logan dropped her own towel to the floor, deliberately displaying her body for Frith.
“You have to be anywhere in a hurry?” The tall woman was at her seductive best, but she knew that if she were being honest with herself this wasn’t about seduction or even lust or the thrill of the chase. This was something more.
Frith indicated with a shake of her head that she had no other pressing engagements. Right now she couldn’t imagine anything on earth that would be important enough to warrant walking away from the beautiful naked woman in front of her.
“Good,” said Logan. “Come here.”
Logan took Frith in her arms and kissed her. Soon Frith’s towel was also on the floor, the women exploring each others skin, rendered even more soft and smooth and fragrant from the bath oil.
By mutual, unspoken agreement they got into the bed, snuggling under the covers, clinging to the warmth of each others body until the chill of the sheets disappeared. If their first night together was characterised by urgency and passion, this afternoon was calm and gentle, both of them taking time to stroke and taste and explore without haste. Neither of them felt the need to accelerate the pace toward climax, rather they reveled in the sweet arousal. Soft kisses were exchanged along with lingering touches, limbs intertwined so that it was difficult to tell where one woman began and the other finished.
Eventually the meandering journey became little more purposeful, bodies pressing into each other a little more urgently.
Logan leaned up on one elbow, cupping one of Frith’s breasts, her thumb teasing a very alert nipple.
“Show me.”
“Show you what?” Frith’s voice was quizzical.
“You said last night that you don’t usually come with other people, that you get yourself off. I want to see. Show me,” Logan repeated, encouraging the other woman.
“Oh….” Frith hesitated and searched Logan’s face for some re-assurance.
“Please show me.” Logan pushed the covers off them, the sight of their tangled limbs beautifully erotic. She nuzzled Frith’s neck and pressed her thigh between the other woman’s legs. She reached over and took Frith’s hand, threading their fingers together, gliding their hands over Frith’s body.
Frith moaned – the feeling of being simultaneously stroked by Logan and herself was unbelievable.
“Show me.” The words whispered in her ear gave her confidence in her body and its reactions.
Frith took the initiative and directed their joined hands, fingertips tracing a increasingly heated path over her breasts and across her stomach and into her pubic hair where they paused, stroking quietly. Logan was content to let Frith lead, enjoying the wonderful sight of Frith’s body stretched out, her eyes closed, their joined hands weaving a little magic over her. Almost by accident fingers playing in pubic hair traveled a little further south, slipping gently between Frith’s legs which parted instinctively, her hips arching off the bed.
Frith had almost lost the ability to tell whose hand was whose and who exactly was creating the sensations in her cunt. All she knew was she felt safe and in control and loved. If there was surprise that the “love” word had entered her head, it wasn’t sufficient to distract her from leading the dance of hands underway between her legs.
And soon the sensation was just enough, aided a little by Logan taking a nipple between her lips and running her tongue back and forth over its tip.
“Oh … Logan….” The blonde woman moaned her lover’s name as she quietly and intensely climaxed.
After a few minutes, reaching for Logan, Frith insinuated herself back into her arms, kissing her collar bone. “That was lovely.” Frith looked up and smiled. “You are lovely.”
Logan grinned happily and squeezed the blonde woman tightly. “So are you.”
It crossed Frith’s mind that maybe she should rouse herself a little and make love to Logan but, really, the sense of calm pervading her body was too wonderful to deny. She felt her eyelids getting heavy as an incongruous thought flitted through her mind.
“Logan,” she murmured sleepily, ” Do you really think Sarah Harris bugged my office?” And with that, she drifted off.
Logan kissed the woman in her arms on the top of her head and wished her ‘sweet dreams’.
Her thoughts inevitably turned to less pleasant concerns, specifically the unanswered questions surrounding Tall Trees and the associated cast of characters. Covering Frith with the sheet and duvet, she slipped from the bed.
She looked out the bay window of Frith’s bedroom, over the harbour towards Wellington central city. Frith’s confession had moved her – but the dilemma remained. What to do now? How to get closer to Tall Trees?
Face it, the issue was – how would she approach Sarah? Did Sarah know she was involved yet? How deeply involved was Sarah herself? She had been a trifle melodramatic with the warning about the Communications Manager for Tall Trees having possibly bugged Frith’s office at Solaris Consulting. If she had, Wiremu and Jack had cheerfully and loudly announced Logan’s name.
As Frith moved in her sleep on the bed, Logan thought about the last woman to love her. Sarah Harris. The buxom blonde woman had caught her eye immediately at the Tall Trees stockholder meeting Logan had covertly attended. She had been employed for the night by the catering company, a favour owed by a friend.
To be fair, Sarah had caught the eye and the libido of most men and not a few of the women present as well. Her generous figure, poured into a tight red dress, had shrieked sex, sex, sex and more sex to Logan’s starving senses.
Logan had been quietly dating Tall Trees Chief Executive, Alan Gadsby, at the time. In fact, he had asked her to investigate the possibility of insider trading by one of his senior managers. But the sexual component of their relationship had not advanced as far as Logan had wanted. He seemed to be weighing her up as potential marriage material, rather than a roll in the hay. She had briefly considered it too. Having just turned thirty and feeling alone, suffering one of the frequent bouts of mild depression which plagued her life, she thought about the future.
Sarah had just blown that all away with a single wink and smirk. Logan gritted her teeth and rejected Sarah’s initial overture with her business
card. The blonde had squared up to the challenge and flirted furiously with her all night, until she followed Logan into the women’s bathroom.
Logan was washing her hands, when the door had opened and closed behind her. She paid no attention, until the pressure of hands reaching straight for her breasts registered in her brain along with the fragrance of a Gaultier perfume.
Logan had known immediately who it was. Two seconds of delicious pressure on her breasts was all it took to decide to blow off the angle she was investigating and a potential alliance with a powerful man.
“Darling, you really do have the most gorgeous tits. I just had to touch them”. Sarah pulled Logan into the closest stall and claimed her mouth. Her hands reached down and lifted Logan’s skirt up and over her thighs. She ended the kiss and spoke again, her words as useful as her hands in teasing Logan.
“You have had me so hot for it all night, sashaying around in your little catering drag. It was all I could do not do bend you over the hors-d’oeuvres table, rip your knickers off and have you in front of all one hundred and fifty of those boring little stockholders. Now, wouldn’t that have gotten their dividends up?”
The humour enabled Logan to recover a little and to take some of the initiative back. “I may have gorgeous tits but you … you have the most fuckable body I have seen in a long, long time, and fuck you is what I am going to do.”
Logan turned the other woman, forcing her hard up against the cool wall of the toilet stall. It faintly crossed Logan’s mind that perhaps she should close the door, but Sarah’s butt grinding into her groin was shorting out important connections in her brain, rendering her incapable of carrying out any manual activity that did not require her hands on Sarah’s soft, full flesh.
Reaching down Logan grasped the hem of the red velvet dress, the colour and texture of the fabric presaging two of the more salient qualities of Sarah’s cunt. The dress ascended Sarah’s body, up over thighs, buttocks, rounded belly and full breasts until it was bunched under her armpits.
“Jesus … fucking … christ.” Logan let out a long breath and took in the picture that was Sarah – a pornographer’s wet dream. The woman went for the classic accoutrement of sexual fantasy, sheer seamed black stockings and garter belt the only underwear she saw fit to wear. Logan grabbed Sarah by the waist and pulled her back from the wall so she was slightly bent at the hips, the blonde using her elbows to brace herself.
The months of celibate game-playing with Alan Gadsby resulted in a degree of sexual frustration Logan had rarely experienced in her generally promiscuous life. A beautiful woman was practically naked in front of her in a semi-public bathroom, stockinged legs spread for her. Logan didn’t know whether she wanted to bury her fingers or her face in the cunt on offer. Sarah, however, knew what she wanted.
“Get your fingers in me – now.” A thrust of round backside added emphasis.
Logan, never the most compliant of women, decided on this occasion to do as she was told. Logan shaped her body against Sarah’s. Her mouth tasted tender skin on a neck hidden under curly blonde hair, her left hand reached around and firmly grasped a heavy breast, while her dominant right slid down the cleft between full buttocks and, on encountering a gratifying degree of lubrication, two fingers began fucking Sarah.
The woman in the disheveled red dress arched backwards into the touch and met Logan’s thrusts stroke for stroke. “Oh yes, darling woman, fuck me.”
Logan’s own cunt was throbbing, signaling a very strong interest in its own direct involvement. Reluctantly releasing Sarah’s breast, Logan slid her hand down pliant flesh seeking out the blonde woman’s clitoris, now using both her hands in synchronisation to ratchet Sarah’s arousal up even further. Logan’s firm hold on the woman also enabled her to maneuver her long legs either side of Sarah’s rocking hip, the subsequent explosion of sensation in her own sex making her lose her rhythm briefly.
“Easy, darling, we can do this together.” Sarah slowed her own movements, generously allowing Logan to catch up. Soon the two women, strangers, were moving together with a precision that would have had even the Russian judges reaching for the number ten score card.
The click of the outer door handle being turned gave them a nanosecond’s warning that they were about to have company. The woman who
walked in was an old friend and drinking buddy of Logan’s. She was also the caterer who had organised Logan’s undercover presence that evening and a woman not easily phased. Walking past the love nest that was the third toilet stall from the end, she shrieked slightly in shock at the image reflected in the mirror. She recovered quickly.
“Jesus, Kendrick! Trust you, you filthy bitch!”
Leaning casually against the marble vanity unit, she laughingly absorbed the sight of the sweaty panting women in front of her.
“Well, much as I would like to suggest that I stay and watch the finale, the meeting has just broken up and in about three minutes twenty five rich women with full bladders will be providing you with more of an audience that even you could brazen out.”
The woman grinned broadly.
Sarah had rolled her eyes at the interruption and addressed the tall dark woman whose hands were still buried between her legs.
“Well, sweetheart, much as I hate to suggest a detour so close to our destination, it does appear that a little decorum is the order of the day.”
Within minutes the two women were outside the hotel, running and giggling along the brightly lit pedestrian precinct of Cuba Street. After one brief pause when one pulled the other into a darkened doorway and kissed her wildly, they arrived at Sarah’s building. Barely in the lift, it started again. Hands, lips, thighs, arms – all pressed into the service of completion of sexual gratification.
The investigation into insider trading in Tall Trees was on hiatus.
Frith drifted from a light sleep to a waking doze. She had heard Logan get up, but she hadn’t left the house, so Frith relaxed.
Confession is good for the soul. A true cliché, Frith thought, but only if all was confessed. She had not been able to tell Logan the whole truth. She was too afraid of losing her now. Maybe later, when this was all over.
She lay there, considering the woman she was rapidly falling in love with. Was it love? The sex was fantastic. And there was something about Logan which really attracted her. Maybe it was the mix of utter competence, her dark good looks, the ever-present sense of danger and violence – and the underlying feeling that this complicated woman somehow … needed her too.
She glanced out the sash-window at the lengthening shadows of late afternoon. Soon the sun would shine directly in, before descending behind Tinakori Hill across the city. Time to get on with it – whatever it was. Maybe Logan had a plan.
Frith dragged the white cotton sheet off the bed, wrapping it around her as she walked out into the livingroom. Logan was standing at the north bay window, staring out at Somes Island in the middle of Wellington Harbour. Frith cleared her throat gently, as Logan turned towards her. Gods, she was beautiful. Dressed in only a superman t-shirt and her blue jeans, Logan made every other standard of aesthetic beauty Frith had ever known seem insipid and shallow. She wanted to touch that beauty and power, to inhale it, to make it a part of her own skin, to consume the tall woman and make them one. Then the shadows which plagued her own life would surely be banished. Together they could form one whole undamaged person.
Some of her longing must have shown in her face, for Logan crossed the room and drew her to the couch. Unwrapping Frith from the cocoon she was in, Logan tenderly kissed and caressed her. Clothes and sheet were removed, the manifestation of love needing no mundane apparel. The darkness could wait. For these moments they had each other.
Wellington by night is one of the more beautiful sights in the world. The silver lights of the office buildings nestle in a protective barrier of the surrounding hills, with orange street lamps and lit-up houses criss-crossing in an intricate pattern. The blaze of splendour sets off the brooding presence of the dark water of the harbour itself.
Logan and Frith lay entangled on the couch, looking out the french doors over the bay towards the city. The heat of passion had abated to a gentle warmth. Logan had seldom before felt so comfortable just cuddling. Her life had always been so full on, with little opportunity for the simple give and take of affection. Lust, not her less turbulent sister, had ruled her relationships in the past.
As she lay there, her thoughts turned to the work ahead of her. Jack had given her enough information to point her in the right direction. Darryl Booth had been extorting money out of Tall Trees. He had tangible evidence of something really nasty – was it the same nasty that was currently stinking up the atmosphere? Was the evidence information or an object? How did the Department of Security figure in this? Was Jack investigating or was he covering-up?
Her stomach sank as she considered that possibility. Jack and Sarah?
As if sensing her turmoil, Frith tightened her clasp around Logan’s waist.
“What’s up?” she mumbled.
“Me, in a few minutes,” replied Logan.
“Wha’ for? Can’t we just stay like this forever?”
Logan smiled in the dark.
“Bad guys to catch, conspiracies to foil. That kind of thing,” she said.
“So what’s the plan? Frith asked. “Do you have one?”
“Unfortunately, now that Jack has buggered off, I reckon Sarah is my best bet.”
Frith sat up abruptly. “You know her?” she asked.
“Oh yes… we have what you might call a history.”
“Let me guess,” said Frith. “Romantic.”
“I used to her get information for a story. Then when I had what I wanted, I dumped her.” Logan’s tone was bitter. “Frith, I’m not a very nice person. And better you should know that now…. before…”
“Before what? Before I …..”
Frith broke off. Like Logan, she couldn’t yet articulate what was growing between them. ‘Please, don’t let me fuck this one up,’ she prayed, though to whom or what she addressed this plea, she did not know.
“So, do we just turn up at her house and say – ‘hey, tell us everything’?” asked Frith.
“That’s one possible approach. But maybe ‘me’, not ‘we’.”
“No! You can’t leave me behind. Better think of another approach, buddy.”
“Buddy?” asked Logan. “That wasn’t what I’d call buddy-behaviour, you know. Except maybe it is in the South Island. Where were you brought up, again?”
“Nelson. And no changing the subject.
The two women extricated themselves from the muddle of sheets, clothes and cushions they had nested in and wandered down the hallway.
“The other approach is to find her in one of her leisure pursuits. Meet in a neutral kind of space.”
“Like at the gym?”
Logan laughed. “No way. Sarah gets all her best exercise in less, um, salubrious settings.”
“Like clubbing or the party circuit or her famous orgies.”
Frith shot her a look.
“Okay, okay….. reputed orgies.”
“So … which clubs?”
“On Friday’s she always went to Claire’s on Garrett Street.”
Frith walked towards the closet, dragging Logan with her.
“Then help me choose something to wear to Claire’s. Tonight.”
Logan made a show of reluctance. “Hold on, hold on.” She glanced at the bedside clock. “It’s only seven.” Part of her wanted to make a pretend event as close to the real thing as possible. A first date. With Frith.
“Let’s have some fun, while we’re at it,” she suggested. “There’s nothing useful to do before talking to Sarah, so let’s enjoy ourselves.”
“All right,” agreed Frith. “I’ll make us a drink, while you pick out some clothes for me. And then you are going to have to find something to wear.”
She eyed Logan up and down. “For a start, nothing I have will fit you, and secondly…” It had been bothering her from the beginning. “You must live somewhere with your own wardrobe, other than that little beach house up the Coast? Don’t you? I mean, naked women holding blue jeans and t-shirt make the grade here, but perhaps not in a club.”
“Really? Do you enforce the dress code rigidly?” asked Logan, as she dropped her clothes and squeezed her arms around Frith.
“Stop that! Oh, don’t stop that…..” Logan was kissing her throat and, pulling long blonde hair aside, worked her way along Frith’s shoulder. A shiver ran through her.
“Cold?”
“Ah, no … thanks … toasty … hmmmm.” With an effort she pulled herself away from Logan’s embrace. “How are you doing? Cold, wearing no clothes and changing the subject?”
“I keep some clothes in my office. We could pop in there.” Logan was uncomfortable with the idea of Frith in her house in Island Bay. Not yet.
Frith caught the hesitation, but decided to ignore it. ‘No fucking this up, remember,’ she told herself sternly.
“Right then, it’s a date.” She extricated herself from long arms. “A drink perhaps? Wine? Something stronger?” She wandered into the living room. The CD player had CD’s scattered all over it. What to put on? Romantic schmaltz? That would just end them up back in bed ….. hmmmm …. She picked up Natalie Cole thoughtfully. Nope, not the objective this time. How about something dancy? Get them in the party mood rather than the other. She crouched down to her older CD’s in the drawer beneath the player. Compilation of anonymous techno? Nah. Oh – this was it. Grace Jones. Perfect. Her older sister had left this behind, a relic of the eighties.
She put the CD in and pressed play. Nothing. She checked the volume. Still nothing.
“Bugger. What’s the matter with this?” She had just gotten the player cleaned, so it was unlikely to be that. She looked at the CD. How had a data CD gotten in there? She checked the empty cover. There was Grace.
She put the correct disk in and the strains of Sly and Robbie underneath Grace’s powerful tones filled the house.
By the time she had fixed the drinks – two classic G&T’s – Logan was dressed again in her t-shirt and jeans and half a dozen items were laid out on the bed.
Frith laughed out loud as she saw what Logan wanted her in. All the shortest, skimpiest skirts in her wardrobe were partnered with tight tops.
“Well, I’ll take that as a compliment, Logan,” she said.
Logan blushed. She mumbled defensively, “Well, it gets hot in those places, you know.” She took her drink and sipping it, turned away from Frith’s smirk.
“Let me get ready. Why don’t you ring Wiremu and see if he and Brian can join us? Might make us less conspicuous. His number’s on the wall by the phone.”
It was a good idea, Logan thought. ‘I can leave Frith with them once I find Sarah.’
Out in the hall-way, she dialed Wiremu’s number. Wiremu answered and they talked for a few minutes. Details were exchanged, arrangements made.
Frith had disappeared into the bathroom. Logan was at a loose end, so she poured another drink and let the music infiltrate her consciousness. The heavy bass notes of the title track boomed around Frith’s livingroom. Logan sat on the couch, waiting while Frith showered and dressed.
A slight movement caught her eye. Frith was standing silhouetted in the doorway, the light from the hallway spilling into the darkened room. Her hair was long and loose, tinged more red than blonde in the light. The dress she was in was form fitting. Logan rose mechanically. As she moved closer to Frith, she saw the dress was tight and black, thigh length. Her breath caught, her heart-beat quickened.
Frith smiled shyly. She held up a pair of shoes and asked, “What kind of shoes?”
Logan smiled back automatically.
“I mean, are we going to be running after bad guys down dark alleys?” A pause. “C’mon Logan, talk to me.”
In answer, Logan drew Frith into the living room, removed the shoes from her grasp. The music moved her into Logan’s arms. Her hands settled on Frith’s hips, Frith’s hands slid around Logan’s waist. Her head rested on the taller woman’s breast. They swayed together.
A life-time later, Frith raised her head. Logan had her eyes closed, shutting out the whole world except for Frith’s body.
“Logan. What’s the matter?” she asked gently.
A hesitant answer came. “I don’t know if I can do this again.”
“Do what?” ‘Oh please, let her not mean me.’
“Tall Trees. Sarah. Alan. Putting you in danger.”
“Whoa right there! What are you talking about?” Frith was alarmed by Logan’s demeanor. Her tone penetrated Logan’s trance.
Hastily, she let Frith go and shook herself. ‘Get a grip, Logan. This is what you do, remember.’
“Nothing. Forget it,” she muttered. She picked up the shoes. “These look fine. Ready?”
The sudden switch in mood threw Frith for a moment.
“Oh… right… okay. Yes, I’m as ready as I can be.”
In the hall closet, she picked out a warm coat as Logan shrugged her leather jacket on.
“Your car or mine?”
“Follow me to the office. We’ll leave my car there and take yours.”
They left the house and walked down the dark path to the road. Wellington sparkled across the bay. A full moon had risen over the hills to the east of the harbour, illuminating the hills surrounding Port Nicholson. Logan’s battered yellow Mazda took off before Frith even had her seatbelt on. Hurriedly, she shoved the Suzuki into gear and, bouncing off the sidewalk, followed the distinctive tail-lights down Palliser Road towards town.
They drove through the streets of downtown Wellington as the city came alive in its ritual celebration of the end of the working week. Logan’s office in the New Business Age building was at the north end of Lambton Quay. It wasn’t really a quay anymore, although it had been when Wellington was founded. An earthquake in 1855 had jolted the shoreline of the port out by a hundred meters. Quays and wharves and jetties had all been left high and dry.
Frith parked in the top level of the underground carpark, while the Mazda disappeared down to a lower level. She waited until Logan jogged up the ramp.
“Come with me,” she ordered. The ground-floor lobby was darkened and deserted. The other employees of the publishing concern had already headed off for the bars and clubs. Using her access card, they made their way up to the twentieth floor. Logan’s office was in the prime north-east corner, overlooking Wellington Harbour and out to the Hutt Valley. She locked the door behind them.
Frith automatically drifted over to the large windows. Every Wellingtonian checked out the view, no matter where they were. It was the major compensating factor for being stuck with New Zealand’s most notorious climate. They didn’t call it the Windy City for nothing. The capital’s position at the bottom of the North Island, right on the strait between it and the South Island, formed an enormous wind-tunnel effect, exacerbated by the strong ocean currents. Whatever blustery weather was going, Wellington got a double dose. At least it didn’t rain as much as in Auckland. A small consolation sometimes.
Looking around the office, Frith could easily see the public face of Logan Kendrick. Journalism awards lined one wall, framed copies of some of her biggest stories lined another. The third wall had a giant map of the world and a large map of New Zealand. She wandered over to the desk and fingered some of the tiny figurines adorning the top of Logan’s monitor. Hmmmm… was Virgil from Thunderbirds ogling Uhura from Star Trek? Or was Counselor Troi doing the ogling? She noticed the calendar was still set on May. Had Logan not been here for over three months?
Logan had disappeared into the ensuite bathroom. When she emerged, hair still damp from the shower, she was dressed ready for action. Of a sort.
Faded blue jeans were gone, replaced by figure-hugging black leather pants. T-shirt was gone, replaced by what Frith could only characterise as a black leather bra. A loose silk shirt was draped over one shoulder.
Frith felt her legs wobble underneath her. To save some shred of dignity, she sat down with a thump on the office chair.
“My god. You look …..” Words failed her….. ‘Like you’re setting out to seduce someone,’ her mind helpfully supplied. ‘Other than me,’ it meanly continued.
But Logan was all business now.
“Ready? Good, let’s go.” And with that she lead the way out of her office and to the lifts. The elevator stopped twice on the way down. The first time two weary-looking men in suits got in, nodding politely to the women.
The second time, an older woman entered. Behind her, a distinguished man walked past the lift as the door closed.
As Frith squeezed out of the lift ahead of the two men, she was surprised to see Logan’s face had gone dead white. Pulling her aside and waiting until the foyer was empty she asked, “What’s up, Logan? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
Logan placed her hand over Frith’s mouth. She motioned with her head. Frith followed her gaze to the camera in the high corner. Taking her by the hand, Logan led her outside and to the visitor’s carpark. Only when they were safe in Frith’s car, did she feel safe enough to speak.
“Did you see that man, when the lift stopped?” she asked.
“Tall, good-looking, fifty-ish? Sure,” Frith answered.
“Did you see who was with him?”
She hadn’t. The lift door had closed too soon.
Logan was still white as a sheet. “I thought … it looked like … ” She couldn’t continue.
“Who, Logan? Who was it? Sarah?”
“No,” she whispered. “It was Jack.”
Logan had arranged with Wiremu to meet for dinner at Flipp, one of Wellington’s funkiest restaurants, and only a five minute walk from Claire’s. It was just before 8.30 when the Suzuki pulled into the tiny carpark beside the old building which housed the Brasserie. Climbing the marble stairs to the first floor, the women could hear Wiremu’s voice clearly, wafting down the stairwell.
“No, I reserved a smoking table. What do you mean I can smoke at the bar? Oh, for christ’s sake!”
Frith grinned and rolled her eyes. Logan’s spirits were slowly returning to normal after the shock of seeing Jack with the Managing Editor of the New Business Age. What had he been doing there?
But now, she had a few hours to kill before heading to the nightclub to try and contact Sarah. Dinner with Frith, her boss and his boyfriend seemed relatively innocuous and a chance to regain her composure. She felt a bit rusty around people after three months of isolation.
At the top of the stairs, Wiremu was still remonstrating with the maitre de hotel. To one side stood a taller, slightly tubby man with wispy blond hair. His irritated expression changed to a good-natured smile as he saw Frith.
“Gidday, Frith,” he greeted her. “Can you calm the mad little bastard down?”
“No way, Brian,” she replied. “That’s your delegated task. We just ignore him at work.”
Wiremu turned to her, leaving the hapless maitre d’ gesturing furiously to one of the waiting staff.
“And because you ignore me there, I am forced to play the drama queen in public!”
“Just the queen, if you ask me,” muttered Brian.
“I most certainly did not, my friend!” exclaimed Wiremu. “Frith, you look divine. Wear that outfit the next time those wankers from the Ministry of Defence want a demo of an intranet. I do love to watch straight boys in uniform sweat. Logan, my goodness, you obviously keep in shape, don’t you?”
Logan had removed her leather jacket. Looking down ruefully, she buttoned up the silk shirt to fit in with the more decorous demands of a restaurant. Frith looked regretful as delicious skin disappeared from view.
As Wiremu turned again to badger the maitre d’, Logan and Brian shook hands and introduced themselves. They agreed they must have met at some journalistic function someplace sometime.
The harassed maitre d’ now had a table ready for them. Fortunately for Logan’s digestion, it was away from the eight foot by ten foot painting of the severed sheep’s head.
Two hours later, Logan was prepared to admit that social events were more enjoyable with Frith than they had been before. Perhaps it was the low level but good-natured flirting, perhaps the queer company with intelligent and wide-ranging discussions, or maybe the occasional hand on her thigh, followed by a dazzling smile. The tension which had threatened to engulf her before had subsided to a manageable level. Logan Kendrick, big trouble, had been replaced by Logan Kendrick, potential friend. It was a pleasant change.
Wiremu had kept away from the events of earlier in the day, though several times Logan had caught a glitter in his eyes as he looked her way.
By eleven, she was starting to feel anxious about the rest of the night. She had no doubt that Sarah would be at Claire’s. But Logan had no clear idea about how to approach her. Other than to duck whatever object Sarah would aim at her head. Sarah had her own ideas about the world and forgiveness was low on the list. But even with her expensive tastes, would she knowingly connive at a plot to test a biological weapon in New Zealand? Logan’s gut feeling was that she wouldn’t.
Twenty minutes later, the foursome were checking their coats and jackets at Claire’s. Claire’s was a dance floor downstairs and a jazz club upstairs. At Logan’s suggestion they headed upstairs first. A trio of piano, guitar and vocalist was performing in the large, crowded room. Wiremu headed for the bar to procure some drinks. Frith and Brian sat chatting while Logan excused herself to go to the bathroom.
When Wiremu rejoined his friends, he could no longer keep away from the topic which had pre-occupied him throughout the day. Taking advantage of Logan’s absence, he broached the topic with Frith.
“So, what’s the deal with the bio-terrorism shit?” he asked bluntly.
“I have no idea, Willy,” Frith replied, wearily. Apart from the emotional highs and lows of the day, the self-same question had nagged at her too. She knew Darryl had been blackmailing Tall Trees about something. When the html files for the Tall Trees web-site had referred to the hydroponics farm and the Texas lab, she had assumed (or had she really jumped to a conclusion?) that same something was involved.
Where was Logan?
Logan bypassed the bathrooms entirely. She briefly looked around the dance floor downstairs, but it was a little early for Sarah, so she went outside to check the carpark. On the phone earlier, she had asked Wiremu what cars were parked outside Frith’s house earlier in the afternoon. From the list of cars he remembered Logan recognised a car very likely to be Jack’s. A dark blue Subaru Impreza. Jack had always liked cars which looked innocuous but went like stink.
No sign of him. Logan wasn’t sure why she kept expecting him to be at the club. Just as she turned to re-enter the club doors, she heard the familiar sound of Sarah laughing. A gaggle of men and women were weaving their way up Cuba Street, walking in the middle of the very narrow road. Sarah was the centre of the throng, as usual. As they neared the entrance, Sarah shushed them all and, with a giggle made an announcement.
“My darlings! As we prepare to enter the hedonistic whirl of the dance floor, there is a deeper purpose to our revels this evening.”
“Getting wasted?” enquired a voice from the back.
“Nonononono. Well, yes. But other than that, this is the one month anniversary of me and my darling boy. A celebration is in order!”
“Sarah and Gareth!” they enthusiastically cried.
“There is a tab at the bar under my name. They have orders not to break out the best bubbly – ”
Calls of “Shame!”
” – but other than that, please imbibe to your heart’s content and raise a toast during the evening to love, sweet love.”
“Oh, yes,” she continued. “Remember to cab it home!”
“Yes, Camp Mother!” they chorused.
“Onwards!”
With another cheer, the crowd poured into the entranceway.
Frith was worried. Had Logan just abandoned her? As the band launched into another standard, she spotted a tall dark-haired presence in the doorway to the now crowded room.
Logan made her way over to the table with its solitary occupant.
Leaning close to Frith, she whispered, “She’s here.”
She looked around for the lads.
Brian and Wiremu were on the tiny dance floor. A small group of couples were braving a slower tempo number. Damn. Logan had hoped that Wiremu would take care of Frith while she talked to Sarah. He had been okay with that idea earlier on the phone.
She sighed.
“Let’s go down to the dance floor.”
Frith whispered back, “Do you have a plan?”
“Yes. I’m going to hide behind you when she tries to kill me.”
Catching Brian’s eye, she motioned that the two of them were going downstairs. Brian replied with his hand, indicating that they would be down in five.
‘That’ll work,’ thought Logan.
Abandoning the table, the two women made their way out of the jazz club. More than one set of eyes followed them, most in appreciation. A tall man at the far end of the bar turned discreetly away and finished his drink, reaching for his cellphone.
Downstairs the jazz ambiance vanished immediately. A loud insistent beat pulsed through the doors leading from the foyer into the disco. The foyer itself was crowded – it was really a bar-cum-coat-check-cum-entrance.
In the main room, Logan decided a subtle approach might work. Let Sarah see her first, to get the shock out of the way.
Maneuvering Frith into the middle of the crush, they danced. To be fair, neither woman’s mind was really on it. Logan’s height allowed her to continually monitor the edges of the room, looking for where Sarah might be holding court. As they danced, she eventually became aware that Frith was something of a mover. And that others around them were also taking notice. Frith’s red blonde hair, sweet figure and tight, tight dress was definitely an attention grabber. Logan might have noticed that she herself was a focus of attention, except that eyes tended to skitter away from her glare.
Frith motioned Logan closer. Pulling her head down, she softly said, “Don’t glower. You’re scaring the horses.”
Logan grinned half-heartedly. “Just warning off any poachers,” she replied.
She was a little frustrated she couldn’t spot Sarah. She hadn’t been able to see what Sarah had been wearing under her coat, but her hair had been blonder than usual and with wilder curls. No doubt her outfit was cut down to there – Sarah enjoyed flaunting her body. She had always appreciated spontaneous and uncontrolled reactions from both men and women alike. The tease.
The sweet smell of cannabis wafted to her senses across the crowded room. It was not unusual in public places, but Wellington police had lately been cracking down on overt drug use. There was an election coming up and every politician and their dog was busy playing the law and order card. Police had no choice but to look busy too.
The crowd was in a typical midnight frenzy, close and oppressive. Logan was jostled as a man danced past her. She felt his hand brush her back and she pushed him away.
Logan idly watched an asian man answer a cellphone. How could he hear anything over this din? Apparently it was bad news as his face stiffened in shock. His eyes twitched towards the men’s room. Closing the phone, he shouted something in the ear of his companion. The other man moved swiftly towards the men’s bathroom, while he pushed his way to a blonde woman dressed in red – Sarah!
Sarah looked annoyed more than shocked with whatever his news was. But she turned with him and moved as swiftly as the throng would allow towards an unobtrusive exit. Logan was now more than intrigued. Looking down to Frith, she saw that Wiremu and Brian had joined them, and the threesome were dancing like it was 1999. She eased away from them and set sail for the exit that Sarah had made for.
As she reached the exit, a skirmish at the entrance to the rest rooms broke out. People were pouring out of the loos and pushing through the crowd towards the main exit. Logan hesitated, half wanting to see what was happening, half needing to catch Sarah before she disappeared into the night. Sarah won out, and Logan slipped out the exit.
Frith turned just in time to catch sight of Logan’s back vanishing into the mass of humanity. She had suspected that Logan would want to approach Sarah by herself, so she persuaded herself to patience.
The dancers around her were looking agitated. An tide swell swept them towards the main doors. But the doors burst inwards as a dozen police rushed into the large room. Chaos erupted. The music abruptly stopped and the clamour of voices rose to compensate for the sudden silence. The flashing lights of the dance floor were overwhelmed by the blue flashing lights of the police. A loud hailer cut through the racket.
THIS IS THE POLICE. EVERYBODY STAY CALM. THE BUILDING IS BEING SECURED.
STAY WHERE YOU ARE. THIS IS A RAID. YOU CAN ALL BE HELD UNDER THE PROVISIONS OF THE MIS-USE OF DRUGS ACT. SO PLEASE CO-OPERATE.
A small group at a fire exit managed to open the barred doors. This set off the automatic alarms making the din near to intolerable. Outside the fire exit more cops were waiting, these ones had batons and riot gear. Frith could not see much over the crowd (for the millionth time she cursed being 5′ 4″) but Brian was feeding her a running commentary. As the noise abated, he pulled out his cellphone and rang the news desk of the Dominion newspaper.
“Phil? Hi, it’s Brian. I’m caught up in a bust at Claire’s. No, I don’t have any drugs. No, I won’t do anything stupid. Check this with the boss for tomorrow’s edition.” He looked at his watch. “Might make the local run, perhaps the What’s New column. About thirty police, three hundred people, two paddy wagons. No arrests yet as far as I can see. Nope, no celebrities. Just us hard working yuppies. Oh, and Phil? Can you tell Stephanie I might be in late tomorrow? See ya.”
He turned to his two friends. “Let’s just stay loose and try not to get arrested. Hopefully it will be just statements or names and addresses here, rather than down at the cop shop.”
“Can you see Logan?” Frith asked.
Brian smiled patronisingly. “You two short bunnies can’t see anything?” He grunted as a swift kick was delivered to his shins. “Sorry, sweetheart,” he apologised to Wiremu. “You know I can’t resist short jokes.”
He scanned the room again. People were calming down, many reaching for cellphone to call either lawyers or spouses. No sign of a six foot tall beautiful woman.
“Nope,” he reported. “Maybe she was in the ladies loos.”
“I hope not,” snickered Wiremu. “Those are the first place the lads in blue hit. All that powder and tablets flushed away. Ruins the fishing in the harbour for weeks.”
“I think she might have taken off after Sarah,” said Frith.
“Aah, well then, she’ll be fine. Sarah Harris has an instinct for self-preservation like no-one else.” He took Brian’s hand and held it tight. “Let’s just get through this with the minimum of fuss. We’ll find her afterwards, back at your place no doubt.”
Logan found herself in the alley behind Claire’s. From her right, she heard the sounds of approaching sirens. To her left was the entrance to Glover Park, a hangout for local street kids and winos. She could see Sarah and her companion scurrying towards the park. Closing the door behind her, Logan jogged after them.
The park was secluded, surrounded by tall buildings, with a few dozen or so trees throwing deep shadows. Only one street really touched it – Ghuznee Street which was an exit from the motorway. Once in the park, Logan could not immediately see Sarah. She started towards the lights of the distant traffic. Walking quickly, she was aware that the park was inhabited, not empty as it initially seemed. She could sense eyes following her from the shadows. Now deep in the darkest part, she heard a short stifled scream.
Spinning around, she tried to identify which direction the shout had come from. A cry came again. This time, Logan could hear the plea for help.
“Leave him alone, you bastard. Help! Someone help!”
She ran towards the noise. There, struggling with an assailant, was Sarah. On the ground was a huddled, still body.
Coming from behind, Logan grabbed the attacker by the arms and just tore him away from the woman. He staggered a few steps, before looking at the new danger. For a moment it seemed he might renew the assault. But Logan stepped towards him, raising her fists threateningly. Somehow the confident attitude, coupled with her height, persuaded him that this was a lost cause. The shadowy figure turned and fled.
When she twisted to where Sarah was, the woman was kneeling beside the prone figure. She was crying, calling his name.
“Gareth! Gareth! Can you hear me? Are you all right? Speak to me!”
Logan crouched beside her.
“Sarah, it’s all right. He’s gone.”
The woman started. “Logan! Oh my god! Help me. He’s ……”
“Let me look,” said Logan. She moved Sarah out of the way and knelt close to Gareth. She checked his pulse. It was strong and fast.
“It’s okay, he’s alive. What happened?”
“They … he… on the head….” Sarah was near hysteria. Logan put her arm gingerly around her.
“C’mon, c’mon, shush now, calm down….” As she soothed the agitated woman, she gradually became aware of a group of indistinct figures confronting them. The shadow had returned, with help.
With a snarl, the leader flung himself at Logan. In seconds the others had joined in. Logan staggered away from Gareth and Sarah, trying to move the fight away from the prone man.
Fists and kicks flew furiously. Logan felt rather than saw her punches and kicks land. In reality, their greater numbers were little advantage as they got in each others way. A few blows landed on her, mostly ineffectual. One enterprising bastard had a stripped branch which was being twirled like a club. At last he got a strike in, striking Logan on the arm and head as she partially deflected the blow. She dropped to one knee, attempting to clear the stars from her eyes. A kick came at her head , but she grabbed the foot and yanked her assailant over. Gritting her teeth, she went all out on offense. Her eyes had fully adjusted to the gloom by now and she nailed the thug who had the club with an elbow to the throat. He collapsed.
A kick to the groin disposed of the next one. She was aware of figures shuffling off as she threw herself at the last man. He failed completely to get out of way and took the full force of her body in a tackle. Almost casually, she kicked him in the head as she clambered up.
All that was left now was the sound of her heavy breathing and Sarah’s sobs. In the distance, the sound of the raid in progress filtered through the other city sounds.
Right. Gareth next.
Returning to Sarah’s side, Logan once again knelt by the injured man. Using a technique she had learnt from the Waikanae Volunteer Fire Brigade, she hoisted his body on to her shoulder.
“Right. Where to?” she asked. “Your place?”
Five months ago Sarah had lived in the apartments in Atlas House, further down Ghuznee Street. The building had once housed parts of both the National Library and the National Archives, but now like so many inner city buildings, had been converted into twenty or so swanky apartments.
Sarah could only nod yes.
Logan took a deep breath and started off. In minutes they were turning right on to Ghuznee Street. Although it was now closer to one in the morning, there was still a reasonable amount of traffic. Her muscles began to protest. She couldn’t do this much longer. Cars slowed down as they passed, drivers rubbernecking at the sight of a person being carried along. One car that didn’t slow down, but which caught Logan’s eye, was a dark Subaru Impreza.
At the entrance to Atlas House, Sarah keyed in her security code. They had covered the one hundred and fifty or so meters in silence. Now, in the safety of her own building, she finally spoke. “Are you doing okay?”
Logan was breathing heavily. “Just get us up to your place,” she panted. “Then we’ll talk. Christ! I’m glad he’s a little fellow….”
Once inside her apartment, Logan carried Gareth into Sarah’s bedroom. It appeared unchanged from her brief tenure as Sarah’s lover.
As gently as she could, she dumped him on the bed.
“Get a cold flannel, some water and a bowl or bucket,” she told Sarah. As the other woman trotted off, Logan stretched out her much abused muscles. She would pay for that effort.
Flicking on the bedside light, she examined Sarah’s new lover. He had dark hair with the blue sheen, but otherwise was ordinary looking. She loosened his shirt collar and smoothed his hair back off his face. There, above his left eye, was a nasty graze and lump. She checked his pupils. They appeared normal.
Sarah returned with the face cloth and the water.
“Is he all right?” she asked. Her voice was strained.
“He has a bit of a bang,” Logan indicated where. She took the cloth and cleaned around the lump.
Leaning close, she spoke clearly. “Gareth. Gareth! Can you hear me?”
He stirred.
“C’mon Gareth. Open those eyes for me.”
His eyes fluttered open. “Sarah?”
“I’m right here, love.” Sarah sat on the bed, holding his hand to her lips.
“Are you ….?”
“Yes, I’m okay.”
“What day is it, Gareth?” Logan asked.
“Friday – no Saturday now.”
“Gareth Wong.”
“Where do you live, Gareth?”
“24b Matai Road.”
“And – forgive me for this – who’s Prime Minister?”
“Is Jenny Shipley a good or bad answer?”
“Very good – a joke even.”
His eyes flickered from Sarah to Logan and back. He was about to speak again, when his face screwed up. Sarah held him as he threw up into the bowl.
“Should I call a doctor?” she asked Logan.
She shrugged her shoulders. “He should be okay. He’s probably concussed. Maybe take it easy for a few days. Do you want me to call an ambulance?”
“No, I don’t think so,” she replied. ” It’s never good for a senior barrister to turn up at the Accident and Emergency.”
Gareth finished with the bowl. He lay back down, closing his eyes, as Sarah removed it.
Logan followed Sarah into the kitchen.
“How are you doing?” she asked.
“Fine,” she said. “It was lucky for us you happened along.”
“Ah,” said Logan. “Maybe lucky is not the right word. I followed you from the club.”
“So you knew about the raid?”
“Not exactly. I was trying to find you. I saw Gareth take the call.”
“Gareth is a Crown Prosecutor. One of his cop friends tipped him off about the raid.”
Logan considered this. “It was cutting it a bit fine, wasn’t it? Usually those things are planned hours in advance.”
“I guess so.” Sarah wasn’t particularly interested. “Why were you looking for me? I’m guessing it wasn’t to apologise.”
“That wasn’t the only reason,” Logan agreed.
Sarah pretended surprise. “But it was ONE of the reasons. My, I’m flattered.”
Logan gritted her teeth. ‘Face it, Kendrick, you deserve this.’
Seeing the pained look on Logan’s face, Sarah relented. “I’m sorry, Logan. I’m just still a little shaken. What do you want?”
Logan searched for a way to start. Sarah moved through to the living room. “Let me just check on Gareth. Make yourself comfortable.”
The dark woman walked over to the window. Atlas House looked south over what passed for Wellington’s red light district. Over to her right, she could see the blue flashing lights outside Claire’s. Briefly she wondered whether Frith was all right. She missed her gentle presence already.
“Fancy a drink?” Sarah asked, interrupting her reverie.
“Sure. Whatever you’ve got.”
Sarah poured a couple of brandies and they sat on the couch.
“Now, talk.”
Logan couldn’t think of any subtle way to start, so she just launched right in.
“I’m taking a risk coming to you. Frankly, I don’t know how deeply involved you are, but if you are, then I am making a big, big mistake. But …” she looked Sarah in the eye. “But I didn’t give you or us a chance before. I treated you badly and I’m sorry.”
Sarah’s eyes filled. “You don’t know how much it means to me to hear you say that. I … trusted you. I had always believed in my ability to judge people, but you fooled me.”
Logan went on. “After you tossed me out, I …. I had a very bad experience. Three months ago. Another story went wrong. I was …. nearly killed.”
“That World Charities thing?” asked Sarah.
“Yes,” replied Logan tersely. She looked away for a while before she could continue. “I have been doing some serious thinking about my life since then. I’m not sure if I can go back to how I was, to the work I did. But you were one of the things I regretted most.”
She started at the touch of a hand on her arm. They sat like that for a few moments, before Sarah drew her into a hug.
Logan inhaled her scent deeply. She had always found the physical presence of this woman mesmerising. Memories of their vibrant sexual relationship flooded her mind. Pulling her head back a little, she looked Sarah directly in the eyes. As Sarah smiled, she closed her eyes and Logan eased forward and kissed her. The kiss deepened. She tried to convey her inchoate feelings. As the kiss lingered, the two woman reconnected.
The recent events with Frith had made Logan more sensitive. Physically sensitive. Sensually sensitive. She felt again the gut pull of sexual attraction to Sarah that had been present right from the start. From Sarah’s responsiveness, she was feeling it too.
Sarah drew back, her breathing a little laboured.
“Oooh yes,” she said. “The sex was always good.”
She laughed. “If only we had met somewhere else, some when else. I know, I know…. I threw myself at you. Even when I thought you were on the catering staff, I fancied you. Maybe it was the uniform.”
The two women pulled slightly apart, Sarah’s hand still curled around Logan’s arm.
Logan smiled too. “And now it’s Gareth?”
“Yes. He’s rather a sweetie. And I think the world of him.”
“Your one month anniversary? Sounds serious.”
“You heard that? Yes, I think it might be.” She stood up and poured herself another drink. Logan shook her head at the offer.
“So. What is this big mistake you might be making with me?”
This was crunch time. Logan had little more than her feelings to rely on. No evidence. No corroboration. No gossip. No data. Just a guess. It all came down to this.
“I think Tall Trees is attempting to covertly smuggle biological organisms into New Zealand. The purpose is to test a new hybrid organism in local conditions and on a local population, with the end goal of introducing it to the United States. I am not sure exactly what the effect of the organism is – it could be a vector for a human disease, or it could be a threat to an agricultural crop. Either way, someone in the Department of Security is facilitating the entry of this material.”
During her tale, Logan had keenly watched Sarah’s face.
“And you think that …. I guess you don’t think I’m involved then? That’s the risk, huh?” Sarah asked.
“Yes.” She waited.
“Is there more?”
“But you’re not sure you can trust me?”
“Is Alan involved?”
“Why do you say that?” asked Logan.
“He’s been having meetings recently, excluding me. He’s had a guy coming to see him, John Fraser, an Australian I think.”
Logan stiffened. John Fraser was a name that Jack McKechnie had used in the past.
Sarah continued. “And he’s been jumpy.” She considered Logan’s story for a moment. “What evidence do you have?”
“What was the security lock-down that you organised down at Solaris Consulting today?”
“Solaris? Oh! The delightful Ms Buchanan and her little boss, Willy Kale. That was Alan’s doing. He was on the phone to Head Office this morning and they announced a complete company wide lock-down. Something about testing security protocols in the system administration. Didn’t make much sense to me, but then Head Office can be like that.”
“Do you know anything about the Tricomi Laboratories in Texas?”
“No, can’t say as I have.”
“What about Kapiti Horticultural?”
“Nope. Anything else?”
Logan was silent. She had a story, but no proof. One last throw of the dice.
“I’m looking for something that was in Darryl Booth’s possession. You know, the ex-director of Greenpeace.”
“Darryl? That loser? What on earth could he have to do with it? He’s been in the loony farm for over a year, hasn’t he?”
“Did you know he had been blackmailing someone at TTL?”
“No. Good lord, was he? And you knew? Were you investigating him?”
“Yes, but we thought it was kick-backs to hold off a Greenpeace campaign. When we got a bit too close, he flipped. And has stayed flipped.”
Logan sighed.
“So, you can’t help me, then.”
“Doesn’t sound like it, darling. But you said you had been in trouble – the World Charities scandal?”
Logan went rigid. It suddenly seemed to Sarah that her hand on Logan’s arm was holding a block of wood.
“Logan? Are you all right?”
Suddenly Logan was trembling violently. Tears sprang to her eyes and she could not remain seated on the couch.
Jumping up, she stammered, “I gotta …. ”
Sarah stood up and went to touch her, but Logan shrugged her off. Striding to the apartment door, she flung it open and disappeared into the hallway. Sarah rushed after her, but only in time to see the dark woman vanish through the stairwell door.
She called after her. “Logan! Thank you for ….” But it was too late. Her rescuer was gone.
Frith, Wiremu and Brian were well and truly, thoroughly and with no mistake, bored. The police had been unfailingly polite. Several patrons had been carted off in the paddy wagon, mostly people scoring in the restrooms, Frith assumed. But an hour at least passed before the three friends found themselves outside Claire’s. It had been names and addresses. Frith got the odd feeling they were perfunctory rather than urgent.
About twenty people were milling outside in Cuba Street. Frith looked up and down the street, but there was no sign of her lover. It was now about two and Frith was fading. The long, intense day was catching up to her and she suddenly wanted nothing more than to be home in her bed. Alone? Perhaps she did need a bit of space to think about what was happening in her life.
They walked along Cuba Street to Ghuznee Street, turning left towards the Flipp carpark, where her car was parked. Once there, Brian and Wiremu bid her goodnight.
“Ring me tomorrow,” urged Wiremu. “Not too early mind. We’re out for brunch at a G.A.P. function at about eleven, so the gossip will be as good as the machiato.”
Wiremu was a stalwart of the local Gay Association of Professionals and their dedication to coffee and chat was legendary. Frith knew that several pieces of work had come to Solaris from his contacts there.
“Sure thing,” Frith replied. “Otherwise I’ll see you Monday.”
“Just come in for the staff meeting if you like. Maybe there’ll be some more work for you.” He stopped awkwardly, not wanting to ask again about the Tall Trees work.
She patted him on the arm and gave them both quick kisses goodnight.
Once in the little Suzuki, she drove along Oriental Parade towards the road which would take her up the hill to Roseneath. As she passed the Freyberg Pools, perched between the Parade and the water, she stood on the brakes, bringing the 4-wheel-drive to a sudden, juddering stop. There, seated on a bench under a lamp, looking out over the water, was Logan. The dark-haired woman had her head in her hands and her feet propped up on the low seawall in front of her.
Frith left her car double-parked – there was not much traffic around at this time of the morning. She walked towards the bench and, not wanting to startle Logan, she said quietly, “Hey there!”
Logan turned slowly. The look on her face was enough to wring Frith’s heart. It spoke of despair and pain. She stood beside her and put her arms around Logan’s shoulders. With a soft kiss to her forehead she asked, “Want to talk about it?”
“No,” came the brief answer. But Logan seemed to accept the hug and the caress, so Frith felt emboldened.
“Well, at least come home with me, before …. ” Before what? ‘Before disappearing out of my life, before leaving me alone again?’ Frith was apprehensive about what she actually wanted from Logan. She focused herself firmly on the here and now.
Not waiting for an answer, she grabbed Logan’s hand. “C’mon. Ups-a-daisy.”
Logan offered no physical resistance. Once in the car, Frith finally asked, “So … did you find Sarah?”
“Yes,” came another brief answer. Frith waited again. She sighed silently. This was like pulling teeth. But Logan was staring out the window at the city lights which came into view as Frith navigated the twisting turning roads up to her house. She stole a couple of glances at her passenger, but the driving demanded most of her attention. She pulled into her carpark on its wooden platform. Parking in Wellington was so scarce that in the hilly suburbs like Roseneath, little platforms with enough room for two or three cars were commonly built, jutting out over steep bush-clad drops.
To her relief she didn’t need to urge Logan out of the car, but the tall woman lagged behind her up the path. As they came into view of the house, Frith stopped dead. Logan blindly bumped into her.
In a strange voice, Frith asked, “Uh… Logan ….. you didn’t leave those lights on, did you?” Logan finally raised her head. Every light in the house was blazing brightly.
With an oath, she moved in front of Frith, placing herself between the short woman and any possible threat.
She turned her head slightly, speaking so that only Frith would be able to hear her.
“Go back to the car.”
“What do you mean, no?” Logan couldn’t believe her ears.
“I mean, whatever’s going on here is as much my business as yours. I’ll stick close to you. I won’t get in your way, I promise.”
Logan turned more fully, about to remonstrate with this foolhardy idea, when the lights suddenly went out. The two women froze. Breathing was suspended. Logan debated briefly the sense of a stealthy approach. They had probably been heard and Frith would more easily tag-along. All guns blazing it was.
Whirling, she broke away from Frith’s grasping hands and ran up the steps. With one kick, the front door was open. Immediately inside, she remembered, the fuse box was high on the wall. Reaching up, she found, as she had suspected, that the mains switch had been turned off.
She flipped the power back on. All the lights came on, instantly. Behind her came a crash. She spun around.
“Frith! Frith! Are you all right?”
There was no reply. Stepping back on to the front porch, the outside lights had come on, but there was no sign of Frith. Had she gone back to the car? Unlikely. Logan growled in frustration. A noise from the rear of the house caught her attention. It was the sound of the back-door being shut. She turned again and raced down the hall, through the kitchen and into the back porch. Sure enough, the back door was unlocked. As she went to open it, the door swung forcefully at her. She stumbled backwards but not quickly enough to avoid its arc. She crashed back into the kitchen, landing with a thud on the floor.
She heard the sound of a person running along the back path. Springing to her feet, she dashed out the back door, in time to see a shadowy figure disappearing up to the back of the section, into the trees. Without hesitation she ran after him.
She could more easily hear the intruder than see him. Crashing through the trees and brush, he ran into a neighbour’s section and then veered uphill, towards the town-belt. Wellington’s town-belt was a girdle of mature trees, five hundred to a thousand meters wide, which surrounded the inner city. It went for perhaps fifteen kilometers from Roseneath in the east, via Mt Cook and Brooklyn in the south, to Kelburn, Tinakori Hill and Khandallah in the west. In some places, houses had infiltrated its edges.
The belt of trees, mostly imported pines, cedars and cypresses, was criss-crossed by dozens of paths. If the intruder made it there, he could easily disappear. No doubt he had parked somewhere in a street near the town-belt and had walked to Frith’s house.
She increased her pace, trying to catch him. The man, or woman she supposed, was finding the running uphill tough going. Both of them stumbled occasionally, but Logan thought she was gaining. Within a minute, they were on one of the town-belt paths, the Southern Walkway. Like all the town-belt it was unpaved and unlit. The dirt track was covered with pine needles and twigs, but it was flat and traversed the slope. Her quarry was now able to sprint, but Logan was hard on his heels. The path sloped downwards and the pace increased. Abruptly, the path forked. He chose the down fork, but Logan chose the upper one. She knew that the path soon rejoined and that she might have a brief advantage – if he stayed on the path at all. It was a calculated risk.
She was right. He slowed slightly, wondering perhaps where she had gone. Obviously he didn’t know the Walkway very well. She was now nearly level with him and about ten feet above him. With a shout, she leaped on him from behind, tackling him to the ground. They rolled together over the edge of the track, down a steep slope of about another ten feet and crashed violently into a large monterey cypress.
Logan lay stunned and breathless against the tree. Struggling to regain her wind, she saw the man get up and stagger off. Reaching for anything, she picked up a small branch and hurled it at his halting figure. She struggled to her feet, but her legs buckled under her. By the time she had levered herself upright, he had clambered over a fence leading to a road. As she went to give chase, she heard a high-performance car squeal around a corner and into the street. As she reached the fence, she was in time to see a tall man get into the passenger side of a dark Subaru, illuminated by a solitary street lamp. Even before he was completely in, the car was thrown into reverse, back the way it had come. Logan strained, but could not make out the driver or his passenger. At the corner, the car spun and powered away, out of sight.
She had lost him.
Breathing heavily, Logan turned and scrambled up to the path. Limping slightly, she ran back along the walkway. Frith! What had happened to Frith?
Frith watched Logan disappear into the house. As the lights came back on, a noise around the side of the house drew her attention. Cautiously walking around the corner, Frith endeavoured to pierce the gloom. Nothing, as far as she could make out. A louder noise, almost a crash, down the path made her jump. Suddenly frightened, she shrank against the weatherboards. A tall figure appeared.
“Logan?” she whispered.
Instead of answering, the figure lunged at her, taking her by surprise. A large hand covered her mouth before she could make a sound, long arms pinning her arms to her side and lifting her bodily off the ground. She struggled and lashed out with her legs, connecting violently with the legs of her assailant, causing grunts of pain to erupt from his mouth. But Frith was unable to break free. As she continued to squirm, he smacked her heavily in the temple and she subsided.
The powerful man carried Frith down the path, towards the road. At the bottom of the path he paused, checking for pedestrians or cars. At this point the road was barely wide enough for two cars to pass, and with the parked cars along one side, barely wide enough for one. Across the road and downhill about twenty meters was Frith’s car and those of her neighbours, on the platform. He hesitated further. Was he waiting for someone?
The waiting continued. He paced, still holding the now limp woman. Frith was also waiting, waiting for an opportunity to break free. Several times it seemed he was about to stride down the street, but it was obvious to Frith that this was a rendezvous point. Eventually the sound of a high revving car speeding up Palliser Road could be heard. Her abductor seemed to relax, as if this was what he was expecting. But then he tensed again, as a woman’s voice came floating down from the house.
“Frith! Frith! Where are you? Frith!”
The voice came closer. So was the car.
This was it. Frith struggled again. This time she managed to get an arm free. Poking her fingers in his eyes, he shouted with surprise and pain. Clutching at his face with both hands, he dropped Frith on the pavement with a thud. Clambering to her feet, she darted on to the platform, putting her Suzuki between the man and herself. She could now see him clearly. He was tall, solidly built, dressed in plain black track clothing. A fairly nondescript face, distorted by pain and irritation.
As he advanced around one side of the Samurai, Frith inched the other way. The car finally arrived and screeched to a halt, blocking Frith’s escape from the parking space. At the same moment, Logan appeared down the path, limping and bleeding. Time slowed. The man advanced again on Frith. She backed away, hands in front of her to ward off the assault.
She caught sight of Logan across the road. The man caught her change of focus and turned to see what she was staring at. He saw the tall woman stumbling towards him with murder in her eyes. He whirled and made one last attempt to grab Frith. With only one way to go, Frith went it. She turned and jumped off the edge of the platform into space.
He cried out in anger and frustration, thwarted. As Logan started across the road towards the car, he dived headfirst into the open back door. The car rocketed away in a cloud of burning rubber, leaving Logan collapsed on her knees in shock.
The stone chips in the asphalt dug into Logan’s palms. Half of her mind was in shock and denial of the vision of Frith disappearing into the dark void beyond the platform. The other half wanted to follow her over the edge.
The bruising pain in her hands and her knees inched its way through her consciousness, clearing a path along the fissure between despair and madness. For a long moment, it seemed as if the world stilled, traffic noise faded, the wind ceased its breath. Into that nothingness, a small sound crept. It was a whisper, a whimper, a murmur. Logan… Logan …
“Logan? Logan? Are you up there?”
She was abruptly filled with self-mocking amusement. Twisting and sinking on to the road, she threw her head back and roared with laughter. The bellow of relief and release echoed around the empty street. She lay on her back, giggling slightly hysterically.
As her chuckles died away, the plaintive cry came again. This time it had a distinct undertone of annoyance.
“Logan! For god’s sake, get down here and help me!”
With a whoosh of exhaled breath, she sat up.
“Right!” she called back. “One rescue-the-maiden coming up,” she muttered to herself.
Once on the platform, she edged past the cars to the rim. Peering down, she could see a pale form about fifteen feet below her.
“How do I get down?” she called.
“Same way as me, you idiot.”
“But I’d land on you. Seriously.”
“Go down to number 51. Their path goes right past here.”
“Sure. Us ex-Greenpeace types are tough, you know. I’m just a bit stuck.”
“Hang on, then.”
Logan walked slowly down the road to letterbox for number 51. Her body was stiffening up a little, now that the adrenaline was ebbing away. The path was thankfully obvious and easy to follow. Once she was under the platform, Logan was puzzled that she couldn’t see Frith.
“Where are you?” she asked.
Frith’s voice surprised her. It was right beside her ear.
“Here. In the … compost bin.”
A hand flopped over the edge of a concrete bin and hit Logan on the shoulder.
“Hold on, princess…. let’s get you out of there….”
A few moments of effort and Frith was out – along with some wilted cabbage and a dead rose she had to untangle of from her hair.
“I swear I’m getting it cut off one day,” she muttered.
“How the hell did you manage to …. I thought you ….” Logan couldn’t quite frame the question.
“What? Land in the crap – so to speak? I dropped my keys off the platform one day – don’t ask – and had to rummage around in something a lot worse than cabbage and roses. Amazing what spring’s to mind in a crisis.” Frith was conscious she was blethering, but if she stopped talking she would start thinking about the man who had just attempted to kidnap her. She wanted desperately to ask Logan what it was all about, but she knew, she knew anyway. She had started down this path and now the shit was about to hit the fan. But Logan … she hadn’t counted on Logan.
Abruptly she turned away from Logan and trotted across the road and up her pathway. Logan stared after her, puzzled. Then she hurried after her.
Scant minutes later the two women approached the brightly lit house again. This time Logan strode straight in, checking each room quickly. Apparently safe. Frith went directly to the bathroom and stripped out of her clothes. They lay in a disconsolate pile on the floor while she ran a shower.
Logan felt her body slowly seizing up. Her ribs and stomach throbbed from where she had hit the tree and her hands were scraped from the road. She leaned against the doorframe of the bathroom, wanting nothing more than for this day to be over and to crawl back under her rock. She had come down off her adrenaline high with a real thump and it was all she could do not to slump down against the wall and curl up into a miserable ball.
But she held off, keeping watch until Frith was finished in the shower. She collected Frith’s smelly dress and jacket and dumped them in the tub in the laundry. Out of sight, out of mind was her motto for dirty clothes. In an effort to stay awake and focused, she looked around for something else to do.
The front door lock had broken when she kicked it in, but miraculously the latch still worked. At least the possums and hedgehogs wouldn’t have free access to the house tonight. She pulled the door closed, realising it was not a good idea for Frith to stay here. Logan didn’t think they – whoever they were – would come back tonight, but she was feeling somewhat risk averse.
What had they been after? And who were they? Logan had some definite suspicions on that score. And judging by the lack of questions from Frith, so did she.
A cloud of steam issued out of the bathroom door as Frith finished her shower and came out. Her hair and body wrapped in white towels, she grinned slightly at Logan as she wandered into her bedroom.
“Silver lining and all that,” she said. “At least I don’t have to open any closets to see what I’ve got to wear.” Logan peered into the young woman’s bedroom.
“And I thought I was messy,” she cracked.
Every drawer, cupboard and closet had been emptied on to the floor and bed. Frith plucked some trackpants and a sweater from the tangle and dressed. Logan stood, leaning against the bedroom doorjamb, watching. She couldn’t keep her eyes off Frith’s trim body, yet the desire which had flamed in her was now curiously absent. It was like her mind and body were playing different pages in the songbook. She could rationally think Frith was a beautiful, desirable woman, but her emotions and body were numb.
As Frith toweled her hair dry, she became aware of Logan’s regard. Turning, she assessed the tall woman’s condition.
“You manage to look beautiful and like death warmed up all at once,” she sighed. “Go on, have a shower. I guess one of my jerseys will fit you, if those pants are still in good enough shape.”
“I should go. And you should go to a hotel for the night. It’s not safe here.”
“A hotel?” Frith’s face fell. “What about you? I want to be with you.”
She could have bitten her tongue. She hadn’t meant to state her need for Logan quite so bluntly. Not yet. But a hotel room did not appeal to her in the least. Perhaps this was the opening she had been waiting for.
“Why don’t we head up the Coast to your place? Or maybe go to …” she broke off.
Logan shot her a look. And not a pleasant one.
“Go to? Go to where?”
“Your home.”
“My – ”
“Well, yes. You know a lot about me, Logan, but I know almost nothing about you.”
Putting her arms around Logan’s bare waist, she gave it a gentle, friendly squeeze.
“C’mon, sailor. Take me home.”
Logan’s sharp intake of breath alerted Frith. Taking a closer look, she could see the bruises starting to form and the scrapes starting to bleed. Glancing up into Logan’s face, she asked gently, “Logan, do you need to get those taken care of?”
A half-grin answered her.
“Nope.” Logan echoed Frith’s earlier words. “Us defenders of free-speech are tough, you know.”
She returned the pressure of Frith’s embrace, kissing the top of her head lightly.
“But we should check out what is missing, then head off.”
“Okay,” came the doubtful answer. “What could they have been after?”
In the living room, the two surveyed the mess. Cushions were removed from the couches, paintings were askew on the wall, CD’s were scattered over the floor, books tossed in every direction. Frith crouched down to mournfully gather the broken pieces of a glass vase that had not survived the maelstrom. The carnations she had put in the vase – was it only yesterday morning? – were scattered around the room, their fragrance dissipated in the violence.
Logan knelt down beside her, gently touching her shoulder. Frith turned, conscious of the tears filling her eyes. She repeated her forlorn question, not really expecting an answer. Not an answer that would give her peace of mind, anyway.
“I think they were looking for whatever Darryl had,” said Logan, watching Frith’s reaction closely. Frith looked at her blankly.
“Darryl? How does he figure in this?”
“Jack said he thought Darryl had something tangible. Something easily hidden. And he thought Darryl had given it ….”
“To me?”
“You mean, I am involved in this more than I thought?”
She surveyed the mess again.
“I can’t even tell what’s missing that I know I had. How can I figure out what has gone that I didn’t know I had?” Her head ached slightly with the logic of it. “Darryl never gave me …. well, it wasn’t that kind of relationship.” She coloured slightly, as if admitting to an ex-lover who was so unlike her current … whatever … was an admission of weakness or inconsistency. Not that Logan had given her anything yet. Well, nothing tangible, at least.
Logan regarded her thoughtfully, wanting to poke this particular wound until it bled, yet not wanting to hurt Frith. Jealousy. It was Logan’s wound to bear.
“Fair enough,” she replied. “Have a look around anyway, see what you can see.”
Frith’s shoulders slumped. “Do I have to now? Can’t we come back tomorrow, when it’s light?”
Logan felt the throbbing in her side echo Frith’s plea. Oh, to sink into a warm bath and keep the world at bay. Safe and secure, with her arms around Frith…..
“Okay,” she said finally. “Let’s go.”
Pausing only for Frith to grab another jacket and to secure the front door as best they could, they left. This time Logan went ahead down the path. Near the road she halted, looking intently up and down the dimly lit road, listening for any hint of an unusual presence.
It seemed all clear. The wind had died down in the pre-dawn lull and Logan could hear the faint noise of machinery from the port across the bay.
“You follow me and -” said Logan.
“No,” interrupted Frith. “I’d rather come with you.”
Logan considered it. Her initial response, which she bit back, was to keep Frith at arms length. To deny her stated need to be near Logan. Was she over-reacting to Frith’s desire to know her better? Did it really matter if she came home? Where was her home these days? These embryonic thoughts could not gain more than a tenuous foothold in Logan’s consciousness. She was too tired, tired of being alone.
“Logan?”
Logan shook her head, She was a little disturbed how easily her mind was slipping into these small periods of introspection. It seemed her capacity to focus had not yet fully returned to her. WIth an effort, she said, “Sure. Jump in.”
They drove down the hill away from the city, towards Evans Bay and the airport. Logan was cautious enough to not take the most direct route to Island Bay, so she followed the shore-line past the airport and along the south coast. It was still dark, but a string of bright lights off the coast indicated the squid-fishing fleet was active in the straits. The boats may have been ten miles or more away, but the brilliant lights, which lured squid from the depths of the ocean to waiting death, were still clearly visible.
The after-effects of the strenuous day had caught up with Frith and she was dozing in the passenger seat, despite the rattle of the heater and the reverberation of the engine.
The slight bump as the car left the road and crossed the footpath jostled her awake.
“We there yet?” she mumbled.
The Mazda had climbed steadily upwards, the driveway seeming to wind on interminably. Somewhere high above the ocean it finally came to an end.
Logan’s house was silhouetted against the deep blue of the night sky, a jumble of geometric planes, a modernist cube deconstructed for a post-modern age. Glass, steel, concrete and stone seamlessly melded by clever design, maximising privacy from. the road.
The car juddered to a halt outside the garage doors. A security light had come on, illuminating a tiled courtyard.
Logan was suddenly apprehensive. She had not been here since that ruinous day over three months ago. After Jack dropped her off at the clinic and disappeared, she had been physically patched up and given the name of a counselor. Leaving the clinic, she walked directly to an ATM and took out $2,000. Two streets over, she had plunked down $1,500 for the Mazda and driven to the house on the Kapiti Coast.
This was the first time since then she had been home.
“Come on, baby. Let’s get inside.” Frith seemed to realise that Logan had reached the end of her energy. Taking the key from Logan’s hand, she unlocked and opened the door. She turned, took the tall woman by the hand and led her inside.
In the entranceway, Frith felt around for the light switch. Flooding the space with warm light, Frith could only stare around herself in amazement. Huge windows provided views of the ocean and the wild southern coast line. Living spaces tumbled over multiple levels, furnished sparsely but expensively, furniture classic pieces which transcended fashion.
‘So this is how journalists live these days?’ she thought.
Putting aside her reaction to the house, she turned her attention back to Logan. Awareness was slowly returning to the blue eyes.
Once again Frith’s quiet voice brought her back from wherever she had drifted off to.
Mentally shaking herself, she seemed to take stock of Frith and herself.
“Right. I need a shower, maybe a bath. Let me show you to a bedroom. Down this way…” and she led Frith down into the lounge and along a glass-walled passageway. Two doors along, she entered what was clearly the guest bedroom. The rooms were surprisingly warm – passive solar heating, Frith guessed.
She stood awkwardly as Logan acted like a realtor, showing her the features of the room. Inside thirty seconds, Logan had made her excuses and gone, leaving her alone.
This was not the way this moment should have gone. She could just crawl into bed and try and sleep, but dammit, she was not going to be treated like a guest forced to stay the night because her car had broken down. Logan was clearly not firing on all cylinders, so she should take the initiative. Right.
Acting with a confidence she didn’t feel, Frith went back towards the front door. Sure enough, on the other side of the lobby was a kitchen and dining room. Maybe a cup of tea would do the trick. They had seemed so … connected earlier in the evening. What had happened to cause Logan to retreat? She had been sullen and withdrawn when Frith had found her sitting on Oriental Bay.
Whatever it was, Frith was determined that she would not let this embryonic friendship falter at the first hurdle.
In the time-honoured New Zealand response to any emotional or physical stress, Frith put the jug on. The electric kettle was sitting on the bench top in plain sight. As it boiled, Frith looked through the cupboards and found cups and teapot and tea. In the fridge, the milk was clearly off. With a grimace, she poured it down the sink, washing it away. Black tea would have to do. How had Logan made her tea at Kapiti? Was it only two days ago she had sat at Logan’s kitchen table in that tiny house?
As she waited for the tea to draw, her thoughts turned to the connection she and the tall woman had forged so quickly. It had been so physical that she would have been able, not willing but able, to write it off as a one night stand. She had almost fled the beach house early that morning, not wanting to see rejection or indifference in Logan’s face. But those thoughts had all been swept aside when she looked into those blue eyes and that dazzling smile in the Solaris office. ‘She came for me’ was all the blonde woman could hear in her mind. Since that moment in her office when they hugged, they had been getting closer and closer. Dinner had been a pleasant revelation, Logan proving a witty and sweet companion.
But after that, after being separated at the nightclub, walls had been flung up. ‘Time to tear them down,’ she thought.
The tea made, she went in search of Logan. Past the bedroom Logan had deposited her in, was a bathroom. Unused. Frith turned back to the entranceway. There, to the left, was a staircase. At the top of the stairs and down another hallway, a door led into what was obviously the master bedroom. Frith saw steam wafting out of the ensuite bathroom and she tentatively made her way in, careful not to spill any of the tea on the plain cream carpet. The bath was empty, though one of the taps was still running, feeding hot water into the tub. The sweatshirt Logan had borrowed from Frith was lying on the floor. Putting the tea down by the handbasin, Frith turned the faucet off.
With a sigh, she set off in again.
Opposite the bedroom, Frith saw a glass-door. Opening it, she found herself outside on a balcony or walkway. The sound of the southerly swell far below came clearly to her ears, rolling waves breaking on the rocky shore.
A shadow spoke, barely audible above the surf.
Frith felt a sharp contraction in her heart. This had not been a good idea. Somehow Logan had been jolted into a frame of reference which did not include Frith, and Frith could not allow that. Intuitively she realised that words, usually her ally, would not suffice.
Reaching toward the darker shape, she gently touched Logan’s face. The pre-dawn dark was giving way to the pale gray of the new day and she could now see more clearly as her eyes adjusted to the gloom. Logan flinched away, but not before Frith had felt the tears on her face.
She felt her own tears welling up in sympathy. Moving forward, she put her arms around Logan, seeking as well as offering comfort. No flinch this time. Instead, a tremor shook the tall woman in her arms. With an effort she controlled herself, a cough sounding suspiciously like a sob.
Again, Frith took the initiative. Sliding her arms inside the torn silk overshirt Logan was still wearing, she hugged her. The hug was solid, yet gentle – trying to persuade Logan, using some body to body talk, to let her in. Again. When Logan made a move away, Frith held on tight. Somehow … somehow she had to convey what she was feeling. Compassion. Admiration. Caring.
Still holding tight, she pressed her lips against Logan’s collar-bone. The skin there was smooth and sweet. It led her inevitably to Logan’s throat, where the sensation of mouth on skin brought a sigh in response from the tall woman.
Frith slid her hands up Logan’s arms and under the silk shirt pushing it off strong shoulders. Frith trailed her tongue over a curved collar-bone, hands now kneading tense muscles in Logan’s back. She decided to lighten the mood, to back off anything too dangerous, to concentrate on bringing Logan back – not pushing her over another brink.
“Jesus, your muscles are so tight,” she looked up into Logan’s dark eyes. “Those bruises must be painful. How about we go inside and I give you the Frith Buchanan special?” Frith’s easy tone, gentle smile and soothing hands were a persuasive combination and Logan felt her mood lighten a little.
“Got any massage oil?”
Wrapping her arms around the smaller woman’s body, Logan nodded. Her first attempt to speak failed, but she coughed to clear her throat and tried again.
“I think there is some in the bathroom cabinet,” she said.
Adding, as her body reacted to a small hand cupping her breast, “Do you do ‘extras’?”
“Only for very special clients. Come on.”
Frith took Logan’s hand and led her back inside into the bedroom, sitting her down on the edge of the bed. Lowering her head, she kissed the dark woman gently, cradling her face between soft hands.
“Beautiful.” Green eyes drank in the smooth curves and planes of Logan’s face.
“Is it okay if I go into the bathroom and get that oil?”
Logan nodded. Another gentle smile from Frith.
“Why don’t you get out of those clothes? I’ll be right back.”
Logan shook her head slightly as Frith went into the bathroom. She couldn’t quite believe that Frith was here, in her house, a space hitherto kept totally private. She stood, wincing slightly as her scrapes made their presence felt and stripped off her clothes.
“Now that is a sight for sore eyes.”
Frith reappeared from the bathroom with an armful of towels and the bottle of massage oil. She dumped the towels and bottle of oil on the bed and moved into Logan’s arms.
“Do you have any idea what you do to me?” Frith’s hands wove a simple pattern over Logan’s bare skin. Logan, content to hold the smaller woman and give herself over the the sensations, didn’t feel capable of a sensible answer.
“Right…” Frith took a deep breath, calming herself a little. “Let’s get this massage underway before I think of other things I would rather be doing to you.”
She quickly pulled the duvet off the bed and spread a large fluffy towel over the sheet. Crossing the room she dimmed the light and turned the temperature up a little on the thermostat of the central heating.
“Go on, lie down, sweetheart.”
Logan, unusually passive, did as Frith suggested, stretching out face down on the bed. Frith stripped off her clothes but left her knickers on. The thought of being totally naked and near the woman lying on the bed was too distracting, rendering the likelihood of giving a reasonable massage very small indeed.
Frith got onto the bed and straddled Logan’s hips.
“This okay?”
“Mmmm ..” came a muffled reply from Logan her, head buried in her arms.
Frith poured a little of the oil into her hands, warming it between them, then leaning forward she began a series of long smooth strokes, tracing the contours of Logan’s back.
She worked purposefully for twenty minutes, stroking and kneading tired and tense muscles and as Logan’s physical stresses were soothed, so too were many of her emotional ones. Slowly, the woman relaxed.
“God, that feels good. You have hidden talents.”
“I have many skills you don’t know about,” Frith bragged a little. “Feeling sleepy?”
Logan shook her head slightly. “Nope, I think I’m beyond sleep.”
The surface beneath Frith suddenly shifted as Logan turned over under her. Frith swallowed as she found herself staring down into intense blue eyes from her position still astride the tall woman’s body.
The two women regarded each other in silence for several moments as something in the air shifted and the calm atmosphere that had prevailed during the massage was replaced with the rising tension of sexual attraction.
Logan ran her hands over Frith’s thighs sliding her thumbs under the elastic leg of Frith’s underwear.
“You wanna get rid of these?”
“Uh huh, soon.” Frith leaned forward and stretched herself out along Logan’s body. Threading her arms underneath Logan’s shoulders, she moved in and kissed her gently.
The two women were content to linger over the kiss, a soft exploration, a reintroduction of sorts. Then the tenderness too became more urgent as Frith again took the initiative. Raising herself on all fours she looked down at Logan. “I want to bury my face in your cunt.” Wasting no time she retreated down the bed. Before she could settle herself, Logan spoke.
“Me too, what?”
“I want to taste you too. Take your knickers off and turn yourself around. Two can play this game.” A slight grin came from Logan as again the mood in the room shifted and lightened.
“Oh… okay… who am I to refuse that sort of an offer?”
It took Frith all of four seconds, to get off the bed, take her underwear off and resettle next to Logan.
The women curled into each other, legs parting and heads were lowered simultaneously as tongues began tasting.
Frith immersed her face in Logan’s cunt, reveling in the moistness, rubbing her nose, her cheeks, her chin over slick full flesh. Wrapping one arm around Logan’s left thigh in order to maximise her closeness, with her other hand she began firmly massaging Logan’s buttocks. She was dimly aware of the sensations of Logan’s tongue circling her clitoris, but for the moment she was too intent on bringing Logan pleasure. Frith slowly slid her hand down Logan’s crack, her fingers lubricated by the massage oil. Two fingers rested at the entrance to Logan’s anus. She raised her head a little.
“Is this ok?” lightly massaging the tight opening to underpin the question.
“Oh yeah.” The answer was quick and certain from Logan, her backside thrusting back a little to meet the welcome pressure.
Frith smiled to herself and bent her head again to taste the slick flesh on offer, then slowly and persistently pressed her fingers forward.
“Oh fuck!” the exclamation came from Logan as she involuntarily raised her head, the sensations registering in her brain.
Much as Logan wanted to continue her exploration of the space between Frith’s legs, her concentration was shot. Frith’s, on the other hand, was not. She fucked Logan slowly, intently relishing the feeling of the circle of tight muscle around her fingers. The slow, solid thrusting of her hand was counterpointed by her tongue, a series of light strokes over Logan’s hyper-sensitive flesh.
“Please Frith – harder, fuck me harder.”
Frith was happy to oblige, even if her hand was beginning to ache a little from maintaining the tension required to meet Logan’s vigorous thrusting.
And soon, the fullness created by the magic fingers in her arse and the tension in her belly, wound slowly tighter and tighter by Frith’s educated tongue and seemed all the sensation Logan could take. But even then, somehow, Frith managed to free her other hand and thrust a thumb deep into Logan’s cunt. As wave upon wave of orgasm began rolling over her, Logan was strangely quiet, uttering only a single exclamation of Frith’s name as her body succumbed to the intense feelings.
Finally, the crisis was over and Frith raised her head, kissing Logan gently on her belly as she slowly withdrew her fingers. Frith turned herself around and crawled up Logan’s body, their sweaty skin sliding together smoothly.
Propping herself up on an elbow, Frith looked down at Logan, her fingers running over heated skin. Logan moaned slightly, her eyes hidden from Frith’s view by an crooked arm.
Slowly the arm was lowered and Logan looked up into Frith’s concerned face.
“You okay, sweetheart?”
A small nod.
“Good.” Frith lay down again and wrapped her arms around Logan and kissed her on the forehead.
“You know how we have known each other for only three days?”
Another mute nod from Logan.
“Do you think its possible to fall in love in that time?”
No reaction this time and Frith mentally kicked herself for blowing it, for giving in to the sense of heightened emotion, when slowly Logan nodded for a third time.
The lovers lay curled together on the bed, watching the sun rise over Palliser Heads. Once again, the acts of love had brought them close together. Frith was determined to make full use of this closeness and not let the past and its memories drive them apart. In order to keep Logan in the present, she needed to know and understand Logan’s past. All of it. Or as much of it as Logan could share.
Frith desperately wanted to know about whatever trauma was keeping Logan off-balance. But perhaps it was not the right place to start, just yet.
“Tell me …. ” she started. Logan stiffened, almost imperceptibly. Frith continued, “Tell me about … what you were like at school. Where were you brought up?”
“Up the Coast,” Logan replied.
“Uh huh?”
“We lived in Waikanae, even though Dad worked in Wellington. He was determined to live a country life-style on a city salary.”
“What did he do?” Frith asked.
“He was a lawyer, for an intellectual property firm. Patents and all that. I went to Kapiti College, until my seventh form year. Then I took the train into Wellington to Wellington Girl’s High. They had an English teacher who had been a journalist, and Mum and Dad thought … well, if I was serious about journalism that I should get a head-start.”
“Did you enjoy school?”
“Kinda. It was like waiting for life to start. Sometimes I couldn’t wait to get out and into the real world. Sometimes I hid there – trying to avoid growing up.”
“Were you an achiever even then?”
Logan smiled at Frith. “Even then? So I’m an achiever now?” Without waiting for an answer she went on. “Yes. Enough to realise early on that if I chose, I could make a difference. But there were distractions….”
“Boys?”
“No. Not until I went to university. And got away from home. It wasn’t really safe to be … um …. unconventional at home. How did you manage? With girls at school?”
Logan laughed. “At first there was lots of sublimation. Sport. But I soon realised the double-edged sword of team games. Hockey and softball were a lot of fun, but there were a lot of cute girls. So I tried judo.”
“I had wondered where you got your … ”
“Fighting skills? Or wildly aggressive nature? Judo was supposed to train and channel that. But the local sensei was a git. He saw the martial arts as primarily a way to pull chicks.”
“Pull chicks? How seventies. Were you …. one of them?”
“Nah. He had me pegged straight away. But once I was traveling into Wellington everyday, I found a kenpo dojo near Courtney Place. It was near the bus-stop. And there were a few women there. Quite a few. I sometimes used to stay with my aunt in Mt Victoria. And that made it easy for me to be unsupervised in town…. so I took advantage of that.”
“First girlfriend, huh?”
“Yeah. I’d just pick a night Mum was out and leave a message on the phone that I was staying with Aunt Kathleen. She usually got in late, so she never rang to check up.”
“Who was your first?”
“Anne. She was a student up at Victoria University. She was at the dojo, too.”
Suddenly, Frith did not want to hear all the details of Logan’s love life. Not even the early stories. She was sure that Logan’s sexual experience far outstripped hers and knew that she could be quite jealous, unreasonably so at times.
“Did you go straight to journalism school?”
“No. It’s a post-graduate degree, so I started off at Victoria. But after my second year, Dad got a chance to work in New York, with the New Zealand Trade Development Board. So we packed up and went with him. I enrolled at Columbia and finished my degree there.”
“That must have been exciting,” said Frith. “Why did you come back and not do a journalism course there?”
“I missed home too much. I knew the MA programme down in Christchurch was well regarded, and I had made some contacts in New York anyway. They all wanted to come to New Zealand for the skiing during the summer break.”
“Did your parents come back, too?”
“No. They … were in a …. an accident. A car crash …. in Arizona. At the Grand Canyon of all places. A tourist came around a blind corner on the wrong side of the road,” Logan said. “They were DOA at the Flagstaff Regional Medical Center.”
Frith leaned across Logan’s torso and gently squeezed her. “So you didn’t even get to say goodbye?”
“Nope. But that’s all in the past now.”
“The past can still hurt us. Even if we move on and change.”
Logan fell silent.
Frith tried another tack.
“So what do you do for fun? Apart from win awards, that is?”
“And beating people up? I’ll show you around later and you can see for yourself. You could even give me a hand, if you like,” she finished shyly.
“Later?” Frith took a deep breath. “So, what are your plans for the rest of the day?”
Logan considered the question. It seemed she could no longer pretend she was just playing. Even if she turned tail and fled – again – the forces at work would search her out. With the assault at Frith’s house, it had suddenly become personal. Logan had committed the cardinal sin of all journalists and gotten emotionally involved.
Time to get some ideas straight between her and Frith.
“I think I need to get into Tall Trees,” she started, quietly. “And the best way to do that is to get Sarah to help me.”
“So it was useful, seeing her last night? What happened?”
Logan levered herself up and off the bed. “I’ll tell you all about it – but we have to get a move on,” she announced. Frith saw the half-hidden wince on the reporter’s face.
“Oh, Logan!” she started. “Your body -”
“Yeah, it’s a bit sore,” Logan said. “Could you help me with a bandaid or two?”
Logan went to the bathroom cupboard and pulled out a first-aid kit. Frith joined her and looked critically up and down the tall frame. Nothing was bleeding. But a couple of the scrapes looked very raw. Moving Logan’s bangs aside, Frith could see a bruise forming near her temple.
“Oh, great,” she said. “We’ve got matching bumps. How did you get this one?”
Logan outlined the events in Glover Park with Sarah and Gareth. As she talked, Frith smeared antiseptic cream gently on to the scrapes. Two required some gauze padding and tape, but the others got covered up with the sticking plasters.
“You carried him how far?”
“Well,” Logan got defensive, “he wasn’t that big. And it was only a couple of blocks.”
Frith laughed. “Don’t worry. I’m just teasing. It sounds very heroic. Did it cut any ice with the spurned ex?”
“She didn’t slice my throat, if that’s what you mean. But yeah, I apologised for being a bitch. And we talked … about Tall Trees and stuff.”
“So, what triggered it?”
Frith’s quiet question took Logan by surprise.
“Triggered what?”
“Logan, since last night you’ve been vague and spaced-out. There’s something bothering you – more than just a scuffle with some shit-heads in the park.”
Logan turned away jerkily. In hindsight, Logan herself was puzzled by her behaviour the previous night. She had thought her three months in therapy had put her mind to rest. Suddenly, she was close to tears.
“Damn. I’m sorry, Logan.” Frith regretted her question, but she really wanted to know. She cast around for a way to get the answers she craved, without scaring Logan back into her shell.
“I hate this,” Logan stammered. “I hate not being able … crying … I don’t want … it’s not….” As Frith looked on helplessly, unable to fathom what was happening inside Logan’s head, Logan slowly controlled herself. Arms tucked tightly around her body, head down, muttering fiercely. After a couple of minutes, though it seemed like an hour, she raised her head and was able to look Frith in the eye, wiping the moisture from her face.
Frith just sat there, barely daring to breathe. Whatever was coming was going to be serious.
With a deep breath, Logan said, “My therapist told me I might have some reaction, but I didn’t believe her.”
Frith was stunned. Of all the things she had been dreading, the revelation that Logan Kendrick, of all people, had a therapist, was almost unbelievable.
“Reaction to what?” she asked, faintly.
“The fancy term is Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Not coping is what my mother would have called it. But I have been fine until now. I thought I was fine.”
“Can you tell me about it?”
Logan hesitated. She knew she should be able to, that it was the healthy thing to do. If she was fixed, truly all right, she would tell Frith and it wouldn’t matter, it wouldn’t hurt. But a part of her suspected that it would hurt and it would matter. How could Frith love her if Logan was not strong? How could she love Frith if she wasn’t in control? Of herself, at the very least.
“Okay. But …” she sought some temporary respite. “Let’s go down to the beach. I always feel better down there.”
Frith acquiesced, determined to hear this story and not let the opportunity slip away.
The two women dressed quietly and Logan lead the way down the narrow path at the front of the house to the rocky beach. The south coast of Wellington faced directly into the southern ocean currents, the same currents which brought the squid and the sperm whales up the Kaikoura Coast and through the Strait. There was no sand here, unlike the Kapiti Coast. This was rugged rock.
They picked their way along the rocks until they found a spot where they could both sit down. The breeze was pleasant, brisk enough to ruffle hair. The early morning sun was warm on Logan’s back as she leaned down and picked up a handful of small rocks. She tossed them one after another into the swell. Sea-gulls swooped low overhead, hovering in the wind.
The two women sat companionably, throwing rocks into the water. A little competition started, trying to land the next stone within the ripple circle of the previous one. After a few minutes, Logan stopped.
If she waited any longer, she would lose her nerve. ‘C’mon Kendrick, it’s the healthy thing to do.’
“He was …. he was crazy. But I didn’t know it. I thought he was just another bullshit artist, taking good citizen’s money and blowing smoke in everyone’s eyes. And taking the lord’s name in vain. But he thought he was special. The New Business Age was keen to nail him – their first really high profile international target. The kind of expose that would put New Zealand, the NBA and me on the world stage.”
“How did it all start? How did you know there was something screwy?” asked Frith, as Logan paused.
Logan gathered her thoughts.
“A snitch. It’s often the way. Someone on the inside gets sickened by the scam, or doesn’t get enough of a cut, not their fair share,” the cynicism in Logan’s voice was unmistakable. “A flunky of David Cartwright’s. Julia Fitzroy was her name. She had been down here on holiday the summer before and seen my by-line. She thought that talking to me would be harder for Cartwright to trace. And harder for the US authorities to catch her. So she thought.
“She told me nearly everything. Every detail of how the scam worked. How it tied in to Cartwright’s television evangelist appeals, how he siphoned off nearly 60%, how he hid it from the IRS – everything. With that level of detail, checking facts becomes a lot easier. You can ask smaller, more specific, less suspicious questions. In fact, Jack got a counterpart in the US Treasury Department to start digging.”
“So you and Jack often worked together?”
“We did. I could do the dodgier things he couldn’t. But he could get me information that would take days to get otherwise. By the time I was ready to publish my story, the authorities were nearly ready to arrest him. And then, the unexpected happened. He came here. Of all the places to come on vacation, David frigging Cartwright came to New Zealand.”
Logan shook her head, still somehow disbelieving the strange twist events had taken.
“And like every frigging tourist since 1997, he came to Wellington to visit Te Papa. Why does everybody want to see the new museum? Why don’t they just stick to mudpools in Rotorua and mozzies in Milford Sound?
“So there I am, writing the final copy for the article which will rip open his slimy little scheme, and he walks past a cafe and claps eyes on Julia Fitzroy drinking a fucking latte. I guess she panicked, because it seems she told him everything.”
Logan’s voice became remote. This was the hard part, but it was only the past, right?
“I was working at home on the final version. Just the last polishing. The boss had planned to publish it that week. And he rang me. That little son of a bitch rang me.”
Frith moved over on to the same rock as Logan. Not touching, but close.
“He rang me and asked to meet. Said he had an offer I couldn’t refuse. I … I thought it would make a good ending to the story. A last attempt to bribe his way out of trouble. The noble, incorruptible reporter. Jesus, what a fool. It was like a rush of blood to the head – I just forgot everything I had learnt about him.
“So I said yes. He suggested the entrance to the seal colony at Red Rocks. I agreed.”
Red Rocks seal colony was a little further along the road in Island Bay from Logan’s house. The road, or more accurately, walking track, hugged the bottom of the cliffs for three kilometers, passing through a gravel quarry and some old World War 2 gun installations.
“I wasn’t a complete idiot. I rang Jack and he agreed to be my back-up. From that point, everything went wrong.”
Now, the low voice faltered. Frith simply put her hand on Logan’s arm, resting it there. Blue eyes tracked to green, but Logan couldn’t hold the contact and she looked away.
Frith stayed silent, letting her touch do the talking.
A deep, shuddering breath.
“He hadn’t gone all the way to the seals. He was waiting for me at the quarry. I couldn’t see his car, I thought he had parked it at the entrance and walked. As I got out of the car, he pulled a gun.”
The memory of that awful morning was playing in Logan’s mind like a film. She closed her eyes. She could smell the salt air, the dust of the quarry, hear the quiet surf and the cry of gulls. The sounds of the present melded seamlessly into those of the past.
“He didn’t even really talk to me. Just tossed a pair of handcuffs at me and told me to cuff myself to the passenger side door. I laughed. God help me I laughed and told him my editor already had the final copy. And I knew that Jack was on the way.”
Logan’s voice was a mere croak.
“He … he walked off … I figured he was just playing a stupid spiteful trick…. but he had his rental car parked out of sight behind one of the quarry buildings. When he drove it around, he had his wife and kid with him in the car. I figured he was gonna give me the fingers and bugger off, but I was wrong. He -”
Her voice was failing her. She had to go on, but her body was rebelling. Her frame shook.
Frith wrapped her arms around the tall woman and held her tight. She poured all her feelings into the physical link, trying to give Logan the courage, the strength to go on.
“He dragged them out of the car. I could the fear in their eyes. They knew. And when I saw the terror in her face, I knew too. He was going to kill them. And me too,” Logan stopped. She was now gasping for breath.
“I couldn’t help them. She looked right at me. I pulled and pulled, but the car wouldn’t budge. I broke my left wrist trying to …. he had it all planned out. He kept saying things, awful things, like it was all my fault and that they would die because of me, because of my story.
“He had a knife. He …. took it … and … he butchered them…. the boy first, then the woman… across the neck… and I … I …”
Frith now was cradling Logan’s head against her breast, murmuring words of comfort.
“It’s all right, you’re all right, I’ve got you.”
“He said … he said …. and then….”
With a superhuman effort she controlled herself.
“He shot himself. The bastard walked right up to me and shot himself.”
Frith cried out with the horror of it. It was almost too much to bear, just listening to it.
With a shuddering breath, she continued.
“He died in my arms. I had his brains all over me.”
Her voice was remote now, as if the repressed emotions had built a transparent, tough layer somewhere in her psyche.
“I don’t know how long I was there before Jack arrived, maybe ten minutes. By the time he got there I was out of my head. He got me out of there before the cops arrived. The article went to press as planned – the editor wrote the ending, fronted the publicity. I disappeared.”
“Where did you go?” asked Frith.
“Jack took me to a private clinic. I was there a week and they would only release me if I saw a therapist. I found one in Waikanae, near the beach house.”
“And you’ve been there since then?”
“Until you. Until you came along.”
“I’m glad I did, then,” said Frith.
For a long moment, they sat together silently, staring out to sea. Frith had sat down again, next to Logan, softly holding her hand. She did not know what to say. Surely there was nothing to say. But a key had been handed to her. As with all keys, it would not open every door and she had to be careful she did not attribute too many of Logan’s quirks to this trauma. She knew almost nothing about post traumatic stress disorder. Didn’t Vietnam vets have it years later? Or rape or abuse survivors? Was it fixable?
Would talking about it make things worse? Or better? Frith was no therapist. What could she offer? Perhaps Logan needed a friend as much as a counselor. ‘I could be your friend,’ she thought.
“I’d like that,” said Logan, quietly.
Frith started. She hadn’t realised she had spoken aloud.
“If you want …. to,” Logan continued.
Frith was silent.
Logan lead the way back up the track to the house. In the daylight and from the front, Frith could further appreciate its beauty.
“Did you build it yourself?” she asked, half-way up.
“No,” replied the tall woman. By mutual unspoken agreement, they paused.
“I saw it in an architectural magazine one day and promised myself if I ever had the money I would buy it. And with the last couple of years at the paper I could. But I had to persuade the owners to sell.”
“It’s stunning.” Turning, Frith looked east toward Cape Palliser. “And a great view.”‘
The winter sun, still harsh, shone on the barren hills across the entrance to the harbour. The reef guarding the harbour lay brown and menacing in the bright blue sea – it had claimed many lives during the century, with large ships tossed on to the rocks by southerly storms.
“Does the wind bother you?”
East over Island Bay towards Cape Palliser
“Only in a southerly. But then, every house on the south coast battens down the hatches.”
They continued up the path and around the back of the house. The battered yellow Mazda was still parked in the courtyard. Logan went to the side of the garage and, entering a code, opened the garage door.
The double garage had only one car in it – a fire-engine red sports car. Logan stood uncomfortably, half proud, half embarrassed.
Frith grinned at her. “So this is the real love story, huh?”
Logan smiled back.
“Yeah. My baby.”
Frith traced the letters on the front. T-R-I-U-M-P-H. And walked around it to where the model name was revealed. SPITFIRE MK 3.
“You doing the work yourself?”
Frith could clearly see this car was being lovingly restored. One bucket seat was ripped, but the other had been patched. The soft-top material was lying on a bench nearby and the windscreen wipers were sitting on the bonnet.
“I’ve done about as much as I can with the engine. Now I’m sending bits and pieces off to experts.”
Frith closed her eyes as she suddenly visualised Logan, hot, sweaty, with a grease smear across her face, wearing a white tanktop and overalls tied around the waist. She came up behind Logan as she bent over the engine sliding her hands underneath the tight shirt there was no bra and pulling the pants down she placed one hand on the hood and one down the back of Logan’s long leg stroking and caressing and pushing gently up between her legs until she felt the wet warmth of an aroused woman the clatter as a spanner fell to the concrete floor the groan and shudder as Logan gripped the windshield tightly bracing herself as Frith’s mouth touched the base of her spine kissing down to the top of ….
“Frith? You okay?”
Frith swallowed and opened her eyes. Logan’s clear blue eyes were mere inches away, as she looked closely at Frith’s face.
“Sure. Just maybe need something to drink. Cool myself off….”
“All right,” said Logan, doubtfully. “Let’s see what’s still in the kitchen. Maybe you need some breakfast, too?”
“Right. Breakfast. That should help.”
Back in the kitchen, Logan glanced in the fridge, dismissing the contents. Investigating the freezer, she pulled out some frozen croissants and defrosted them before putting them in the oven to heat.
“Tea okay? Frith?”
Frith had collapsed into a chair at the kitchen table and was poking desultorily through the papers on it. Someone had obviously been clearing Logan’s letterbox during her absence. But on top of the pile was a familiar looking envelope. It was the documents they had nicked from the hydroponics place.
A large glass of water appeared at her elbow. She drank most of it down in one long swallow. When she looked up, Logan had the envelope in her hands, regarding it thoughtfully.
“Let’s see what’s in here, shall we?”
“Where did you get that? I ha- ” Frith broke off as she realised she was just about to admit to purloining it from Logan’s beach house.
“I picked it at your house last night. Let’s see what that hydroponics farm is up to. And then, I think, a visit to Tall Trees is in order.”
“Tall Trees? How will you get in there?”
Logan smiled grimly. “Someone I know there owes me a favour. I just saved her boyfriend’s life.”
Frith was appalled at the calculated thought processes that had led Logan to that statement.
“And if she doesn’t?”
“Well, there are other ways to skin that particular cat.”
Early Saturday morning found Alan Gadsby, Chief Executive of Tall Trees (NZ) Ltd, down at the marina in Oriental Bay, spending some quality time with his significant other – the sloop Jezebel.
The previous weekend he had had the engineers down, completing her annual mechanical overhaul. Now he was just relaxing, doing some minor painting and tidying up the deck. ‘Next week,’ he mused, ‘I might take her over to the Sounds. Give her a good run across Cook Strait.’
The weather was finally coming right after a windy spring. The temperatures were slowly inching up as the daylight hours slowly increased.
Most of the boats at the Royal Port Nicholson Yacht Club were also sail-boats, yachts and sloops mostly. There was a small smattering of what Wellingtonians scornfully called gin palaces, more common in Auckland where ‘being out on the water’ was less of a challenge and more conducive to partying. Or, at least, that was the southern perception. The disdain between the two major cities filtered into every facet of New Zealand life.
Marina in the foreground, Mt Victoria and town-belt behind
Alan found sailing his boat challenging enough, the perfect distraction from business.
He put down the small paint-brush – he was painting the trim around the hatches and port-holes a cheerful royal blue – and looked out across the busy harbour. The usual contingent of kayakers, rowers and dragon-boat racers were also taking advantage of the pleasant day and relatively calm wind. When the wind came up, as it inevitably did, these craft would scurry for shelter and be replaced by the larger, wind-dependent sailing boats.
The sound of a firm tread on the jetty behind him alerted him to the presence mere seconds before a shadow fell across him. A tall shadow.
“You’re late,” he said.
“Well,” came the reply, “I’ve had a busy night.”
Not for the first time, Alan wandered what it would be like to be at ease in the night. He preferred the daylight.
Jack McKechnie stepped on to the boat, his weight causing it to move gently against the dockside.
Alan looked up, squinting against the light at the tall man. Jack was dressed in warm-up gear, track pants and a striped Canterbury jersey, looking for all the world like he was on his way to play rugby. He crouched down, bringing his eyes level to the sitting man.
“Gidday, Mr. Gadsby,” he said, politely but it sounded almost like a sneer. “You’re up early. Busy getting a jump on all the other CEO’s out polishing their little toys?”
‘Crap,’ thought Alan, ‘I am nearly up to here with his bullshit.’
Out loud he said, “That’s the advantage of being at the top of the tree, Jack. I get both the toys and the time to play.”
“Aaah, but the top of which tree? Well, it’s a moot point. We’re both playing in the same tree at the moment.”
Alan concentrated again on his painting – taking a small cloth and wiping away a trace of blue which had trespassed on to the white of the deck. After a careful few moments, he spoke again.
“So, have you anything to report?”
Jack had looked away, allowing the seated man his illusion of control.
“I am getting closer to the information. Logan is leading me to what we need.”
Alan reflected, again, on the wisdom – or folly – of involving Logan Kendrick at any level in this enterprise. She had cut her teeth on substantial stories, no mere neophyte.
When McKechnie had reported her re-emergence, Alan had felt a momentary flicker of concern. Logan had seemed to be out of the picture after the incident at the quarry, isolated and removed in that god-forsaken bach up the Coast. The therapist’s need for a new porch (or whatever it was therapists spent their money on) outweighed her professional integrity. She had reported, perhaps informed was more accurate, on Logan’s mental state every week for the previous 3 months.
“Depressed”, “Mentally confused”, “Unsure of herself” and “Desperate” were terms which had regularly occurred.
Until Logan finally failed to turn up two weeks in a row.
Jack seemed to read Alan’s thoughts. After all, they had had this argument several times already. Both men thought that they knew what made Logan Kendrick tick, Jack from years of working together, Alan from his romantic overtures.
“Don’t worry. I have a source close to her. Very close. She and Buchanan think they’re some kind of dynamic duo, but they are traveling down a path I have laid out for them.”
“Do I need to know the details?” asked Alan. “What if I run into her now she’s back in town? Has she been to Sarah Harris? And who’s the source?”
“No. Fake it. Yes. You don’t want to know.” Jack laughed quietly. “I need them to find whatever Baxter stole. He was so smug, that little prick. Until his wife decided she really couldn’t overlook one last infidelity.”
Jack was both proud and irritated with Baxter’s wife. She had played her part perfectly in destabilising the man. But Darryl had proven too mentally fragile. Who’d have thought he was that close to the edge?
“Is Sarah going to be a problem?” Alan continued. “Losing a lover is hard enough – but to lose my Communications Manager…. Well, that’s the kind of event which makes the business papers.”
“It’s not long now. Just keep things on a steady, even keel and we’ll be fine.”
“But the – ?”
“I would know if she found it. Therefore, she hasn’t found it yet. And I will know the moment she does.”
Alan grimaced unconsciously. He ran his hand through his dark hair and tugged on his fringe.
“I hate loose ends,” he muttered. “Especially unknown quantities. It may be nothing, it may be everything.”
He stood abruptly. He was only slightly shorter than Jack, but the other man’s erect stance made him seem bigger.
“Keep her in sight. Let me know as soon as anything happens. Get on with the preparations.”
“Right, boss,” replied Jack. “Tomorrow at 6pm, then?”
“At six.”
Logan was uneasy, but couldn’t pinpoint a reason for it. She wanted to let down her guard and discuss this matter freely with Frith, but something was wrong. Was it Frith? Was she afraid of her feelings for the gentle woman? Or were her journalistic instincts trying to tell her something?
Frith picked up on her unease. As they shuffled through the papers Logan had purloined from the hydroponics place, she glanced as often at Logan’s face as at the documents.
Noticing that the blue eyes had finally stopped reading the words on the page, Frith sighed in exasperation.
“What the heck is it, Logan?” she asked.
The blue eyes turned to hers.
“I dunno,” she replied thoughtfully. “Something is bugging me. My brain can’t figure it out.”
“Are you trying too hard? Sometimes when I’m looking for errors in code or flaws in a design, the harder I try the harder it is to find the problem.”
Logan smiled across the kitchen table. “So what’s your technique? With problem solving that is?”
The blonde woman blushed, then grinned. “You liked my technique?” She stood and walked around the table, trailing her fingers up Logan’s arm and along her shoulder to her neck. Leaning down she replaced her fingers with her lips. Sucking gently, her hand wandered down the front of Logan’s shirt, slipping inside her bra.
As the tall woman’s breathing shortened, she grinned to herself. “So your technique would be ….?”
“Distraction.” Frith breathed the word into Logan’s ear. “Take one last thought about your problem.” She removed her mouth and her hand stilled.
“Ooooh-kaaaaay.”
“Now,” she murmured, “Stop thinking, stop willing, stop worrying, stop desiring …”
“Stop talking,” suggested Logan, as Frith’s mouth covered hers. Frith pushed Logan and the chair away from the table, sliding on to Logan’s lap and continuing the kiss with some vigour. Long arms snaked around her waist, pulling her close, deep into the embrace. Hands went automatically to the waistband of the track-pants, but Frith eased them away. The same hands then worked their way up Frith’s back, beneath her shirt, under her bra. Frith squirmed, trying to dissuade her lover from unhooking it.
Logan smiled against Frith’s throat as she recognised the game. Tease your lover to distraction. Two could play that game, she thought, as Frith’s teeth nipped her ear-lobe. She tried the pants again, but Frith was ready. This time she pulled Frith’s shirt up, exposing her pale cream-pink torso. She leaned Frith backwards and bent her head to the smooth skin. But instead of kissing, licking or biting, she blew a loud raspberry right above the belly-button. Frith erupted in giggles and the tickle fight was on.
Four rooms, a sofa, the stairs and a spare bed later, Frith had been divested of shirt, bra and pants, while Logan was still in possession of her jeans. Her shirt and bra had been sacrificed somewhere in the ground floor hallway.
Logan was laughing so hard, she failed to notice Frith slip behind the door to her bedroom. By the time she calmed down and realised the blonde woman was nowhere to be seen, she was also feeling some side-effects of the chase. Her breath was slowing, but the thrill of the chase was not yet gone.
“Frith….. Fri-ith! Where are you?”
“Oh baby, don’t you like that game?” she laughed.
“I know another one we could play….” As she trailed off, she spotted Frith’s toes peeping out from the bottom of the doorway.
“Damn it,” she said. “I’ll just have to play it by myself.”
She walked into the bedroom, ignoring the door. She was sure Frith could see her. As she went past the disheveled bed, Logan put an element of … well, it was half swagger, half sashay into her walk. Standing at the floor-to-ceiling glass doors, she faced out of the room and slowly removed her jeans. Legs astride, Logan ran her hands from her thighs, up her body, across her chest, lingering on her breasts and then down again, continuing down her thighs, bending to reach her ankles. As she let herself relax and her calf and thigh muscles stretch out, she was sure she could hear Frith’s breathing quicken.
She straightened and turned towards the bed, trying hard not to let her eyes flicker towards the door, and sat down on the edge. Lying on her back, she swiveled so her long body was completely on it. She pulled the sheet partially over her, feeling rather than hearing the slight sigh of disappointment. Her hands, long and slender, disappeared under the cover, but it was clear where they were headed. Logan smiled to herself and closed her eyes.
With a quick yank, she pulled her knickers off and tossed them towards the end of the bed. Hands wandering up again, they pulled down the sheet exposing Logan’s breasts and belly. One hand caressed her breasts, the other touching her hair, face, lips. One long finger slipped from her mouth and trailed down her body, under the sheet. As she pressed her fingers against her mound, she heard Frith leave her position behind the door and steal to the foot of the bed. A rush of heat to her groin had her legs moving restlessly. As they opened wide, she slid her fingers into her cunt. She groaned aloud at the wetness there. A faint sound echoed.
The thought of Frith standing there, watching her, increased the heat. Quickly her fingers found her clit, playing with it, bringing more moisture up from her vulva, then finding and maintaining a rhythm. She felt Frith clamber on to the bed, kneeling just out of reach of her legs. As her fingers continued, she murmured, “Top drawer on the left.”
Frith scooted across the bed. She could barely wrench her eyes off Logan. As she fumbled with the drawer indicated, her eyes grew large and she fell off the bed entirely.
In the drawer was a double-headed dildo and harness.
“You want to use this on me?” came out in a strangled squeak.
Logan slowed, opened her eyes and leaned over towards Frith, hand still buried in her cunt.
“No,” she said in a low voice, “I want you to use it on me. Will you?”
Frith swallowed convulsively. Her hand reached out to touch the silicon toy. It was smooth and cool.
“How does it go on?” she asked, taking it out of its container.
“I’ll help you,” whispered Logan, as she slithered across to Frith. Still half tangled in the sheet, she reached around Frith, caressing her breasts and kissing the back of her neck. One hand wandered down to Frith’s cunt, finding a wet warmth. The other reached for the dildo, lightly dragging the shorter end down Frith’s stomach and pressing just the very end of it against the curls.
“This okay?” she asked.
Frith stared at the toy, mesmerised.
Logan’s spare hand reached past Frith into the drawer and pulled out a tube of lube. Flicking the top, she squeezed some on to both ends of the dildo. She turned Frith to face her.
“Bend your knees a little,” she whispered.
Frith did as instructed. Logan slid the lubricated dildo against her cunt, letting it rub against Frith’s clitoris for a few seconds. She then placed the other end against her own cunt, murmuring aloud with the pleasure of it. She lay back on the bed, Frith standing between her legs, and slowly slid the dildo into herself.
Frith’s breathing nearly matched Logan’s now. Panting slightly, she moved forward and took the dildo in her own hand. Logan’s legs spread to accommodate Frith’s thighs. Frith bent her knees again to allow the shorter end of the dildo enter her. The lubricant was cool and sensual. As it gently penetrated her, she lowered herself slowly on top of Logan.
“Okay?” Logan asked again. Feeling the nod of Frith’s head, Logan reached down behind Frith’s buttocks and, fumbling a little, fastened the harness in place. Drawing Frith’s face down to hers, she ignited the heightened sensation between them with a kiss. As the kiss deepened, the dildo eased its way further into both women.
As Logan moved back on to the bed, Frith was drawn with her. The pressure of the dildo inside her was unusual, smaller than a man’s, but with the extra bonus of a clit tickler. Slightly startled by the tickler, she thrust forward into Logan. A loud groan rewarded her, which also served to reduce Frith’s self-consciousness. Raising herself on her hands, she gazed at the beautiful woman writhing beneath her. Logan’s hands were at Frith’s hips, pulling Frith and the dildo deeper into herself – releasing her only to pull her closer. The blue eyes were fluttering shut, lips parted, panting, tongue licking lips, head turning from side to side, black hair tumbled on the pillow.
Frith had a momentary twinge that she could be any anonymous woman, or man, fucking Logan. But then Logan’s eyes flickered open and fixed themselves on her green ones.
“Frith,” she sighed. Then stronger. “Frith! God you feel good… Frith!”
With a grin, Frith applied herself to the task. She had never done this before…. never even really fantasized about it…. but now it seemed the most natural, exciting thing in the world. With her hands resting on the bed, and Logan’s hands roaming from her hips to her breasts, she moved with short thrusts, then long slower strokes. As Logan’s excitement built, so did hers. She liked the sensation of leaning back and away from the woman she was fucking – looking at Logan from a slight distance, then being able to lean closer to lick the sweat off her collarbone and bite her nipples. She felt in control and she liked it.
Frith slipped her fingers between their groins and quickly found Logan’s clitoris. Rubbing it in tandem with her thrusts, she was rewarded by Logan exploding almost immediately. With a wild cry, the tall woman shuddered upwards, clinging to Frith’s naked body, nearly sobbing with the force of her release.
The sudden change of angle of the shorter end of the toy nearly took Frith to the brink, but not quite.
As Logan came back to herself, hers eye opened and she assessed Frith’s progress. With a smile, she lay back down and her hands again went to the shorter woman’s hips. She carefully brought her own legs together as Frith’s naturally opened to straddle her. This time the rhythm was different. Logan was controlling the thrusts and strokes as Frith rode her. Hands were more focussed, caressing Frith’s breasts, waist, back, lips, thighs, breasts ….. Her tongue ached to be involved, but Frith was too upright. She took one of Frith’s hands and sucked and licked the fingers, one by one and then together in her mouth. Frith was now deep in the new rhythm, striving for completion, yet wanting to draw out the sensations created by the magical woman underneath her.
All too soon, it seemed, Frith came. As she shook in her orgasm, Logan felt it deep within her own cunt. For a moment she wanted nothing more than to pull Frith’s fingers or tongue to her cunt again and immerse herself in sensuality, but the beautiful sight of Frith after orgasm moved her to unexpected tenderness. Carefully she rolled their joined bodies over on their sides, slipping off the long end of the dildo and removing the harness from Frith.
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Frith’s breathing calmed down and she nuzzled closer to Logan. As they relaxed together, Frith’s mind tossed up a thought.
“So,” she murmured, “what were you trying to figure out?”
In the post-orgasmic haze, Logan heard her own voice respond. “How did Jack know we went to the nightclub?”
Yawning, Frith casually replied, “He bugged the phone….”
Two pairs of eyes popped wide open.
A minute later Logan had dragged Frith into the bathroom and turned on the shower. Frith looked hopefully at the water but noticed that the setting was on cold. I’m hot, but not THAT hot, she thought.
Logan leaned close to the shorter woman, mouth close to her ear.
“If he bugged your phone, he may have bugged a lot of places. Including other rooms in your house – ”
Frith blushed with the thought of what the big man may have been listening to.
” – and maybe this house too.”
At that statement, Frith fought the urge to spin around and search every nook and cranny until she found something.
“What should we do?” she muttered into Logan’s ear.
“Be very, very paranoid. I have seen Jack’s surveillance in action. He is very thorough and has access to state of the art equipment. His favourite is listening devices coupled with long-distance video cameras. He probably has a remote device watching this place now. Maybe taking and transmitting an image every five minutes.”
“What can we do? Won’t he notice if we suddenly …. um … I dunno …. start talking outside and not inside? Or something?”
Logan thought. Thought about what SHE would do if she was in Jack’s position.
“He probably has someone else monitoring us. He will only be notified if something interesting happens. And no – ” she continued in response to Frith’s violent colouring, “Not that kind of interesting. Let’s have a shower and head off, act like it’s a normal Saturday or something.”
“Right” said Frith. “Into the shower …. and all in the name of duty!”
As she adjusted the temperature of the water, she turned and confided, “I’m not going to enjoy this, you realise….”
An hour later, the little red sports car was bumping its way down Logan’s long driveway. Logan had rejected the Mazda – “bugged or tracked” – and after ten minutes spent struggling with a recalcitrant windscreen wiper, the car was ready for the road.
Frith privately wondered if the road was ready for the car. It was so close to the surface that she thought she could quite possibly reach out of the passenger-side window and touch the tarseal.
Once in motion, they briefly discussed their next step. Talk? Sarah? Frith’s house?
“Your place will be bugged. No doubt he has Sarah under surveillance. But I want her security access card.”
“Would she meet us somewhere? For lunch?”
“Without Jack being alerted?”
Logan pondered the situation and thought of the slight man she had carried last night. Dialling 018 on her cell-phone, she asked Directory for Gareth Wong’s phone number and was connected. Fortunately Gareth had left it on and even more fortunately Sarah answered it.
The conversation was brief and to the point.
“Right,” said Logan. “First, your house for a quick tidy-up and look-see. Then that café down by the marina at 1pm.”
“What will we be looking for?”
“Whatever Darryl had, that he gave to you, that you don’t know you have, that has Jack in a lather.”
“Oh,” replied Frith. “That old thing….”
It was a performance worthy of an award. The two women cleaned and tidied up Frith’s place, looking at any item for a double meaning, communicating with glances and signs. Logan’s neck was crawling with the thought of Jack’s surveillance watching them. She wanted desperately to touch the young woman who was coming to mean a great deal to her, but kept her hands strictly to herself. Until, that is, they both chanced to be in the kitchen, away from the visible windows, and Frith took Logan in her arms and gave her an enormous hug.
Frith was still at a loss to identify any item Darryl had given her. Theirs had been a clandestine affair, the young idealist and the older powerful activist, with the thrill and secrecy taking the place of gifts and tokens.
After an hour or so sifting through the trashed rooms, Logan picked up a handful of compact disk covers. The top one was Grace Jones and the dark woman was temporarily returned through time and space to the previous evening when she had held Frith in her arms and they had swayed to the slow seductive rhythms.
“Isn’t this a bit before your time?” she asked.
Frith looked over from the books she was putting back on the shelf.
“Ah…. not mine, I’m afraid. I think Serena left it behind after some party she threw. You know, one of those retro things.” She looked at the cover as Logan held it our towards her. Her brow wrinkled. There had been something ….
“Uh, Logan? Is there a disk in there?”
Logan flipped open the cover.
“Nope,” she said loudly, closing the cover and slipping the CD into her jacket pocket. She got up off the floor, stretching her aching limbs. God, she needed to do more regular work-outs. The strenuous activity of the last few days had drawn heavily on the fitness work she had been doing, but she had not been to a dojo for more than three months and some muscles were seriously protesting.
“Ready for lunch?” she inquired.
Frith cast a quizzical look at her lover. A dark eyebrow twitched.
“Um, okay, sure. Wanna eat here or head out? It’s a nice day.” She glanced sideways out the window, half expecting to see Jack peering at her.
“Out. Then I have to head back up the coast. Check my email. Do some shopping, take a library book back.”
“Right. Let’s go, then.” And in a matter of minutes the two women were climbing into the Spitfire and zipping down Palliser Road.
The Parade Café was a popular eating place on the waterfront, crowded all year round with Wellingtonians eager to be as outdoorsy as the climate would allow. Across the road, joggers, roller-bladers, walkers and people just hanging out created a endless stream of people to watch. Opposite the café was the Royal Port Nicholson Yacht Club, home to an exclusive group of the rich and privileged.
The café was busy, the high counter with pastries and cakes was crowded, forcing the blonde, cheerful-looking woman to squeeze rather intimately past a couple of dykes fussing around a stroller.
“Oops! Sorry darlings ….” She murmured as she searched for her quarry. Tall, dark and sexy was not immediately apparent, so she went through into the restaurant. Nothing.
Inching past the crammed tables, Sarah shaded her eyes as she entered the bright courtyard. With the breeze keeping the temperature cool, the outside tables were more sparsely populated. However there was still no sign of Logan. Checking her watch again, Sarah ventured back inside. As she stood by the daily newspapers, trying to stay out of the way, a low voice tickled her ear. It took all her significant will-power not to squawk like a great galah.
“Keep looking out the window,” said the voice.
Sarah sighed melodramatically.
“Really, darling. You are straight out of a thriller sometimes.”
This engendered a tiny, muffled giggle somewhere behind her. Her blonde eyebrows rose. That did not sound like Logan.
The voice in her ear sounded patient and slightly long-suffering. “Ye-es. But I’d still like you to continue looking out the window. Please.”
“Of course. I shall. What do you want Logan?”
“I want you to lose your handbag. Just for five minutes. Come back when you get to your car. It will be at the counter.”
Sarah considered for a moment.
“What we talked about last night?”
“Yes,” came the terse reply.
She picked up a newspaper and flicked it open.
“Gareth’s feeling a bit under the weather, but he’s all right really” she remarked conversationally. When there was no reply, she folded up the paper and made her way out the narrow glass front door.
The small red sports car pulled into the car-park just behind the cycle shop on Willis Street. Two women sat there for a few moments, probably discussing which shops to check out first before heading for a leisurely lunch. Across the road loomed the bulk of the Majestic Centre, a construct of the 80’s building boom, built on the site of Wellington’s old Majestic Theatre.
Majestic Centre, corner Willis and Boulcott Streets
The discussion looked to be heated. A casual passer-by could have assumed the argument over Mischief Shoes versus Plimmer Shoes was proving too difficult to resolve.
“But what about the security cameras? They’ll catch us on film, won’t they?”
“That’s half the point, Frith. We find out what they’re doing and then they know we know.”
“And then?”
“And then we tell. Or they stop it.”
“Or they stop us. Logan, I’m scared. I’ve … never done anything like this before. What if I freeze and …” her voice trailed off. She sat there flushed and looking miserable.
Logan glanced sideways at her companion.
“What if you what?” she asked.
“What if I … I … can’t keep up? Or fuck up really, really badly?” Frith was near tears, whether of nerves or something else Logan couldn’t tell. She gently took the small woman’s hand in hers.
“Look, Frith, here’s the plan …. we use Sarah’s card to get into the building. Alan’s office is the best bet to find out what the hell is going on. When I was working for him I came across a few internal systems that could be useful.”
“And then what? Who are we going to tell? Who will believe us?”
Logan looked thoughtful. She had some possible scenarios floating around in her head, but which one eventuated would depend on the nature of the answers they were hunting.
“We have options, Frith. But they only kick-in if we find something. If we come away from this with nothing, then we are no better off – Jack will still want it, whatever it is.”
Frith fumbled in her pocket for a tissue and gave her nose a good blow. The simple action gave her a moment to steady herself. Taking a deep breath she looked out the car window at the tall building across the street. Wellington was full of office buildings, equally full of public servants and corporate head offices drawn by access to the country’s politicians. The Majestic Centre was one of the newest and tallest at thirty-five stories. It housed a couple of embassies and a few corporate tenants, TTL being the largest with fifteen levels.
“So we just mosey in the front door? And how do we get out? What if we set off alarms? What if we get split up?”
Logan smiled at Frith’s new-found grit.
“Yes. Same way. The card should be cool. There are cameras in the stairwells and the lobby and at each lift area on each floor. Nothing in the individual offices. If we get separated, head for the north floor stairwell, level six, okay?”
“Level six?”
“There’s a service exit which opens on to the roof of the next door building. If you need to use it without me, don’t come back to the car. Go right along Boulcott Street, down Plimmer Steps and find a taxi outside the Parkroyal Hotel.”
Logan’s mouth tightened. She didn’t want to consider some of the possibilities which loomed large in her thoughts.
“We’ll have two rendezvous points and times. The first at … ” she glanced at her watch, “six o’clock at Sarah’s place. That’s Atlas House on Ghuznee. Flat seven.”
“Okay. And the second?”
“If I’m not there, things will be seriously wrong. So let’s make it tomorrow at the marina by the Freyberg Pools, between two and four. If I still don’t turn up, plan to leave Wellington for a while. Go back to Nelson or visit your parents in Milan or Manhatten. I’ll find you.”
Frith stared at her, aghast.
“What do you mean, seriously wrong?”
Logan sighed. “That’s the point of contingency plans, sometimes you just don’t know what can go wrong so it’s sensible to plan for the worst.”
She glanced at her watch again. “C’mon. It’s time.” And with that, the tall woman levered herself out of the tiny car.
Logan lead the way across the steep road to the side entrance. On a Saturday there was a likelihood that the concierge desk was unmanned. She trotted up the marble steps and swiped Sarah’s access card. The light immediately turned green and with a quiet sigh of relief, Logan ushered Frith inside. Moving purposively, she walked across the lobby to the tower lifts and pressed the button.
She could not bring herself to look at Frith. She was not used to having someone else with her – Jack had been less a field operative than a backroom boy. She was afraid that if she looked at Frith she might lose her nerve completely.
Fortunately a lift arrived promptly. Once inside, she pushed the button for the 30th floor. Alan’s and Sarah’s office were on the same floor so the access card should be okay. The two women stood in silence, both acutely aware of the security camera in the corner. Frith found herself counting off the floors as the light changed for each floor. It was like some inexorable countdown, but she reminded herself that the damage was already done. They were now immortalised by TTL’s security cameras.
The lift slowed gently as it neared the 30th floor. Frith inched closer to Logan, hoping to draw some stoicism at least from the journalist. The doors eased open, revealing a plush carpet (‘Nice colour,’ Frith thought inanely) with a rimu timber and brushed metal reception desk, with the words TALL TREES carved within a Maori motif.
They stepped out on to the floor, Logan in the lead. The lights were off, only the natural sunlight filtering in through open office doors lit the internal space. The floor appeared to be deserted. She glanced towards the left – Alan’s office had the prime north-east corner with it’s views over Wellington and the harbour. She turned right, however, walking briskly down a corridor leading towards the diagonally opposite corner. Frith trotted behind her, internally cursing her short legs.
Logan walked confidently into the south-west corner office and waited for Frith to catch up. Once the blonde woman was inside, she shut the door behind her.As she sat down at the workstation, she flicked on the computer screen and reached into her jacket pocket.
“This is Sarah’s office,” she said. “And this …. this is a CD that was in the Grace Jones CD cover.” She held up the data CD for Frith. Frith nodded in agreement, remembering the previous evening. Her eyes grew large as the implication of what Logan was suggesting hit home.
She slipped in disk into the CD reader in the machine and stood up.
“Here, you sit. Copy the files to the hard-drive. Then bring the CD to me in Alan’s office. It’s the opposite corner. Then come back here and write the files to another disk.”
She rummaged in Sarah’s drawers, finally finding a blank CD still encased in its plastic wrapping.
Frith settled herself at the desk. “So it’s a CD-writer? No problem. I’ll see you in five.”
“Don’t go back the way we came. Keep going.”
Logan left Frith to do her bit and continued on around the floor, avoiding the cameras at the lift area as she slid into Alan’s office. Closing the door behind her, she quickly sat at Alan’s PC. Unlike Sarah, Alan usually logged off when he left work. A few moments passed as the box fired up. Logan had taken her previous work for Alan seriously, even to the point of doing some simple hacking. And standing behind Alan at least twice when he had logged on had given her a good look at his username and password.
She smirked. Why oh why do people not change their password more often? Five months later it was still the same. Well, at least it wasn’t p-a-s-s-w-o-r-d.
She opened Windows Explorer. The company’s shared drives were not likely to be useful. The document management system usually excluded any documents being kept that weren’t open to corporate scrutiny. His personal drive was her first bet, followed by email and then the C drive.
The personal drive was empty. Outlook open easily and she had just started looking at his mail folders when Frith opened the door. She had the CD in her hand.
“Anything?” asked Logan.
“Oh yeah. About ten files, maybe five meg,” replied Frith.
“Let’s see.”
Running the CD was simple. Frith was right, there were nearly a dozen files. Two were spreadsheets, two were txt files, two were Word docs, the rest htmls.
Opening the files, Logan and Frith read through what seemed to be a business case and a record of a project. The project was name “Burn” which rang no bells with either of the women. It wasn’t until she opened the first html file that Logan glimpsed the shape of Alan’s scheme.
It was an article from a recent New Scientist magazine, outlining the risk to American agriculture from rogue genetically engineered bio-entities. Not a plague like anthrax, as she had at first feared, but less deadly ones like wheat rust. An infected crop would significantly lower production and if bad enough would force a fallow period and quarantine.
Flicking back to the spreadsheets, the codes now made more sense.
RUST | ILL | Qual. Bakers | $500,000
Another html file was for the Tricomi Laboratories in Austin, Texas, another for Quality Bakers in Champaign, Illinois.
The text files were saved emails. From Jack.
Son-of-a-BITCH!
The shape was solidifying. Jack and Alan were conspiring to infect crops in the US. The main questions now were motive and scale. Was it espionage? Had they stumbled into an international terrorist attack on America’s agricultural sector? Or was it motivated by money? Was the figure of $500,000 a cost or an extortion amount? Was the Department of Security, Jack’s current employers, a player or just coincidence? Why was Jack visiting her Managing Editor last night? Who could they trust? What to do next?
As she turned to Frith, ready to say it all out loud, she froze. Outside Alan’s office, through the glass panel surrounding the door, she saw the light indicating the arrival of the lift flash on.
Sheee-it!
“There’s someone else here!” she whispered urgently.
Frith turned an interesting shade of white as she saw a security guard leave the lift. He paused, then turned right, heading along to Sarah’s office.
“The disk!” she hissed in Logan’s ears. “It was still writing….”
Logan ejected the original disk and pocketed it.
“Follow him around and nip into to her office and grab it. I’ll meet you in the north stairwell.”
Frith walked as normally as she could past the cameras by the lifts. She paused rounding the corner, watching the guard pace solidly past Sarah’s office. She tiptoed into the Communication Manager’s office and crouched down by the PC. The disk had finished writing and had ejected itself. She quickly shut down the machine and slid the disk into her jacket.
As she crept to the door, ready to again follow the guard around the floor until she found the north stairwell door, a loud shout sounded. Oh god, it was the guard. He must have spotted Logan! Frith abandoned stealth and raced towards the sound. She came up short behind the guard who had his gun drawn facing her lover.
He was fumbling with his radio as Logan gestured with her eyes for Frith to take the stairwell door she was now right beside. Frith shook her head and prepared to charge the man from behind. Logan was horrifed.
“No!” she shouted. The guard, mistaking her shout as aimed at him, gestured with his gun more forcefully.
“For christ’s sake just shut the fuck up! Yeah, Charlie, I got an intruder on the 30th. Send up the sweepers, see who else is in the building. Check with the video monitoring as well.
Frith had hesitated. The pleading look in Logan’s eyes was enough for her. She gently opened the stairwell door and slipped through. Where had Logan said to go? Sixth floor and out over the next door building.
Inside the stairwell it was gloomy, the lights normally on during the working day turned off to save energy. Frith started cautiously down the stairs. She was on the 30th and Logan had said the 6th. At the 29th she easily made out the floor number on the door. Good, she wouldn’t miss the right door. Her thoughts turned to Logan and the guard. She had no doubt that Logan would be all right. After all, hadn’t she fought off Gareth’s attackers in the park? But she then remembered the scrapes and bruises on Logan’s torso. What if she couldn’t get away? What if the guards called the police? Or didn’t call the police and just called Alan Gadsby? Alan would call Jack and they – Her thoughts were interrupted by a noise in the stairwell below her. Holy jesus fucking christ! Someone was coming up the stairs towards her, and they were on this side of the 6th floor. She was trapped!
Logan looked at the guard, her gaze never faltering as Frith slipped through the stairwell door. She was safe! For now, anyway.
The guard’s name was written on a name tag, so she played her only real card.
“Hey, no need to do that John! I’m Logan Kendrick – I was doing some work for your boss. Remember, about four – five months ago? That insider-trading stuff that made all the papers?”
The guard paused, looking at the tall woman more closely.
“Where’s your photo-id then?” he asked. “I know everyone who’s allowed access to this floor out of work hours, and lady, believe me, I’d remember you.”
Logan reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out her wallet.
“It’s in here, somewhere,” she muttered, struggling to pull out a card. John instinctively moved forward to help her as she juggled the wallet and its contents. As they dropped to the floor between them, his eyes followed them down. She lashed out with both hands in a double round-house punch, catching the hapless guard in the temple and smashing his head against the wall. He fell without a sound, unconscious before reaching the carpet.
Logan knelt to gather up her things. She could hear another lift on it’s way, no doubt back-up if they were sticking to SOP. She hooked her hands under John’s armpits and dragged him into Alan’s office. Closing the door, she went to the same stairwell door that Frith had gone through just minutes before. As she opened it, she caught sight of Frith coming up the stairs two at a time.
“What the fuck are you doing?” she asked in a harsh whisper. Frith’s breath was coming in gasps – she had just sprinted up eight floors in sheer terror. She clutched at Logan’s jacket.
“There’s a man coming up the stairs. He was already on this side of the sixth floor.”
Logan frowned. “He didn’t go into any of the floors?” She peered over the balustrade, looking through the gloom for any sign. There! A figure was climbing, about eigth floors below them, although it was difficult to judge.
She turned back to Frith. “Right, let’s go up.”
Frith’s eyes goggled at her. Then she gathered her wits and her breath. She felt better being with Logan anyway.
Logan led the way up. The roof was six floors above them. This had to be Plan C. Two minutes later she carefully opened the door out on to the roof. Closing it, she grabbed open the cupboard for the fire hose and jammed the nozzle between the handle and door surrounds. That should hold it for a few minutes.
Frith had gone to the side of the tall building, looking over the side for any way of escape. Although it was the tallest building in Wellington, the proximity of Kelburn Hill always made it look like a small building – until you needed to jump off the roof, Frith thought.
Logan ran over to the north edge and looked over. There it was – the window cleaning car, sitting just over the edge of the building above the window line of the 35th floor. She beckoned Frith over, then bodily lifted her up and into the car. Clambering in after her, she looked at the simple control panel, trying to figure out how to get this thing moving.
The green button seemed the best bet. Pressing it, the car lurched into life, jolting Frith off her feet. Logan held the button down and the car steadily descended, much too slowly for Logan’s taste.
They had passed the 30th floor when they heard a shout above them. Two guards appeared over the roof edge, then jerked back out of sight as Logan aimed at them as if she had a gun. When no shots eventuated, they peered over again.
One of them shouted for them to stop, but Logan held that green button down. He then aimed his gun at the car, firing a shot which glanced off the metal scurity cage. His fellow guard grabbed his arm and shouted at him to knock it off.
Shouting instructions to his buddy to call out the ground floor guys, the second guard clambered over the balustrade and prepared to rappel down the car’s cables. He hooked himself on to the safety harness, then grasped the cables and started sliding down towards the two women.
By now the car was down to the 20th floor and Logan thought it would be a close thing.
The sixth floor was not far away, the next building was her old stamping ground of Wellington Newspapers, which she knew well. If they could just get on to that roof with a few seconds lead from their pursuers, they might have a chance. Frith was hanging on for dear life, staring at the building coming up to meet them, willing the car to go faster. At the 10th floor, the car jerked to a halt. Someone had finally found the roof-top master control panel and over-ridden Logan’s control.
The man coming down the cable let out a whoop of triumph. Logan grabbed the safety harness within the car – would it hold both their weights? Probably as the safety limit was usually around 150 – 200 kilograms. She looped the harness around Frith before the shorter woman had a chance to protest.
“I’ll lower you down then come down it myself, okay? Go! Go! Go!”
Frith found herself half falling, half being lowered the remaining four floors. As she hit the roof with a thud, she looked up to see the guard leap into the car, knocking Logan out of her sight.
Logan had tried to prepare herself for the guard’s arrival, but his momentum overwhelmed her stance. As they fell to the floor of the cart, she grabbed him by the jacket and gave him a sweetly vicious Liverpool kiss, breaking his nose with her headbutt and causing blood to spurt everywhere. He screamed with the pain and surprise – he had expected the woman to give up straight away. He grabbed for her throat and they struggled up to their feet, grappling for an advantage, looking for enough space to throw a knock-out punch.
She felt his hands around her throat squeeze the breath from her and she knew if she didn’t take him down soon, she would pass out. She forced him back along to one end of the car, then fell backwards. Her grip on his jacket and his grip around her neck meant he went right along with her. As they fell, she managed to get one foot up on his chest, breaking his chokehold and propelling him over her head. He landed with a thud and slid underneath the bottom guard-rail. He threw up an arm to catch the rail, managing to break the slide half on and half off the car. The car tilted as Logan staggered over to him. She reached down and dragged him up and back into the car. A palm heel strike to his face knocked him out cold. As he folded in her arms, Logan lowered him to the floor of the cart. She rummaged in his pockets, taking his security card.
Looking over the side of the car she could not see Frith. Hopefully she had found her way down to the street and was following Plan B. Hopefully.
Logan threw her leg over the railing and rappelled down the line left behind by Frith. In moments she was on the roof of Wellington Newspapers. Frith was nowhere to be seen. Logan jogged to the edge of the roof, prepared to clamber down to Boulcott Street. As she checked to see that the street was clear, a muffled cry made her whirl around. Her head swam as she saw her worst nightmare. The blonde woman was grasped firmly in the large arms of Jack McKechnie with a gun held to her temple.
Instinctively she surged forward, but Jack tightened his grip on Frith and pointed the gun at Logan’s head.
“Stay back!” he roared.
Logan held up her hands in a gesture of submission and backed towards the edge of the building.
“Don’t hurt her!”
Jack grinned sardonically as the gun was aimed at Frith’s head again.
“Oh, how the mighty are fallen,” he laughed bitterly. “The ice-queen Logan Kendrick is in L-O-V-E. And with this little scrap of nothing! Therapy has really done you a fat lot of good.”
He pointed the gun at Logan again.
“Give me what you found. Now.”
The tall woman could hardly concentrate on what Jack was saying. She was willing Frith to do something while the gun was aimed at her. She remembered Frith stamping her instep just two days beforehand and her own leg was twitching as if to communicate telepathically with Frith’s leg.
Frith was staring in dread fascination at the gun. Her gaze then flicked to Logan who was shaking like a leaf, legs trembling.
“What do you mean?” Logan asked Jack. “I haven’t found anything.”
“Don’t give me that bullshit,” he replied. “I know you were in Alan’s office. I know you accessed his computer. Give me what you fou-”
His voice screeched to a halt as Frith finally bought a clue and jammed her boot down on Jack’s foot with considerable power. At the same moment, she swung her elbow with as much force as she could at his solar plexus.
He doubled over with a huge exhalation but grimly held on to his trump card. The gun however went scattering across the roof-top and Logan dived after it. It landed near the bottom of the Majestic Tower and she scooped it up with a shout of triumph. Before she could use it, the gun was knocked from her hand by a security guard opening the sixth floor fire exit. As she turned to face this new foe, she heard Frith yelling and screaming behind her. A low thud cut off the shouting woman and she knew that Jack had silenced her. Logan spun around to see Jack hobbling towards the far side of the roof of the newspaper building. Sirens were sounding and someone had obviously called the police. He dragged Frith’s unconscious body with him and dumped her over the side of a low balustrade before clambering over himself.
Logan started after them but was tackled from behind by the TTL guard. As she struggled to break free, two more guards poured out the exit and piled on to the pair, attempting to subdue her by sheer numbers.
With a huge effort Logan found her feet and erupted skywards, the guards tumbling away. She bounced over one of them after Jack and Frith. As she neared the balustrade, she heard the engine of a car start up and a dark blue Subaru roared out of the next-door building’s driveway. As it passed her, Logan leaped from the building and landed with a thud on the roof of the car.
She tried desperately to cling to the top of the vehicle but Jack swerved the car around the corner and she came adrift, thumping on to the asphalt and tumbling until her head thwacked the gutter and she was out like a light. Her last memory was of the wail of sirens.
The smell of the sea was the first thing Frith noticed. Her eyelids seemed glued shut and her mouth was a dry as if she had a hangover. Groaning, she reached for her head but her hands would not obey her. Trying again, she realised they were tied behind her back and in fact they hurt like buggery.
Her eyes would not obey her either. So she was blind or blindfolded, hopefully the latter. A pressure over her mouth and she guessed she was gagged as well. In short, she was trussed like a pig about to be spit roasted. With this thought came a wave of panic. She was aware of herself whimpering and struggling vainly against her bonds – for long minutes Frith’s conscious mind was helpless in a tide of terror.
Slowly she wrenched her thoughts and emotions under control. Utilising all the new age meditative techniques she had ever tried, Frith gradually slowed her breathing and with that, achieved some measure of calm.
Think. She needed to think.
What would Logan do? She listened intently and could hear the gentle sound of water lapping. Wherever she was, it was rocking slightly. Putting two and two together, she figured she was in a boat at a marina. If they were at sea the motion would have been more pronounced.
There were really only two marinas in Wellington. The Chaffer Street marina just across the road from the cafe where they had rendezvoused with Sarah earlier and the Evans Bay marina over the hill.
Easy to get to and from – once she had freed herself. She wiggled her wrists, trying to free her hands. ‘Just keep trying, Frith,’ she thought. ‘Logan will be coming for you. You have to be ready when she does.’
Logan’s first conscious moments were a little more data rich than Frith’s. She was in an ambulance which was swaying dangerously as it negotiated one of Wellington’s tighter corners. A woman was seated next to her, holding an IV in place on her arm and watching a monitor strapped to a gurney.
A flicker of eyes her way and then a closer scrutiny.
“Aaah, you’re awake. Good. How do you feel?”
Logan blinked at her slowly.
“Okaaaay,” she muttered.
“What’s your name?” the medic inquired.
Logan blinked again. The world was in some kind of slow motion as she considered the question.
It didn’t seem quite safe to say her name. What if the wrong person found out? For some reason, that possibility seemed likely and highly undesirable. She would have to think about it some more. She closed her eyes. Think about it. Think …..
She drifted back into consciousness about ten minutes later, this time to a sharper awareness of her surroundings and understanding of her circumstances.
Now she was in a hospital. It looked shiny and new and could therefore only be Wellington Public’s new Accident and Emergency Room. She was lying on a gurney behind closed curtains and she became aware of a murmuring just out of comprehension. She strained and the words grew sharper.
“…. yes Sergeant, I appreciate that. But she’s still unconscious.”
“I want to leave an officer here, if that’s okay?”
“Sure, no worries. But he’ll have to wait in the public area. Otherwise he’ll just get underfoot.”
“Let him know when she regains consciousness, will you? She didn’t give a name at all?”
“No. And no ID either, which is unusual.”
A rustle of curtains alerted her and Logan closed her eyes quickly.
“Anything on her?”
“Just this and some cash.”
Logan knew without opening her eyes that it was the CD. She chanted silently, ‘leave it, leave it, leave it, leave it’ and some minor goddess must have been listening as the CD cover clattered on the bench.
“Make sure this goes with her.”
“Sure. When will your man get here?”
“About ten minutes.”
Footsteps receded and the curtain swished closed.
Blue eyes flicked open again, this time sharply assessing the room for options. She had been stripped and lay in a hospital gown. Her clothes lay in a pile on a metal chair nearby. Time to go!
Her first attempt to lever herself upright was not a success. Her head whirled and she felt sick to her stomach. A few moments later she tried again and this time forced the nausea back. Fortunately her clothes were intact and had only a few spots of blood on her jacket. As she dressed herself, she frowned. Surely she had had her wallet with her? She remembered showing it to the security guard on the 30th floor.
She rummaged through her pockets. There was $35 in notes but no wallet. A mystery. The ambos would have left everything.
Twitching the curtain aside, she peered carefully out along the corridor. Fortunately for her it was now late-ish Saturday afternoon. In every New Zealand emergency room that meant only one thing – rugby injuries. Sure enough the waiting room and examining rooms were full of brawny young men and some brawny young women dressed in striped rugby shirts, patiently awaiting treatment. The staff were busy and no-one paid attention to the young woman carefully walking to to main entrance. Once safely outside A&E Logan sat down and gathered her breath and her thoughts.
First things first. The disk. It was not much use to her if she lost it. Frith needed her and she might easily lose it.
One name sprang to mind as she considered her options. Brian Cowley. Wiremu Kale’s boyfriend worked at the Dominion newspaper. Ordinarily she would have just called a colleague at the New Business Age, but seeing Jack with her Managing Editor the other night had spooked her. It seemed that the NBA was compromised as far as this story was concerned.
Looking around she saw the sign pointing towards the Post Shop. Following the signs, she was surprised to find it was open, probably because it was a hospital and needed to operate outside the normal five-days-a-week constraints of most businesses.
Logan picked up a courier bag and jotted a short note on the back of a postal form. She addressed the bag to Brian care of the Dominion. At the counter she asked if there was a same day service.
The young woman, ‘Sheree’ according to her name badge, said there was only overnight at this time of day. Logan swore under her breath.
Sheree looked at her watch. “Where’s it going?” she asked. “The Dom? I’m going into town after work, in about 15 minutes. I could drop it off for you. If you like,” she shyly added.
Logan looked at the girl. She seemed no more than 17 and entirely guileless.
“Okay, that would be very kind of you,” she replied. “I only have $20 – would that be enough?”
The girl leaned over the counter and said quietly, “Only if I can have an autographed copy of your next article.”
Logan recoiled as if stung. If this kid had recognised her, how come the ambo and the cop hadn’t?
Sheree laughed happily. “I’m studying to become a journalist. You are on our recommended reading list.” She looked closely at Logan. “Are you undercover?”
Logan smiled in relief. “Yes, I am. But I need to get this quickly to Brian. And without anyone knowing. Could you do that?”
Another giggle. “Hold on a second.” She poked her head out the STAFF ONLY door and talked to someone out of Logan’s sight.
“I can go now. Frank can take over early. Do you need a lift into town too?”
Logan considered her next move. Frith. Where would Jack have taken her?
“If you could drop me off near Ghuznee Street, that would be good,” she eventually replied.
“Right. Let’s go.”
Ghuznee Street on a Saturday afternoon was bustling, despite the light drizzle. The tall dark woman sat on a low wall trying to get her head to stop aching. The pain from the lump on the outside was echoed by the pain within. Worse was her indecisiveness, which was completely unlike her. She had no idea of where to find Frith. Sitting outside Sarah’s apartment building had been her only idea so far.
Staring fixedly at the front door across the road, she almost failed to notice the dark blue Japanese car slow to a crawl as it passed her. It was the Subaru Impreza. But Jack was not driving it and she did not recognise the driver. But surely it was….. It was trying to attract her attention? Having done so, the driver – male, caucasian, blond hair, 90 kilograms, blue eyes – grinned at her and floored it. As it disappeared down the road, Logan memorised its number plate. ‘Sometimes,’ she thought,’ I should have been a cop’.
Galvanised by this event, she threaded her way through the cars and across the wet street to Atlas House.
Sarah answered the door to her apartment.
“Logan! What are you doing here?”
“I need your help. Again. Sorry.”
“Oh don’t be silly. Get in here.” And with that she pulled Logan inside. Gareth was reclining on the couch in the livingroom. He glanced up as the energy level of the room rose noticeably.
“I don’t believe you two have been properly introduced,” Sarah smiled. “Gareth Wong, QC, this is Logan Kendrick, ace reporter.”
“Logan, nice to meet you at last,” said Gareth. “I believe I owe you a rather large debt of gratitude.”
“You’re welcome,” Logan replied forthrightly as she shrugged. “Right time, right place, I guess.”
“Sit, sit,” said Sarah, pulling piles of magazines and cushions off the rooms other sofa. “Tea or something stronger. Not you, sweetheart.”
“Tea for me, thanks,” said Logan. “I’m off the booze at the moment.” She didn’t mention the lump hidden by her bangs.
Sarah busied herself in the kitchen making the tea.
Logan set herself on the couch, coiled like a spring.
Gareth looked at her quizzically, but forebore from questioning her. Instead he quietly said, “Sarah tells me you you fought off a small army the other night. They knocked me out right at the beginning I think.”
The dark woman forced herself to visibly relax. Leaning back in her chair, she proffered the comment, “Well, it’s a pretty dangerous place to be at that time of night. But you could hardly stay in the nightclub, could you?” With a half smile.
He grinned back at her. “Queen’s Counsel’s aren’t supposed to rave it up on a Friday night. Especially during a drugs bust. But having friends in the ranks of the boys in blue sometimes pays off.”
She frowned slightly, remembering. “The warning was cutting it a bit fine, wasn’t it?”
Gareth shot her a more direct questioning look.
“I was looking for Sarah and saw you take the call.”
“Talking about me already?” asked Sarah, as she came bustling in with a tray. “Nothing good or true I hope!”
After pouring three cups and seating herself in an armchair, Sarah said casually, “And how did it go today?”
Logan admired the technique. A ‘Fine, thank you’ in reply would not alert Gareth too much.
But she needed more help now. At the least she needed to get an outside perspective on everything that had happened and Gareth’s position within the New Zealand judicial system indicated she could trust him.
Putting aside her natural inclination for secrecy and distrust, she placed her problem openly on the table, leaving out any mention of the disk she had sent to Brian. That was her ace in the hole.
Gareth and Sarah listened enthralled to the whole sorry saga. Even in Logan’s terse style, the story was compelling. At the end, Sarah leaned forward and asked, “What can we do? How can we help?”
At this, Logan finally put her head in her hands. “I don’t know where he has taken Frith,” came the muffled statement. “I need to …..” She could not continue.
Sarah frowned. “With the amount of money you suggest is involved, her life is certainly in danger. And yours, too.”
Gareth had been listening quietly. Now he joined the discussion. “Surely not necessarily. All you have, Logan, is circumstantial evidence.”
She started at this, but the slight barrister held up his hand.
“Wait, hear me out. Electronic documents such as those you describe were on Darryl’s CD are pretty low in the evidential value hierarchy. A judge, or indeed the police, would need more evidence to even proceed with an investigation.
“However, that is for the bigger picture. On the more immediate scale, Mr McKechnie has put himeself in an awkward position. Up until kidnapping Ms Buchanan, he could have argued that YOU were the transgressor.”
Logan sat still, processing this new angle.
Gareth turned to his lover. “Sarah, you work with Alan closely. What’s your assessment of his likely involvement?”
Sarah looked thoughtful. “A lot of small things start to add up … if I look at them a certain way. He has become more secretive recently, but in a large company like Tall Trees you never know if that’s just office politics.”
“Were you ever present at any meeting between Alan and this John Fraser also known as Jack McKechnie?” he continued.
“Noooo. And that in itself is odd. Tall Trees has a company policy of keeping Communications people in the loop – generally so we can lie more convincingly. I think I assumed it was more personal business between the two of them.”
“Why did you think that?” interjected Logan.
“They met a few times in Alan’s office, but then I saw them together twice out of work. Once just in a coffee shop in Willis Street, once down on Alan’s yacht.”
“So, let’s take a worst case scenario,” said Gareth.
“Alan the insider, Jack with access to security service resources, Tricomi the laboratory making the biological bombs,” replied Logan promptly.
“And the transit mechanism? Between the US and here?”
“Diplomatic bag, perhaps?”
“Yes, that would do it. And what about within the US? Maybe a simple single person courier or a series of blind couriers? How close does the modified material need to be released to the crops?”
“Those are the questions I have been asking myself,” said Logan. “And, how can we prove it, or put a stop to it?”
Sarah coughed slightly to get their attention. “Does John know about you and Ms Buchanan?”
Logan coloured faintly. “He’s been bugging her house – and mine,” she muttered.
“Your house?” Sarah’s voice rose in disbelief. “Good heavens Logan, it must be serious!”
The tall woman blushed a little more. “Well…. yeah ….”
Suddenly she thought of the blue Impreza’s odd behaviour on the street.
“I think he’s laying a trap for me – with Frith as the bait. He thinks I will know where he’s holding her.”
“And where is that?” asked Sarah.
“Could be anywhere,” she replied.
Gareth suggested diffidently, “He must have picked a place that he thought you would think of. Like his house or a meeting place you two had or ….”
“Or the Jezebel?” said Sarah.
Logan looked at her sharply. “Yes, that’s worth a look. Maybe I’ll check it out now. God knows I don’t have any other ideas.”
Gareth and Sarah looked at each other with concern.
“And what about some back-up?” he asked.
“Police are out – Jack will have his buddies covered there. Same for the Secret Service. My paper – well I saw Jack meeting with my editor a couple of days ago. And I don’t want to get the two of you in any trouble,” said Logan.
“So what CAN we do, that doesn’t involve us or them?” pushed Gareth.
“Perhaps the Harbour Police …. and the television media,” Logan was thinking out loud.
Sarah laughed lightly. “You mean blow up the Jezebel and get TV reporters to cover that? And get Alan arrested for kidnapping?”
Logan looked grimly at her. “That could well be the ticket. Can I use your bathroom?”
An hour later, Logan was feeling much better for a shower and a rest. Thinking more clearly she realised she probably had a slight concussion, which would account for the muzziness and the sense of stupidity.
Sarah hovered unhappily at the door as Logan left. None of her arguments could sway the tall journalist. With a laconic, “It’s time” Logan disappeared down the spiral staircase.
Saturday afternoon had become early evening. The winter sun had set behind the western hills and cars were putting on their headlights. As Logan walked quickly down the Wellington streets towards the marina the city lights flickered into orange life above her head.
She crossed the still-busy waterfront road and emerged on the docks at Te Papa, the national museum. The large modern ediface hovered on it’s harbour frontage, separating parks and the port from the Chaffer Street marina. Logan had hoped she could check out the marina and surrounds without getting too close, but as she lounged against the museum wall she was forcibly reminded of Wellington’s geography. Anyone could be keeping the Jezebel under surveillance from a hundred houses or pathways in the Town Belt. She had no chance of seeing the trap before springing it. She would have to rely on brute force plus her unlikely allies to work together to thwart Jack and Alan’s plan.
Using the small binoculars she had taken from Sarah, used probably for watching cricket or the opera, Logan scanned what she could see of the marina. It sat near the large wharf which housed the Overseas Terminal, built in the early 70’s just in time for the last surge of British immigration by boat. There was a slight swell gently disturbing the several hundred boats that occupied the marina. She fixed the location of the entrance in her mind and turned quickly away and jogged away towards Frank Kitts Park.
Within ten minutes, Logan was paddling across the harbour towards the marina.
The breeze and rain had eased to a halt as the light of day ebbed from the harbour. People heading home from a day on the water mingled with those taking advantage of the quiet water. The kayakers and rowers and dragon-boaters cheerfully lowered their craft into the lagoon and made their way into the inner harbour. Beside them, tiny jet boats with coaches and their bullhorns shouted instructions and exhortations.
Several of the kayaks headed across the harbour towards the fountain that sat 100 metres off shore from the yacht club on the opposite side. As they passed the entrance to the marina, one of the boats slowed to a halt and, after a pause while his mates took their leave, paddled slowly into the marina.
Logan welcomed the steady physical effort of kayaking. Her headache had receded before the onslaught of the painkillers she had taken at Sarah’s flat. Now she focused on the rhythm necessary to propel the boat through the water. It gave the woman a chance to test stretched ligaments and bruised muscles and to ease her mind into an empty readiness.
She did not know where in the marina the Jezebel was moored. If necessary she would search the whole complex. Coming across the bay she had steadily appraised what she could see of the marina. At one point a flash of white from one of the boats had made her nerves leap, but it had not been repeated. Now as the light was starting to fade, Logan realised she would still need to evade whatever trap Jack and Alan may have set for her.
There had been not much of a chance for a reconnaissance, just the dash across the inner harbour to the marina. Above her the houses high in Oriental Bay were still bathed in light, but the shore itself and the marina were caught in the shadow of Tinakori Hill. She assumed Jack had left surveillance around the entrance to the marina that would alert him when she made an entrance. She also thought that Jack would have Frith there, so that even if she evaded her foes, she would still be slowed down in making an escape.
The kayak edged its way under the entrance to the marina. Logan maneuvered under the first pontoon and crawled out of the boat. Peeking over the top of the steps, she searched for the Jezebel. She remembered it was a white sloop with perhaps a blue trim, so she ignored the single-masted yachts and larger pleasure boats. Where was she?
Frith found the lack of sight to be the most disturbing feature of her incarceration. She had tried scraping the edge of the duct tape from her forehead against what must have been the galley bench, but all that did was give her a bruise and what seemed to be a small scrape that had decided to bleed.
She realised if she had her hands in front of her she could perhaps remove the blindfold. Frith had seen heroes on cop shows get their bound hands in front of them by stepping through it. She thought she was limber enough to try it – all that yoga had to pay off sometime.
She had already fallen off the seating she had woken to find herself on and reminded herself wryly that she couldn’t fall off the floor.
Straining to elongate her arms, she gradually worked her bound hands, now in agony, under her buttocks. Exhausted by the effort, she rested awhile. The pain did not ease, but her breathing slowed down again.
Then with a sudden spurt, she dragged her hands to behind her knees. Nearly there. Her shoulders now chimed in with complaints. Drawing her knees up to her face, she wiggled her feet over her wrists and she was done. Frith did not wait for her aches to subside, she was too eager to regain her sight and get the hell out of here.
Bending her arms slowly, she soon realised her hands were virtually useless. They were like blocks of ice-cold meat attached to the end of someone else’s arms. And until they were untied, there wasn’t much she could do about that. But she needed her sight. With a final effort she made her thumb and forefinger grab the edge of the duct tape from her temple and pulled.
The pain of pulling out hair and what can only have been eyelashes made the blonde woman squeak with the hurt. Worse than the sticking plasters on her scraped knees as a child. But the triumph of her achievement made up for it.
The cabin she was in was dimly lit, but definitely luxuriously furnished. She could see the galley drawers in which a knife was most likely to be found, if she could only reach it. Sighing as she realised much more effort was necessary, Frith levered herself up against the galley bench and opened the first drawer. Bingo. Kitchen knives. Clutching a vegetable knife between the palms of her hands, she sawed at the ropes binding her ankles. In less than a minute the rope was cut and she sat down abruptly on the cabin seat to recover herself. Only the hands remained.
Once her feet had recovered from indignity, she managed to grasp the knife firmly between. Sawing carefully, she sliced the ropes around her wrists with only a few small cuts suffered.
Finally free, she coaxed her hands back into painful life by massaging them together. Still stiff and sore, Frith sat on the cabin seat near a window and slowly opened the curtain. Outside she could see it was early evening and she could also see the central city buildings across the bay. A boat was leaving the port opposite, headed out to sea. She was in the Chaffer Street marina.
Buoyed by this discovery, she closed the curtain and, climbing gingerly up the ladder, tried the door out on to the deck. It was locked. As she looked to see how it unlocked from the inside, she heard the sound of footsteps coming along the jetty. Voices in conservation sounded like a distant muttering. For a moment she was seized with the feeling of Logan near her, and she nearly shouted out. But the voices were male and one … as they came closer she could tell one was Jack’s.
“I don’t know what’s keeping her. But don’t worry Mr. Gadsby, she’ll come.”
“Are you sure your men are prepared?”
“They know what to do.”
“And why am I here?”
“Because I have what she found, but I’m sure it was a copy. She still has it.”
“So you need to make the trade. Her girlfriend for the disk – the original disk. She won’t talk to me.”
Another silence.
“Let’s wait on board then.”
“No. We’ll let them both be trapped together on the Jezebel. Then make a deal. One she can’t refuse.”
“Why not just kill them both and dump the bodies in Cook Strait?”
“Well, that’s our fallback position.”
“You still have feelings for her, huh?”
“Shut your face Mr. Gadsby. Or I’ll shut it for you.”
A different quality of silence.
“No need to get shirty. We’ll clear this up and get back on schedule. When’s the next shipment due to leave?”
“Thursday. For Oklahoma this one.”
“Well, we better make sure it does. Now, we are we going to wait?”
“There. The Buttercup. The ugly yellow boat.”
Logan had seen the two men walking along the jetty. They stopped for few minutes alongside a white sloop and talked, before scrambling on to a yellow-hulled boat two berths along. She expelled a breath in frustration. Was Frith on the Jezebel or the yellow boat? Her gaze was drawn to a figure lounging inside the pedestrian entrance to the marina. And another sitting quietly on the deck of a boat by the gas pump. And yet a third desultorily poking at the engine under the hood of a dark blue car on the next wharf.
All armed, she guessed. And there were probably more.
Well, first things first.
The tall woman slipped into the water below the steps and breaststroked her way to the side of the Jezebel furthest from the yellow boat. As she rested alongside the white hull, she heard faint stirrings on board. She tapped gently on the hull, hoping that it was Frith on board and that she was able to respond. As she listened intently for a reply, a commotion at the entrance to the marina drew her attention. She inched around the boat to witness an unexpected sight.
Police cars were pulling up to the entrance, with people in dark jumpsuits leaping out and swarming into the marina. The man guarding the entrance let out a shout of warning, before he was forced down on to the wooden jetty.
Jack and Alan came above deck on the Buttercup just in time for a dark figure to point at them across the forty or so boats separating the Jezebel from the entrance.
The executive stood staring, quietly swearing under his breath as he considered his options.
“Right!” he barked. “I’m taking the Jezebel out. Coming?”
“Nope,” replied Jack. “I’ll take my chances on shore. We’re blown then?”
There was no answer as Alan scrambled off the Buttercup and along to the Jezebel. Jack took off along the jetty, aiming to get as far away from the police as possible. His car was sitting on a neighbouring wharf at the old Overseas Terminal. The fleeing figure attracted the cops’ attention and they changed direction to chase him.
Alan jumped on to the Jezebel and quickly let loose the mooring ropes. The engine of the graceful boat quickly started and within seconds he was pulling away from the mooring.
As he looked towards the harbour entrance of the marina, a dripping dark shape from his nightmares loomed up in front of his face.
Before he could react beyond a paralysed shock, the figure drew back and punched him squarely in the face. He stumbled to his knees, preparing to sell his life or freedom dearly, but the assailant rushed past, shoving him again to the deck. The figure wrenched open the door to the cabin and disappeared inside.
Alan struggled back to the helm of the Jezebel as the boat neared the entrance to the harbour. Hauling the wheel over, he managed to avoid colliding with the bollard on the south side.
There was a roar of anger from inside the cabin and Alan braced himself for further assault. Out hurtled Logan.
“Where is she, you bastard?” she yelled.
Alan froze. “She’s not there?” was all he could squeak.
A spotlight suddenly illuminated his tall frame. Ahead of the slender sloop a Coast Guard vessel materialized off his starboard bow.
“STAND TO JEZEBEL. THIS IS THE COAST GUARD. PREPARE TO BE BOARDED.”
Logan paid no attention. Her eyes swept the water line, looking for Frith. With immense relief she saw a slight form being helped from the water by two men.
Jack had reached the Subaru without being intercepted. His man had fled.
‘Typical,’ he snorted to himself. ‘Easy help for the easy bucks.’
He opened the passenger side door and reached for the mechanism lying on the seat.
As the pursuers came close, they skidded to a halt, fearing the perpetrator was reaching for a gun. Alan turned around triumphantly and pointed the antenna towards the Jezebel.
Their eyes widened as the two police officers realised what was about to happen. One, a woman, even turned and shouted as if to warn the occupants of the distant boat. As Alan pressed the trigger, the other officer leapt at him. Too late. The Jezebel erupted into a fireball, lighting the entire marina in a flickering glow.
Frith found herself being hauled out of the water by two men. She had crawled out one of the sloop’s windows when Alan had come aboard and slipped into the water as the boat took off from its mooring.
Choking and spluttering, she held on to her helpers’ arms as she turned to watch the Coast Guard vessel attempt to intercept the Jezebel.
With horror she had to shield her face as the boat exploded into a flaming mass.
“Oh god!” she cried and struggled to free herself from the restraining arms.
“Hey, hey, hey!” said a familiar voice.
“Brian?” she shouted.
“And me,” chimed in Wiremu. “Calm down babe … c’mon now…” He put his arms around her.
“But Logan was on that boat!” she cried.
“Really? Fuck it! Brian, go and tell those cops to get a search party into the water.”
Brian raced off towards the police cars. Wiremu and Frith went past the other boats towards the marina entrance, looking in the water for any signs of Logan.
“What was she wearing, Frith?”
“I don’t know,” replied Frith distractedly. “Dark, blue, something.”
“Shit – hard to see in the dark then.”
A police officer had run along the jetty to their position. “Can you see her?” he asked.
“No,” they said in unison.
He raised his radio. “Negative, Warrior. No sign of her here. Over.”
Over the radio came a scratchy voice. “We’ll put an inflatable in right away. We have to wait before searching the boat. Keep looking your end. Out.”
Wiremu grasped Frith firmly as her legs seemed to give way.
“It’ll be all right Frith. Let’s keep looking.”
Unable to look at the flaming wreckage, Frith nodded.
“Until we find her,” she said, firmly.
Frith, Wiremu and Brian sat on a bench seat, watching as the Warrior pulled away from the marina. They had been searching for over two hours. The flames on the Jezebel had long since died down and the coast guard had quickly searched the sloop. Alan’s body had been retrieved, what was left of it. But no sign of Logan.
Brian tried convincing Frith that this was a positive sign. But all the small blonde woman could reiterate was, “She would come for me.” Brian really had no argument for that.
Finally tearing her eyes away from the water, she looked curiously at Brian.
“So, what are you guys doing here?”
Brian related his tale. How the disk and a note had arrived on his desk on a quiet afternoon. How easily he had put two and two together. The later phone call from the Communications Manager of Tall Trees. The initial disbelief of the local Police Commander. The intervention of a Crown Prosecutor.
“And here we are,” he concluded. “Riding to the rescue.”
He stopped abruptly has he realised the rescue had not been entirely successful.
Wiremu took her by the hand.
“Come home with us, Frith. Let’s clean you up and get you into some dry and clean clothes. We’ll go down to the cop shop tomorrow and see what’s what.”
Frith could not argue, though her soul ached to think of abandoning her vigil.
They stopped and told one of the officer’s where they were off to and gave her their contact details. Frith was to present herself to Detective Inspector Scott at twelve noon for an interview.
Frith insisted on going back to her house. It was closer to the harbour and she could see the water from the verandah.
The vivacious blonde was not paying any attention to the slight dark haired man sitting beside her. Despite his brown skin he looked pale and wan, perhaps getting over a winter flu or convalescence. She was staring out the window of the Parade Café at the main building of the yacht club, obviously trying to will a particular face to come into view.
Leaning forward, he murmured, “She’ll come.”
Distracted, Sarah frowned. “But what if she’s held up with the police? Maybe I should just find her on Monday?”
“Logan said today. Between 2pm and 4pm.” The unspoken corollary, which they both remembered vividly, “or not at all”, remained unspoken.
Another impatient glance at her watch told Sarah it was 3.45pm.
Gareth stiffened, his gaze caught by a blonde woman running hell for leather along Oriental Parade.
“There’s one,” he said triumphantly.
Frith had thought she was going to be charged with obstructing justice. She looked at her watch so often that the detective finally invited her to take it off and put it on the table in front of her.
Her story had taken a while to tell. Her mind, however, was on the 2-hour period that Logan had designated as their second rendezvous times. The policeman, D.I. Scott, had been almost as interested in Logan’s current whereabouts as in her story. But although Frith was worried, she had an unreasoning faith in the journalist’s ability to survive.
As soon as the lengthy interview was concluded, with an injunction not to leave the country, Frith had walked briskly out of the police station on Hunter Street and made her way past Te Papa along the harbour-side walkway towards the Freyberg Pools.
At the entrance to the Marina she gave up all pretence of walking and ran like the devil towards the pools.
At the main entrance to Freyberg, she paused and looked around. The Sunday crowd was still out in full force, the roller-bladers somewhat in the ascendant at the moment.
She spent the next ten minutes pacing deliberately between the pools and the marina. Across the road, in the window seats of the Parade Café, Sarah and Gareth watched carefully.
At 4pm Frith sat down on the low brick seawall that separated the old part of the yacht club from the street. She stared despondently down at her feet, trying to keep her fears under control.
She could not be this close to happiness to have it whistled away. Logan must be alive and watching her somehow. Perhaps she had thought it was too dangerous to actually meet up with Frith.
The fact that Jack had not been captured had been sobering.
She looked up to see two people standing, arms crossed, about three metres away. She leaped to her feet, recognising Sarah right away.
The shock of disappointment pierced her chest like a physical pain. Her eyes filled with tears and she swallowed hard to keep sobs from coming up past her throat.
Sarah threw off her attitude and ran to the young woman. Putting her arm around Frith, she led her back to the seawall.
The small kindness unblocked Frith’s staunch resolve and she cried for long moments as Sarah and Gareth huddled around, trying to shield her from the curious stares of strangers.
Soon crisis was past and she blew her nose and wiped her face on a hanky proffered by Gareth.
“What’s happened?” asked Sarah, unable to hold back any longer. “Where’s Logan?”
Frith remembered that news of last night’s events had not rated more than a quick notice on the local radio news and had not made the Sunday papers at all.
“The Jezebel was blown up,” she said. “With Alan Gadsby on board.”
The pair exchanged startled glances.
“Who …?” Sarah could hardly frame the question.
“Not Logan,” Frith said immediately. “It was Jack McKechnie or Jack Wilson or John Fraser or whatever the fuck his name was. Is.”
Jack had eluded capture by the rather simple expedient of diving into the harbour and taking one of the police officers with him. That had dissuaded any keen officer from firing into the black darkness of the water. A quick blow to the head of the cop and a shout for help had turned their attention to rescuing their own colleague. Jack, it was surmised, had disappeared rather easily.
His fate, as much as Logan’s, was of intense interest to the police.
Looking up at the pair, Frith was suddenly struck by a question.
“Why are you here? Do you know where Logan is?” she asked feverishly.
Gareth and Sarah looked at each other, asking a silent question. It was Sarah who broke the short silence.
“No, we don’t. We were expecting her to be here between 2pm and 4pm as well. She told us she would be here. And if she wasn’t …” she faltered briefly. “If she wasn’t and you were, I was to give you this.”
She nodded at Gareth and he produced a white envelope from his overcoat pocket.
The pair had argued the previous evening about opening the envelope. Sarah had been of the ‘of course!’ school. Gareth had been more circumspect about what an officer of the court should and should not expose himself to.
“Better for us and her if we don’t know, darling,” he had persuaded her.
“But what if she …?” Sarah had cried inarticulately.
“I know you cared a great deal for her,” Gareth said gently. “But she has a new future now. One where we can help by doing as she asks.”
Sarah had acquiesced. But she would try again with Logan’s new lover.
All attention was now focused on the plain white envelope.
Frith looked at the envelope painfully, aware of the amount of pain that could well be hidden inside. She turned slightly aware from Sarah and Gareth, giving herself some small modicum of privacy. She carefully opened the flap and looked at the white enclosure. Drawing it slowly out, she opened the sheet and read.
Dearest Frith I am in a hurry and unsure of how events will go this evening. If I cannot be with you at our rendezvous, then either I am dead or under arrest. I will not let Jack have the satisfaction of destroying me or us. If you think there is a third likelihood, then have faith in me. Meet me at Zurich Airport on the last Sunday in July. Take the afternoon flight from Charles de Gaulle. I will be in the Diners Club Lounge. Give this note to Gareth. I love you. Logan
Frith was half smiling half weeping as she read. Crumpling the envelope, she stuck it into her jacket pocket. She kissed the note, turned and gave it directly to Gareth. Unable to resist, he glanced at this contents and could not stop a groan. He knew what he was bound by law to do.
Hand it over to the police.
It didn’t matter to Frith. The physical letter mean little. What meant much was the declaration she had longed to hear from Logan’s lips. And she would hear from Logan herself within a few short weeks.
She knew Logan was alive.
The Diners Club at Zurich Airport was busy as usual in the early Sunday evening. The urbane young man who staffed it glanced over to the flowers sitting behind the service counter. It was the first time in his brief tenure in the position that a bouquet had been left waiting for a passenger in transit. Privately he wondered how the recipient was going to take them on the plane with them, but reassured himself that first class could deal with anything.
A person arrived at the desk in front of him.
“Guten abend! Kann ich Sie helfen?”
“I am looking for a Fraulein Logan Kendrick. She is expecting me.”
“Ahh, Fraulein Kendrick. Ja, I have something for you she left.”
He looked over at the flowers and reached to pick them up. Women sending flowers? He was all for it. The tall man did not look very pleased as the assistant presented him with the arrangement.
“This is it?” he barked.
Günter’s face fell. Obviously not what the Englischer was expecting.
“Ja, mein Herr,” he replied.
Jack McKechnie turned abruptly and left the lounge. Once outside the door he extracted the note from the bouquet and threw the flowers angrily into a rubbish bin.
He had risked much in connecting with his contacts within Wellington CID. But the payoff had seemed immediate as the note Gareth had handed to D.I. Scott, or a photocopy of it, had been left in one of his drop boxes.
He opened the note. It was a plain square of paper, obviously written by the Tele-florist and not in Logan’s handwriting. It was succinct.
And unsigned.
Epilogue Redux
Frith clutched the grimy envelope. Once it had been white.
Written on the inside of the flap were now indecipherable words. It didn’t matter, Frith had them long memorised.
29/7. Sitka. Finn Alley Inn.
It hadn’t taken Frith long to figure it out and arrange the trip. Sitka was a small town in southeast Alaska. Formerly a Russian provincial capital, it rested on the ocean-side of the islands that stretched up the coast from Seattle. The boat had left from Bellingham near Seattle and taken two days to reach Sitka, passing the entire Pacific Coast of Canada. The ferry, or Alaska Marine Highway as it was more commonly known, only ran to Sitka once a week on Fridays during winter.
It was almost as obscure a place you could get into within the US. And still be below the Artic Circle.
She had booked the flight to Zurich via Los Angeles, New York and Paris. At LA she had taken another flight to Seattle. The bus to Bellingham left at midday, which had only given her 45 minutes from the shuttle flight to get into the Greyhound station. She had made it with at least 15 minutes to spare.
The MV Kennicot had left promptly, powering north past Vancouver and Victoria Island towards Alaska. Two days later she was standing on the bow of the ferry, watching as the Russian-style buildings of Sitka hove into view.
She would find the hotel and find Logan and begin to find her new life.
As the boat began the docking approach, she scanned the half dozen people waiting on the wharf. A tall person stepped out of the small group. Tall. Long dark hair. A smile Frith could see from a hundred metres.
She was found.
A FIN
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IssuesLocal NewsHarris County Bail Reform Could Have Far-Reaching Consequences for Community Safety
The consent decree would result in most pre-trial misdemeanor arrestees to be released as soon as practicable after arrest. One arrestee released under this bail reform approach allegedly murdered his wife and unborn child.
Holly HansenNovember 4, 2019
Depending on a federal court judge’s approval, Harris County may be required to adopt both bail bond and court process policies with far-reaching criminal justice implications.
At a hearing in U.S. District Court in Houston last week, Judge Lee H. Rosenthal allowed select non-parties to testify on the potential impact of a lawsuit settlement narrowly approved by the Harris County Commissioners Court earlier this year.
While both supporters and opponents provided either written or oral testimony, those opposed to the settlement voiced support for bail bond reform in principle. Most also defended county efforts to improve the judicial process for misdemeanor defendants, but urged Judge Rosenthal to reconsider problematic details of the proposed consent decree.
In a 2016 lawsuit, ODonnell v. Harris County, plaintiffs alleged misdemeanor bond policies were unconstitutional and unfair to those unable to afford bond. Judge Rosenthal’s 193-page ruling concluded that the system was indeed unconstitutional, and she issued an injunction for the county to release misdemeanor suspects on unsecured personal bonds within 24 hours of arrest.
The county then adopted “Local Rule 9,” which specifies that secure money bail must not be required as a condition of pretrial release prior to determining a defendant’s ability to pay. The rule also states that with a few exceptions, all misdemeanor arrestees must be released on a personal bond as soon as practical after arrest.
In 2018, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Judge Rosenthal’s finding of an unconstitutional system but called her proposed remedies “overbroad.” The Fifth Circuit vacated Rosenthal’s “24-hour” injunction and remanded the case back for further revision.
But in the interim, the 2018 elections shifted both the commissioners court and the county’s 16 misdemeanor court judges to the control of Democrats. Rather than continuing to negotiate a solution as requested by the Fifth Circuit, Democrat county officials and judges crafted a new 51-page consent decree which county commissioners approved on a 3-2 party-line vote.
The details of that consent decree were the object of contention at last week’s federal court hearing.
The Devil in The Details
Those filing amicus briefs or statements of opposition included Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg, a Democrat. In August, Ogg wrote that she supported reforms and Local Rule 9, but that the “proposed settlement seeks relief far beyond the scope of the original controversy.”
In addition to allowing the federal court to impose a legislative solution, Ogg says the bond-setting rules undermine the ability of the elected district attorney to recommend case-by-case pre-trial conditions that consider risk to victims and public safety.
Ogg also argues that misdemeanor hearings could be repeatedly postponed without regard to the impact on victims, witnesses, and other stakeholders.
Although the decree states that misdemeanor arrestees may reschedule regular court appearances “two times per case for any reason with no adverse consequences,” it does not limit the court’s discretion to reschedule.
Ogg also notes there is no requirement for judges to issue warrants for non-appearances.
Consequently, the D.A. said these rules give a judge “authority to waive a defendant’s appearance in perpetuity, contrary to Texas law.”
In her amicus brief, Ogg cites five Harris County cases in which judges have already applied these policies and which have had disastrous outcomes.
The most notable involves Alex Guajardo, who was repeatedly released on general order and personal bonds for DWI charges as well as a domestic violence assault charge. While out on bond, on August 3, 2019 Guajardo allegedly murdered his wife and her unborn child.
In lieu of testifying last week, Ogg provided a written statement testifying to the “operational reality” of how personal recognizance (PR) bonds are working in the county.
Although the settlement has not been finalized, Ogg says the county began implementing PR bonds “in earnest” on January 1, 2018.
“On that date, there were 18,890 open cases in Harris County’s sixteen misdemeanor courts. At the close of last week, there were 29,947 open cases, a 59 percent increase.” Ogg continued, “Given the thousands of misdemeanor cases my Administration has diverted pre-charge since January 1, 2017, the reason for the exponential increase in the county court dockets is clear.”
“Simply put, people are not showing up to court,” wrote Ogg.
Although Ogg says at times her office requests bond forfeiture for as many as 30 defendants at a court setting, it is “not uncommon” for none to have bonds forfeited or revoked.
Others testifying against the consent decree included representatives from the Houston Police Officers’ Union, the Texas Attorney General, and Crime Stoppers of Houston, as well as County Commissioner Steve Radack and Kevin Pennell for the Professional Bondsmen of Harris County.
Pennell defended the historic role of bondsmen in compelling defendants to appear in court.
Plaintiff attorney Neal Manne dismissed what he called scare stories, and noted that proceedings were part of a lawsuit, “not a community forum.”
Manne said the data demonstrating a 59 percent increase in open cases was based on an “arbitrary” time frame, but any documented rise would be because arrestees were no longer being “coerced” to plead guilty.
He also decried the role of “for-profit” bondsmen.
Along with other proponents of the consent decree, Manne also referred to a 2016 University of Pennsylvania study that found Harris County misdemeanor arrestees detained pre-trial were more likely to commit crimes in the future. The study claimed that pretrial detention caused 1,600 more felonies and 2,400 more misdemeanors in the county between 2008 and 2013.
Therefore, supporters of the consent decree argue these new policies will make the community safer.
Although a few states have moved to end cash bail, some former supporters have backtracked in response to the practical effects. New Jersey Assemblyman Bob Andrzejczak (D) called his state’s reformed policy “an absolute disaster,” and now the state’s legislature is considering a repeal.
Most of the Democrat presidential candidates support eliminating the cash bail system, although Kamala Harris, a former district attorney and California Attorney General, supports reforming rather than abolishing the system.
Judge Rosenthal has already given preliminary approval to the consent decree and is expected to announce final approval at any time, but she could alter some of the specifics. And with the change in leadership at the county level, there is no longer a defendant to appeal any ruling from the District Court judge.
Bail bond reformers also plan to expand similar rules to felony cases, and the ACLU has filed a lawsuit against Galveston County that includes felony bail procedures.
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Alex Guajardo
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Holly Hansen
Holly Hansen is a freelance writer living in Cypress, Texas. Her former column, “All In Perspective” ran in The Georgetown Advocate, Jarrell Star Ledger, and The Hill Country News, and she has contributed to a variety of Texas digital media outlets. She graduated summa cum laude from the University of Central Florida with a degree in History, and in addition to writing about politics and policy, also writes about faith and culture.
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Home Basketball NBA Awards Predictions, “Post All-Star” Update
NBA Awards Predictions, “Post All-Star” Update
By Mathias Eftedal February 21, 2018, 10:11 pm March 7, 2018
We’re done with the All-Star activities and as fun as the NBA All-Star game was this year, the rest of the regular season will be even more entertaining. Teams are jockeying for playoff positions or to simply qualify for them.
The Golden State Warriors are winning the NBA title again, but the NBA Regular Season awards are still up for grabs. With the exception of Most Improved Player, which will surely go to 1st time All-Star Victor Oladipo. Some favorites have emerged in the other categories, but a lot could happen in the last 21-27 games.
Can Anyone Make James Harden the MVP Runner-Up Yet Again?
James Harden has made a solid case for being the MVP for a third time in four seasons. Both of the previous times, he has come up just short, but it’s starting to look like the third time’s the charm. But the season isn’t over yet, so there is a possibility that someone else could once again make Daryl Morey salty and knock James Harden down from 1st place.
It’s not a huge possibility though, as most of the pre-season favorites have faltered. My own pre-season pick Kawhi Leonard has barely played, while Kevin Durant and Steph Curry will steal each others votes. Russell Westbrook has taken a step back statistically with better teammates and Kyrie Irving’s Boston are on a downward trajectory.
That leaves us with two candidates. Giannis Antetokounmpo and LeBron James. This is reflected in the MVP odds. James Harden is the clear favorite at 1/4, while LeBron and Giannis are 7/2 and 9/1 respectively.
LeBron has been a monster ever since right before the trade deadline when the Cavs traded away half their team. If he keeps up his current pace, he’s gonna win the MVP. The last 4 games he has averaged 30PPG, 13APG, 9,5RPG on 55% shooting in 4 tough wins. Right up until Christmas, LeBron was gaining steam as an MVP candidate and he might do it again.
Giannis was the favorite for MVP after the 1st week of action in the NBA this season, but along with his Milwaukee Bucks, he dropped off a bit. The Bucks are now 32-25 however and with a little run of wins, people might start to pay attention. The Greek Freak is sporting similar numbers to LeBron except with fewer assists, but with more rebounds.
Still, this is James Harden’s award to lose. He’s gonna get some sympathy votes rolling over from last year and the Rockets currently have the best record in the NBA. Chris Paul won’t get nearly as much credit as he deserves for that, but Harden does deserve the MVP if he keeps this up.
Prediction: James Harden
Did Donovan Mitchell’s NBA Dunk Contest Win Help Him?
I admit it. I got a little carried away when I wrote about the two Rookie of the Year contenders possibly duking it out at the Rising Stars game. It did write a whole lot more about their ROTY candidacies though, so if you want something more in-depth about that, check out this link.
Mitchell might not have given much effort to win the Rising Stars challenge, but he came prepared for the Dunk Contest. His dunks were impressive, showing off his freaky athleticism, but it was his showmanship that probably won him the contest. Donovan Mitchell is a star and now, the rest of the league will have to #TakeNote.
He might be the favorite to become Rookie of the Year right now and while I’m hopeful, I still think Ben Simmons ultimately wins it.
The Philadelphia 76ers are on a 5 game win streak and that might become even longer. No NBA teams have a schedule easier than the 76ers. Seriously, just look at it. 17 out of 27 games against lottery teams. No more games against the Warriors, Rockets, Spurs, OKC, Celtics or the Raptors! I’m expecting home court advantage in the playoffs before it’s all set and done.
Prediction: Ben Simmons (not a reverse jinx.. no Sir)
Will Anyone Emerge Out of The Crowded Defensive Player of the Year Race?
Who even is the favorite right now? When The Ringer had their staff pick their Defensive Player of the Year, 6 different names were chosen. Only teammates Kevin Durant and Draymond Green got 2 votes. Joel Embiid, Al Horford, Rudy Gobert and Paul George are all credible winners as well. So who’s gonna come out on top?
It’s easy to pick a 76ers player again considering their schedule. Embiid is a force, on both ends and he plays on the team with the 3rd best defensive rating. Make that the best defensive rating whenever Embiid plays. Check out this chart from about a month ago. The 76ers are the top ranked defense with Embiid on the floor, 25th ranked when he’s off it. It’s not really all that surprising if you watch a 76ers game. He’s a 7’2 giant with long arms who moves like a wing. If he doesn’t win the award this year, he surely will in the future.
Paul George has been a beast on defense, as evidenced when he dominated the Warriors with 6 steals only 2 weeks ago. OKC have had a severe drop-off defensively since Andre Roberson went down with an injury though. Roberson might have been the DPOY in his own right, had he been healthy all year.
Horford plays on the best defensive team in the league, but in a team littered with good to great defenders, so that might not say as much. Rudy Gobert would normally be favored in a year where Kawhi Leonard has been out with injury, but Gobert was hit with the injury bug himself. If he plays the rest of the games this season, he’ll end up at 56. Ish. 56? I don’t think that’s enough to win Defensive Player of the Year.
Then there’s the two pen pals in Golden State, Draymond and Durant. They both have reasons to think they are the best defensive players in the league. Draymond won the award last season and still has a shot even though he has regressed a bit. As for Kevin Durant, you can read Jonathan Tjarks piece on his candidacy here. I think the fact that the Warriors are better defensively without him needs to be highlighted though. That narrative early on in the season ruined Kawhi’s candidacy last season.
I think The Process is going to be the story going forward in the NBA. Both the 76ers finally realizing their true potential after years of tanking and “The Process” Joel Embiid’s first award, with many more to come.
Prediction: Joel Embiid
6th Man of the Year
Prediction: Lou Williams
That wasn’t so hard, was it?
When Will Brad Stevens Become Coach of the Year?
The whole season it has looked like Brad Stevens had this award locked up. Even after seeing his big summer acquisition Gordon Hayward go down with season ending(?) injury in the very first game, Stevens’ Celtics exploded out of the gate. 16 straight wins after their opening two losses made the Celtics the favorites out East and Stevens the favorite for Coach of the Year.
But now, it’s all eyes north. (Technically south in this article)
Dwane Casey’s Toronto Raptors are on top of the Eastern Conference now and they likely stay there for the end of the season. While the Celtics are 10-9 the last 19 games, the Raptors are surging, thanks to a more fast paced and free flowing style. DeMar DeRozan is draining 3’s, the team has gone from 30th to 10th in assists per game and using their whole rotation allows them to stay fresh. Raptors GM Masai Ujiri has done a great job again assembling this roster, and could be Executive of the Year again. He deserves even more credit for sticking by Casey who has been close to fired a couple of times.
It’s so refreshing to see a coach who is not stuck in his ways and is ready to evolve with the times. Especially up north…
Prediction: Dwane Casey
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the desire paths
August 2018: Newcastle Gateshead Edinburgh
For the second year running I’m not planning to be in Edinburgh during the festivals. It’s bittersweet; I love Edinburgh and I love Edinburgh (in a different way) during the festivals, but the thought of being ready to either take a show to Edinburgh or even just visit so soon after we made Inherited Cities (and The Desire Paths and The Journeys) is impossible.
We do have a summer project, of course – it’s already up and running. We’ve co-curated Self Build Utopias with Northern Stage and the Experimental Architecture Group for the Great Exhibition of the North. We made THE DESIRE PATHS as our part of it:
The map of hopes and dreams is being incorporated into a group performance installation that already features the beautiful work of Hannah Fox’s SHACKLANDS, 154 Collective’s CITIES IN THE SKY, Fabric Lenny’s DOODLETOPIAS, and EAG and Culture Lab’s HERE BE MONSTERS.
This week and next Sonia Hughes & Lisa Mattocks are in the installation with the lovely conversation piece, WHAT DO WE WANT? WHEN DO WE WANT IT? making plans and designing placards with the public.
Unfolding Theatre are re-imagining their BUILDING PALACES (16 – 19 August), and Northern Stage’s Young Company’s bring WHERE WE STAND to Utopia 29 August – 2 September.
So my August trips will be to Newcastle to see those artists’ work and other stuff in the Great Exhibition. Please do come see us if you are in or passing Newcastle/Gateshead. We’re open 10am-6pm Tuesday – Sunday and there is always something to see. You can follow the Great Exhibition’s Arts and Innovation trails to find us, or simply go straight to Northern Stage.
However, if I was going to be in Edinburgh during the Fringe, these are the shows that I would be making a bee line for:
Footprint Theatre’s SIGNALS (Pleasance). Exciting young Sheffield company making a show about interstellar contact? Obviously right up my street. I’m really looking forward to seeing this on tour.
STATUS (Summerhall) by my good friend and Third Angel collaborator Chris Thorpe and the brilliant Rachel Chavkin. From what Chris has told me, this sounds like it is as smart, fascinating, challenging and funny as their last show Confirmation – but this time with added electric guitar. If you’re planning to see this – book early.
ADVENTURERS WANTED: REBELLION (Sweet Novotel) – they’re just doing 100 hours this summer, not 250 like last year (slackers). What I love about this project is how they have reclaimed Role Playing Games as story telling. If you’re not in Edinburgh to see them live, you can always catch the live stream or follow them on Twitter.
Live Art Bistro bring their Leeds brand of genre-busting, convention-defying performance programming to the Fringe for an unmissable one day, two venue festival, ALL THESE THINGS (Zoo Southside) on 15 August. Drop in a few times, or stay the whole night – this should be brilliant.
PRICKS (Pleasance) by Jade Byrne in association with LittleMighty sounds great:
I’m a big fan of Michael Pinchbeck’s work, and he has two pieces on at the Fringe this year: A FORTUNATE MAN (Summerhall) and SIT WITH US FOR A MOMENT AND REMEMBER (Zoo)
My brilliant Leeds Beckett colleagues are in the Richard Demarco archive in Summerhall 14 - 16 August. Oliver Bray, one of my favourite stage performers, is presenting URSONATE POST TRUTH, a re-performance of Kurt Schwitters’ seminal piece of sound poetry, Ursonate, and Teresa Brayshaw’s Cinage brilliant group are performing TALKIN ‘BOUT MY GENERATION which I saw an excellent early version of in Leeds.
I’ve heard great things about Molly Taylor’s work, and so would be checking out EXTINGUISHED THINGS (Summerhall) if I could.
Volker Gerling’s PORTRAITS IN MOTION is back at Summerhall – one of my absolute favourites a couple of years ago, massively recommended.
Breach Theatre’s new one, IT’S TRUE, IT’S TRUE, IT’S TRUE (Underbelly) looks great.
I loved 2 Destination Language’s Near Gone, so would definitely be seeing FALLEN FRUIT (Summerhall).
Paul O’Donnell’s Bon Jovi musical WE’VE GOT EACH OTHER (Pleasance) sounds like it could be amazing.
And Kieran Hurley & Gary McNair’s SQUARE GO (Roundabout @ Summerhall) is a must see. In fact, Summerhall, as ever, is full of “must sees”. Sh!t Theatre’s DOLLYWOULD, Valentijn Dhaenens’ UNSUNG… just camp out there for a few days.
Posted by Alex Kelly
Labels: the desire paths
That was 2016 - an anniversary year
Partus. Photo by Helena Fletcher.
This was meant to be our New Year’s Eve post, but for various reasons, that didn’t happen. But here we are.
Usually for New Year’s Eve we post something from the previous year - a bit of text created for a show, an out-take or an extra, as it were. But 2016 has been so busy, it feels more appropriate to look at it all - or most of it, anyway - and say, well, that was a good year. An annual review, if you like. An annual review of a year that was a two decade review.
We started the year opening PARTUS with a week’s run at The Crucible Studio in Sheffield. We tried out baby and breast-feeding friendly audiences for the first time, which were a great success, over 30 and 50 babies at the two daytime performances.
Sheffield blogger Katie Hilton wrote:
“Partus is about births. Funny ones (and it really was funny in places), scary ones, multiple ones, sad ones, young ones, and exhausting ones but all of them real ones. It was born out of a research project and included real life experiences of mums, dads, doulas and midwives. I have no idea how you would begin to decide which stories to highlight out of the hundreds they heard but Third Angel chose well, I think, setting the balance of humour and emotion.”
And other audience members wrote:
Brilliant – best theatre I’ve been to. • I chose to come to the baby-friendly performance which added an amazing atmosphere • Wonderful. A must see. • Thank You, Thank You, Thank You! I love that you talk about women’s stories, that they matter.
Alongside making the show, and feeding in to it, we ran The Young Mums Project, in collaboration with the brilliant, and important, Young Women’s Housing Project.
Partus is on tour in spring 2017 - check the tour calendar for dates. If you’d like to book Partus for the autumn, do get in touch.
2016 was our 21st Anniversary year - which actually kicked off in October 2015 with a revival of PRESUMPTION, performed by Lucy Ellinson and Chris Thorpe - who toured the show from 2007 to 2010 (I wrote about that here.) In February 2016, we revisited Presumption again, with performances at Northern Stage, this time with Rachael performing the show for the first time since 2006. (And I wrote about that, here.)
Rachael in Presumption 2016. Photo by Martin Fuller.
It was a joy to return to again. We had made a deliberate decision that reviving Presumption for the 20th Anniversary would be a remount of the existing show (we have thoughts about re-interpretations of a couple of other early shows), and in rehearsal we talked quite a lot about a couple of lines that we wouldn’t have written now. We did make one or two tweaks, and of course some later sections are partly improvised. But this is a couple who live together but who appear not to have mobile phones… in the light of that, Megan Vaughan wrote a really interesting response to the piece, here.
Shortly after that, we were back out on the road with 6OO PEOPLE, which we were lucky enough to tour to a host of brilliant Festivals: Castaway in Goole, Pulse in Ipswich, The NRTS Showcase in Falmouth, the Edinburgh Fringe with Northern Stage at Summerhall, Greenbelt Festival, Festival of the Mind and Off The Shelf in Sheffield (in a Spiegeltent and the Crucible Studio, respectively), Warrington Contemporary Arts Festival and the Sidewalks Festival in Beirut. Amidst a tour of brilliant gigs, the first night at Sidewalks stands out as one of my favourite performances ever.
Audiences have been brilliant for 600 People, and I’ve had some fascinating conversations after performances. We also had the show Peer Reviewed, by research scientist Dr Nathan Adams, who said that the show’s explanation of CRISPR (*happy science geek klaxon*) was “almost perfect” - and reminded me of the precise detail needed to improve it. He concluded: “Overall a wonderful piece of work.”
In May we brought two well toured pieces back to Sheffield for the beautiful WROUGHT Festival. We had two lovely gigs of CAPE WRATH:
And it was great to bring INSPIRATION EXCHANGE home to Sheffield (as it was created for a workshop at The Showroom in 2010) for presentations at both Wrought and at the first Hillsfest in the summer.
Inspiration Exchange. Photo by Joseph Priestly.
Throughout the year we’ve been running TAMS - the Third Angel Mentoring Scheme - through which it has been a pleasure to support:
Yolanda Mercy
Luca Rutherford
Chella Quint
Joely Fielding
John R. Wilkinson
Louisa Claughton
Charlotte Blackburn & Tim Norwood
and Pauline Mayers.
Through Theatre Delicatessen’s great Departure Point scheme we also got to support:
Tribe Arts
Buglight Theatre
My Big Phat Writers Group
The Travelling Shadow Theatre
We also got to start or carry on mentoring conversations with:
Action Hero
Flickbook Theatre
Daniel Bye
Paige Stillwell
Ellie Harrison
Holly Gallagher
and Hannah Nicklin, who was on tour with EQUATIONS FOR A MOVING BODY, made in collaboration with me, including a three week run at the Edinburgh Fringe - again with Northern Stage at Summerhall. There were loads of really lovely responses to the show online and in person (it made the BBC sports pages), but this from Rosie Curtis was probably my favourite.
Hannah Nicklin’s Equations For A Moving Body. Photo by Niall Coffey.
We’ve had a long relationship with brilliant theatre maker and friend of the company, Michael Pinchbeck, and this year that was more apparent than ever. Rachael was a guest performer in Michael’s show The man who flew into space from his apartment at Wrought, and then also worked as a dramaturg, with Ollie Smith, on Michael’s new show Concerto (touring this year).
Concerto by Michael Pinchbeck.
Back in Sheffield in October we realised the long held ambition to make the full version of THE DESIRE PATHS. Originally conceived for Northern Stage’s Make. Do. And Mend. event in Edinburgh 2013, The Desire Paths was created in full for Sheffield’s Year of Making, October 2016.
The Desire Paths, Sheffield. Photo by Joseph Priestly.
We chalked out the city centre street map from the Sheffield A-Z, and asked the public to rename the streets - not after some past event, but to commemorate a hope or a dream for the future: personal or political, serious or lighthearted. We heard so many stories, of first jobs, chance meetings, lost loves. A moving, brilliant day, and a chance to work with some regular collaborators, and some who we’ve been wanting to work with for a long time.
We’re currently compiling and editing all of the documentation of the day, and that will all go up on this site soon. In the meantime, if you’d like us to come and remake The Desire Paths for your town or city, do get in touch.
In the autumn we also launched FUTURE MAKERS, our new free workshops for 14-19 years olds, introducing them to routes into the theatre and film industries. The project carries on in school holidays in 2017 - all the information is here.
Our good friends at mala voadora invited us back to Porto for the second incarnation of Uma Famillia Inglessa. When we first met Jorge in in Lisbon in 2004, we were making the show that would become THE LAD LIT PROJECT. So if felt fitting to revisit and revive that show, to present with them, in their amazing space in Porto.
I’ve been performing The Lad Lit Project for 12 years now (though this performance ended a three year hiatus). I was worried that it would feel dated, but in the end, the only section that needed an ‘update’ is the Friends Map, which is much more complicated than it was in 2005, due to social media and being a parent.
In November 2016, to close our anniversary year, Leeds Beckett University and Compass Festival of Live Art hosted the symposium WHERE FROM HERE: 21 Years of Third Angel, convened by Alex, Michael Pinchbeck, Oliver Bray and Hannah Nicklin. Third Angel artists were joined by other friends, colleagues, artists and academics from around the country, who gave performances, papers and presentations either directly about our work, or their own work which explores a similar territory, or, most often, a combination of the two.
The (free) event was sold out, and it was great to present it in collaboration with long time partners Compass and Leeds Beckett University. We’ll be putting documentation of many of the talks and performances up online in the near future. As well as ‘our own’ symposium this year, we also presented papers about our work at the TaPRA Interim event, Training To Give Evidence, at Northumbria University (‘Telling Other People’s Stories’), and at the Staging Loss symposium at the University of Lincoln (‘Cheers Grandad!: Third Angel’s The Lad Lit Project and Cape Wrath as Acts of Remembrance’).
Where From Here was also the first public screening of THE SMALL CELEBRATIONS, a series of five short films - one by us, the other four commissioned from artists who we have mentored in some capacity over the last few years. After a second public screening at The Showroom/Workstation in Sheffield (where Third Angel was born in 1995), we put all of the films on line. You can watch them all for free:
Action Hero: THE THIRD ANGEL ANNEXE:
Hannah Butterfield: OENOMEL
Massive Owl: THE DOLPHIN HOTEL
RashDash: THERE WERE GODDESSES
And from us, POPCORN, made with long-time collaborator Christopher Hall:
Mixed in with all that there was of course more education work, and research and development on five or more other shows and projects. About some of which, more soon.
So that was 2016. Thanks for joining us for some of it.
Labels: 600 people, cape wrath, equations for a moving body, future makers, inspiration exchange, mentoring, partus, presumption, the desire paths, the lad lit project, the small celebrations, where from here
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Duties & Responsibilities of a Company Director
You’re establishing your business and you’ve chosen your preferred structure, a company.
You have an existing company and you’re appointing a new director.
You’re an employee and you’ve been invited to become a director of a company.
Each scenario requires an understanding of the responsibilities of a director. This ensures the director makes an informed choice to become a director. It also allows the director and the company to access the right tools to protect the director.
Can I be a director?
Different types of companies have different requirements for the number of directors. An Australian proprietary limited company must appoint at least one director. The director must be a natural person, at least 18 years old, and not been disqualified from becoming a director of an Australian company. Directors do not need to reside in Australia, however at least one of a company’s directors must. A director must consent to their appointment.
I am a director. What responsibilities do I have?
Exercise care and diligence. A director must act with the degree of care and diligence that a reasonable person in the role might be expected to show.
Act in good faith. A director must act in good faith, in the best interests of the company and for a proper purpose.
Not to improperly use position or information. A director must not make improper use of his or her position or information acquired through that position, to gain an advantage for themselves or any other person, or to cause detriment to the company.
Avoid a conflict of interest and to disclose material personal interests. A director must disclose all personal interests that he or she may have in relation to the affairs of the company. Sometimes, it may be enough that the director discloses a conflict and refrain from voting on the issues. Other times, the director may need to resign.
Not to engage in insolvent trading. A director has a duty to prevent the company from trading while insolvent and prevent the company from trading in a way that will make it insolvent.
To keep proper accounts and records. A director must ensure that the company prepares the required reports, such as financial or directors’. Companies of different sizes have different reporting obligations – specialist accounting advice is usually necessary.
I am a director. Am I on the hook for the company?
Yes, in certain circumstances a director is personally liable for breaches of the law by the company. This is known as ‘vicarious liability’. This includes a breach of competition and consumer laws, occupational health and safety laws, and environmental protection laws.
What are the consequences of breaching directors’ duties?
Different breaches have different penalties. Some are criminal offences (such as dishonest or reckless breach of duty of good faith or improper use of information or position). Others attract civil sanctions, some may result in a disqualification from being a director in the future. However, often the consequence is commercial – that is, a decision is not made in the best interests of the company to the detriment of the company, or the company suffers reputational or market damage due to poor decision making or practices.
I am a director. What protections are there for me?
The director should:
know his or her obligations and the touch points – obtain proper advice regarding the legislation governing the company’s activities and the obligations imposed on the company and the directors by that legislation; and
know the company – ensure that the company has proper procedures and that they are followed to minimise the risk of the company breaching laws and the director becoming vicariously liable.
I am a company. What protections can I offer our director?
The company can:
maintain directors’ and officers’ insurance. This insurance will cover a director for liabilities and legal costs in claims made by third parties for wrongful acts. This insurance will not cover a director’s fraud or dishonesty, or any act or omission that causes a claim; and
enter into a Deed of Indemnity with the director to indemnify the director for any loss suffered by the director in acting as a director. A company can obtain directors’ and officers’ insurance to cover the company’s liability under the Deed of Indemnity.
Being a director of a company gives a person opportunity but carries with it duties and responsibilities. A prudent director should ensure he or she is aware of its responsibilities and how to best protect itself from potential personal liability. A company should ensure it has the appropriate structure and knowhow to best protect its directors.
If you or your organisation require any assistance with business structures or directors’ duties, please contact Alice Hoban or Michael Huelin from WGC Lawyers on (07) 4046 1172 for specific advice.
1A Water Street Cairns
cairns@wgc.com.au
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Home Available Light Cinema: Time Bandits
Available Light Cinema: Time Bandits
In this fantastic voyage through time and space from Terry Gilliam (Brazil, Monty Python, 12 Monkeys), a boy named Kevin (Craig Warnock) escapes his gadget-obsessed parents to join a band of time-traveling dwarfs. Armed with a map stolen from the Supreme Being (Ralph Richardson), they plunder treasure from Napoleon (Ian Holm) and Agamemnon (Sean Connery)--but the Evil Genius (David Warner) is watching their every move. Featuring a darkly playful script by Gilliam and his Monty Python cohort Michael Palin (who also appears in the film), TIME BANDITS is at once a giddy fairy tale, a revisionist history lesson, and a satire of technology gone awry.
Dir. Terry Gilliam 1981, United Kingdom 110 min.
Family passes available/ all other tickets are $9 per person!
CommonSense Media says: 9+ "Fun fantasy has a bit of bite."
Parents need to know that kids will see a good deal of cartoonish violence in Time Bandits (a man's arm is ripped off during an arm wrestling match, a hungry dwarf captures a rat and eats it, severed feet hang from the ceiling of an ogre's ship, etc.). Two characters are blown up at the end, but they aren't depicted as very nice people. Also there are scary creatures, and depictions of a supreme being and his nemesis that some will find objectionable. The bandits are pursued by the Supreme Being, i.e., God, who seems to have created the world in a slapdash manner. They also encounter the Evil Genius, or Devil. Throughout, the movie advocates reading and an appreciation for both the factual and mythological aspects of human history. Its dwarf protagonists also address themes of tolerance.
Event Type Film & Movie Showings
General Listings - Print Tourism Listings - Print Tourism Listings - YG Online Whitehorse
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White Tail Falls shares ethereal new single ‘Disintegrate’
Enigmatic London-based artist White Tail Falls have shared their new single, ‘Disintegrate’, as well as announcing the release of their debut album, Age Of Entitlement, out March 6th via Physical Education Records.
Opening to a beautifully ambient blend of strings, guitar and subtle piano, the track builds through verses highlighting expressive and poignant lyricism before opening into a resonant mix of intoxicating harmonies and ethereal synth flourishes, propelled by sparse drum machine beats.
“I was thinking about bloodlines and procreation and how we think we've got power over it when the decision is ultimately out of our hands,” explains Irwin. “Over-thinking about the family I'm from and the family I hadn't started and the implications of having kids or not and remembering the love I do have in my life, to go skipping into the apocalypse with. It became a bit of an existential love song.”
‘Disintegrate’ is the second track to be taken from White Tail Falls’ newly announced debut album, Age Of Entitlement, following their debut single ‘Give It Up, Son’, released in October. Climactic and pleading, the track addresses the viewpoint of observers who seek to save someone from the consequences of their actions.
Throughout the rest of the album, White Tail Falls explores an array of evocative lyrical themes, set against a euphoric and immersive sonic palette touching on influences from the worlds of folk, mellow pop and alternative music. Crafting intoxicatingly beautiful soundscapes laden with equally self-reflective and observant lyricism, the writing was informed by the volatility of mental health, dreams becoming spirit-crushing grinds, and an eventual pivot to positivity.
Opening with the fragile, exquisite, life-affirming ‘Body Weight’, a broken angel’s swoon of a song about the threads that life hangs from and how easily they snap, the album moves through the spirit-stirring R&B of ‘Devout’ – inspired by Hippocrates’ idea of the ‘four humors’ – the richly textured title track, led by raw, folk-esque guitar, to the stirring ‘Rome’s Already Fallen’, an exploration of the pivotal moment in a relationship when tempers blow, bruises bloom, things can’t be unsaid and there’s no going back to how things were, set against a swelling blend of orchestra and piano interspersed with auto-tuned vocal accents.
Following the album’s release, White Tail Falls will be embarking on an eight-date UK headline tour throughout March and April, starting in Newcastle on March 19th and including shows in Glasgow, Brighton, Birmingham and Manchester, as well as a date at London’s St Pancras Old Church on March 26th. Tickets are on sale now, and full dates can be found below.
19/03 – Newcastle, Head Of Steam (tickets here)
20/03 – Glasgow, The Poetry Club (tickets here)
21/03 – Leeds, Royal Park Cellars (tickets here)
26/03 – London, St Pancras Old Church (tickets here)
27/03 – Brighton, The Hope & Ruin (tickets here)
01/04 – Birmingham, Hare & Hounds (tickets here)
02/04 – Manchester, Night People (tickets here)
03/04 – Nottingham, The Bodega (tickets here)
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Sergio Tacchini Essentials T Shirt Black
Sergio Tacchini Sergio Tacchini Essentials T Shirt Black
This is the Sergio Tacchini Essentials T Shirt in Black. The Essentials T Shirt is a simple piece and one that should be a staple of every wardrobe. The ribbed crew neck adds to the comfort of the t-shirt and gives it a nice fit on the body.
The Sergio Tacchini logo has been embroidered on the left hand side of the T-Shirt.
Made from 100% Cotton for a soft feel on the body.
80s Casual Classics stocks a vast range of Sergio Tacchini, stretching across not just it's hit track tops and track bottoms, but also the Ski inspired modern classics produced for it's more Winter season items.
Sergio Tacchini's heritage line made a return on 80s Casual Classics in Jan 2006. It's first re-release was the legendary Dallas track top and the matching Dallas polo shirt.
Upon his retirement, tennis champion Sergio Tacchini embellished in the Sportswear industry. By the 80s it became a casual brand that, by now, will bring back fond memories of terrace casuals, break dancers, John McEnroe, The Business and Danny Dyer. Beyond that was Sergio's movement into broader sporting industries such as Golf and Skiing to name a couple - becoming a great competitor to the likes of Ellesse.
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You never know what they’re thinking
BY LIAM HORAN, Galway Advertiser, Tue, Dec 30, 2014
SLI NUA CAREERS
A story was relayed to me by a colleague who had, and still has, a close friendship with a highly-successful businessman. It concerned the manner in which this businessman would form opinions on the suitability of candidates during interviews.
These candidates would be applying for senior executive positions within this man’s organisation and would be paid the extravagant salaries. The stakes were high. A candidate would have had several rounds of interviews and screenings before getting to the point of sitting down in front of the ‘main man’ himself.
The candidate would be ushered into the business man’s office and asked to sit in one of two chairs. One of the chairs was deliberately wonky and practically impossible to sit steadily on. If the candidate chose this chair, realised his or her predicament, stood up and chose the other chair, this would be deemed as an obvious example of confidence and viewed favourably by the businessman.
Alternatively, a candidate who stayed in the chair and wobbled their way through the interview would be deemed as potentially weak and lacking in self-belief.
Phase two of this quirky interview process involved lunch. Again the candidate was unaware of the manner in which his or her actions were being interpreted. This was relayed to me as being the ‘soup test’. The businessman would observe the candidate when the soup arrived. If he or she were to use salt or pepper without tasting the soup first, this was deemed as being impetuous and could mean the candidate was the type of person who would rush to judgement.
These assessment examples may seem extreme and unfair but the businessman in question would justify his actions on a number of levels. Firstly, the candidate had already gone through a rigorous interview process and this was now more of a personality analysis approach, albeit one without any scientific grounding. Secondly, the businessman was offering a massive salary and felt justified in his actions on that basis.
Believe it or not, we can all take something from this story.
Job interviews don’t just start and end with you answering questions. Interviewers look at other criteria as well. Ultimately, it’s a people-driven dynamic.
If you make a personal connection with the interviewer it can help a lot. Think about your body language during the interview.
Do you look relaxed when sitting at interview? Do you present well? Do you exude confidence in your own ability?
Do you smile and make eye contact? Do you shake their hands when you walk into the room? Do you thank them for inviting you for interview?
Do you sell yourself enough? Do you demonstrate that you are passionate about wanting the job?
All these small elements count in the overall assessment that someone else makes on your interview performance. You’re on trial from the moment you enter the building to the moment you walk, cycle or drive out the gate. Preparing along these lines will help your chances of success.
The interview environment is a funny place at the best of times. We can all help ourselves if we continue to think about our overall presentation.
It’s not just about questions. Avoid wobbly chairs, taste your soup first and the best of luck.
Sli Nua Careers (www.SliNuaCareers.com ) have offices in Galway (Patricia Maloney, 091 528883 ), Mayo (Ballinrobe ), Dublin, Limerick, Donegal, Athlone and Tullamore. Their services include CV preparation, interview training, job-searching strategies and career direction. For more details, visit www.slinuacareers.com/galway
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renseignements AES
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GENERAL TERMS AND DELIVERY CONDITIONS Of: AES Auto Electric Service AES B.V., hereinafter to be referred to as: supplier Article 1 Definitions 1.In the present general terms and conditions, the following terms are used in the sense given below, unless explicitly indicated otherwise. Supplier: AES Auto Electric Service B.V. Buyer: the supplier's opposite party, acting in the course of a business or in the course of a profession. Agreement: the agreement between the supplier and buyer. Article 2 General 1.The stipulations of the present terms and conditions shall apply to each and every offer and agreement between supplier and a buyer, to which supplier has declared the present terms and conditions applicable, insofar as parties have not explicitly deviated from the present terms and conditions in writing. 2.The present terms and conditions shall also apply to all agreements with supplier, the execution of which calls for the services of third parties. 3.The buyer's general terms and conditions shall only apply if parties have explicitly agreed in writing that said general terms and conditions shall apply to the present agreement with the exclusion of the present general terms and conditions. In that event possibly still conflicting stipulations in the supplier's and buyer's general terms and conditions shall only apply between parties, if and in so far that they are a part of supplier's general terms and conditions. 4.If one or more stipulations in the present general terms and conditions should be null and void or declared null and void, then the other stipulations of the present general terms and conditions shall remain fully applicable. The case ensuing, supplier and buyer shall enter into negotiations to agree upon new stipulations replacing the null and void conditions, or, as the case may be, the conditions declared null and void, whereby the purpose and the meaning of the original conditions shall be heeded as far as possible. Article 3 Offers and Tenders 1.All offers shall be free of obligation unless the offer contains an acceptance term. 2.The offers made by supplier shall be free of obligation; they shall be valid for a period of thirty days, unless indicated otherwise. Supplier shall only be bound by the offers if the acceptance thereof is confirmed in writing by the buyer within thirty days. 3.Terms of delivery given in supplier's offers shall only be tentative and exceeding these terms of delivery shall not entitle buyer to dissolution or damages, unless explicitly agreed upon otherwise. 4.The prices given in above-mentioned offers and tenders are mentioned in Euro’s and shall be exclusive of VAT and other government levies, as well as of shipment costs and possible packaging and administration costs, unless explicitly stated otherwise. 5.If the acceptance deviates (on secondary items) from the offer given, supplier shall not be bound by it. The agreement shall in such event not be concluded in accordance with said deviating acceptance, unless supplier indicates otherwise. 6.A compound quotation shall not oblige supplier to execute part of the assignment against a corresponding part of the given quotation. 7.Offers and tenders shall not apply automatically to repeat orders. Article 4 Execution of the Agreement 1.Supplier shall execute the agreement to the best of his knowledge and ability. 2.If and in so far required for the proper execution of the agreement, supplier shall have the right to have certain work done by third parties. 3.The buyer shall see to it that supplier shall be provided in due time with all data which supplier has said to be necessary or which the buyer must in all reasonableness understand to be necessary to the execution of the agreement. If supplier has not been provided in due time with the data necessary to the execution of the agreement, supplier shall have the right to suspend the execution of the agreement and / or to charge the buyer for the additional costs resulting from the delay at the generally accepted rates. 4.Supplier shall not be liable for damage of whatever nature caused by the fact that supplier worked on the basis of incorrect and / or incomplete data provided by the buyer, unless supplier should have been aware of said incorrectness or incompleteness. 5.If parties have agreed that the agreement will be executed in stages, supplier can suspend the execution of the parts belonging to a following stage until the buyer has approved in writing the results of the stage prior to it. 6.If supplier or third parties engaged by supplier within the scope of the assignment do work at buyer's site or at a site designated by buyer, buyer shall provide the employees having to work there free of charge with all facilities desired in all reasonableness by said employees. 7.Buyer shall safeguard supplier against possible claims filed by third parties who may sustain damage attributable to buyer in connection with the execution of the agreement. Article 5 Delivery 1.Delivery shall be made ex works/store/warehouse of supplier. 2.If delivery is made on the basis of divergent conditions as prelimenary agreed, the conditions valid at the moment the agreement is concluded, shall apply. 3.Buyer shall be held to take delivery of the goods the moment that supplier delivers them to him or has them delivered, or the moment at which the goods are put at buyer's disposal under the agreement. 4.If the buyer refuses to take delivery or fails to give the information or instructions necessary to the delivery, supplier shall be entitled to store the goods at buyer's risk and expense. 5.If the goods are serviced, supplier shall be entitled to charge possible service charges. Said service charges shall then be invoiced separately. 6.If, in the framework of the execution of the agreement, supplier requires data to be given by the buyer, the term of delivery shall commence after the buyer has provided supplier with said data 7.If supplier has given a term of delivery, it shall only be indicative. A given term of delivery shall therefore never constitute a term to be observed on penalty of forfeiture of rights. If a term is exceeded, the buyer must give supplier notice of default in writing. 8.Supplier shall be entitled to deliver the goods in parts, unless such is deviated from in writing in the agreement or if the partial delivery does not represent an independent value. Supplier shall be entitled to invoice the thus delivered goods separately. 9.If execution of the agreement in stages has been agreed upon, supplier can suspend the execution of the parts belonging to a following stage until the buyer has approved in writing the results of the stage prior to it. Article 6 Samples and Models 1.If a sample or model has been given to buyer, then the assumption is that such has been given by way of indication only, unless parties agree explicitly that the product to be delivered shall correspond with it. Article 7 Inspection & Complaints 1.Buyer shall be held to examine the delivered goods (to have the delivered goods inspected) the moment of delivery (handing over), but in any case in as short a period of time as possible. In this respect, buyer must examine whether the quality and the quantity of the delivered goods comply with what was agreed upon, or at least whether they meet the requirements applying to said goods in normal (business) transactions. 2.Possible visible shortcomings must be communicated in writing to supplier within three days following delivery. Non-visible shortcomings must be reported within three weeks following their detection but no later than 24 months following delivery. 3.If in accordance with the previous paragraph, buyer files his complaint in due time, he shall still be held to take delivery and effect payment of the goods purchased. If buyer wishes to return defect goods, he shall do so following prior consent in writing from supplier. Article 8 Remuneration, Price and Costs 1.If supplier and buyer have agreed upon an administered price, supplier shall nevertheless be entitled to increase said price. 2.Supplier shall be allowed among others, to charge on price increases if changes in price have occurred between the moment the offer was made and the moment of execution of the agreement with respect to, e.g., exchange rates, salaries and wages, raw material, semi-finished products or packaging material. 3.The prices given by supplier are mentioned in Euro’s and shall be exclusive of VAT and other government levies, as well as of the other expenses to be possibly made within the scope of the agreement, including shipment and administration costs, unless stated otherwise. Article 9 Changes to the agreement 1.If it is shown during the execution of the agreement that the work to be done needs to be changed and / or supplemented in order to ensure its proper execution, parties shall adapt the agreement accordingly in due time and in mutual consultations. 2.If parties agree that the agreement needs to be changed and / or supplemented, this decision may influence the time of completion of the execution. Supplier shall inform the buyer thereof as soon as possible. 3.Should the change and / or supplement to the agreement have any financial and / or qualitative consequences, supplier shall inform buyer thereof in advance. 4.If a fixed rate has been agreed upon then supplier shall indicate the degree to which the change or supplement to the agreement will result in an increase of said fixed rate. 5.Contrary to the conditions governing this matter, supplier shall not be able to charge additional costs if the change or supplement is the result of circumstances attributable to supplier. Article 10 Payment 1.Payment must be made within the term as mentioned on the invoice from the date of invoice, in a way to be indicated by supplier and in the currency in which the goods were invoiced. Contestation of the amount of the invoices shall not suspend the fulfilment of the payment obligation 2.If buyer fails to fulfil his payment obligation within the term as mentioned on the invoice, then buyer shall be in default by operation of law. In that event, buyer shall owe an interest of 1% per month, unless the statutory interest rate is higher, in which case the statutory interest rate shall apply. The interest on the amount due and payable shall be calculated as from the day the buyer is in default until the moment he has paid the amount in full. 3.Supplier's claims against buyer shall become due on demand in the event that buyer is wound up, attached, declared bankrupt, or if a suspension of payment is granted. 4.Supplier shall be entitled to have the payments made by the buyer go first of all to reduce the costs, subsequently to reduce the interest still due and finally to reduce the principal sum and the current interest. Supplier shall have the right, without this leading supplier to be in default, to refuse an offer for payment, if the buyer designates a different sequence of attribution. Supplier shall be entitled to refuse full payment of the principal sum, if said payment does not include the interest still due, the current interest and the costs. 5.Supplier has the possibility to charge a credit limitation surcharge of 2%. This surcharge will not be charged if payment is made within 7 days from the date of invoice. Article 11 Retention of Title 1.All goods delivered by supplier, possibly also including designs, sketches, drawings, films, software, (electronic) files, etc., shall remain supplier's property until buyer has fulfilled all of his obligations under all agreements concluded with supplier. 2.Buyer shall not be authorised to pledge or encumber in any way the goods falling under the retention of title. 3.If third parties seize goods delivered subject to retention of title or wish to establish or assert a right to them, buyer shall be held to inform supplier thereof as soon as can reasonably expected. 4.The buyer shall undertake to insure the goods delivered subject to retention of title and to keep them insured against damage caused by fire, explosion and water as well as against theft and make this insurance policy available for inspection on first demand. 5.Goods delivered by supplier falling under the retention of title by virtue of the stipulations under 1. of the present article, may only be sold on within the framework of normal business activities and must never be used as instrument of payment. 6.In the event that supplier wishes to exercise his ownership rights mentioned in the present article, buyer shall give supplier or third parties to be appointed by supplier, now for then, unconditional and irrevocable permission to access all sites and locations where supplier's property might be found and to take these goods back. Article 12 Guarantee 1.Supplier shall guarantee that the goods to be delivered shall meet the usual requirements and standards that can be set for and made upon them and that they shall be free of any defect whatsoever. 2.The guarantee mentioned under 1 shall equally apply if the goods to be delivered are destined for use abroad and if the buyer explicitly informed supplier of this use in writing the moment the agreement was entered into. 3.The guarantee mentioned under 1 shall be valid for a period of 24 months following delivery (max 100.000km). 4.If the good to be delivered does not comply with said guarantee, supplier shall, at his discretion, replace or see to the repair of the good, within a reasonable period of time following receipt thereof, or, if the good cannot be returned in reason, following notification of the defect by the buyer. In the event the good is replaced, the buyer shall already now undertake to return the replaced good to supplier and to transfer ownership to supplier. 5.The guarantee mentioned for this purpose shall not apply when the defect originated as the result of injudicious or improper use or when the buyer or third parties have introduced changes or tried to introduce changes to the good without supplier's consent in writing or if they have used it for purposes for which the good was not intended. 6.If the guarantee given by supplier concerns a good produced by a third party, the guarantee shall be limited to the guarantee given by the producer of the good. Article 13 Collection Charges 1.If the buyer fails to fulfil his obligations (in due time) or defaults on them, then all reasonable costs incurred to have all extrajudicial costs and debts paid shall be borne by the buyer. If the buyer remains in default of payment within the set time period, he forfeits a immediately payable fine of 15% on the amount due at that moment. This with a minimum of € 250. 2.If supplier demonstrates that he has incurred higher expenses, which were necessary in reason, said expenses shall also qualify for reimbursement. 3.The reasonable judicial and execution costs possibly incurred shall equally be borne by buyer. 4. Buyer shall owe interest over the made collection charges. Article 14 Suspension and Dissolution 1.Supplier shall be authorised to suspend the fulfilment of the obligations under the agreement or to dissolve the agreement, in the event that: -buyer does not fulfil or does not fully fulfil his obligations resulting from the agreement -after the agreement has been concluded, supplier learns of circumstances giving good ground to fear that the buyer will not fulfil his obligations. If good ground exists to fear that the buyer will only partially or improperly fulfil his obligations, suspension shall only be allowed in so far the shortcoming justifies such action. -buyer was asked to furnish security to guarantee the fulfilment of his obligations resulting from the agreement when the contract was concluded and that this security is not provided or insufficient. As soon as security is furnished, the authorisation to suspend shall lapse, unless said fulfilment has been unreasonably delayed because of it. 2.Supplier shall furthermore be authorised to dissolve the agreement (have the agreement dissolved) if circumstances arise of such a nature that fulfilment of the obligations becomes impossible or can no longer be demanded in accordance with the requirements of reasonableness and fairness, or if other circumstances arise of such a nature that the unaltered maintenance of the agreement can no longer be demanded in all reasonableness. 3.If the agreement is dissolved, the supplier's claims against the buyer shall be forthwith due and payable. If supplier suspends fulfilment of his obligations, he shall retain his rights under the law and the agreement. 4.Supplier shall always retain the right to claim damages. Article 15 Return of Goods Put at Buyer's Disposal 1.If supplier has put goods at buyer's disposal during and in connection with the execution of the agreement, buyer shall be held to return the delivered goods within 14 days in their original state, free of defects and in their entirety. If buyer fails to fulfil this obligation, all resulting costs shall be at buyer's expense. 2.If, for any reason whatsoever, buyer still remains in default to fulfil the obligation mentioned under 1. after being warned to do so, supplier shall be entitled to recover the resulting damage and costs, including replacement costs, from buyer. Article 16 Liability 1.If the goods delivered by supplier are defective, supplier's liability vis à vis the buyer shall be limited to the arrangements made in the present terms and conditions under "Guarantee". 2.Supplier shall never be liable for indirect damage, including consequential damage, loss of profit, lost savings and damage due to business stagnation. 3: Supplier shall never be liable for the costs of assembling or disassembling of the claimed units. Article 17 Transfer of Risk 1.The risk of loss of, or damage to the products being the subject of the agreement, shall be transferred to buyer the moment said products are judicially and/or actually delivered to buyer and therefore fall into the power of buyer or of third parties to be appointed by buyer. Article 18 Force Majeure 1.Parties shall not be held to fulfil any of their obligations if they are hindered to do so due to a circumstance through no fault of their own and which cannot be attributed to them by virtue of law, a legal action or generally accepted practice. 2.In addition to the provisions of the law and the judge-made law in this respect, force majeure shall in the present general terms and conditions furthermore be understood to be any external circumstance, be it envisaged or not, on which supplier cannot have any influence but which prevents supplier from fulfilling his obligations. Industrial action at supplier's company shall also be understood to be a circumstance of force majeure. 3.Supplier shall also be entitled to invoke force majeure if the circumstance rendering (further) fulfilment of the obligation(s) impossible, commences after the point in time on which supplier should have fulfilled his obligation. 4.Throughout the duration of the circumstances of force majeure, parties shall be entitled to suspend the fulfilment of their obligations. If this period lasts for more than two months, either of the parties shall be entitled to dissolve the agreement without any obligation to pay the opposite party damages. 5.Insofar supplier has already partially fulfilled his obligations resulting from the agreement at the moment the circumstance of force majeure commenced or shall be able to fulfil them and insofar separate value can be attributed to the part already fulfilled or still to be fulfilled respectively, supplier shall be entitled to invoice the part already fulfilled or still to be fulfilled respectively. The buyer shall be held to pay this invoice as if it were a separate agreement. Article 19 Safeguarding 1.The buyer shall safeguard supplier against claims filed by third parties concerning intellectual property rights on material or data provided by the buyer, which shall be used for and during the execution of the agreement. 2.If the buyer provides supplier with information carriers, electronic files or software etc., the former shall guarantee that said information carriers, electronic files or software are free of viruses and defects. Article 20 Intellectual Property and Copyrights 1.Without prejudice to the other stipulations of the present general terms and conditions, supplier shall reserve the rights and authorities to which supplier is entitled under the Copyright Act. 2.The buyer shall not be allowed to introduce changes to the goods and material provided, unless the nature of the delivered goods and material dictates otherwise or if agreed upon otherwise in writing. 3.The designs, sketches, drawings, films, software and other material or (electronic) files, possibly produced by the supplier within the framework of the agreement, shall remain supplier's property, irrespective of the fact whether they have been handed over to the buyer or to third parties, unless agreed upon otherwise in writing. 4.All documents, such as designs, sketches, drawings, films, software, (electronic) files, etc., provided by supplier, shall be destined to be used by buyer exclusively and must not be reproduced, made public or brought to the notice of third parties by buyer without prior consent from supplier, unless the nature of the documents provided dictates otherwise. 5.Supplier shall reserve the right to use the knowledge gained due to the execution of the work for other purposes, in so far no confidential information shall be brought to the notice of third parties when doing so. Article 21 Secrecy 1.Both parties shall be bound to secrecy of all confidential information they have received within the scope of their agreement from each other or from another source. Information shall be considered to be confidential if the other party has indicated so or if the confidential character results from the nature of the information. 2.If a statutory provision or a judicial decision compels supplier to convey confidential information to third parties designated by law or by the court and supplier cannot for that purpose invoke a legal right to refuse to give evidence or such a right acknowledged or allowed by the competent court, supplier shall not be held to pay damages or compensation and the opposite party shall not be entitled to demand the dissolution of the agreement on the ground of any damage resulting from said circumstance. Article 22 Non-employment of the opposite party's personnel 1.Throughout the duration of the agreement and for one year following termination thereof, buyer shall not in any way, hire or employ in any other way, be it directly or indirectly, staff of supplier or of enterprises whom supplier has engaged to execute the present agreement and who are (were) involved in the execution of the agreement, without prior proper businesslike consultation on this matter, all this in accordance with the requirements of reasonableness and fairness. Article 23 Disputes 1.The Court in supplier's place of business shall have exclusive jurisdiction to hear actions, unless the District Court is the competent Court. Supplier shall nevertheless be entitled to submit the dispute to the Court deemed competent by the law. 2.Parties shall only refer the matter to the court if they have done their utmost to solve the dispute in mutual consultations. Article 24 Applicable Law 1.Dutch law shall apply to each and every agreement between supplier and the buyer. The Vienna Sales Convention shall be explicitly excluded. Article 25 Changes to the Terms and Conditions, interpretation and their location 1.The present terms and conditions have been filed at the office of the Chamber of Commerce in Hilversum (NL) under number 32032035. 2.The Dutch version of these general terms and conditions prevails at all time in case of disputes with regard to the interpretation and purpose of these terms and conditions. 3.The most recently filed version shall always apply, or, as the case may be, the version valid at the time the agreement was concluded.
AES Auto Electric Service B.V., Vlotbrugweg 17, 1332 AG Almere, Nederland +++ telefoon +31 (0)35 · 656 3444 +++ telefax +31 (0)36 · 532 4737
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Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979), a recap (part 9 of 10)
by Dr. Winston O'Boogie · November 29, 2019
Welcome back to my latest patron-only recap! The full recap is available to those who pledge just $1/month on the Agony Booth’s Patreon page.
Previously: Decker tried to put the moves on the Ilia-probe, while Spock stole a spacesuit and tried to put the mind-meld moves on V’Ger. Sadly, those living machines aren’t quite the easy lay that either man expected.
Spock wakes up in Sickbay. Dr. Chapel is scanning his brain, and McCoy tells Kirk that the “power pouring through that mind-meld” may have caused Spock neurological trauma. As if to affirm the diagnosis, Spock starts quietly chuckling. Kirk is stunned to see Spock LQTM and Spock address him as “Jim” and says he saw V’Ger’s planet, which was full of living machines, and V’Ger has knowledge that “spans this universe”, but despite its “pure logic”, V’Ger is “barren… cold” and has “no beauty”.
Spock starts to fall unconscious and Kirk shakes him and McCoy tries to stop Kirk, so Kirk jerks away and yells, “Bones!” and goes right back to shaking Spock. (The director’s cut edits out the shaking, which is probably for the best, from a character as well as a medical standpoint.) Spock comes around and clasps Kirk’s hand and says that “this simple feeling… is beyond V’Ger’s comprehension.” So V’Ger can’t understand a bromance? Or a slash-fic pairing? Kirk tenderly holds Spock’s hand and they nod to each other to show they both know what’s up.
“Oh, Spock, I’ve been waiting years for you to ask me! Yes, yes, yes!”
Spock says that V’Ger is asking questions like “Is this all that I am?” and “Is there nothing more?” and getting no answers. This discussion is interrupted when Kirk gets hailed from the bridge, and Uhura and Sulu (the latter getting a rare opportunity to sit in the captain’s chair) tell him that Starfleet is making visual contact with V’Ger, and the cloud is dissipating, and the vessel is dropping to sub-warp speed, and they’re three minutes from Earth orbit. Kirk says he’ll be right there, then tells Chapel he needs Spock on the bridge, so she dopes him up with “Dalaphaline”. Can I get a hit of some of that too?
Then Kirk weirdly stands in Sickbay for a while, marveling at a “machine planet sending a machine to Earth, looking for its Creator!” Thanks for the plot recap, Jimbo, but I think we’re all up to speed here. Then Kirk calls back up to the bridge to ask where Decker is. He’s in Engineering with the Ilia-probe, which never becomes important, and now we get a shot of one of the psychedelic V’Ger exterior sets with Earth in the background.
And in the director’s cut, Kirk’s oddball plot recap and everything following has been removed, and in its place we get one of the more notable changes of this version, where we finally see the entirety of the V’Ger spacecraft as it enters Earth orbit. It’s all CGI and similar to concept art created at the time of the original production, though there’s some debate as to whether or not the filmmakers ever seriously considered including a shot like this in the movie. Apparently, some of them felt that not being able to see the entire ship would add to the sense of V’Ger’s unbelievably massive scale, but I’d say that with all the vagueness already present in the theatrical cut, anything that helps give a more concrete view of what’s going on is probably for the best.
At last, the whooziwhatsis in all its glory.
Kirk and Spock and McCoy are on the bridge as Uhura announces that Starfleet is sending “tactical” on V’Ger’s position, and it’s… a wireframe illustration of a blinking light over Earth, and it’s yet another useless diagram that reveals nothing.
Starfleet really needs to step up its infographic game.
Uhura says V’Ger is sending out a signal, and then Decker and the Ilia-probe show up on the bridge. Ilia-probe helpfully intones that “V’Ger signals the Creator.” And everyone stares at the screen for a while. After a random shot of the Enterprise still hovering in front of the Great Sphincter, we cut to Spock trying to decipher the signal. He says it’s a “simple binary code” being transmitted by radio, and Kirk is taken aback at the mention of radio. Yeah, seriously, who even listens to terrestrial anymore?
Decker somehow knows that “V’Ger expects an answer.” Kirk replies, “I don’t know the question!” Ilia-probe says that the Creator hasn’t responded (after all of twenty seconds), and I guess V’Ger is none too happy about this, because it sends out a big destructive ball of plasma that heads into Earth orbit.
Continue to Page 10 →
Tags: Captain KirkChief DiFalcoDeForest KelleyDr. ChapelDr. McCoyGeorge TakeiIliaJames Doohanjames t. kirkKirkklingonsLeonard NimoyMarcy LaffertyMr. SpockMulti-Part RecapsNurse ChapelparamountPersis KhambattaRobert WiseScottySpockStar TrekStar Trek: The Motion PictureStephen CollinsSuluThe Star Trek MoviesUhurauss enterpriseV'GerWalter KoenigWill DeckerWilliam Shatner
Multi-Part Article: Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979), a recap
Next story Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979), a recap (part 10 of 10)
Previous story Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979), a recap (part 8 of 10)
Hit or Bomb? December 2019 movie predictions
Hit or Bomb? November 2019 movie predictions
I’ll take the last act of TMP over any other Trek movie (barring the subsequent trilogy). Took a long time to get here, but it manages some tension.
PhysUnknown
Were there releases between the theatrical and the Director’s Cut? I’ve seen that scene with Scotty and the lass, as well as Spock’s tears/resolution, but not many of the other changes (especially not the CGI).
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19.com Scottish Open Starts Monday
Tuesday 3 Dec 2019 10:26AM
Snooker fans might be focused on the Betway UK Championship this week, but don’t forget the 19.com Scottish Open starts on Monday at the Emirates Arena in Glasgow.
Tickets are still available and start at just £10 – for details CLICK HERE
Home favourite John Higgins, defending champion Mark Allen, Ronnie O’Sullivan, Neil Robertson, Mark Selby, Shaun Murphy and World Champion Judd Trump are among the star names competing at the Home Nations event, which runs from December 9 to 15.
Click here for the draw
In all there will 128 players battling for the Stephen Hendry Trophy.
Selby Claims Glasgow Glory
Selby Secures Glasgow Lead
Lisowski Holds Off Allen To Make Final
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icvalledeilaghiicvalledeilaghi
icvalledeilaghi » Classical » Robert W. Mann: Silberglöckchen Zauberflöten; Quincunx
Robert W. Mann: Silberglöckchen Zauberflöten; Quincunx album mp3
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Robert W. Mann: Silberglöckchen Zauberflöten; Quincunx
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Silberglöckechen Zauberflöte for piccolo/flute and celesta. Robert W. Mann: Silberglöckchen Zauberflöten; Quincunx.
Robert Nathaniel Mann (July 19, 1920 – January 1, 2018) was a violinist, composer, conductor, and founding member of the Juilliard String Quartet, as well as a faculty member at the Manhattan School of Music. Mann, the first violinist at Juilliard, served on the school's string quartet for over fifty years until his retirement in 1997. Mann played and performed on many instruments, including those made by Antonio Stradivari and John Young
Auberge (a French word meaning "inn") is the eleventh studio album by British singer-songwriter Chris Rea, released in 1991. The album, as well as the title song, was mostly notable for the association of the Caterham Super Seven that he owned, in which he called it the "Blue Seven". That car appeared on the album cover, illustrated in oil by renowned motoring artist Alan Fearnley.
Photographic Regional Atlas of Bone Disease: A Guide to Pathologic and Normal Variation in the Human Skeleton. Regional Atlas of Bone Disease: A Guide to Pathologic and Normal Variation in the Human Skeleton by. Mann, Sean P. Murphy.
Robert W. Mann, former Railroad Consultant. Studied History at Oklahoma Station University.
Albums related to Robert W. Mann: Silberglöckchen Zauberflöten; Quincunx:
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Jonathan Mann - All Over Again mp3 download
Sara Mann - The End of You mp3 download
Robert Mann / Stephen Hough - Beethoven: The Complete Sonatas for Violin & Piano mp3 download
KD Mann - Ishq mp3 download
Carl Mann - Crazy Fool mp3 download
B.E. Mann - Best of B.E. Mann, Vol. 2 mp3 download
Herbie Mann - Suite mp3 download
Manfred Mann - Original Manfred Mann mp3 download
Various Artists - So Ein Mann mp3 download
Light music
Discussed albums
Jackslacks - Lucky Man
The Rolling Stones - 12 X 5
The The - Soul Mining
Roxy Music - Roxy Music
My Chemical Romance - The Black Parade
Jefferson Airplane - Surrealistic Pillow
Queen - Jazz
Attila - Attila
Niall Horan - Flicker
Bob Dylan / The Band - The Basement Tapes
©2016-2019 Popular Music Albums. icvalledeilaghi.it
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13th MAN FOUNDATION
A COMMITMENT TO EXCELLENCE FOR ALL STUDENTS
© 2019 13th Man Foundation.
The 13th Man Foundation is not affiliated with UBC and is a separate and independent legal entity that sets its own fundraising priorities.
The Top 100 UBC Football Players: 75 - 71
Len Catling (Sr. Manager, Communications and Media Relations)
Every weekday until UBC football's home opener on September 9th, GoThunderbirds.ca will release five former T-Birds on the list of 'The Top 100 UBC Football Players'. Follow along on the UBC football page of GoThunderbirds.ca. Support the 2017 version of the UBC Thunderbirds football program by purchasing your season tickets today at GoThunderbirds.ca/tickets.
Who is the greatest Thunderbird to ever play football for UBC? A lofty question and one that is hard to quantify. Comparing football players through generations is challenging. The game of football has seen countless changes in rules and equipment, since the first team of what were then called Canadian rugby-football players formed at Point Grey in 1923.
These obstacles did not deter UBC defensive coordinator Pat Tracey, however. Tracey, a self-confessed football stats and history 'geek', wanted to compile an easy to digest ranking list for fans and alumni alike. He went to work devising a ranking system to create a final compilation: 'The Top 100 UBC Football Players'.
Here are numbers 75-71. Let the debate begin.
75) KC Steele (LB):
Hardy Cup Finalist ('81,'83)
Vanier Cup Champion ('82)
Led UBC in QB-Sacks ('83)
Canada West All-Star ('82,'83,'84)
74) Blake Smelser (QB):
Led Canada West in Passing Attempts in a Game (51) vs. Regina, Sept. 27th ('03)
Led UBC in Passing ('02,'03,'04,'05,'06)
Led UBC in Total Offensive Yards ('02,'03,'04,'05,'06)
73) Tom Dixon (K/P):
Hardy Cup Finalist ('83)
Led Canada West in Punting ('83,'84)
Led Canada West in Scoring ('83,'84)
Led Canada West in Kickoff's ('84)
Canada West All-Star ('83)
CFL ('85-'88 EDM, OTT)
Holds School Records for Highest Kickoff Average in a Game (78.4), Longest Kickoff in a Season (90), Highest Punting Average in a Career (43.5), Highest Rookie Punting Average (44.6)
Set Records for Highest Punting average in a Game (51.9) and Most Punting Yards in a Game (554)
72) Brad Yamaoka (RB/P/KR):
Led UBC in in Rushing ('91,'92,'93), including a Career High 201-yards vs. Manitoba, Sept. 28th, 1991.
Led UBC in Rushing Touch Downs ('91,'92),
Led Canada West in Rushing TD's and Points Scored in a Game (24 vs. Manitoba, Oct. 16th, 1993)
CFL ('97-'03 BC, WPG)
Holds School Records for Most Carries in a Season (222) and Most Carries in a Career (758)
71) Sandy Beveridge (DB):
Can-West in Interception ('00,'02)
Led Can-West in Punt Returns ('02)
Led UBC in Kickoff Returns ('00)
All-Canadian ('02)
CFL ('03-'10 HAM)
Holds School Record for Longest Interception Return (106 yards vs. Saskatchewan, Sept. 30th, 2000)
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10 people shot outside Pennsylvania nightclub
Several people -- likely three -- opened fire just before 2 a.m. outside the Déjà Vu nightclub.
Thursday, June 20th 2019, 1:41 PM EDT
(CNN) -- Ten people were injured in a shooting early Thursday outside a lounge in the eastern Pennsylvania city of Allentown, and police are looking for what they believe are several shooters, authorities said.
Several people -- likely three -- opened fire just before 2 a.m. outside the Déjà Vu nightclub, Lehigh County District Attorney James Martin and Allentown Police Chief Tony Alsleben said in a joint statement.
"This does not appear to be an indiscriminate shooting; it appears that at least one individual was a target," the joint statement reads, without saying who the target was.
No further details were immediately available about who fired the shots, Allentown police Capt. Bill Lake said. No arrests in the case have been reported.
All 10 people who were shot are expected to survive, Lake said.
Shots were fired from a white Cadillac Escalade SUV around the time the establishment was closing, the nightclub's owner, Osiris Guzman, told CNN.
Witnesses described a chaotic scene, saying several people ran as the shots were fired, CNN affiliate KYW reported.
The lounge owner first noticed the Escalade at 1:51 a.m., he told CNN. Guzman saw it on surveillance video, pulling up to the club. It drove around and made U-turns on the block twice, he said.
Gunfire rang out around 1:55 a.m., as most patrons were leaving the lounge, he said.
The vehicle had no license plate, he said.
Witnesses and some shooting victims have been uncooperative with the police investigation, Martin and Alsleben said.
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Ho Bee Land Secures Singapore’s First Green Loan
Singapore property investment and development company, Ho Bee Land Limited (Ho Bee), in conjunction with HSBC, today announced the completion of a £200 million bridged Green Loan – the first of its kind in Singapore.
Earlier this year, Ho Bee appointed HSBC as its green structuring advisor in the commissioning and development of its Green Finance Framework. The Framework is part of Ho Bee’s goal of enhancing its business into a sustainable one. The framework has been successfully certified by third-party sustainability certifier, Sustainalytics1.
The first transaction executed under the Framework is the bridging loan, provided by HSBC, as part of the acquisition of Ropemaker Place (a 21-storey commercial development in London with LEED Platinum pre-certified, BREEAM Excellent rating).
Whilst Singapore has seen a string of green bonds and sustainability-linked loans over 2017 and 20182, this deal is the first green loan in Singapore and also the first that aligns to the LMA/APLMA Green Loan Principles. (See Editor Notes for details on difference between sustainability-linked loans and green loans and the APLMA Green Principles).
Mr Chua Thian Poh, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Ho Bee said, “As part of our Green Finance Framework, we are pleased to secure Singapore's first green loan through HSBC. We have always pride ourselves in developing and investing into quality properties and now, we are able to tap onto green financing to fund projects that are both environmentally friendly and sustainable.”
“With this inaugural green loan, it affirms Ho Bee’s position as a forward-looking company and its strong commitment towards building a sustainable business model,” Mr Chua added.
Commenting on the experience of developing the Ho Bee Green Finance Framework, Alan Turner, Head of Commercial Banking, HSBC Singapore, said: “HSBC is proud to have partnered with Ho Bee in this inaugural green loan in Singapore. By setting up its Green Finance Framework, Ho Bee has been able to realise its green vision and ambitions as well as provide it with the necessary infrastructure to tap green financing in future. Moreover, the deal is good news for Singapore’s green financing credentials as it sets the template for other corporates seeking similar green transactions in the future.”
Speaking on the deal: Trisha Taneja, Product Manager for Sustainable Finance Solutions at Sustainalytics said: “We are excited to see HSBC and Ho Bee Land complete the work on Singapore’s first Green loan, which is aligned with the APLMA green loan principles. The HSBC loan to Ho Bee Land expands the green financing label to debt instruments other than green bonds, and is a significant step to scale the flow of capital to environmentally impactful projects. Sustainalytics is honored to have been selected as the second opinion provider to assess the quality of loan.”
HSBC as Ho Bee’s green structuring advisor
HSBC was appointed by Ho Bee to act as its green structuring advisor, which involves HSBC:
(1) Developing and preparing the Green Finance Framework with Ho Bee which sets out and articulates how Ho Bee – as a company - will be compliant with the Green Loan Principles and the Green Bond Principles when it enters into fund raising activities for specific green projects in future (see below for details on the Green Loan Principles)
(2) Partnering with green assurance provider, Sustainalytics (whom Ho Bee commissioned), to test the veracity/credibility of Ho Bee’s Green Finance Framework
(3) With the establishment of the Ho Bee Land Green Finance Framework, and the completion of Second Party Opinion assessment by Sustainalytics, the loan for the acquisition of Ropemaker Place by Ho Bee Land becomes an eligible transaction under the Ho Bee Land Green Finance Framework.
Green Loan Principles
To comply with the Green Loan Principles, companies could develop and publically publish a “Framework” setting out their intention to raise Green Loans, how these loans will meet the four pillars of the Green Loan Principles, and how they will obtain an external review to verify that their actions match their claims.
On 21 March 2018, the Loan Market Association and the Asia Pacific Loan Market Association jointly issued the Green Loan Principles to formalise what constitutes a green loan. These set out 4 key criteria that a Green Loan should adopt being:
Use of Proceeds: that the loan is exclusively used for green projects and that the environmental benefits, which will be assessed and reported, are articulated in the finance documents
Project Selection and Evaluation: The development of a company framework stating the borrower’s environmental sustainability objectives; the process to determine how projects fit within the eligible categories set; and how they will identify and manage environmental risks associated with proposed projects that they wish to seek green funding. Borrowers are also encouraged to disclose any green standards or certifications
Management of Proceeds: The proceeds of a green loan should be credited to a dedicated account otherwise tracked by the borrower in an appropriate manner; and establish internal governance process for the tracking of funds towards designated green projects
Reporting: Borrowers will articulate how they maintain in real-time information on the use of proceeds for all green projects under finance including the amounts allocated and their expected impact.
Actions of Singapore government in supporting sustainable financing
Green Bond Grant scheme launched in May 2017. This grant will offset 100% of the costs of obtaining an external review for qualifying issuances, up to S$100,000 per issuance.
Singapore government aims to have at least 80% of the nation’s buildings be green by 2030. To encourage this, the Building and Construction Authority (BCA) has initiatives like the $50 million BCA Green Mark Incentive Scheme for Existing Buildings to encourage energy efficiency3.
As of Jan 2018, the BCA says Singapore has “greened” more than a third of its total gross floor area (at 100 million m2 GFA) translating to over 3,300 buildings4.
In addition to BCA’s incentive schemes, there’s also a building-rating tool that encourages such improvements as sun-shading exteriors, water-efficient fittings, computer modelling of energy flows and carbon emissions, and highly efficient air conditioning and ventilation systems.
At the Singapore 2018 Budget, it was announced that all facilities producing 25,000 tonnes or more of greenhouse gas emissions in a year will have to pay a carbon tax from 2020. The carbon tax will initially be $5 per tonne of greenhouse gas emissions from 2019 to 20235.
The difference between a green loan and sustainability-linked loans
Sustainability-linked loans can be used for everyday corporate purposes, are linked to broader corporate performance against Environmental as well as Social and Governance criteria. The corporate’s ability to meet its pre-set out ESG criteria will have an impact on the interest that is applied to the loan
With green loans, the proceeds can only fund specific projects with positive environmental benefits as defined in the Green Loan Principles. The types of projects include shifting to renewable energy, pollution prevention and control, sustainable natural resources management, biodiversity conservation, climate change adaptation and green buildings.
1 https://www.sustainalytics.com/about-us/
2 Examples of Singapore green deals
CDL Properties’ S$100 million green bond (http://www.cdl.com.sg/images/press_release/20170406.pdf)
Manulife’s S$500 million green bond (https://www.manulife.com.hk/wps/wcm/connect/pws/599b56e9-3468-46ba-98ef-176c9be15901/Manulife+First+Life+Insurer+to+Offer+a+Green+Bond+-+ENGLISH.pdf?MOD=AJPERES&CACHEID=599b56e9-3468-46ba-98ef-176c9be15901)
DBS’s US$500 million green bond https://www.dbs.com/newsroom/DBS_Group_Holdings_Ltds_first_green_bond_offering_attracts_strong_interest
Olam International secured a US$500 million sustainability-linked green loan. (http://olamgroup.com/news/olam-international-secures-asias-first-sustainability-linked-club-loan-facility-us500-0-million/#sthash.6FuVQj8F.dpbs)
3 https://www.bca.gov.sg/Newsroom/pr01092014_3GBM.html
4 https://www.bca.gov.sg/Publications/BuildGreen/others/BGreen_12_2017.pdf
5 https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/singapore-budget-2018-carbon-tax-of-5-per-tonne-of-greenhouse-gas-emissions-to-be-levied
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HSBC Singapore to relocate its headquarters to MBFC
CEO Statement by Tony Cripps, Group General Manager and CEO of HSBC Singapore
I’m really pleased and excited to announce that HSBC Singapore will be relocating its head office to Marina Bay Financial Centre (MBFC) Tower 2, within the Central Business District, by April 2020 to accommodate the company’s rapid growth plans.
HSBC at Marina Bay Financial Centre
HSBC is one of the oldest banks in Singapore and we are committed to growing our presence here, so the move to MBFC is a real statement of our intentions. The decision to move to MBFC – a pre-eminent location – is a logical next step in our growth strategy and will enable us to further service current and future clients.
We will be investing substantially in this new workplace to create an environment that is conducive to collaboration; encourages innovation and an entrepreneurial mindset; and trigger new ways of working for our employees.
HSBC in Singapore will undergo a number of workplace and cultural changes that will transform the way our employees communicate, engage and work with each other. The new space will not only reflect our company goals but also focus on delivering quality service to all our customers.
HSBC will also have signage rights for the building and will occupy the top floors of the 50-storey building.
This announcement follows our March launch of HSBC Singapore’s three-year strategic plan which focuses on supporting our clients across eight strategic priorities:
Grow our domestic retail business
Scale up Singapore as an international wealth hub
Scale up our support of Small and Medium Enterprises
Invest in our digital capabilities
Capture international trade and investment flows with the rest of the world
Grow Singapore a wholesale hub for ASEAN
Capture the infrastructure and Belt and Road opportunities underway within ASEAN
Support our clients in their transition to sustainable business practices
More recently at HSBC’s global strategy update in June, Singapore was one of only eight markets amongst HSBC’s 66 countries that was classified as a ‘scale’ market into which Group investment will be channeled to support material growth.
As a scale market, Singapore is key to the Group’s growth plan. Our new premises will ensure our workplace, operations and technology can meet the requirements to carry out this business expansion, and reflect our ambitions in the market.
This is an exciting time for all of us at HSBC Singapore and our forthcoming move marks a huge milestone for the company, its employees and customers who will all benefit from the opportunities this expansion presents.
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ACH is a social enterprise working to resettle refugees through labour market and social integration.
#rethinkingrefugee
Our Board & Senior Staff
We are the go-to partner for employers looking to diversify workforce and address skills shortages.
Policy Advice & Research
EU & global projects
ACH provides safe, secure and comfortable housing for refugees and other vulnerable homeless people
All the latest from ACH
In 2014 we set up our training subsidiary, Himilo.
Providing a roof over somebody’s head is a vital first step in their journey away from homelessness and into independent living. ACH's primary aim is to house single vulnerable adults with support needs, and we specialise in supporting newly arrived refugees.
ACH provides a network of safe, high-quality and well-managed supported accommodation across Bristol, Birmingham and Wolverhampton, which enables tenants to overcome their difficulties, learn new skills and prepare for independent living.
We have an unparalleled service that is based on lived experience and cultural understanding of our clients. This cultural competence enables us to support their resettlement and integration needs by helping to develop key skills and build the social bridges that enable them to sustain tenancies and move on with their lives.
Our support teams help with:
Finance and benefits
Education, training and employment
Cultural integration and social inclusion
Legal and immigration assistance
Moving on - Council and social housing applications
A Week in the Life of an ACH Support & Integration Worker
Naomi, one of our Bristol Support & Integration Workers, recently wrote an article for The Guardian about her working week.
Mohammed's story
Mohammed is originally from Syria where he was forced to leave the country because of the war.
Originally from Sudan, Mohammed first moved to Bristol in January 2015. He had a friend who was also living in Bristol; however, when he did move here his friend left for London, leaving Mohammed feeling alone in a new city.
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25 Advertisements from Aviation's Early Years
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World’s safest airlines for 2017
Airlineratings.com names its best of the best.
AirlineRatings.com, the world’s only safety and product rating website, which was launched in June 2013, has announced its top twenty safest airlines and top ten safest low-cost airlines for 2017 from the 425 it monitors.
Top of the list for the fourth year is Australia’s Qantas, which has a fatality free record in the jet era – an extraordinary record. Making up the remainder of the top twenty in alphabetical order are: Air New Zealand, Alaska Airlines, All Nippon Airways, British Airways, Cathay Pacific Airways, Delta Air Lines, Etihad Airways, EVA Air, Finnair, Hawaiian Airlines, Japan Airlines, KLM, Lufthansa, Scandinavian Airline System, Singapore Airlines, Swiss, United Airlines, Virgin Atlantic and Virgin Australia.
In making its selections AirlineRatings.com takes into account numerous factors that include; audits from aviation’s governing bodies and lead associations; government audits; airline’s crash and serious incident record; profitability and fleet age.
AirlineRating.com’s editorial team, one of the world’s most awarded and experienced, also examined each airline’s fleet history and its track record of initiating new safety technology to arrive at its top 20 safest airlines.
The AirlineRatings.com top twenty have always been at the forefront of safety innovation and launching of new aircraft and these airlines have become a byword for excellence.
AirlineRatings.com editors also identified their top ten safest low-cost airlines.
These are in alphabetical order: Aer Lingus, Flybe, HK Express, Jetblue, Jetstar Australia, Jetstar Asia, Thomas Cook, Virgin America, Vueling and Westjet.
Unlike a number of low-cost carriers, these airlines have all passed the stringent International Air Transport Association Operational Safety Audit (IOSA) which has over 1000 audit items and have excellent safety records.
Suggested read: How we work out each airline’s safety rating
Of the 425 airlines surveyed, 148 have the top seven-star safety ranking but almost 50 have just three stars or less. There are 14 airlines with only one star and these airlines are from Afghanistan, Indonesia, Nepal and Surinam.
In selecting Qantas as the world’s safest airline for the fourth year running AirlineRatings.com editors noted that over its 96-year history the world’s oldest continuously operating airline has amassed an amazing record of firsts in operations and safety and is now accepted by the British Advertising Standards Association as the industry’s most experienced carrier.
The Australian airline has been a leader in; the development of the Future Air Navigation System; the Flight Data Recorder to monitor plane and later crew performance; automatic landings using Global Navigation Satellite System as well as precision approaches around mountains in cloud using RNP. Qantas was the lead airline with real-time monitoring of its engines across its fleet using satellite communications, which has enabled the airline to detect problems before they become a major safety issue.
Despite some high-profile accidents in 2016, the number of crashes has shown a steady and persistent decline over the past two decades.
Air crashes are big news but statistics from the Aviation Safety Network show that 2016 was the second safest year on record to take a flight.
The Netherlands-based ASN, which compiles a global accident database, looked at crashes worldwide of civil aircraft carrying at least 14 passengers and found there were 19 fatal airliner accidents involving 325 deaths. The network’s statistics include acts such as suicide, sabotage and hijackings that can be excluded from some analyses.
Although this was up from 16 accidents in 2015, it still made 2016 the second safest year ever by number of fatal accidents as well as in terms of fatalities.
By comparison, 560 people died in 2015, while the year of the lowest number of fatalities, 2013, recorded 29 accidents.
Eleven of the accidents and 288 deaths involved passenger flights but the ASN noted this translated to one fatal passenger flight per 3.2 million flights.
This means aviation is still by far the safest way to travel and provides a context for the widespread media coverage of high-profile crashes such as the LaMia tragedy in Colombia involving a Brazillian football team.
The ASN’s analysis also found the five-year average trend showed accidents occurring during approach and landing fell to their lowest point in 45 years.
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10 Of The Safest Airlines In 2017 | Never Ending Traveller September 28, 2017 at 11:38 am
[…] the fourth year in a row, Qantas has been ranked the safest airline in 2017 by Airlineratings.com. Qantas is continually setting the standard for safety and the company’s reputation is built […]
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[…] Courtesy : Airlinerating.com […]
These are the world's safest airlines for year 2017 December 13, 2017 at 11:02 pm
[…] Source: AirlineRatings.com […]
Airlines you definitely want to fly with in 2018 because they've nailed the safety thing - KarryOn January 4, 2018 at 7:25 am
[…] returned to the top 20 after being absent in 2017, as did Delta Air Lines and Scandinavian Airline System, while American Airlines and United dropped […]
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2019 still one of aviation's safest years despite 737 MAX, says Aviation Safety Network. #avgeeks #PaxEx… https://t.co/wMkvUtWGzi
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Home/District Celebrates School Board Recognition Month
District Celebrates School Board Recognition Month
Aldine Trustees are launching the next generation.
Superintendent Dr. LaTonya Goffney (center, back row) poses with Board Members Randy Bates, Steve Mead, Paul Shanklin, Rose Avalos, Dr. Kimberly Booker, Dr. Viola M. García, and Connie Esparza.
January is School Board Recognition Month in Texas. Please take the time to honor school board members for their untiring dedication to public education.
Superintendent Dr. LaTonya M. Goffney lauds the district’s Board Trustees for making the time to share their vision and voice. Their actions and decisions affect children’s lives.
“Trustees volunteer to do this tough job,” said Goffney. “They spend many hours and days out of the year working on behalf of the community. Trustees shoulder enormous responsibilities as they work to make our schools the best they can be.
“We proudly join educators and community members by recognizing these education advocates. Board Trustees have demonstrated their unfailing commitment to the success of all students.”
While educating children may not be rocket science, it is a complex, demanding responsibility: ensuring that schools are available, qualified teachers are in place, buildings are safe, and resources are provided. They commit to reading reports, learn the laws, understand the community’s needs, set thoughtful goals, and wisely handle the district’s financial resources. They immerse themselves in learning what they need to know to make good decisions that will provide for students, from the very youngest to the graduating senior. Trustees are public servants who generously work to benefit the most vulnerable members of each community.
Trustees serve as a vital link between community members and their schools.
The collaboration helps board members create the educational vision we want for our students. As such, the board formulates goals and defines results. It sets the course for an adequate and equitable educational program for all students.
According to the Texas Association of School Boards (TASB), there are 1,025 Texas school districts. Membership also includes regional education service centers and community colleges. TASB represents the largest group of publicly elected officials in the state. TASB members serve more than 5.4 million Texas students.
In Aldine ISD, seven individuals serve as school board trustees:
Randy Bates — Position 1
Paul Shanklin — Position 2
Rose Avalos — Position 3
Conception “Connie” Esparza —Position 4
Dr. Kimberly Booker — Position 6
Steve Mead — Position 5
Dr. Viola M. García — Position 7
Voters elect each board position to a four-year term. Board members are at large Trustees, meaning Trustees can live anywhere in the district and are elected by all the voters in the district.
School Boards Work Hard to Benefit Students — the Whole Community Benefits From Good Schools.
Aldine ISD Trustees are responsible and oversee:
Aldine ISD, the 9th largest school district in Texas
An annual budget of more than $647 million
More than 67,000 students
More than 9,000 employees
Nearly 90 facilities
Over the years, the Aldine ISD Board of Education has earned numerous honors, including being named a finalist for H-E-B’s 2013 Excellence in Education Award. The award recognizes school boards that demonstrate real leadership in the community they serve. In 2013, Region 4 ESC named Aldine the Outstanding School Board winner. Other honors include Region 4 Honor Board, the Texas Outstanding School Board honor, and the Magna Award from the American School Board Journal.
Through the Board’s leadership, Aldine ISD continually earns the state’s top financial rating under the Schools Financial Integrity Rating System of Texas (FIRST) and the Financial Allocation Study of Texas (FAST).
During the 2015-2016 school year, AISD earned recognition in two different case studies. Education First lauded AISD in its Districts Rising Briefs. The report highlights 10 districts across the nation working to raise student achievement and preparing students for college and career. In the case study, The Rewards of Perseverance, by Education Resource Strategies, AISD is highlighted for improving student outcomes and narrowing achievement gaps. The study tells the story of AISD’s deliberate, systemwide evolution in response to change.
Take Time to Thank Board Trustees
Take a moment to recognize your local trustees. Take a moment to honor the work they are doing to help your students blast off into the future. Please take a moment to say thank you for the work school board members are doing on your behalf. Join me in celebrating School Board Recognition Month throughout January.
Community members can voice their appreciation at the School Board Meeting on January 14. Campuses and students will show their appreciation throughout the month.
Contacting the School Board
Citizens are welcome to bring a topic or issue to the attention of the school board. There are two primary ways to do so:
Write to the school board
Public comment at school board meetings
Want to see the School Board in Action?
The AISD school board conducts meetings on the third Tuesday of each month in the Donaldson Administration Building (2520 W.W. Thorne Blvd., Houston 77073). The date only changes if there are conflicts with other important dates. The monthly board meeting begins at 7 p.m. The Trustees conduct all meetings in the Board Room.
By Leticia Fehling|2020-01-10T08:20:49-06:00January 6th, 2020|District|0 Comments
About the Author: Leticia Fehling
Director of Internal Communications
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Emotional Ndamukong Suh Leaves Lions-Cowboys Postgame Press Conference In Tears
Beanie Howell
Ndamukong Suh wipes tears from his eyes after the Lions lost at Dallas in Sunday's Wild Card playoff game. (Screengrab courtesy DetroitLions.com)
Ndamukong Suh, the Lions' rough and tough defensive tackle often depicted as mean and ruthless, wiped tears from his eyes as he exited a postgame press conference following Detroit's Wild Card loss at Dallas in the playoffs on Sunday.
Suh began the press conference by asking reporters to limit the scope of their questions to Sunday's game. Presumably, Suh was asking the media not to question him about his overturned suspension from earlier in the week.
He also may have been asking reporters not to ask him about his contract situation. It is widely suspected Suh will sign elsewhere in the offseason as his deal with the Lions is up. If that's the case, that means the man the Lions drafted No. 2 overall in 2010 has played his last game for Detroit.
When asked to describe his emotions after the Cowboys came back from trailing the Lions for most of the game to end Detroit's season--aided by a controversial picked-up pass interference penalty flag on Dallas late in the game--Suh said: "I didn't expect this."
Check out the full postgame press conference here, and see a short video of Suh's emotional exit below.
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Strange stuff from Pharyngula
I don’t, in general, read my fellow science blogs. Not because I hate them, you understand, but because they talk about other stuff. But I was lead to Inventing excuses for a Bible story, and getting them published in a science journal? and was immeadiately struck by (a) how strident it seemed, and (b) how backwards it all seemed. (a) I can excuse: I’m sure I seem the same fairly often, but hopefully not too often (b). Side note: I was “accused” recently of being tedious in my writing on wikipedia, at which I vigourously protested. But it became clear that she actually meant “tendentious” which isn’t great but is certainly much better (old joke: deaf old Oirish Catholic grandmother: and what do you do now, grandaughter? Grandaughter (embarrased, low voice, mumbles): I’m a prostitute. Grandmother (outraged): *what* did you say? Grandaughter: repeats, louder. Grandmother: Oh thank heavens, I thought you said you were a Protestant).
Anyway, where was I? Oh yes: someone has published a harmless paper with hydrodynamic modelling about whether the fabled crossing of the Red Sea by the Israelites could be explained simply by wind forcing exposing some mudflats or reef. I read a bit of it (here it is, if you want to) but not enough to tell if it was any good. It reminded me of what I was taught in school, oooh, must be (thinks) 30 years ago. Much the same story, though with less detail. And we were taught by a proper C of E clergyman too, I tell you. In those days, “explaining away” the miracles of the bible was quite fashionable; perhaps it still is.
But PZ gets this completely backwards, altough bizarrely he also realises this, because if you can explain away all the miracles that is evidence against God, not in favour of it. so all the outrage and huffing and puffing is completely off target. Far better would have been a gentle mocking piece called something like “even the believers don’t believe” or somesuch.
I also find his “If a paper like this were plopped on my desk for review, I’d be calling the editor to ask if it was a joke. If it wasn’t, I’d laugh and reject it”. PZ knows nothing about hydrodynamics or ocean modelling. If this paper landed on his desk the only honourable thing for him to do would be to return it with a polite note saying that it was outside his field of competency to review.
Also, PZ has been rather careless with some of his sniping: It’s also troubling that this work actually got funded by NCAR and the Office of Naval Research. Why? I suspect that sympathetic Christians somewhere in the administration gave bad Christian research a pass… looks wrong (as pointed out in the comments [1]. The authors are funded; it doens’t look like this study specifically was. This looks like the kind of stuff one sees the septics pushing in the Global Warming arena. But PZ has no excuse: he is a scientist, and he knows how funding works.
Incidentally, there is a whole pile of speculation in PZ’s comments about where the idea for this came from, and why they bothered, etc etc. I think the answer is obvious: they were interested in the idea, and most importantly they had a model they could conveniently reconfigure to run this case, and computer time to run it. So they did.
Ha: and while I’m on disturbing reminders of GW: how about this from the comments:
I just talked to Drew via email, and he claims he performed this research ON HIS OWN TIME. I intend to write to NCAR and request and audit of his time there to verify that he used no government funded resources, and also to inquire why NCAR’s name was attached to this research in any way shape or form.
Does that kind of (threatened) harassment remind you of anything? I felt moved to comment over there:
PZ: you know (professionally) nothing about hydrodynamics. If this paper passed your desk for review, your only correct response would be to decline on the grounds of lack of competence. https://wmconnolley.wordpress.com/2010/09/strange_stuff_from_pharyngula.php Some of the comments on this thread are appalling. In particular I intend to write to NCAR and request and audit of his time there to verify that… looks very much like the kind of harassment that cliamte scientists have been subjected to by the septics. This is a harmless little paper. It may well not be great science, but if anything it deserves gentle mockery not vitriol.
[Note: visitors from P are welcome. However, make sure you’re aware of the comment policy which may not be as free-n-easy as you’re used to. In particular, insulting other commenters, or simply repeating yourself, aren’t welcome. I’ve already deleted some comments -W]
[Update: from Chris, over in the comments there, an important point: It’s well worth, in my opinion, standing firmly for the principle of academic freedom. I wish I’d said that too.]
[Update: another aspect I forgot and shouldn’t have (from Chris C in the comments): There’s a larger issue here: the importance of a playful attitude in the pursuit of knowledge. Yes! Lets not take this stuff too seriously. We have to work, but it doesn’t all have to be grind. We can have fun too, and should.]
[Thanks to the indefatiguable Hank for digging out Sci-Fi atmospheres by Ray Pierrehumbert. I haven’t seen that before. Meanwhile, BCL has found some more govt-sponsored trash that PZ will doubtless be attacking :-)]
Author wmconnolleyPosted on September 23, 2010 Categories fun, religionTags going ballistic, israelites, pz, red sea
93 thoughts on “Strange stuff from Pharyngula”
Thomas Lee Elifritz says:
Harmless? Since when does the Navy, National Science Foundation, National Center for Atmospheric Research and University Corporation for Atmospheric Research consider funding and thus wasting valuable taxpayer’s dollars on the wet dream of a self admitted Jesus freak and bible thumper?
You need to get your freakin priorities straight. The paper and its author are a joke, make our federally funding research laboratories look stupid, and are a waste of valuable time and resources. Plus the author lied to me about the funding in an email. He should be fired forthwith, and there should be an investigation of the NSF for funding this kind of obvious crap.
If you are interested, I’ve blobbed it, since either the scienceblogs software doesn’t allow embedded links, or I screwed up the link. The guy is a software engineer, and this paper makes NCAR look really bad, and you complaining about its blogospheric coverage makes you look really bad as well. It’s complete tripe, pure and simple.
> explained simply by wind forcing
Seems like a straightforward exercise in establishing the baseline natural variability, against which to evaluate any claims that anything is attributable to some new and extraordinary forcing.
After all, if it happens again, someone’s going to blame it on climate change, UFOs, your deity of choice, or some combination thereof — and this kind of study can be referenced to say, nope, could’ve happened any time, nothing unusual going on here.
Add some curry to spice it up if it’s too bland.
Good grief. Apparently, linking to your fellow science bloggers brings forth angry people. Or at least, an angry person.
Silly/fun publications are not unheard of. Somebody develops some tools, and uses them for something silly on the side. It then gets more attention than it’s worth.
Silly/fun publications are not unheard of.
Sure, if Mr. Drews wants to run his simulations on his home computer and on his own time, fine, but he used federally funded supercomputers and a federal grant, and lied about it.
And you continue to support that kind of behavior. Go USA!
Chris Ho-Stuart says:
Academic freedom, anyone?
And while we are at it… the idea that all non-USA people should butt out of comment on this is bizarre.
Cheers — Chris
Google the name, folks, just Google the name.
Before you reply to anything, Google the name.
@ carrot eater: “It then gets more attention than it’s worth.”
Notably from CNN and the BBC. Don’t tell me PLoS ONE wasn’t aware that this stuff would draw media attention! Science journals are not above using sensationalism, for the same reasons other journals do: it gets publicity.
@ Hank Roberts: Interesting speculation. But then, it’s not the aim of the actual paper, is it? It’s about a possible natural explanation of a totally fictitious story (since we know that no Pharaoh drowned with his whole army in the Red Sea around 1200 BC, or at any other time, for that matter).
Indeed, and I have the academic freedom to notify Carl Drews bosses that I consider it a travesty that [snip – WMC. There is no need to repeat yourself]
The absurdly over the top response from the Pharyngula crowds is nicely exemplified by “Thomas Lee Elifritz” (who he?). A few runs of an open source model isn’t exactly the Large Hadron Collider.
Atmoz says:
stoats should filter out the rabids.
[Wabbits? I’ve only just woken up -W]
Rosie Redfield says:
Given that the peer reviewers found that the science was fine, I think the researcher’s motivation is largely irrelevant.
And there can’t be many scientists who have never used the computers provided by their employers or granting agencies for research that falls outside of the officially approved project.
Kengi says:
If the paper had been explaining an actual historical event, or proposing a reason for a particular fossil find, I can see how it might be of value to science. If it had been studying the meteorological and geological phenomenon in general, it would have been fine.
The paper, however, took a make-believe story and “investigated” an explanation for it. It’s like the really bad Discovery Channel programs about how it was actually possible for the ancient Greeks to build a Trojan horse.
[Why does it matter whether the historical event was real or not? Its just a hydrodynamics paper, tied to an interesting peg. If you don’t find the peg interesting, thats all right, you can just ignore it.
When I ran GCMs, I sometimes ran simulations of “aquaplanets” – ie, the whole world was completely covered in water (well, nearly). People still do such stuff today. Will you tell me those runs were totally fictitious, and therefore valueless? -W]
The Iliad was just a story, perhaps based on some actual war, told by Homer. It’s still hard to say with confidence there was even an actual “Trojan war”, though evidence has been mounting. There is not a bit of evidence, however, for the specifics of any strategies or battles in such a war.
The same applies to the Bible story. It’s hard to say there was even such an exodus never mind the details made up in the stories about it.
Ajax, Achilles, Paris, Moses, et al, were just characters made up for a nice story to tell. Anyone who sets out to prove that the Trojan Horse existed, or the Red Sea was parted, is not doing science. The “research” doesn’t belong in a science journal. It belongs on the Discovery Channel.
‘He‘ is a United States citizen who is sick and tired of my federal government funding religious nonsense, and who has decided to fight back against it. Carl Drews is a federally funded researcher who has taken it upon himself to use his federal funding to pursue a religious pet project, and then who decided to lie about the origin of his funding in an email to me when I complained. Then William Connelley decides to liken my complaints to illegally hacking emails and harassing British climate scientists who are actually doing research critical to global security. I live in a country where United States senators and representatives invoke the bible and god on the house and senate floor regularly in clear conflict with the constitution they have taken an oath to protect and defend, and I’m not about to take any s h i t from anyone who thinks I don’t have a right to complain about that, and that I don’t have a right to demand that they be fired forthwith. Fortunately, that just involves voting them out. Carl Drews is no different. He is guilty of misusing his federal funds, and then he lied to me about it. Game over. I can complain, and he can be fired if his bosses decide to fire him, or even better, they can take a good hard look at where their management procedures went horribly wrong here.
My complaint isn’t about the peer review, they can do whatever they want, and my complaint isn’t about Mr. Drews motivations, that’s fairly clear, he’s a religious fanatic. My complaint is about his federal funding of his religious pet project. Get it? It is not in the purview of the federal government, and superficial research has already shown that the phenomenon under consideration has already been observed, rendering its need for physical explanation moot. I see that sort of thing all the time in hurricanes.
Anyone who sets out to prove that the Trojan Horse existed, or the Red Sea was parted, is not doing science.
They didn’t set out to prove that the Red Sea was parted. They set out to see if there was a plausible physical mechanism that might provide a context to some ancient mythology. They come from the perspective of treating “the Exodus 14 narrative as an interesting and ancient story of uncertain origin.” You don’t have to be religious to do this, you might just have an interest in old stories. Indeed, they’re not the first researchers to do this – Doron Nof did something similar over a decade ago:
http://www.doronnof.net/red-sea.php
I don’t see any particular problem with this kind of minor little investigation. Even if it happens to be a bit pointless, it certainly doesn’t warrant the absurdly hyperbolic reaction it has recieved.
You seem to be very angry. Perhaps you should go for a lie down.
SteveF #17:
They set out to see if there was a plausible physical mechanism that might provide a context to some ancient mythology.
Next I’m looking forward to the materials science research showing how it was possible for old world European cobblers to construct glass slippers for stepdaughters destined to become princesses.
Or perhaps we should stick with meteorology and show how it really is possible for wolves to blow down houses, especially when those houses were constructed using differing techniques of common suidae.
The paper is a poorly veiled attempt to support a Bible story as a literal event.
Are you an American Steve? [Snip – WMC]
[What is all this nationalism stuff creeping in? -W]
E.V. says:
60+ mph sustained winds along a narrow channel (4 hours?!!) is pretty silly by any standards. Marching a large crowd of refugees into it is ridiculous, but then most myths are. It wasn’t just a simulation for a lark – this little study was an attempt to overlap those Non-Overlapping Magisteria the Templeton Foundation, and evidently the people who sponsored this little study, are so fond of promoting. Your tax dollars at work – trying to make science and Judeo-Christian lore partners.
Now lets see the modeling for a flying horse for Mohammad on his trip to Baghdad.
*cricket… cricket…*
‘ thought so.
Gasp! Look, there’s ANOTHER one:
http://www.google.com/search?q=black+sea+flood
and … and … ANOTHER!:
http://www.noradsanta.org/
Watch the skies!!!:
http://beforeitsnews.com/story/177/903/Retired_NORAD_Officer_Predicts_a_Worldwide_UFO_Display_on_October_13,_2010.html
Now, focus for a minute.
There are stories from before writing was invented. Mostly lost. A few got written down. Some are about improbable things or things people thought, maybe still think, are just impossible.
Stars that move. Rocks that fall from the sky. Rains of frogs. Great floods. Parting of the Red Sea. UFOs.
Who’s to say for sure none of these could have any basis in reality?
Give ideas a chance. If someone’s abusing privilege or priorities, it will become obvious fairly soon that he’s a crank wasting people’s time.
By their works …. wait, where’s that quote from?
[Ha ha, you know better than to put in 3 links 🙂 -W]
Psst — folks, William gave the link, you can read the paper. This bit is relevant to assess the reliability of the assumptions made in some of the comments above:
“Scientific literature from the 19th century contains a description of a wind setdown event that occurred in the eastern Nile delta. Major-General Alexander B. Tulloch of the British Army reported this event happening on Lake Manzala in January or February 1882 ….”
Snardly Barfinton says:
If you want a good laugh, google ‘setdown’ in scholar.
#21 “60+ mph sustained winds along a narrow channel (4 hours?!!) is pretty silly by any standards”
Chinook winds can exceed 75mph and last for several hours, causing effects that are localized to within less than 50 miles. It is also common in areas with large tidal variations, such as the Normandy coast, for high winds or storms to greatly change the amount of beach exposed or flooded during tidal changes. Such possible weather events were a major factor in D-Day invasion planning. So the possibility of such an event described in the paper is not unheard of. It just requires the proper conditions.
I see no great harm in looking at conditions in the Middle east to see if such an windstorm is possible, since the area is famous for large sandstorms. Its not earth shaking research, but it certainly is not an endorsement of biblical miracles.
thingsbreak says:
Left at PZ’s:
I second @132. This seems entirely wrong-headed.
The idea of PZ reviewing this is absurd, the threat of demanding an audit of the author’s time is eerily reminiscent of the crap the denialists pull, and the proposition that because something is alleged to occur in the Bible it shouldn’t be investigated by modern science is precisely the opposite of what I would assume rational skeptics would propose.
There have been a legion of attempts to test the plausibility of physical phenomena that appear in religious texts/oral traditions. They can be a valuable source of scientific investigation. The tone of many of these comments smacks of the same tribalism and groupthink that the same commentors claim to abhor.
Krajick, K. (2005): Tracking myth to geological reality. Science, 310, 762â764, doi:10.1126/science.310.5749.762.
[Available here for those like me without subs -W]
Chinook winds can exceed 75mph and last for several hours, causing effects that are localized to within less than 50 miles.
Yeah, those snow capped Egyptian peaks on the Red Sea are well known. And hordes of people can trek through 75mph winds? You seem to have left that part out, Jim.
Dan Satterfield says:
WC has it right. Not a biggy. Not worthy of acting like the nutters in climate denial.
I would suggest some more aggressive editorial control over the comments though.
[Now in place, so it may look like this comment wasn’t warranted -W]
This idea has been floating out there for a while. The day before I saw the presser on this I watched — while trying to fall asleep — an old (circa 2002) show on History Channel International which put forth a similar hypothesis. I can’t call this paper great science (at best it seems like science fiction) but hey, you got it right. No miracle needed, if indeed the Exodus ever happened as described in the bible.
Oddly enough, I don’t remember the outrage over a similar study that proposed a skim of ice allowing the “miracle” of Jesus “walking on water”. Recalling a study discussed in Ice, Mud, and Blood:
Nof, D., et al. (2006): Is There a Paleolimnological Explanation for “Walking on Water” in the Sea of Galilee? Journal of Paleolimnology, 35, 417-439, doi:10.1007/s10933-005-1996-1.
Sigmund says:
Sorry William but I think you’ve got this one wrong. If it was simply a question of hydrodynamic modeling – for instance, about wind forces causing mud flats to be exposed in a shallow lagoon site – then it can have some scientific merit, although it is not particularly novel and thus not suitable for a journal with the impact factor of Plos One.
[I think that is an arguable point, but a erasonable one. If so, any criticism should largely be directed at Plos One for their editorial standards – after all, you can’t blame people for submitting papers to journals above their station (if that is so: I should emphasise that I left science before Plos became major (if indeed it is) and that I’ve only read about 1/3 of the paper) -W]
The reason it is getting all the attention is that it tries to use the hydrodynamic modeling to explain a ‘historical’ event. There’s no way such a story would get into PLoS One without the religious angle attached to it and the fact that some people view it as a real historical event. Does anyone think you could get a paper in PLoS One trying to give a natural explanation for one of the miracles of Thor or Hercules?
[Some seem to disagree with you. But Nature has been similarly guilty of publishing stuff primarily for its impact factor rather than intrinsic worth. I’ve argued against that before (see here, though now I look back I can see the point I’m making here is only implicit in the headline. Incidentally, I came across Latif saying a good thing, which I recoemmend reading). So to be clear: yes I agree that journals publishing research merely because they know it discusses a controversial and exciting topic, and will make a splash in the meeja, and thereby dropping their editorial standards, is a Bad Thing -W]
The religious or mythological aspect, however, does not rule out real science being done – we can look at the real archaeology associated with places like Troy and Jericho for examples of this. What it does mean, however is that one must apply rigor to the review of these aspects of the story as well as the hydrodynamics. Even apart from the extreme lack of physical or historical evidence for the Jewish captivity and exodus from Egypt there is a glaring problem with the model proposed by Drews that I think the reviewers have not addressed, namely that the model requires the fleeing Jews – all several hundred thousand of them – to be fleeing directly headfirst into 74 mph winds.
On the Beaufort scale we are talking of the border between gale and violent storm and this will have to be consistently blowing for hours on end in order for the water channel to remain open.
The authors laughingly describe this scenario as probably being ‘memorable’ to those who experienced it!
[Perhaps I’m showing my biases. As a modeller, I was considering this primarily as a modelling paper. But I’ve just scanned it again, and I think I’m right: it *is* a modelling paper, and (just as many other papers do) it is dressed up with some relevance. So I disagree that it should have been judged on its archaeology, because that is a minor part (or the scientific content) -W]
In conclusion I would suggest that it is wrong to consider this as being an average paper on hydrodynamic modeling. It should be considered a bad archaeology paper that happens to use good hydrodynamic data to make an insufficiently supported archaeological claim and as such it should not have been accepted in PLoS One.
P. Lewis says:
Hang on a min. Have I missed something?
Notwithstanding any funding impropriety that there may (or may not) be — advertised for all to see in the publication — a dyed-in-the-wool Christian and his believing or nonbelieving acolyte attempt to explain what The Book describes as a Divine intervention by postulating that the said “event” does not require Divine intervention at all. Have I got that right?
Now where are the fundies, ripping this work to shreds because it casts doubt on the figment who must be obeyed’s word?
Zealots rool!
WMC, you must have wanted to get your numbers up for the end of the month, yes? 🙂 Politics and religion, guaranteed to turn any Friday night down at the pub into a bun fight.
P. Lewis (lifetime atheist)
[Ah, you have spotted my cunning plan. What do you think my next target should be? -W]
@Sigmund: “Does anyone think you could get a paper in PLoS One trying to give a natural explanation for one of the miracles of Thor or Hercules? ”
Well, actually yes, I think you could. Basically, you take an extreme event and see whether such an event could plausibly occur. Mythology is a good source for such extreme events and my guess is that such studies have been done. It happens more often with the bible, because that is a book our culture knows best.
“What it does mean, however is that one must apply rigor to the review of these aspects of the story as well as the hydrodynamics.”
Why? It’s a hydrodynamics paper. They did a simple modeling exercise on a fictitious event. They research one aspect of the story. Your putting limits on this research that isn’t even put on serious research.
Sorry, no. It’s not an archeological paper. It’s a modeling exercise.
Slowjoe says:
Gotta love the inquisitor going after NCAR for a time audit. Considering that I’m a GW sceptic (and indeed, one that applauds the FOI requests to CRU), I’ve got to say that I can’t express how hostile I am to this witch-hunting bigot.
Rationalising, I guess I’m ok with requests for data, but not with requests looking to harass. But that’s a thin line, and this story unnerves me. I have no truck with this idiot. At all.
David MarjanoviÄ says:
The really strange thing about the paper is that one author is an Old-Earth creationist.
Incidentally, Thomas Lee Elifritz has been killfiled by several Pharyngulite regulars for his… strange behavior in climate change denialism threads. Apparently we made him feel sufficiently unwelcome that he hasn’t come back since the last such thread several months ago.
[I think I remember him, possibly from sci.env days. Eli? -W]
Birger Johansson says:
PZ has been conditioned to regard all religion stuff as hostile, due to the *extreme* prevalence of fundies and politicized religion in the U S. In this particular case, he is mistaking a flapping turkey for an inbound strategic bomber.
I am reminded of the T-shirt worn by Jon Stewart: “Take it down a notch for America” 🙂 Yes, I do like Jon Stewart. He knows humor is a great way to fight religious bigotry, BTW.
[http://www.rallytorestoresanity.com/ looks good. A long way for me to go. But I like “If we had to sum up the political view of our participants in a single sentence… we couldn’t. That’s sort of the point.” -W]
Oh, I know you were being rhetorical WMC, but state executions of women (or men for that matter), gun control, possibly/probably ending a moratorium on building on occupied territory that doesn’t belong to you as a means to end talks you don’t really want to be involved in, religious/racial hatred arrests in Gateshead (also see PZM for that, too**), …, hockey sticks;-)
Take your pick. They’ll all bring out the zanies, the zombies and the zealots. Your advertisers will love you for it, and you’ll have lots of material on the cutting room floor 🙂
** But first have a read of the European Convention on Human Rights provisos concerning the guarantee to “freedom of expression” and the UK specific provisos enshrined in UK law under the Human Rights Act and also see the Public Order Act 1986, Part 3A: Hatred against persons on religious grounds, 29B Use of words or behaviour or display of written material, para (2) and other paras thereabouts to see where PZM, when he says
they had their own copy and destroyed it ⦠they did nothing illegal. But they’re still arrested, and the police are making excuses.
might not be right on that score.
On second thoughts, you’d best delete this message, having read it of course, ‘cos it’ll bring out the zanies, the zombies and the zealots… and I have work to do to, lots of it unfortunately. 😦
The original comment was questioning whether winds of such strength and duration can exist. I gave examples. The question is could such winds occur in the middle east for other reasons? Isn’t the purpose of science to investigate new questions? I don’t think this is any kind of serious research, but its a fun problem in meteorology, and I see no harm in this paper.
I apologize for double posting but I just couldn’t resist. Pictures of a snow capped egyptian peak. About 30 miles from the Red Sea:
http://www.snow-forecast.com/resorts/Jabal-Katherina
I learn so many cool things from these internet discussions. Hope you enjoy. 🙂
With regard to old European glass shoes/slippers: though largely or even wholly ornamental, search for Caspar Wistar and glass shoes.
On Canis lupus‘s porcine hunting expedition, I would suggest it’s the laziness and poor building skills of Sus domesticas one and two that were the issue with their houses tumbling down, not said lupine’s exhalation feats. Straw and wooden houses can be built to very exacting standards indeed.
William and Beaker, you both agree that this is a modeling paper but I think you are not addressing a critical point of the model. As far as I can tell the model has two section:
1) It suggests a plausible mechanism for the exposure of a land bridge in a relatively shallow body of water.
– I have no problem with that part.
2) It suggests that the land bridge could be a plausible route for a large group of people to transverse in a short time period. This is the part that I have reservations about. Even if you ignore the archaeology and treat the whole paper as a fun speculation you are left with a model suggesting that several hundred thousand people (young, old, infirm and their livestock) could cross the mudflats by heading directly into almost hurricane force winds.
If you think the second part of the model is unimportant then you are left with a rather mundane and unoriginal paper speculating on how a high wind can expose a mudflat – hardly worthy of PLoS One.
[So, yes, I don’t think the paper is really about (2), because that isn’t modelling. As to the importance, I think we likely agree -W]
Sigmund, (#40), you say that the paper “suggests that the land bridge could be a plausible route for a large group of people to transverse in a short time period”.
What part of the paper do you mean? Here’s the link again. Dynamics of Wind Setdown at Suez and the Eastern Nile Delta. I don’t see this alleged second part of the model. There’s a brief mention of implications of times and strong winds for a mixed group; but it hardly raises to the level of being part of the model! I don’t see numbers for a group used at all.
By the by; the raw numbers in Genesis are certainly an enormous exaggeration if in fact there was any historical seed to the story; but that’s a side issue not mentioned in the paper that I can see.
I consider that the real merits of the paper are completely independent of this alleged second part of the model on large groups. The real merit or otherwise is in the hydrodynamics. I’m not enough of an expert to judge whether or not the results are worthy of publication. I don’t accept a bland assertion that it is not.
It doesn’t have to be earth shattering (it certainly doesn’t seem to be) but publishable? I don’t see the problem. The discussion is a little more sophisticated than simply whether a mud flat can be exposed, and it looks at first site to be a credible kind of test case for the modeling system used, with a bonus (at least, I think it is a bonus) of having a bit of wider interest and association with prior less technically developed papers on the same hypothesis.
Eli, being an old bunny remembers a great deal of speculation on this about the time ol’ Cecile B filmed his “Ten Commandments”. Now Eli, silly bunny, thinks that the navy might be seriously interested in conditions when a ground crossing of the Red Sea might be possible, so an attack on those grounds does not appear very fruitful given program managers interests. However, as Wm. points out, moving the miraculous to the “large natural variation” camp undercuts religious beliefs on the issue. Curry worst at its best.
Oh yes, TL was one of the crazy uncles we kept in the closet for when Steve visited.
Snodly Yardgrass says:
Sure, I’m a bigot. I can’t stand retards, so that means you. If you’re an American, then I go after you verbally, with a US constitution in my back pocket. Get used to it, it ain’t gonna stop until after the election.
Sure, mud flats can be exposed. It’s called storm surge when it sets up, and storm surge when it sets down. I’ve seen it happen many times in hurricanes on the Bahama banks. There is nothing miraculous about it. Drews is a first class twit, and Connelley is a first class twit defending him, and comparing my outrage at my government wasting valuable time coddling him, to Climategate, so much that I’m gonna blob his pathetic ass all over the internet. This is going to get some press, trust me. And it’s not going to make any of you look good.
Rhinanthus says:
Consider this hypothetical case: In the Harry Potter books the “Death Eaters” (evil wizards) make a huge skull appear in the clouds by saying some magic words. Do you think that a scientific journal would publish a paper in which the author shows how the Death Eaters accomplish this feat by their magic words manipulating known atmospheric dynamics? Might not the fact that the book is just a children’s story and and that there are no skulls appearing in the clouds affect the justification for publishing the mathematical model in a science (as opposed to a mathematics) journal?
Well, outside of the Bible there is no evidence for Moses, for the flight of the Isrealites and certainly no evidence for the Red (or Reed) Sea parting. There is lots of empirical evidence that it didn’t happen.
Demonstrating a theoretical explanation for a non-existant phenomenon is not science (with appologies to string theorists…).
Onkel Bob says:
just my $.02…I believe there should be a corollary to Dunning-Kruger (the ignorant being confident about knowledge) that the educated believe their expertise extends to all fields.
Then there’s the adage, those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad.
Sigmund, the paper modelled winds of 62 mph, not 75. I’m not sure I know what a 62 mph wind feels like but suspect that, whereas 75 mph could knock you off your feet, 62 mph would be hard work but manageable. Winds that strong blew across much of northwest China earlier this year. People coped – and coped without having spears at their backs to chivvy them along.
It might have been you who wondered whether such winds are likely in that area. Yes, they are. Strong, steady winds blow for weeks and sometimes months in desert regions, especially near the sea. I think a southeasterly khamsin would be more likely than an easterly in the Nile delta but natural variability and all that.
(Handy tip: If a sandstorm is approaching and your only shelter is a sleeping bag, make sure you lie with your feet facing the wind, otherwise you’ll wake up with the bag filled with sand up to your waist. D’oh!)
Chris Ho Stuart asked: “What part of the paper do you mean?”
Look at the very beginning of the paper
“Previous researchers have suggested wind setdown as a possible hydrodynamic explanation for Moses crossing the Red Sea, as described in Exodus 14.
This study analyzes the hydrodynamic mechanism proposed by earlier studies, focusing on the time needed to reach a steady-state solution.”
This is pretty clearly stating that the purpose of the paper is to examine a previously proposed model for “Moses crossing the Red Sea” I think it is fair to conclude that the words “Moses crossing the Red Sea” refers to the biblical story that mentions numbers much higher than I mentioned previously.
(Exodus 12:37)
“And the children of Israel journeyed from Rameses to Succoth, about six hundred thousand on foot who were men, besides children.”
So 600,000 men plus women, children and the foreign slaves that the Israelites owned (so we are probably talking several million people!)
The author looks at a time period consistent with the biblical account and discounts other crossings in the Red Sea area for the reason that the reefs that might get exposed contain ‘notches’ that would make it difficult to traverse – entirely consistent with the model being one that would explain the biblical crossing of Moses and the Israelites.
The author doesn’t spend much time on the mechanics of the physical crossing itself (for rather obvious reasons if you think of the numbers mentioned in Exodus) but I don’t think one can ignore this (OK, the reviewers did!) if you want the take the model, as a whole, seriously.
Sigmund, of course the paper refers to the biblical story; and it also explicitly says “The present study treats the Exodus 14 narrative as an interesting and ancient story of uncertain origin.”
The quotes from the bible are not from the paper and the model in the paper does not anywhere consider the obviously impossibly large numbers in the current biblical text.
So, as I said, the model IN THE PAPER does not appear to include the second part you mentioned of a large group of people. The actual models studied are simply hydrodynamic and deal simply with the effects of wind on certain geographic configurations.
It’s just not true to say that the paper models the large numbers you quote. Several million people can’t walk across a land bridge in a few hours, let alone 600,000. This is not a refutation of the paper, because the paper does not simply use the bible as a model. It’s just dealing with the hydrological model; and it’s a speculation (not in principle impossible) that there may be a historical seed to the story. If there is, it won’t involve the numbers you quote from the bible; and the paper simply doesn’t deal with that at all. There’s no reason for it to do so. It’s not trying to make the whole thing simply exactly as quoted in Exodus, and this kind of demythologizing usally reduces the numbers of the Exodus enormously.
But this paper doesn’t deal with the numbers of people at all.
thinsgbreak says:
Did you note who makes a cameo in the article?
“The pendulum may have swung too far in favor of accepting myths, says social anthropologist Benny Peiser of Liverpool John Moores University in the U.K., who runs the Cambridge Conference Network, an Internet clearinghouse for catastrophist theories.”
[Aieee! -W]
> remember him … sci.env
Memory fails? Google. Yep.
Checking IPs? I wonder if you have sockpuppets.
Chris Ho-Stuart said:
“this paper doesn’t deal with the numbers of people at all.”
It doesn’t mention specific numbers but section 3.2.2 “Realistic Topographic Case” makes it clear that they are modeling a number of people crossing the exposed mudflats.
“A traversable dry gap in the waters opens here at 9:36 hours, where it appears feasible for a number of people to make their way across the exposed mud flats. The midpoint of the land bridge is at (30.9812° N, 32.4553° E). The passage is about 5 km wide initially, and it later expands up to 6 km wide. This land bridge remains continuously open until 13:30 hours, leaving 3.9 hours for the company to cross the Kedua Gap.”
The paper also goes on to model the location of the “debris field of military artifacts” caused by the waters returning to engulf the Egyptian army (apparently it should be “North of the gap” shown in(Figure 10(a))
It is unclear what sort of numbers they mean in each case but I do think its highly relevant to the story and leaving it out makes it rather ambiguous whether they have or have not produced a plausible explanation for “Moses crossing the Red Sea”.
To correct myself, I note that T. L. Elifritz has appeared in the Pharyngula thread (with which I’m now catching up), under the name of “Antagonizer”, and has not got a friendly welcome. It’s glaringly obvious that that’s him. “Snodly Yardgrass” above is likely him again.
I don’t understand the reason for the morphing. He’s not banned at Pharyngula; at least not yet — because morphing is a bannable offense there.
[My, it is getting weird over there. My current favourite: Antagonizer you idiot! I wasn’t addressing you! You fail reading comprehension. I was on your side you twit. Does PZ ever step in to moderate? -W]
Chris Crawford says:
equally unreasonable applies here.
Let us suppose, solely for purposes of argument, that a scientist discovered proof of God’s existence. Yes, as an atheist I reject the physical possibility, but I raise the point as a useful hypothetical test of intellectual honesty. Suppose, for example, that the Hubble telescope obtained photos of pearly gates, angels strumming harps, and this old bearded guy smiling down on everything from a throne. Would Mr. Myers prefer that such photographs not be published? In other words, if by some microscopically tiny chance, Mr. Myers was proven to be wrong about the existence of a deity, would he be willing to admit his error? I hope that enough of the spirit of scientific inquiry still breathes in him to permit him to do so.
Two quotes from, iirc, Voltaire seem apropos here, both of which I shall probably mangle:
1. The test of true intelligence is the ability to simultaneously entertain two contradictory ideas in one’s mind.
2. I disagree with what you say, but I shall defend to the death your right to say it.
Richard D says:
My attitude to this paper was as following.
1. Not sure about the raw science behind it as this is far from my field. I assume, given that it got published that the science is in some way decent.
2. To anyone who studies the human past this paper displayed glaringly bad logic in trying to hunt around for possible candidate events within a location and time window that are highly dubious. Putting aside the fact that the Exudus is archaeologically invisible and is unlikely to have happened, people who actually believe it happened, can not only not pin down the body of water but disagree which Pharaoh was ruling to the extent that it could have happened within a window of a 1000 years or so.
This is why I was mainly annoyed at the paper.
3. At the time I saw it initially, I chalked it up to one of those ‘fun’ papers that gets people talking about the research project as a whole. I put the history rape down to the fact the guy was not an archaeologist or ancient historian and left it at that, thinking it was a most ill advised ‘fun project’.
Now seems the guy may have had an agenda, which disturbs me a little more and I would agree, much as it pains me to say it, that this was a bit of a waste of time and money.
All I can say is let’s hope that modelling comes in handy and they do some of the work they claim they got funding for.
I just realized that the editor seems to have cut off the first portion of my earlier post. Here is the portion that was excised:
I am much saddened by Mr. Myers’ comments on the paper. Intellectual freedom is a crucial component of any scientific culture. It’s the scientific analogue of the First Amendment: just as we honor the right of Nazis to deny the Holocaust,
[You do (assuming you’re USA). However, in Germany it is illegal. That is probably reasonable, or at least it was when first brought in. Holocaust denial is something of a special case though; perhaps not a good one to generalise from -W]
so too must we be open-minded about scientific pursuits. Indeed, science has a much stricter standard than the First Amendment: a paper must pass the rigorous process of peer review before it is published. The only proper objection to any paper must concern its truth or falsity. Mr. Myers makes no such objection. His injection of political considerations into scientific matters is every bit as reprehensible as the efforts of climate change deniers or creationists. It would seem that the old saw about fanatics on both sides of an issue being just as unreasonable applies here.
J. J. Ramsey says:
Richard D: “Now seems the guy may have had an agenda”
However, if the science is good, that doesn’t matter much. Considering that this guy’s paper can easily be used as further ammunition to show just how dicey the story from Exodus 14 is, it’s not even all that good at pushing the guy’s agenda.
P. Lewis (lifetime atheist) says:
A thing puzzles me about the blog reaction (comments and original post), having just had a gander at the paper, and that is the seeming focus on Drews, when the author contributions state:
“Conceived and designed the experiments: CD WH. Performed the experiments: CD. Analyzed the data: CD WH. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: CD. Wrote the paper: CD. Conducted background research: CD. Supervised the research: WH. Extensively reviewed and edited the manuscript: WH.”
So, Prof Han had extensive input to the design, review and edit. So, is she being tarred with the same brush as Drews seems to be? Not if PZM’s post is anything to go by. If not, then why not? She doesn’t seem to have a Christian-oriented web page (though she may of course, or even may swing in that direction). Is that the reason?
[I haven’t looked at Plos much, but Extensively reviewed and edited the manuscript looks rather suspicious to me: I would take it as something like “ZOMG! You can’t say that! Where is my red pen…” So yes, I’d take it as extensive involvement in the write-up -W]
Amenhotepstein says:
Chris @ 55
Suppose, for example, that the Hubble telescope obtained photos of pearly gates, angels strumming harps, and this old bearded guy smiling down on everything from a throne. Would Mr. Myers prefer that such photographs not be published?
Say rather that Dr. Myers (kudos for not using “Meyers”) would object of several hours of extremely valuable HST observing time being used in a search for those “…pearly gates and angels strumming harps…”, which no reliable evidence suggests exist. Should such sights be miraculously captured by the Hubble, Dr. Myers (and myself, I might add), would be very excited to see them published. I would even be forced to reconsider my world view.
However, as a working scientist with a good knowledge of the current funding situation, let me say that the idea of Drews and Han using valuable grant $ for a project which was almost certainly NOT made known to the granting agency beforehand is frustrating to say the least.
The fact that PLoS ONE published this paper is more depressing than frustrating. I now realize that the old adage “There’s no such thing as bad publicity” applies to the academy as well.
Yes, Amenhotepstein, I agree that funding should not be allocated for such research — except in the rare case of author funding as opposed to project funding. For example, a university pays its tenured professors to pursue any intellectual quest that interests them. This is essential to academic freedom. If the authors in question were working on “university time” as opposed to “project grant time”, and if they used equipment that was broadly assigned to their use rather than specifically assigned to a particular project, then I would say, “Let’s chalk this up as one of those academic freedom things”. But if any of these conditions were not met, then I would conclude that these academics have violated the trust that was placed in them.
One other thought to ponder: suppose that these scientists had come up with conclusive proof that the parting of the Red Sea was a physical impossibility. Would that research have earned Mr. Myers’ ire?
Another thought: back in the 1960s, there was a crackpot named Velikovsky who cooked up this crazy hypothesis based on an absolutely literal interpretation of Old Testament material. He proposed that Venus and Mars went careening through the solar system, begetting near-misses with earth and other planets. Each such collision generated lots of sparks that Mr. Velikovsky used to explain various weird phenomena in the Old Testament. For example the mannah from heaven was really some form of congealed hydrocarbons release by electrical discharges in the upper atmosphere of Venus… you can see how crazy this stuff was.
Scientists all over the world were extremely dismissive of Mr. Velikovsky’s books (Worlds in Collision and Earth in Upheaval). However, a young astronomer by the name of Carl Sagan suggested that Mr. Velikovsky’s hypothesis be discussed at the upcoming AAAS meeting, and somehow got it through the organizing committee. At the session, a number of scientists presented devastating critiques of Mr. Velikovsky’s hypothesis. Neither Velikovsky nor any of his adherents showed up, despite open invitations being published. They talked one scientist into discussing the magnetic field of Jupiter, iirc, and he presented a very weakly plausible scenario in which, under truly fantastic conditions, the magnetic field of Jupiter might be sufficient to alter the orbit of an asteroid. My memory on that is weak, though.
My question to Mr. Myers is this: was Mr. Sagan wrong to organize this session?
natural cynic says:
This looks like the kind of stuff one sees the septics pushing in the Global Warming arena.
…looks very much like the kind of harassment that cliamte scientists have been subjected to by the septics.
Is this how we spell skeptic [or sceptic]? But, then again, you may be correct. Most of them should not be considered as skeptics – cranks is a better term. Then again, they are septic as in a bad infection on the body politic.
[You want http://mustelid.blogspot.com/2004/12/septics-and-skeptics-denialists-and.html -W]
‘J. J. Ramsey: Considering that this guy’s paper can easily be used as further ammunition to show just how dicey the story from Exodus 14 is, it’s not even all that good at pushing the guy’s agenda.’
This would be fine, if it weren’t for the fact that some people are happy to accept this as further proof. As bonkers as it sounds, you end up at the point where ‘god did it’ eventually, even if he ‘did it’ through a medium that Earth science would consider a perfectly explicable event.
To the angry people: Nobody spends 24/7 working on exactly what’s written in their grant proposals. You may even take time to sleep instead, or have lunch, or write angry comments on a website. Or follow up on something amusing.
Have any of the people huffing and puffing away actually read the paper? It also refers to these so-called setdown events in more recent times, as well. I never heard of it, but it’s pretty far outside my comfort area. It also seems to be out of the comfort area of everybody else, since nobody is talking about whether the work was competently done.
> Does PZ … moderate?
Rarely: http://www.google.com/search?q=pz+pharyngula+ban+moderation
[That lead me to the Mooney farce, which I hadn’t known about, so thanks -W]
‘carrot eater: It also seems to be out of the comfort area of everybody else, since nobody is talking about whether the work was competently done.’
The closest I can come to saying that would be that it was incompetent theoretical archaeology.
If it is competent science in terms of the model I don’t know, but it was trash archaeological science.
[Um. But the problem is that it is a hydrodynamics paper, not an archaeology one. And the point that no-one is judging it on its merits, because so far we’ve found no-one who can (I probably could, if I cared enough, but I don’t), still stands -W]
Richard D:
As bonkers as it sounds, you end up at the point where ‘god did it’ eventually, even if he ‘did it’ through a medium that Earth science would consider a perfectly explicable event.
First, it’s borderline rather than “perfectly explicable.” Second, why should a misuse of the paper that would have to involve a distortion of its contents be anything for which the paper’s authors should be blamed?
zamia12 says:
A strong wind blew for 3 days in the Washington, D.C., area. The Potomac in front of the Naval Research Lab shrunk to a fraction of its size. I’ve forgotten details, I think it occurred in the mid80s and the wind was 50mph. It was obnoxious to walk in.
Boats were stranded, a large mud flat was exposed. If people or horses could walk in the mud I don’t know. Perhaps something like that happened to the Red Sea, maybe the Moses legend got conflated with the story, or maybe it happened exactly as described.
The story of Noah, ark and flood circulated throughout the ancient world, only the name of the protaganist changed. (Gilgamesh for example).
NCAR and the referees thought the paper reasonable enough to be approved and published. I can see why some people are enraged by the fundamentalist attack on science. The paper does not prove the Bible was written by God nor should it be discounted because it investigates the possibility a Biblical event could occur.
An aside: I suspect most of the Bible thumpers have only read excerpts second hand. I bet if they picked up the Bible and read passages at random, say Levitacus, they’d be surprised at what is in there.
I have to hand it to you. I have learned a lot from what I perceive of your thinking style. You have no sacred cows and see things from all perspectives.
I am a big fan of PZ, but I think you make some valid points here.
Whatever happened to our “Spotters Guide to Climate Blogs”? Fools like me need advice about who to trust.
[I like PZ too, but I think he got it wrong here. For your compliments, my thanks. And for your reminder, ditto. Yes I need to dredge that out: I have a draft. Now I get to add Curry, too -W]
William, if I go along with your point that the paper is really a modeling exercise and nothing to do with archaeology then we are left with a paper that models a hypothetical situation derived from an old fictional story. Now there may be good modeling science involved in this exercise – I am certainly not qualified to judge the merits of the science – but I do wonder whether PLoS One is the correct venue for publishing models of fictional events. Isn’t the paper simply the equivalent of modeling how the tornado lifted Dorothy’s house and deposited it back to the ground in ‘The Wizard of OZ’?
I have no objection to such papers getting published but unless the scientific modeling is novel and helpful to that discipline of science then my objection is pretty much the standard one that us working scientists hear when a paper is rejected – This paper is not appropriate for this journal and the authors are recommended to submit to a more suitable journal.
Is there a “Nature – Fairy-Tale Modeling”?
[That is a possible attidue, with which I don’t quite agree, but in that case you have to conclude that the error lies not with the authors but with the journal -W]
Sven DiMilo says:
‘led’
Sigmund, the fact that the authors of the paper were inspired by an old fable in no wise subtracts from its scientific merit. I have known the fantasies of science fiction to have been the source of fascinating scientific discussions, although I know of no papers resulting from such discussions. I can imagine a number of fictional phenomena that could (and possibly already have) provided provender for interesting scientific analysis: Scylla from the Odyssey; the Flood tales of Middle Eastern mythology (do they reflect ancient knowledge of the filling of the Black Sea c 10,000 BCE?); Merlin’s transport of the bluestones for Stonehenge from the Arthurian legends (how did they get the source location right?); the references to dragons in the mythology of weakly connected cultures (do they reflect some actual creature or combination of creatures?)
There’s a larger issue here: the importance of a playful attitude in the pursuit of knowledge. Some of our best ideas come from flights of fancy. Sometimes scientists are inspired by decidedly unscientific considerations. The laws of probability were first established by a French mathematician thinking about how to win card games. Isaac Newton was almost fanatic in his Christian fundamentalism, which in turn drove him to understand what he took to be God’s handiwork — should we discard Newtonian mechanics because Newton was seeking to glorify God in his researches? Einstein famously developed some of his ideas about special relativity by imagining himself riding on top of a beam of light — is that not an absurd fantasy? There have been a number of scholarly papers published on the Tippy-Top, a child’s toy. The fact that the subject of the paper is a child’s toy does not detract from the scientific merit of the analysis of the dynamics of the object.
Homo sapiens is not a robot; cognitive processes can be inspired by all sorts of considerations. Let us hope that no psychologist ever carries out research to determine the degree to which sexual desires motivate scientific research — the results would, I’m sure, undermine the gravitas science enrobes itself with. Let us ignore the motivations behind any individual scientist’s work and instead focus our attentions on the work itself. After all, who cares about any particular scientist? We’re here to study science, not scientists.
“… an interesting 6 page essay by Ray Pierrehumbert (Atmospheric Physicist) … covers the atmospheric plots of: Ballard’s ‘The Drowned World’ & ‘The Wind from Nowhere’, Shute’s ‘On The Beach’, Herbert’s ‘Dune’, ‘Attack of the Clones’, and Kim Stanley Robinson’s ‘Red Mars'”
http://www.sciencefile.org/SciFile/forum/Futures/62629-Re-Science-Fiction-Atmospheres
Tardly Whistlemouse says:
We’re here to study science, not scientists.
Then you need to get out there right away and collect some sediments and try to experimentally verify that this incredibly important ancient minor wind setdown occurred.
Quickly now, millions of Pakistani global warming enhanced megaflood victims are anxiously awaiting your breakthroughs.
If people are going to get upset at publications that lay out solutions that are in search of realistic problems, then I suggest you stay far, far away from academia.
That’s a non sequitur.
Does this guy create a new pseudonym each time he posts?
Simulux Experion says:
That’s a vitally important outstanding scientific question, Hank. I suggest you get a federal grant from a prestigious American scientific institution, and go ahead and run some simulations on your supercomputing laptop, and then do some experiments to verify and refute your insightful hypothesis.
Look at the acknowledgments. No grant funding seems to have been involved.
On the other hand, it looks like a pretty lightweight paper.
Wallace Gromit says:
Read the paper, lightweight, the Bluefire supercomputer was involved, NCAR receives 95% of their funding from the federal government, and NCAR paid his tuition. For all practical purposes, this was funded by the United States government.
[This is getting rather dull. We’ve been though this bit before. No more on this, please -W]
This next link is a gift for PZ as a reward for coming back by this thread whenever he or one of his ‘inions does:
http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=1603
And of course for everyone else.
Even mentions climate change.
Wait until Myers hears about this:
http://physicsbuzz.physicscentral.com/2010/09/aliens-eye-view-of-solar-system.html
NASA scientists using a gov. supercomputer to help illegal aliens plot their invasion of the solar system. Why do NASA scientists hate America?
Exomoon Alien says:
This next link is a gift for PZ as a reward
A Hugo. Wow. That makes a Nobel look downright silly.
Outrageous. Everyone KNOWS Earth is the only life bearing planet in the entire universe. Exomoons can’t possibly exist until we observe them. And what possible use would simulating large telescope images be to telescope design? Everyone knows that the observing the heavens is irrelevant to ordinary life on Earth, what possible use can classical mechanics be to agricultural and hunter gatherer societies?
> NASA scientists
Likely related to that NORAD thing linked above:
“The author draws upon … a senior NORAD intelligence officer who provided him a wealth of historical data relating to NORADâs experience with the UFO/alien ….”
John Morales says:
William:
You’re suggesting it was the equivalent of a Mythbusters episode, except for the bit were parameters are fed into a model rather than an actual experiment is made?
Do you then consider that myth Confirmed, or just Plausible? 🙂
[I don’t see the connection to Mythbusters, which I’ve never seen anyway. Like I said: they had a tool lying around, so they used it. The results (if correct: as I’ve said, I haven’t read it carefulyl) confirm a possible physical basis for the “myth”. But if you really cared about that, you’d need to do all the archaeology carefully. Several people over at PZ have asserted that there is no evidence for Exodos. If that is so, then you’re probably at a dead end -W]
Mr. Connolley, you and I do not share the same meaning of the word “harmless”.
[Who is Mr Connolley? -W]
Mike McCants says:
“a harmless paper”
Your opinion is noted and dismissed as wrong.
[You need to look up contempt, in Leviathan -W]
Kevin (NYC) says:
“[snip – WMC. There is no need to repeat yourself]”
you cut comments because you think they are repeating themselves? wow. your blog and all but that is a crappy way to play. bad form and all that.
[If you look at the way threads at PZ, or WUWT, degenerate when unmodified, I think you’ll agree that modeeration is a good idea. But even if you don’t: that *is* the policy here. I don’t oblige you to like it, but you accept it or you leave -W]
every time the believers try and force science into proving their fantastic stories, it is harmful to the cause of reasonable understanding of the world around us, and dangerous because it feeds their intolerant and pernicious world view of good/evil.
[No, not at all. I entirely disagree with you. This is rather like the “war on terror” errors that most Western governments have made. You need to take care that your reaction isn’t worse than the threat. In this case, I think that PZ’s well-over-the-top reaction to this paper is teaching unreasoning -W]
The people who wasted our money and computer time…
Kerry Maxwell says:
I can’t help but wonder if as many apologists would have stood up for this paper if it was a proposed model of how the Big Bad Wolf could indeed huff and puff and blow your house down?
[You still don’t get it, but I’ll try again. If this paper was (a) about the stability of straw, wood and brick structures, and (b) was submitted to a buildings journal, and if it (c) carefully analysed the wind stresses required to damage these different classes of builds, and if it (d) could then demonstrate that the range required were within the winds capbable of being generated by a wolfs breath, then you could just about get away with it. But I think (d) is implausible. Unlike the paper under discussion, whose scenario is unlikely but not implausible -W]
Kevin (NYC): “every time the believers try and force science into proving their fantastic stories”
What part of “The present study treats the Exodus 14 narrative as an interesting and ancient story of uncertain origin” do you not understand? Did you even read the comments above that point out that the paper does not even support the narrative as is, that at best, the numbers in Exodus 14 would need to be treated as exaggerated? Looks to me like the biblical story was a starting point, but that the conclusions followed from the scientific modeling, regardless of whether it supported the story or not.
Kerry Maxwell: “I can’t help but wonder if as many apologists would have stood up for this paper if it was a proposed model of how the Big Bad Wolf could indeed huff and puff and blow your house down?”
Well, if it were plausible for a wolf to actually make that strong a wind …
For context, has everyone here visited Dr. Drews’ website?
http://theistic-evolution.com/
*THAT* is really why the Pharygulites are going completely bonkers, though few of them seem to admit it. FWIW, I’m an atheist, and a longtime Pharygula fan, but I do get tired of the dick-waving there. The responses to Chris Ho-Stewart and Hank Roberts’ posts were absurdly aggro.
Also, has everyone here actually read not just the paper, and but the PLoS One *comments* on the paper, and Dr. Drews’ responses to them?
http://www.plosone.org/article/comments/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0012481
> absurdly aggro
Meh, one guy arguing his fantasies with his socks, ignorable.
> PLOS
Thanks for that pointer; their editorial process and policy is explained in the “Comment from PLoS Posted by DPattinson on 30 Sep 2010”
New thread more typical of good Pharyngula:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/10/so_thats_why_koch_funded_a_maj.php
Carl Drews says:
William Connolley –
Nice blog post! Thanks for writing it. (Sorry, I didn’t read all the comments.)
Since your blog entry is tagged as “religion”, I want to clarify something. The statement “if you can explain away all the miracles that is evidence against God, not in favour of it.” refers to the God-of-the-Gaps philosophy and its converse:
1. If science can’t explain something, then God must have done it.
2. If science can explain something, then God must not have done it.
TalkOrigins has a couple of good references to God-of-the-Gaps:
CA100: Argument from incredulity
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CA/CA100.html
The Origin of Life
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob/originoflife.html
The upshot is that God-of-the-Gaps is a view held by a number of individuals (either instinctively or deliberately), but rejected by many mainstream religions. Many theologians would disagree with both of the statements above.
Your comments about harassment are well-taken; it is not unusual for scientists researching the atmosphere and oceans to receive obscenities and threats. That does not mean we should just accept them. I’m glad to see you speaking out against that kind of thing.
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Category Archives: LAW-Latin American Wings
Four abandoned Boeing 737 Classics to be auctioned in Chile
The Chilean Customs (Servicio Nacional de Aduanas) is conducting its third auction of the year on September 2, 2018.
Aside from abandoned/confiscated goods, there are four Boeing 737-200/300 aircraft abandoned at Santiago Airport (SCL), Chile . The airliners are:
CC-ACD, Boeing 737-2K9, msn 23404; last operator and owner was Bravo Capital 23404, LLC. (PAL Airlines livery)
Above Copyright Photo: PAL Airlines Boeing 737-2K9 CC-ACD (msn 23404) (Copa America 2011-Chile Soccer Team) SCL (Alvaro Romero). Image: 906744.
CC-CRP, Boeing 737-230, msn 22134; last operator and owner was Wells Fargo Bank Northwest, N.A. (Trustee) (PAL Airlines livery)
Above Copyright Photo: PAL Airlines Boeing 737-230 CC-CRP (msn 22134) SCL (Alvaro Romero). Image: 943337.
CC-CSW, Boeing 737-228, msn 23002; last operator and owner was Wells Fargo Bank Northwest, N.A. (Trustee) (Aerolíneas del Sur livery)
Above Copyright Photo: Aerolineas Del Sur Boeing 737-228 CC-CSW (msn 23002) SCL (Marcelo F. De Biasi). Image: 900169.
CC-ADZ, Boeing 737-3G7, msn 24634; last operator and owner was Zela Aircraft Trading Ltd. (LAW-Latin American Wings livery)
Above Copyright Photo: LAW – Latin American Wings (Chilejet) Boeing 737-3G7 CC-ADZ (msn 24634) SCL (Alvaro Romero). Image: 931388.
All registrations have been cancelled from Chile’s aircraft register.
Alvaro Romero reporting from Chile.
This entry was posted in LAW-Latin American Wings, PAL Airlines and tagged Aerolineas Del Sur, Boeing 737-228, Boeing 737-230, Boeing 737-2K9, Boeing 737-3G7, CC-ACD, CC-ADZ, CC-CRP, CC-CSW, LAW - Latin American Wings (Chilejet), msn 22134, msn 23002, msn 23404, msn 24634, PAL Airlines on August 30, 2018 by Bruce Drum.
LAW – Latin American Wings is officially bankrupt
On July 30 2018, local judges in Santiago, Chile, declared the bankruptcy of LAW – Latin American Wings. This decision was made by request of the airline’s workers and creditors after the unpaid debts. Many of the workers are still contracted but did not receive its salaries from six months ago. LAW’s AOC was suspended by DGAC Chile on March 12, 2018.
This entry was posted in LAW-Latin American Wings and tagged LAW-Latin American Wings on August 6, 2018 by Bruce Drum.
Update on LAW-Latin American Wings
On March 12, 2018, the Chilean airline LAW-Latin American Wings said in a statement that the company will gradually return its operations. The company plans to operate from Friday, March 16, to its last remaining international destinations in Haiti, Dominican Republic and Miami (via Xtra Airways).
The airline is also considering operating under an ACMI contract for six months starting in April 2018.
LAW statement (in Spanish): https://www.vuelalaw.com/cl/Declaracio%CC%81n-pu%CC%81blica_120302018.pdf)
That afternoon, local civil aviation authority, DGAC Chile via Twitter stated that LAW has not given them the proper documents for restarting operations on March 16, and thus LAW’s AOC has been suspended until the airline updates its status, as they have not informed the DGAC about the extent of the announced ACMI operation of its fleet.
This entry was posted in LAW-Latin American Wings and tagged LAW-Latin American Wings on March 13, 2018 by Bruce Drum.
LAW suspends operations
LAW-Latin American Wings on Friday, March 9, announced it was suspending all operations. The airline blamed the suspension on competition from other low-cost competitors.
Previously in January 2018, the airline closed down its domestic operations in Chile, concentrating on international flights to Lima in Perú, Port-au-Prince in Haiti, Caracas in Venezuela and La Romana in Dominican Republic.
Recently, the Peruvian authorities conducted an investigation that led to the suspension of LAW flights to Peru from March 15, after many passengers suffered from cancellations and big delays because of the lack of aircraft.
The carrier stated it was “restructuring”. LAW was also offering a connection service to Miami via La Romana.
The airline was operating five Boeing 737-300s.
Copyright Photo: LAW – Latin American Wings (Chilejet) Boeing 737-33R WL CC-ARQ (msn 28869) SCL (Alvaro Romero). Image: 937249.
LAW aircraft slide show:
This entry was posted in LAW-Latin American Wings and tagged Boeing 737-33R WL, CC-ARQ, Latin American Wings, LAW, LAW - Latin American Wings (Chilejet), msn 28869 on March 10, 2018 by Bruce Drum.
LAW drops out of the Chilean domestic market, will concentrate on international routes
LAW-Latin American Wings announced on January 8 2018, that is leaving the domestic routes in Chile on January 10, 2018, to fully concentrate in its foreign routes.
LAW flew from Santiago, Chile to Antofagasta, Concepción and Puerto Montt with a fleet of five Boeing 737-300s.
LAW only had a 1.3% passenger share in the domestic market. Its seat occupancy rate was only 43.3%.
LAW will continue to operate from Santiago to Punta Cana, Port-au-Prince, Mendoza, Caracas, Lima and Miami.
Top Copyright Photo (all others by LAW): LAW – Latin American Wings (Chilejet) Boeing 737-33R WL CC-ARQ (msn 28869) SCL (Alvaro Romero). Image: 937249.
Route Map:
This entry was posted in LAW-Latin American Wings and tagged Boeing 737-33R WL, CC-ARQ, LAW - Latin American Wings (Chilejet), LAW-Latin American Wings, msn 28869, SCL on January 10, 2018 by Bruce Drum.
LAW-Latin American Wings to wetlease an Icelandair Boeing 757-200
LAW-Latin American Wings (Santiago) is planning to add a wetleased Boeing 757-200 from Icelandair.
This aircraft will arrive in Chile next October which will allow the airline to expand its operations from Santiago to Caracas in Venezuela, as well as later adding an extended route from Caracas to New York and Miami (subject to government approvals).
The new route from Santiago to Caracas will operate daily except on Wednesdays and Fridays, while Thursdays and Saturdays will be operated twice a day.
It is unclear how the currency problems in Venezuela will affect these plans.
This entry was posted in LAW-Latin American Wings and tagged LAW-Latin American Wings on August 19, 2017 by Bruce Drum.
LAW – Latin American Wings to start scheduled passenger operations
LAW – Latin American Wings (Santiago) is planning to change from a charter airline to a scheduled passenger airline. Starting on Monday March 13, 2017 the upstart will commence regularly scheduled passenger services from Santiago to the city of Concepción (CCP/SCIE) using its Boeing 737-300s.
The company will operate two roundtrips a day (Monday through Saturday) and a sole flight on Sunday.
Boeing 737-300 CC-ARQ, formerly operated by Alas Uruguay, is pictured landing at Santiago on
runway 17L. (above).
Top Copyright Photo: LAW – Latin American Wings (Chilejet) Boeing 737-33R WL CC-ARQ (msn
28869) SCL (Alvaro Romero). Image: 937249.
Alvaro Romero reporting from Santiago, Chile.
This entry was posted in LAW-Latin American Wings and tagged Boeing 737-33R WL, CC-ARQ, Chilejet, Latin American Wings, LAW, LAW-Latin American Wings, msn 28869 on March 10, 2017 by Bruce Drum.
First photos: The first Airbus A380 is dismantled
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Geneva's New Years Eve celebrations announced
National News // Nov. 22, 2016
Geneva’s New Year’s Eve celebrations are to be held once again on the Quai du Mont-Blanc.
Photo by Yves Merckx via Flickr
Fireworks in front of the Kempinski hotel will be set off at midnight and three stages will be set up for dancing with jazz, disco and electro music until 3am.
Nearly 15,000 people attended last year. Mayor Guillaume Barazzone says it "a great success so we decided to repeat it.”
“My greatest wish as mayor is that the whole population of Geneva takes party in the celebrations."
No hard liquor will be allowed on site and there will be an ambulance and up to around 30 security officers complementing the work of the cantonal and municipal police.
The associations Carrefour Addictions and Nuit Blanche will also be there to deal with any drug taking.
Tags: fireworks, geneva, new years eve, Quai du Mont-Blanc
Geneva to have more inclusive pedestrian crossing signs
The city of Geneva is to change the road signs that warn of a pedestrian crossing ahead.
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ALWAYS ON THE WAY
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→Inside North Korea – Travel Blogger Interview with Agness and Cez
Inside North Korea – Travel Blogger Interview with Agness and Cez
THIS POST MAY CONTAIN AFFILIATE LINKS. PLEASE READ MY DISCLOSURE FOR MORE INFO.
This interview series features interviews with travel bloggers and writers. If you are a travel blogger and a writer and have something to share with your readers, please get in touch with me at [email protected] I look forward to hearing from you!
In this travel blogger interview, let us meet Agness and Cez, the adventurous travel duo of eTramping, a travel blog full of incredible resources and knowledge for everyone looking for intense and unique travel experiences across the world. Agness and Cez both originally hail from Poland. They have been exploring the world since 2011 and it doesn’t seem like they are planning to stop anytime soon. They love visiting unique travel destinations such as Tibet and Antarctica.
Apart from these two destinations, Agness and Cez have visited North Korea, a mysterious country that has been a hotbed of the news or decades. I asked them to share their experience and they revealed so much about North Korea than what this country has been portrayed as on news media. From the unique culture and history, to the people, the food, and the daily life, I have learned so much about this country through their travels, and their experience has inspired has me to visit North Korea too!
Photo credit: Agness and Cez from etramping.com. Follow their adventure on Twitter, Instagram & Facebook to get travel inspired.
Welcome, Agness and Cez! Tell us about yourselves, your blog, and your adventures.
Agness: We are best friends, originally from Gdańsk in Poland, and back in 2011 we both sort of had this separate epiphany that we didn’t want to slog through 9 to 5 jobs anymore. I set off for China that year and Cez joined me shortly after. We knew we never wanted to go back to the grind! Etramping was born out of that, a desire to travel long-term and to sustain ourselves while doing so. Seven years later, we’re still going strong!
When did you first start thinking about visiting North Korea and what inspired you to visit?
Cez: We’ve both got a passion for going off the beaten track, and I for one always wanted to go to North Korea and Agness was really keen too. It’s just one of those bucket list destinations that had always been at the back of our mind. I think many serious travelers would say the same – it’s not always about visiting resorts or taking the easy or “safe” route. You have to challenge yourself. We’re inspired to go to the places that other people don’t.
How long were you both in North Korea and what did your itinerary look like?
Cez: We were there a total of six days. We went with Tongil Tours, and they took care of everything. We had two guides and a driver. One was originally from Texas but he’d lived in Asia for over 10 years and he spoke Korean fluently. He had a set itinerary for us, taking us around the sights you’re allowed to see. We were shown the famous landmarks, monuments, and museums, as well as had the chance to mix with the locals. While it is prearranged, what you can and can’t visit, the guides are super friendly and relaxed. It was a fascinating experience.
Location: Pyongyang, North Korea. Being surrounded by amazing people who made my trip to North Korea an amazing experience. Thank you to Tongil Tours and our North Korean guides, Ms Hong and Ms Oh | Photo credit: Agness and Cez from etramping.com
What is your favorite place in North Korea?
Agness: For me, it was experiencing the North Korean DMZ. I’ve been to the South Korean version previously, so it was really interesting seeing the contrasts. We met an official translator who deals with any necessary conversation with the outside world in the region – such as ourselves. But he didn’t say a word in English the whole time we were there!
Visiting a portion of the North Korean DMZ ⚠. In 2016 Agness managed to get to the South Korean DMZ so she made it to both spots Photo credit: Angess and Cez from etramping.com
Cez: I’d have to say the magic show we attended was my overall favorite moment. We were the first Westerners to view the spectacle, and it was really well performed. I just got this tremendous buzz from seeing something not many people get the chance to see.
On your website, you mentioned that “tourism can have a positive effect by allowing local people who overcome these negative stereotypes and come into contact with new ideas which they otherwise wouldn’t.” What does the daily life of local people look like and how has this trip has impacted them the most?
Agness: we understand that many people might think a visit to North Korea is playing right into the hands of the regime, that all your money goes directly to funding tyranny. But much of it goes to helping the guides and their families and those who work in the steadily blossoming tourism sector. As we’ve seen in the news recently, we’re on the cusp of historic change within the Korean peninsula, and promoting tourism in DPRK is one great way to ensure the rest of the world learns the positives about the country, while North Koreans learn about the positives of the rest of the world.
Cez: It’s true we weren’t permitted to see much of the country or the general population, and you hear stories of their daily life being extremely hard and, of course, of NK’s poor record with human rights. But there were glimpses here and there, and opportunity to reach out and make contact. If you shut tourism down completely then these people are lost; but, by steadily chipping away, barriers can be broken down, and we can only see positives if even one North Korean learned something new about the outside world. A snowflake can cause an avalanche.
Our visit in Pyongyang, North Korea | Photo credit: Angess and Cez from etramping.com
Can you share anything new that you have learned about North Korea from this trip?
Agness: Everything was new! It was fascinating to be inside such a secretive country, guided everywhere we went, only seeing what we were allowed to see. This sort of pantomime for foreigners was really interesting and heartbreaking at the same time.
Cez: I think their love of ten-pin bowling was really cool. There was a strangeness to it, people enjoying themselves! The wider world generally believes it’s hell on earth in there, but really they’re just trying to get on with things like the rest of us.
Visiting the International Friendship Exhibition House located at Myohyangsan, North Korea. Displayed are more than 112,000 gifts for Kim Il Sung, his son Kim Jong Il and current leader Kim Jong Un from 184 different countries | Photo credit: Angess and Cez from etramping.com
I had no idea people in North Korea love ten-pin bowling. What are your fondest memories of your visit?
Cez: For me, it was this moment at the magic show I mentioned previously. As I said we were among the first Westerners to see something like that and, naturally, we stood out like sore thumbs! There weren’t many seats left so we were separated and I sat next to a Korean woman and her young boy. He suddenly grabbed my water – it’s part of their culture to share things – and so I let him drink. But his mum wasn’t happy about it at all! Still, he held my hand for the entire performance. It was a really interesting moment – the curiosity of the child and the fear of the mother. I hoped I made a good impression though – and gained a friend in the process!
Agness: I was interviewed on national TV too – so that was fun! We had a good laugh about that afterward!
Exploring the Pyongyang metro – the deepest metro system in the world at 110 metres, conveniently doubling as a nuclear bunker | Photo credit: Angess and Cez from etramping.com
You both mentioned, “North Korea has a lot of very unique food”. What is the most unique food you had in North Korea that other travelers need to try?
Agness: Food in North Korea (and Korea in general) is amazing. It’s so eclectic and you’ll be spoiled for choice when visiting a restaurant. They also go out of their way to make everything really comfortable for you, so everything is over-the-top as they believe this is what Western hospitality is like. Food-wise, you’ve obviously got kimchi, which is their national dish of fermented chili peppers and vegetables on cabbage, but I think we both loved these steamed buns filled with bean paste. They were delicious!
Coffee with the view of Pyongyang city | Photo credit: Angess and Cez from etramping.com
Cez: I loved the warm noodles in chicken broth and ginseng, but honestly there’s not enough time to explain all the flavors on offer. They have one of the best diets in the world. Also, it’s hard to remember the names of everything!
Food to die for – the famous North Korean cold noodles|Location: Pyongyang, North Korea | Photo credit: Angess and Cez from etramping.com
Kimchi is my favorite food too! Did you have any disasters?
Agness: I think the only disaster I had was when I dropped my phone in a toilet and flushed it by accident. I’ve lost all the data and the phone never turned back on.
Cez: That and the SD card we bought didn’t fit into our camera, which obviously means the world is ending!
Oh, no…that is not a fun experience. For anyone who wants to go on a tour to North Korea, what should they expect and how can they maximize their experience?
Agness: Go with an open mind, with curiosity, and with kindness. Treat people with the utmost respect – remember you’re an ambassador for your own country. This is general advice for anywhere you go really, but it counts for a lot somewhere like NK.
Cez: You’ve still got to behave yourself there, so listen to your guides at all times – if they tell you to do something, you do it!
Agness: And wherever possible, try to reach out to the locals. Share your knowledge and experiences. Make connections even if only for a moment – it might change someone’s life!
Thank you Angess and Cez for sharing your travel experience in North Korea. Enjoy your coming travels!
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Julie Cao
What You Need to Know About Bus Travel in Northern Chile
Journey Through the Worst Countries in the World
Travel in Bangladesh – An Interview with Travel Blogger Noraly
Go To Thailand – Travel Blogger Interview with Mariska
Julie is the creator of Always On The Way. She lived in Hawaii and has made her way to Toronto Canada. In 2017, she went on an overland trip from Bogota Colombia to Puerto Williams, the southernmost city in the world. She believes travel is not only about visiting tourist attractions but more about getting to know the culture, people and the place.
Julie Cao - Always On The Way
Julie Cao is a Toronto-based travel writer and blogger. She has lived in the USA and Canada for ten years and traveled extensively throughout the North and Latin America. Instead of fast-paced travel, she likes to travel in-depth, slowly explore a place and make connections.
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Visiting United Nations Headquarters in New York City
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Men Who Raped co-worker’s Kids Charged, Remanded In Kirikiri Prison
According to Punch Four men who allegedly raped the five-year-old and three-year-old daughters of one of their co-workers, who was homeless, have been charged before an Ikeja Family Court on charges of rape and child defilement.
Saturday PUNCH learnt that the men – John Mahansi, Taiye Ojo (aka Ejima), Deji Adenekan (aka Orobo) and Peter Irobo (aka Apako)- who pleaded not guilty to the offences, were later remanded at the Kirikiri Prisons, pending the mention of their case, which comes up again for hearing on December 14, 2015.
Posted by SESAN OLASUPO at 09:17 No comments:
Knock knock...Man Finds Giant1.5 Metre Monitor Lizard Thumping On The Wall
A man has found a 1.5m lizard climbing the outside of his house after he heard it thumping on the wall.
The Daily Mail reports Eric Holland was out in the yard of his Thurgoona property in southern NSW when the fully grown Lace Monitor Lizard came up to him, reared up on its hind legs and stared him down.
The 80-year-old said he fled inside, fearing he could be bitten or scratched by the lizard, which carries a venomous bacteria in its mouth.
Bayelsa Election: Jonathan Battles To Save Face
There are indications that the outcome of today’s governorship election in Bayelsa State may go a long way in determining the future political relevance of former President Goodluck Jonathan.
Jonathan, an indigene of Bayelsa State from Ogbia council area was defeated at the last presidential election by the candidate of the All Progressive Congress, APC, Muhammadu Buhari.
Though Jonathan has lived a relatively quiet life since leaving office, shuttling between his Otuoke country home and Abuja and appearing twice at PDP events, such as the party primary where the incumbent Governor, Seriake Dickson, was affirmed as the party candidate for today’s polls and the mega rally where Dickson was presented the party flag, he is expected to lead some other members of the party from his Otuoke ward to cast their votes.
I am For APC, Sylva – Alaibe
Former managing director of the NDDC, Mr Ndutimi Alaibe has described as mischievous, stories making the rounds that he has perfected plans to work for Governor Seriake Dickson of the PDP in today’s governorship election.
According to Alaibe in a statement personally signed by him, the story trending in the socio media is a move aimed at pitting him against the APC leadership just as its sponsors are scared of the possible influence he will exact for the APC.
Nigerian Man Starts Preaching In London Bus And Is Told To Shut Up Or They Call The Police
A Nigerian man took to a London bus and starting constituting a nuisance of himself there preaching. In the UK, he would most likely be disturbing the peace and could be arrested. The preacher kept insisting that the passengers hear him out ‘because I am preaching the word of life.’
An annoyed female passenger who was obviously frustrated with the preacher’s refusal to get off the bus yelled at him, ‘Idiot!’ He further shocked passengers with his refusal to get off the bus and just stayed on disturbing the peace. It became so embarrasing that the driver stopped the bus and told the passengers he wasn’t moving the vehicle till the preacher gets off.
Posted by SESAN OLASUPO at 14:57 1 comment:
Police Hunt Man Who Filmed Toddler Smoking Marijuana Joint And Posted It On Facebook (Photo + Video)
Some people are just outrightly wicked and missing screws upstairs ooh! Why am I angry with such people? I’ll tell you picking a real life situation now. Can you imagine a man filmed a toddler still in diapers ooh smoking a marijuana joint and sadly, encourages the boy to “Inhale it.”
25-Year-Old Mom Found Dead After Inviting A Man From Facebook Into Her Home
In this day and age of online dating and app hookups, it’s become standard to meet men on social media and other digital outlets, but the story of Sharae Bradford might make you think twice about how soon you want to go from social outings to home invitations.
On Saturday, Bradford was found nude and “bleeding heavily” by a family member in her Ferguson, MO, apartment around 6 pm. At the time, the 25-year-old mom was responsive but by the time paramedics arrived she was unconscious and pronounced dead at the scene.
Video Of Pastor Caught Pants Down Trying To Sleep With A Married Woman [Photos+Video]
This is a Congolese Pastor caught on a church member's bed in London trying to sleep with the woman on Nov 28. He has been undermining the woman's husband, when he kept on pestering the woman for sex. He got what he deserved after he went to their house pretending to do deliverance through sex. After striping they called the husband and other church members on him. Watch the shocking video below.
'How CBN Emptied Its Vaults To Finance PDP’s Presidential Campaign
According to TheCable the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) practically emptied its vaults apparently to finance the presidential campaign of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), sources conversant with investigations into security spending in the last administration have informed
TheCable. TheCable had earlier reported the extra-budgetary disbursement of N40 billion to the office of the national security adviser and N20 billion to the Department of State Services (DSS) by the CBN, but fresh revelations indicate that the monies were released in dollar cash — contrary to all money laundering regulations. They were taken directly from the dollar reserve vaults of the central bank, TheCable understands.
"N4.6billion I Received From Dasuki Was For Spiritual Purpose" - Attahiru Bafarawa
The alleged diversion of $2.2 billion meant for arms purchase by the administration of former President Goodluck Jonathan continue to generate more revelations as former Sokoto State Governor Alhaji Attahiru Bafarawa denied receiving any money from the embattled former National Security Adviser (NSA) retired Colonel Sambo Dasuki.
Controversy has led to arrest of Dasuki and some prominent Nigerians by the Department of State Service (DSS) and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).
Alaafin Of Oyo In London Again With His Four Wives - Trains With Larry The Boxer (Photos)
The Alaafin of Oyo , Oba Dr Lamidi Olayiwola Adeyemi III, was in spotlight again when he visited Larry Ekundayo’s AKA Larry The Boxer during his training session at Lime house Marina Gym, London.
Nigerian rapper 2Shotz And Wife, Precious Jones Separate; Accuses Him Of Beating Her
Nigerian rapper 2Shotz has been accused by his wife Precious Jones of domestic violence. In a series of leaked WhatsApp messages between the rapper's wife and her friend, she narrates how the popular rapper laid his hands on her. 2Shotz started becoming violent was last year when he pushed his wife to the ground when she was in so much pain from a medical condition. Things got worse this year when he slapped her after he called her a wh*re in front of their daughter.
Bode George, Odili Got N100M Each From Dasuki In Arms Purchase Scam
A source at the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission has linked former Governor Peter Odili of Rivers State and a once convicted top member of the Peoples Democratic Party, Bode George, with receiving N100 million each from the former National Security Adviser, Colonel Sambo Dasuki (ret.).
The EFCC source told SaharaReporters that the largess to the two PDP officials was diverted from funds meant for the purchase of arms in order to better equip the Nigerian military in its campaign against Islamist terror group, Boko Haram.
God Pulled Me Out of Mess; I Have A Happy Life Free From Abuse- Anita Oyakhilome Shades Ex-Husband, Pastor Chris
Estranged wife of popular Lagos Pastor, Chris Oyakhilome, Anita, yesterday December 2nd, took to her blog to thank God for pulling her out of mess and making her lead a life now free from abuse. Anita and Chris Oyakhilome have been separated since last year. What she wrote below ...
"December is the last month of the year I start every month thankful and for this month of December I am eternally grateful. I am worthy of love, to give and receive. I have value and self-respect, no one has the ability to oppress, suppress or depress me. I am enough and complete in God. My today is better than yesterday.
Nigerian Girl Breaks Record By Graduating With A Distinction In Masters Of Law From UK University
A Nigerian student in the United Kingdom has made the headlines for laudable reasons after finishing atop her class. Some Nigerians in diaspora are really making the country proud with outstanding performances in their different areas of focus.
Agbani Darego Puts Sexy Bikini Bod On Display - Slams Body Shaming Trolls Who Told Her to Add Flesh to her ‘Skinny Ass’
Former miss world showed off her sexy bikini body… She also slammed haters who said she is a skinny ass...
Supermodel and former Miss World Agbani Darego is not letting negative comments about her body get to her. Just yesterday, she shared this photo of herself all ready and set to leave for an event only for some trolls to fire back that she should add some weight
Nigerian Cele Pastor Arrested In Washington For Beating, Robbing and Raping Women
A certain Nigerian preacher of the Celestial Church of Christ, one Gabriel Omogbo, has been arrested in the United States for allegedly committing crimes across hotels.
According to WJLA-TV, channel 7, an ABC-affiliated television station in Washington, D.C., the 33-year-old Omogbo of Hyattsville, Maryland, had been in the habit of preaching the word of God on Sunday mornings and allegedly spending his nights hunting prostitutes at hotels.
Doctor With The Magic Touch: Paediatrician Reveals Secret Of How To Hold A Baby And Stop It Crying Every Time [Photos+Video]
This may be the saving grace all new parents are looking for.
An American paediatrician claims to have found a miracle way of holding an infant to make it stop crying.
Dr Robert C Hamilton, of Santa Monica, California, says his technique, dubbed 'The Hold', works every time without fail.
Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg Announces Arrival Of Baby Daughter And Plan To Donate 99 Percent of Facebook Fortune
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan have celebrated the arrival of their baby daughter and said they plan to donate 99 percent of their shares in the social media network to improving the world.
Mr Zuckerberg posted to the site this morning to celebrate the birth of daughter Max, and said the couple were committed to improving the world she will live in.
"We are committed to doing our small part to help create this world for all children," Mr Zuckerberg wrote.
Raymond Dokpesi Arrested By EFCC Over N2.1Billion Arms Purchase Scandal
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) today arrested the Chairman of Africa Independent Television, Raymond Dokpesi, over the spreading arms purchase scandal involving the office of the former National Security Adviser, Sambo Dasuki, and the theft of N2.1billion from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
Mr. Dokpesi was arrested shortly after noon, Nigerian time, and whisked to the EFCC, where he is now being interrogated.
EFCC sources told SaharaRerporters that on the instructions of the Mr. Dasuki, CBN paid N2.1billion to the AIT chairman.
[Photos+Video]Lamborghini Driver Seen Hanging Out Of Window Sending Text Moments After Hitting And Injuring Three People Warning: [Graphic footage]
A young driver was caught on camera hanging out of his wrecked Lamborghini to send a text moments after he mowed down three people, killing one.
Wiyang Lautner, 24, allegedly lost control of his supercar while racing a Ferrari in Surabaya, East Java, and hit a couple, 41-year-old Srikanti and 51-year-old Kuswanto, and vendor waiter Mujianto, 44.
Witnesses filming the aftermath of the crash were surprised to see Lautner hanging out of the window to send a text.
I Have No Problems With Tinubu - Why Would I Attack Asiwaju? Talking Of Politics, He Has Paid His Dues.
Pastor Tunde Bakare has denied having any issues with APC Chieftain, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu and says, those who say he usually attacks Tinubu do not know what they are saying, because he praises him instead. According to the G.O, Tinubu is a good politician who he respects and he is someone who single handedly defeated PDP. And guess what? We believe him because men of God do not lie. Here’s what he told The News… As usual he answered the question brilliantly!
Q: When we look at the campaign of PMB, we saw Asiwaju Tinubu as his backbone, he played a leading role in the emergence of Buhari as President. Recently in the church, I heard I wasn’t there, that you attacked Jonathan and Tinubu and when I look at your comment on Tinubu, I see that you always attack him, I want to ask, why? Continue...
CAREER SWITCH!!! You Will Not Believe What This Lovely Former Top Booty Model Is Doing For Employment Now After Seven Kids:
#truckingdiva Montana Deleon Shares Her Experience
Montana DeLeon was one of the most popular BOOTY MODELS IN THE WORLD a few years ago. She was famous - not only for her looks - but for the fact that she gave birth to SEVEN CHILDREN.
Well, Montana has decided to hang up her THING, and move on to a new career. She's now a cross-country truck driver.
US Pastor, 60 Marries His Pregnant Girlfriend, 19, With The Blessing Of His Wife, 44, (and now the two women will live in different wings of his home)
Reverend Thom Miller, 60, has married pregnant girlfriend Reba Kerfoot, 19, with the full support of his wife Belinda, 44. Rev. Miller, a former mafia enforcer who found god in prison, is now building a new house in their hometown of Mansfield, Ohio, with one wing for each wife. Belinda and Reba claim to both be perfectly happy with a life of polygamy, but Rev. Miller stresses that he is the only person in their relationship allowed to have more than one partner.
Executive Guilty Of Date Rape After Slipping Drug Into Drink Of Woman He Met
Businessman John Campbell has been found guilty of spiking the woman's drink with ecstasy in the back garden at his home before having sex with her. The finance director date raped the air stewardess he met on a dating website MillionaireMatch after he slipped drugs into her glass of wine.
The air stewardess had struck up a relationship with 65-year-old Campbell after meeting him online on the exclusive dating site that matches "successful singles and admirers".
But she told police she "lost" several hours after having memory blackouts and being violently sick after having the drug secretly dropped in her drink.
Ex-NYPD Officer Pleads Guilty To Shooting Wife To Death In Front Of Children
An ex-NYPD officer admitted to viciously gunning down his wife in front of their two young children because he thought she was having an affair.Kevin Canty, 44, pleaded guilty Tuesday to hitting his wife Jessica, 40, with seven bullets as their 6 and 9-year-old children watched in horror inside their
Ozone Park home."My nephew saw everything. ...
I'm just glad he doesn't have to go through anything he already went through the grand jury. No child should have to go through this,"saidJessica's sister Lisa Caccavale outside of Queens Supreme Cour
Chidinma & Flavour Kiss Passionately On Stage (Photos)
Finally, the rumour has been confirmed by the two celebrities
Chidinma and Flavour performed their popular collabo song, Ololufe and locked a kiss at the end of the performance. Now get this right, according to those who were at the concert, and ofcourse according to the photo already circulating, that was not just a stage kiss. Look at the photo well and see the way Flavour went deep and of course Chidnma doing the LongThroat Thing by raising her head so high so she could meet his LIPS.
Pharrell Wears Gay Flag On New Grill (photo)
The rapper and music producer showed off his new grill on his instagram page over the weekend, with the gay flag on it. His followers have been questioning him about the move...many wondering if he wanted to come out of the closet or just supporting the gay movement. Kinda odd though
Small Penis Competition Desperately Hunting For World's Tiniest Manhood [Photos+Video]
Contestants will strip off to display their genitals through evening wear and swimsuits at the annual competition.
The owner of the smallest penis will win £325, a crown and a sash at the competition in New York.
But just weeks before the contest, organisers at the Kings County Saloon are struggling to find entrants and have put out a call for "exemplary small penises" from around the world.
They've opened up a website which lets anyone nominate their friends for the honour – and video submissions will be accepted.
Fury shocks Klitschko to win heavyweight world titles with unanimous points win over long reigning champion
The Gypsy King of England is amazingly, wonderfully, sensationally - and tearfully - the new heavyweight champion of the world. Tyson Fury ended the decade long reign of the great Wladimir Klitschko with a display of astonishing nerve and virtuosity -
▼ 29 Nov - 6 Dec (30)
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Home / American Football / Andrew Harris’ historic night helps Winnipeg Blue Bombers get past BC Lions
Andrew Harris’ historic night helps Winnipeg Blue Bombers get past BC Lions
Photo: Jason Halstead, CFL.ca
WINNIPEG — Andrew Harris set a major milestone in the Winnipeg Blue Bombers’ 32-16 victory over the BC Lions on Thursday night.
Harris finished with over 70 yards on the ground, which helped him set the all-time record for yards gained from scrimmage by a Canadian.
Bombers quarterback Matt Nichols went 10 of 12 for 179 yards and a touchdown, but he was forced to leave the game in the fourth quarter with an upper-body injury.
Mike Reilly went 16-for-26 for 177 yards in the loss. Receiver Duron Carter also had a 56-yard completion to Lemar Durant in the third quarter.
The Winnipeg defence got to Reilly seven times on the night and added an interception and three forced fumbles. Marcus Sayles also had a blocked punt touchdown on special teams.
BC would immediately concede great field position to the Bombers, as an attempt to keep the ball away from Janarion Grant off the opening kick-off would set up Winnipeg on their own 44. A 20-yard clipping penalty on Garry Peters and a pair of scampers by Harris totalling 14 yards got Matt Nichols into prime position. He’d take care of the rest, unleashing a strike to the back of the end zone to hit Nic Demski in stride. Justin Medlock would stick the extra point to give the hosts an early 7-0 lead.
Nichols would continue to fire, hitting Chris Matthews with a bomb over the middle for a gain of 51 yards. After a gain of three on a pass to Lucky Whitehead, the pivot would take a shot at Kenny Lawler in the end zone. However, the pass over the middle would catch the upright, forcing the kicking team onto the field. Medlock would calmly run out and hit a 25-yarder to push the Bomber lead to 10.
The Lions’ offensive line continued to struggle in the early goings of the game, as the Bombers were able to get the 30th sack of the campaign on Mike Reilly to force BC off the field on their second possession.
Winnipeg’s offence would keep testing the BC secondary to end the first frame. Nichols found Demski streaking down the left sideline at put the ball on him for a gain of 53. But on the final play of the first quarter, Nichols threw while being hit, and after Drew Wolitarsky juggled the ball, Maleki Harris would nab it in mid-air for the interception.
Reilly would start to find a groove to open the second quarter by getting the ball out early to his receivers on short routes. The offence would march 61 yards downfield, but Winnipeg stuffed John White on a short run to force a field goal, which Sergio Castillo would hit from 35 yards out to get the Leos on the board.
The BC defence would nab a second interception of the first half to keep the momentum going. Chris Strevelerwould be under centre to start the possession for the Bombers. He’d gain a first down on a pair of runs, but after being forced out of the pocket on his third play, Isaiah Guzylak-Messam tipped a pass and defensive lineman Junior Luke settled underneath the ball for the pick.
They’d convert turnovers into points again, as Castillo would put his second field goal of the night through the uprights from 50 yards out to cut the Winnipeg lead to 10-6.
Harris would gain 26 yards on a trio of carries near the end of the first half, but the Bombers’ offence was forced off the field again, leaving Medlock with a 45-yarder to get those three points back, but he’d hit the upright on the long kick. That ended Medlock’s previous streak of 11 straight field goals made.
Winnipeg would get the second sack of the evening on Reilly, forcing the Lions to kick deep in their own territory. They’d opt to concede the safety. That pushed the Winnipeg lead to 12-6 and gave the Bombers possession with around 20 seconds left in the half. They would kneel out the clock and take their six-point advantage into the locker rooms.
BC opened the second half with a spot of trickery. Duron Carter went in motion and rolled out to the flat to receive a pass from Reilly. He’d plant and air it out for Lemar Durant for a 56-yard catch and run that got the Lions down to the Winnipeg 19. White would gain 15 on a carry before punching it in from 4 yards out on the following play. Castillo’s extra point gave the Lions their first lead of the contest.
But that advantage would be short-lived, as Grant would return the ensuing kick-off 55 yards to set the Bombers up on the BC 25. After a quick two-and-out, Medlock would drill a 37-yard field goal to put the Bombers back on top.
Reilly would toss his first interception halfway through the third quarter after Willie Jefferson dropped into coverage to pick off a short pass.
The Bombers would immediately turn that defensive play into points a 20-yard completion to Lucky Whiteheadand a 16-yard connection with Kenny Lawler would set up a rushing touchdown from 1-yard out by Nichols. It would be a nine-point game following the point after. On the drive, Harris became the all-time Canadian leader in scrimmage yards on a 1-yard carry, passing Ben Cahoon in the process.
Things would go from bad to worse for BC. Marcus Sayles would get a free lane to punter Josh Bartel, block the kick, and return it to the end zone. Medlock would hit another extra point to give the Bombers a double-digit lead to end the third.
Both kickers would exchange field goals — Medlock hit from 53 yards out before Castillo countered with a 47-yarder to make it 32-16. On the next play, Shawn Lemon would force a fumble and take Nichols to the ground. The Bombers’ pivot would get up and immediately signal backup Chris Streveler to start warming up. He’d headed to the locker room and did not return.
Winnipeg would get the ball back on the next play, as Reilly would put the ball on the turf and Kyrie Wilson would fall on it.
The Lions would get some extra chances to narrow the gap, but the Winnipeg defence would hold strong.
With the victory, the Bombers move to 7-2 on the campaign. They’ll head to Edmonton in Week 11 for a clash with the Eskimos on Aug 23. BC is headed home with a 1-8 record and a matchup against the East-leading Hamilton Tiger-Cats on tap on Aug 24.
Related ItemsAmerican FootballAndrew HarrisBC LionsCanadian footballCanadian Football LeagueCFLNewsWinnipeg Blue Bombers
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