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You are here: Home / Archives for crane
“This Work Is our Whole Life”
August 9, 2014 By Pam
This week, I honored the memory of August 1945, when the U.S. dropped atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, by writing about the resistance of the Shibokusa women for my new book on creative nonviolence. It lifted my spirits. I hope it lifts yours, too.
Long before Occupy Wall Street, the Shibokusa women of Japan used the tactic of nonviolent occupation. They refused to abandon Mount Fuji, a beloved symbol of their nation.
The land at the foot of Kita Fuji (North Fuji) had been farmed since the Edo period in the 17th century. In 1936, however, it was taken over by the Japanese Imperial Army for military exercises. Following World War II, the base was appropriated by U.S. forces, which retained special privileges even after a 1952 treaty. Little did the soldiers know that some very tough women would become their worst nightmare.
After most farm families gave up and moved to the cities, these tough, steadfastly antiwar grandmothers formed the Shibokusa Mother’s Committee in 1955, determined to fight for their land and disrupt business-as-usual on the military base. They knew that militarism meant death to people and animals and violence to the earth.
An intentionally mischievous, bothersome, embarrassing presence at the military base, they dressed in baggy trousers and wide straw hats and found countless ways to disrupt training exercises. They flew kites in flight paths, sent up smoke signals to obstruct artillery tests, lay down in the road to block trucks. They created secret paths from their cottages to the military exercise areas and jumped out of the bushes to startle the soldiers. They planted scarecrows, sat in circles to sing and clap, stood pointing and laughing at the men in their military uniforms.
Sometimes, riot police were sent to arrest the women in a futile attempt to evict them and put an end to their resistance. The elders were unfazed.
Humor was one of the hallmarks of the Shibokusa women’s resistance. In an interview with Leonie Caldecott, they explained, “[The police] hate it when we start screaming. They have realized that, though we are physically easier to arrest than men, we’re more trouble afterwards! Men put up a fight, but once it’s over they just give everything away. We never give our name, age or anything. We just say we’re so old, we can’t remember when we were born or who we are.”
In the Caldecott interview, the women said, “Don’t imagine our lives are miserable. It’s fun to make a nuisance of ourselves and embarrass those men. This work is our whole life. We enjoy every minute, but we’re not lazy about it.”
The women’s occupation at Kita Fuji lasted until 2006 when the aged leadership died off, but the stories of their resistance and courage live on.
To Go Deeper:
Caldecott, Leonie. “At the Foot of the Mountain: The Shibokusa Women of Kita Fuji” from Keeping the Peace: A Women’s Peace Handbook. Lynne Jones, ed. London: Women’s Press, 1983.
“Remembering Hiroshima and Nagasaki with WILPF (Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom), July 28, 2014 http://peaceeconomyproject.org/wordpress/?p=3273
“The Story of the Peace Crane” http://www.buddhistcouncil.org/bodhitree/Books/Story_of_the_Peace_Crane.pdf
“How to Fold an Origami Crane (for beginners)”
“Origami” by Hiroko Sakai (She is a contemporary Japanese artist who has lived in San Francisco since 1999.) http://www.redbubble.com/people/hilo/works/3420485-origami
Filed Under: Featured Tagged With: crane, Hiroshima, Japan, Leonie Caldecott, Mount Fuji, Nagasaki, origami, peace crane, Shibokusa
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Television credits include: THE GOOD WIFE (Emmy Winner, Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series), CLAWS, PERSON OF INTEREST, TRUE BLOOD (SAG nomination, Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series), CROWDED, WHEN WE RISE, LOST, DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES and many, many others. Film credits include: TO THE BONE, DAISY WINTERS, AND THEN I GO, 5 FLIGHTS UP, BENEATH THEHARVEST SKY, IN VITO VERITAS, BAG OF HAMMERS, WHAT’S WRONG WITH VIRGINIA, SIRONIA, DUPLICITY, VICKY CHRISTINA BARCELONA, TRANSAMERICA, TOWELHEAD, THAT EVENING SUN, STRAIGHT JACKET, GRACE ; GLORIE, THE JOURNEY, and MY BEST FRIEND’S WEDDING. Ms. Preston is alsoan accomplished theatre actor who’s worked both on and off-Broadway, and a director whose film, THAT’S WHAT SHE SAID, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2012.
Television credits include HBO’s ROOM 104, and recent film credits include the Oscar-nominated film, LADYBIRD, for which she received a SAG award nomination for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture. Ms. Scott is an LA native, took classes at the RSC, and is agraduate of UCLA’s School of Theatre, Film & Television.
Reggie Baker
Officer Marsh
Television credits include: SUPERNATURAL, FELICITY, WAITING, MASTERS OF SEX,THRESHOLD, ALIAS, COME TO PAPA, HEAD CASE, TOUCH, FRANKLIN & BASH, CHICAGO HOPE, BIRDS OF PREY, BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER, and KINGS OF CON.Film Credits include: A LITTLE HELP, STILL WAITING, STATE OF PLAY, KICKING AND SCREAMING, SEX AND DEATH 101, THE FIRST 20 MILLION IS ALWAYS THE HARDEST, NOT ANOTHER TEEN MOVIE, TWO DAYS WITH PAUL RUDD, THE SIDEKICK, and WAITING.Mr. Benedict can also be seen and heard as the front man of the La-based band, LOUDEN SWAIN, whose 6th studio EP was released in January 2017.
William Smillie
Television credits include: CHICAGO FIRE, APB, BOSS, THE CHICAGO CODE, SHAMELESS and ER.Film credits include THE DARK KNIGHT and DILEMMA, and the soon-to-be-released WHAT THEY HAD. Chicago-based Smillie can also be found in voice-over booths and on stage.
Officer Riley
Cathy Shim
Television credits include: THE FAKE NEWS, PLAYING HOUSE, SUPERIOR DONUTS, BAJILLION DOLLAR PROPERTIES, FAMELESS, DEAL WITH IT, YOU’RE WHOLE, RENO 911!, MAD TV, DRAKE & JOSH, and PUNK’D.Film credits include: RAISING BUCHANAN, LOVE IS NOT LOVE, THE WATCH, RENO 911!, MIAMI, BALLS OF FURY, and AMERICONS, and her voice-over work includes THE CLEVELAND SHOW, GLENN MARTIN DDS, SAMURAI DAYCARE, and OISHI HIGH SCHOOL BATTLE. Ms. Shim has performed sketch and improv at UCB, 10 West, Groundlings, and Second City, as well as stand-up at various clubs around town.
Postell Pringle
Television credits include: RESCUE ME, UNFORGETTABLE, LAW & ORDER, and LAW & ORDER: CRIMINAL INTENT.Film credits include: UNKNOWN SOLDIER, 14085, THE HUDSON TRIBES, and ORANGE BOW. Mr. Pringle has worked as an actor both on and off-Broadway, and has won numerous awards as a writer, performer, choreographer, and composer with his theatre company, Q Brothers Collective, known chiefly for hip hop musical adaptations of Shakespeare. He is also a member of the Chicago-based band, The Rap Pack.
Andrew Rothenberg
Seana Kofoed
Television credits include: AMERICAN PRINCESS, FLAKED, GONE, NCIS, RAISING HOPE, SUBURGATORY, RULES OF ENGAGEMENT, MAJOR CRIMES, THE BIG C, MEN OF A CERTAIN AGE, FLASHFORWARD, THE MENTALIST, MEN IN TREES, NUMBERS, VAMPED OUT, DONNA’S REVENGE, VALENTINE, BORDERLINE TALENT, QUEENS SUPREME, ED, THE AUDREY HEPBURN STORY, LAW & ORDER: SVU, AND THIRD WATCH.Ms. Kofoed has voiced characters on MAD, ELECTRIC CITY, DRAGON AGE: ORIGINS, and SHARK TALE: THE GAME, and was a New York theatre actor for years, happily working both on and Off Broadway, before moving west to Los Angeles.
Roslyn Alexander
Robert Breuler
Father Galvin
Birgundi Baker
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6 St. Louis Women Making Waves In The Arts
Home / Culture / 6 St. Louis Women Making Waves In The Arts
By Lena Crown
Posted Feb 14, 2018
In Culture, Feature
6 St. Louis Women Making Waves In The Arts2018-02-142018-02-20http://www.alivemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/logo_header.pngAlivehttp://alivemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/visionary-award-winners-pic-min-e1518421656361.jpg200px200px
The six women honored by the 2018 St. Louis Visionary Awards have pushed the city’s arts community forward in distinct, tangible ways—ways such as: establishing the Shakespeare Festival in Forest Park; forging the city’s first space for classical Indian dance; creating space for conversations about race, identity and art; and much more.
We asked each of these inspiring women about their arts experience, inspirations and visions for the future. Keep reading for their answers.
Yvonne Osei, Emerging Artist
Tell me about your introduction to art and the arts community in St. Louis.
As a native of the Ashanti Kingdom of Ghana, my interest in art was subconsciously sparked and continues to be invigorated by the Ashanti way of life. Art forms an inseparable synergy with life and is embodied by people: art is worn, carried around and lived in. My involvement with the art scene in St. Louis dates back to 2009, when I first served as a Gallery Assistant at Three Sinks Gallery, where I was exposed to local artists and art events in the St. Louis area.
What is something you are proud to have created?
In 2016, I created a collection of garments titled “From Utopia, With Love.” These garments are constructed from textile designs using photographic renditions of the skins and body features of diverse individuals I have photographed. I am proud of this work and seek to expand on it because of its potential to celebrate differences and call attention to the superficiality of racial categorizations.
What are you working on at the moment, or what do you currently find inspiring?
I find clothing inspiring because of its potency as a highly responsive artistic medium of expression. Clothing is a universally relatable necessity that exemplifies the synergistic relationship between art and life in my culture. In my recent creative works, I explore clothing as cultural, social and political symbols as well as literal and conceptual coverings of ‘nudity.’ I am also drawn to the way clothing moves fluidly between public and private spaces.
What is your advice for young people looking to establish a career in the arts?
As young artists, it is crucial to understand that your creative voice is inherently yours and it is valid. It is a good thing to receive constructive criticism about your work but a dangerous thing to internalize it to the detriment of your vision.
Antionette Carroll, Community Impact Artist
My grandparents, who raised me, always integrated art into our home. Still, no one ever told me that a career in the arts is possible. I ultimately decided to pursue design after studying biology. My introduction to the arts community in St. Louis came from the Katherine Dunham Fellowship at the Regional Arts Commission, which opened my eyes to the existence of careers like arts administration.
My biggest accomplishment was the establishment of the Creative Reaction Lab in response to the unrest in Ferguson. We educate and engage Black and Latino youth, to address issues around racism. I am proud to have implemented a new form of creative problem-solving: equity-centered community design, which can be applied to address social justice issues. We are trying to build a network of community leaders and equity designers.
Currently, I’m working on the curation of the third annual Design + Diversity conference. The conference examines how we design diversity, both through the visual lens and through the lens of human connection. This year, we are developing a fellowship program to give interested designers the opportunity to not only attend the conference, but also to receive resources to support their success in the industry.
We are at work more than we are at home, so try not to bring unhappiness home with you. Find your happiness in whatever medium that brings you joy.
Allison Felter, Outstanding Arts Professional
I first encountered the arts in grade school, when my mother insisted I sign up to play a band instrument. I was introduced to the St. Louis arts community fresh out of college, working for the legendary Joan Fann at the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra. She took an enthusiastic but wildly unfocused twenty-two-year-old and initiated my training as an arts administrator.
I have had the privilege of building the Artists-in-Training Program at Opera Theatre of Saint Louis into one that is nationally recognized, providing college-level voice training and life skills to students from all socioeconomic backgrounds. Numerous graduates have achieved distinguished careers in diverse disciplines, from opera to politics. Beyond the career opportunities, the program invests in the community by offering young people the chance to make lifelong friends.
My partnerships, both ongoing and new, make my job interesting. I pair our resources at Opera Theater of Saint Louis with those of partner organizations to create new programming for students and adults. We recently partnered with the Sheldon Concert Hall, St. Louis Public Schools and St. Louis Archdiocesan Schools to offer a professional development day for teachers, including vocal, aural and physical body training.
If you are interested in arts administration, sample as many departments as you can—whether you’re an intern, volunteer or paid employee—to find out where your true gifts lie.
Asha Premachandra, Outstanding Teaching Artist
When I came to St. Louis, I realized there were no classical Indian dance companies here, so my family and I started our own. We named it “Dances of India,” because many thought our school taught Native American dance. My husband, who was always fond of both Eastern and Western dance, took the lead in organizing the school.
We are very proud to have created new pieces for our annual dance shows for the past 40 years. I also feel very lucky to work alongside my friends and family. My friend and student Theckla Mehta is the artistic co-director, and my daughter, Nartana Premachandra, serves as the president and writes our original productions.
We are continually pushing ourselves to bring new ideas to our dance choreography so that we can inspire the audience. We try to reach out to the audience emotionally to help them truly feel the story or the dance’s rhythm.
Don’t underestimate the benefits that the performing arts can have on your mind and body. Dance in general is very relaxing to the mind and body. Dance is healthy!
Cheeraz Gormon, Outstanding Working Artist
The house I grew up in had paintings covering the walls and music playing on any given day of the week. I navigated the St. Louis arts community during college as a young photographer and spoken-word poet in 1998, and, since then, my journey has been filled with so much exploration and growth.
I am proud to have released my first collection of poetry and writing in 2015. I’m grateful to have founded the nonprofit Sonic Arts United, and to have watched it take shape as the co-director over the years. I’m thankful to have helped to establish the St. Louis Brick City Poetry Festival. Last, but surely not least, it was humbling to work with Shirley Bradley-LeFlore to bring back her writers workshop, Poets Alley.
As Storytelling Fellow at InPower Institute based in St. Louis, I’m excited to launch a podcast series dedicated to giving voice to Black neighborhoods and communities that have suffered displacement and erasure. In my own poetry, I’m collaborating with visual artist and animator Sarah Paulsen. I am beginning the process of turning some of my poems into short films, which is exciting and intimidating.
Resist the urge to narrow what is meant to be wide. The world has enough systems designed to suppress what is most beautiful, vibrant and liberating. Always choose your freedom.
Lana Pepper, Major Contributor to the Arts
I was twenty-three years old before I went to the theater. My very first play was “Othello,” and although I knew nothing about Shakespeare, I was mesmerized. I eventually studied theater while raising my children and later became the assistant to the artistic director at The Rep. After receiving my MFA, I began to organize fundraisers and events for local arts organizations.
I am proud of my role in bringing the Shakespeare Festival to St. Louis. I was first brought on as a volunteer because of my background in Shakespeare and my organizational experience, and eventually I became the managing director. We also immediately implemented educational programs in St. Louis schools. Inspired by the Chicago Shakespeare Festival, we trained teachers to get students up out of their chairs, speaking and acting out the lines.
I serve on the board at the Fox Performing Arts Charitable Foundation, and we are currently working to offer more young people opportunities for performance. I hope that someday, in the future, so many talented artists will be coming from our city that someone will say, “What is in the water in St. Louis? Where is this talent coming from?”
Ask for help. And when you get help, you must give credit to those people. And finally: drive a station wagon, because you’re going to be schlepping.
Artist, Creative, Maker, missouri, St. Louis, Story, Writer
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Was North Carolina the Florida of 2004?
With support from the Z. Smith Reynolds and Ford Foundations, FairVote presents: North Carolina Reform Roundtables
Co-sponsored by Democracy North Carolina and Common Cause North Carolina
North Carolina's 2004 elections highlighted disturbing flaws in the state's electoral system. In August, the state held a runoff election for the Democratic nomination for Superintendent of Public Instruction. This election cost counties $3.5 million dollars, for a turnout of only 2 to 3% of voters. In the November general election, voting machines in Carteret County failed to record over four-thousand votes, whilethe Republican and Democrat were separated by less than three-thousand votes in the state-wide race for Agriculture Commissioner. As a result, voters throughout the state will have to re-cast their ballots for that position. These problems, as well as a host of others around the state, all stem from structural problems in the state's electoral system that are creating a democracy deficit in North Carolina.
Expensive Runoffs, "Missing" Votes and Minority Under-Representation: Where do we go from here?
In February 2005, FairVote-The Center for Voting and Democracy will be holding a series of workshops in conjunction with state and local activists in North Carolina to discuss ways in which current electoral practices can be improved. We hope that you can join us for some of these events.
Coverage of the 2004 general elections lacked the dramatic images of electoral problems that dominated 2000, but this should not blind us to the inconsistencies and unfairnesses which have plagued voting in North Carolina just as much this time round. The low turnout in the most recent primary runoffs raised questions about the effectiveness of the current runoff system ñ along with an excessively heavy elections bill for local communities. With the general election, more allegations surfaced of lost votes, voter intimidation, fraud and faulty voting equipment. And the emergence of new problems should not distract us from a long-standing one: ethnic and racial minorities in North Carolina have suffered from perennial under-representation. Although over 20% of the voting age population of the state is African American, only one in ten County Commissioners are. Now is the time to take action so that the problems which remained unfixed for 2004 will not resurface at the next election.
What's the Matter with North Carolina Elections?
Program and Speakers
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Who is donald sutherland dating
He recalls: “I walked up to Timothy Hutton when I was about 22 and said: ‘You stole that moment from me and my dad.
As a teenager, watching one of his father’s best performances in – Robert Redford’s drama about a disintegrating family – created angst within Kiefer.
A few years after it came out, he remembers meeting Timothy Hutton, the actor who played Donald’s screen son.
He thought about , the family drama starring Henry Fonda and his daughter Jane.
“That is the perfect film where it was done,” says the actor. An audience thought they got to have a glimpse into real life – although it was not their real life – and that was what I wanted to do.” , which features Alan Ladd’s young gunslinger coming to town in search of a quiet life but becoming embroiled in a battle between a homesteader and a ruthless cattle baron.
It was a desire that had burned within him ever since he decided to follow in his father Donald’s footsteps and become an actor, that one day he would star in a film alongside his dad.
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Sutherland was born, alongside his twin sister, Rachel, at St Mary’s Hospital in London.
His mother, Shirley Douglas, is a Canadian film and television actress who was married to Donald for four years between 19.
“I thought, ‘What if it was a son coming back and he has all the same problems? Sutherland Snr was excited about playing Reverend Clayton, who preaches peace and turning the other cheek.
He doesn’t want his son, who he has not seen since the death of his wife, to take up arms in a battle over property.
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After playing Jack Bauer for a ninth season, he was with Donald, now 80, when he “looked up at my father and I thought, wow, I don’t have much more time to do this”.
Over the course of a 30-year-career, Sutherland Jnr had yet to come across a script that he felt would be suitable for them both, so he decided to take the bull by the horns.
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Here are some examples of first text messages that you can send to a girl: “I like that place we all were at at the end of the night. ” “I think that bartender was having a few too many himself. ” “My coffee only lasted me about an hour this time. Don’t bring up serious subjects or get into drama with your texts. If you write too much, it can make you look desperate. Keep these simple and relevant to what she’s been doing lately to keep the conversation going. Therefore, all of your texts should push to achieve a meet-up in some way. Don’t Be So Readily Available After you get a girl’s number, wait a little while before texting her. Always Be The One To End It If the conversation is going really well, keep her wanting more of you by ending it. They convey to her that you’re a fun guy with a playful, light-hearted attitude. If you use fancy ones or those really long ones that create a picture, that’s when you’re over doing it. ;)” See how adding a wink makes seeing a movie sound way more fun?… continue reading »
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A public hearing was held on Bylaw 379 – Development Fees Amendment. The bylaw would increase some development fees related to new construction permits, bed and breakfast homes, late application fees, compliance certificates and development appeals. Three residents spoke at the meeting, all in opposition to the increase in development and subdivision appeals from $100 to $200. Council voted to postpone second reading of the bylaw to receive information on whether it was possible to have separate appeal fees for individuals and corporations, and to see options that would allow the Development Appeal Board to issue appeal fee refunds. The bylaw is expected to return to council at the February 13 meeting.
First reading was given to two new waste bylaws. Bylaw 376 – Residential Waste Bylaw – updates wording from the existing bylaw to match current practices and terminology. Bylaw 377 – Non-Residential Waste Bylaw – proposes the mandatory use of clear garbage bags for commercial properties. A number of jurisdictions around the world have implemented the use of clear bags, and have found it to be a valuable tool in reducing the quantity of recyclable materials being thrown in the garbage. It’s suggested the use of clear bags become mandatory six months after approval of the bylaw, and be coupled with an education program. The last full review of the waste bylaw was completed in 2004.
Council gave second and third readings to Bylaw 368 – ATCO Gas Franchise Bylaw. The bylaw allows a natural gas franchise agreement with ATCO Gas and Pipelines Ltd for the distribution and delivery of natural gas within the Town of Banff.
Council authorized the Town to participate in the Alberta Community Partnership Grant submitted by the Town of Canmore for a Shared Information Governance Service Delivery Feasibility Study under the Intermunicipal Collaboration component of the Alberta Community Partnership Grant. Both towns will apply for a $30,000 grant to assess, develop and design a regional shared services initiative for municipal records management, preservation and storage; and to explore shared information governance service delivery.
Council received a briefing on three trails related projects that have been completed or have reached milestones:
The Bow River Trail Restoration was done in the summer and fall of 2016 to close an informal trail that paralleled the Bow River Trail between the pedestrian bridge and Bow Falls. The primary reason for closing the informal trail was to reduce the number of people venturing into the sensitive, wet riparian zone at the edge of the river.
Since the December 2014 train derailment in and near 40-Mile Creek, Parks Canada has been leading work to restore riparian habitat where the derailment occurred, in cooperation with the Town. In the summer of 2016, Parks staff noted that persistent public use of informal trails through the restoration site was compromising the success of ecological restoration efforts. Parks Canada proposed to the Town that a potential solution would be for CP Rail to fund the completion of a Town of Banff neighbourhood trail that previously ended near the restoration site. Through creating the trail connection that’s approximately 20 metres long, trail users going north are now led from along 40-Mile Creek back to connect with the Bow River trail at Gopher Street. Completing this trail connection guides trail users onto the appropriate next segment in the trail system, rather than directing users towards the informal trails through the 40-Mile Creek restoration site.
In 2016 a net of 94 new bike parking stalls were established and there are plans to install at least 90 more bike parking stalls in 2017. Four surveys of occupancy at bike parking facilities were conducted throughout the summer of 2016. Twenty-two bike parking sites had 75% occupancy or more in at least half of the 2016 surveys, indicating that they require expanded capacity in 2017. Survey data were also used to identify bicycle racks that had no usage, and therefore are candidates for being re-deployed to other locations in 2017.
⇐Previous Council briefs for January 23, 2017Next⇒ Council briefs for November 28, 2016
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Flight of the GlobalFlyer—Around the World in 67 Hours
By Bob Shane
Sir Richard Branson talks to Steve Fossett from inside Mission Control. Fossett’s face is displayed in the background on a 10 x 12 foot plasma screen.
It was touted as “the last great aviation record,” the first solo non-stop circumnavigation of the world in an aircraft. The quest for this coveted goal brought together a successful entrepreneur, adventurer and billionaire, a professional record setter and a master exotic airplane builder. Time would show that this was a recipe for success; however, the saga that followed proved once again that the truth can be stranger than fiction, and that in aviation, there’s often no sure thing.
On March 4, 2005, the Virgin Atlantic team, headed by Sir Richard Branson; pilot Steve Fossett, who already holds 102 records in balloons, gliders, sailboats and powered airplanes; and Burt Rutan and his company Scaled Composites proved they were the right blend. The GlobalFlyer aircraft set the record for the first solo non-stop circumnavigation of the world by an aircraft in 67 hours, 1 minute and 46 seconds. Other team members vital to the success of the project included Paul Moore, the project manager; Kevin Stass, the mission control director; and Jon Karkow, the project engineer from Scaled Composites in charge of designing and building the GlobalFlyer.
The aircraft
The GlobalFlyer was designed by Burt Rutan and built by Scaled Composites. An almost all composite aircraft, it has a length of 38.7 feet, wingspan of 114 feet and a gross weight of 22,066 pounds. It’s powered by a single Williams jet engine rated at 2,300 pounds of thrust, capable of propelling the aircraft at speeds in excess of 285 mph. It has a glide ratio of 30 to 1, which fortunately didn’t have to be tested during the record-setting flight.
The launch site
Salina Municipal Airport (Kansas) was chosen for the launch of the GlobalFlyer. SLN was selected because of its central geographic location in the United States and its newly resurfaced 12,300-foot runway, which is one of the longest in North America. Originally built in 1942 as the Smoky Hill Army Air Field, it was an active base for B-17 bombers and the nation’s first operational training center for the B-29 bomber. In 1951, it was a SAC base with B-47s. The name was changed to Schilling Air Force Base in 1957. After the base closed in 1965, it became Salina Municipal Airport.
Another reason SLN was selected was that the GlobalFlyer had the overwhelming support of the entire community. Located at the airport is the K-State College of Technology and Aviation. Student volunteers provided much needed support to the GlobalFlyer project, serving as ground crew and assisting in flight planning and public relations. The school’s 300-person auditorium was transformed into Mission Control, outfitted with glass partitions, six plasma screens, 24 computers, 24 monitors, eight work stations and 10 miles of wiring.
Stan Herd, a local artist noted for his “earthwork” art, sprang into action when he heard the GlobalFlyer was coming to Salina. In a field near the airport, with a weed eater and shovel in hand, Herd created his da Vinci earthwork. Other volunteers with rototillers and gardening tools assisted him. The size of a football field, it connects man’s first understanding of the possibility of flight to the historic accomplishment of the GlobalFlyer.
Sitting on the ramp, near the north end of the runway at the airport, is a vintage 1949 Lockheed Constellation. When its owner, Gordon Cole, found out about the GlobalFlyer coming to Salina, he quickly added nose art to the airplane, “Go Virgin Atlantic,” showing his support for the project. Cole is hoping to get a sponsor that will help get his Connie back in the air again.
This Lockheed Constellation, a long time resident of the Salina Airport, received temporary nose art showing the owner’s support for the Virgin Atlantic team. Its owner, Gordon Cole, is pictured with the Connie.
The Salina Chamber of Commerce was a big supporter. It sponsored a number of receptions for the international media. Additionally, tours of local businesses and attractions were arranged.
Finally showtime
It was thought that the flight of the GlobalFlyer would occur in early January. The first media alert was posted for January 7, which was later postponed due to unfavorable weather conditions. On February 18, the project went to code yellow with a possible launch for February 24. Unfortunately, it was back to code red for that period due to unacceptable ground winds.
Then on February 26, the project went to code green for a possible launch two days later. At that point, the wheels were finally in motion as journalists and photographers started making their way to Kansas. On Sunday, February 27, a Virgin Atlantic Boeing 747 carrying Sir Richard Branson and a contingent of international press touched down at Salina Municipal Airport.
The first press conference held in Mission Control was that evening, which was Oscar night in Hollywood. Branson boldly proclaimed, “Leonardo may win an Oscar tonight for the movie, ‘The Aviator.’ Tomorrow, Steve will prove who the real aviator is!” (By the way, DiCaprio lost out to Jamie Foxx, but fellow aviator Morgan Freeman did win one for supporting actor for “Million Dollar Baby.”)
Branson hoped that Fossett’s quest for a new world record would regenerate excitement in aviation, doing for Salina what the Wright Brothers did for Kitty Hawk, N.C.
The proposed flight for the next day was surrounded by a multitude of contingencies. The GlobalFlyer is an experimental aircraft and Fossett, with only 30 hours in the aircraft, was in essence a test pilot. The craft would be carrying full fuel, one and a half tons more fuel than the airplane had ever flown with before. Fully laden, the handling characteristics would be very different.
We would soon know if Scale got the engineering right. The takeoff would be particularly scary for Fossett. Never having flown the aircraft this heavy before, there would be the danger of a structural failure. Once airborne, turbulence could present a problem. Following the takeoff, Fossett would still be in danger for the first two hours, until enough fuel was burned off and the aircraft had reached a smooth altitude.
Steve Fossett (second from right) and his wife Peggy chat with friends, from front right, Bob Hoover, Barron Hilton, Mike Gilles and Greg Dillon, two hours prior to launch.
On February 28, at 6:47 p.m., just after sunset, a determined Steve Fossett took off in the GlobalFlyer, using more than 8,000 feet of runway. At 8 p.m., Branson stated, “I would like to thank Scaled. I know it isn’t over, but 80 percent of the biggest worrying stage is past.”
At 10 p.m., the GlobalFlyer was 55 miles north of Detroit at 38,000 feet, traveling at 310 knots. At that point in the flight there were no surprises.
Flying blind
On Tuesday, March 1, during the 8 a.m. press conference, it was revealed that the GlobalFlyer was 13 hours into its flight, near the Azores at an altitude of 45,000 feet and traveling at 330 knots. It was learned that when Fossett was over Canada, he experienced an intermittent GPS failure for a two-hour period. Without GPS, he would be flying blind. This situation could have been a showstopper. The GPS finally re-engaged and no longer was a problem.
Early that afternoon, those waiting for news at SLN were informed that the Citation chase plane had made its first intercept of the GlobalFlyer over Morocco, following it to the Atlas Mountains. Fossett had consumed three chocolate milkshakes and all was going well.
Missing fuel
A troubling development was revealed early the next morning, on Wednesday, March 2. As the GlobalFlyer was passing over China, it was determined that 2,600 pounds of fuel were missing. This revelation couldn’t have come at a more inopportune time. Fossett was getting ready to embark upon the most dangerous part of the route—the Pacific Ocean.
The folks at Mission Control began to theorize what could have happened to the missing fuel. It didn’t appear to be a leak. It was more likely a system issue such as a bent fuel line. It was determined that the fuel loss occurred during the first three hours of flight. This would suggest that the fuel could have been lost due to a venting process during the climb out. Another possibility is that the fuel was never put on to begin with; Fossett was now very much at the mercy of the winds. With winds no better than 40 knots, fuel alone would not take him back to Kansas.
The fuel burn and tailwinds were being carefully monitored. Fossett commenced a regimen of fuel conservation. This required continuous throttle adjustments, making it difficult for him to get any sleep. Fuel in the wing tanks had to be drained into the boom tanks where probes inside the tank would be able to measure it. This process enabled Mission Control to determine that fuel thought to be in the wing tanks was in fact there. Man and plane were now reaching their limits.
L to R: Richard Branson, Steve Fossett and Salina Airport Manager Timothy Rogers with the GlobalFlyer in front of the Virgin Atlantic B-747 that transported the press and Virgin Atlantic team back to New York’s JFK Airport.
As Fossett approached Japan, a decision would have to be made. Did he have enough fuel to make it to Hawaii? Fossett approached the Hawaiian Islands and another decision point, whether to land or continue onto the California coast. It was now Tuesday, March 2, and 10 p.m. at Mission Control. The GlobalFlyer had flown 18,676 miles and was now traveling at 274 knots at an altitude of 45,259 feet. It was positioned 500 miles north of Hawaii when Fossett said, “Let’s go for it.” The tailwinds were much better than expected. Fossett was becoming more confident that the record was within his grasp. He was setting his sights on Kansas.
On Thursday, March 3, at 1:50 p.m., Steve Fossett and the Virgin Atlantic GlobalFlyer landed safely in Salina. Fossett had endured three sleepless days and the possibility of having to ditch in the ocean, to become the first pilot to circumnavigate the globe alone, non-stop without refueling.
The official flight time was 67 hours, 1 minute and 46 seconds. The unofficial distance was 22,878 miles. At the first press briefing for the GlobalFlyer on Friday morning, Fossett was presented with a plaque from the Guinness World Records in London.
Sir Richard Branson, president and CEO of Virgin Atlantic Airways, sprays GlobalFlyer pilot Steve Fossett with champagne after his successful flight.
This was a mega-event where everyone came out a winner. Steve Fossett once again made the record books. Sir Richard Branson parlayed a $1.5 million adventure into a multimillion dollar advertising campaign for Virgin Atlantic. The students at K-State in Salina got to be a part of a world-class event, working with some of the best professionals in the aviation business. Finally, the people of Kansas were given an opportunity to confirm what we already knew, that the hospitality and can-do spirit in America’s heartland is without parallel.
When Branson, members of his team, and the international press (including this ecstatic reporter!) departed Salina aboard a Virgin Atlantic B-747-400, you can be sure it was party time all the way back to New York’s JFK Airport! While I know the aircraft wasn’t venting any fuel, I suspect that if it was venting anything, it was champagne!
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Mixmasters—Cessna’s Misunderstood Twins
On: May 1, 2008
One person compared the looks of Cessna’s 1964 336 Skymaster to “Miss America posing in a swimsuit, but wearing G.I. boots.”
By Daryl Murphy
If an airplane design could evoke both unswerving devotion and total rejection, it would have to be the Cessna Skymaster. People on one side of the camp smile warmly as they describe the Skymaster as “the greatest thing since sliced bread,” while those on the other side sneer and call it an “imitation Twin.” No matter your opinion, from 1964 to 1980, more than 2,200 civil and nearly 500 military versions were delivered.
By 1959, Cessna’s sleek 310 had been on the market for four years and was successful, but its $60,000 base price put it out of the reach of many pilots who wanted multi-engine equipment. Willing to build airplanes to fit every market niche, Cessna management challenged its design group to come up with a light twin that could operate from small or rough fields and cruise at about 180 mph. Nothing economical could be adapted from the 310, so designers had to be objective in their approach. They looked at high wing, low wing, pushers, tandems and conventional twins and sketched out their ideas. In late January 1960, they got the green light for a high-wing tandem-twin concept.
Assigned the model number 336, the twin was to be built along the lines of the high-wing Cessna single, but with engines fore and aft, one pushing and one pulling. The unconventional fuselage would be set between twin booms that trailed off the wings and were connected to an empennage that included twin vertical stabilizers and a single horizontal stabilizer. And, although it had not been a prerequisite, the 336 could share many components and assemblies with Cessna singles.
Preliminary studies indicated the target speed could be achieved with fixed landing gear—which would keep costs down and make it appealing to lower-time step-up buyers. Continental 210 hp IO-360 engines would provide the power.
Powered by 160-hp Lycoming O-320 engines, the experimental Model 327 had a four-place cabin and cantilever laminar flow wing adapted from the 210.
It was a brilliant design, but taxing to solve the design’s unique problems. First, everyone involved had to become experts on pushers. They found that pushing an airplane through the air was a bit better than pulling it, but rear engines have inherent cooling problems because of fuselage airflow anomalies. Initially, air was gathered in forward-facing scoops (located in the trailing edge of the inboard wing) and exited aft of the engine through a complex arrangement of augmenter tubes. Flight tests showed that the exiting air really only needed a large opening in the rear of the cowl, but that created noise in the cabin, so a movable scoop was installed on top of the cowl, along with a fan located in the cowling’s rear opening.
A problem with control cables also had to be overcome. Engineers had routed empennage controls through the wing struts. It was a complicated route, filled with many pulleys working at unusual attitudes, and when flight testing began, it proved to be a high-friction operation. After seven pulleys were eliminated, the problem was solved.
Designers mounted auxiliary fuel pumps in the wing leading edges and three-quart sump tanks in the tail boom area below the wing. Large Fowler flaps, mounted outboard of the booms, were 30 percent of the wing chord and eight feet long; ailerons, five feet long, were 29 percent.
The airplane’s appearance was striking—until they installed the fixed landing gear with wheel pants. One person said it was like “seeing Miss America posing in a swimsuit, but wearing G.I. boots.”
The 336’s maiden flight was on Feb. 28, 1961. Test pilot Bill Thompson lauded its takeoff and climb performance and creature comforts, but complained about longitudinal stability and a lack of elevator power due to the high-friction controls. After some reworking, a second prototype flew in March 1962. Slightly more than a year later, the first Skymaster was delivered.
The aviation industry considered the 336 to be a landmark airplane from a safety standpoint. The loss of one engine would be barely noticeable—particularly if it was the rear engine. Torque or P-effect was cancelled, because the propellers were turning in opposite directions. And the Skymaster’s power-off, flaps-down stall speed was 52 kts (60 mph).
The 335-mph pressurized Skymaster’s average equipped price was $98,000. Only 98 were sold during its eight-year production run.
The press lauded the new airplane, but the flying public ignored it. In its first year of production, Cessna sold only 239 of the aircraft. Many pilots ridiculed the safety features, saying that they were capable of handling engine-outs in the conventional manner. In addition, the model attracted pilots with less flight time, which skewed incident and accident statistics.
The biggest problem pilots had with the plane was the ability to identify a dead rear engine. Engine controls weren’t foolproof. The pilot operating book suggested checking the gauges and then increasing the throttle to the rear engine, listening for an accompanying rise in sound.
The look of the airplane didn’t help. It certainly wasn’t as sleek as the 310—and it wasn’t even as fast as a 210. But it did have a chance. By the time the 336 hit the sales floor, Cessna had already decided to take the G.I. boots off Miss America.
Super Skymaster
The factory hadn’t done its homework and had misjudged the market. They had presumed a cadre of faithful customers would wait in line to buy the inexpensive, safe but goofy-looking fixed-gear twin that cruised at only 173 mph. In fact, it seemed the market cared only about the words “inexpensive” and “twin.”
To redesign the fixed landing gear into retractable gear, a huge number of compromises had to be made. Cessna thought it had learned that lesson in the 1950s, when it created the 210 from a 180.
Tucking and folding everything neatly into the fuselage of a Skymaster required even more complex maneuvering, and the resulting “lame duck” look of the airplane in mid-retraction or extension was to become legendary. The gear Cessna finally used put the airplane four inches closer to the ground.
The elimination of the gear drag dramatically changed the airplane’s aerodynamics. The wing angle of incidence changed 2.5 degrees, and the cowl sloped more downward. Engineers replaced the rear engine’s air scoop and eliminated the fan, the elevator had a four-inch chord increase and ventral fins were shortened six inches.
Engineers decided to add wing flaps inboard the tail boom attach, but testing showed that they had to limit travel to 25 degrees when the outboard flaps went to 40 degrees.
With a 300-pound increase in gross weight and the expectation of higher performance figures, customers pressed for five- or six-place seating. Engineers designed an exterior belly-mounted cargo pod.
Cessna built 144 military O-2As and 30 O-2Bs between 1967 and 1970.
The problem identifying an idle or dead rear engine was partially fixed by raising the rear engine’s idling speed 50 rpm, providing a different sound level than that of the front engine In addition, the handbook suggested that pilots lead with the rear engine throttle during taxi and takeoff.
With the new retractable gear and a few other minor changes, the former ugly duckling had become a sleek, 200-mph airplane.
The Super Skymaster flew on March 30, 1964, and 1966 model deliveries began in fall 1965. A cantilever-wing 337 was built in December 1965, but a negligible increase in performance was offset by the complex structural components and weight penalties, and the project was canceled in 1966.
When the turbo system was integrated into the 337 in 1967, the cruise speed jumped to 225 mph and the service ceiling rose to more than 30,000 feet. The pressurized Skymaster debuted with a 235-mph cruise speed. Its $76,500 base price in 1973 (average equipped: $98,000) escalated nearly $100,000 by 1980. Cessna sold only 98 during its eight-year production run.
While its nicknames included “Mixmaster,” “Push-Pull” and “Push-Me-Pull-Me,” the official moniker “Super Skymaster” was used for all 337 models from 1965 to 1971. From 1971 until production ceased in 1980, it was known simply as the “Skymaster.” Cessna built 144 military O-2As and 30 O-2Bs between 1967 and 1970, but had no turbocharged versions between 1972 and 1977.
Soon after the Super Skymaster debuted, designers conceived a lower-powered version of the 337, named the 327. Identical in form to the bigger 337, the 327 had a four-place cabin and a cantilever laminar flow wing adapted from the 210, and 160-hp Lycoming O-320s powered it.
Its top speed was projected to be 190 mph and construction techniques and structures were anticipated to be simpler. Its performance didn’t live up to expectations. Thirty-nine hours were logged on the prototype, before two 180-hp IO-360 engines were installed in May 1968. Its top speed at 3,500 pounds was 198 mph, but its performance wasn’t good enough to compete with the Piper Twin Comanche. After 44 hours of further flight testing, the program was cancelled in August 1968. The prototype was given to the NASA-Langley Research Center. Researchers there used it to test ducted propellers in full-scale wind tunnel testing.
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Shakey Graves
Illiterate Light
Fri · May 17, 2019
Alejandro Rose-Garcia (aka Shakey Graves) announced his newest album 'Can't Wake Up' (out now on Dualtone) with a simple message to his fans -"Next album. New sound. Sell your suspenders."That tongue-in-cheek statement, though, was a genuine attempt to prepare his followers for a major sonic shift for the Texas songwriter, who got his start performing as a one-man band, culminating with an Americana Music Awards win for "Emerging Artist of the Year" behind his breakout full-length album, 'And The War Came.'Now armed with a full band, Rose-Garcia leaves behind much of that stripped-down, folk-y sound. 'Can't Wake Up' takes his songwriting in a "decidedly bigger direction" full of "lush indie compositions" (Consequence of Sound), drawing on another set of his musical influences, ranging from the Beatles and Harry Nilsson to Elliott Smith, Broken Social Scene, Built to Spill and other '90s indie rock bands.
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Close Back to Cactus
MEREL & TONY – SATURDAY, 12/15/18 @ 1:00PM
MEREL & TONY met in 2013 while working on an art installation in a small Dutch village. Since then, they have released several EPs of songs, written music for THIS AMERICAN LIFE, been commissioned to compose a musical for a Houston-based theater company, recorded an album of protest songs funded by a grant from the Houston Arts Alliance, and toured Texas with their band, THE WOE WOE WOES. Merel & Tony now divide their time between Rome and Houston.
“There’s something about straight artistry that tickles the ears of any music journalist. True art, without genre or placement where the music is eclectic and different. That’s probably the best way to describe the music of Merel & Tony… this duo makes music that sounds like no one else while still having plenty of hooks to catch a hold of your ears and stick with you for days.” – Houston Press
“We rarely review EPs and only when it’s something that really stands out. This is one of those cases. We’re always on a continual search for sincerity and originality in the world of music. With the Houston, Texas-based duo Merel & Tony…you get both. We’ve never ever heard music from Texas that sounds like this.” – babysue
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ME Graduate Seminar: Anant Madabhushi Ph.D.
Tuesday, Oct 9, 2018, 3:30 – 4:30 p.m.
Mechanical Engineering Building (MEB)
Engineering students and alumni
Prognostic and Predictive Radiomics and Pathomics: Implications for Precision Medicine
Anant Madabhushi Ph.D.
Director of the Center for Computational Imaging and Personalized Diagnostics (CCIPD) and the F. Alex Nason Professor II in the Departments of Biomedical Engineering, Pathology, Radiology, Radiation Oncology, Urology, General Medical Sciences, and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Case Western Reserve University.
at 3:30PM Mechanical Engineering Building
(MEB) 238
ABSTRACT: Traditional biology generally looks at only a few aspects of an organism at a time and attempts to molecularly dissect diseases and study them part by part with the hope that the sum of knowledge of parts would help explain the operation of the whole. Rarely has this been a successful strategy to understand the causes and cures for complex diseases. The motivation for a systems based approach to disease understanding aims to understand how large numbers of interrelated health variables, gene expression profiling, its cellular architecture and microenvironment, as seen in its histological image features, its 3 dimensional tissue architecture and vascularization, as seen in dynamic contrast enhanced (DCE) MRI, and its metabolic features, as seen by Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy (MRS) or Positron Emission Tomography (PET), result in emergence of definable phenotypes. At the Center for Computational Imaging and Personalized Diagnostics (CCIPD) at Case Western Reserve University, we have been developing computerized knowledge alignment, representation, and fusion tools for integrating and correlating heterogeneous biological data spanning different spatial and temporal scales, modalities, and functionalities. These tools include computerized feature analysis methods for extracting subvisual attributes for characterizing disease appearance and behavior on radiographic (radiomics) and digitized pathology images (pathomics). In this talk I will discuss the development work in CCIPD on new radiomic and pathomic approaches for capturing intra-tumoral heterogeneity and modeling tumor appearance. I will also focus my talk on how these radiomic and pathomic approaches can be applied to predicting disease outcome, recurrence, progression and response to therapy in the context of prostate, brain, rectal, oropharyngeal, and lung cancers. Additionally I will also discuss some recent work on looking at use of pathomics in the context of racial health disparity and creation of more precise and tailored prognostic and response prediction models.
SPEAKE R BIO: Dr. Anant Madabhushi is the Director of the Center for Computational Imaging and Personalized Diagnostics (CCIPD) and the F. Alex Nason Professor II in the Departments of Biomedical Engineering, Pathology, Radiology, Radiation Oncology, Urology, General Medical Sciences, and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Case Western Reserve University. He is also a member of the Case Comprehensive Cancer Center. Dr. Madabhushi received his Bachelor’s Degree in Biomedical Engineering from Mumbai University, India in 1998 and his Masters in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Texas, Austin in 2000. In 2004 he obtained his PhD in Bioengineering from the University of Pennsylvania. He joined the Department of Biomedical Engineering, Rutgers University as an Assistant Professor in 2005. He was promoted to Associate Professor with Tenure in 2010. In 2012 he accepted the position of Associate Professor at Case Western Reserve University, Department of Biomedical Engineering and was promoted to full professor in 2014.
Dr. Madabhushi has authored nearly 150 peer-reviewed journal publications and has over 75 patents either issued or pending in the areas of medical image analysis, computer-aided diagnosis, and computer vision. He is an Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering, IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering Letters, BMC Cancer, BMC Medical Imaging, Journal of Medical Imaging and Medical Image Analysis (MedIA). He has been the recipient of a number of awards for both research as well as teaching, including the Department of Defense New Investigator Award in Lung Cancer (2014), the Coulter Phase 1 and Phase 2 Early Career award (2006, 2008), and the Excellence in Teaching Award (2007-2009). His research work has received grant funding from the National Cancer Institute (NIH), National Science Foundation, the Department of Defense, private foundations, and from Industry. He currently serves as principal investigator of 7 different federal grants.
www.me.washington.edu…
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Priests spend long hours working out solutions at Synod on Young People
Catholic youth still passionate about their faith
Father Jude David
Many eyes have been on Rome in recent months and I am glad that there has been a positive reason for this because many have been interested in the Synod of Bishops on Young People, the Faith and Vocational Discernment that has been called forth by our Holy Father, Pope Francis.
This synod has captured not only the attention of Catholics from around the world but also non-Catholics who are eagerly waiting to see how the Church responds to young people and desires to accompany them in their journey of life.
I recently had the opportunity to attend a recording of a talk show by the BBC entitled Heart & Soul that was specially recorded in Rome in conjunction with the synod that is underway in this city. Several of us Singaporeans who are studying in Rome decided to attend this recording to listen to what the young people whom the BBC had invited had to say about the synod and about the Church.
It was a heartening experience for me because despite some negative comments, the majority of young Catholics who were interviewed spoke passionately about the Church and her teachings and their desire to be part of her life. We often think that young people do not care about the Church but in reality, many of them who have met the Lord deeply care and love the Church and are willing to sacrifice for her mission. What a sign of hope!
Whilst I am not privy to the proceedings of the synod and we all await reading the guiding documents that will come out, I would like to share how it speaks to me as a bystander in the Eternal City witnessing the synod unfold as well as my perspective as the Chaplain for the Office for Young People (OYP) in Singapore.
Whilst there may be many issues that demand the attention of the Church in this time, it is of great encouragement to young people all around the world that the Church is clearly saying to them that they matter to her and that the Church is willing to invest the kind of time and resources that have gone into organising this synod.
Some of the synod Fathers who have come from all over the world have been staying in the house that I am living at and it is evident from their faces how demanding the long days have been on them. They leave early in the morning and come home late in the evening and they have been at it for almost a month. The shepherds of our Church care deeply for our young people. What a sign of hope!
The synod is primarily a time of listening for the Church. Many young people have been invited as auditors from around the world. These young people are being listened to and they are also listening to what the bishops are carrying in their hearts. Above all, the synod is ultimately the time of listening to the Holy Spirit as He guides the Church in the pastoring of her young flock. What a sign of hope!
As at every level of the Church, there are diverse perspectives, priorities, approaches and experiences and it may be difficult to find a consensus on what is the best way forward. I do not think that we can expect the synod to come up with a one size fits all solution that will suddenly bring back all our young people into the Church.
However, it does bring to focus what the Church is primarily called to do for our young people in all their diverse circumstances – to inspire faith in them and to accompany them in discovering and living out their God-given mission in the Church and in the world.
I do not think the synod would give us something radically new or different from what we have been doing in Singapore. Whilst it is true that we have our share of people leaving the Church in Singapore and we must continue to reflect on how we can arrest this phenomenon, I am also glad to note that we have been working very hard as an Archdiocese to recapture the hearts of our young people for Jesus Christ and His Church. The mantra at OYP, which is the official arm of our Archdiocese overseeing the pastoral care of young people, is “Raising up a Generation for Christ” and we have been working tirelessly for this to be realised.
I vividly remember the words of Luis Antonio Cardinal Tagle, the Archbishop of Manila, who was also present at the current synod, when he addressed youth ministers from Asia some years ago at a meeting and he told us that we need to be like Jesus going out to the well to meet the Samaritan woman (John 4:6-7). Jesus did not wait for her to look for Him, He went out to her. Cardinal Tagle challenged us to go out to the “wells” where our young people are gathering today because they certainly are not gathering at the well of the Church.
My time in Rome thus far has been a time of meeting many new people, especially priests from all over the world and as I hear their stories and about their respective pastoral situations, I feel very encouraged for what we have back home in Singapore. We may be a small Catholic community with a relatively short history but we are certainly alive and kicking. What a sign of hope!
Fr Jude is currently studying Dogmatic Theology in Rome.
Category: NOVEMBER 11, 2018, Vol 68, No 23
A night of youthful praise, worship and outreach (6 matches)
Me... a missionary? Yes, you a missionary (6 matches)
Archbishop's Advent message 2014 (5 matches)
Archbishop's Christmas message: The Gift of God (5 matches)
Church employment policy features in lively dialogue with archbishop (5 matches)
Father Paul Staes: “The church should speak more strongly to change the mindset of the people” (5 matches)
Here, Carmelite priest who helped reawaken Infant Jesus devotion (5 matches)
It’s Christmas: Good time to come home to the Church (5 matches)
Largest Singapore Contingent Heads to International World Youth Day 2016 (5 matches)
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Trying to Change the Subject
Congresswoman Michele Bachmann accused the Obama administration of orchestrating yet another information dump on a “Friday dump day” at the end of last week. Indeed, this was one of their most clever Friday dumps yet.
Two days following shocking revelations about what is arguably the worst presidential (cover-up) scandal in American history, the BenghaziGate scandal -- involving the dereliction of duty by the Obama administration regarding the September 11, 2012 Islamic terrorist attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya and the preventable assassinations of Obama’s Ambassador to Libya; his fellow diplomat, and two Navy Seals -- the Obama administration tried to change the subject to what has become another new Obama scandal.
The Internal Revenue Service -- obviously now under the thumb of the Obama administration -- revealed that it has been playing politics in the two years leading up to last year’s presidential election by targeting conservative and tea-party organizations. The IRS’s intimidation of conservative groups scared possible donors into not donating to conservative and Tea Party groups. Likewise, the IRS intimidated grassroots groups into doing nothing to support conservative candidates for all sorts of offices including the presidential race. And that is exactly what some officials in the Obama administration wanted.
And change the subject it has. Yesterday’s top story in many newspapers and other media outlets around the country featured the IRS attack on Tea Party and conservative groups. Monday’s “USA Today’s” front-page headline blared: “GOP Demands Obama Apology; Seeks Probe of IRS for Singling out Tea Party.” A headline in “The Wall Street Journal” said: “Chiefs at IRS Knew of Targeting.” The past two editions of “The Washington Times” had front-page headlines: “Outraged GOP: It’s time to audit IRS; Conservative group targeting ‘chilling,’” and “Congress pounces on IRS target revelations.”
Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, Republican from Minnesota, who is also tax attorney, told WND.com that the Obama administration confessed to a flagrant use of politics and power by “the most feared government agency,” the IRS, because of the Benghazi scandal. She said, “There’s no doubt that this was not a coincidence that they dumped this story today, a Friday dump day. This is when they put their negative stories out.”
The WND.com article continues: “But she said the looming storm cloud called Benghazi is the “soft underbelly” of the Obama administration and likely will keep Hillary Clinton from fulfilling her dream of occupying the Oval Office. That would make it logical to release an IRS story that, while embarrassing, also could be cubbyholed as another “conservative” dispute with the White House. She was referring to the ongoing hearings on the administration’s handling of the Sept. 11, 2012, attack by al-Qaida-linked terrorists on a U.S. foreign service post in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans, including the ambassador.” She also maintained that the credibility of the 2012 election is in doubt.
The Congresswoman wonders if the IRS -- which will enforce ObamaCare -- “will target conservative voices opposed to President Obama with delays or denials of medical care.” According to WND.com, Congresswoman Bachmann “said the IRS announcement of misbehavior was intended to provoke conservatives and draw their anger and attention. ‘I was in that Benghazi hearing. I think the Obama administration is desperate to spin Benghazi, and they can’t. I think they saved this story up for a day like today so that conservatives would focus on this admission. It won’t work. Conservatives can handle two shocking stories at the same time. Both are equally unconstitutional and call into question the very president.’”
Since Congresswoman Bachmann made these remarks over the weekend, things have gotten much worse for the president. In addition to the news media asking about both the Benghanzi and the IRS scandals in his press conference yesterday with British Prime Minister David Cameron, a new shocking story has developed which affects even his sycophantic mainstream media supporters. Obama’s administration reportedly has been spying on Associated Press reporters -- possibly 100 or more -- in the months before last November’s presidential election.
The Associated Press’ president and chief executive officer is furious, as he rightfully should be. Gary Pruitt said the Justice Department’s spying amounted to “a massive and unprecedented intrusion” on AP’s newsgathering operation. Isn’t it interesting what the reaction of the news media people is when their own ox is gored by the Obama administration? Pruitt goes on to say: “There can be no possible justification for such an overbroad collection of the telephone communications of The Associated Press and its reporters.”
Although the Obama administration’s attempt to change the subject from his Benghazi scandal has temporarily worked, Republicans can walk and chew gum at the same time. Conservatives can handle even more than two shocking stories at the same time.
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Get Involved & Volunteer
Early Bird Discounted Tickets
Venue & Ticketing Info
ZviDance | OCT
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Area Choreographers Festival | JUN
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RE-SCHEDULED: CREATING SOCIAL COMMENTARY WITH AFRICAN AMERICAN DANCE
A CONVERSATION WITH DAVID ROUSSÈVE
Choreographer, Writer, Dancer, Filmmaker, Performer
With deepest sympathies for Mr. Roussève and his family, we have rescheduled his community conversation. The Wednesday, March 19 event has been canceled and re-scheduled to an intimate pre-show chat with Mr. Roussève on Saturday, March 22 from 7-7:30pm in the Green Room at the Aronoff Center for the Arts.
Please RSVP so that we may reach you in case of further changes.
TO RSVP, CLICK HERE.
TO READ MORE ABOUT THE EVENT, CLICK HERE.
RSVP here —
Phone: We will text or call this number if there is a last-minute emergency and need to cancel the event.
Total attending with you:
What would you like to hear about in the future?
Guest Artist Series at the Aronoff Center Dance classes Kids & Family programming African American interest Volunteering Becoming a Board Member Nothing: please do not add me to your mailing list
More information about the event —
An acclaimed artist, David Roussève is a Princeton University graduate (Politics, Theater and Dance, and Africa Studies) who has received numerous accolades and awards for his work in the arts. His hard-hitting (yet deeply human), multi-cultural, multi-discplinary dance theatre troupe, David Roussève / REALITY is coming to Cincinnati from Los Angeles via Contemporary Dance Theater.
As a pre-cursor to their performance of Stardust (a modern coming-of-age story of an unseen, urban, gay, black teen), we invite you to join Urban Impressario’s Derek Peebles and Contemporary Dance Theater’s Jefferson James, in a conversation with David Roussève about Stardust and his body of work.
We will focus on the ways Mr. Roussève’s work strives to use African American traditional, spiritual, and pop/hip hop cultures within an avant garde context, while also commenting on the social world around us. We will view video of his work and discuss how dance theatre can create social dialogue while being both avant garde and grounded in African American culture.
RE-SCHEDULED
Wednesday, March 19’s event has been cancelled.
Creating Social Commentary with African American Dance:
Saturday, March 22, 2014 7:00-7:30pm
Recommended arrival by 6:45pm
Aronoff Center, Green Room (ask ushers & staff),
650 Walnut St, Cincinnati, OH 45202
Please RSVP to cdt-dance.org/conversationrsvp (above) today!
David Roussève / REALITY
at the Aronoff Center for the Arts
Friday & Saturday, March 21 & 22, 2014
Free meet-the-artists Q&A reception following Friday’s performance ($5 donation suggested)
Intimate Conversation with Mr. Roussève before Saturday’s performance, 7-7:30pm Green Room (please arrive by 6:45pm)
In-theater Q&A following Saturday’s performance
Masterclass for Dancers Saturday morning, March 21
More information at cdt-dance.org/14rousseve
PARENTAL ADVISORY FOR THE MARCH 21 & 22 PERFORMANCE: While the stage action is not graphic, the actual performances of Stardust are not recommended for children due to explicit language, references to abuse, sexual references, and other content of serious nature.
facebook.com/contemporarydancetheater
The Contemporary Dance Theater Guest Artist Series is sponsored by the Otto M. Budig Family Foundation and is supported by the thousands of people who give generously to the ArtsWave Community Campaign. Support also comes from the National Endowment for the Arts, a public agency dedicated to supporting excellence in the arts, both new and established; bringing the arts to all Americans; and providing leadership in arts education. Contemporary Dance Theater is also supported by The Ohio Arts Council, a state agency that supports public programs in the arts. Media sponsorship provided by CityBeat.
Stardust was commissioned by the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center at the University of Maryland, the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and Peak Performances at Montclair State University. This project is made possible in part by support from the National Performance Network Performance Residency Program. Major contributions include the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, Ford Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts (a federal agency). Stardust was made possible by the New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and additional funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Met Life Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Additional funding provided by Investing in Artists grant from the Center for Cultural Innovation, the University of CA Institute for Research in the Arts, and the UCLA Faculty Research Grants program.
Tags: 2013-2014 african american black conversations david roussève / REALITY guest artist series
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Kauai Archives - Air Canada Vacations
By Melissa Manzo
DiscoverFeatured articles
Top 15 Destinations to Visit in 2015
December 22, 2014 | By Melissa Manzo |
Wondering what the world has in store for you in 2015? With a new year, comes new resolutions. And with new resolutions, comes the need for new experiences. This upcoming year, make your new experiences about seeing new places, eating new food, meeting new people. Not sure where to start? From luxury destinations to foodie favourites, these top 15 destinations should give you a very good glimpse at what 2015 holds for you.
1) Nassau, Bahamas
The hustle and bustle of Nassau never gets old. As both a popular cruise ship port and the commercial hub of the Bahamas, this city has an undeniable pulse. Bay Street is particularly bustling, with its myriad duty-free shops, restaurants and the famous Nassau Straw Market. In 2015, the buzz will be around the opening of Baha Mar, the biggest project to be undertaken in the Bahamas since Atlantis. In addition to 2,200 luxury rooms, this new mega resort will house a Vegas-style casino and approximately 40 restaurants.
2) Saint Lucia
Photo by Mary-Lynn (Flickr)
Who knew there was such a thing as a drive-in volcanic crater? Whether you knew of its existence or not, you should know that Saint Lucia has one. It’s called La Soufrière Volanco (or Sulfur Springs) and you can drive up to its crater to witness it emit steam and sulphur. If you’re feeling slightly more adventurous, you can even have a warm sulphuric mud bath (though you should be warned that as much as it softens the skin, its rotten egg smell may not be well received by your nose). If first-time experiences are what you’re after in 2015, then this may be something to add to your wish list.
3) Osaka, Japan
Photo by Kimishowota (Flickr)
In 2015, you may want to familiarize yourself with the expression kuidore (Japanese for “to eat yourself bankrupt”). Osaka’s food scene is booming and if you have appetite to spare, then you may want to sample Osakan fare. Takoyaki (octopus balls), Kushikatsu (a deep-fried meat or vegetable skewer) and Okonomiyaki (pork- or seafood-filled pancakes) are among street food favourites. And don’t forget to check out the multiple Michelin-star restaurants scattered around the city.
4) Turks & Caicos
Marina at Blue Haven Turks and Caicos
Turks & Caicos is all about luxury – world-class hotels, spas, golf courses. In the last couple of years, it has undergone even more development in the luxury department. In 2015, make sure to check out some of Providenciales’ newest boutique hotels, including the all-suite Beach House Turks & Caicos and the Blue Haven Turks & Caicos, which has its very own marina!
5) Panama
Panama is a country of stark contrasts: it is highly industrialized on the one hand, yet an eco-friendly haven on the other. If you’re looking for a city pulse similar to Miami, Panama City has got it: its abundant high-rises, dining and nightlife are why it has been dubbed the “Miami of the South.” If nature is more your thing, you can hike through the national parks of Coiba and Darien, awe at the cloud forests of Chiriqui or check out the Panama Canal.
6) Costa Rica
Pura Vida (literally translated as “Pure Life” in English) is probably the most commonly used expression in Costa Rica. While its uses are varied, the meaning is universal: life is beautiful and you should know it. And if there is any place in the world where you can see Mother Nature’s beauty on full display, it has got to be Costa Rica. This is a country with some of the richest flora and fauna in the world, impeccably fresh produce and amazing vistas. If you have not yet had the chance to visit this mecca of natural beauty, make sure to add it to your 2015 bucket list.
7) Hawaii
If island hopping is on your travel wish list for the new year, then Hawaii should definitely be on your radar. The Hawaiian Islands have got it all: Visit Kaui for some history, Oahu for action-packed Honolulu, Maui for its culinary delights or the Big Island for its volcanic sights. See more Hawaii Highlights.
8) Milan, Italy
Milan is currently in full swing, preparing to host one of the world’s main events of the new year: Expo 2015. The theme of the exposition is “Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life,” and will take place from May 1 to October 31, 2015. It will feature more than 60 custom-built pavilions and the city is currently planning special exhibitions and the opening of new museums for the event.
9) Curaçao
In 2015, Curaçao will celebrate 5 years of its semi-independence as an autonomous country within the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Its Dutch influences are nevertheless visible on the island – in the colonial architecture of Willemstad, the local specialties at MarsheBieuw (also called Old Market) and in the local patois called Papiamento. Besides it cultural diversity, Curaçao has over 40 world-class dive spots – see our top 5 here!
10) Grenada
Also known as “Spice Island,” Grenada is one of the world’s largest producers of nutmeg and mace. Spice is not Grenada’s only gem though; this island is abundant in other natural riches like its beaches, the Annandale Falls, the beaches at Morne Rouge Bay and Grand Anse, and the flora and fauna of Grand Etang National Park and Forest Reserve. In 2015, get a taste of the island by attending the Spice Mas Festival, Grenada’s colourful carnival that features music, parading and masquerading.
11) Riviera Nayarit, Mexico
Move over Riviera Maya, it’s time for Riviera Nayarit to shine. This 320-kilometre stretch of Pacific coastline is definitely a quieter alternative to its Caribbean-sided counterpart. You can golf in one of two Jack Nicklaus golf courses in Punta Mita, surf in Sayulita or relax in the peaceful town of San Blas. Riviera Nayarit will be seeing a significant amount of touristic development in the coming years, so go visit before the crowds swarm in!
12) St. Kitts
St. Kitts may be small, but that doesn’t mean it should be overlooked when planning your 2015 travels. This little island has plenty of history, which is visible in the capital city of Basseterre. It also has plenty of natural habitat to explore, from its rainforests to its coral reef systems like Sandy Point and Turtle Bar. See our Top 5 Things to See in St. Kitts for more ideas.
13) Palm Springs, California
Palm Springs has had a mini tourism boom in the last few years and its number of lodgings is estimated to be in the triple digits by mid-2015. In addition to its desert scenery, 10,000-foot mountains and evening spas, the city is now also home to the Architecture and Design Center, launched in late 2014 to preserve the city’s desert modernism movement.
14) Barbados
Photo by Loozrboy (Flickr)
Foodies, there is one thing you should know for 2015: The food scene is absolutely blossoming in Barbados. Having just celebrated its 5th edition this past November, the Barbados Food & Wine and Rum Festival has become a culinary success. In addition to wine and rum tastings, it features cooking demonstrations by international celebrity chefs such as Mark McEwan, Marcus Samuelsson and Anne Burrell. Stay tuned for the 2015 program.
15) Chile
It’s never too late to visit the end of the earth. After making a stop in the capital city of Santiago (which, by the way, has opened a number of new museums and art galleries in the last few years), most travellers will either head to the Atacama Desert or to trek through the bare, rigged landscapes of Patagonia (a.k.a “the end of the earth”). Another must for a 2015 trip to Chile is its brand new wine and food festival, which will take place in late September.
DiscoverUSA travel
Hawaii Highlights for the First-Time Traveller
November 21, 2014 | By Melissa Manzo |
Aloha Hawaii! Pristine beaches, active volcanoes, quaint towns… Hawaii seems to have it all. So where to begin exploring this series of islands? What makes each island different? Whether you want to island hop or stick to one island only, a look at some of Hawaii’s highlights will certainly help. Here is a look at some of the best ofs on 4 of the main Hawaiian Islands.
Kauai: The Oldest of the Hawaiian Islands
Waimea Canyon – photo by TLPOSCHARSKY (Flickr)
Hanapepe: When visiting the oldest of the Hawaiian Islands, it’s only fitting to explore its history and culture – both present in the small town of Hanapepe. Historic plantation-style buildings, shops and art galleries abound here. The town’s charm is so palpable that it is often used as the setting for Hollywood films, like Lilo and Stitch and The Thornbirds.
Old Koloa Town is another must-see for history buffs; this town helped shape the sugar cane industry in the 1800s. It’s accessible via the Maluhia Road Tree Tunnel, a stretch of road lined with eucalyptus trees that were planted over a century ago.
The great outdoors: Kauai, deeply rooted in the environment, has outdoor spots that beg to be explored as well. In addition to hitting up Kauai’s beaches, you can visit remote waterfalls and kayak along the Wailua River, hike through the Waimea Canyon and cruise along the scenic Napali Coast.
Oahu: The “Heart of Hawaii”
Surfing on Waikiki Beach – photo by Surfing the Nations (Flickr)
Surfing: Located on Honolulu’s south shore, Waikiki Beach’s calm waters set the tone for a first-time surfing lesson. The North Shore’s bigger waves are perfect for more seasoned surfers.
Pearl Harbor: The 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor by the Empire of Japan is what brought the United States into World War II. This US naval base is now a designated National Historic Landmark with a total of 5 memorial sites.
Leahi Peak (Diamond Head): If hiking and taking in coastal views are on your Hawaii to dos, then reaching the top of Leahi Peak is a great way to get the best of both worlds. Waikiki and Honolulu are visible from here.
Maui: Foodie Favourite and Tropical Paradise
Photo by Rebecca Bollwitt (Flickr)
Lahaina: Hawaii regional cuisine is the pièce de resistance in Lahaina, a Maui hotspot. Known as farm-to-table cuisine, this type of fare combines local specialties like seafood with international influences. This town is also a great place to witness a luau, a traditional Hawaiian feast with eating, drinking and Polynesian dancing.
Kula: Many of the ingredients used in Hawaii regional cuisine come from the produce farms of Kula. Besides taking a farm tour, you can also visit the Kula Botanical Gardens.
Natural beauty: Maui’s food is not its only highlight – there are lots of natural sights to take in too. Head to Iao Valley State Park to see the famed Iao Needle, a protruding green-mantled volcanic rock that looks like, you guessed it – a needle. Haleakala National Park, with its numerous hiking trails, is also an ideal location to see natural wonders like the Nene, an endangered species of Hawaiian goose.
Hawaii, the Big Island: Adventure Island
Kona Coast – photo by William Bigelis (Flickr)
Hawaii Volcanoes National Park definitely deserves a visit if you’re heading to the Big Island. It is home to 2 volcanoes: Maunaloa and Kilauea, one of the most active volcanoes in the world. In addition to hiking volcanic craters, you can visit the on-site museum or snap photos of some petroglyphs (lava rock carvings).
Sailing the Kona Coast: Several boat tours depart from Historic Kailua Village and Hilo. Diving with manta rays, whale watching, scuba diving and fishing excursions are also possible from Honokohau Harbor and Kawaihae Harbor.
Horseback riding in Waimea: Experience the paniolo (Hawaiian cowboy) lifestyle by horseback riding through Waimea. Head along the waterfall trails of Waipio Valley or make your way towards Kealakekua Bay to cap off your day with a quick swim.
Want to discover more Hawaii highlights? Check out our section on Hawaii travel.
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redraping of the neck
Is everyone giving their face a little lift?
October 7, 2011 Bangkok Bright Smile 926 Comments
Cosmetic surgery in Britain is on the rise despite the cost and pain of having a major operation.
By Bryony Gordon
7:20AM BST 05 Oct 2011
Going under the knife for a facelift – or a rhytidectomy, as it is officially known – requires a general anaesthetic, but it is worth knowing what will happen while you are out for the count. Be warned: you may want to take a deep breath and put your breakfast to the side. This is not a procedure for the faint of heart, or weak of stomach.
First, your surgeon will take a scalpel and make an incision above your hairline. This incision will curve to the front of the ear, behind the earlobe and into the lower scalp. Another, smaller one can be made beneath the chin to tighten the neck.
Once this is done, the surgeon is ready to lift up the skin that covers your face, revealing the muscle underneath. He or she will then remove fat and tighten the muscle before repositioning it. If needed, liposuction can be carried out on the neck, with your fat injected back into your cheeks to make you look more youthful.
Approaching the end of the two- to three-hour operation – which can cost up to £12,000 – your surgeon will pull your skin back up over your newly tightened face, removing any excess skin and then closing the incisions. It is, some say, a bit like straightening a rug to get rid of any unsightly bulges. Indeed, the procedure is often talked about in terms that make it sound more like redecorating the spare room than a major operation. One surgeon talks to me about the “redraping of the neck”, as if describing a pair of curtains.
Reading this, you might wonder why anyone other than a vain Hollywood star would put themselves through such an ordeal. Chuck in the rise of Botox, fillers, and the introduction this year of a £999 “non-surgical” facelift, not to mention the scores of plumping, rejuvenating anti-wrinkle creams that line the shelves of everywhere from high-end department stores to branches of Boots, and one struggles to work out why anyone would opt for a facelift. They are just so tacky, so reminiscent of the Bride of Wildenstein.
Or are they? The British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons reports that after a decline in facelifts during 2009, the number of procedures being carried out increased by 12 per cent last year, despite the recession. And with this, the question “has she had a facelift?” – often asked in the early Nineties but replaced in popularity by “has she had Botox?” – seems to have made a comeback.
This weekend it was rumoured that Louise Mensch, the 40-year-old Tory MP for Corby and East Northamptonshire, had undergone a “Chicago Facelift” – one popular with young women which also has a minimal recovery time – after a journalist interviewing her noticed “incisions in the creases where her ears and cheeks meet that look so fresh, they still have tiny lines of a scab”. When asked outright by the interviewer if this was the case, Mensch replied that “without denying it, I’m going to refuse to answer your question, because as soon as I do that you become the minister for mascara”.
She had a point, but she is not the only politician to have the accusation of plastic surgery levelled at her. Vladimir Putin caused a stir last month when he appeared at the United Russia congress looking as if he had had work done. The bags under his eyes, heavy after many years of sleepless nights in frontline politics, had vanished. In their place was skin so smooth and light that he looked a little like a model from a Touche Eclat advert. Others pointed out that the contours which once appeared on his face had filled out, making him look remarkably youthful for his 59 years. As one Twitter user put it: “Putin looks like he’s had a facelift. Scary!”
General Sir Mike Jackson has admitted to having the bags beneath his eyes removed – while Anne Robinson has admitted to a £9,000 facelift. “Anything that allows women to feel better about themselves is worth the money,” she said. “I did look like a car crash for a couple of weeks. But it was soon over and I feel much better for it.”
The formidable Kay Burley treated herself to a facelift for her 50th birthday last December, and isn’t afraid to admit it. “I did it because I wanted to look a little better than I was looking when I woke up in the morning,” she said. “I’m on television, which is a visual medium.” Jane Asher refuses to talk about surgery (“I’ve always said that beauty secrets should remain secret because I’m sure there will be a time, like anybody, when I would consider it”) but one doctor, an expert in medical aesthetics, thinks she may have had some work done.
“There are signs that Jane could have had a facelift purely on the look of how the skin is being pulled,” says Dr Bob Khanna. “It also looks as if she has had Botox.”
Part of the reason for the rise of the facelift during an economic downturn is that the demographic who usually has them – the over 50s – are the ones with the most disposable income. But it is more than that.
The designer Nicky Haslam, who had his facelift 12 years ago, tells me: “They are essential. There are so many people out there who have had them, you wouldn’t believe it.”
Really? Are there seriously hordes of people wandering the streets with faces that have been peeled back and then stitched back on, as if in some ghastly episode of Doctor Who? “Yes,” says Norman Waterhouse, a plastic surgeon so popular he has had a facelift named after him. (“Well, I mean, there are hundreds of different facelift techniques so it’s not that big,” he says bashfully). “I have operated on household names, some of them internationally famous, and you wouldn’t know they had undergone facelifts.”
Waterhouse believes that bad surgery – as seen with Jocelyn Wildenstein – used to be considered normal surgery “but that has changed and there is now a realisation that with most facelifts, it doesn’t actually look as if you have had a facelift.” The key – as well as finding a good surgeon – is recovery time. “Most of my clients are busy people, but I tell them they can’t go back to work for two and a half weeks,” says Waterhouse.
“You will look bruised and swollen. After five days, you can go shopping without frightening the greengrocer. After 10 days, you can wave at the neighbour over the fence. And after two and a half weeks, you can go to a dinner party, but the real improvements are seen between four and six weeks.”
He makes it sound so simple. And then you remember what is involved. As Sharon Osbourne once commented: “If anybody says their facelift doesn’t hurt, they’re lying. It was like spending the night with an axe murderer.”
THE TELEGRAPHE
FRIDAY 7 /10/2011
Face Lift, Facial Surgery face lift, face lift surgery, redraping of the neck
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Education Week's blogs > Politics K-12 See our Federal Policy coverage
Betsy DeVos. Donald Trump. The Every Student Succeeds Act. Congress. State chiefs. School spending. Elections. Education Week reporters keep watch on education policy and politics in the nation’s capital and in the states.
« 3rd-Round Waiver Deadline Set, Short-Term NCLB Relief Offered | Main | Federal Role in K-12 at Heart of ESEA Hearing »
New Mexico Granted NCLB Waiver, Federal Officials Say
By Michele McNeil on February 15, 2012 4:15 PM
New Mexico has been granted a waiver under the No Child Left Behind Act, federal officials announced today, less than a week after the state was the only first-round applicant for flexibility under the law to have been denied that request.
In one sense, the announcement making New Mexico the 11th state to receive a waiver should not come as a major surprise.
U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan had said last week that New Mexico was "very, very close" to securing a waiver, at the time he announced that the other 10 had been given that flexibility. Duncan was guarded about which aspects of the state's plan needed work, but New Mexico officials evidently have met those standards.
Of the first 10 states, three—Florida, Georgia, and Oklahoma—were given waivers on a "conditional" basis, meaning the Obama administration is requiring them to meet certain standards before they're granted leeway under the decade-old federal law.
But New Mexico's waiver approval is not conditional, a U.S. Department of Education official tells Education Week.
The other states that have secured waivers so far are: Colorado, Indiana, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, and Tennessee. The next deadline for states to apply for NCLB flexibility is Feb. 28, and federal officials have said they will accept other applications throughout the rest of the year.
Duncan, in a statement, emphasized that he expects state officials, including Republican Gov. Susana Martinez, to seek cooperation of teachers and lawmakers from both parties, in implementing the plan.
"Today, New Mexico joins the ranks of states leading the charge on education reform by protecting children, raising standards and holding themselves accountable," Duncan said. "As New Mexico implements these reforms, it is important that all stakeholders are at the table and their voices are heard. We encourage the governor and her team to work closely and in a bipartisan manner with the legislature, and to fully include educators, community, and tribal leaders and parents in the process of advancing these reforms."
New Mexico will move to an accountability system that "recognizes and rewards high-performing schools and those that are making significant gains, while targeting rigorous and comprehensive interventions for the lowest-performing schools," the Department of Education said.
Duncan has predicted that states obtaining waivers will hold more students accountable for academic gains than they do under the current version of NCLB—and department officials said they see the same benefits coming out of New Mexico's waiver plan.
New Mexico officials have estimated that their new accountabilty system "will include 175 more schools and 20,000 more students," than are currently counted under the NCLB law, according to federal officials.
[UPDATE (Feb. 16): Hanna Skandera, New Mexico's secretary-designate of education, attributed the state initially not being granted a waiver to federal officials' concerns about the state's slow pace in implementing the common-core standards, and to worries about its plans for working with schools that struggle academically.
"They wanted us to talk through with them, 'How are you going to work with schools on closing the achievement gap?'" Skandera said. Federal officials also wanted proof of a "plan of intervention for schools that have large achievement gaps."
Skandera also told Education Week that other states have more experience than New Mexico in implementing the policies promoted by the Obama administration through the waivers, and that the state is making progress in that area.
"We had a long way to go when we turned in our application," she said. "This was our first year in the reform trenches. ... This is a great day for the state of New Mexico."]
NCLB
no child left behind act
Farewell (Sorta) to One Half of the Politics K-12 Team
Chris Minnich Stepping Down as Executive Director of CCSSO, Will Lead NWEA
Farewell, From One-Half of the Politics K-12 Team
Ed. Dept. Churn Brings New Faces to Key Initiatives
Introducing the New Half of Politics K-12
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Henry's Men: And the Men Who Made Him
Henry VIII is best known in history for his tempestuous marriages and the fates of his six wives. However, as acclaimed historian Tracy Borman makes clear in her illuminating new chronicle of Henry's life, his reign and reputation were hugely influenced by the men who surrounded and interacted with him as companions and confidants, servants and ministers, and occasionally as rivals -- many of whom have been underplayed in previous biographies.
These relationships offer a fresh, often surprising perspective on the legendary king, revealing the contradictions in his beliefs, behavior, and character in a nuanced light. They show him capable of fierce but seldom abiding loyalty, of raising men up only to destroy them later. He loved to be attended by boisterous young men, the likes of his intimate friend Charles Brandon, who shared his passion for sport, but could also be diverted by men of intellect, culture, and wit, as his longstanding interplay with Cardinal Wolsey and his reluctant abandonment of Thomas More attest. Eager to escape the shadow of his father, Henry VII, he was often trusting and easily led by male attendants and advisors early in his reign (his coronation was just shy of his 18th birthday in 1509) ; in time, though, he matured into a profoundly suspicious and paranoid king whose ruthlessness would be ever more apparent, as Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk and uncle to two of Henry's wives, discovered to his great discomfort, and as Eustace Chapuys, the ambassador of Charles V of Spain, often reported.
Recounting the great Tudor's life and signal moments through the lens of his male relationships, Tracy Borman's new biography reveals Henry's personality in all its multi-faceted, contradictory glory, and sheds fresh light on his reign for anyone fascinated by the Tudor era and its legacy.
Goodreads reviews for Henry's Men: And the Men Who Made Him
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press
Manufacturer: Atlantic Monthly Press
Publication Year: February 5, 2019
US Salesrank: 42812
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Tag Archives | Sounds Like Me
Bob Babbitt
By Greg Wilson on July 17, 2012 in Black Culture, Documentaries, DVD, Records, RIP, The Seventies, The Sixties
Just over 2 months on from the passing of iconic bass man, Donald ‘Duck’ Dunn of Booker T. & The M.G.’s (http://blog.gregwilson.co.uk/2012/05/donald-duck-dunn/), another of Soul’s most prolific bass players, Bob Babbitt, a member of Motown’s illustrious studio band, the Funk Brothers, died yesterday, aged 74.
Confused, Misused And In The Dark
By Greg Wilson on January 13, 2012 in Black Culture, DVD, The Eighties, The Fifties, The Seventies, The Sixties, Video
The photo above shows a man walking down the street past a wall that’s been sprayed with some graffiti – it says ‘Powell For P.M’. I’d imagine that most people under a certain age would completely miss the relevance of this image, having no idea who this Powell was. Maybe they might pick up on the clue that it has some reference to race, as the man in the picture is black, but without understanding the context its message has been lost with the passage of time. Anyone looking at it in the years following the milestone date of April 20th 1968 would be left in no doubt of its potency, but whilst children in British schools are now taught about Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks and key aspects of the US Civil Rights movement during the ’50s and ’60s, the story of what happened in this country, following the mass immigration of the post-war period, remains a largely hidden history. Without the knowledge of what went on back then, it’s impossible to properly understand what’s going on now, for Enoch Powell MP, and what he had to say in Birmingham that fateful April day almost 44 years ago (which, at the time, a Gallup poll told us was supported by almost three quarters of the UK population), set the agenda for the race debate in this country – a heated debate which has very much reignited in the past few months.
Ball Of Confusion
By Greg Wilson on April 5, 2011 in Black Culture, Hear, Interviews, Psychedelia, Records, The Seventies
Most of the interviews you do throw up the same type of questions, but every now and again someone takes a completely different approach, which can be very refreshing. One such occasion was a few years ago when I received a request for an interview by Berlin based DJ and writer Finn Johannsen, who told me he was doing a feature series for the blog ‘Sounds Like Me’ in which he asks people to chose a favourite record that has strong personal associations. Once I’d informed him of my choice, ‘Ball Of Confusion (That’s What The World Is Today)’, a key single of my formative years by The Temptations, he came back with a whole heap of insightful questions that really caused me to get deep into my reasons behind this selection, including my views on its socio-political relevance, the role of the protest song, and the innovations of its producer, Norman Whitfield.
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By PerformanceAcura March 11, 2016
2016 Acura ILX Leads The Way In Superior Handling
Acura has an extensive history of creating quality vehicles that look sharp and drive with precision. As their parent company, Honda, is known for its intuitive and effortless handling, Acura vehicles also receive the same treatment. Acura has made great strides with the 2016 ILX, improving its powertrain options and giving it a sleek new look.
Older ILX models came with a 2.0-litre, 4-cylinder engine which provided a silky smooth ride. This time around, Acura capitalized on all areas for improvement. The 2016 ILX is equipped with new 2.4-litre engine which offers more power and operates seamlessly with its transmission for responsive power when you need it.
This impressive engine and transmission combination produces 201 horsepower and 180 lb.-ft. of torque. Also seen for the first time in an ILX are a direct fuel injection system and a redesigned motor. Despite no manual transmission option available, its 8-speed dual-clutch automatic transmission will make for a dynamic ride.
For a vehicle with front-wheel-drive, it handles as if it had all-wheel-drive. Whereas modern electric steering has reduced the handling ‘feeling’ for many vehicles, Acura has made a point to ensure that every movement you make on the wheel is accurately translated to the road. This makes for a fun drive with a vehicle that corners aggressively and responsively.
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Russia Finds Kaspersky Lab Cyber Experts Guilty of Treason
Audrey McNamara
Maxim Shemetov/Reuters
A Russian military court on Tuesday found two cyber security experts from Kaspersky Lab guilty of treason. The men, a former state security officer and a former cyber-security expert at Kaspersky Lab, were sentenced to 22 and 14 years in jail, respectively, Russian news agencies reported. Col. Sergei Mikhailov, a former officer in Russia’s Federal Security Service, and Ruslan Stoyanov, head of the computer incidents investigation team at Kaspersky Lab, were both convicted of passing secret information to foreign intelligence services, agencies reported. During a top-secret trial, the men faced accusations that they shared confidential material from a 2010 cybercrime and spam investigation to an analyst at a U.S. security firm. That analyst, Kimberly Zenz, never testified—and insisted in an interview with The Daily Beast that Stoyanov didn’t commit treason.
Last year, the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) required the U.S. government to fully purge itself of “any hardware, software, or services developed or provided, in whole or in part,” by Kaspersky Lab. The purge was over concerns the Kremlin may use the Moscow-based company to infiltrate or infect U.S. computer networks that used the software.
Read it at Moscow Times
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THE OLD SOUTH
Stonewall Jackson, VMI’s Most Embattled Professor
Before he led the armies of the Confederacy, Stonewall Jackson was one of the strangest professors to ever teach at the Virginia Military Institute.
S. C. Gwynne
Mark Rucker/Transcendental Graphics/Getty
The course Jackson taught at VMI, “Natural and Experimental Philosophy,” was brutally difficult.
It had been brutally difficult when he took it in 1845 at West Point, where it was loathed and feared by most of the cadet corps, which included some of the brightest math and engineering students in the country. Jackson’s VMI course used exactly the same texts, some of them written by William H. C. Bartlett, his old professor. The subjects included a dizzying array of the most difficult scientific and mathematical concepts of the day: electricity, magnetics (including electromagnetism and electrodynamics), acoustics, optics (reflection and refraction of light, microscopes and telescopes), analytical mechanics, the motion of celestial bodies, and astronomy.
Unlike most of his fellow West Point cadets, Jackson actually liked the course and had done well in it, placing eleventh of 62 in his class. This was despite the fact that his previous schooling in rural western Virginia had given him little preparation for such advanced work, and had placed him at a huge disadvantage against classmates such as Philadelphia-raised George McClellan, the future Union general, who had spent two years at the University of Pennsylvania before he even arrived at West Point. Jackson was an exceptional math and science student; the dreaded Bartlett was one of his favorite professors.
The other subject he taught at VMI was something he knew a great deal about, too: artillery. Each day between 2:00 p.m. and 4:00 p.m. he would drill cadets in the transportation, deployment, and firing of mobile field artillery consisting of four six-pounder smoothbores and two twelve-pounder howitzers. In place of horses, underclassmen would pull the field pieces around the drill ground. Most of this was straight mechanical drill. The “tactical” side of artillery—its use on a battlefield—was something Jackson was not called upon to explain.
He was the most peculiar of teachers. According to the many accounts left by his former students, he did not really teach at all. Instead, he would assign what were considered to be extremely difficult lessons, and then listen to “recitations” of those lessons by cadets at the blackboard, correcting them as they went along. “At the appointed time [Jackson] ‘heard’ them, and this was about all of it,” recalled one former cadet. “Discussions in the class-room were unknown, and even explanations were infrequent . . . The text was the one great thing which he came to ‘hear,’ and we came to ‘say,’ if we could, and most of us commonly couldn’t, when the said text was Bartlett’s Course of Natural Philosophy, in three of the toughest volumes this scribe ever attacked—‘Mechanics,’ ’Optics and Acoustics,’ and ‘Spherical Astronomy.’”
Jackson’s behavior in the classroom seemed as peculiar as it did everywhere else. “When questioning the cadets,” wrote future Confederate general James H. Lane, one of his students, “he had a peculiar way of grasping his lead pencil, with his thumb on the end towards the cadets, and when a mistake was made, he would say ‘rather the reverse’ and flip his thumb back on the pencil.” When befuddled cadets asked him to explain some point, Jackson’s answer—devoid of imagination or technique—was simply to recite back to them the exact words of the text, which he had committed to memory and then rehearsed for several hours in darkness. Though this did nothing to help impart knowledge to his charges, some were impressed anyway by his command of the subject.
“In the section room he would sit perfectly erect and motionless,” recalled cadet James McCabe, “listening with grave attention and exhibiting the great powers of his wonderful memory, which was, I think, the most remarkable that ever came under my observation.” But Jackson’s power of recall offered little help to students who had trouble understanding his course. When one cadet insisted, after hearing Jackson explain a problem twice in exactly the same way, that he still did not understand it, Jackson ordered him to leave the section room. The result was that, while the brightest students managed to master the course, those in the middle and at the bottom were often left on their own to flounder, and sometimes to fail.
To make matters worse, Jackson placed great value on regurgitating every last detail of the assigned texts. When, in response to Jackson’s question “What are the three simple machines?” a cadet answered, “The inclined plane, the lever, and the wheel,” Jackson replied, ”No, sir. The lever, the wheel, and the inclined plane.” That was exactly as they were listed in the textbook, and that was how Jackson wanted it. No amount of student outrage or protest could dislodge him from this position. His course managed to be both dreadfully dull and appallingly difficult, with few light moments. When the students begged him to give them a separate session to help them review for a test, Jackson met them in his classroom in the dark, where, according to one cadet, he “sat in front of us on his platform, and with closed eyes questioned us over many pages of a complicated study.”
Whenever Jackson did manage to make what one student termed “an ironical remark,” he would hasten to qualify his expression by adding, “Not meaning exactly what I say,” even though the meaning was plain to everyone. The expression soon became a byword around the barracks. Such remarks made Jackson seem to be what he was not: stupid, or uncomprehending. Cadets would call him Old Tom Jackson while pointing, significantly, to their heads and saying that “he was not quite right there.”
In the cloistered world of VMI, most of which was contained within a single building, the shortcomings of the man cadets called Old Jack, Tom Fool, Old Hickory, and Square Box (in reference to his large feet) were on intimate display. By the end of his first year it had become common knowledge that the grave, taciturn major was, if not completely inept, at the very least the worst teacher at the institute. If there was anyone who thought otherwise, he left no historical record. Even Colonel Francis H. Smith, VMI’s superintendent and the man who both hired Jackson and kept him in his job, acknowledged his failure. “As a Professor of Natural and Experimental Philosophy, Major Jackson was not a success,” Smith wrote later, after his most illustrious faculty member’s rise to world fame. “He had not the qualifications needed for so important a chair. He was no teacher, and he lacked the tact required in getting along with his classes. He was a brave man, a conscientious man, and a good man, but he was no professor.”
But mere inability to impart knowledge was only the beginning of Jackson’s problems as a professor. One might expect that such a stern pedagogue would rule his classroom with an iron fist. But the reverse was true. Jackson was a poor disciplinarian whose classroom often seemed on the edge of complete chaos. While he sat, gimlet-eyed, watching one of the cadets recite, the other students, arrayed in a horseshoe curve behind Jackson, would often be in a full-scale battle, pelting one another with spitballs and other paper projectiles. Others cheated by taking crib sheets to the blackboard with them, concealing them from Jackson but not from the other students.
Former cadet Lane said he only saw Jackson attempt to catch one of them. “As he approached the guilty party,” wrote Lane, “his heavy, creaking boots betrayed him; the cadet slipped the paper up his sleeve . . . When Jackson reached him, he asked sharply ’What is that in your hand, Sir?’ The Cadet turned suddenly with a surprised look, opened his hand and said ‘a piece of chalk,’ at the same time displaying it. ‘Yes, a piece of chalk,’ responded Jackson, and there was a general laugh at ‘Old Jack’ as he returned, foiled, to his rostrum.”
Sometimes the cadets would truss a first-year student in a chair and balance the chair against the classroom door so that it would tip over when Jackson entered. Cadets would walk behind him, mimicking his step, as he walked with his long strides through campus, head down, looking straight ahead. According to one student, “from behind buildings and around corners he was saluted with cries and catcalls.” Almost invariably, one of them would draw a picture of outsized feet on the blackboard in Jackson’s section room. Sometimes there would be caricatures in which his body was swallowed up by his boots. Over a decade, his teaching often took place in an atmosphere of what one cadet called “wanton disrespect.”
Through all of this, Jackson never lost his temper or his dignity; rather, he took it all with a strange, almost distracted, imperturbability, as though he were too thick to understand what was really happening. “They played tricks on him, they made sport of him,” wrote D. H. Hill, a math professor at Lexington’s Washington College at the time. “They teased him, they persecuted him. All in vain. He turned neither to the right nor to the left, but went straight on in his own ways.” It should be noted that Jackson was not a complete pushover: he put many students on report, and placed some of them in arrest. Though he made fewer charges than the other teachers, he usually made them stick. Nor was Jackson universally despised. Though almost everyone agreed that he was a bad teacher, several of his students later wrote that they admired him for his record in the Mexican-American War, his strong sense of duty, and his Christian ethics.
Indeed, in 1858, Jackson’s seventh year at VMI, a cadet named Leigh Wilber Reid wrote a strikingly prescient poem about Jackson, saying that he saw “The stamp of genius on his brow, and he / With his wild glance and keen but quiet eye / Draws forth from secret sources, where they lie.” Reid had written poems about three other professors, all of them critical and derogatory.
Jackson fared better as an instructor of artillery, a subject he was far better at explaining. As one of his students later wrote, a change would come over him at the sound of the guns. “The grasp on the sabre would tighten; the quiet eyes would flash.” In fact, he taught the most intensive artillery course in the South and very likely the equal of courses at West Point. Over a decade he managed to impart considerable knowledge to several hundred students that would have a telling effect in the coming war. Scores of them would actually serve as artillerists under Jackson himself.
But here, too, he had trouble controlling his charges, who had far more freedom on the drill ground than in the section room to play pranks and otherwise disrupt the class. Cadets mimicked his commands, which he issued in drawn-out syllables in his high-pitched, mountain-inflected voice. They removed the linchpins so that the cannon wheels would fall away, sending the various pieces of the gun tumbling down the hill. Sometimes he caught them, and put them in arrest; often he did not. The trick, in any case, was repeated semester after semester. It became a sort of tradition. Another common prank was to spin the cannon in the direction of the major, causing him to leap out of the way.
Some of the tricks were not so harmless. Once a cadet dropped a brick from a third-story barracks window that barely missed Jackson. Jackson, striding forward as he always did and looking neither left nor right, took no notice of it, though as D. H. Hill said, “his escape was almost miraculous.” The perpetrator was never caught. When asked later why he did not try to find out who had done it, Jackson replied, “The truth is, I do not want to know that we have such a coward in the corps of cadets.”
His comment is a small revelation. Though his reaction might seem to be that of someone with strange physical habits who lacked connection with the real world about him, in fact he saw the act for what it was, and had a distinct, deliberate, and intelligent response to it. Jackson might seem opaque, out of touch, or just bizarrely insensitive to pranks or disrespect, but everything we know about him suggests that none of that was true. As his later wartime record would show, Jackson was extremely competent in the many skills required of a commanding general. He was highly perceptive and exquisitely sensitive to everything around him. His correspondence, much of which survives, is that of an incisive and articulate observer. Appearances and nicknames notwithstanding, he was nobody’s fool.
Unfortunately, he never wrote to his sister or to friends to tell them the stories of his struggles at VMI. We can only assume that he was, as you would expect him to be, mortified by his own inability to keep his charges under control.
His sensitivity to this problem came out in his first sharp disagreement with his boss, VMI superintendent Francis H. Smith. In the spring of 1852, Smith happened to be walking across the parade ground when he saw one of the cannons lose its wheels and scatter in several directions—the result of the linchpin-pulling trick. He walked over to Jackson and ordered him to report the cadet officers responsible for allowing this to happen. Stung by what he perceived to be sharp criticism—though it hardly sounds like that—Jackson immediately went back to his room in the barracks and wrote Smith a note requesting that he “put his severe reprimand in writing.” After that, Jackson’s treatment of Smith became noticeably cooler. He did not, as far as we know, ”cut” him as he had done Major French at Fort Meade, but for a time he would have nothing to do with him on anything except official business, and on that he was curt and deliberately abrupt.
As with French, Jackson, the normally duty-bound, strictly-by-the-book military man, had some obvious problems with officers of elevated rank, and with authority in general, especially when they said anything critical of him. This rogue character trait—nothing in his past quite accounts for it, and it would seem to violate both his military and Christian sense of duty—would come into play significantly during the Civil War, in ways that would have a profound effect on his military career.
Jackson had several notable confrontations with cadets who were unhappy with him or who felt he had been unjust. The most famous of these took place in April 1852. It involved a cadet named James A. Walker. Walker, a highly ranked student, had challenged Jackson in trigonometry class over an answer to a problem that Walker had written on the blackboard, insisting that he was right and telling Jackson that he had not made himself clear. Jackson told the cadet that he was out of line, whereupon Walker protested angrily. When Jackson told him to be quiet, he refused, and Jackson put him under arrest. After a court-martial, in which 62 pages of testimony were recorded, Walker was found guilty on all charges and dismissed from the institute. His response was to challenge Jackson to a duel, and to write him a note saying that if he did not receive satisfaction he would kill Jackson on sight.
What happened next is not quite clear, though many versions exist. The most commonly cited is that told by D. H. Hill, who later said that Jackson had asked him for advice on whether to seek a restraining order. Hill advised him not to, saying that if he did so, the cadets would regard him as a coward. But Jackson disregarded him and went straight to the magistrate. Hill saw this as the quintessential demonstration of Jackson’s personality: he would do his Christian duty to avoid a fight, and he would accept the social consequences.
“I have thought that no incident in the life of Jackson was more truly sublime than this,” wrote Hill. “He was ambitious, covetous of distinction, desirous to rise in the world, sensitive to ridicule, tenacious of honor—yet, from a high sense of Christian duty, he sacrificed the good opinion of his associates.” In Hill’s version, Jackson at the same time let it be known that he would defend himself if attacked, and Walker never dared attack him. In any case, there was nothing in Jackson’s behavior that suggested cowardice to anyone. The cadet was expelled, and that was the end of it.
We do know with great precision what happened to the expelled student. He entered the war with the 4th Virginia Regiment. He fought with distinction under Jackson as part of the Stonewall Brigade, rising steadily by Jackson’s promotions and making colonel in March 1862. In May 1863 he was promoted to brigadier general and became, by Jackson’s direct command on his deathbed (“I do not know a braver officer”), the Stonewall Brigade’s last commanding officer. Thirty-nine years after his expulsion from VMI, he acted as chief marshal at the unveiling of the Stonewall Jackson monument in Lexington. His nickname, given to him at the Battle of Gettysburg and which he kept for the rest of his life, was Stonewall Jim. He would later write of Jackson that “the cadets came to understand him and to appreciate his character for courage and justice, and to respect and love him for his kindly heart and noble soul.”
Walker was not the only one who complained publicly about Jackson. Superintendent Smith, in fact, had fielded a steady stream of complaints about him that never resulted in any direct action. But in the spring of 1856 he finally faced a full-scale protest. Acting on the basis of a number of complaints, the Society of the Alumni appointed a VMI graduate to investigate and prepare a report for the school’s governing body, the Board of Visitors. In July, the alumni presented a resolution condemning the mismanagement of the Department of Natural and Experimental Philosophy, and saying that Jackson lacked ”capacity adequate to the duties of the chair.”
Though this might easily have been grounds for dismissal or reassignment, nothing of the sort happened. The board decided simply to table the resolution, and there the matter rested. When Jackson found out about this campaign against him a year later, he made a formal request that every charge be investigated. But the board— like General David Twiggs in Tampa, who fielded a similar request—would have nothing to do with it. The members tabled Jackson’s request as well.
It is noteworthy, considering how difficult it must have been for him to engage year after year in a difficult job for which he had no aptitude, that he even stuck it out. (His one attempt to leave was a failure, too: he applied for a job teaching math at the University of Virginia in 1854, but did not get the job.) One explanation comes from his second wife, Anna, who said that Jackson had once been asked by a friend if it wasn’t presumptuous of him to take the teaching job at VMI when his eye illness made him incapable of doing it properly. “Not in the least,” Jackson said. “The appointment came unsought, and was therefore providential; and I knew that if Providence set me a task, he would give me the power to perform it. So I resolved to get well.” He persisted because he believed God wanted him to.
Excerpted from Rebel Yell: The Violence, Passion, and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson by S.C. Gwynne. Copyright © 2014 by Samuel C. Gwynne. Excerpted with permission by Scribner, a Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
S.C. Gwynne, author of Rebel Yell: The Violence, Passion and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson, is the author of the New York Times bestseller Empire of the Summer Moon, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. He spent most of his career as a journalist, including stints with Time as bureau chief, national correspondent, and senior editor, and with Texas Monthly as executive editor. He lives in Austin, Texas, with his wife and daughter. For more information please visit http://www.scgwynne.com, and follow the author on Facebook and Twitter
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Set Visit Preview: Warner Bros. Brings the Supernatural Romance BEAUTIFUL CREATURES to Life in Louisiana
by Scott Wampler August 9, 2012
A few months ago, I was given the opportunity to travel to Baton Rouge, Louisiana for a visit to the set of Richard LaGravenese’s forthcoming supernatural-romance, Beautiful Creatures. Now, while the title might not mean much to you if you’re say, a late-20’s male with little to no involvement with the Young Adult section of your local Barnes and Nobel, that name means a whole bunch to a whole bunch of non-late-20’s males: Beautiful Creatures—which involves teenage girls, witches, stately manors on the edge of swamps, and Jeremy Irons—might just be the heir to the Twilight throne.
And with the potential for another franchise like that on their hands, it’s easy to understand why the studio would agree to let us start talking about our set visit now: sure, it doesn’t arrive until February of 2013, but why not tell you a little bit about the cool stuff we saw on-set? Find out what I saw there, who we interviewed, and see some pictures from Beautiful Creatures after the jump, folks.
Before I start bringing you up to speed on Warner Bros. and Richard LaGravenese’s Beautiful Creatures, it’s important that we make the following very, very clear: this is not our full set-visit report. Typically, set visits (and the interviews that occur there) don’t start popping up until the week or two before a film hits theaters. In this case, however, WB has given us the go-ahead to write a quick little preview about that visit. Once we get closer to the film’s February, 2013 release date, they’ll lift the embargo and we’ll be able to share everything we saw (and the handful of interviews we scored). Until then, there’s this.
For the uninitiated, Beautiful Creatures is the first novel (published in 2009) in Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl’s Caster Chronicles young-adult series, and—to someone like me, who doesn’t read a lot of supernatural-romance YA novels—the series sounds like it was always destined to be given the Hollywood treatment: in Gatlin, South Carolina, 16-year-old sophomore Ethan (here played by Alden Ehrenreich, a relative newcomer who cut his teeth in Francis Ford Coppola’s Twixt and Tetro) discovers a mysterious new girl at school, Lena (played by Alice Englert). Ethan is drawn into a mystery involving Lena’s life as a witch (or “Caster”), the town of Gatlin itself, and Lena’s even-more-mysterious Uncle, Macon (played by Jeremy Irons, who needs no introduction).
While on-set, we watched LaGravenese film an elaborate outdoor party scene, one that involved what appeared to be dozens and dozens of extras dressed in jaw-droppingly intricate costumes (and some truly impressive makeup). We took a walk around the outside of a massive, sprawling house in the middle of nowhere (this was outside Baton Rouge, and the place looked exactly like you’d expect “a massive, sprawling house in the middle of nowhere outside of Baton Rouge” to look like: hanging vines, heavy gothic architecture, lots of wrought-iron and deep shadows) that turned out to be Macon’s house, and we were given time to interview a number of cast members, including Ehrenreich, Englert, Emmy Rossum, and Margo Martindale, all of whom were clearly very excited about bringing this massively popular YA series to life.
The Beautiful Creatures set was enormously impressive, and though I walked onto the set knowing next-to-nothing about the series that inspired it, I left curious to learn more. This is just about all I’m able to share at the moment, but you can rest assured that we’ll have much, much more coverage for you on our Beautiful Creatures set visit when we get closer to the film’s February 2013 release date, including a report from the set and all those aforementioned interviews. While you’re waiting on that day to arrive, check out some of these pictures from the Beautiful Creatures Facebook page, and feel free to sound off in the comments section below if you’ve got anything you’d like to add: read the books? Excited for the movie? Think Beautiful Creatures has what it takes to take up the Twilight mantle? Tell us about it below, folks, and stay tuned!
FX Orders 13-Episode First Season of Spy Pilot THE AMERICANS Starring Keri…
New Poster for RED DAWN Starring Chris Hemsworth and Josh Hutcherson
• Alden Ehrenreich • Alice Englert • Beautiful Creatures • Emmy Rossum • Entertainment • Movie • Richard LaGravenese • Set Visit
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Posts Tagged ‘lonely’
Episode 062–Gillian Gaar On The Sub Pop Records Story with Bruce Hilliard
By Bruce Hilliard | 11/30/2018 | 0
Sup Pop Records has released early recordings with bands such as Green River, Nirvana, Soundgarden and more. The label was founded by Bruce Pavitt and Jonathan Poneman in the 80’s. The new book by Gillian Gaar illustrates the record label founders’ journey from music lovers to becoming pioneers of one of the most influential independent record companies to date.
Gillian talks about her first-hand interviews and research that went into making the book. She was there as history unfurled and could probably talk all day on the subject but this is a half hour teaser. If you want to meet the author and chat, see the below information. She is one of the foremost authorities on rock music.
Her first book of 17, She’s A Rebel: The History of Women in Rock & Roll was published in 1992. In addition to her own books, she has appeared in various anthologies, including The Nirvana Companion; Trouble Girls: The Rolling Stone Guide to Women in Rock; Nirvana: The Complete Illustrated History; Leonard Cohen on Leonard Cohen: Interviews and Encounters; Goldmine: The Beatles Digest (volumes one and two); and The Best of the Beatles Book. She has also researched and written some of the best Elvis literature available anywhere.
World Domination: The Sub Pop Records Story takes you on a journey from the 1980’s to now. Gillian Gaar is a Seattle-based author and local music journalist. She has also appeared in anthologies such as ‘Nirvana: The Complete Illustrated History’, ‘The Stranger Guide to Seattle’, ‘The Best of the Beatles Book’, and others.
To find out more about the book you can come her book signing.
What: Gillian Gaar Book Reading and Signing
When: Friday, Dec. 7 at 7 p.m.
Where: Easy Street Records
4559 California Ave SW, (West Seattle)
Gillian Gaar is one of those rock gurus that in conversation makes you listen, and like a good concert, leaves you wanting more. Gillian is a Seattle-based author. She was editorial assistant for Krist Novoselic’s book From Grunge To Government: Let’s Fix This Broken Democracy!
She was also a project consultant/liner note writer for Nirvana’s box set With The Lights Out. She has written for numerous magazines, including Rolling Stone, Mojo, Q, Goldmine, The Seattle Times, The Stranger, Option, and No Depression, and was a senior editor at Seattle music paper The Rocket.
Gillian written liner notes for collections by Laurie Anderson, Judy Collins, Heart, Pat Benatar, Paula Cole and Mat Kearney, among others.
Listen to the full episode
Gillian Gaar is one of those rock gurus that in conversation makes you listen, and like a good concert, leaves you wanting more. Gillian is a Seattle-based author. Her first book, She’s A Rebel: The History of Women in Rock & Roll was published in 1992. In addition to her own books, she has appeared in…
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HITTING THE THIRD RAIL
I am about to hit the third rail of American politics: Saying something less than gushingly laudatory about the 9/11 Commission.
Well, it’s actually less about the Commission than it is about the testimony of some of its members at hearings last week before a couple of committees of the House of Representatives.
The subject was ‘public diplomacy’. Translating this Washington-speak, public diplomacy consists of the things we say and do to get the world to understand and love us. More specifically, the hearings were about how the United States should reach out to the Muslim world.
The Commission’s report was absolutely right in saying that the US cannot win the battle against terrorism with the military alone, that we’re also fighting a war of ideas, and we can only win that war with better ideas. “The United States must do more to communicate its message”, the Commission’s report declares.
But what is the message? According to Commission Chairman Thomas Kean, Vice-Chairman Lee Hamilton, and Commission member Jamie Gorelick, the American message needs to be about our moral values, about how generous the American people are, about the need for better education, more libraries, women’s rights, closing the digital divide, and religious, racial and ethnic tolerance.
That’s all good stuff. But Commission members, in their scrupulous and unusual effort to remain nonpartisan, were visibly walking on political eggs to avoid any mention of the indispensable factor in the public diplomacy equation: Policy.
Yet every poll taken in the last few years tells us it is not America that is hated around the world, it is American foreign policy. And neither the Commission witnesses, nor any of the Republicans on these House committees, was prepared to discuss policy.
Only the ranking Democrats on the committees, Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio and Rep. Tom Lantos of California, weighed in with policy rants, and even these two Democrats disagreed on many issues. US policy toward Israel, for example.
Which made the discussion about tools. The tools we should be using to influence the world: Broadcasts, exchange programs, aid to strengthen economic development and civil society, and suchlike. This is a useful discussion because, unlikely as it may seem, the country that virtually invented modern communications has not been hugely successful in the way it uses its tools.
But tools are only messengers. They don’t make the message; they simply convey it.
But trying to discuss public diplomacy without discussing foreign policy is like moving bureaucratic boxes around and persuading voters you’ve actually achieved something. It makes hearings like these even more farcical than most of what goes on in Congress.
Ever since the 9/11 Commission issued its final report, the men and women of our Congress have been running for political cover like cats on a hot tin roof. It has been seen as something approaching blasphemy to question any of the Commission’s findings and recommendations – President Bush simply couldn’t wait to get to the Rose Garden to announce he was going to appoint an intelligence czar and create a national counter-terrorism center.
The Commission should not be faulted for avoiding partisan and inevitably rancorous foreign policy debates. That’s what we elect an Administration and a Congress to do. And that’s what we have a right to expect – and aren’t getting – from our quadrennial electoral process.
What is clear is that we have many failed foreign policies and a President who won’t say so. If those are givens, why are we wasting the taxpayers’ money discussing tools?
About the writer: William Fisher has managed economic development programs in the Middle East for the US State Department and the US Agency for International Development, and served in the international affairs area in the Kennedy Administration.
Posted by Unknown at Friday, August 27, 2004 298 comments:
AMERICAN GULAG
If you think prisoner abuse is about Abu Ghraib and a ‘few bad apples’, reading Mark Dow’s American Gulag may make you think again.
Dow is a journalist and former teacher at the US Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) detention center in Miami. He has spent years interviewing inmates, guards, and officials at that and the many other detention centers run by INS (now part of the new Department of Homeland Security).
"Long before Abu Ghraib, and even before September 11th”, Dow told The New Yorker magazine, “detainees in America's immigration prisons were being stripped, beaten, and sexually abused.” They were also being routinely deprived of the most basic civil rights.
Since September 11, immigration policy has become far more stringent, targeting Arab, Muslim, and South Asian foreign nationals. “Attorney General John Ashcroft has repeatedly used the term ‘terrorist’ to describe detainees, “when he was certainly in a position to know that they were not terrorists.” In fact, Dow writes, most had overstayed their visas, which could get them deported, but which is not a crime. Immigration law is not part of the US criminal justice system – which gives the INS virtually unlimited scope to hold people indefinitely, without charge, without access to attorneys, and without public disclosure.
Dow’s book describes a chamber of horrors that followed the 9/11 tragedy and the sweeping round-up of Arabs and Muslims.
Egyptian detainees held in Alabama go on a hunger strike. A Palestinian is transferred from jail to jail to keep him from contacting the media. He is told by INS officials that a condition of his release is that he cannot speak to the media about his case. If he does, they will lock him up again. An Egyptian man is confined for two months before being allowed to call a lawyer. He is given no soap or towels for a week and meanwhile interrogated. He says correctional officers stomped on his bare feet.
A Pakistani man, Mehmood, “had been traveling between Pakistan and the US since the mid-1980s. He was in the import export business. In the 1990s, he overstayed his five-year renewable visa…(He) had not been particularly surprised or concerned when, three weeks after (9/11), 25 FBI agents came knocking at the door of his Bayonne, New Jersey, home while he slept. He knew the authorities were ‘coming to Muslim houses. They just want to search us’, he said. Agents found ‘suspicious’ items – a flight simulator, a flying lesson logbook, box cutters and a hazardous materials driving permit. “But”, says Dow, “ with minimal investigation, the ‘case’ evaporated”. There were plausible – and confirmed – reasons for Mehmood to have had these items. His most serious breach of the law was altering the no-work line of his Social Security card.
When the FBI finished interviewing him, they said, “We have no problem with you. Now it’s up to the INS if they want to take you or not.” The INS arrested him. They told his wife she could expect a call from him in four to six hours, and that he would probably be freed on bail and might even get a ‘Green Card’. Bail was never set.
Dow writes: “For the first two months…Mehmood was moved each week to a new cell, handcuffed and shackled to be moved those few feet. After three weeks, he was allowed to make his first legal phone call. He was kept inside his cell for 24 hours day.” Then he was transferred first to Manhattan and then to Brooklyn. When he arrived in Brooklyn, he alleges, seven or eight correctional officers threw him out of the van, dragged him across the floor, and then threw him against a wall…with their full power.” He was injured.
Mehmood was charged with altering his social security card. He pled guilty and was sentenced to time served. He was deported back to Pakistan in mid-April, 2002. In that year, and in early 2003, “at least four charter flights took large groups of Pakistanis who had no proper documentation – or ties to terrorists – back to Pakistan. The INS called the charters “routine”. Even after Mehmood was back in Pakistan, Dow says, “Immigration officials said they could not comment on specific cases.”
Dow asks why Mehmood was held in the Special Housing Unit at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center, “a federal prison, for four months and two days, and denied access to legal help and to his family for weeks?”
Dow concludes: The Bush Administration has “exploited our national trauma to extend law enforcement authority, as the long-standing biases within the Justice Department against Muslims and Arabs became politically correct.” None of this, he adds, “has anything to do with immigration…It's simply the result of excessive authority and an obsession with secrecy.”
“Today, the immigration agency holds some 23,000 people in detention on a given day and detains about 200,000 annually. The prisoners are held in the INS’s service processing centers; in local jails; in facilities owned and operated by private companies…and in Bureau of Prisons facilities, including federal penitentiaries. Wherever they are held, INS prisoners are ‘administrative detainees’; they are not serving a sentence…Immigration detainees can be held for days, months, or years…Detainees who came (to the US) from Cuba during the 1980 ‘Mariel boatlift’ are still in detention, despite a US Supreme Court against indefinite detention.” The reason given by INS is that Cuba has refused to take them back.
Detainees tend to fall into four categories: Those who have entered the US without proper documentation, including asylum-seekers (10-13% of all detainees); people with, say, a visa overstay, who can be picked up by an immigration agent and taken to detention -- either an immigration detention center or a contracted jail; people with some kind of criminal conviction -- once an immigrant completes a prison sentence, he or she can be turned over to the immigration service; finally, there is a fourth category, labeled “special detention”, for those thought to be associated with ‘terror’.
“Local politicians and business entrepreneurs have taken full advantage of the revenue possibilities in immigration detention”, Dow writes. ”The Federal Government paid New York County $45.00 per detainees per day, although it only cost the prison $24.37 to maintain each prisoner.”
“When detentions increased following the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York City and the Pentagon, private prison profiteers saw another opportunity. The Chairman of the Houston-based Cornell Companies spoke candidly in a conference call with other investors: ‘It can only be good…with the focus on people that are illegal and also from Middle Eastern descent…In the US there are over 900,000 undocumented individuals from Middle Eastern descent…That’s half of our entire prison population…The Federal business is the best business for us…and the events of September 11 (are) increasing that level of business…”
“The prisons themselves are often gruesome,” Dow writes. The guards are “often unprepared for the environment.” One officer, after being convicted for repeatedly kicking and punching an inmate, told Dow, “It was a situation I had never been in … I reacted … I don't know what happened.”
Almost as disturbing is the veil of secrecy surrounding the detention centers. In his investigations, Dow was often prevented from interviewing prisoners, accessing medical records, and looking at immigration guidelines. Dow also found that INS answers to no one. It eschews formal regulations. There are no monitors or independent watchdogs. Most of what we know about these prisons comes from a handful of journalists, working tirelessly to "make public what the INS tries to hide."
In its new home at the DHS, Dow says, “The secretive immigration prison world is likely to be pulled even further from public scrutiny.”
That high levels of government are aware of the situation is clear. FBI whistle-blower agent Colleen Rowley expressed concern over the pressure from FBI offices to round up Arabs in order to fill the detention centers. A newsletter from the Justice Department says, “An alien's constitutional status in this country might be something that the government can use when an alien detainee challenges his or her treatment in detention.“ Dow finds this “astonishing, and disturbing, because it tells me that high-ranking Justice Department officials know about the treatment of these detainees, but instead of trying to do something about the conditions, they're looking for a way to justify those conditions.”
On paper, he says, there are INS standards regarding immigration conditions, including attorney visitation, media interviews, law libraries, and other crucial aspects of prison life. But, says the American Civil Liberties Union, “By refusing to promulgate these standards as regulations, the INS insured that they would be difficult if not impossible to enforce.”
Dow adds: “This effort to operate outside the bounds of enforceable law is no accident…“ Attorney General Ashcroft has “likened his new policy of preventative detention to Robert Kennedy’s crackdown on the Mafia, when arrests were made for ‘spitting on the sidewalk’ in order to prevent more serious crimes.”
Dow recommends a few ways to make the INS more transparent and accountable. These include Congressional hearings to consider the 2 1/2 decades of immigration detention abuses; an investigation by the Office of Inspector General; independent, surprise monitoring of all detention centers, prisons and jails organized by nongovernmental and community groups across the country; legal counsel and judicial review for every detainee; and repeal of the 1996 anti-immigrant laws -- responsible for tripling the detention population and for the deportation of tens of thousands of long-term legal residents for past minor crimes.
But ultimately, Dow believes, “detention authority should be removed from the immigration service except in emergencies and for strictly limited periods. The American immigration bureaucracy should not be operating a prison system at all.”
American Gulag: Inside U.S. Immigration Prisons is published by University of California Press, Berkeley 94704, California, USA, 2004. (www.ucpress.edu).
Posted by Unknown at Friday, August 27, 2004 68 comments:
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Toxicity of GM 'Food' Revealed in New Study
'Tis unnatural,/Even like the deed that's done (Macbeth, Act II, Scene IV, ll. 10, 11).
From NaturalNews:
Eating genetically modified corn (GM corn) and consuming trace levels of Monsanto's Roundup chemical fertilizer caused rats to develop horrifying tumors, widespread organ damage, and premature death. That's the conclusion of a shocking new study that looked at the long-term effects of consuming Monsanto's genetically modified corn.
The study has been deemed "the most thorough research ever published into the health effects of GM food crops and the herbicide Roundup on rats." News of the horrifying findings is spreading like wildfire across the internet, with even the mainstream media seemingly in shock over the photos of rats with multiple grotesque tumors... tumors so large the rats even had difficulty breathing in some cases. GMOs may be the new thalidomide.
It goes on to say: "The animals on the GM diet suffered mammary tumors, as well as severe liver and kidney damage. The researchers said 50 percent of males and 70 percent of females died prematurely, compared with only 30 percent and 20 percent in the control group."
We may say definitively that GMO food is a danger to human health and to other living creatures, but now comes the difficult part: opposing this life-in-death vision that the agri-business corporations of the world have in mind for us with an alternative vision for man and the creation that has life-giving, creative content. This is Father Sergius Bulgakov's challenge to us, perhaps more relevant today than when he wrote it in 1939:
Our epoch is characterized by a broad development of creativity "in its own name," by a deluge of anthropotheism, in the form of a luciferian creative intoxication, and by an immersion in dull sensual paganism. These developments cannot be overcome by mere rejection; they can be overcome only by the unfolding of a positive Christian doctrine of the world and creative activity, and by manifestation of its power (The Bride of the Lamb, tr. Boris Jakim, Grand Rapids, Michigan, Eerdmans: 2002, p. 332).
The Englishman and the King
The Islamic World Aflame
A Sonnet to Lee
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Coral Gables’ Temporary City
It was around 1925 that one could find William S. Hammon, a heavy-set, grey haired gentleman, strolling through the city he had recently been declared mayor of. It is likely that Mr. Hammon, a man whose jacket was charitably described as “dusty,” would have never expected to be proclaimed the mayor of anything. In truth, the title was little more than a term of endearment. Additionally, the term “city” only loosely applies to the community he presided over. “Tent City,” as it was called, was comprised of over 600 tents, housed close to 1000 people, and was located in Coral Gables. The community itself was reminiscent of a slightly upscale refugee camp. Why was this ritzy shanty town located within the boundaries of one of Miami’s most affluent boomtime developments? Why would the City Beautiful and George Merrick deviate from the standards they set for their Mediterranean Revival styled community in favor of wooden shacks and dirt roads? The answers to these questions (and others likely posed) are what this article attempts to address.
In the 1920’s, Miami found itself in the midst of the Great Florida Land Boom. This period of time was punctuated by a huge influx of development; houses, commercial buildings, neighborhoods, and streets were being built at an unparalleled pace. It was during this building boom that neighborhoods and cities such as Miami Shores, Opa Locka, Miami Beach, Miami Springs, and Coral Gables sprung into existence. This surge in construction resulted in an exponentially expanding workforce, which grew to include thousands of construction workers, salesmen, electricians, plumbers, and contractors.
The irony behind this explosive increase of homes, however, was that it resulted in a massive housing shortage for all the laborers and employees associated with the development of these houses and buildings. Affordable housing took a backseat to large single-family homes, leaving common laborers, artisans, administrative workers, and the sales forces with no place to hang their own hat. This problem even entangled George Merrick, the visionary responsible for the creation and development of Coral Gables. Merrick’s attention was drawn to the issue, resulting in the temporary establishment of “Tent City” in October of 1925. In fact, it was Tent City’s future “mayor,” W.S. Hammon, who proposed the idea to Merrick while working for the corporation’s construction branch.
Though purely of temporary construction, the colony was established at a total cost of $85,000 ($1,224,184 today) and was spread over 6 acres of property. Tent City was located approximately where Coral Gables Senior Highschool is currently situated, on the corner of LeJeune and Bird Road. Like any planned town, it was laid out with streets, individual lots, and a plaza in the center. The “tents” themselves, which were more like cottages, varied in size and had a wooden framework, bolted and reinforced with iron at each joint, had screen doors and windows, and were even waterproof. The interiors were divided into rooms by curtains. They were rented fully furnished and were outfitted with linoleum floors, chairs, beds, dressers, and tables. Each tent was wired for electricity, which with water, was provided free of charge. Electric grills were used for cooking in the interest of fire protection. It is all the more surprising to know that no attempt was made to realize a profit from the enterprise. Rent was nominal and solely served the purpose of maintaining the community.
Those who lived in Tent City took part in regularly scheduled community festivals and events. The “Town Square” was frequently alive with activity. “Mayor” Hammon, whose 12 year old son was considered the maintenance “man,” was very much the community leader; organizing events, activities, and providing supplies and groceries out of his centrally based dry goods store. Tent City housing was initially limited to individuals who worked for the Coral Gables Corporation and their families. Inhabitants were drawn from all departments of the corporation, including the administrative offices, the accounting department, the sales force, and the construction department. While there were plenty of adults, there were also over a hundred children living in Tent City who were enrolled in the Coral Gables school system. It has been reported that, when not in school, the children would play in the “town square” or on the dance platform which had been erected for the recreation of it’s “citizens.”
In April 1926, the completion of the $800,000 San Sebastian Apartments employee hotel resulted in the departure of many of Tent City’s residents. The Corporation promptly altered it’s policies and opened up Tent City to non-company employees. Until it’s liquidation on July 21, 1926, Tent City was available to tourists, prospective home buyers, and Gables residents who were awaiting the completion of their homes. By September of 1926, the development boom had reached it’s peak and was winding down. The structures found within Tent City were auctioned off to the general public in early September.
As for Will S. Hammon, the community’s “dusty” mayor… By 1929 he, his wife Ona, and son Harley, had moved to Columbus, IN, where he returned to working as a retail merchant. Hammon died in Minnesota in 1939 and was buried at Crown Hill Cemetery in Indianapolis, presumably without the dust of Coral Gables on his jacket.
Malcolm Lauredo
Volume Two; Number One
Support the Museum with your Membership
Coral Gables Museum Summer Camp 2019
June 7 @ 8:00 am - August 16 @ 5:00 pm
Downtown Walking Tour
Creating the Dream Tour
Gables Bike Tour
Panel Discussion: The Making of The Art Of Compassion: From Conception to Exhibition.
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William Southwell
Southwell Brothers
Web Publications
CMC, Disability Studies and Educational Counselling/Advising
In summary my research interests include:
Disability and special needs
Computer-mediated conferencing
Specialist educational counselling/advising
Student support (in distance education in particular)
My doctoral research, completed 2001, crossed the boundaries of three areas of interest. These are: disability studies, computer mediated communication (CMC) and educational counselling/advising. My main study focused on an exploration of the effects of providing access to the services of an educational counsellor on-line in a 'Virtual Campus' environment for a group of undergraduate distance learners with long-term health problems. This work was supervised by Dr. Pat Fung and Professor Denise Whitelock at the Institute of Educational Technology and Ms Judy Emms, Faculty of Maths and Computing, The Open University.
"Computer Mediated Communication and Disability Support: Addressing Barriers to Study for Undergraduate Distance Learners with Long-term Health Problems". Doctoral thesis. Milton Keynes: The Open University. (Abstract available here).
Epistolary Interviews - a novel research method
A novel research method was developed and piloted during the final phase of this research. This is a form of interactive personal interview by asynchronous e-mail, which is introduced in my thesis and termed epistolary interview. The interview structure was adapted for text-based communication from the type of semi-structured conversational format described by Wilson (1996) as a suitable research tool for in depth exploration of interviewee experience in a face-to-face situation (Debenham, M. 2007: Epistolary Interviews On-line: A Novel Addition to the Researcher's Palette. York: TechDis. [Note: This paper was first published on the TechDis site, which sadly has been disontinued in 2015. A pdf of the published version may be downloaded here, posted with the agreement of the Higher Education Academy, so that the material will remain available to scholars with an interest in the field.])
Wilson, M. 1996. Asking Questions: in Data Collection and Analysis, ed. R. Sapsford, V. Jupp, pp 94 - 120. London: Sage.
Biographical Background
As an undergraduate in 1988 I became one of the first group of students to take the Open University's pioneering course in Information Technology, entitled "An Introduction to Information Technology: Social and Technological Issues". This introduced the use of computer conferencing for contact with the course tutor and fellow students in a distance learning environment. As an alumna of the course, I continued to use the medium on a self help basis to support my remaining undergraduate studies. It was this experience which later triggered my interest in undertaking research to explore the potential of the medium to support disabled distance learners.
For health-related reasons, I was myself registered as a disabled student with the Open University from the outset of my undergraduate studies in 1980. Later, when I was awarded a full time post-graduate research studentship at the Institute of Educational Technology (IET), commencing in early 1996, the department took great care in making special arrangements to accommodate and facilitate my study-related needs. These included permission to be formally based at my Regional Centre in Bristol, with a locally based supervisor in addition to my two departmental supervisors in Milton Keynes; extensive use of CMC and telephone for communication with my IET supervisors, other Milton Keynes campus-based staff and support services; and regular trips to campus for conferences, presentations and meetings. These CMC provisions were experimental in those early days, when data communication systems were still very slow and cumbersome in use — in contrast to today, when the highly developed Internet and fast broadband access have transformed the scenario for all distance learners.
The Institute of Educational Technology, The Open University, UK
Services for Disabled Students, The Open University, UK
Centre for Disability Studies, University of Leeds, UK
DO-IT Program, Disabilities, Opportunities, Internetworking and Technology, University of Washington, Seattle, USA
Association for Learning Technology (ALT)
Adaptech Project, Dawson College, Canada
Page last updated 2 May 2017
Copyright © Margaret Debenham 2002 - 2019. All rights reserved. This web site does not use cookies. Contact the
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Discover more about my vision for Australian women
Please support GirlsfromOz who provide activities for children and young people in remote Australia
The Burnet Institute aims to achieve better health for poor and vulnerable communities through medical research, education and public health
Family Violence (4)
Follow @chloeshorten
Chloe Shorten
Passionate advocate for equality
A candid, revealing chat with Chloe Shorten. Family, life and Bill’s worst habit.
July 12, 2016 November 30, 2016 6 minute readby Chloe
Leader of the Labor party Bill Shorten (right) and his wife Chloe pose for photographs at Parliament House in Canberra, Sunday, Oct. 13, 2013. The Labor party announced Bill Shorten as the newly elected leader. (AAP Image/Lukas Coch) NO ARCHIVING
Two weeks ago, the ALP posted a video of Bill Shorten being interviewed by his wife Chloe on their Facebook page.
That’s the video above.
Cynical media outlets described the interview as “bizarre” and “peculiar”. It’s unusual, for sure. Political spouses don’t usually interview their candidate partners and then post the video on social media, nationwide.
But the thing that you see more clearly than anything else in the video is the love and affection that Bill clearly has for his wife. The ALP posted it with the caption “#RelationshipGoals” with good reason. Bill tells Chloe that he wants to try and make her happy.
Perhaps the cynical response it garnered points to a knowledge gap in the electorate – we don’t often see the spouses of politicians in such an intimate way. Does the electorate need to get to know the people behind the politicians a little better?
In another video on the ALP’s Facebook page, Chloe Shorten is interviewed herself, by a staffer at Labor’s Campaign Headquarters in Melbourne.
She says, “when Mummy’s okay, the whole world’s okay,” a mantra she repeats often.
Chloe, who immediately scoffed at being addressed as ‘Ms Shorten’, tells Mamamia, “I use that as a sort of frame for just about everything I do in my life. Friendships, corporate roles. It’s a great way to look at life.”
And it’s also what prompts her to gravitate towards the mothers and the grandmothers that she says are some of her favourite people to spend time with on the campaign.
“I tend to gravitate towards comparing notes and getting good advice from the mums and grandmothers I’ve met.
“I had a lovely conversation with a woman I met in her eighties. She said to me she had just lost her granddaughter, an adult granddaughter who has suddenly died. She was so moving and she reminded me of that need to be conscious of how precious our families and our children are.
“It was really special.
“In Gladstone I met a group of indigenous mothers and grandmothers. The grandmas talking about their granddaughters, worried about them getting a good education and chance.
“It was such a reality check about how so many of us live with great opportunity. We need to make sure the access [that great opportunity] is extended to every single child.”
Chloe says meetings like that do two things. They reinforce her support of Bill, and they remind her how precious her family life is.
Chloe isn’t full time on the campaign trail with Bill. She drops in and out when she can find the time to take a break from managing the well being and busy schedules of three children.
Since the start of the campaign, Chloe says, “Bill’s maybe been home six nights.”
How is that working? “I have to admit that it’s probably working at about 60 percent. I’ve lowered the bar of expectations of managing my family world.” Which is more than fair enough, three children including Bill and Chloe’s five-year-old daughter, Clementine, a Federal Election campaign and a parent barely able to be at home, 60 per cent seems remarkable.
“I reflected on this recently with some women whose husbands were serving overseas. They have to deal with this stuff all the time. It’s a given for them.
“Sometimes we try to get the kids to come to things, but only the things they want to.”
Chloe says that Clementine misses Bill a lot, “She just wants to be sitting on his lap at every moment, getting his attention.
“I was like that as a kid. Not so public. But being around my parents meant being around them in their workplaces.”
Chloe is the daughter of Dame Quentin and Michael Bryce, the fourth of five children. While Michael was a highly accomplished architect, and graphic and industrial designer, Dame Quentin is the widely celebrated first female Governor-General of Australia.
Chloe grew up in Brisbane. In her early career she worked as a copy girl for the Sunday Mail newspaper, and then as a journalist and writer for ACP magazines, including Cleo. She spent time in the early 80s in Port Moresby.
She had two children in 2001 and 2002 with her first husband. She met Bill shortly after he was elected in 2007.
They married in 2009 and live in suburban Melbourne. By all accounts, they live a remarkably normal life. Bill drives the kids to soccer and ballet on the weekends. Chloe says Bill’s worst habit is that he’s always on the phone. She gives a derisive, “yep” as she describes it, but laughs at it too. She shares some intimate details of their lives together, but not much.
Bill’s favourite food is weetbix. They binge watch television shows together, when they get the time – something they haven’t had much of recently. There aren’t any podcasts, but right now there are shared books with kids – Chloe’s older daughter is reading I am Malala, by Malala Yousafzai and her son is reading the ‘Theodore Boon Kid Lawyer’ series by John Grisham.
Chloe has had a strong career in marketing and corporate affairs and has for her whole adult life, a strong focus on gender equality. She resigned earlier this year in order to focus on her family and on her campaign.
But with a background like hers, and the career that she’s had, you’d be forgiven for wondering if previously being the daughter of a Governor-General and now being publicly known as the wife of a man who wishes to be Prime Minister she’s struggling to carve out her own space separate to the prominent people in her life.
“Not really,” Chloe says.
“I think it’s given me an opportunity to experience things that have added to my core beliefs and my views of the world, and the passions that drive me.
“They’ve enhanced the opportunity for me to get to know people and participate in some of the discussions about things like equality and advocacy for women and girls.”
Chloe points to her recent meeting with Julia Gillard just a week or two ago. “She’s been such an advocate for women and girls and [meeting her has] been a wonderful opportunity to have.”
Chloe’s passion for gender equality is undeniable.
“I certainly think that gender equality relies on constant improvement in all sorts aspects of our social lives.
“I applaud Bill for calling out that the burden on child care falls on women. He was definitely saying that it shouldn’t be and that it’s unfair that it does.”
Chloe points to Bill’s personal commitment here, “We take turns in our relationship, speaking personally.”
As for what else we can do for gender equality?
“I think the targets the ALP have set [for women in parliament], I’m really proud of that. We set targets for financial goals. Why wouldn’t we set targets in politics?
“I get really concerned about the messages young girls get about who they are and what they should look like. We need to make sure our girls are not constantly bombarded.”
And, if Bill is elected, what then for Chloe?
You get the impression she has been concentrating more on the campaign, the lead up to Saturday rather than thinking about what might happen after that.
But she’s writing a book on Australian family life in the 21st century, an ongoing project for her.
As for Sunday morning, July 3? While we might wish Chloe a sleep in and a lazy Melbourne brunch, it sounds like family life will, as it ever does, plough relentlessly but joyfully on.
Copyright © 2016 — Digital engagement provided by Harris Partners
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THE ANTI-ASBESTOS LOBBY'S NEW WAY TO GET RICH. NOW IT IS EUROPE'S TURN
Anti-asbestos lobbyists and activists are exerting pressure on the European Commission, demanding the establishment of a mandatory special-purpose program to dismantle every product that has ever been manufactured containing asbestos in the EU. The question is, whose interests does such a program really promote?According to a document that journalists managed to get their hands on, the European Parliament is going to consider a declaration in December on the need for the complete removal of asbestos from all buildings and infrastructure in EU countries. Given the fact that a huge number of buildings in post-war Western Europe were constructed using asbestos-containing materials, we can get a feel for the scope of the potential market that the removal or abatement lobby is creating for its own personal gain. In Poland alone, the asbestos removal market totals approximately 9 billion EuroIn 2005, the anti-asbestos lobby forced the EU and a number of other countries to prohibit the use of all types of asbestos, regardless of profound biochemical and risk-profile differences between fiber types. The legislators ignored the fact that amphibole asbestos (the form of the mineral that is detrimental to human health) was universally prohibited well before the law was adopted. This means that the true purpose of the document was to snuff out demand for chrysotile asbestos, which is completely safe when used in controlled conditions. In fact, there isn’t a single field in the EU where amphibole asbestos can be mined, so the ban on this affordable building material provided synthetic fiber manufacturers with a competitive advantage. The adopted document became the foundation of numerous lawsuits aimed at seeking monetary compensation from people who worked with the supposedly harmful substance.According to a study conducted by the RAND Institute for Civil Justice, by the end of the 2000’s the number of anti-asbestos lawsuits exceeded 600,000, with over 6,000 companies acting as defendants. The total amount of compensation is estimated at 200 to 265 billions USD.The United States stands at the forefront of those seeking monetary recompense. Wide-spread legal campaigns helped the country earn hundreds of billions of dollars on anti-asbestos litigation. But by the end of the 2000’s many of these cases were marked scandals involving forgery and mis-representation. There have been cases where law firms (charging a commission of 70 percent) used the same X-ray image for thousands of individual applicants, or when they had a corrupt doctor give the same diagnosis to all of their patients, using information dictated by the lawyers themselves. Today, the market for legal cases in the US is finally drying up. In their search for profit, anti-asbestos activists have now turned to a new prospect: the mandatory removal of asbestos — no matter if there is a health risk or not — and this can mean big money for decades to come.The anti-asbestos lobbyists have also adopted a new slogan: «The best way to prevent asbestos-related diseases is to remove asbestos from the existing buildings and infrastructure, as millions of tons of this deadly substance still remain there today.» And unlike in 2005 when the goals of the anti-asbestos lobby still seemed selfless (disguised as concerns about human health), the new requirements for its removal will cost taxpayers hundreds of billions of euros. Might these developments be planned rather than accidental, and actually betray a step-by-step strategy? What if from the very beginning lobbyists had been willing to subjugate the construction industry of EU countries for their own ends? In any event, the names of the final beneficiaries of the anti-asbestos hysteria are now out in the open.
Is chrysotile dangerous to workers and how?
Dusts or airborne fibres including glass fibre, synthetic fibre, chrysotile fibre, stone dust, gasoline fume, exhaust fume, all are dangerous, if workers inhale and are exposed to them for a long period of time. However, the processing of chrysotile fibre as a raw material in manufacturing factories is properly controlled and thus, poses no risks to workers. Once the fibres are covered by cementous slurry, they are locked-in permanently and cannot escape.
Are workmen installing or fixing asbestos cement roof at risk of exposure to chrysotile?
Typical test results of air sampling show that fibre concentration is around 0.07 fibre/cc during cutting and installation of chrysotile cement roofing sheets. This is far below the level of 0.5 fibre/cc envisaged. There will be no risk for workmen or carpenters if they follow properly recommended work practices while installing or fixing roofing sheets.
Is there any evidence of workers who suffer from asbestos related diseases in Thai factories?
Thai manufacturers follow recommendations from the Ministry of Industry and Ministry of Public Health. They provide health check-up and lung x-ray for all employees annually. There is no evidence regarding the disease up to date.
Chrysotile Highlights
What is chrysotile?
Differences between types of asbestos fibres
Asbestos usages today VS. in the past
Common misperception about chrysotile
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History on 21st July
Tony Blair Elected Labour Leader
Battle of Shrewsbury
First Lord’s Test Match
Lord of the Rings Published
The 21st of July 1954 AD
Some 17 years after The Hobbit arrived charmingly in our national consciousness, J.R.R. Tolkien published the first volume of the follow-on story, Lord of the Rings. The gap is explained by his work as an English Professor at Pembroke and later Merton College in Oxford; but also it appears by the disorganised way in which he wrote, requiring much revision.
His spat with publishers George Allen & Unwin didn’t help either – the book begun shortly after The Hobbit was finished was only completed in 1949, but they were not keen on publishing the companion work The Silmarillion (incomplete at that time) as the writer wished so he went over to Collins. When Collins suggested Lord of the Rings be extensively edited down Tolkien went back to Allen & Unwin, who given the vastness of the work decided to publish in three volumes spaced over a year and more. The first, The Fellowship of the Ring, came out on July 21 1954.
Opinion on the work is sharply divided: it is (improbably) credited with inventing the whole fantasy genre, and generations of devotees will hear no word against it; but others find the writing turgid – they are strongly advised to avoid the Silmarillion - and share the view of one of the Inklings, the literary group that included Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, who during a reading of one chapter exclaimed: “Not another fxxxing elf.” It cannot be denied, however, that the story if not the style is gripping. It is equally hard to disagree with the Collins view of its need for shortening.
More famous dates here
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People to whom nothing has ever happened cannot understand the unimportance of events. - T S Eliot
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