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Tag: classic
The Appeal of Milly Molly Mandy
Milly Molly Mandy remains one of my mother's favourite books, but even then it was old. Milly Molly Mandy is in fact the great-grandmother of today's child readers. I'm not sure how popular these stories are among the contemporary audience, but I can say for sure, Milly Molly Mandy entertained at least two generations of children. I never got into them myself, but I did fall in love with the endpaper hand drawn map. There is something so unbearably hygge about that little village. Even now, I open a Milly Molly Mandy book and I want to go back to that village. I may have been too old by the time I encountered my mother's book. But the impact was clear. I was ten years old and started making maps for my own made-up stories.
My mother's version features illustrations with coloured-pencil scribbles. The black and white line drawings do look like a colouring-in book. The Milly Molly Mandy series has been reprinted in various formats and some of those are now colour illustrations — sometimes in pastels, sometimes in the limited palette of 1950s and 60s. I still prefer the black and white.
The illustrations were done by the author herself. I believe Joyce Lankester Brisley was a better draughtswoman than she was a prose stylist, but in the end, her greatest strengths were:
Storytelling (in the voice of an oral narrator). Enid Blyton possessed this exact skill.
Knowing how children occupy their time
Lankester Brisley either surrounded herself with children or remembered in amazing detail the experience of being a child. The children in the Milly-Molly-Mandy stories can be found engaged in tasks such as:
Keeping ducks company
Making mud by pouring water onto dirt
Getting wet in the rain, then flapping and quacking like ducks
'Mending' a puddle in the road by throwing twigs into it
Making their own little loaves alongside the big family loaf
Likewise, Lankester Brisley understood the psychology of children:
Revelations such as the insight that your strict teacher at school is a normal human being and even has her own mother.
The desire to do something very useful, to impress the adults in your life (like making stepping stones on a rainy day, for ladies without rubber boots).
But we know virtually nothing about the author's life. She was born in 1896 in a small seaside town at the bottom of England called Bexhill-on-Sea. Look at historic photos of Bexhill-on-Sea and apart from the fashions, it's not so different from taking a Google Earth tour of the town on foot. It remains a town known for its historical significance.
We know that as a young woman her parents divorced, which in those days meant automatic poverty for the woman, especially when the woman is supporting three daughters. The daughters were all trained in art, and perhaps the reason their work made it out into the world is precisely because they were forced to seek out income, having lost their father's income as a middle-class pharmacist.
Joyce died at the age of 82, and 2018 marks the 40th anniversary of her death. Her natal family were big into the Christian Science church. Was Joyce a Christian scientist her whole life? It seems she was, publishing Christian texts along with the more general stories such as Milly Molly Mandy. Did she marry? (Where does the Lankester come from? Her husband's name?) Did she have children of her own?
In my imagination Joyce was close to her sisters. She died just a few months after one of the sisters, which is either coincidence or a sign of emotional closeness, or both. I imagine Joyce was active in the church and perhaps taught Sunday school, so if she didn't have children of her own, I imagine she saw many children regardless.
NARRATIVE VOICE OF MILLY MOLLY MANDY STORIES
The stories are written in conversational, oral storyteller style with plenty of parenthetical asides, as if the storyteller has forgotten to explain one bit, but they're shoving it in now to clarify.
However, each story absolutely includes the seven minimum steps of a complete and satisfying story. In fact, Lankester Brisley is often very clear about these steps, whether she knew them consciously or not. Modern stories for a young reader tend to be less obvious about where the steps occur. I think this is partly because contemporary books are expected to entertain adult co-readers as well as children themselves, and adults have seen far more story. (To be fair, even today's children have been exposed to far more stories than children of the 1920s were.)
STORY STRUCTURE OF MILLY-MOLLY-MANDY GETS TO KNOW TEACHER
WEAKNESS/NEED
Milly Molly Mandy is scared of the new teacher because the teacher is strict.
It has been arranged that the new teacher stay with Milly Molly Mandy's family for a few nights until she gets herself sorted with accommodation. Milly Molly Mandy does not want this.
This is an example of a desire not to have something. To cast it the other way around: Milly Molly Mandy wants the freedom to be her normal carefree house while in her own home. School is school; home is home.
The teacher, because Milly Molly Mandy doesn't want her in her home, but the teacher arrives regardless.
Milly's plan is to be on her best behaviour and to impress the teacher. Ultimately, the character of Milly Molly Mandy is a good little girl, serving well as a model for behaviour. But what makes her real, and what keeps the character away from didacticism, is her 'imperfect' psychology. Milly has doubts, fears and anxieties like every other child, but despite all that, she does her best.
There is no traditional Battle sequence in this cosy story, but we have the proxy conflict of the baking scene in which teacher is cast as the inverse of everything Milly Molly Mandy thought she was.
Ultimately, teacher is wearing Mother's apron, which casts her firmly in the role of someone familiar and knowable. Moreover, by learning how to make turn-overs, the teacher is cast in the role of student — a complete and utter inversion for Milly. Billy Blunt says, "Fancy a teacher playing with dough!" The children now realise that teacher was once a child, too. She is all the human things at once — a complete person.
This battle takes place entirely in Milly's head as she makes her own (failed) dough creations alongside.
SELF-REVELATION
Child characters more often have revelations about life in general than self-revelations.
The revelation is that Miss Edwards is a regular human. Though this isn't a self-revelation as such, the lesson teaches Milly Molly Mandy something about humankind, and by extension, this is about herself. Though this is not on the page, it's clear that Miss Edwards is acting in a certain role while she is at school. This is the first time Milly Molly Mandy has realised that people play roles according to expectations. This links back to how Milly Molly Mandy has been on her best behaviour with a teacher in the house. She, too, has been playing a role.
Sometimes the revelation phase of the story simply means the main character has changed their mind about something. In this case, Milly is sad to see her teacher leave. The valence has flipped from negative to positive.
NEW EQUILIBRIUM
Milly Molly Mandy needn't be frightened of Miss Edwards at school because she knows she's a fully-rounded human and is playing a teacherly role.
The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier was not written with a young adult audience in mind, but class sets of the book found their way into English departments all over the world. Though this is not my favourite Cormier novel, it remains his best known. Heavy in symbolism and discussable themes, The Chocolate War also makes for a good case study in juxtaposition. The novel begins with a juxtaposition in the title — chocolate is sweet and comforting; war most certainly is not. There are many resources for teaching and studying this book in a high school literature class. This blog focuses on the storytelling: What writing lessons can we take from this young adult story from 1974, banned and beloved in equal measure?
Content Note
I feel readers deserve a content note about Robert Cormier novels, and about The Chocolate War in particular. This novel has been widely banned, but my reasons for the content note are probably different and girl readers in particular deserve this acknowledged: Cormier writes consistently from the male point of view and objectifies female characters as part of his commentary on how awful boys can be. Cormier never proved he could write well-rounded girls, to be fair. Even when he writes a female character (not in this book) she self objectifies or she is murdered or both. The Chocolate War contains implied rape of girls at the nearby girls' high school. Archie, a psychopathic character, 'usually manages to persuade one of them into his car'. He gives them a ride home 'with detours'. The older I get the more icky I find this. Here's my exact beef: Robert Cormier and many other writers who imply/describe sexual assault feel the need to include girls — otherwise absent in the story — in order to amplify the awfulness of a particular boy character. This is done for characterisation reasons, yet that's not how sexual assault works in real life and I expect a bit of mimesis here. Despite his heterosexual orientation, a character as awful as Archie does not need to prey on the girls at a different school entirely. If ever there was a clear psychopath in young adult fiction, Archie is it.
Archie was always puzzled about whatever there was inside of him that enjoyed these performances — toying with kids, leading them on, humiliating them, finally.
Robert Cormier, The Chocolate War
There are plenty of boys he can pick on to assert his sexual dominance, without leaving his own school. My problem here is the extent to which writers are comfortable with the implication of male on female sexual assault, but can't seem to even fathom male on male sexual assault. Written in the 1970s, going this far may not have even crossed Cormier's mind, or maybe he self-edited, who knows. Archie carries out his own version of sexual assault on Emile, pretending to take a photo of him after finding him in the toilets masturbating. But it's never implied that he does to the other boys as he does to the girls. And I don't think his heterosexuality has anything to do with that. Archie's 1970s pretend camera would be an actual camera in the 2010s. This kind of timelessness is why some schools continue to study The Chocolate War with modern teenagers, though I think the objectification and assault issue requires a discussion. Though uncomfortable to talk about, the problems with glossing over this aspect of Archie are two-fold:
As a culture we underestimate the rate of male on male sexual assault (important emphasis: rape is about power over others, not about orientation);
We become uncomfortably comfortable with the image of the assaulted female, to the extent where, as a culture, we have now learned to look the other way. To what extent is the male gaze designed to be titillating? Does it matter really if it's not meant to be, and still is? At no point are readers encouraged to find descriptions of the boy characters titillating, regardless of the reader's orientation.
These are not the exact reasons The Chocolate War has found infamy as a frequently banned book. This novel has been banned due to:
Frequency of sexual references
Detail included in the sexual scenes e.g. masturbation
Negative portrayal of the institution of school
Catholic schools in particular get a bad rap
But mostly? The issues in this book are so heavy they are difficult to discuss with 30 teenagers, some of whom will have been sexually assaulted themselves, some of whom will sexually assault/have already assaulted. I find it far easier to write about these issues on a blog than to manage a class discussion, and to have that discussion go in the right direction. When schools ban books, that's sometimes a factor. The Chocolate War is one of those novels which requires the reader to bring their own morality to the table. We're to look at these boys as an example of treating people badly. But what if some readers do not have morality to bring? What then?
Three Types of YA Novels
Further to the banning, it's important to note that Cormier did not intend The Chocolate War for a young adult audience. The reading age happens to be 12, however. That was Cormier's natural writing style.
The American Library Association classifies adolescent literature into three categories:
Books Written Specifically for Adolescents
Books Written for General Trade Market Which Have Adolescent Main Characters
General Books of Interest to Young Readers
The Chocolate War belongs to category two and was seen by many as a good text to study in schools.
THEMES IN THE CHOCOLATE WAR
There are many. Here's a big one:
"Do I dare disturb the universe?"
from T.S. Eliot, in a poem he wrote in his early 20s.
At its heart, this question "Do I dare disturb the universe?" is about power. It serves as an apt metaphor for what adolescents often seek to know about themselves. Jerry Renault takes up this question in Robert Cormier's The Chocolate War (1974).
Jerry hangs in his school locker a poster of a man walking alone on a beach that bears the caption "Do I dare disturb the universe?": "Jerry wasn't sure of the poster's meaning. But it had moved him mysteriously." The Chocolate War explores the question of whether Jerry can disturb the universe–of what will happen to him if he dares assert his personal power. […]
In The Chocolate War Jerry Renault has power in agreeing to exist in harmony with the forces of oppression at Trinity High School, The Vigils and the teachers. He is defeated by novel's end because he has chosen to break the contract and so be oppressed by the power structure. Foucault would say instead that rather than possessing a certain amount of power to begin with, Jerry actually exists in a chain of power, a chain that involves the selling of education as a commodity and that results in the commodification of the chocolates. Their sale is a means of production for the students. Jerry's power in the situation is fluid: he both has and does not have power, depending on his relationship to the market forces at specific points in the novel's time. When he overwhelms the market by providing a model for the other boys' non-participation in the means of production, the market retaliates by attempting to obliterate him in a "war."
Foucault even supplies the term "war repression schema" as a synonym for the "domination repression" model of power; he makes much of the notion that "power is war, a war continued by other means". […]
The Chocolate War is the same sort of dark adolescent fantasy that Lord of the Flies is: when adolescents achieve total control, they become totally corrupt. Both novels are metaphors for the concept that absolute power corrupts absolutely.
[…] Anne Scott Macleod argues that what happens at Trinity is a microcosmic metaphor for American politics. […]
Perry Nodelman interprets the chocolate war as a metaphor for the Vietnam War. […]
Jan Susina interprets The Vigils as the Mafia. […]
Cormier himself has identified big business as the central metaphor of the novel.
At the heart of all these interpretations is the recognition that The Chocolate War is a political novel. It is an investigation of social organisation and how individuals interact with that organisation. The novel communicates that institutions are more powerful than individuals, but that individuals who engage their own power can affect the shape of the institution. Cormier implies that as social organisations, institutions are not to be trusted. […]
When ideologies in YA novels focus specifically on government, they tend to convey to adolescents that they are better served by accepting than by rejecting the social institutions with which they must live. In that sense, the underlying agenda of many young adult novels is to indoctrinate adolescents into a measure of social acceptance.
Robert Seelinger Trites in her book Disturbing The Universe: Power and repression in adolescent literature
But is The Chocolate War any more political than your typical YA novel?
Few adolescent novels are as direct as Cormier's are in addressing government as a form of social organization, although almost all adolescent novels are informed by ideologies that are political in nature. That is, all novels are influenced by their authors' sociopolitical beliefs.
STORYTELLING TECHNIQUES OF NOTE
Juxtaposition and Irony
The Chocolate War is a story of irony and juxtaposition, which makes the title so apt. Examples from chapter one:
'A terrible stillness'
'Suddenly he loved that voice, "Show up tomorrow".'
'A strange happiness invaded him.'
And in chapter two we get all the ironies of Archie:
'Archie the bastard. The bastard that Obie alternately hated and admired.'
Archie looks like an All-American Boy but it turns out he's atheist, which is not very American at all, especially in 1974.
'That's what baffled everyone about Archie — his changes of mood, the way he could be a wise bastard one minute and a great guy the next'
Although Archie is really mean, he 'disliked violence'.
Norman Stanton: 'a blustering bragging character with wild red hair and eyelids matted with yellow crap'
Roland Goubert: The Goober. Juxtaposition: Very tall yet like a child.
Brother Leon: Can control a class but Archie sees vulnerabilities. Assistant Headmaster but in Archie's eyes he is simply an errand boy for the head. Not worthy of respect. However, like Archie, this man has two juxtaposed sides to him. "In the classroom, Leon was another person altogether. Smirking, sarcastic. His thin, high voice venomous. He could hold your attention like a cobra. Instead of fangs, he used his teacher's pointer, flicker out here, there, everywhere. He watched the class like a hawk, suspicious, searching out cheaters or daydreamers, probing for weaknesses in the students and then exploiting those weaknesses.' This man will make a good shadow character for Archie.
Leon is an ambiguous character. In Chapter Six we see him carry out a cruel taunting on a student then tells the class he's delivered a lesson. He hasn't delivered a lesson without causing the boy in question grief, so is this similar to doing something really mean and then calling it 'a joke'? Another juxtaposition.
'Emile was a brute, which was kind of funny because he didn't look like a brute. He wasn't big or overly strong. … Wise guys usually sat in back. Emile didn't. He chose seats near the front where he'd be in better position to harass the teacher.'
'Emile, you're a beautiful person', says Archie, watching Emile steal fuel from a weaker kid's car. But Emile never knows if Archie is serious or not — in fact, stealing fuel probably does count as beautiful in Archie's eyes, because Emile can be useful to him. At the end of Chapter Six, Emile is 'somehow disappointed' that the owner of the vehicle hasn't caught him stealing gas. This is a different kind of irony — an emotion the the audience wouldn't expect in most people.
The sale of chocolates is such a cozy thing to do — this part of the plot could easily be used in a middle grade novel set in a genuine utopia. But here, the chocolate fundraiser is juxtaposed against the evil of the school.
Goober is the reflection character for Archie. Whereas Archie is delighted at chaos, Goober is utterly bewildered by it, not comfortable at all. We are set to root for Goober because he is such an underdog, but we are equally keen to see what Archie gets up to, because Archie is interesting. Without each other, this book would feel too pathetic or too mean. These boys balance each other out for the reader.
Jerry Renault is the Every Boy — most readers have not lost their mother to cancer, but we can empathise with him because we feel our lives would look like his if we did. Apart from the ghost of a dead mother, nothing much stands out about Jerry. He's like the Jerry Seinfeld off Seinfeld actually — the characters around him are more individualised.
Among the teachers, too, we have a replica of the classroom, with the Brothers responding in contrasting ways to the same event. Brother Eugene is the grown up Goober — sensitive and emotional and vulnerable. Brother Leon understands Archie the best, though Archie does not have a sociopathic equivalent on staff, which is good for him. The teachers have power by virtue of being teachers, so Brother Leon is still a formidable opponent for Archie.
STORY WORLD OF THE CHOCOLATE WAR
The Chocolate War is an American novel with a USA setting.
Obie describes the school as 'a lousy little high school like Trinity'. This is a Catholic school. The culture revolves around sport. Football is everything. It is clear from this that we're talking about a boys' high school, with its particular brand of hyper-masculinity. Boxing turns out to be other other big sport at Trinity — another dangerous, combative pastime.
The Trinity brothers wanted peace at any price, quiet on the campus, no broken bones.
This is a run-down school — the football field needs seeding and the bleachers need replacing. This needs to be a run-down school because if it were wealthy the need to sell all those chocolates wouldn't be as dire.
Within this school we have something akin to the mafia:
The Vigils kept things under control. Without The Vigils, Trinity might have been torn apart like other schools had been, by demonstrations, protests, all that crap.
The school is populated with a variety of teachers, some good, some not so good. Brother Eugene: one of the good brothers who teach at Trinity. 'A peaceful sort'. He exists to contrast with Brother Leon.
The Vigils meet in a small room behind the gym.
Obie works at the grocery store stacking shelves for a part-time job. A friend of the family owns the store, suggesting a cosy, small town where everyone knows everyone.
But this version of American suburbia is an apparent utopia — underneath, things are rotten. Case in point: The Vigils. The gang headed by Archie. These boys run the town. Lead by Archie. President is another bastard called Carter. Obie is secretary and underdog.
For fun there's the Teen-Age Canteen where the boys have the opportunity to meet girls, referred to as 'broads', because these boys objectify female characters as if they're an entirely different species.
NARRATIVE TECHNIQUE IN THE CHOCOLATE WAR
In a novel, even the unseen narrator can be considered a character. I feel the narrative voice is masculine, perhaps someone who knows these boys really well, a stand-in for a fellow student at the school. He talks about girls as if they are a different species: "The girl was heart-wrenchingly, impossibly beautiful." (Not the way girls usually describe each other.) However, he is also closely emulating the voice of the characters themselves. 'Close' third person.
This close third person narrator reminds us occasionally that he is telling a story. Here, he lampshades some pretty obvious symbolism. Perhaps as he was writing even Cormier thought the cross symbolism felt a little heavy handed:
The shadows of the goalposts definitely resembled a network of crosses, empty crucifixes. That's enough symbolism for one day, Obie told himself.
Cormier's narrator is an all-knowing, misanthropic, pessimistic character who can zoom right into the psychologies of the characters as if he knows them better than they know themselves (he does), and that's because he sees through their eyes. The narrator is one of them. However, The Chocolate War does not have the immediacy of voice common to most young adult novels. Most are written either in first person right after the events, or occasionally in third person right after the events. Perhaps because this was never meant for the young adult audience, Cormier's narrator seems much older, as if he's looking back in time as an unnamed student in this school, but with the psychological insight of a 40 year old man. The advantage of this kind of narrator is that his wisdom can fill in the gaps for an audience who has yet to give much thought to how social groups and dominance works. A teenage narrator would seem preternaturally gifted in psychology to believably write this stuff.
The Chocolate War does not ask the young adult reader to trust in the voice of a single speaker or to accept a single, unchallenged view of events. In alternating chapters we are given thirteen different characters' perspectives on events. Within some chapters, especially chapters twenty-five and thirty-five, the reader gets multiple points of view. Although Jerry Renault's views are those most frequently shared, they do not account for even one third of the book. Despite the fact that no adult's thoughts are represented (we never see into Jerry's father's or Brother Leon's or Brother Jacque's thoughts, for instance), the book does not limit itself to a single adolescent's view of the world. The reader develops a sense of a complicated world through the recognition of competing positions and perspectives that are quite different from each other despite their all being "young adult".
The Chocolate War is not written in first-person address, though the narrator reports throughs from the position of the characters being portrayed. We are told, for instance, that "The Goober was beautiful when he ran". We understand that Goober himself considers this to be true in contrast with the rest of his life, including the moment under narration in which he attempts a terrifying "assignment". Here we see what Gerard Genette would call indirect address.
Mike Cadden, The Irony of Narration in the Young Adult Novel
STORY STRUCTURE OF THE CHOCOLATE WAR
QUESTIONS AND REVELATIONS IN THE CHOCOLATE WAR
Cormier is a master of this technique:
If you have too many scenes that just set up questions and knock 'em down, then the story will seem plodding and episodic, and it won't build a larger narrative. So you have to mix quick payoffs with longer mysteries. Usually the question that ends the scene is a practical one that's instantly answered by the circumstances of the next. But you should keep your audience looking further ahead, breathlessly wondering how the events they've just witnessed will affect the rest of the story.
Matt Bird, The Secrets of Story
Cormier was a master of the question and revelation sequence. He makes readers work just the right amount before handing over the information. I started to make detailed notes on how Cormier was achieving this, but it soon got so complicated I gave up the task. Just know that this book looks simple at first read but is extremely intricately plotted, with set ups and pay-offs, perfect foreshadowing and expert subtleties. If I planned to write a book similar to this I would persevere with my detailed notes.
WEAKNESS/NEED/PROBLEM
Our protagonist (in its original, Greek sense — the character who gets the story going) is Jerry Renault. We see him getting beaten up in the first scene, straight into 'action', in its most widely used sense.
Hey Coach, you pit on me, Jerry protested. Stop the spitting, coach. What he said aloud was, 'I'm all right, coach,' because he was a coward about stuff like that, thinking one thing and saying another, planning one thing and doing another — he had been Peter a thousand times and a thousand cocks had crowed in his lifetime.
He is not the right body type to be playing football. Too skinny. Ironically, this is his dream.
Chapter two flips to Obie.
Obie was bored. Worse than bored. He was disgusted. He was also tired.
There we have them — Obie's main psychological weaknesses in the very first line. Cormier is masterful the way he combines unexpected emotions. We can imagine how someone would mistake disgust for boredom, though may not of thought of this before.
The alternating points of view establish that this is not a story about any one character or hero, but about a community. The community itself is the main character, and this community has a dark, seedy underbelly. Another story like this is Brokeback Mountain by Annie Proulx. Another is The Lottery by Shirley Jackson. The boys in this story each has their own weakness, except for Archie, who demonstrates better than anyone in YA literature how psychopathy is an evolutionary advantage.
Archie is kingpin and has a very specific goal. It's Archie's goal which drives the story, making him the 'main character' in a sense. His aim is always to inflict as much psychological pain as possible on those around him.
Certain other boys desire the approval of Archie. Emile is another sociopath, though not quite as smart. I suspect circumstances have deprived him of empathy, whereas Archie seems 'born evil'.
Goober just wants to be left alone to run. Jerry doesn't want anything at first but gets sucked into the drama and wants to passively aggressively claim some status for himself. He doesn't have to do much to earn that — in fact, he has to do the opposite of something — nothing, so the little rebellions prove too tempting.
So in these characters we see the whole range of desire, from 'leave me alone' to 'I'm going to turn this little community upside down.'
The coach is Renault's first opponent, though it remains to be see whether he is an ally. Teachers can swing either way — in fiction as in real life, they can seem mean but actually have students' best interests at heart. This coach is a stereotypical mean guy. He looks like 'an old gangster' and even has a movie-star scar on his cheek. 'But a helluva coach, they said'. Turns out the meanest looking coach isn't the most dangerous adult in the school.
Obie's arch nemesis is Archie. Archie is depicted as an 'all American boy', with blonde hair blowing in the wind, sitting in the bleachers. 'Archie turned and smiled at [Obie] benevolently, like a goddam kind passing out favours.' Archie is soon set up as the main force of evil — the true, evil villain of the story. Even the title is drawn from him — minions must buy him Hersheys or else get on the wrong side of him. There's no true friendship in this novel. When a pecking order is being established it has to be constantly maintained. Everyone is everyone else's opponent. Though it appears Goober and Jerry could have been friends, they weren't for the entirety of the novel.
Each character has his own plan in an intricate battle for top of the hierarchy. The boys are each a different example of one way of going about gaining dominance within an institution. For instance: Jerry — passive aggressively, by refusing to do as asked, then getting a bit addicted to the adrenaline of rebellion and taking it further. Archie — like a sociopath, taking power from others, killing their spirits Goober — Just trying to get along unnoticed, manoeuvring around the power plays of others These characters are mirrored in the characters of the teachers.
The minor battles of the pranks and the refusal to sell lead up to the big fight — a literal battle scene which we suspect may have killed Jerry Renault. (You have to go back to the first sentence of the book to be sure, but it's metaphorical — his spirit has been killed.) This fight has been set up by Archie to get Jerry back for refusing to start selling the chocolates again. He is pitted against Emile Janza, a strong physical opponent. Students can buy raffle tickets. They write on the tickets who gets to hit who and where. Things get out of hand when Emile loses control of himself.
Jerry is almost dead when he comes to some kind of understanding:
The knowledge, the knowledge: what he had discovered. Funny, how his mind was clear suddenly, apart from his body, floating above his body, floating above the pain. 'It'll be all right, Jerry.' No, it won't. He recognized Goober's voice and it was important to share the discovery with Goober. He had to tell Goober to play ball, to play football, to run, to make the team, to sell the chocolates, to sell whatever they wanted you to sell, to do whatever they wanted you to do. … They tell you to do your thing but they don't mean it. They don't want you to do your thing, not unless it happens to be their thing, too. It's a laugh, Goober, a fake. Don't disturb the universe, Goober, no matter what the posters say.
This is a literal outworking of what John Truby advises when writing self-revelations: Make your character come to the absolute brink of (spiritual/actual) death before giving them their epiphany. Otherwise it won't feel like they earned it. Seelinger Trites makes use of the word 'epiphany' here, and points out that the self-revelation experienced by Jerry in The Chocolate War is completely typical of YA literature:
[The] intertextual question that lies at the heart of The Chocolate War — "Do I dare disturb the universe?" — is representative of an ethos that informs many adolescent novels. The chief characteristic that distinguishes adolescent literature form children's literature is the issue of how social power is deployed during the course of the narrative. In books that younger children read…much of the action focuses on one child who learns to feel more secure in the confines of her or his immediate environment, usually represented by family and home.
Children's literature often affirms the child's sense of Self and her or his personal power. But in the adolescent novel, protagonists must learn about the social forces that have made them what they are. They learn to negotiate the levels of power that exist in the myriad social institutions within which they must function, including family; school; the church; government; social constructions of sexuality, gender, race, class; and cultural mores surrounding death. […]
In The Chocolate War, for example, Jerry Renault must negotiate his place within a family, in terms of a religion, and in his school.. Jerry's epiphany is a recognition that social institutions are bigger and more powerful than individuals. The lesson he learns is a primary one in Young Adult literature.
YA literature reassures readers that the world is your oyster if only you can find the power within yourself to rise above it or up into it.
SYMBOL WEB
To help lead a character (and readers) towards a self-revelation, authors often make use of a symbol which they return to again and again. In YA novels, it's quite often photos. But it can just as easily be something else. In The Chocolate War, it's "The Love Song of Alfred Prucock". Jerry sees a poster with Do I Dare Disturb The Universe? (the inspiration for Seelinger Trite's book on YA literature) every time he opens his locker.
This is a classic case of: The reader has the self-revelation even if the character doesn't. When the character doesn't have any revelation, the author has to use recursive tricks like a photo, a line from a poem, a stamp on a hand (in The Changeover by Margaret Mahy) to ram home the message for readers.
I would like to point out that Jerry's advice to Goober can be read two ways. It can sound like he's saying, 'buckle in, do what they tell you.' But Seelinger Trites believes the message is yes, do disturb the universe:
Jerry's final words in the novel echo the novel's opening statement, "They murdered him." His final lines are unspoken thoughts that he directs to his friend Goober: "Do whatever they wanted you to do…They tell you to do your own thing but they don't mean it. They don't want you to do your thing, not unless it happens to be their thing, too…. Don't disturb the universe, Goober. Although Jerry appears defeated and is even possibly dead by novel's end, the book still answers the question affirmatively: yes, he can disturb the universe. In fact, he should disturb the universe. Doing so may be painful, but Jerry has affected other people with the choices he has made.
The events in this novel ring very true to me. They probably ring true to you, too. Weird things happen in schools. This viral thread about the bread reminds me of the incidents in The Chocolate War, though doesn't end as darkly.
Frog Went A Courtin by John Langstaff
This month I wrote a post on Teaching Kids How To Structure A Story. Today I continue with a selection of mentor texts to help kids see how it works. Let's look closely at Frog Went A-Courtin, a Scottish folk song from the 1500s, which was turned into an iconic picture book for children written by John Langstaff in 1955. There's a brief history of the ballad included in the picture book which explains how the words of songs change and evolve over time. This case study is interesting because there is no true main character. This story is about a group of characters.
The illustrations are by Feodor Rojankovsky, who emigrated from Ukraine to America just as WW2 was cranking up. By that stage he'd already been a soldier in Ukraine and taken prisoner in Poland. If you're familiar with Little Golden Books you'll have seen his work elsewhere.
Frog Went A-Courtin won the 1956 Caldecott Medal.
First, a note on frogs in children's stories.
Just so you know, in a picture book, frogs are the speedfreaks & grizzly bears are the stoners.
– @lilymandarin
Frogs and Aesop
Unless you've got a really unusual animal like a naked mole rat, when animals appear in children's stories, you pretty much need to go back to Aesop's Fables and then you'll see why these characters are the way they are. Frogs don't feature heavily in Aesop's tales, but there are a number of them. Unlike foxes, which are always cunning, or hens, which are always naive and vulnerable, frogs have no clear personality archetype. In Aesop's fables featuring frogs all of the following can be said:
Frogs have no natural ruler, unlike creatures of the jungle, who are ruled by the lion.
Frogs are quite vulnerable because they are obliged to stay near water.
Frogs can do silly things that lead to their own demise, but they are not natural tricksters.
Frogs are capable of doing good deeds. They can also be stubborn, brave, timid and mendacious.
Aesop used frogs when he wanted to set a story in or near a pond or in a well.
Amphibian frogs exist in contrast to mice, who live on land and are about the same size.
On this last point, the Scottish folktale Frog Went A-Courtin is therefore a direct descendant of Aesop, setting mice up to contrast with frogs. Or perhaps humans naturally see frogs as the 'inverse' of mice, Aesop's cultural influence aside. Humans think quite differently about animals when we don't have a formal (or cultural) education.
Bear that in mind as we get to the 'opponent' part of the story.
STORY STRUCTURE OF FROG WENT A-COURTIN
Story in a nutshell: Frog courts a mouse. No one says that anymore. Frog woos a mouse? No one says that either.
Mouse must ask male relative for permission to wed frog, as she is considered chattel. That's how women were treated in the 1500s and in many parts of the modern world.
Mouse seems happy about it anyway. Mouse recounts her wedding plans to Uncle. Uncle Rat gives consent. The wedding itself doesn't go exactly to plan, as a variety of creatures turn up. This creates a carnivalesque and cumulative story within the wrapper story of the courting. Finally the baddie turns up — the cat.
WHO IS THE MAIN CHARACTER?
Is Mr Frog the main character? The title suggests so. Mr Frog is a male bachelor amphibian whose life will not be complete until he has found a wife. So at first glance this looks like a romance, but in fact frog's weakness (he needs to find a wife) only starts the story. He's like a McGuffin character. (I'm not sure there's such a thing as a McGuffin character, but we'll go with it.)
In a true romance/love story, the finding of the bride/groom lasts the entire length of the story and the story stops at (or just before) the wedding. The MAIN part of Frog Went A-Courtin is the wedding itself, which makes this story a madcap farce. There is no true main character. This is an ensemble cast.
What is wrong with the ensemble? (What is their biggest weakness?)
I have to get something out of the way. I'm not sure if we're meant to think this as we're reading, though it's inevitable to an adult, modern reader: This is a cross-species relationship. Also, how is a mouse related to a rat? They can't breed with each other. Okay. Let's ignore that for the sake of the story. We're not supposed to consider these characters animals. They are humans in animal form, to lend the story a bit of madcap comedy. (Turning people into animals always lends a bit of madcap, though we're so used to this now it's no longer really funny in and of itself.) As for the frog in this particular frog story, he is heavily anthropomorphised. In other words, he's basically a human. Man as frog simply gives a story a touch of madcap humour. This frog is the Every Man.
However! When we get to the battle scene (see below) we can no longer ignore the animal-ness of the animals, because that is integral to the plot. The cat would not be dangerous to those smaller creatures if it were not a cat.
To cut a long story short, in stories starring animals, sometimes the animals are people, sometimes the animals act as animals. Authors and illustrators use animals how they wish at any given time in order to suit the plot. That can happen. I do think it happened more in earlier eras of children's literature. Olivia the Pig is always a little girl, for instance. She never goes rolling about in mud. Then again, Julia Donaldson's Highway Rat is a contemporary story, and he is both humanlike (as a highway robber) and ratlike (as his punishment, cleaning crumbs from the bakery floor).
Here's another point about animal characters: When animals act like human and are then required to act like their animal selves, that means everything's gone to pot. Something's gone wrong. Someone's being punished. When humanlike animals behave like animals suddenly, this will only happen from the Big Battle onwards, not before. This is a different take of Masks in Storytelling. All along, the animals were only sort of pretending to be genteel like humans. Then something bad happens and their untamed, wild side emerges.
WHAT DOES THE CHARACTER ENSEMBLE WANT?
They want to have a fun time at the wedding party.
OPPONENT/MONSTER/BADDIE/ENEMY/FRENEMY
No one, until the cat turns up! A cat is the natural enemy because it is a much larger hunting animal.
WHAT'S THE PLAN?
There is a sequence where Miss Mouse tells her Uncle Rat how she would like the party to go. This makes it funny when the wedding party does not go like that. Planning a wedding is a bit like planning a birth — it's impossible to plan everything to the last detail because events will take their course!
BIG BATTLE
Obviously this is the part where the cat turns up. With no words, the pictures show us the cat creates havoc. The small animals scatter.
WHAT DO THE CHARACTERS LEARN?
Frog Went A-Courtin is not a complete narrative because the ending is left up to the reader. Or rather, the reader is invited to participate in the story to create a full narrative of our own. I believe the ending is left off because it would not be interesting.
HOW WILL LIFE BE DIFFERENT FROM NOW ON?
Either that, or Miss Mouse got killed and eaten by the cat. Maybe that's why the ending was left out. Jon Klassen did a similar thing in This Is Not My Hat. We surmise the little thieving scoundrel fish was eaten up by the big fish.
Let's not dwell on this sad ending. Let's say Mr Frog and Mrs Frog-Mouse lived happily ever after? And had beautiful frog-mice babies between them?
SOME MORE STORIES WITH FROGS IN
Because Aesop invented many uses for the frog, when you meet a frog in a modern children's book you don't know who you're going to get. Frogs can be quirky and funny. They have the endearing habit of extending their tongue and catching flies.
Frog's Outing — a Japanese picture book depicting a quirky, likeable frog character. Likeable frogs tend to have human eyeballs. Amphibian eyes are inherently off-putting to humans, as they look like the eyes of snakes.
On the other hand… frogs extend their tongues and catch flies. This is disgusting.
Frogs seem to have great fun. It's fun to leap and jump like a frog, which is part of flight symbolism.
The Duck Tale by Virginia Bennett. Illustrated by E. Stewart. London – Ernest Nister New York – E. P. Dutton & Co. .c.1908.
"Les enfants et les bêtes" (1936) livre de lecture illustré par Armand Rapeno
The Princess Frog.1956. Artist – Nika Goltz. The frog in this fairy tale is a bit of a trickster. But then, he's not really a frog but a prince. These stories must exist to coax daughters into marrying whoever is chosen for them, regardless of physical attraction. I suspect a lot of these men chosen for girls were much older, to boot.
The Many Versions Of Frog Went A-Courtin from Mama Lisa
Green Eggs and Ham by Dr Seuss
This month I'm blogging a series aimed at teaching kids how to structure a story. This seven-step structure works for all forms of narrative. It works for picture books, songs, commercials, films and novels. Today I take a close look at another Dr Seuss early reader, Green Eggs and Ham.
Green Eggs and Ham is buddy comedy from the late 1950s with aspects of the carnivalesque. It also makes use of a mythic journey to beef up the word count and ends in a clear character arc.
Hard to believe, but this book was banned in China, for promoting Marxism. (They lifted the ban after Dr Seuss died.)
STORY STRUCTURE OF GREEN EGGS AND HAM
If Green Eggs and Ham were a movie and not an early reader, it would be called an 'odd couple' or 'buddy comedy' film. Continue reading "Green Eggs and Ham by Dr Seuss"
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The Artifacts on the App Store


AWS-based applications are becoming more and more complex, as companies try to take advantage of the full range of services available from Amazon. These applications have critical interdependencies, so it's vital to monitor different AWS services simultaneously to keep systems running.
Many AWS monitoring tools are available in the market today, but no matter which you use, it all comes down to how well you plan usage of your selected solution, its effective implementation, and iteration after launch. In this article, we will cover a four-step framework to share some AWS monitoring best practices and help guide your approach to successfully monitoring your resources – as well as a general framework for future interaction and collaboration between teams.
Are you also running an on-premise network? Do you want to monitor both environments with one tool?
Can you use a SaaS solution for monitoring and logging? Are there any legal compliance requirements?
If you already use a monitoring tool, is it capable of monitoring AWS?
How difficult will it be to install new monitoring agents and remove legacy agents from all servers?
What are some of the most important metrics you want to monitor?
This is not a complete list, but this type of upfront legwork can help you choose the right AWS monitoring product and create an implementation roadmap, helping save you time and money (and not to mention pain and lost sleep) in the long run.
Many people add all available metrics from their AWS fleet when starting with a new monitoring tool. But we believe doing so can overlook important metrics and create an inconsistent configuration.
The approach should be app-based and phased, with the most critical applications on-boarded first. An application can have many moving parts: URLs, DNS entry, firewalls, load balancers, app and database servers, S3 buckets, etc. For a holistic view of the application, all these moving parts should be included one by one until the application can be ticked off as fully monitored. Other applications should be on-boarded in the same way.
Does the monitoring system raise an alarm? How, and to whom?
Does the application take any self-healing action?
You can use CloudWatch metrics to monitor almost any AWS resource. CloudWatch comes with a number of pre-built counters like CPUUtilization, DiskQueueLength, etc. You can also receive extra counters from some services like EC2 or RDS by enabling their CloudWatch integration. You can create meaningful dashboards from these standard and extra counters. Moreso, CloudWatch alerts can help notify you about incidents. We recommend making CloudWatch a part of your AWS monitoring regimen.
You can use a mix of monitoring tools. Check with the vendor to see if they have a suite of tools to cover everything. For example, if you are using the SolarWinds® Network Performance Monitor, you may want to use SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor.
It presents a unified view of your application from code to infrastructure.
Distributed tracing can show API calls from source to destination, spanning the entire stack, even across geographical boundaries.
It can trace applications written in most popular languages and frameworks including Java, Go, Python, .NET Node.js, etc.
Host monitoring can be done as part of the entire APM suite or on a stand-alone basis.
CloudWatch monitoring integration can show performance counters from any AWS service.
It comes with pre-built dashboards.
It can collect and use custom metrics sent by third-party open source agents or API calls.
It can create custom metrics from existing ones.
VPC flow logs, web server logs, and firewall logs can identify access patterns and attacks.
Database logs can identify slow-running queries.
AWS CloudTrail can identify API calls made to AWS.
Elastic Load Balancing and host logs can show changes in availability and latency.
Application logs can show application failures.
OS logs can show host failure reasons.
Most monitoring systems predominantly gather metrics, and some can capture and display logs in limited capacity. We recommend capturing both metrics and logs from AWS.
Although you can save to CloudWatch logs, we recommend using SaaS solutions because they have better searching capabilities.
It has a powerful search and drill-down facility with Dynamic Field Explorer (DFE). DFE can allow users to start with a basic search, then narrow down from log event fields parsed and presented in a hierarchical fashion.
The derived fields feature can help you tcreate custom parsing rules for log events.
Anomaly detection can help pinpoint abnormal trends in log events.
It can search only subsets of log data from certain hosts, applications, or sources by creating source groups.
It can show multiple log files in real time with the Live Tail feature, much like the tail-f command.
Save your searches and use them again.
Charts and dashboards can be created from saved searches. There are pre-configured dashboards for popular platforms like Docker, IIS, MongoDB, or CloudWatch metrics.
Make sure you are using as much automation as possible. You can use two types of automation. The first type involves deploying the monitoring agents. For example, using SOE builds, a monitoring tool's client agent can be installed in any new EC2 instance. Once a host is online, it can run a Puppet module or an Ansible playbook to configure the agent with a pre-defined template. This way, as soon as the host is available, it registers itself with the central server.
The second type of automation involves alert events. An event trigger should send messages to channels like email, SNS, PagerDuty, or Slack. But it's best if the trigger can automatically log a ticket in a service management tool like Jira or ServiceNow.
Make sure monitoring is part of the operational readiness checklist for your AWS applications. There should be a process to ensure all components of a new system are brought under a monitoring regimen before it goes to production.
Is the API call taking more time after the new version of a microservice has been deployed?
Is the application queue length shorter after the EC2 fleet was upgraded to a new class?
If the picture after a deployment is worse, you'll know it's likely related to the recent change. You can identify and troubleshoot the issue before promoting it to production. If it's in production, you'll have better data to identify what happened and roll back if needed.
For multi-AZ clusters, are nodes from both AZs included?
How far back can you go with the metrics and logs? If it's supposed to keep two weeks' worth of data, can you go back two weeks for all the components, or are there visible gaps?
Are all the dashboards working? Are there too many dashboards?
Are all the alerts working? Are they uniform for all resources of the same type?
Are you receiving notifications when the alerts are triggered?
Are log files going to the correct S3 bucket?
Does the bucket have proper policies attached?
Is the bucket inadvertently exposed to the internet?
If the logs contain sensitive data, are they being encrypted or redacted?
If you are using a solution like SolarWinds Loggly, can you view the logs from the UI and search them?
Advanced organizations like Netflix may also use chaos engineering techniques to purposefully shut down or remove parts of the infrastructure to verify that the monitoring and failover systems respond appropriately.
Choosing the right monitoring tool for AWS is only half the problem. You also need to tailor it for your use case and follow best practices. Implementing AWS monitoring best practices is an iterative process that can take a long time.
Sign up for a free trial of AppOptics or Loggly to get a head start on implementing your monitoring solution. Integration is easy, it typically only takes a few minutes. These tools can help you meet best practices out of the box and can save you time when troubleshooting problems.
The SolarWinds and SolarWinds Cloud trademarks, service marks, and logos are the exclusive property of SolarWinds Worldwide, LLC or its affiliates. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.


Treat your sweetheart to a delicious breakfast at the Tarbell House. A Step Above Catering will offer a waffle bar with customizable toppings, sausage, and sticky buns. Each guest will receive a personalized Valentine and guided house tour!
$15 per person, or $25 for 2. Reservations required. Call 814-677-3152 x 121 or email jhilburn@oilregion.org.


text:
El municipio de Owens (en inglés: Owens Township) es un municipio ubicado en el condado de St. Louis en el estado estadounidense de Minnesota. En el año 2010 tenía una población de 263 habitantes y una densidad poblacional de 3,67 personas por km².

Geografía
El municipio de Owens se encuentra ubicado en las coordenadas . Según la Oficina del Censo de los Estados Unidos, el municipio tiene una superficie total de 71.76 km², de la cual 71,74 km² corresponden a tierra firme y (0,02 %) 0,02 km² es agua.

Demografía
Según el censo de 2010, había 263 personas residiendo en el municipio de Owens. La densidad de población era de 3,67 hab./km². De los 263 habitantes, el municipio de Owens estaba compuesto por el 94,68 % blancos, el 0,76 % eran amerindios, el 0,38 % eran asiáticos y el 4,18 % eran de una mezcla de razas. Del total de la población el 0,38 % eran hispanos o latinos de cualquier raza.

Referencias

Enlaces externos

Municipios de Minnesota
Localidades del condado de St. Louis (Minnesota)

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
package actor

sealed trait Message

case class ProcessSearchRequest(query: String, page: Int) extends Message
case class SearchResultEntity(title: String, url: String, aliases: String, cacheId: String, rank: Int) extends Message
case class SearchResults(entities: List[SearchResultEntity], totalNum: Int) extends Message
case class RunQuery(ast: List[List[util.Expr]])

object SearchResultEntity{
  import redis.{ByteStringFormatter, ByteStringSerializer}
  import akka.util.ByteString
  implicit val byteStringFormatter = new ByteStringFormatter[SearchResultEntity]{
    def serialize(data: SearchResultEntity): ByteString = {
      ByteString(data.title + "|" + data.url + "|" + data.aliases + "|" + data.cacheId + "|" + data.rank.toString)
    }
    def deserialize(bs: ByteString): SearchResultEntity = {
        val r = bs.utf8String.split('|').toList
        SearchResultEntity(r(0), r(1), r(2), r(3), r(4).toInt)
    }
  }
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
What happened this week? Debt funding up to $71M while...
HungerBox, food tech start-up successfully raises $12 M from new...
Azah, women wellness start-up fetches investment from Snapdeal founders and...
1 month ago 3 weeks ago
To promote awareness about feminine hygiene, two individuals namely Shashwat Diesh and Aqib Mohammad founded Azah in November 2018. The start-up was founded with the motive to improve, innovate, and offer high-quality products that solve mensuration related hygiene issues faced by the Indian women population. The start-up aims to be the one-stop solution for high-quality women's hygiene products and claims to have been developing at a rapid rate of 30 percent month-on-month, with nearly more than 50 percent of its revenue being generated from repeat clients.
The start-up has received positive reviews from clients across numerous e-commerce platforms and has successfully sold 2,00,000 pads within a span of 5 months of launch. The start-up has also successfully served clients in over 1800 pin codes across India with average delivery time being only 2.5 days. They get their regular orders from North-eastern states including Tripura and Arunachal Pradesh.
The start-up's average monthly revenue has been growing at 50% and the revenue successfully crossed Rs 10 lakhs in March 2019. Currently, the Azah team has 9 members operating to achieve the finest results.
Shashwat Diesh, Co-founder, Azah, commented on the functioning of the start-up, stating that the women's wellness sector has been particularly open to disruption due to the relative lack of innovation over the past couple of decades. Increasing consumer awareness about menstrual hygiene has led individuals to demand better quality products, and this is the reason why newer homegrown brands have stood up well to the challenge of satisfying this requirement, and that's where Azah comes into the picture.
Coming to the investment news, Azah recently announced that it successfully raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Snapdeal founders Rohit Bansal and Kunal Bahl, AngelList India and a few other HNIs in a pre-series A funding. The lead funding was fetched from Titan Capital, a VC-arm run by Rohit and Kunal. Before this huge funding, Azah had successfully fetched seed funding amounting to $2,00,000 from a group of angel investors with the motive to expand the business and optimize its supply chain management.
To add on to some extra information, both Aqib and Shashwat once worked at Snapdeal before joining together for Azah.
On the investment, Prakhar Agarwal, Investments Lead, AngelList India mentioned that the founders of Azah have been doing an incredible job at developing a brand that resonates perfectly with its clients, and he has been looking forward to the new items that Azah motives to introduce to their existing offerings with this new round of fresh funding. Further, in a statement, Azah mentioned that they plan to utilize the procured investment in enhancing the production, launch new products and expand the sales operations in Tier II and III cities for the users.
Aqib Mohammad, Co-founder, Azah, mentioned that these procured funds will benefit the start-up to further their mission to make a woman's period easier by introducing products that actually solve her difficulties. A good part of the funding will be spent on research and development of these innovative products, while also benefiting the start-up to carry out further innovation in the current product line. In the end, he also added that the start-up will be using the investment to expand its reach to newer demographics while discovering alternative means to drive development and acquisition. The start-up plans to double its monthly revenue by the end of the next quarter.
The start-up has been moving forward positively under the expert guidance of Mr. Mehmood Khan who worked as a Global Leader at the innovation process at Unilever from 1990 to 2009.
Azah

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Malaysia is made up of 13 states. Which is Johor, Melacca, Pahang, Penang, Perak, Sabah, Sarawak, Terengganu, Kelantan, Negeri Sembilan, Kedah, Perlis and Selangor. Kuala Lumpur is the capital. It is the largest city and the heart of Malaysian business and culture.
Malaysia is one of the most pleasant, hassle-free countries to visit in southeast Asia. It's buoyant and wealthy, and has moved towards a pluralist culture based on a vibrant and interesting fusion of Malay, Chinese, Indian and indigenous cultures and customs. Parliament House, (see picture) is the symbol of democracy in Malaysia.
Strategically located between the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea, Malaysia has long been the meeting place for traders and travellers from west and east. Its history is one of continuous interaction with foreign powers and influences.
It Since the days of the 15th century Malacca Sultanate, founded by Parameswara, people from other parts of the world have made Malaysia their home. Located in the heart of the main trade route between the East and the West with abundant natural resources, Malaysia has been under the influence of the Chinese, the Portuguese, the Dutch and the British at various times. Now, Malaysia is a bubbling, bustling melting pot of races and religions where Malays, Indians, Chinese and many other ethnic groups live together in peace and harmony. With such a unique heritage, be enchanted by the fascinating architecture, festivals, attire, handicrafts, music, dance, and customs.
In the heart of Asia lies a land of many cultures, wonders and attractions. It?s a bubbling, bustling melting pot of races and religions where Malays, Indians, Chinese and many other ethnic groups live together in peace and harmony. It is also a land of fascinating extremes, where towering skyscrapers look down upon primitive longhouses. Blessed with natural wonders galore, it is perfect for a memorable eco-holiday. With some of the best beaches and diving spots in the world, it is ideal for island getaways. Experience Asia in Malaysia.
A fascinating fusion of tradition and modernity, Malaysia's architecture today is a reflection of Asia's many styles, cultures and religions. These influences include Hindu-Indian, Arab-Muslim, Chinese and European - Portuguese, Dutch and British. Now, the country embraces an independent modern Malaysian vision whilst staying true to its rich culture and heritage.
Traditional Malay architecture employs relatively sophisticated architectural processes ideally suited to tropical conditions such as wide roof overhangs and high-pitched roofs. Building on stilts allow cross-ventilating breezes beneath the dwelling to cool the house whilst mitigating the effects of the occasional flood.
In Malaysia, Chinese architecture is of two broad types: traditional and Baba-Nyonya. Examples of traditional architecture include Chinese temples found throughout the country such as the Cheng Hoon Teng that dates from 1646. Many old houses especially those in Malacca and Penang are of Baba-Nyonya heritage.
The most notable example of Portuguese architecture in Malaysia is the A'Famosa fort in Malacca, which was built by Alfonso d'Albuquerque in 1511. Nearly annihilated by the Dutch only a small part of the fortification on the hill overlooking the Malacca town, old port and the Straits remains.
Malaysia is a country renown for its creative, complex, and lovingly prepared original cuisine. Food is taken very seriously here, from the five-star restaurants right down to the hawker's booths. Sauces tend to be highly developed, often incorporating local fruits and spices, and the seafood dishes are what you'd expect from a country almost entirely surrounded by ocean.
As most artisans are Muslims, Malaysian handicraft design is heavily influenced by Islam. The religion prohibits the depiction of the human form in art. Hence, most designs centre around natural elements such as the interlacing of leaves or vines, flowers and animals ? predominantly birds.
Colourful and captivating, Malaysia?s traditional textiles are much-sought-after worldwide. Varieties include batik, songket, pua kumbu and tekat. These textiles are made into sarongs, pareos, beachwear, headgears, shoes, beddings, cushions, table covers, bags, d?cor pieces and more.
Enticing hand-crafted accessories abound in Malaysia. Choose from leather-crafted goods, Borneo beadwork necklaces, bangles, hats, beaded pouches and more. Finely made gold and silver jewellery adorned with gems such as rings, bracelets and earrings are also seductively mesmerising.
Popular items of traditional design include Perak labu sayong, geluk, belanga, Chinese dragon kiln ceramics and Sarawakian tribal motif pottery. Contemporary items include vases, flower pots, decorative pottery, sculpture and kitchenware.
Blessed with an abundance of timber in boundless tropical forests, Malaysia is renowned for an assortment of distinctive wood crafts. Traditionally, whole houses were built from elaborate hand-carved timber. Today, antique Malay-styled engraved panels, keris dagger handles, Chinese containers, unusual Orang Asli spirit sculptures, moulded walking sticks, kitchen utensils and carved scented woods are among the wide range of exotic decorative items for your home.
Popular since the early days traditional brass casting and bronze working are still used to make an array of utensils. More recently in the 19th century, with the discovery of tin in Malaysia, pewter has become increasingly popular. Metal craft products include decorative items, vases, small furniture pieces, kettles, cooking utensils, serving trays, bowls, tepak sireh sets, candelabras, incense burners, rose-water instruments, keris blades, wind chimes and lamps.
Marvel at the creative hand-woven crafts of Malaysia. Local plant fibres and parts from bamboo, rattan, pandan and mengkuang leaves are coiled, plaited, twined and woven to produce items such as bags, baskets, tikar or mats, hats, tudung saji and sepak raga balls.
Traditional pastime crafts include gasing or spinning tops, wayang kulit or shadow-play puppets and wau or kites. Intricately designed with much skill and patience, these fascinating items are perfect mementos.
The tropical waters off both Peninsular Malaysia and Borneo offer some of the world's best scuba diving. This is a place endowed with some of the sport's best possibilities: you can dive with whale sharks, hover around immense coral gardens and walls, or dive on ominous and hulking WWII shipwrecks.
Nature has been almost as generous to Malaysia regarding its caves as it has with the rain forest. Both the world's largest single cave chamber, and the longest cave passage in Southeast Asia can be found in Sarawak's extraordinary Gunung Mulu National Park.
Located between 2o and 7o north of the Equator, Peninsular Malaysia is separated from the states of Sabah and Sarawak by the South China Sea. To the north of Peninsular Malaysia is Thailand while its southern neighbour is Singapore. Sabah and Sarawak are bounded by Indonesia while Sarawak also shares a border with Brunei.
Perak is a state that is defined by the course of its namesake river. Perak's population is about two million. Until the nineteenth century, Perak's people were concentrated along the Perak River, and the chief city was riverside Kuala Kangsar. However, the discovery of wondrously rich tin deposits in surrounding valleys lead to the establishment of and transfer of the capital to Taiping and, later, Ipoh. The tin mines around Ipoh are reputedly the richest in the world, and it is no surprise that the city has expanded steadily from the time the mines were discovered in the nineteenth century.
Johor possesses a wide range of attractions, from the exciting metropolitan atmosphere of Johor Bahru to the forests of Endau-Rompin Park. The village of Desaru and the remote and beautiful islands in the South China Sea are favored by vacationers seeking a relaxed and natural holiday environment, while the state's commercial centres attract businessmen from all over the world.
Kelantan are found in the vitality of its culture and its remote, unsullied beauty. The traditional sports of giant kite-flying, top-spinning, silat, wayang kulit, bird-singing competitions and the making of exquisite handicrafts such as songket, batik, silverware and mengkuang products still remain fixtures here, offering a glimpse of tradtional Malay culture in truly spectacular setting.
If the ultra-modern architecture and forward-looking citizens of Kuala Lumpur symbolize Malaysia's hopes for the future, then the quiet, seaside city of Malacca, about 150 kilometers to the south, is the guardian charged with the reflective task of preserving its past. Five hundred years ago, an extraordinary empire rose and fell here, its power and dreams suddenly caught off-gaurd by the dawn of the Colonial Era.


text:
Q: Add row dynamically to AdvancedDataGrid I would like to add new row on the fly (runtime) to my AdvancedDataGrid.
I can add it to the data model, but couldn't find a way to make the table render and show the new row.
What i am seeking for is to create an effect of expandable item, where clicking on row will show "additional information" (like a drawer) and clicking on row expand button will reveal it's children.
I saw examples of this for dataGrid (http://livedocs.adobe.com/flex/3/html/help.html?content=advdatagrid_10.html), but not for AdavancedDataGrid.
Only way I found to do this is to add a new child and use openItem, but this cause the other children to be visible as well.
Any help is greatly appreciated

A: you need to revalidate the whole datagrid after you added a new item, so that all the new elements can become visible.
yourDataGrid.validateNow();

This should help:)

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
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        android:textAlignment="center"
        android:layout_marginTop="10sp"
        android:layout_marginBottom="10sp"/>

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SteveB hasn't added any friends yet.
Nice link here for those of us whose Greek isnt perfect.
A beautiful song by Manolis Mitsias ,with english translation.Enjoy!
Boarding at 11-30 tonite,by this time tommorow,Ill be back in beloved Crete!
Just a whimsical question at the moment,but do we have any members who have any experience of owning/sailing a boat in Crete?
Having just read the new rules(Crete Gazette),I love the last one!
Yannis,would I be mistaken in thinking you added that one!


text:
Munoz, defense leads Utah State to 26-21 win over Wyoming
Written by Daniel Hansen
LOGAN – Utah State's star player was on the sidelines. The offensive and defensive leaders for the season were no longer available.
A little-known walk-on linebacker filled the void.
Junior LB Eric Munoz totaled 13 tackles and two interceptions, one of which sealed the game in the final minute, as the Aggies defeated Wyoming 26-21 on Saturday evening on Merlin Olsen Field. Junior QB Jordan Love exited the contest during the third quarter with an injury. Prior to his departure, Love accrued 282 yards passing while completing 18 of 29 attempts with two touchdowns and two interceptions.
"It's how it's been all year long, no different. They're excited to compete," head coach Gary Andersen said. "When they've lost, they come back excited to compete. The morale in this team has been fantastic from day one… We've had an opportunity to play two very meaningful games in the month of November and won them both, so now we get the opportunity to play a third one."
The teams exchanged punts and turnovers during a scoreless first quarter, before Wyoming's Logan Wilson opened the second quarter by intercepting a pass from Love and returning it 10 yards for a touchdown. Facing a 7-0 deficit, the Aggie offense sprung to life as Love tossed an 80-yard TD to senior WR Siaosi Mariner, followed by a 35-yard TD to senior RB Gerold Bright to put USU up 14-7. The Cowboys responded with a 5-play, 61-yard drive capped off by an 11-yard TD run by QB Tyler Vander Waal.
USU's offense continued to hum along through the remainder of the second quarter, but were unable to convert drives into touchdowns, settling for two field goals from senior K Dominik Eberle of 47 and 44 yards, respectively. The Aggies entered halftime with a 20-14 lead.
"Early on, we struggled a little bit," Mariner said, "but if there's one thing we do is face adversity week in and week out. I thought we did a good job playing through adversity, and we stepped up in a way to help this team win the game."
Following the break, Utah State's offense continued to amass yards but again fell short of the end zone. USU started the half with a 15-play, 83-yard drive which ended on fourth down on Wyoming's 3-yard line. On the ensuing possession, the Aggies started on Wyoming's 14-yard line after a 15-yard punt return and unnecessary roughing penalty on the Cowboys, but were forced to settle for a 26-yard field goal from Eberle. It would be Love's final drive of the game. The Aggies' star QB was removed from the game with an undisclosed injury, thrusting sophomore QB Henry Colombi onto the field.
"We didn't flinch. We watch Henry (Colombi) come in every day and do it in practice," Mariner said. "You do it in practice, you're going to do it in the game. It's going to translate… It sucks Jordan (Love) went down, obviously. That's our guy, that's our leader. But when Henry came in, we had his back. We had his support."
With Love out, the Aggie defense picked up the intensity and stifled Wyoming's offense to keep Utah State's lead at a comfortable margin. Munoz, starting in place of the injured David Woodward, took the initiative, intercepting a pass from Vander Waal and returning it 51 yards to Wyoming's 2-yard line. A botched snap on the first play of the drive resulted in a 23-yard loss, forcing the Aggies to settle for a 23-yard field goal from Eberle to stretch USU's lead to 26-14. The Cowboys regrouped after the INT, going 75 yards in nine plays on the ensuing possession with Vander Waal trimming the lead to 26-21 with a 5-yard rushing TD.
From there, Munoz and the defense again clamped down. The Aggies forced a three-and-out on the Wyoming's next possession. Then, on the Cowboys' last gasp drive, Munoz intercepted his second pass of the game to seal the victory and ensure bowl eligibility for USU. Utah State has now won two straight games after dropping to 4-4 after a 42-14 loss to BYU.
"This has been a special team when you talk about morale," coach Andersen said. "I don't mean to rattle on about it, but they really have been. If you bring 54 new young kids into a program and have them all get absorbed into the system and the seniors lead the way they've led, and for our kids to go through the downs that they've gone through and the upside that they've gone through and have to battle through, they've been an unbelievable crew."
Munoz, a junior college transfer who walked on at Utah State, may have been one of the most unlikely players to seal the game on Saturday. Sitting behind several other players on the depth chart, Munoz' opportunity first came last week versus Fresno State, where his play in the fourth quarter earned him his first start as an Aggie on Saturday.
"It's been a long time coming, to be honest with you," Munoz said, fighting through tears after the game "This is the third school I've been to. Redshirt junior having to sit behind some guys is tough. Then coming here out of my junior college and having to walk on was tough. God blessed me with an opportunity. My parents were there with me the whole way… All 10 guys on defense were rooting for me and cheering for me and they were excited to see me out there. So I couldn't let them down."
Mariner led the Aggies with 123 receiving yards and one touchdown on four receptions. Sophomore WR Deven Thompkins added 51 yards on four receptions. Senior RB Gerold Bright went for 56 rushing yards on 17 carries, adding a further 44 yards on receiving on three catches. Defensively, juniors S Troy Lefeged Jr. and LB Kevin Meitzenheimer backed up Munoz' efforts with 12 tackles each in the contest. Lefeged added two tackles-for-loss, one pass break-up and a force fumble, as well.
The win kept Bridger's Rifle, the rivalry trophy between Utah State and Wyoming, in Logan for the second consecutive year. The Aggies are now also 6-4 and bowl eligible for the eighth time in nine seasons.
"Reaching bowl eligibility is a huge, huge accomplishment," coach Andersen said. "Anyone who discounts that or discards that is completely, absolutely wrong. It's a huge accomplishment to reach bowl eligibility. You get six wins, you get rewarded. So that's a good thing, it makes it a good year. This team's not sitting here saying 'it's a good year and we're good and we're ready to go and be done with it' but they need to be recognized. That's a huge accomplishment to get to this point. They'll be excited to line up and go play again next week and they'll be excited to line up and go play again the next week."
The win moves the Aggies to 5-1 in Mountain West play and sets up a massive showdown next week in Logan versus Boise State.
"It's definitely going to be a challenge for our defense. Boise's a great team, but I think the way we've been playing defensively, we've connected a lot better," Munoz said. "I think we're learning to mesh well and trust each other. Guys are doing their job and believing that the guy next to them is going to do theirs."
Kickoff versus the Broncos is currently set for Saturday at 8:30 pm MST.
Posted in Sports, USUTagged Coach Gary Andersen, Deven Thompkins, Eric Munoz, Gerold Bright, Jordan Love, Jordan Love injury, Kevin Meitzenheimer, siaosi mariner, troy lefeged, USU Football, Utah State Aggies, Utah State Andersen, Utah State Football, Utah State Munoz


Marketing strategy & planning… what's your game?
More to the point, what is our game and how are we going to help you find out what yours is? The first step of our approach to marketing strategy and planning is a marketing audit, otherwise known as the part where we look back with you on what you've already done and what you're doing. Where are the ups and where are the downs? What needs to be thrown out with the dishwater, what needs to be cleaned up a little bit, and what is just grand the way it is?
Next, we check out the marketing environment you're in, do some research on the marketing conditions, and see what your competitors are up to. This helps us to see where the gaps are and what your perfect fit is. At this stage, we're looking for what makes you unique, interesting and downright special. We're figuring out who you are, what you do and how you sound. We're also considering the best ways of channelling that sound out to the wider world.
Finally, let's work together. Workshops are handy little things for brainstorming with your team and getting everyone excited and involved. The best strategies are the ones which meld together our knowledge of what works and what doesn't (in a marketing sense, of course), and your enthusiasm for and in-and-out knowledge of your business.
In the end, all the different routes and ideas come together to present a beautifully drawn map of where you're going and how to get there. Ready for the journey? Thinking about it? Get in touch and we'll have a chat.


Good grooming includes taking good care of your hands and nails. Pampering your hands with a manicure will not only leave your hands looking beautiful, but it will also repair, relieve as well as protect the skin around your hands. A hot stone manicure is regarded as an integrated manicure therapy. It utilizes heat treatment and, in some instances, aromatherapy and massage to relax your tired hands.
Why Get a Hot Stone Manicure?
A hot stone manicure a therapeutic manicure that utilizes heated rocks to promote relaxation within your hands. The day after day, your hands are continually exposed to the elements, accelerating the aging process. A hot stone therapy might be just what you require to supplement your manicure. Your fingers come out looking fierce and fabulous, and your hands feel less tired. A hot stone manicure will provide relief for your overworked hands.
You will require the following materials for the hot stone manicure: boiling water within which the stones will be heated, a normal massaging cream used for a typical manicure, as well as essential oils. Since this manicure type involves rubbing your hands using the heated stones, you will need somebody to assist you with the process.
When boiling the water for heating the stones, ensure the water reaches a temperature of about 120 degrees Celsius. Also, the stones should be at a temperature of approximately 56 degrees Celsius when they are taken out of the heated water.
As the stones are being heated, immerse your hands within a container of warm water. This will help loosen the muscles around your hands. Also, you should add essential oils in the water within which you immerse your hands, as this will give the water a pleasant smell as well as produce a relaxing effect.
Once the stones are sufficiently heated, take them out of the boiling water. Next, the individual assisting you should use the stones to rub down your palms, fingers, and arms. This should be done slowly for approximately 15 minutes and ensure that all sides are treated. As the stones are used to massage your hands, the warmth from the stones will seep into your hands thereby relaxing your tired hand muscles.
Once the massage process has been completed, you should wash your hands using warm water. After that, apply your normal moisturizing cream to your hands. Lastly, you should perform your normal manicure routine such as cutting, filling and coating your nails with any color of your choice.
Note that it is best to get an experienced manicurist to help you perform this type of manicure. Nevertheless, if you wish to do this on your own at home, then ensure you follow the right process.


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See the Pen 7of100 Double Helix by Yiting Liu (@yitliu) on CodePen.
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text:
Cape Town, Joburg among cheapest cities in the world
Mobility firm ranks most and least expensive cities to which to deploy expats.
/ 28 June 2016 00:01
Rand weakness has resulted in Cape Town and Johannesburg being named among the top ten least expensive cities in the world for companies to deploy expatriate employees to.
2016 Cost of living rankings
Most expensive cities
Least expensive cities
1. Hong Kong, Hong Kong
1. Windhoek, Namibia
2. Luanda, Angola
2. Cape Town, South Africa
3. Zurich, Switzerland
3. Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan
4. Singapore, Singapore
4. Blantyre, Malawi
5. Tokyo, Japan
5. Johannesburg, South Africa
6. Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo
6. Minsk, Belarus
7. Shanghai, China
7. Tunis, Tunisia
8. Geneva, Switzerland
8. Karachi, Pakistan
9. Ndjamena, Chad
9. Gaborone, Botswana
10. Beijing, China
10. Lusaka, Zambia
Source: Mercer Cost of Living Survey, 2016
According to a new Cost of Living Survey by mobility firm Mercer, Cape Town now ranks second among the least expensive cities in the world, compared with seventh in 2015, while Johannesburg has moved to fifth place from sixteenth a year ago.
Seven of the ten least expensive cities ranked are in Africa, with Namibian capital city Windhoek emerging as the cheapest. Hong Kong is the most expensive city for expats, Angolan capital Luanda came in second, after topping the table in 2015, while Zurich in Switzerland retained third place.
New York City, which ranks as the 11th most expensive city, was used as the base city for all comparisons, with all currency movements measured against the US dollar.
The survey, now in its 22nd year, ranked 209 cities across five continents, based on the comparative costs of more than 200 items from accommodation and fuel to a cup of coffee, beer and even a pair of blue jeans.
According to data from the consulting firm, monthly rental of a two-bedroom unfurnished apartment of international standards and in an appropriate neighbourhood in Johannesburg would cost $1 139.43 while that of a three-bedroom house would cost $1 772.44. Rental accommodation of a similar standard would cost $6 809.47 and $12 007.18 per month in Hong Kong. At an estimated $15 200 per month, Luanda is the most expensive city in which to rent a three-bedroom house.
The price of unleaded 95 octane fuel is highest in Hong Kong, coming in at $1.79 per litre. A litre of fuel, of the same grade, costs $0.77 in Johannesburg and $0.71c in New York City.
Beverage costs at medium priced establishments show stark discrepancies among select cities. A 330ml serving of imported beer costs $0.70 in Johannesburg compared with $2.29 in Singapore but is most expensive in Sydney, Australia at $2.39. One cup of coffee, including a service charge would cost $1.27 in Johannesburg compared with $7.77 in Hong Kong – unsurprisingly 1 litre of whole milk costs far less in Johannesburg than in Hong Kong. In Johannesburg, one litre of still water costs $0.55 compared with $3.13 in Beijing.
Mercer said volatile markets and stunted economic growth in several parts of the world, means expatriate remuneration packages are an important factor in cost efficiency. Currency fluctuations, the cost of inflation for goods and services, and instability of accommodation prices contribute to the cost of pay packages for employees on international duty.
BS-Baffles-B 4 years ago
This article simple demonstrates the unreliability of such statistical data. I refer to the Business Day Live report of 17th June 2016 wherein another international survey quite clearly shows that DURBAN is the cheapest of the three major SA cities to live in – see: http://www.bdlive.co.za/national/2016/06/17/durban-living-is-cheapest-of-sas-big-three-cities A short copy-paste will whet your appetite: "GETTING gym fit or buying a beer costs more if you live in Johannesburg and Cape Town' compared with smaller cities' but Durban is the place to be if you want a city buzz and the best bang for your buck.
If you live in Durban' you pay less on rent' eating out and groceries than you would in Cape Town and Johannesburg.
Apartment rentals in Cape Town are 50.8% higher than in Durban' restaurant bills are 6.5% higher and groceries cost 8.9% more' according to a database of user-contributed price information from cities and countries worldwide published by Numbeo.
"You would need around R32'000 in Cape Town to maintain the same standard of life that you can have with R27'624 in Durban'" Numbeo says."
So, which of these reports do YOU believe? 🙂
Sensei 4 years ago
You may be right, but Durban was not included in the study because it is merely a suburb of Nkandla.
Anonymous User 4 years ago
Currently in Venice on holiday. Try Expensive with a capital "E". 500ml water anywhere between €1.5 and €4 depending on where you buy it… times that by 16 for the cost in bokkies.
bobsmith 4 years ago
Misleading article as it is based upon Rand/Dollar. CT is by no means cheap for locals!
fcassim 4 years ago
The article serves to highlight the cost for expats in major business cities around the world. Durban can hardly be considered that , even in SA terms!!
As for Cape-Town being expensive, like any major city, will seek to attract a premium but if you are "street wise" can arrange your affairs at an economical cost. There are many takers in JNB and Cape Town less then what is being quoted in the survey.
Simply stay with the locals !
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text:
Home > News and events > New episode of 24 Hours in A&E: My Other Half…
New episode of 24 Hours in A&E: My Other Half…
The RTS award-winning documentary series returns for a fifteenth series following patients treated in the same 24 hour period at St George's in south west London. The hospital has one of the busiest A&E departments in Britain – under more pressure than ever. It's a place where stories of life, love and loss unfold every day.
This episode shows the importance of true love and how relationships can get you through the toughest of times.
Danny, a 41-year-old painter and decorator, is brought by ambulance after falling 20 foot through a skylight onto concrete.
Tara, 27, is in A&E with severe abdominal pains, she is joined by her husband Adrian who keeps her entertained.
Three year old Clara has a chickpea stuck up her nose and is brought to A&E by her Mum.
Tune in tonight (Wednesday 11 July) at 9pm on Channel 4.
Follow us on Twitter @StGeorgesTrust and get involved – using #24HrsAE – with our live tweeting during each episode.
For more information, please contact Pippa Harper, Media Manager, on philippa.harper@stgeorges.nhs.uk or 020 8266 6128.
Tags: #24HrsAE 24 hours in A&E a&e ED emergency Emergency Department trauma


text:
Tell Tarby was a British television comedy series which aired in 1973. Cast included Jimmy Tarbuck, Lynda Bellingham, Josephine Tewson, Stanley Unwin and Frank Williams. All six episodes are missing, believed lost.

References

External links
Tell Tarby on IMDb

1973 British television series debuts
1973 British television series endings
Lost television shows
English-language television shows
1970s British comedy television series


Nia Sharma was party ready and posted a mirror selfie wearing a bralet with blazer hung over her shoulders. The actress sexily braided her hair and sported dark lips. Mouni Roy gave her saree a twist as she wore a peach coloured saree for one of her promotional event, while Hina Khan donned a flared bottom pants with a blazer-style top for BCL4 match. She styled her hair in two knotted buns.


text:
Phalaris Staggers
Regional pest plans
Disease prevention and response
Johne's Disease transmission
Phalaris toxicity can cause both a sudden death syndrome and a staggers syndrome. 'Phalaris staggers' is an in- coordination syndrome that is associated with the ingestion of some varieties of phalaris (Phalaris aquatica) at a time when it contains toxic alkaloids. The staggers syndrome can also cause death in severely affected animals through heart failure. Sheep of all ages are affected and cattle may also be affected. Cattle are less susceptible than sheep but it affects the nerves that control the tongue and swallowing, so affected cattle are unable to eat normally and can suffer a high degree of weight loss.
'Phalaris sudden death' is thought to be a completely separate syndrome to 'Phalaris staggers'. The sudden death syndrome also occurs in autumn to early winter, but occurs within 36 hours of introducing stock onto phalaris pastures. The sudden death syndrome is proposed to occur as a result of ingesting a compound in phalaris that decreases nitrogen metabolism, resulting in peracute ammonia poisoning. It takes sheep 24 hours to develop effective nitrogen metabolism on phalaris.
Provision of oral cobalt protects against phalaris staggers. It appears to stimulate the proliferation in the rumen of microorganisms which are capable of destroying the causative agent/toxic alkaloid that causes the staggers syndrome. Cobalt has no preventive effect on the sudden death syndrome.
Cobalt oral supplementation can be provided in the form of cobalt ruminal pellets, cobalt in drinking water, cobalt loose licks and blocks and cobalt drenches. Pasture spraying with cobalt sulphate in the autumn should be considered as another preventative alternative to manage the risk of phalaris staggers on high risk pastures.
Clinical signs and diagnosis
It usually takes a minimum of 10 days grazing on phalaris for staggers signs to occur. Most cases occur after one to two months of grazing. Deaths are reported to continue for 1 week after removal from the pasture. Phalaris is well known to cause delayed onset clinical signs, nervous signs can persist for 2 months and have been known to arise up to five months after stock are moved off phalaris. In some animals signs may persist for life but some mildly affected animals will recover. The chance of recovery is higher the more rapid the onset of signs.
Characteristic signs are head nodding and bunny hopping with a wide based gait. Some cases walk on their knees, or knuckle at the fetlocks. Symptoms of staggers can be induced by normal mustering stress. 'Phalaris staggers' can progress to death via the alkaloid affects on the heart causing a heart attack.
There is currently no cure.
Tongue and swallowing paresis particularly in cattle can lead to "manic" attempts to eat with frenzied tongue stabbing at grass.
Characteristic pigmentation in the brain can be seen on microscopic examination at post mortem, and can often also be seen grossly.
Assessing risk
It is not really possible to assess the phalaris staggers risk by taking samples from the plants, animals or soil. However known higher risk pastures (from a past history of problems) could be monitored more carefully for seasonal effects and animals grazing these pastures routinely protected by using a supplement.
The risk of stock developing phalaris staggers is a function of soil cobalt levels, levels of soil ingestion and levels of phalaris dominance and palatability. Cases can occur at all times of the year but peak in late autumn and winter. Phalaris has been found to be most toxic during rapid growth (autumn) and then increase again when the plant is placed under environmental stress (such as frost or water stress). The highest concentrations of alkaloids are in the first re-growth and in the leaf blades. Under field conditions, studies have found that the hazard from phalaris decreases as the plant matures. However, this may be because other species dilute the phalaris and because clovers and other legumes contain more cobalt.
Cobalt supplementation
Cobalt bullets
Intraruminal Cobalt pellets, given using a 'bulleting gun' are best for long term prevention of staggers and deficiency. In sheep, pelleting is best done when lambs are weaned. Pellets are not suitable for lambs less than eight weeks old. One pellet appears to be enough in most cases, but often two are recommended especially in higher risk situations. Sheep should be treated once every three years, and cattle once a year.
Cobalt bullets for sheep are around $1.40 per head, Cobalt bullets for cattle are around $4.50 per head.
Cobalt in loose licks and blocks
Cobalt sulphate or Cobalt carbonate can be added to drinking water, incorporated into salt licks or mixed with feed. The main problem with intake from licks and blocks is the variation in uptake/usage by individual animals. The recommended supplementation rate to protect against staggers is 28mg Cobalt per week or 4 milligrams/day. To prevent phalaris staggers the rate of cobalt recommended is much higher than usual so many of the nutritional supplement licks would need to be fortified to make them work. Supplementation at the phalaris staggers prevention rate should not be continued longer than necessary.
Cobalt can also be toxic in excess. Cobalt toxicity: daily doses above 4mg/kg bodyweight for sheep and 1mg/kg body weight for cattle would result in toxicity resulting in loss of appetite and depression and doses in excess of 40mg/kg of body weight may result in sudden death.
Cobalt drenches
Cobalt sulphate drenches are available, however the protective effect only lasts about 1 week, demanding weekly re-dosing.
Cobalt Foliar spraying of Phalaris pasture
Annual foliar spraying of phalaris pastures with cobalt soon after the autumn break has reportedly been effective at preventing phalaris staggers in the South East of SA, a region with a high incidence of phalaris staggers.
Application recommendations
Mix 100 grams of cobalt sulphate per ha with water and apply to a quarter of the paddock. This can be done by using strips of spray. Most producers use misters due to convenience, however a boom spray may also be used. The foliar spray is only absorbed by green leaves, so producers may need to wait until a few weeks after the autumn break for phalaris to shoot before they spray. Rain within two to three days of application will wash the cobalt spray off before it can be fully absorbed, so spraying should be carefully timed. Livestock can be introduced into the paddock as soon as spraying is completed.
Cases of phalaris staggers do not necessarily indicate cobalt deficiency (Vitamin B12 deficiency). Injection of VitB 12 does not offer any protection against the staggers syndrome or phalaris sudden death.
Summary of Phalaris staggers preventive strategies
Cobalt foliar sprays and cobalt bullets are both effective at preventing phalaris staggers. Cobalt foliar sprays may be easier to apply than cobalt bullets and provide full management flexibility with which stock are selected to graze the at-risk productive phalaris pastures.
For more information on Cobalt foliar spraying please see:
Flock and Herd case notes: David Rendell. Hamilton. The role of cobalt in the risk assessment and prevention of Phalaris staggers