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Serious Mental Health
Voice, Choice, Dignity, Rights.
Papercuts: restorative approaches and cumulative harm in mental health care
26/03/2021 23/09/2021 ZoeLeave a comment
How it began for me
A couple of years ago I was asked as an ex-patient to be involved in a participation project with mental health staff called 'Reducing Restrictive Interventions'.
We split into separate groups (one of staff and one of service users), each with a facilitator, to brainstorm. One member of staff misunderstood the instructions and joined our group. None of us said anything, assuming there was an unspoken reason for her joining. She wasn't meant to be there, but it turned out to be a really helpful mistake!
We talked about restrictive practices on the ward and their effect, from small things like not being allowed to congregate and chat in the corridor, to more difficult things such as restraint and seclusion. The staff member listened intently to what we said and acknowledged our experiences, saying it was very helpful to hear. She then tentatively told us about how imposing restrictions upon us sometimes made her feel, and we listened in return.
It hadn't been planned. Out of nowhere a safe space materialised where testimony was heard and acknowledged on both sides. For that 20-minute slot, we were no longer staff and service users – we were human beings, equal to one other, listening and acknowledging with empathy and compassion.
The whole group agreed that it had been an enlightening experience, including the member of staff. I thought about how incredibly helpful it would be to have opportunities like this occur more often. It wasn't until I recently came across a piece written in in the British Medical Journal by Dr Sarah Markham, that I realised what had emerged that day was the kind of space and situation that restorative practice (also restorative justice/approaches) works to create.
What is restorative practice?
Restorative practice can take many different forms, and for more comprehensive explanations, please see the links at the end of this piece.
The way I understand it is as a coming together of people who have been involved in a conflict, difficult experience, or trauma, in order to share the impact it has had upon them.
It can be used to repair specific relationships or harms that have occurred, or it can be a more general expression of thoughts, feelings, and needs in a mediated safe space where everyone is listened to without interruption or judgement. The idea is to create empathy, enable mutual understanding, and to then work towards a satisfactory resolution for the benefit of all.
Restorative practice and approaches are already used in various forms in a number of sectors, such as criminal justice, community mediation, and in schools.
Why might we need restorative approaches in mental health?
Restorative approaches could help by:
Reducing the impact and level of trauma felt by those using or working in mental health services.
Improving staff/patient relationships.
Improving mental health outcomes and quality of life for all.
Despite it being a contentious issue that not all like to accept, harm occurs regularly within mental health services and on psychiatric wards.
Many are harmed by the most obvious major practices, such as Mental Health Act detention, coercion, restraint, forced seclusion and sedation (which is another article in itself!) but harm also occurs in smaller, more insidious ways.
These include verbal abuse, gaslighting, neglect, withholding care, not telling the truth, making decisions without the patient, breaking trust, not listening, ignoring, being dismissive, and acting without care or compassion.
When cumulative, these 'little' hurts can become more painful than the bigger harms. They are thousands of papercuts that never heal.
It is these cumulative harms that I would like to focus on in this article, because it is these that I feel are most unacceptable because they are the most avoidable, and could be most easily tackled by restorative approaches.
Of course, mental health staff are also harmed by what they experience at work. This could be directly through violence and abuse from unwell patients, high-stress work environments, or by being implicit in restrictive and coercive interventions or practices that they do not feel comfortable with.
Staff themselves are not subject to those coercive and restrictive practices, and they implicitly have more power than a service user even at the lower end of their pay grades, but they are certainly still vulnerable to stress and trauma.
Psychiatric wards are trauma machines: harm is cycled and passed from person to person in an enclosed space within the rigid, heavily bureaucratic, emotionless system that is NHS mental health services – a model unfit to deal with the complexity that is humanity and human emotion, let alone that of mental distress.
Relationships between staff and service users are often strained. Each views the other as an oppositional unit which they should be wary of and therefore protect themselves from. This creates huge rifts that undermine the therapeutic benefit of services.
Mistrust stops people reaching out for help in the future. If someone does so and is met with a dispassionate, unkind response, they will think twice about doing so again. This increases loneliness, fear, and risk of self-harm or suicide.
A lack of trust also adds to service users' issues with healthy relationships in general: feeling suspicious or afraid of others can lead to further isolation from peers and greater society and worsening of the original mental illness.
Of course, there will always be those who find their interactions with mental health services supportive and helpful. This must be acknowledged, and I am happy that those people certainly do exist.
Where trauma is felt, however, patients are often dealt an extra burden to recover from in addition to the illness or condition that brought them to services in the first place.
In this way, mental health services can actually perpetuate mental illness and distress.
In particular, those deemed to have a personality disorder (a contentious label at the best of times) or complex needs, have often been on long journeys through services, experiencing exclusion, gross misunderstanding of needs, verbal abuse, threats, coercion, prejudice, not being believed, and a stark lack of compassion.
All of this mirrors and reinforces trauma already experienced in personal lives outside of mental health services.
Like a snowball rolling down a mountain, trauma and pain and their associated difficulties stick to the original, core problem, making people so heavy with pain that they become formidable, dangerous, and impossible to treat in the eyes of those who helped make them this way.
Those who have spent years in services can find it impossible to detangle the trauma that existed originally, from that gained since.
It doesn't make sense to be healing and hurting people at the same time, particularly if you want them to thrive and get free of the revolving door of repeated discharge and re-admission.
Are restorative approaches feasible in mental health?
Formal Approaches
In a dreamworld, everyone who has been cruel and neglectful to me in a healthcare setting would come and sit with me and we'd use restorative approaches to work it through. We'd have conversations about how it affected me, and they would listen. I would ask the 'why?' questions I've always wanted to ask and listen to them in return, hopefully they'd apologise or at least reflect, and we'd repair things and find a way through that felt better.
This is an unlikely situation for service users.
There is rarely a single 'perpetrator'. We often hurt from many actions from many different people, that have chipped away at us sometimes over decades of damaging interactions with mental health services, when we were already at our lowest and most vulnerable: those papercuts.
We have no chance of facing all of those who hurt us. Would they even remember the nasty comment they made years ago? Would they remember a single situation even months ago, during yet another busy, understaffed double shift?
(Most likely not but, rest assured, we definitely do.)
They might not even see what they did as wrong or negligent, or may not want to admit it.
One of the underpinning principles of restorative practice is that it must be voluntary – everyone has to consent to join in and so there needs to be a willingness to engage.
Services and staff may feel that restorative practice will involve some admittance of mistakes or of neglect and abuse, and it is unlikely they will be happy (or able) to do that.
Due to this, I feel that more formal restorative approaches like those used in criminal justice, with an obvious victim and offender, are most likely not feasible in mental health services.
Grassroots Initiatives
Spandler and McKeown (2017) suggest that grassroots truth and reconciliation initiatives might indeed be what is needed, particularly in the absence of the interest or enthusiasm of services and psychiatry.
They describe instances of grassroots and service user led mental health organisations in the USA that have made use of community-based models and healing circles to hear testimony from those harmed, whether staff or patient, and also to hear from those who did not feel harmed – all viewpoints being equally welcome and compassionately acknowledged.
Perhaps something like this could be helpful.
I know from the experience I described earlier that if you can turn a room of service users and staff into a room of human beings, even for a short while, amazing things can happen.
There would need to be a level playing field offered, and a space of safety for all to be able to speak and listen, wearing no official 'hat' of service user or staff member.
There would need to be no repercussions for sharing, and it would need to take place in a neutral space, so not in a hospital meeting room.
There already exist initiatives amongst service user only communities where testimony is heard in safe and non-judgemental spaces, providing those who have been hurt a forum in which to express pain and anger, and for that to be acknowledged.
I am currently involved in project 'For The Record' with the grassroots service user group #MadCovid, where experiences are shared via closed-group presentations of writing and creative pieces on the theme of iatrogenic harm.
Supporting each other in this way is helpful, and for some it is the only forum in which they feel safe enough to truly express their feelings. However, it is no surprise for us to hear the trauma of our fellow service users. We know it only too well.
There is absolutely a place for this work, but for true restoration I feel that those with other viewpoints, perspectives, and experiences need to be included and need to listen, or we risk remaining in a well-meaning echo-chamber, with no real movement towards remedying the situation.
I like to think that there are staff and patients who would genuinely want to take part in informal initiatives that aim for better understanding for those on all sides.
Service-user led initiatives may not be impartial enough for this specific task. We need projects formed by both 'people who work as staff' (a distinction from 'staff', which is their official capacity whilst at work) and service users, and/or by allies who are completely impartial.
As it would be a voluntary activity engaged in outside of work time, that could be off-putting to staff who already work long hours, but if touted as an exercise that could enrich them personally, rather than a work-related box-ticking exercise, it could perhaps be more attractive. There will always be those who are not at all interested, but I believe there will always be those who are.
Meetings or circles should be trumpeted as positive, welcoming, healing spaces that are not about apportioning blame. The idea is to enrich understanding and empathy on all sides, which could go some way to better relationships within services and hopefully to change opinions and behaviour towards those previously seen as an oppositional group.
They would need to be closely guided by restorative principles, impartially managed, and only joined by those distinctly wanting to work towards restorative ends.
An important question at this point is: do we need to come together with specific people who were involved in our own individual experiences, or is hearing testimony from anyone, even people we don't know, still helpful? In an informal meeting like this there would be no guarantees about who might attend.
As I said earlier, we may wish for the opportunity to face those who wronged us, so we can ask specific questions, understand particular instances, maybe even share apologies, but the chances of this are low.
Hearing from others who have been in similar situations (on either side) might not give us that, but it could still help expand empathy for and understanding of each other, break down oppositional barriers, and help us see each other as human beings, all with capacity to hurt and be hurt.
Will restorative approaches actually make any difference in terms of harm?
Despite me advocating for restorative practices, there is a voice of cynicism deep inside me, one which most long-term service users will know well. It says that nothing will ever be enough to make up for the pain that has been inflicted.
I'm trying not to listen to that voice, because I want to be more hopeful than that, but I acknowledge that there are many who have been hurt so badly that these drops in the ocean will seem nowhere near good enough, and I fully respect that.
There will be many people who won't like these ideas. They won't want to relive their traumas or remember certain times of their lives. Some understandably won't feel able to be vulnerable around the 'opposite team' who has caused them so much harm. Many will be afraid of repercussions and further victimisation.
We need to acknowledge and be mindful of this.
I do think, however, that proactive restorative approaches could go some way to lessen the cumulative harm that occurs within mental health services.
If we deal with each papercut as it occurs, we can help to stop it building up into trauma.
Proactive Approaches
I remember a difficult interaction that occurred once between myself and a professional within services. She made a mistake that broke trust and at the time it really upset me. Trust of healthcare staff was already something I found difficult.
When we were next in touch, she set aside a good 15 minutes of our appointment to talk about it. She apologised and completely owned the mistake. She didn't make excuses and she listened to me explain why it hurt me so much. We talked through it. She did not rush me or minimise my emotions or reaction.
The fact that she had the courage and integrity to initiate this conversation made a huge impression on me.
It may seem obvious that someone would do this, but it is not common.
She was so demonstrably honest and compassionate that we quickly repaired the relationship and the hurt I felt disappeared. I also apologised to her for how I had reacted when it happened, and we were both able to agree to move on.
Just a single restorative interaction like this can give a service user hope and a renewed faith in services in general. It creates a welcome contradiction against the idea that 'all staff are bad', or 'I need to protect myself from staff'.
The more examples we are shown of compassion and kindness, the more that serves to challenge ingrained views of staff and services as a homogenous group of unkind, uncaring people.
This experience helped me believe it is possible to have the restoration we seek with those who have directly hurt us if it happens as soon as possible after the incident.
Apologies are probably best left to occur in organic and spontaneous ways in order to protect their sincerity, however proactive restorative approaches could be part of a new way of working. Examples include improved communication styles and time set aside for restorative and reflective catch-ups with service users, as the need arises.
Restorative approaches in schools often include the use of restorative communication. Staff and pupils are encouraged to make 'affective statements', where they communicate to each other how they have been affected by the actions of the other, both positively and negatively. They also use 'affective questions' to explore things that have happened and how they could be best resolved as they arise, avoiding the use of blame or accusation.
Time is taken out to have restorative talks, as needed, which could just be a couple of minutes or longer if needed.
Something like this might be really helpful if it was embedded within mental health services, for both staff and service users to make use of.
It might be viewed as more work for already under-resourced staff teams, but I genuinely think it would be worth it in terms of improved relationships and outcomes for all involved.
It could also help improve communication skills, assertiveness, and skills for dealing with confrontation on both sides.
I acknowledge that issues of mental capacity, distress, and illness are factors to consider that aren't as relevant in the school environment, but ways in which proactive restorative approaches could improve the mental health environment are definitely worth exploring further.
In believe that informal restorative approaches, utilised as we go, may be the best format for mitigating cumulative harm within mental health services. These have certainly made the most difference to me personally.
In addition, there could be grassroots initiatives that bring people who work as staff and people who are service users together voluntarily and on equal grounds, in order to learn more about each other's experiences.
Restorative approaches may seem too meagre to make a dent in the impact of harm caused by mental health services. There is no doubt that social action aimed at general reform of mental health services and legislation is desperately needed in addition to any restorative work.
Bloom & Farragher (2010) call for organisations to be "trauma-informed systems" run to be more like living organisms, "capable of all the same emotions, processes, learning, disease and change that any other organism experiences", instead of cold machines.
I think restorative approaches, especially proactive communicative ones, should be a key part of that vision.
I don't have all the answers, but I know that ignoring the fact that trauma occurs within our services isn't working and is a ticking mental health timebomb.
I also know that the interactions I have had with staff on a human level have made the biggest impact on my ability to heal and have faith in people, more than any psychology session or medication ever has.
Those interactions have expanded my own capacity for empathy with those who care for me and have most of all allowed me to feel hope that things can change.
I do think it is important to bring restorative approaches to mental health services, even if the efforts at first seem small. More opportunities, spaces, and interactions like those I have described – informal, voluntary, human – would contradict negative experiences, foster better relationships between staff and service users, and make small but solid steps towards repairing harm.
To achieve this, big work desperately needs to be done, but I personally believe enough small, reticent stones cast out in hope could cause enough ripples to rock the boat.
Bloom, S. and Farragher, B. (2010), Destroying Sanctuary: The Crisis in Human Service Delivery Systems, Oxford University Press, New York, NY.
Markham, S. (2018), "Dealing with iatrogenic harm in mental health", British Medical Journal Blogs website, available at: https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2018/12/04/sarah-markham-dealing-with-iatrogenic-harm-in-mental-health/ (accessed 26 Mar 2021).
Spandler, H. and Mckeown, M. (2017), "Exploring the Case for Truth and Reconciliation in Mental Health Services", Mental Health Review Journal, Vol. 22 No 2., available at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/316848109_Exploring_the_case_for_truth_and_reconciliation_in_mental_health_services/ (accessed 26 Mar 2021).
Links for further reading:
What is restorative justice?
Principles of Restorative Practice
Restorative Justice and Restorative Practice
Restorative Justice in Everyday Life
Restorative Approaches in Schools in the UK
Time to Think: Using Restorative Questions
Copyright 2021 Zoe Layton. All rights reserved.
How working in customer service taught me how to support people in crisis
Customer service is often viewed as low-skilled work, but there is actually an art to doing it well.
I have had a number of customer service jobs, including working for various auto breakdown services, and a private pathology lab. I was often on the phone to distraught people: perhaps they'd had a smash on the M25, and they had 3 terrified children with them, or they were waiting for a breast cancer test result that was running late and were petrified the delay was due to bad news.
Those calls were much trickier than the average; however, through them I learned some fundamental principles that have continued to help me help others, including work with prisoners, rough sleepers, and those with mental illness, for many years since.
Whether you are dealing with a vulnerable person in crisis or a customer on the phone, these principles come in handy.
Here are 9 that I see as the most important:
1. What people define as a crisis is relative
A crisis can be an enduring situation where someone's entire life is collapsing quite literally, or it can be a sudden, short-lived incident that causes acute stress but is able to be resolved within a day, or even a few hours.
What one person experiences as a crisis may not be the same as another.
Timing is also a consideration – someone might normally cope very well, but they might not have the emotional resources to cope at other times, depending on what else is happening for them.
All reasons for distress are valid and relevant because of the meaning they have for the person experiencing them.
It is best to avoid judging someone coming to you in crisis, even if their issue does not resonate with you, or it could be seen as minor or silly in comparison to others.
People need to feel like their problems are not just valid, but that the extent and gravity of their problems as they see them is acknowledged.
People, understandably, need to feel like they matter, and that their problems matter to you as much as they matter to them.
2. You can make a big difference in just one interaction
When someone is already stressed out, whether it is because they've dropped their phone down the loo, or they've found themselves suddenly homeless, the last thing they need is a difficult interaction when they reach out for help. This only makes people feel more stressed, angry, and frustrated with their situation.
We all know what a relief it can be to have a problem sorted out speedily and adeptly. The call handler is friendly, empathetic, and competent, immediately putting you at ease. They give you opportunities to ask questions, explain what you're not sure of, and tell you what they will do to help. You come off the phone feeling lighter and less worried about your problem, now it is in someone else's capable hands. Your stress levels decrease immediately.
Most of us have had experiences at both ends of this spectrum and can remember how differently we felt after each of them.
You can radically affect how stressed someone feels in quite a short space of time, depending on how you approach their issues and how you treat them.
You do not have to work in a call centre. The same principle works when supporting people in social or healthcare environments.
Make the most of those opportunities. Lessen their burden, instead of adding to it.
3. Anger is fear and a need to be heard
When someone in crisis appears angry, it is often fear in disguise.
Understanding this is key to being able to help someone whose stress comes across as anger.
If someone seems frustrated or angry, I stop talking and I listen. I let them do the talking.
After they get their initial rush of frustration out, most people begin to relax, especially if they aren't coming up against resistance from you, and it is obvious that you are listening.
A calm, attentive reaction often takes people by surprise. They've most likely been expecting a battle, and you don't let that happen.
You will notice their relief emerging as they begin to slow down, take some breaths & come to a calmer, more centred place. Sometimes people begin feel a bit embarrassed at their outburst, and they apologise. So many times, I have heard the words:
"I'm sorry, I know it's not your fault – I'm just so stressed about it all and I don't know what to do."
At which point I say 'it's ok, I understand that this is very difficult for you/stressful for you' or something similar.
People often just need to be heard and have their fears acknowledged. They need to be able to share the impact a situation is having upon them and have someone be a witness to that. They need to feel the emotions they are having are externally valid.
Anger is rarely about you as the helper: it is more about the person's situation, and how afraid and out of control they feel because of it.
(N.B. I am not saying anyone should have to tolerate aggression. It is not okay for someone to be abusive. I have found that active listening, followed by focusing on joint problem-solving, is very effective in de-escalating anger. If it isn't working, it is important to be assertive and possibly end the interaction if they are being aggressive towards you.)
4. People need allies
Someone in crisis who is reaching out for help longs to feel that they aren't alone.
Being distressed and alone is something no one should have to experience.
Knowing that someone is helping to shoulder the weight of their problem (especially someone who has access to resources to help them fix it) can make a huge difference to how powerless someone feels.
It doesn't mean that you should do all the work for them, or that you should step outside professional boundaries. Even simply ensuring the person has a positive and genuine interaction with you will help them feel less alone. Be a human.
Even if there's little you are actually able to do for that person, just listening and acknowledging their frustrations is a wonderful way to be an ally.
5. Be reliable
This is one of the simplest, but also most powerful, of these principles.
I cannot stress enough how important it is to be reliable when you are working with someone in crisis.
It is likely that you represent a glimmer of hope for that person, so don't just throw that away.
If you say you'll do something, you must do it. If you forget easily, make a note, or put it in your calendar.
If you're not able to do what you said you would, let them know. Get in touch and tell them that you'll need a couple more days to find something out, or that you're going to be trying something else instead.
Not doing something when you said you would (especially when someone is relying on you to help them), shows that person that they don't really matter – even if that is not your intention.
Don't just leave someone in limbo, wondering what's happening. Call them. Get in touch and let them know.
It might feel easy to get lazy about these details, but don't let that happen. It is that important.
If you can't commit to an action or communication, it is probably best not to make or state those commitments in the first place.
Don't take the easy road and simply tell people what they want to hear, just to make your life easier. Honesty is everything – even if it means delivering less than satisfactory news.
People appreciate being told the truth.
Most people prefer news that isn't what they want to hear to lies or vagueness given only to placate. This is otherwise known as 'fobbing someone off', and most of us know how that can feel.
7. Move people forward
A manager and trainer at Citizens' Advice taught me this:
You may not be able to solve someone's problems in one go, but you should aim to move them on a step further than when they came to you.
Openness, warmth, and a listening ear may be helpful in the moment, but you should also think about what you could give the person that they can take away with them.
It might be something tangible such as an information leaflet or a telephone number to call, but equally important are hope, the relief of a problem shared, the courage that comes from having an ally, or even some restored faith in humanity.
We can all think of times when we've walked away from an interaction feeling more hopeful, whether it was from a medical appointment or a call to the insurance company.
Think about how you want that person to feel when they put the phone down, or walk away from your office.
People feel better when they can see where they are going, or what steps to take next. It is like finally receiving a map to somewhere when you've been completely lost.
8. Everyone can benefit
We could probably all do with more customer service in our lives! You don't have to be in an official 'helper' position.
I use these principles in my daily life to support others, even my partner, my parents, and my friends. I regularly ask myself:
"What can I do to help this person? How can we sort this situation out? Will letting them talk while I listen help? How can I help, in this moment, to take them from feeling stressed to feeling a bit better about things?"
9. Be human
I'm not suggesting by using customer service principles we should all become call-centre robots. Not at all. Good customer service is warm, supportive, and validating. Everyone is treated as an individual equally as important as the last, and everyone's plight is as valid as the next.
Nurse, doctor, receptionist, call handler, or friend: any of us can make a difference to other people's distress by thinking about how we interact with them, and what effect that might have on them. It doesn't matter who you are or what position you hold, these principles apply to everyone.
It is about being a human being talking to another human being: the simplest things are often the most powerful!
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Preston selectmen to discuss hospital petition
MATTHEW L. BROWN
Mar 24, 2011 at 12:01 AM Mar 24, 2011 at 12:15 PM
The Board of Selectmen, at its 6:30 p.m. meeting tonight, is expected to take up whether to allow voters to decide if the town should deal with World LLC on the sale of the former Norwich Hospital property.
The meeting will be held at Preston Town Hall.
More than 140 residents signed a petition demanding that selectmen approve a special meeting to ask residents whether the town should accept World LLC's offer of a $200,000, 120-day option to buy about 144 acres of the 390-acre, 55-building property.
The Preston Redevelopment Agency, which was appointed to implement the redevelopment of the hospital property after the town bought it from the state for $1 in 2009, has held off on dealing with developers while it puts together a comprehensive site development plan.
But World LLC, which answered a formal Request for Qualifications late last year, and town residents, have become impatient with the agency's slow pace.

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package com.progym.custom;

import org.androidannotations.annotations.EViewGroup;
import org.androidannotations.annotations.ViewById;

import android.content.Context;
import android.widget.ImageView;
import android.widget.RelativeLayout;
import android.widget.TextView;

import com.progym.R;

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     @ViewById public TextView twIngridientsAmount;

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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


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Just last month the Norwegian University of Science and Technology released a study that compared the impact of collecting food waste to convert it to biogas (recycling) versus cutting food waste (prevention). A growing number of waste management plants in both the United States and Europe are processing food waste into biogas, which significantly reduces CO2 emissions when it replaces fossil fuels. But is this process a good long-term solution for the environment?
This study reminds us of a simple fact: It takes more energy to collect and process food waste than it would if people didn't throw it away in the first place.
Sounds obvious, yet food waste prevention is often overlooked, in our society as a whole and also within foodservice operations that we work with here at LeanPath. This study suggests that prevention is overlooked and food recycling gets more of the attention in Norway for two reasons: because there's no clear goal at the national level, and because society values marketable goods, such as biogas.
The study separated food waste into two groups: avoidable food waste (food that should have been eaten), and unavoidable food waste (bones, shells, peels). In the consumer sector, much of the food waste was driven by date label confusion, something that's getting a lot of attention in the U.S. (see the Expired film from Harvard's Food Law and Policy Clinic).
In the foodservice industry, we come across this quite often in our work at LeanPath, where we find that operations go straight to solutions to recycle or divert food waste from the landfill, before they've examined the source of the food waste problem. On average, 50 percent or more of the food wastage that's occurring in kitchens is avoidable waste.
This report reminds us to focus on prevention first, for the greatest environmental and financial impact, and then look at ways to keep the unavoidable food waste out of the landfill.
Interested in tools to help build your organization's food waste strategy? Check out the LeanPath webinar and companion checklist: "10 Steps to Building a 2016 Food Waste Strategy."


text:
Q: Error receiving response from the server? I'm making an app that stores some data on a database, then it retrieves it.
On the server side I'm working with PHP, and on the client side I've got this file that gets the input and pass it to the PHP file.
new AsyncTask<String, String, String>() {

                JSONParser jsonParser = new JSONParser();
                private ProgressBar pBar;
                private String url_post_pet = "http://192.168.0.13/Android/post_pet.php";

                // JSON Node names
                private static final String TAG_SUCCESS = "success";

                /**
                 * Before starting background thread Show Progress Dialog
                 */
                @Override
                protected void onPreExecute() {
                    super.onPreExecute();
                    //pBar = new ProgressBar();
                    //pBar.setIndeterminate(false);
                    //pBar.setVisibility(View.VISIBLE);
                }

                @Override
                protected String doInBackground(String... args) {
                    // Building Parameters
                    HashMap<String, String> params = new HashMap<>();
                    params.put("name", a);
                    params.put("breed", BREED);
                    params.put("type", TYPE);
                    params.put("images", "Whatever");
                    params.put("description", c);
                    params.put("coords", b);

                    // getting JSON Object
                    // Note that create product url accepts POST method
                    JSONObject json = jsonParser.makeHttpRequest(url_post_pet,
                            "POST", params);
                    // check log cat for response
                    Log.d("Create Response", json.toString());

                    // check for success tag
                    try {
                        int success = json.getInt(TAG_SUCCESS);

                        if (success == 1) {
                            // successfully created product
                            Intent i = new Intent(getApplicationContext(), MainActivity.class);
                            startActivity(i);

                            // closing this screen
                            finish();
                        } else {
                            // failed to create product
                        }
                    } catch (JSONException e) {
                        System.out.println("exception" + e);
                        e.printStackTrace();
                    }
                    System.out.println("nul");
                    return null;
                }

                /**
                 * After completing background task Dismiss the progress dialog
                 **/
                protected void onPostExecute(String file_url) {
                    // dismiss the dialog once done
                    //pBar.dismiss();
                }
            }.execute();

        }
    });
}

Also, i've got this JSONParser:
public class JSONParser {

String charset = "UTF-8";
HttpURLConnection conn;
DataOutputStream wr;
StringBuilder result;
URL urlObj;
JSONObject jObj = null;
StringBuilder sbParams;
String paramsString;

public JSONObject makeHttpRequest(String url, String method,
                                  HashMap<String, String> params) {

    sbParams = new StringBuilder();
    int i = 0;
    for (String key : params.keySet()) {
        try {
            if (i != 0){
                sbParams.append("&");
            }
            sbParams.append(key).append("=")
                    .append(URLEncoder.encode(params.get(key), charset));

        } catch (UnsupportedEncodingException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
        i++;
    }

    if (method.equals("POST")) {
        // request method is POST
        try {
            urlObj = new URL(url);
            conn = (HttpURLConnection) urlObj.openConnection();
            conn.setDoOutput(true);
            conn.setRequestMethod("POST");
            conn.setRequestProperty("Accept-Charset", charset);
            conn.setReadTimeout(10000);
            conn.setConnectTimeout(15000);
            conn.connect();

            paramsString = sbParams.toString();

            wr = new DataOutputStream(conn.getOutputStream());
            wr.writeBytes(paramsString);
            wr.flush();
            wr.close();

        } catch (IOException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }
    else if(method.equals("GET")){
        // request method is GET

        if (sbParams.length() != 0) {
            url += "?" + sbParams.toString();
        }

        try {
            urlObj = new URL(url);
            conn = (HttpURLConnection) urlObj.openConnection();
            conn.setDoOutput(false);
            conn.setRequestMethod("GET");
            conn.setRequestProperty("Accept-Charset", charset);
            conn.setConnectTimeout(15000);
            conn.connect();

        } catch (IOException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }

    }

    try {
        //Receive the response from the server
        InputStream in = new BufferedInputStream(conn.getInputStream());
        BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(in));
        result = new StringBuilder();
        String line;
        while ((line = reader.readLine()) != null) {
            result.append(line);
        }

        Log.d("JSON Parser", "result: " + result.toString());
    } catch (IOException e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
    }

    conn.disconnect();

    // try parse the string to a JSON object
    try {
        System.out.println(jObj);
        jObj = new JSONObject(result.toString());
    } catch (JSONException e) {
        Log.e("JSON Parser", "Error parsing data " + e.toString());
    }

    // return JSON Object
    return jObj;
}

And this is the error i get every time i submit the data:

08-26 12:51:08.236 5089-5156/chtecnologies.myapplication D/JSON Parser: result:08-26 12:51:08.239 5089-5156/chtecnologies.myapplication E/JSON Parser: Error parsing data org.json.JSONException: End of input at character 0 of
  08-26 12:51:08.793 5089-5096/chtecnologies.myapplication W/art: Suspending all threads took: 190.496ms
  08-26 12:51:09.245 5089-5096/chtecnologies.myapplication W/art: Suspending all threads took: 137.277ms
  08-26 12:51:09.267 5089-5156/chtecnologies.myapplication E/AndroidRuntime: FATAL EXCEPTION: AsyncTask #1
                                                                             Process: chtecnologies.myapplication, PID: 5089
                                                                             java.lang.RuntimeException: An error occured while executing doInBackground()
                                                                                at android.os.AsyncTask$3.done(AsyncTask.java:304)
                                                                                at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.finishCompletion(FutureTask.java:355)
                                                                                at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.setException(FutureTask.java:222)
                                                                                at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.run(FutureTask.java:242)
                                                                                at android.os.AsyncTask$SerialExecutor$1.run(AsyncTask.java:231)
                                                                                at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1112)
                                                                                at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:587)
                                                                                at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:818)
                                                                              Caused by: java.lang.NullPointerException: Attempt to invoke virtual method 'java.lang.String org.json.JSONObject.toString()' on a null object reference
                                                                                at chtecnologies.myapplication.PostPet$4$1.doInBackground(PostPet.java:154)
                                                                                at chtecnologies.myapplication.PostPet$4$1.doInBackground(PostPet.java:118)
                                                                                at android.os.AsyncTask$2.call(AsyncTask.java:292)
                                                                                at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.run(FutureTask.java:237)
                                                                                at android.os.AsyncTask$SerialExecutor$1.run(AsyncTask.java:231)
                                                                                at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1112)
                                                                                at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:587)
                                                                                at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:818)

The data successfully goes into the database, but there seems to be a problem in the JSONParser, than can't get the result of the PHP file.
Would you tell me if there's anything wrong in the JSONParser file or somewhere else? This is the first time that i implement a server in my app, i hope you can help me! Thanks

A: The way you are sending data looks fishy. If you want to send data in POST use HttpURLConnection like
String postParam = "name=" + a + "&breed=" + BREED + "&type=" + "&images=" +
        Whatever + "&description=" + c + "&coords=" + b;

try {
    URL url = new URL(url);
    HttpURLConnection connection = (HttpURLConnection) url.openConnection();

    connection.setRequestMethod("POST");
    connection.setDoOutput(true);
    connection.setDoInput(true);
    connection.setRequestProperty("Content-type", "application/x-www-form-urlencoded");

    OutputStream os = connection.getOutputStream();
    os.write(postParam.getBytes());
    os.flush();
    os.close();

    // Fetching the response code
    responseCode = connection.getResponseCode();
    Log.d(TAG, "POST Response Code: " + responseCode);
} catch (Exception e) {
    e.printStackTrace();
}

connection.setRequestMethod- sets Method you want to send your data with GET/POST
connection.setDoOutput(true)- to let you sent the output
connection.setDoInput(true)- to let you receive input after sending the data (if any)
Hope this solves your problem!

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
SURF • SKATE • SNOW • SUP • WAKE • KITE • WIND
About Board Retailers Association
The Association Dedicated to Uniting & Protecting Specialty Retailers & the Boardsports Lifestyle.
East and West Coast retailers formed the Board Retailers Association in February 2003 in an effort to consolidate the voices, experiences and visions of boardsports retailers into a cohesive organization. Under the direction of BRA's Chairman and Board of Directors, the non-profit trade association serves as the preeminent voice for independent retailers on a grassroots level with manufacturers, trade show representatives, and other associations. Since its inception, BRA has brought about many positive changes, and we're looking forward to building on them throughout the coming years. Read more about our memberships here.
Among our goals are to identify ways to help lower the day-to-day cost of doing business and to negotiate as a group what is beneficial to individual stores, thus strengthening our distribution base and helping the industry grow. Most important is the mission of the association: to provide specialty retailers the educational tools necessary to remain successful and profitable in the boardsports industry. Currently, the association represents about 600 independent boardsports retailers across the country.
The Board Retailers Association (BRA) is the unified voice and action group representing independent board sports retailers across the United States. The name Board Retailers Association reflects the multidimensional aspect that most retailers in our industry have. Surfboarding, skateboarding, snowboarding wakeboarding, kiteboarding and windsurfing all share a central theme as board sport retailers. BRA organizes and expresses the views and concerns of independent board sport retailers to manufacturer's associations and major trade show organizations in an effort to help promote our industry and support the board sports specialty retailer.
To be the preeminent, cohesive, nationwide organization, recognized as the representative of the diverse interests of all Boardsports Retailers. BRA strives to be the most effective provider of quality information and services to members, which in turn fosters an environment conducive to their business success.
BRA also contributes to the industry through its non-profit foundation. The Board Retailers Association Foundation, Inc. raises money through sponsored charitable events. BRA hopes to increase the reach of the foundation by sponsoring amateur contests in the future.
The Board Retailers Association will act as the primary voice and action group within the retail boardsports industry. The Board Retailers Association will organize and express the views and concerns of Boardsports Retailers to Manufacturer's Associations and the Trade Show Organizations in an effort to help promote our industry and support the independent retailer.


text:
FICTION - ISSUE FOUR
MORGAN BEATTY
Giving in to his demand, Cole's step-mother lets the boy stay up late to watch the weather. His father drifts in his chair, nearly asleep, work boots tossed on the floor. Cole has watched as over the last three days four massive storm swirls superimposed on TV radar maps a picture of a world intent on blowing them away. He feels the embattled thrill of belonging to a community under siege. He thinks he might be good at this.
Following a set of commercials, the weatherman skips his ceremonial, funny remarks. Right away, let's go to the areas hardest hit.
A house stripped naked on every side. Cole watches an overweight mother and two small girls in oversized emergency relief clothing pick through possessions littering their lawn. He has no way to figure them. Are they poor and alone, with no father, when this storm destroyed them? Are they born to wade through their own wet scatter while he sits there on the living room floor, in pajamas, watching them, or are they resilient, and could the father just be out getting help?
The camera moves toward a sheaf of damp plywood sagging from the corner of their porch and focuses in. Hair-thin silver fibers have been speared in a long weave across the damp grain of the wood. Whiskers, says the voice on TV, are all that remains of one family's cat.
Cole's father laughs. Kathy laughs one beat late, she thinks, and isn't sure how her husband will react. She didn't mean anything by barking out sardonically, and she's grown tired of Leroy's acting like he's napping, his evenings spent watching the television through slitted eyes. He seems older than he is when she asks him if he's asleep.
"Let's have a change of channels," she says.
"No, keep it," Cole says to his father, steward of the clickers.
Where has your cat gone, the reporter says. The two toddler girls, twins drowning in those donated t-shirts, point to the powder blue sky above their flattened home and answer in unison, There.
Kathy stifles a giggle. Laughing is a giving in. To some things, and, in some situations, to everything. She has already given in once tonight. She hopes they'll end the weather with a bang that will satisfy Cole and send his mind toward bed.
Next, in a neighboring county a soybean farmer displays in his nicked and knobby hands a clot of wet baseball cards and recounts how late last night, while he was out checking his fences, he found the cards blown from someone's bedroom miles away. They cover his field like a light snowfall.
Cole says, "But, that doesn't explain where the cat ended up."
Hearing his father laugh again, Cole sees a way to manage the fear that has slid into their living room. He points to the TV. Kathy readies herself to force a laugh now, because she feels that Cole wants to be funny again and she needs his father to help by laughing with her. She can't tell if Leroy has fallen back asleep. It might be just her and the boy, watching TV.
There, on the news, a dirty, white house, small and mean-looking, collapses live on tape in slow motion. The roof falls down, in and on itself. Walls disintegrate under the roof's weight. Cole watches the replay but can't find anything funny to say. A house is mostly empty. A house is a mostly empty space that can be flattened to nothing. He decides the girls who lost their cat are poor and have no father out looking for help.
In the morning, the kitchen floor strewn with wet newspaper, Cole's father shoving on his work boots and there, on the paper's front page, a large photograph of a sign that reads Keep AWAY From The RADAR uprooted and flung, ripping into a TV station's white radar dome, his step-mother answering the phone call from the city taking Cole's cursing father out to the field, the newspaper crushed under his father's muddy boot as he steps out to the porch, headline shouting in letters as large as the picture, DISASTER.
Now they're gone. Before she left to buy food, Cole's step-mother said the supermarkets have become panicked places of shoving and grabbing, too dangerous for a ten year-old. Cole paces the kitchen, the phone held to his left ear, listening to a computerized voice give the weather report. First Missouri Credit Union, 2:29 p.m. Time and temperature, the number he called for the weather forecast after the latest storm hit hard, raged over his flinching home, then unrolled to the south, bubbling with thunder and fast as the world.
He hopes the computer's voice will lend the afternoon more danger, but it sounds ordinary, Forty-three degrees. Cole wants to be outside, to be unlike the other neighborhood kids who abandoned their bikes in the middle of their drives at the first sound of thunder smashing miles distant.
The phone says, Winds from the north-northwest at 15 miles per hour.
The day looks long. April cloud light re-paints the gray kitchen appliances blue-green, but the cover is gradually breaking and the sun is returning in rippling pools and slices. Outside a window, the robin's nest Cole's father looks after, taking pictures of and blogging about, has been brushed by the storm from its branch. Clotted nest material cascades down the tree's trunk with broken twigs, brown grass and eggshell pieces.
Cole places his foot on the wet newspaper lying on the kitchen floor. His shoe is half the size of his father's print. He knows he could be good at this.
Cole helps his father with the blog about the nest, posts it on Facebook once a week, from the early building stages to the three blue eggs cuddled there. His step-mother never joins them. His father remarried three years ago in a courthouse wedding Cole cannot remember more about than the bloated face of the man who married them, and her name is Kathy, and she's been unwilling to play board games, card games, do puzzles, give out quarters at a video game arcade. Cole wants the phone to ring so he can tell his father about the total destruction of the nest. If he can't tell him, if his father comes home tired and wired and becomes upset about something, anything, Kathy could say, This is all about the nest, and his father wouldn't know what she was talking about, and Cole would feel any chance of humor sigh out of him. There's a counter slowly ticking the low number of visitors to his blog. Cole sends his biological mother links to its updates, but she rarely emails back.
First Missouri Credit Union, 2:31 pm. Cole ends the call and listens to the house. An eave outside the window makes a muffled pop, something above the kitchen ceiling cracks with close presence. Cole brings the phone to his ear and wills it to ring with his father's voice on the other end.
The storms came at the beginning of the week and they cancelled school. They cancelled school, they cancelled work, they cancelled everything except his father's running out to fix the power lines. Since high and low pressure systems met in the sky above someone else's house, a warehouse, buildings Cole doesn't know, the systems have been bringing them all to the ground.
Kathy waits in line at the Kroger's, forty souls deep. Backed into the aisles, she can hardly hear the check-out scanners beeping and feels like she's dreaming the morning while she watches the shopping carts before her, unmoving. The front, she remembers, its strength undetected by radar and satellites until it is upon them, hits the house just as she opens the southern windows for reasons she isn't sure she understands. One's supposed to do something about the air pressure. The leading blast sends Cole and her into animal crouches, snaps a bug screen free of its window casing and flips it across the room. It comes to rest upright in Cole's father's faded armchair. Lumpy and surrounded by the thin, pinkish newspapers he mail orders from his hometown near Kingfisher, Kansas, the chair is spiritually his father's, but Cole can sit in it and Leroy will take his dinner plate to sit on the couch instead, will watch the weather channel and won't complain about Cole taking his place. Kathy's chair is hers alone. It's something about the pressure differential between the inside and the outside of the house, she decides, as the line moves one shopper forward.
The television is off. Emergency warnings do not fill the living room. The phone was wrong. Clear skies. The remaining afternoon is long. Cole knows that TV-ironies will lie within the reach of his legs and the limits of his knowledge of the names of neighboring streets. He's through the porch door when his step-mother's car noses into the drive.
This storm has left behind a sky more radiantly blue than he has ever seen. It's a blowout blue, an atlas blue, the blue of the blue energy that slices through a ray-gunned villain in one of Cole's comic books, and it's into this blue that he runs as Kathy shouts at his back, "Did your dad call?"
The blue through the tree branches and leaves, juddering and blurring as he runs down the porch steps. He sits on the curb above the stenciled numbers of his address. Nothing can stop him from coming out to witness the weird work of the high winds. Soon the neighborhood kids might come out. Soon, jumping off the steps that lead up to their screened-in porches, all the neighborhood kids will come out to search the gutters for something to play with, and then his dad will come home and will find Cole sitting on the curb, facing nature.
He puts his feet in the gutter and lets the chilly runoff flow around his pale calves. The little rough caps made by the flowing water turn the gutter into his river, his legs the sturdy tree trunks the river goes around.
During storms, his father calls from wherever he's fixing power lines to say he's all right, and this calms Kathy, who up to this point is always an overwhelming presence, straightening the kitchen madly, like a sped-up movie, winding herself. Cole wants to tell his father about the bug screen in his chair, thrown there by the storm damage that called him out.
He watches the water stream below the bridge of his legs. The drowned robin, a brown chick with a blasted circle of feathers around its neck sluices and bumps its way toward him. He lifts his legs and holds his breath, and as the bird disappears below his thighs he shudders at the thought of one of his father's birds coming alive, erupting like a white dove explodes from a magician's fist, flying up between his knees, getting lost and panicking about Cole's face then taking a wounded flight into the shredded treetops. What would he tell his father, that his birds are alive, that they flew away? The bird re-emerges and floats to a storm drain where it stops, its leg or beak caught in the grate, and spins circles in the water.
Cole hears a set of tires skid on the slick street. A red Jeep dashes into the flooded intersection two doors down, blowing a standing wave from its hood. Cole feels time stop in his belly. The Jeep continues in its original direction and as it hydroplanes through the intersection and disappears beyond the curve to the next block, Cole silently counts and when he gets to five he hears the crash.
"Leroy hasn't called back," Kathy says.
Inside, Kathy speaks quickly into the telephone to her friend, Melissa. Mel, whose electricity is out, has called to hear a friendly voice while everything in her refrigerator spoils.
"It's getting like the Third World out here," Mel says.
"I'm waiting for his call," Kathy says.
"I hope he gets here and fixes me up."
"He was cut off and he hasn't called back," Kathy says.
A weather report interrupts a game show. There's a radar map showing wind direction and speed. Kathy finds her location inked the relative safety of red. Fibroid streaks of blue countervailing winds jab southward. The weatherman's hand drawn white lines appear at the leading edge of the winds, accompanied by his quick tumble of meteorological jargon.
"What are they showing?" Melissa asks.
"Wait," Kathy says.
She watches the wavy lines drawn by the weatherman. She hears a new rawness and edge in his voice today and wonders whether he has slept much since last night's news. She wonders if weathermen are geeks, decides they are, but that calls into question whether any of them can be as heroic as this one seems, in times like this. Here is a man whose presence is easily taken for granted, the butt of jokes, his own, the counterbalance to fires and foreign disasters and death. Here is a man who one week ago apologized for a three-degree decrease in the weekend weather preview, and now he's indicating the guesstimated direction of this, what is it now, fifth freak storm, using nervous strokes of his light pen, and what scares her more than the memory of the shearing wind and lightning of two hours ago is the thought of the weatherman sitting in a bunker somewhere, his jacket off and sleeves rolled past the elbow, unable to hold his hand steady.
"They're getting hit again 20 miles north," she says to Mel. "He got cut off and he hasn't called back, it came on so quickly, it's apparently getting worse."
She turns from the TV and searches the window over the backyard to get a location on Cole. He's somewhere in the neighborhood playing with lightning poles or exploring a drainage ditch or what-else.
Kathy says, "Leroy could be on a crew up there."
"Those guys are safe," Mel says. "They know where to go."
"He hasn't called back."
Kathy looks out the window but immediately returns to the TV and away from her view of the backyard, where she saw, in the moment of her turning, the shredded remains of Leroy's bird's nest, tipped at an angle, its soggy, empty pocket. As she hears the weatherman say, Taking a look at the roadways, she turns from the thought of Leroy's baby birds lying dead at the bottom of the tree, or eggs cracked open and running, and how often she'd hear about it now, the new, sorry blog posts Leroy would write, with photos of his dead. She concentrates on the graphic on the TV.
It's a black map with the state borders marked by thin orange lines, and over it all, washing across the entire state and speckled in the south, are hundreds of green flecks, or animated X's. They cascade down the map, flipping on and off as they advance, buzzing like the pains stomped from a sleeping foot.
Lightning strike activity, says the weatherman. These are ground strikes occurring over the last fifteen minutes.
The multiplicity increases as it goes southwest, or as it descends on Mel and then flies from Mel to Kathy. Air pressure, kids and pets inside, pile mattresses on yourself, Kathy knows the weatherman will soon say. Lightning strikes the same spots more than once in the moment before the map cuts to a video feed. Quivering beads of water seem to cling to the face of the TV. The drops rotate and then disappear as the camera, up in a helicopter, focuses on an eighteen-wheeler with a broken neck lying across a stretch of highway, smashed cars pressing into its side like nursing kittens.
It's not close, the accident, and this calms Kathy. She didn't drive on that highway today, and she didn't get stuck in that hellish traffic immediately following the supermarket line, tiny bottle of Advil opened before she paid for it, Kathy choking to death in a puddle of her own boredom.
Mel says, "What are they showing now?"
A businessman is walking toward Cole. He carries a dripping briefcase in his right hand and a folded brown suit jacket in his left. He's two houses away from Cole and his pants are wet and his white shirt clings to him, though his hair is dry and stands from his head on one side. Cole wants to say something funny, when he sees that the businessman's face, or half of it, is running with blood. Cole doesn't want the man to come any closer now, but the man is walking toward him, eyes roaming, and the inquisitive tilt of his head and the half-smile on the bloody side of his face seem to say that he's embarrassed to ask for directions.
Cole wants his father to come home right now, as he does without a schedule during emergencies. He could be home, clear skies for the remainder of the day, at any time. Three paces from Cole the man comes to an unsteady halt and lifts his briefcase to his head, splays three fingers away from the handle and attempts to wipe his face. He gives up, lowers the briefcase and reaches with his other hand in a cross-body, backhand move. With the cuff of his suit jacket he wipes the blood into a bold pink upstroke across his cheek.
"I have to get back to my office."
"Yeah," Cole says.
Cole is about to go back inside to try calling his father again when the man says, "Look what I found."
He produces from the folds of his jacket an orange foam football. Cole brings himself into a crouch, ready to leap for his toss. In the Jennings' yard three blocks away there's an orange football so long wedged in an un-climbable tree that the neighborhood kids have given up trying to knock it loose. Occasionally, Cole goes to the tree with three rocks. His father calls it the neighborhood religion. Cole prays to be the one to knock down the ball that has been hanging up there for months, remote as a satellite.
"Where'd you get that?" Cole says.
The man looks at the ball for a puzzled second. "In the gutter."
"Can I see it?" Cole gets to his feet and makes a move toward the businessman. The man looks startled and takes a wobbling step into the street. His eyebrows press into a frown, releasing a dollop of blood from a gash in hairline.
"When you grow up and crash your jeep," he says, "God will give you a football."
He tucks the ball under his arm and staggers by.
A beep announces the arrival of another call.
"I'm going to try not to lose you, Mel," Kathy says. She switches to the other line.
She hears only ignorant silence. She carefully taps the button again. This time there's a distant sound, like a brain buzz after a whack to the head, but no Melanie.
She dials Leroy's field phone.
"Yes." A man's voice.
She waits, hears only the sound of heavy wind in the earpiece of the phone. This isn't her husband, but it doesn't matter. There's the world out there bursting at its seams, raining hail beyond reason, and she allows herself to ask what it was that she signed up for, knowing that this is uncontrollable, the winds.
"What have you been doing," she says. "Why didn't you call or pick up?"
"Kathy Gaines? Originally Kathy Mathis."
"Oh, Leroy's been trying to get you on the phone. He's been up a cherry picker thirty minutes now, and they can't have electronics on them. It's the lightning. There's a high chance of getting, there's a high chance of this storm passing us by."
"Where are you?" Kathy says.
The sound of the wind in the phone increases. Kathy thinks it must be like a hurricane where this man is standing, holding Leroy's phone.
"I can't hear you."
Kathy says nothing as she is drawn into a furniture store commercial, her mother's voice coming unbidden: Daytime TV: bad for you. Mid-way into the announcement of the price of a sleeper sofa, there he is, looking tired and mussed, yet Kathy knows he's wired with the thrill of cutting into a commercial. Right away let's go to the satellite.
The state appears in a computerized green overlaid with photographic swirls of the storm that passed over this afternoon, but now his opaque chalk lines are jabbing northwest, and the weatherman is saying, In the past few minutes, developing by the minute, a very rare pattern, as another blotch of dense white cloud cover advances toward the center of the map.
In the next shot, the weatherman accepts a piece of paper shakily handed to him with a look of raw fear, the TV leaving his face, then the report abruptly cuts to a wide satellite image, which seems to be saying that another storm has gathered behind the new one. Kathy watches, waiting for the man to re-appear from beneath the maps and graphics and victims' interviews. He's the show.
She has the phone in her left hand, the TV remote tight in her right fist. Another satellite image of storms lined up like 747s on a holiday runway. Another necklace of storm cells. Cut to the weatherman: People in central Missouri need to be in their basements. A woman in an open-necked white blouse, face cropped above her frown by the video frame, runs between the weatherman and the camera, blocking him out for a moment. Kathy finds her attractive, the torso of the female that went by, the blur and cropping and focus all off but still, she must be pretty, and Kathy wonders whether there's tension at the station caused by her and her torso walking around. The TV flips to a shot of the new storm lying like a black curtain across a highway.
Cole lets the businessman reach the next corner and turn right, lucky that the Jennings' house is left. He starts at a fast jog. The blue, the deeply wet-earth smells, it seems so natural spinning there in the storm drain two blocks down that Cole has only to side step a little off the sidewalk to bend and scoop up the football in one motion.
It's impossible not to want to see where it came from, to make finding the football more real. Cole jogs another three blocks to find the front end of the businessman's Jeep wrapped around the trunk of the tree in front of the Jennings' house. The porch door opens and Hilda, middle-aged, appears carrying a garment bag. Their dog, a ratty, eternally barking mix, shoots out of the house, skids to a stop at Cole's feet and fires a burst of surprised yaps.
The wedge-spot that held the football is as empty as the blue that shines through it, cold and silent. It's raining softly from the clear skies.
"I'm glad that thing finally came down," Hilda says on her wobbling way to the van parked in the driveway.
Bob comes out of the house with a styrofoam cooler in his arms, rushes to the van, calling out for Hilda to get the back doors open. He drops the cooler and says to Cole, "It's a miracle you didn't break our windows."
"I saw that guy," Cole says, and points at the smashed Jeep. Cole has now spoken to this man exactly twice, and he has lived his entire life here.
"Where's your dad?" Hilda says.
"He's out on repairs," Cole says.
"You need to get home, I bet he's waiting there for you."
"What are we forgetting?" Bob says.
Hilda says, "Forget about what we're forgetting. Let's get going."
Bob looks down at Cole.
"You need to be home," he says, his breath sour.
Home to his step-mother flailing and opening windows, robins' nests destroyed. The afternoon is long. There are things these storms must give up. It could be Bob, who taught Cole and three of the other neighborhood boys to build a homemade radio. It had been the only time Bob invited anyone into his garage, packed tight with tiny modular shelving and electronic parts, and it seems to Cole that it was orchestrated by his father. Go visit the house of the childless couple, the vast sewing room, the dense workshop. That afternoon under the pinprick smell of burning solder Bob gave off a fierce desire that looked like the one-last-try with other people's kids. Wires shook in his hands.
Cole isn't sure what his father had been planning with his meeting Bob, but it seemed a good guess his father wanted him to see how not to be. Cole remembers the man being unable to speak and move the soldering gun at the same time. It was like watching Bob wire himself, not the radio, together. Look at it wrong and it'll fall apart, and take him along with it. Nobody touched anything as Bob built the radio, then turned it on and coaxed out of it a foreign man's voice fast and loud, angry, in a panic. Cole hasn't returned.
Bob lifts the pale slab of his face to the sky. Cole doesn't know when he first made a man not his father do something. This could be the first. Long tendrils of high harmless clouds reach across the blue.
Cole says, "There won't be any more storms today."
Fine dots of sweat glitter Bob's nose. He turns to Cole.
"You can have it," he says. "We're getting high and dry. Tell your step-mother to get her car, and you and her go somewhere else."
"We have to get going now," Hilda says.
She points down the street, toward Cole's house. In the distance above the overpass, the northwest horizon is a black wall capped with a white cloud shaped like a mountain range. The mass's inner swirls are lit by the silent punctuation of lightning flashes. The sky above is turning an underwater green, and the air comes in gentle warm drafts.
Bob says, "Yeah, you can have it," just as the trees at the end of the block bend, and their branches lose leaves. When the front hits them, picking up Hilda's gray curls, Bob gets into the driver's side of the van. Hilda turns her back to Cole and climbs in. Bob fires up the engine, and Cole has just enough time to step aside as the van backs a reckless arc into the street, rocks on its suspension, finds Drive and motors away.
Now the thunderclaps are coming on like afterthoughts, troubled and vague. There is no one on the street, and the wind has changed to a solid chilly flow flecked with fat drops. He'd rather know if his father called, and the football is his. Cole begins to jog home. Electric and telephone lines run alongside him, sagging at the center point between the poles. No line is disconnected from all the others, Cole knows through his father. They go into a house and come out again, all hooked up to each other, so when you're looking at one line here, you're looking at what I'm fixing out there, too.
Rain splatters the windows, tossed by the gusts. Kathy turns the TV down to a low panic, Get as low as possible, go to the center of your house, pile mattresses on yourself. Of course Cole's not back yet, of course he's staring up at the tree in the Jennings' front yard. As she changes channels, the lights stutter and blink, the map disappears from the TV and the house falls dark. Then with an electronic crack the ceiling fan turns again and the phone chirps in her hand. An alarm clock squawks somewhere in the house, and there's no one on the other end of the line, only the empty dial tone. Again the house goes dark, and this time remains silent and dim.
Kathy backs away from the blank TV, puts her hand holding the phone to her chest.
"Hello?" The man on the other end.
She hears the overpoweringly loud, digitized wind in the phone and feels relief. They still have a line.
"Where's Cole?" It's Leroy, out of breath.
"What," Kathy says. It's all she can say. She needs a moment to think.
"Cole. Let me speak to him."
Kathy says, "He's upstairs," and regrets it immediately. They're supposed to be in a shelter or a bathroom, in the bathtub, with mattresses smothering them.
"Are you watching TV right now?" Leroy says.
"Yes. I mean no, the power's out."
"Were you watching TV?"
"I told you, the power's out."
"When did it go out?"
"A couple of hours ago."
"So you've been away from TV for a couple of hours?"
"Yes, the power's out," Kathy says. "I told you."
"Your power went out a couple of minutes ago," Leroy says. "I work for the power company. Let me talk to Cole."
"I'm on the way home. We're not riding out this storm."
"How far away are you?" Kathy asks, calculating how long it would take to walk to the Jennings', retrieve Cole and get back.
"Got a pen? Twenty-two miles," Leroy says. "If you're counting."
"See you soon," she says, and ends the call.
Kathy goes out to the porch. The second line of fronts hits and rips the screen door from her hand. She sees Cole. His body emerges from the gray curtain of rain as a rain-shaped running boy. He exists only so much as his arms and legs slap water away, swinging.
There is nothing to see for the length of a blink of blue. A sharp pain jumps between the teeth at the back of Kathy's jaw. She is ready to see Cole lying with smoke coming from his head, but when the after-image of the lightning strike fades she finds him still running a few houses away, his feet dashing water from the street in flowering splashes.
A few steps before the lightning strikes, Cole sees his step-mother standing on the porch yelling with one hand clasped around her neck like she's trying to strangle herself. He slows to a trot. If she wants to look at him like he's dying, he'll give her more time to feel it.
When it hits, the noise and the force of the air makes him think that a car has skidded off the road and jumped the curb to dig into his back. He sees the neighborhood lit up by a blue sunrise, the shadow of his step-mother thrown onto the side of the house, a pure black, photographic copy of her flinching body. He sprints until he is jumping the four porch steps with the orange football tucked under his arm, slipping across the wet, scalloped floor boards, throwing out an arm to catch himself on the doorjamb.
His step-mother stares at him, phone held to her ear, talking to Melissa or someone else, anyone but him. Knowing he should feel a little guilty for the terrified look on his step-mother's face but somehow free of that worry, broken out of it by the lightning, a miracle cure, Cole is about to say look what I found and hold out the football, when the collapsing porch cuts him off and bats both to the deck.
Kathy thinks the crumple in her left knee is Cole sliding across the porch and colliding with her. She tells herself she's fallen and blacked out, which is why she cannot see and can feel only the pain in her left leg. Leroy will most likely explode over the porch falling down. She laughs. Twenty-two miles, bullshit. Probably more, or else there will be a post-work beer run, so she's stuck. Though her arm's nearly pinned to her side, she can, with effort, bring the phone before her face and turn on the cracked screen, spider webs of seams in the glass. She has 18 emails and more text messages waiting, which stop her. She'd wanted to use its screen as a light to find a way out. She dials Leroy, but she's lost the signal.
Cole feels a broad flat weight pressing him down, angling into a dig at the knob at the bottom of his spine. His step-mother's leg runs a hard band across his stomach. He hears her breathing heavily, with voice in her breaths, grunts and strains, whimpers. He wants to know right now, rather then when it happens, what his father will think we he comes home, finds them under all this wood and roofing. Cole doesn't want to see him worried and doesn't want to be the first pulled out of the rubble. He wants his step-mother to go before he does, his father not in a panic about him, because he feels fine. It's just this thing in his back, pressing so hard it's becoming hard to breathe.
A wrench and sigh come from the roof struts. Sounds pile atop him so quickly they recede, muffled by the debris that has fallen around them. Kathy's eyes are open but feel numb in the sudden darkness. Cole knows that the afternoon's long and there's still some room between his skin and the house as it flattens over them and comes to a rest.
Morgan Beatty received his MFA in Fiction from Columbia University, and has been published in Fence. He's a TV producer and editor in New York City.
FICTION / VISUAL ART
Little Stories
by Mark Newgarden
Lay Me Down Easy
by RL Goldberg
Sassafras and Switchblades
an interview with Gary Panter


Breedveld Trading has a service department of itself for repairing and maintenance. Here we can do preventive or regular maintenance, efficient repairs of products and mend impediments that might occur. In this way we maintain our products properly.
Through mutual agreement Breedveld Trading can dissolve anything when it comes to service and maintenance. If required, this mutual agreement can be contracted in writing.


The Pillows 22" x 22" Pillow by Surya at Sprintz Furniture in the Nashville, Franklin, and Greater Tennessee area. Product availability may vary. Contact us for the most current availability on this product.
The Pillows collection is a great option if you are looking for Accents in the Nashville, Franklin, and Greater Tennessee area.
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Michal obtained his PhD from Lodz University of Technology in Poland, specializing primarily in organic chemistry of nucleic acids. During his academic career he gained significant experience in the synthesis of biologically relevant compounds including heterobase analogues, base/sugar modified nucleosides/nucleotides as well as in synthesis of un-/modified DNA/RNA using phosphoramidite or post-synthetic approaches. At Nuclera, he is supporting the development of the building blocks for the enzymatic DNA synthesis platform.


Where have you hidden? Imagine writing a piece (a poem, prose poem, or creative nonfiction) in which you list every place you can remember hiding during your life.
Number the parts, or just separate each one with an asterisk. See what happens.


Wordless Wednesday–Because I just can't help it.
who knows that only the people who haven't had much to laugh about lately will understand this. Trust me, they need it.
Previous postThe Wonder of the School Bus.


text:
Brexit will cost BASF €10s millions a year
Richard Carter, CEO of BASF UK and Ireland
This article was published in Handelsblatt.com on 19 February 2018.
The original article is here:
https://www.handelsblatt.com/unternehmen/industrie/uk-chef-carter-im-interview-brexit-kostet-basf-bis-zu-60-millionen-euro-pro-jahr/20977914.html?ticket=ST-4194873-Wktvh3Whd2Qacse2Vgcx-ap2
The upcoming Brexit causes unrest on the executive boards of companies, and international corporations like BASF are also changing the subject. The German chemical giant has been doing business on the island since 1880, and now has 10 factories and thousands of employees, who among other things produce paints, fertilizers and pesticides. Their boss, the Briton Richard Carter, is harshly criticising the actions of the UK government.
Mr Carter, how much does the upcoming Brexit make you nervous?
19 months after the referendum there is still uncertainty about where we will eventually arrive. We are ready to make changes if we know what is needed. But the lack of certainty limits us to what we can do on a practical level now.
So how do you prepare for Brexit? What is your so-called emergency plan?
We look at tariffs and barriers to trade, talk with customs experts and our customers about the possible consequences. We've formed teams with members from the, Brussels and our headquarters in Germany, which deal with five different topics, most notably the impact on trade and regulation. For example, it would be important for us to know if the EU regulatory requirements under REACH are still valid for us.
How likely do you consider the option of "hard Brexit"?
Although the UK and the EU have now started the second phase of negotiations, this seems the most likely option right now. It is regrettable – but the companies simply have no planning certainty at the moment.
How do you rate the position of the UK Government?
We would like to see the UK Government clearly positioned, clearly demonstrating what it wants and what it will do if it does not achieve that. We are in close contact with the government, but we can not make the necessary arrangements for the day-to-day business unless the basic parameters are clear.
Have you calculated what the costs of a Brexit for BASF are?
We expect 40 to 60 million euros in extra costs per year – only through possible tariffs and tariffs, their conversion and delays in the supply chain.
Do you have advantages as a daughter of a German company?
Brexit is not just a problem for the British. A tough break with the EU will affect imports to Britain more than exports from the UK. Trade goes both ways. And the supply chains are now so complex that goods sometimes even cross the borders several times.
What would be the highest priority for BASF at Brexit?
Of course, we would like to change as little as possible. It is important for us that trade with the EU continues to run smoothly and that there will be no diverging regulatory requirements.
As a chemical company, BASF is involved in the supply chains of many companies in other industries …
Absolutely. We supply the aerospace, automotive and agricultural industries – just to name a few examples. Some of our employees are even involved in the production process directly on site. For example, we have a team of people responsible for paints at car maker Nissan in Sunderland. That's why the Brexit is so complex. The boundaries between the sectors are blurred.
There is currently talk of a transitional phase. What do you make of it? Is it useful?
In any case. We think that the "about two years" that the British government is talking about are rather short. We would prefer up to five years. The time is running out. We need certainty.
However, the future relationship between Britain and the EU will not be discussed until October.
That's just six months before Brexit! From a political point of view, that may be a lot of time, but it's too short for companies. Some companies will already implement their contingency plans by then. The Brexit has an incredible amount of impact to prepare for, and that takes time.
Can you give examples of that?
Introducing customs duties could have a significant impact on supply chains, for example, if goods are no longer efficiently handled at Dover port and there are congestion and delays. The same applies of course to the ports on the other side of the canal, in Calais or Antwerp. And from the transportation industry, it is likely that there will probably be a shortage of truck drivers in the UK soon. Many of them came from other EU countries – which now offer them better opportunities.
BASF currently generates three to four per cent of group sales in the UK market, with 10 production sites and 1,400 employees. Where do you stand in five years?
I can not give you an answer to that. That is the answer. And it says a lot when an entrepreneur can not tell you how his business will look in five years. The uncertainty is just too big. We hope that will change in the coming weeks.
Will the British market lose importance as a result of Brexit?
At BASF we have to remain competitive, not only in the industry, but also within the Group. If we decide on investments internally, the plant must meet certain conditions – and that could include access to the European single market. The connection to the EU is important for multinational corporate investors like us. But wherever Brexit will lead, the UK market is important to us, and we will continue to explore new opportunities. But we hope that Britain will clarify its intentions.
The full Handelsblatt article is available to Handlesblatt subscribers here: https://www.handelsblatt.com/unternehmen/industrie/uk-chef-carter-im-interview-brexit-kostet-basf-bis-zu-60-millionen-euro-pro-jahr/20977914.html
← Driving change in the automotive sector – is it facing a perfect storm? → "Practical effects of Brexit" – a GBF discussion


text:
2 Spotswood men dead in single-car collision on Route 9 in Manalapan
New York Rangers beat New York Islanders
Ira Podell
UNIONDALE, N.Y. – Kevin Klein scored with 4:32 left, and the New York Rangers overcame a pair of two-goal deficits and netted three third-period goals to stun the New York Islanders 6-5 on Monday night.
After falling behind 11 seconds in, the Rangers completed their game-long, uphill fight and beat the Islanders for the first time in four tries this season. They trail the Metropolitan Division-leading Islanders by two points and have two games in hand.
Defenseman Ryan McDonagh had the first two-goal game of his career, and Chris Kreider, Derek Stepan and Martin St. Louis also scored for the Rangers, who completed a 4-0 road trip.
Stepan and St. Louis scored 1:37 apart in the third to tie it. Cam Talbot made 38 saves and improved to 5-1-1 while filling in for injured goalie Henrik Lundqvist.
The Islanders appeared headed for their fifth straight win, but they couldn't hold a 3-1 lead in the second period or a 5-3 edge in the third.
Ryan Strome scored twice, and John Tavares, Frans Nielsen and Johnny Boychuk had goals for the Islanders, who dropped to 18-3 against Metropolitan opponents and 11-1 at home.
They had outscored the Rangers 13-4 in three previous wins this season. The teams will meet once more in the regular season.
Jaroslav Halak stopped 36 shots but struggled in his attempt to tie the Islanders' record for wins in a season.
Tavares scored 11 seconds in, Nielsen added a first-period goal, and Boychuk scored in the second for the Islanders.
Klein won it with a shot from the right circle after an Islanders turnover in the neutral zone.
Strome put the Islanders in front 4-3 with 12:19 left in the second when he dug out the puck after Travis Hamonic's shot and knocked it past Talbot. The goal came 3 seconds after an Islanders power play expired.
Boychuk had given the Islanders another early strike when he raced from the neutral zone to keep the puck on the blue line and ripped a drive that beat Talbot at 1:20 to make it 3-1. Boychuk scored on the Islanders' first shot of the period just as Tavares had done in the first.
The Rangers shook that off and scored twice in 23 seconds to tie it 3-all.
Kreider started the first comeback by chasing down the puck on the left side of the offensive zone and firing a drive past Halak at 3:07 for his 14th goal. The excitable Kreider leaped into the glass at the end of the rink to celebrate his goal.
Before it could be announced to the split crowd filled with fans decked out in Islanders and Rangers colors, McDonagh connected for his second of the game with 3:30 gone. McDonagh let go a drive from inside the blue line that appeared to tip the stick of Islanders defenseman Lubomir Visnovsky before sailing past Halak.
That briefly got the Rangers even after their early meltdown in the first.
Talbot immediately put his club in a hole when he went behind his net and attempted to pass the puck to McDonagh in the right corner. Tavares intercepted the errant pass and fired the puck into an empty net to make it 1-0. Tavares' 27th goal was his third in two games after a two-goal, four-point performance against Columbus on Saturday.
Nielsen doubled the lead at 11:46 when he cleaned up the rebound of Hamonic's drive and scored his 11th goal.
The Rangers got one back before the intermission when McDonagh took a pass from defense partner Dan Girardi and fired a shot in while down on one knee with 5:25 left in the first. It came less than a minute after Talbot stopped Casey Cizikas on a breakaway.
NOTES: The Islanders had a season-best 22 shots in the first period. … Kevin Hayes, who assisted on McDonagh's second goal, became the first Rangers rookie with a six-game point streak since Stepan in the 2010-11 season. … Rangers D Dan Boyle (flu) returned to the lineup after missing one game. John Moore was scratched. … Islanders D Matt Carkner, out all season due to a back injury, was loaned to Bridgeport of the AHL after being activated from the injured list.


"Ant-Man" is a Marvel, a comic put to film. Actually it is just another superhero film but without much spectacle or 'comic-film' effects. A scientist (Hank Pym, Michael Douglas) invented a machine that can reduce the space between atoms without loosing their original functionality. Having made a suit with that functionality, the wearer can shrink to the size of an ant while using his original powers. Of course bad people have bad plans and the good guys have to prevent the bad guys from doing bad things. You know the story.
The film is not really boring, but neither did I find it very entertaining. It is all pretty predictable and the film has a kids movie atmosphere. Perhaps a film to see a bit from when it happens to be on television, but I would not recommend you to try to see it.