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What's Driving the Brightest Galaxies in the Universe
We've Finally Discovered What's Driving the Most Impossibly Bright Galaxies in the Universe
Burn, baby, burn.
By William Herkewitz Published: Sep 23, 2015
Astronomers may have finally cracked the enigma of why the universe's brightest galaxies are so incredibly luminous.
Over the past 50 years or so, astronomers have observed certain galaxies in our universe—called submillimeter galaxies (SMGs)—that outshine other galaxies by hundreds of times over. These rabid, glowing galaxies also give birth to stars thousands of times faster than our own Milky Way does. But ever since their discovery, exactly what exactly causes these ultra-bright galaxies to become so radiant has been a longstanding mystery.
One prevailing theory is that SMGs are cosmic car crashes—the fiery result of two disc galaxies like the Milky Way colliding. But in simulation after simulation, nobody's ever been able to plug in the physics and explain what we see in real life. But today, a team of astronomers—led by Desika Narayanan at Haverford College—has announced the first working model of SMGs and the first conclusive answer of why they're so radiant. They published their work today in the journal Nature.
Based on Narayanan's new model, SMGs are not the result of spectacular crashes. Rather, something much more interesting is going on: SMG galaxies are strange, long-lived convection ovens driven by gravity.
Narayanan's new model shows that despite their ample reservoirs of gas and dust, SMGs don't leak gas (what astronomers call galactic outflow) at all the way Milky Way-type galaxies do. Instead, because of the tight grip of gravity in these hugely massive galaxies, as stars die and go nova the stellar gas is recycled back inward, continually fueling the formation of new stars and future supernova. That recycling process forms a feedback loop that jets out crazy amounts of light while keeping the mass trapped inside the galaxy.
According to Narayanan and his team, their model owes its accuracy to a newly developed computer code that describes how light escapes the complex maze of dust and gas in an SMG. Romeel Davé, an astronomer at the University of the Western Cape who specializes in supercomputer galactic models (and was not involved in the research), says that thanks to this breakthrough, Narayanan and his team have "presented the first impressively viable model of SMG formation, allowing us a tantalizing glimpse behind the mask of these behemoths of deep space."
According to Davé, Narayanan's new model "offer[s] unprecedented clarity in understanding the origins of such deep-space monsters."
William Herkewitz
Science & Technology Reporter
William Herkewitz is a science and technology journalist based in Berlin, Germany. He writes about theoretical physics, AI, astronomy, board games, brewing and everything in between.
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Тимчасова Місія ООН у Косові () — тимчасова цивільна адміністрація під егідою ООН, яка діє на території частково визнаної держави Косово на основі резолюції Ради Безпеки ООН 1244 від 1999 року.

Місія ООН у Косові заснована відповідно до Резолюції Ради Безпеки ООН від 10 червня 1999 № 1244 (1999) для створення тимчасової цивільної адміністрації на чолі з ООН, під керівництвом якої населення Косова могло б поступово почати користуватися існуючою автономією.

З 2006 року триває скорочення Місії та передачі повноважень Силам законності, правопорядку та жандармерії ЄС у Косові (EULEX), в рамках якого з грудня 2008 року по липень 2009 року проведено кардинальне реформування Місії ООН у Косові і суттєве скорочення персоналу Місії. З 01.07.09 чисельність Місії ООН у Косові становить 510 осіб.

Історія

Місія ООН в Косові (далі МООНК) була заснована 10 червня 1999 року, коли Рада Безпеки у своїй резолюції 1244 уповноважила Генерального секретаря створити в спустошеному війною краї Косово очолювану Організацією Об'єднаних Націй тимчасову адміністрацію, під керуванням якої його населення могло б поступово почати користуватися автономією.

Тісно співробітничаючи з керівниками й населенням Косова, місія взяла на себе цілий спектр найважливіших адміністративних функцій і послуг, що охоплюють такі області, як: охорона здоров'я; банківська система й фінанси; пошта й зв'язок та забезпечення правопорядку. У січні 2000 року були створені департаменти Спільної тимчасової адміністративної структури; у жовтні 2000 року в 30 муніципалітетах Косова пройшли місцеві вибори; у травні 2001 року було прийнято нові конституційні рамки Косова. Вибори у всьому краї пройшли у листопаді 2001 року.

Адміністративно-територіальний поділ Югославії та її складових (1943-2010)

<div style="margin-top:0.6em; margin-bottom:0.8em; font-size:90%;">
Роки, коли вступила в дію Конституція СФРЮ та були внесені зміни.
Союзна Республіка Югославія.
Космет скорочення від Косово і Метохія.

Основні завдання місії
Основними завданнями Місії МООНК, що пропонується у резолюції 1244 є:
 здійснювати основні адміністративні функції;
 сприяти встановленню істотної автономії й самоврядування в Косові;
 сприяти політичному процесу, покликаному визначити майбутній статус Косова;
 координувати гуманітарну й надзвичайну допомогу, надавану всіма міжнародними організаціями;
 надавати допомогу у відновленні ключових об'єктів інфраструктури;
 підтримувати цивільний правопорядок;
 захищати права людини і гарантувати безпечне й безперешкодне повернення всіх біженців у свої будинки в Косові.
 організація навчання представників цивільної поліції;
 робота засобів масової інформації;
 координація питань демократизації суспільства.

Компоненти місії

Для здійснення свого мандата МООНК спочатку об'єднала під своїм керівництвом чотири "компоненти".

 Компонент I: поліція й судочинство під прямим керівництвом ООН
 Компонент II: адміністрація під прямим керівництвом ООН
 Компонент III: демократизація й організаційне будівництво, очолюваний Організацією по безпеці й співробітництву в Європі (ОБСЄ)
 Компонент IV: відновлення економічного розвитку, очолюваний Європейським союзом (ЄС).

Главою МООНК є Спеціальний представник Генерального секретаря щодо Косова. Як найвищий міжнародний службовець у Косові він очолює роботу компонентів і сприяє політичному процесу, покликаному визначити майбутній статус Косова.

Див. також
 КФОР
 Автономний край Косово і Метохія (1990—1999)
 Миротворчі сили ООН
 Генеральна Асамблея ООН
 Міжнародне визнання Республіки Косово

Джерела
 The United Nations Mission in Kosovo
 Full text of Security Council resolution 1244 (pdf)
 KPA  Kosovo Property Kosovo Property Agency - KPA.
 'Nato force 'feeds Kosovo sex trade' - The Guardian
 Amnesty International - Kosovo: Trafficked women and girls have human rights
 Kosova Kosovo

Миротворчі операції ООН
Уряд Косова
Історія Югославії
Косовська війна

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


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text:
Leicester Nostalgia
Vintage photo shows beautiful row of houses overlooking green oasis in heart of city
Area was originally known as Albert Grove after Queen Victoria's husband
Jane Goddard
An undated late 19th century view of The Oval, Leicester
This fabulous photo from our archive is a rare view of one of the three open spaces on Leicester's New Walk – the unique promenade laid out to allow access by foot from the town to the old racecourse, which had been opened on what is now Victoria Park, in 1806.
This is the Oval - the other two open areas being De Montfort Square and Museum Square - and the view dates from the latter half of the 19th century.
Some of the houses, which were built around the 1860s, have the fashionable bay windows added, which were so popular with the later Victorians.
In the early Edwardian period, all these houses were residential, providing spacious and stylish homes for their comfortably-off owners.
Looking back at Leicester's past
Showcasing ever-growing suburbs in 1950s
When massive blaze hit city centre
Leicester prog rock band recalled
Firm had two city factories
At the races in Blackbird Road
This famous actor scrubbed up well!
Pioneering discount supermarket recalled
How many of these shops do you remember?
Originally, the Oval was known as Albert Grove, after Queen Victoria's husband, Prince Albert.
Thankfully, this well-preserved thoroughfare, conserved by the city council and the Friends of New Walk, remains largely unspoilt, though there are some cosmetic changes.
Notice the magnificent lamp standard that appears to be standing quite a long way from the railings, with the curved arm.
There's another a little further along.
Want to read more Leicestershire nostalgia?
These were manufactured by George Perry, of Highcross Street, and are identical to those in Paris, made using patterns which were found as recently as 1990, having survived two world wars.
Notice, too, on the right hand side, the young trees in their protective wooden casings: today, these are mature specimens that provide comfortable shade on a hot summer's day.
Fabulous photos showcase Leicester school netball teams over the decades
Happily, the superb undulating railings were spared during the Second World War, when most of the city's Victorian cast iron railings were removed to provide metal for the war effort.
In the NewsStruggling to sleep? Here are 15 top tips to help you sleep when it's too warmAre you relying heavily on coffee due to heat-related lack of sleep?

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
require "google/cloud/apigee_registry/v1"

##
# Example demonstrating basic usage of
# Google::Cloud::ApigeeRegistry::V1::Registry::Client#delete_artifact
#
def delete_artifact
  # Create a client object. The client can be reused for multiple calls.
  client = Google::Cloud::ApigeeRegistry::V1::Registry::Client.new

  # Create a request. To set request fields, pass in keyword arguments.
  request = Google::Cloud::ApigeeRegistry::V1::DeleteArtifactRequest.new

  # Call the delete_artifact method.
  result = client.delete_artifact request

  # The returned object is of type Google::Protobuf::Empty.
  p result
end
# [END apigeeregistry_v1_generated_Registry_DeleteArtifact_sync]

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, 142 Life Sciences Addition Room 3200, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA.
Ubiquitination controls a broad range of cellular functions. The last step of the ubiquitination pathway is regulated by enzyme type 3 (E3) ubiquitin ligases. E3 enzymes are responsible for substrate specificity and catalyze the formation of an isopeptide bond between a lysine residue of the substrate (or the N terminus of the substrate) and ubiquitin. MIR1 and MIR2 are two E3 ubiquitin ligases encoded by Kaposi's sarcoma–associated herpesvirus that mediate the ubiquitination of major histocompatibility complex class I (MHC I) molecules and subsequent internalization. Here, we found that MIR1, but not MIR2, promoted down-regulation of MHC I molecules lacking lysine residues in their intracytoplasmic domain. In the presence of MIR1, these MHC I molecules were ubiquitinated, and their association with ubiquitin was sensitive to β2-mercaptoethanol, unlike lysine-ubiquitin bonds. This form of ubiquitination required a cysteine residue in the intracytoplasmic tail of MHC I molecules. An MHC I molecule containing a single cysteine residue in an artificial glycine and alanine intracytoplasmic domain was endocytosed and degraded in the presence of MIR1. Thus, ubiquitination can occur on proteins lacking accessible lysines or an accessible N terminus.
Ubiquitination is a highly regulated process conserved in all eukaryotes (1, 2) that regulates many fundamental cellular processes. Many pathogens mimic, block, or redirect the activity of the ubiquitin system. The modulators of immune recognition (MIR) 1 and 2, two proteins encoded by Kaposi's sarcoma–associated herpesvirus (KSHV), specifically down-regulate the expression of MHC I from the surface of infected cells, presumably to prevent lysis of infected cells by cytotoxic T lymphocytes (3–6). MIR1 and MIR2 are highly homologous structurally and functionally, and they belong to a large family of E3 ubiquitin ligases (3, 7). E3 ubiquitin ligases function as adaptors to facilitate positioning and transfer of ubiquitin (Ub) from an E2 enzyme directly onto the E3-bound substrate (1). The nature of the bond between Ub and its substrate has been well characterized: The Ub C-terminal glycine carboxy group forms an isopeptide bond with the ϵ-amino group of lysine residues or, less commonly, with the amino group at the N terminus of the substrate protein (8). MIR proteins recruit E2 enzymes with their N-terminal RING-CH domain (3). Either direct or indirect interactions between the transmembranes of the MIRs and MHC I molecules ultimately lead to the ubiquitination of lysine residues present in the MHC I intracytoplasmic tail (3, 9). Ubiquitinated molecules are then endocytosed and degraded by the lysosome (3, 7, 10–12). Mutating all the lysines to arginines in the intracytoplasmic domain of HLA.B7 (henceforth referred to as the HLA.B7 2R mutant or lysineless HLA.B7) abolishes internalization mediated by MIR2 (3).
However, in the presence of MIR1, the cell surface expression of both wild-type (wt) HLA.B7 and HLA.B7 2R was strongly down-regulated, even in cells expressing low levels of MIR1 (Fig. 1). In contrast, even high levels of MIR2 (Fig. 1) did not induce HLA.B7 2R down-regulation. Thus, the MIR1 protein can mediate the down-regulation of MHC I molecules lacking lysines. Similar results were observed in HeLa cells, suggesting that HLA.B7 2R down-regulation by MIR1 is not restricted to B cells. In the presence of MIR1, HLA.B7 2R molecules are endocytosed, translocated toward the lysosome, and degraded, which is similar to the effects of MIR1 on HLA.B7 wt molecules.
MIR1, but not MIR2, down-regulates the MHC I allele HLA.B7 in the absence of intracytoplasmic lysines. BJAB cells stably expressing wt HLA.B7 or the HLA.B7 2R mutant lacking the two intracytoplasmic lysines were transiently transfected with a vector expressing MIR1 or MIR2 fused to enhanced green fluorescent protein (EGFP). Cells were stained with a phycoerythrin-conjugated monoclonal antibody against HLA.B7 and analyzed by flow cytometry.
To test whether a particular motif encoded in the intracytoplasmic domain of HLA.B7 2R was required for MIR1-mediated down-regulation, we generated a set of HLA.B7 2R molecules lacking different parts of the intracytoplasmic domain (Fig. 2A) and tested their susceptibility to MIR1-mediated down-regulation. Deletion of the last seven amino acids in HLA.B7 2R did not prevent down-regulation (HLA.B7 ΔC), whereas further truncations (constructs HLA.B7 Δ, ΔA, and ΔB) inhibited internalization (Fig. 2C). Thus, a critical determinant for MIR1-mediated down-regulation is encoded in the last seven residues of HLA.B7 ΔC.
An intracytoplasmic cysteine residue is critical for lysine-independent down-regulation by MIR1. (A) Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) mutagenesis was used to create serial deletion mutants in the intracytoplasmic tail of HLA.B7 2R. (B) We generated several mutations within the intracytoplasmic region of HLA.B7 and HLA.A2 so as to analyze the requirement of the cysteine residue unique to HLA.B7. (C) BJAB cells stably expressing the mutants in (A) were transiently transfected with a construct expressing MIR1-EGFP and analyzed for surface expression of HLA.B7 by flow cytometry. (D) BJAB cells stably expressing MIR1-EGFP along with the various HLA.B7 mutants were analyzed for surface HLA.B7 expression by flow cytometry. (E) HeLa cells stably expressing MIR1-EGFP and various HLA.A2 mutants were analyzed for surface HLA.A2 expression. No down-regulation is indicated by cells stably expressing HLA.A2 and EGFP alone.
Although we observed down-regulation of lysineless HLA.B7 by MIR1, a lysine-less HLA.A2 molecule is not down-regulated by MIR1 (7). Within the region identified above, HLA.B7 encodes a cysteine in the same position that HLA.A2 encodes a serine (Fig. 2B). We generated a HLA.B7 mutant lacking both cysteine and lysine in its cytoplasmic tail, which we call HLA.B7 2RS (Fig. 2B). Mutation of the cysteine decreased the extent of MIR1-mediated endocytosis (Fig. 2D). We then introduced by mutagenesis a cysteine into the intracytoplasmic tail of HLA.A2 in which all the intracytoplasmic lysines were previously mutated (Fig. 2B). HLA.A2 without lysines (HLA A2 3R) was slightly down-regulated in the presence of MIR1, and introduction of the cysteine in HLA.A2 3R (HLA.A2 3RC) allowed full down-regulation (Fig. 2E). We also substituted the last arginine residue of HLA.B7 2RS (HLA.B7 without lysines or cysteines) with a cysteine and observed that this mutant was as susceptible as HLA.B7 wt to MIR1-mediated down-regulation (Fig. 2, B and D). This strongly suggested that the cysteine was not acting within a linear motif. Thus, in addition to the lysine- and Ub-dependent pathway, MIR1 can down-regulate surface molecules in a lysine-independent manner through a process that requires a cysteine in the intracytoplasmic tail of the target molecule. Other determinants may also be important, because HLA.B7 2RS and HLA.A2 3R, neither of which contains lysines or cysteines, are both partially down-regulated (Fig. 2, D and E).
To further demonstrate that a single cysteine was sufficient to promote MIR1-mediated down-regulation, we replaced the intracytoplasmic tail of HLA.B7 by a stretch of glycine and alanine residues (GA stretch) (Fig. 3A). To this GA stretch, we added each of the 20 amino acids at position X (Fig. 3B). As expected, the GA stretch did not allow down-regulation, whereas the presence of a lysine did. Thus, lysine is sufficient to promote ubiquitination-mediated down-regulation independent of surrounding motifs. The same phenotype was observed in the presence of a cysteine (Fig. 3B). None of the other amino acids lead to down-regulation in the presence of MIR1 (Fig. 3B), except serine. The extent of the down-regulation in the presence of a serine was modest but highly reproducible. This is consistent with the fact that HLA.B7 2R (which does not have lysines but has a cysteine) is strongly down-regulated, and HLA.B7 2RS (no lysines or cysteine) is partially down-regulated (Fig. 2D). Indeed, HLA.B7 2RS contains nine serine residues in its cytoplasmic tail. Overall, it appears that MHC I molecules can be down-regulated independently of lysines, in a cysteine-dependent (and possibly serine-dependent) fashion.
One lysine or cysteine residue is sufficient to promote down-regulation of HLA.B7 by MIR1. (A) Amino acid sequence of the intracytoplasmic tail of HLA.B7 mutants where the tail has been replaced by a random GA stretch. Each of the 20 amino acids was substituted at position X. (B) BJAB cells stably expressing the HLA.B7 GA mutants were transfected with MIR1-EGFP and an EGFP control, then analyzed for surface expression of HLA.B7 using flow cytometry.
We examined the possibility that lysineless MHC I molecules could be ubiquitinated in the presence of MIR1. We used the hamster CHO cell line, which is permissive for MIR1-mediated down-regulation and does not express endogenous human MHC I molecules. We stably transduced CHO cells with the different HLA.B7 constructs and MIR1. After selection, human MHC I heavy chains were specifically immunoprecipitated, and their ubiquitination status was analyzed. No ubiquitinated forms were observed in the absence of MIR1, or when MIR1 was coexpressed with the HLA.B7 construct lacking almost all its intracytoplasmic domain, HLA.B7 Δ (Fig. 4A). However, in cells expressing MIR1, ubiquitination of HLA.B7 wt and, to a lesser extent, HLA.B7 2R (no lysines) was readily detectable, because it produced a characteristic heterogeneous array. In addition, a small but detectable degree of ubiquitination was observed in HLA.B7 2RS (no lysines or cysteine), consistent with the lower level of down-regulation observed (Fig. 4B). Thus, a residue other than lysine was being ubiquitinated by MIR1.
A novel form of ubiquitination is detectable on HLA.B7 2R. (A) Lysates from CHO cells stably expressing wt HLA.B7, HLA.B7 2R, HLA.B7 2RS, and HLA.B7 Δ with or without stable expression of MIR1 were used in an immunoprecipitation reaction. The reaction was carried out using the antibody against human MHC I w6/32 (which recognizes only properly folded human MHC I molecules), and ubiquitinated species were detected by Western blot with an antibody against ubiquitin. (B) Lysates from CHO cells stably expressing wt HLA.B7 or HLA.B7 2R with MIR1 were immunoprecipitated with an antibody against MHC I, eluted in the presence of the reducing agent β2-mercaptoethanol at either pH 8 or pH 11, and analyzed by Western blot using an antibody against ubiquitin. (C) WtHLA.B7 and HLA.B7 2R were immunoprecipitated as above, and the presence of HLA.B7 was determined by staining with the antibody against human MHC I, HC10.
We next examined the possibility that this cysteine was the ubiquitination site for HLA.B7 2R. We immunoprecipitated wt HLA.B7, as well as HLA.B7 2R, from CHO cells expressing MIR1, and we incubated these immunoprecipitates in the presence of β2-mercaptoethanol at pH 11 in order to break potential thiol-ester bonds (cysteine-Ub bond) but not isopeptide bonds (lysine-Ub bond). Ubiquitination of HLA.B7 2R, but not HLA.B7 wt, was completely eliminated by this treatment (Fig. 4, B and C). Similarly, treatment drastically diminished the cysteine-Ub bond from the E2 enzyme UBE2E3 (fig. S1).
Altogether, our results show that in the absence of lysine, HLA.B7 molecules are ubiquitinated in a cysteine-dependent manner. Moreover, the bond between ubiquitin and the lysineless HLA.B7 shares the same chemical property as the bond between ubiquitin and E2s, which strongly suggests that cysteine is the ubiquitin-attachment site for HLA.B7 2R. Direct visualization of the cysteine-ubiquitin bond by mass spectrometry is hindered by the small amount of ubiquitinated molecules available for purification.
The foregoing shows that the side chain of residues other than lysine can serve as receptors for substrate ubiquitination. It is puzzling that, although ubiquitination has been extensively studied, in particular using large-scale proteomic, such a modification has never been observed in the past. A thiol-ester bond (cysteine-ubiquitin) is more labile than an isopeptide bond (lysine-ubiquitin), which certainly hinders its detection. This may explain why the level of ubiquitination detected with HLA.B7 2R is not as robust as the one observed with HLA.B7 wt (Fig. 4A). In addition, we believe that this form of ubiquitination might be restricted to a subfamily of E3 ubiquitin ligases, such as the MIR1 E3 ubiquitin ligase family (MIR1 and its homologs) (13) (SOM text and fig. S2). The regulation processes mediated by ubiquitination may be more complex because nonlysine residues are also targets of ubiquitination. For example, the number of potential substrates could be extended to molecules that do not contain accessible lysines or an accessible N terminus, and/or transient ubiquitination of substrates may occur, because thiolester bonds (Ub-cysteine) are more labile than isopeptide bonds (Ub-lysine). It will be important to determine whether this alternate form of ubiquitination requires the same cellular cofactors as the ones involved in lysine ubiquitination. The physiological relevance, for the virus, of this alternate form of ubiquitination is still unclear. An attractive hypothesis is that the ability of MIR1 to act on lysineless molecules allows it to broaden its potential targets.
C. M. Pickart, Annu. Rev. Biochem. 70, 503 (2001).
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J. M. Boname, P. G. Stevenson, Immunity 15, 627 (2001).
We thank N. Jarousse, M. Schlissel, and N. Shastri for helpful discussions and critical reading of the manuscript. This work has been supported by the PEW scholars program in the biological sciences, the Hellman family, and a grant (1R01CA108447-01) from the National Cancer Institute.
The peptide tags that mark proteins for degradation can be attached to cysteine residues in addition to the well-known lysine attachment sites.


text:
The Insidious, Elusive Becoming: Addiction in Four Steps
Posted on March 10, 2009 by dlende
Trying to describe the process of becoming an alcoholic is like trying to describe air. It's too big and mysterious and pervasive to be defined… [T]here is no simple reason it happens, no single moment, no physiological event that pushes a heavy drinker across a concrete line into alcoholism. It's a slow, gradual, insidious, elusive becoming.
-Caroline Knapp
Caroline Knapp wrote those lines near the beginning of her powerful memoir Drinking: A Love Story. Every year I use this book in my class on addiction. Students get drawn into Knapp's clear and close account of how she began to drink so much, what it is like to be an alcoholic, and how she managed to get to recovery. Every year the book challenges my own thinking as well.
I used that last line—alcoholism as a slow, gradual, insidious, elusive becoming—to end my earlier post on Subjectivity and Addiction: Moving Beyond Just the Disease Model. There I argued that our two views of addiction, a popular one of getting hooked on things and a serious one about tolerance and destructive use, are crucial to understanding what addiction is.
For each category my class stuck up exemplars on the blackboard, from Facebook to hard-core drugs. Then I drew a ↔ between the two categories, using a thick two-headed arrow to indicate that the subjective and biological views interact. Both sides matter.
But I've realized that is not enough. That double-sided arrow remains woefully inadequate, a place marker that can end being two-faced, saying nothing of consequence, or double-edged, used simply to cut into the other side. That one symbol tells us little about the interactions themselves, about how people and disease mesh. It lends no insight into what Knapp shows us with her book—that addiction is an elusive and terrible becoming.
So how do you become an alcoholic or addict? How do you go from something fun to something all-encompassing? This question matters deeply. One fact, often overlooked in all the moral angst about addiction, is that most people who try alcohol or drugs do not end up addicted to them. They remain on the popular side. But some cross over. In the same passage as the opening quote, Knapp describes the end point: "Alcohol is everywhere in your life, omnipresent, and you're both aware and unaware of it almost all the time; all you know is you'd die without it, and there is no simple reason why this happens… (8)"
There is no simple reason. Knapp is right about that. But we do know much more about the process of becoming than we used to. Here I will outline four important factors that shape the terrible becoming – vulnerability, training, intention, and meaning. My focus will be on understanding the subjective transformations, and I will use Knapp's own words and experiences to help us grasp how this happens. In a forthcoming post, I will address a core biological process—competitive plasticity—that acts as the complement to this description, a process that has also helped me see the interactions in new light.
Some people come to their encounter with alcohol and drugs already vulnerable to what these substances can do, both physiologically and subjectively. Genetics is the typical answer that students give for why some people get hooked and others do not. Genetics is complicated – you can see a traditional take in a post by my students last year on genetics and environment, and my more interactive coverage of addiction and our faultlines. But in the end it's not genetics or societal faultlines. That nature/nurture dichotomy is a lousy one, and doesn't set up Knapp at all well.
Put differently, what I want to say that vulnerability is more than just genetics and/or environment. Saying that misses how to understand vulnerability to substance use and abuse. Here I outline some of the reasons Knapp describes – family, behavior, and first experiences – that find resonance in the scientific literature and my own work on adolescent addiction.
Caroline Knapp's father was an alcoholic, a nature/nurture mix if there ever was one. Her father certainly shaped Knapp's own understanding of how to relate to alcohol. She writes, "You could tell, watching him sip those martinis year after year after year, that there was something central about the ritual, something deeply soothing and needful about it. I liked that ritual long before I started to drink myself… He'd drink his martini, perhaps pour the second one. He'd begin to loosen up, and within a few minutes it would feel as though all the molecules in the room had risen up and then rearranged themselves, settling down into a more comfortable pattern (38-39)."
But Knapp first encountered alcohol with her own susceptibilities. Her non-identical twin sister never developed a drinking problem. What was one thing that marked the sisters as different? Caroline had an obsessive side, marked in her incredible dedication to her work, her anorexia, and her own way of soothing herself. "As soon as I could sit up in my mother's lap, I started rocking, rocking myself back and forth, and I did this for years… [Later] I'd get on my knees and elbows and curl up in a ball on the bed, facedown like a turtle in its shell, and rock away, for hours sometimes… I can see the rocking now as a first addiction of sorts. It calmed me, took me out of myself, gave me a sense of relief (62)."
Beyond family and individual patterns, first experiences with alcohol and drugs matter. At the most basic level the earlier an adolescent uses alcohol socially or tries drugs, the higher the risk of abusing alcohol and drugs. But beyond that starting point, how young people learn to use shapes subsequent interactions with alcohol and drugs. Knapp illustrates both these problems:
The summer after my senior year in high school, [my father] took me to dinner at a Greek restaurant in downtown Boston. It was the first time we'd ever gone out to dinner alone and he ordered a martini for himself and wine for me… I saw on my hands. I remember feeling that particularly acute brand of teenage awkwardness, unable to think of a word to say, and I remember a thick, interminable silence… But then the wine came, one glass and then a second glass. And somewhere during that second drink, the switch was flipped. The wine gave me a melting feeling, a warm light sensation in my head, and I felt like safety itself had arrived in that glass, poured out from the bottle and allowed to spill out between us (39-40).
-//-
I told her about the very first time I got drunk in secret. I was sixteen, a senior in high school, and I'd realized over the course of a phone call that the boy I'd been dating was losing interest in me. I forget the phone call, but I remember the feeling: pending rejection, the sense I'd done something wrong. I didn't kiss well; was that it? I wasn't pretty enough.
I was in my bedroom, on the second floor of our house, and I stole downstairs and snuck a bottle of wine out of an open case in my parents' kitchen. Then I took a corkscrew from the kitchen drawer and went upstairs and drank the whole thing, straight from the bottle. This was not the first time I'd ever gotten smashed… Nor was this an alcoholic frenzy, a question of physical craving, the way it would be later on. The drinking felt more like an experiment, an act based on some vague hypothesis I'd begun to form about the connection between liquor and anxiety, liquor and sadness, how one corrected the other (32).
A Training Regime
It would be an easy explanation if vulnerability alone—family and early behavior and first experiences—made some people into addicts and others not. But it would be wrong. For example, we never use this sort of "vulnerability" approach to understand what makes someone a great athlete. It takes hard work and quite often a special training environment for someone to excel in a sport.
Turning someone from a potentially good athlete into a successful performer offers a useful way to think about addiction. Take running. Long, slow walking doesn't turn someone into a great runner. Doing a sprint once in a while is also inadequate. One of the most accepted ways to build performance, from elite athletes to weekend warriors, is interval training. Intermittent, intense use is a very effective way to build muscle.
It's also a very effective way to get too involved with alcohol and drugs. A drink or two a day, say at a meal, keeps a person at the same level. A binge at that one holiday party leaves a nasty hangover and not much more. But regular, intense use – that does the trick, just as with interval training. To expand on this concept, I would go further and say that regular training can produce adaptations – a habit – over several weeks or months. Periods of more intense use then provides one main way to ratchet up the level of engagement with alcohol and drugs. And Knapp describes just such a process in different moments in time:
David [her boyfriend during college] and I drank that summer, a lot. We took to buying vodka by the gallon jug, and large bottles of tequila, and we'd have a drink before dinner, then wine while we ate, then more after dinner: vodka-and-tonics, or tequila sunrises (95).
Conveniently enough, my twenties coincided with the 1980s, the decade of excess: if the line of my drinking graph began to creep upward, intake and frequency rising, it did so culturally as well: I had plenty of company. I moved to Boston in the mid-eighties, when I was twenty-five, right around the time fancy restaurants with elaborate wine lists began cropping up all over the city. Everyone drank, or so it seemed (18).
It was late in the evening, and I'd probably had seven or eight glasses of wine by then, maybe more, and I reeled across the [hotel] lobby, bumping into the wall at the top of the staircase. Downstairs, I shut myself in the stall, then leaned over and put my head down on my knees. I was dizzy and drunk and I knew it (153).
At the same time conditioning takes a central part of the increasing specificity of associations and actions that a heavy drinker goes through:
I suppose that [first beer in a restaurant] marked the start of what would become a cumulative process, a Pavlovian phenomenon of persistent reinforcement: this feels good, the way this glass of white wine flows from bottle to glass to throat to brain, the way it tingles and warms and lightens. This feels good, the way a group of us gather around a table, elbow to elbow, united in the camaraderie of drink and laughter and reward. Later, the sensations would grow more specific: this feels good, this snifter of Cognac warming in the palm, and this flute of Champagne, cool and delicate to the touch as mother of pearly, and this tumbler of gin, clear and icy and laced with lime: it feels like me; it feels right (66-67).
Training and conditioning don't capture the relationships and the searching that facilitate these same processes. Having friends who drink heavily or who use drugs is a major risk factor for excessive involvement (or to take the athlete example, people to train with). Knapp captures this joint process well in the following passage:
For a long time you drink because the drink just seems to be available, and then, at some point down the line, you drunk because you make it available. Without being completely aware of it you organize your life in such a way that alcohol is always there: at the table over dinner, in your cupboard or refrigerator, in the cupboards and refrigerators of your closest friends. You hang out with other drinkers, people who find it perfectly desirable and perfectly normal to down six bottles of wine in a single sitting, people who support for the effort and the denial of its consequences (159).
But to make that happen, to make it a personal achievement, requires pushing yourself – making it your own. In the process of becoming an alcoholic, drinking moves from something social to something personal, something done alone, even surrounded by people but often not.
That fall, after David moved away to Chicago and my parents nearly broke up and I said good-bye to Roger, I learned to drink alone. That's the year my sister started worrying about my drinking—more than a decade before I finally quit. She came to my apartment one day, opened the refrigerator, and saw a large jug of white wine, nearly empty. "Did you drink all thus by yourself?" she asked. I looked at her quizzically, not sure what the big deal was. "Sure," I said. "Why not?" (102)
Alcoholic drinking is by nature solitary drinking, drinking whose true nature is concealed from the outside world and, in some respects, from the drinker as well. You think you're drinking to have fun, to be sociable or more relaxed. But you're also drinking to shut down, to retreat (103).
Pushed ever higher, with a turn from social to individual use, the use of alcohol becomes a central part of that person's life. And often after that comes the end of training.
A naturally inhibited person, someone who grew up feeling mystified and insecure about what it means to feel sexual, I turned to liquor the way a dancer turns toward music: it felt central to the process, central to my ability to shut down the voices of self-criticism in my own head and simply let go, move to a different kind of music (87).
And then, tragically, the protection stops working. The mathematics of transformation change. This is inevitable. You drink long and hard enough and your life gets messy. Your relationships (with nondrinkers, with yourself) become strained. Your work suffers. You run into financial trouble, or legal trouble, or trouble with the police. Rack up enough pain and the old math—Discomfort + Drink = No Discomfort—ceases to suffice; "comfortable" isn't good enough anymore. You're after something deeper than a respite from shyness, or a break from private fears and anger. So after a while you alter the equation, make it stronger and more complete. Pain + Drink = Self-Obliteration (75-76).
Intentional Use
Even being vulnerable and engaging in heavy drug use is not enough to turn a person into an addict. One of the main tricks is getting them to turn themselves into an addict. Crucial to this process is linking a subjective experience with a subjective action, tying together wanting something and engaging in doing it. They need to have reasons to use – and just as we knit together that sentence so easily, so drug users must engage in each part of that sentence. Specific individuals, the development of compulsive involvement, motivations and expectations and desired outcomes, and the act of using—those things come together through the elusive becoming.
Quite different than older theories which too often relied on "pleasure" as some primal cause. Incentives matter in seeking and wanting alcohol and drugs. Using alcohol and drugs to cope with negative emotions marks a major transition towards problem use. Functional drug use, not simply self medication, provides reasons to keep using.
Some of Knapp's best writing centers on this area. Here she describes one of her early experiences drinking with her father, an adolescent girl out alone with her father: "Then the wine came, one glass and then a second glass. And somewhere during the second drink, the switch was flipped. The wine gave me a melting feeling, a warm light sensation in my head, and I felt like safety itself had arrived in that glass, poured out from the bottle and allowed to spill out between us (40)."
The use of alcohol to subjective effect continues to develop – it is, indeed, part and parcel of the training regimen. It takes conditioning that next step into the realm of subjectivity.
I liked being able to laugh with them [her friends], to sit on barstools and let my own emotions spill out the very same way, the sense of disinhibited high amusement. And I liked the way the drink helped turn me into that kind of person, someone more hardened and rebellious and cynical than the person I was raised to be, someone who could scoff and tell stories and make other people laugh. It was something I'd been looking for all my life… Drinking released me from the compulsion to hold back, gave freer rein to appetites… I wanted that feeling, and I couldn't seem to generate it on my own, and the amazing thing—the truly amazing and seductive thing—was that the drink could generate some version of it for me, a most convincing replica of ease and connection and relief, at least for a little while.
And there it was again, the connection: Repression + Drink = Openness. At heart alcoholism feels like the accumulation of dozens of such connections, dozens of tiny fears and hungers and rages, dozens of experiences and memories that collect in the bottom of your soul, coalescing over many many drinks into a single liquid solution (73-74).
In many ways alcoholism has the feel of a psychological safety net, something a drinker constructs over a period of many years by making connections between feelings, like an emotional game of connect-the-dots. Take a difficult, sober feeling—shyness, fear—and connect it to its easier, drunken counterpart—disinhibition, courage. The net gets woven beneath you, a tight set of strings that promises to cushion you when you fall against a hard emotion. That's exactly what happened when I drank with Sam: dot A, tension; dot B, relief. In my head, out of my head. Disconnected, connected.
There were so many transformations like that, so many strings in the net: self-consciousness to less self-consciousness; inhibition to ease… When the feeling of shyness washed away my voice, there it was, the liquid solution, and there I was beside it, ready to reach for another one. Connect the dots: shy to les shy (69).
Connecting the dots becomes more than simple functional use. It worsens, changes, reaches into other domains of life.
I think my relationship with alcohol began to deepen and shift around that time, my college years, moving from a simple tool of self-transformation—a way to relax and feel less inhibited, a way to be more sexual and open and light—into something more complicated, a more deeply ingrained way of coping with the world. Looking back I can see how certain patterns were beginning to develop, certain classically alcoholic ways of managing feelings and conflicts in relationships that would grow more entrenched and complicated over time.
Almost by definition alcoholics are lousy at relationships. We melt into them in that muddied, liquid way, rather than marching into them with any real sense of strength or self-awareness. We become so accustomed to transforming ourselves into new and improved versions of ourselves that we lose the core version, the version we were born with, the version that might learn to connect with others in a meaningful way (88-89).
Even at the end, in the midst of drinking prodigious quantities due to high tolerance and the gnawing compulsion to keep having more, the intention doesn't simply vanish from the equation. It doesn't work that way. It is one of the clearest things from Knapp's writing, her real strength as a memoir writer. And so she writes:
There is never enough, no such thing. You're always after that insurance, always mindful of it, always so relieved to drink that first drink and feel the warming buzz in the back of your head, always so intent on maintaining the feeling, reinforcing the buzz, adding to it, not losing it (57).
Humans are meaning-making animals. Just become someone becomes more involved with drugs doesn't mean our sense of self, our use of language, our interpretations of the world suddenly disappeared during that process. Au contraire, they become deeply entwined in that developing involvement. Alcohol itself, the organization it provides, the act of drinking, the experience of drinking – all these are shot through with meaning.
Let us start with the object– the alcohol. See how it becomes part of one's life:
It's not at all unusual in AA to hear people refer to alcohol as a best friend, and to mean that on the most visceral level: when you're drinking, liquor occupies the role of a lover or a constant companion. It sits there on its refrigerator shelves or on the counter or in the cabinet like a real person, as present and reliable as a best friend. At the end, when I started hiding bottles of Scotch around the house, and tucking nips of brandy into my bathrobe pockets, I did so in the manner of a child who's afraid to be without a favorite blanket or a teddy bear. Protect me. Shield me from being alone in my own head (104)."
But the meaning isn't just in the object but also in how drinking helps to organize a life, to define it and provide shape to what to do when.
As soon as I got home, I'd crack open the first beer and drink it with a deep relief… I'd understand that the beer, and the one after it and the one after that and the bottle of wine after that, served a very specific purpose: it kept me from that piercing consciousness of self, kept me from the task of learning to tolerate my own company.
Without liquor I'd feel like a trapped animal, which is why I always had it. Without liquor I didn't know what to do with myself, and I mean that in the most literal sense, as though my thoughts and my limbs were foreign to me and I'd missed some key set of instructions about how to use them. I used to feel that way on Sunday mornings, when I'd wake up alone in the apartment with nothing before me but unstructured time. Here I am, in my apartment. Here I am, puttering through the kitchen. Here I am, washing a dish and setting it on the rack. Here I am… conscious of being alone, conscious of my own breath and my own skin and my own thoughts; here I am, waiting waiting waiting and if I keep doing this, if I don't find some way out of my own head, I'll die of boredom or go insane or explode at any moment (114).
Meaning also gets enmeshed into the drinking. Knapp's words to herself, about deserving it, are literally marked in the next passage through italics. She entered a more vulnerable situation. She drank more. She had reasons. And she deserved it – that too marked the transition into her worst drinking.
I also had a long list of reasons to drink, a growing list. No one would have begrudged me that. Two major losses in the space of two years. A stressful job: deadlines and responsibilities. A messy romantic life: ambivalent and confused. So I drank a little too much; it's situational. I deserve it. I said that to myself, too, with increasing conviction. Stress. Depression. An exceptionally bad day, or week, or month. Too much going on. Need a little relief. I deserve it (19).
The experience of using itself has meaning. Knapp came to understand this:
That line stuck [from Nan Robertson] with me for many years… She goes off into some little room in her mind and pulls down the shade. Without stating so explicitly, the image has to do with the places alcohol can take you. It has to do with transportation, with the very real—and, to alcoholics, enormously seductive—phenomenon of taking psychic flight, ingesting a simple substance and leaving yourself behind… Many of us drink in order to take flight, in order to pour ourselves, literally, into new personalities: uncap the bottle, pop the cork, slide into someone else's skin. A liquid makeover, from the inside out (64-65).
Meaning of course exists within a cultural framework. Here is one relevant quote:
You hear echoes of [this yearning for something] all the time in AA meetings, that sense that there's a well of emptiness inside and that the trick in sobriety is to find new ways to fill it, spiritual ways instead of physical ones. People talk about their fixations with things—a new house they're looking to buy, or a job they're desperate for, or a relationship—as though these things have genuinely transformative powers, powers to heal and save and change lives. Searching, searching: the need cuts across all backgrounds, all socioeconomic lines, all ages and sexes and races.
Part of this, of course, is culturally determined or, at least, culturally reinforced. The search for a fix, for a ready solution for what ails, has become a uniquely American undertaking, an ingrained part of consumer culture, as prevalent as the nearest diet workshop or plastic surgeon. In some ways alcoholism is the perfect late twentieth-century expression of that particular brand of searching, an extreme expression of the way so many of us are taught to confront deep yearnings. Fill it up, fill it up, fill it up. Fill up the emptiness; fill up what feels like a pit of loneliness and terror and rage; please, just take it away, now. Our society has become marvelously adept at presenting easy—or seemingly easy—solutions to that impulse (60-61).
But meaning is not simply constant, without tension. In the following quote all I can think is that all three versions of Knapp are the real one. That's the point of meaning. As a process, it doesn't discriminate.
One night after work, on my way to a bar to meet a friend for drinks, a sentence popped into my head. I thought: This is the real me, this person driving in the car. I was anxious. My teeth were clenched, partly from spending a long day hunched over the computer and partly from the physical sensation of wanting a drink badly, and I was aware of an undercurrent of fear deep in my gut, a barely definable sensation that the ground beneath my feet wasn't solid or real. I think I understood in that instant that I'd created two versions of myself: the working version, who sat at the desk and pounded away at the keyboard, and the restaurant version, who sat at a table and pounded away at white wine. In between, for five or ten minutes at a stretch, the real version would emerge: the fearful version, tense and dishonest and uncertain. I rarely allowed her to emerge for long. Work—all the productive, effective, focused work—kept her distracted and submerged during the day. And drink—anesthetizing and constant—kept her too numb to feel at night (17).
So why did Knapp favor this real version, the one she thought could come out but didn't? Here alcohol itself plays a central role, both contributing to and immediately solving the difficult questions of life.
[In the end] the drinking merely complicated the sense of fragmentation, contributed to the gradual loss of control. And that's precisely how drinking works. Your life gets ugly and you drink more. You drink more and your life gets uglier still. The cycle goes on and on, and in the process you become increasingly isolated and lost, stuck in your own circle of duplicity and rationalization and confusion, the gap between your facades and your inner world growing wider and wider and more complete (207).
These were tough questions, complicated feelings, but I never addressed them with David, not once. I drank instead and the questions running through the back of my mind faded away, just faded out of consciousness (96).
The end point is even more ambivalent. Alcohol at once helps the person feel more like their self as it continues to deliver the terrible consequences of its own becoming.
At the end I didn't even feel like myself until I had a drink or two, and I remember that scared me a little: alcohol had become something I felt I needed in order to return to a sense of normalcy, in order to think straight. After one or two drinks I'd feel like I'd come back into my own skin—more clearheaded, more relaxed—but the feeling would last for only half an hour or so. Another few drinks and I'd be gone again, headed toward oblivion (231).
Almost everyone I know who's quit drinking describes that feeling, the sense that life has turned stale and colorless and slowly ground to a halt. You're someplace you don't want to be—in a bad job, a bad relationship—and you can't fathom a way out of it, simply can't see what steps you could take to change things.
The pain becomes acute. With each day you spend in the bad situation, your dignity erodes just a little bit more, keeping your feet glued more firmly to the floor. You cast around for explanations—whose fault is this? Is it your lover? Your boss? Your family? Are you simply doomed, destined to live an unhappy life? Reality clouds. You wake up after another night of heavy drinking and you can't put the pieces back together, can't figure out what the fight was about or why you ended up in the bed you're in or what happened the night before, and you don't understand—you simply do not understand—why you're so miserable, so fucking depressed and full of hate. And so you drink again; of course you drink again. You can't stand this—it's too much—and drinking is the one sure way, the only way, to kill the feeling.
The circle closes in on itself; the cycle is repeated. You are smack in the middle of the dance of addiction and you can't find your way off the floor (186-187).
My title is, in the end, misleading. It is about the becoming but not quite about addiction. The four steps—vulnerability, training, intentions, and meaning—do not get us all the way there. The core process of compulsion and craving is not addressed. The lack of control, though certainly related to trained intentional doing, is not really answered by the steps. The rationalizations and the denials that Knapp describes well have been left to one side.
Nor do these four steps capture how individuals often move through a radically changing social landscape as they get deeper and deeper into substance abuse. These individuals often become the worst cases, not just because of the destructive consequences for the person, but also because these marginalized, often predatory landscapes are traumatic and heighten the focus on short-term fixes.
Craving, control, destructive consequences, and difficult situations lead us beyond the insidious becoming to a dangerous and often deadly endgame. But the becoming matters. It is different from the hallmarks of addiction, and has remained obscure because of that, hidden by two-faced arrows and assumptions of disease and moral failure. It takes an entire book to describe such a process, and Caroline Knapp did so with the starkest of honesty. And most certainly with a becoming and elusive elegance.
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Best damn article on alcoholism I've read to date.
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Marion County Board of Elections releases candidates list for upcoming general election
Mitch Hooper Sophia Veneziano
Correction: Due to a reporter's error, this story has been updated to include Brett Cornelius, Republican, as a candidate for Marion City Council At-Large. Additionally, this story has been updated to show Republican party affiliation for Charles Richard Arndt and David Miller.
With early and absentee voting for the 2021 general election starting in just over two weeks and the general election a little more than month away, the Marion County Board of Elections has released its list of certified candidates running for office.
Marion city and county residents will have the chance to cast their votes in support of the various candidates running for office on Election Day fro 6:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. Nov. 2. The deadline to register to vote is Oct. 4, and absentee and early in-person voting begin the next day.
The deadline to request an absentee ballot for voting is noon on Oct. 30. A ballot drop box and the related forms for absentee ballots are located behind the Marion County Administration Building, located at 222 W. Center St. Alternatively, voters can also obtain their absentee ballot online at boe.ohio.gov/marion, or by calling the Board of Election's office at (740)-223-4090.
Cindy Price, Marion County Board of Elections director, stressed the importance of these general elections as the candidates who are elected will vote on topics that directly impact the community, including such things as road repair projects.
According to data from the 2017 election, voter turnout was roughly at 30% and Price hopes to see that number increase during this election.
Throughout October, voters will have multiple chances to cast their votes early. The schedule for early in-person voting hours are as followed:
Oct. 5 to Oct. 8: 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Oct. 12 to Oct. 15: 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Oct. 30: 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Oct. 31: 1 p.m. to 5 p.m.
Marion City candidates
Marion City Council president Todd Schneider and Councilman Jason Schaber, R-Third Ward, are the only uncontested city candidates. All other council seats are contested, with both Democrats and Republicans running for each position.
In the First Ward, incumbent Council member Kai Meade, a Democrat, is seeking reelection with write-in candidate David Miller, a Republican, also running for the seat. The First Ward encompasses parts of East Fairground and Van Buren streets and Bermuda Drive.
Democrat Ayers Ratliff's bid for reelection to the Second Ward council seat is being challenged by Republican candidate Pamela Larkin. The Second Ward includesWest Fairground Street and Toledo and Blake avenues.
Councilman Joshua Feliciano, R-4th Ward, seeks reelection this year after first being elected in 2019. Feliciano will face off against Democrat candidate Dana Hanif-Booker. The fourth ward of Marion includes parts of McKinley Park Drive as well as W. Columbia Street and parts of W. Center Street.
Fifth Ward Councilwoman Karen Fosnaugh, a Republican, seeks election to her seat after being appointed to the position by the Marion County Republican Party Central Committee in 2020. Challenging Fosnaugh will be Democrat candidate Tara L. Dyer. The Fifth Ward includes parts of East Center and East Church streets as well as parts of East Fairground Street.
In the Sixth Ward, two current Council members face off for the opening. Democrat Councilwoman Kathy Swanger seeks reelection to her seat, but is being challenged by Republican Mike Neff, an at-large council member. The Sixth Ward includes areas such as parts of Mt. Vernon Avenue, East Church Street and Richland Road.
Though Councilman Mike Thomas, an at-large Democrat, seeks reelection for his position, four other candidates are running for a seat with only three available. These candidates are Republicans Aaron Rollins, Brett Cornelius and write-in candidate Charles Richard Arndt, and Democrat Evan Geyer.
Marion City Treasurer Thomas A. Pannett, a Democrat, is running for reelection against Republican candidate Tommy Reese.
Township Trustee candidates
Township residents will elect two trustees to their respective boards in this year's general election. In many of the townships, the candidates are incumbents seeking reelection.
According to the Board of Election's certified list, these candidates are the only ones listed on the ballot in these townships:
Bowling Green: Richard Holcolmb and David Trihaft
Claridon: Tommy Ruth and Rex H. Strine
Green Camp: Chris Abbott and Thomas Wayne McBeth
Grand: Clifton Wenig
Montgomery: Jeffrey S. Wall and Phillip L. Winslow Jr.
Pleasant: David Schrote and Wayne Creasap
Prospect: Harry Hilgenberg and Alfred Wasserbeck
Salt Rock: Allen L. Merritt and Darryl Ralph
Waldo: Michael Augenstein and Greg Price
Elsewhere, trustee incumbents are facing challengers for their seats.
Four candidates are seeking two seats on the Tully Township board, with incumbents C. Paul Robinson Jr. and Kay Smith looking for reelection and Larry T. Barr and Jim Cellar looking to join the board.
In Big Island Township, trustees Ryan Eisele and Robert Handley are running for reelection while candidate Tim Ryan is trying to win a seat.
Grand Prairie trustees Jim Schertzer and Ronald Thiel are running for reelection with candidate Daniel Lust also vying for a seat.
Candidate Ben Creasap is trying to pry one of the two available Marion Township trustee seats away from incumbents Karen S. McCleary and Lynn Thomas, both seeking reelection.
Scott Township also has three candidates running for two trustee seats, with Mark Croman and Dick Lewis both seeking reelection and Steven R. Snyder running for a seat.
In Green Camp, Prospect and Tully townships, voters will cast support for their incumbent township fiscal officers. Unopposed on the ballot are Molli Heffley of Tully Township; Kenneth R. Blue of Prospect Township; and Kimberly Stutler of Green Camp Township.
Story by Mitch Hooper | (740)-244-9935 | bhooper@gannett.com | @_MH16 on Twitter/ and Sophia Veneziano /sveneziano@gannett.com


Take a trip under the sea with this little critter! This guy is perfect for a wall in your home, on your fence or by your entryway to welcome your guests. A must have piece for your coastal decor collection. This crab is 12" inches tall and 21 inches wide. He is designed with the outdoor elements in mind so that he can be enjoyed for years to come.


What are the Boat Builder Awards?
The Boat Builder Awards were initiated in 2015 by METSTRADE and International Boat Industry magazine (IBI), to recognise individual and team success within boat building companies globally. It has since then grown to become a prestigious and widely recognised awards programme.
Where will the Boat Builder Awards take place?
the Maritime Museum in Amsterdam.
What is the programme of the Boat Builder Awards?
Who are the guests of the Boat Builder Awards?
All guests are professionals in the maritime boat building industry..
What is the address of the Maritime Museum in Amsterdam?
The address is: Kattenburgerplein 1 | 1018 KK Amsterdam | The Netherlands.
At what time the Maritime Museum in Amsterdam opens?
The museum opens at 19.30 hrs.
How many categories has the Boat Builder Awards?
The dress code for the evening will be business suits for gentlemen and cocktail or gala for ladies.
How do I get to the Maritime Museum in Amsterdam?
We have arranged boats to bring our guests over the Amsterdam canals to the Maritime Museum. These boats leave from the RAI Harbour at 18.30 hrs and will arrive at the museum at 19.30 hrs.
Where is the RAI Harbour?
Click here for a floorplan ».
Is there arranged transportation after the Boat Builder Awards?
There is no arranged transportation after the event, but we will let the taxi central know at what time the Boat Builder Awards end.
You need your ticket to gain entrance to the Maritime Museum. When entering the boats or (if you use your own transportation) at the entrance of the Maritime Museum you will be asked to show your entrance ticket in a printed or digital version.


Counterfeiters can take advantage of Amazon's system which is designed to let merchants post products quickly and easily after setting up accounts online.
SEATTLE, United States — Amazon.com on Saturday hinted that fighting counterfeits was a reason for its sudden and unexplained purge of thousands of vendors that sowed panic among long-time suppliers.
The company selectively reinstated some accounts, apologizing for "any inconvenience" caused by the "temporary pause" in orders, according to communications reviewed by Bloomberg. It encouraged those reinstated to enroll in "brand registry," a tool to help brands knock counterfeit products off the platform.
The communication sheds further light on why Amazon abruptly canceled routine merchandise orders from thousands of its long-time suppliers over the past two weeks.
Amazon's web store includes a mix of inventory. The company buys some products directly from wholesalers and resells it in a traditional retail model. Other goods come from independent merchants who post their inventory on Amazon and give the company a commission on each sale, similar to EBay Inc.'s online marketplace model or a consignment shop.
The two models complement one another, making sure Amazon has an ample supply of must-have products at competitive prices and giving it a bigger inventory than you'd find at a nearby store.
A key challenge has been maintaining relationships with brands who complain counterfeit products flourish on Amazon's free-wheeling marketplace. Counterfeiters can take advantage of Amazon's system which is designed to let merchants post products quickly and easily after setting up accounts online.
Amazon wants to make sure it is only buying inventory directly from brand owners. Other product suppliers are being pushed to Amazon's marketplace, which is a more profitable model for Amazon and less risky than buying goods outright.
In recent years, Amazon has increasingly prioritized its marketplace. More than half of all products sold on Amazon in 2018 came from marketplace merchants, and revenue-providing services to those merchants are growing at double the pace of revenue from the online store.
Online marketplaces can offer greater selection than even the biggest of stores. Walmart Inc., Target Corp. and Best Buy Co. are all copying Amazon's marketplace model to increase online sales. Amazon will generate e-commerce revenue of $317 billion this year, representing 52.4 percent of all online sales in the U.S., according to EMarketer Inc.


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Bradley weathering the economic storm
By Scout on September 22, 2009
As the world's economy begins to regain its footing a year after the market meltdown, university officials continue to be cautiously optimistic about Bradley's financial position.
"We're holding our own, we just have to stay at it," said Gary Anna, vice president for business affairs. "It's not a crisis [for Bradley], but we have to pay attention. Nobody's out of the woods yet."
Bradley was destined to have a hard couple of years at the start of last fall because the incoming freshman class was significantly under the goal set, which will equate to millions of dollars lost by the time that class graduates.
But a few weeks into the year, as the stock market crashed and the bailouts began, things looked to get a lot harder.
"We had to make $2.5 million in cuts," Anna said. "Our commitment was to make those cuts without influencing the educational experience, and we were able to do it without laying anyone off."
The cuts were made through increasing efficiency in operations and not filling empty positions. In fact, about $400,000 in that $2.5 million came from newer, more efficient heating and cooling systems. Some senior administrators accepted pay freezes for last year, something that could be continued this year, though nothing's for sure yet.
The goal for the cuts was to ensure they came from areas that wouldn't affect students, something Anna said the school accomplished.
Other schools weren't so lucky.
According to Time, Arizona State University cut 48 undergraduate and graduate courses from its catalog. Stanford University laid off 49 staffers in its graduate school of business and Massachusetts Institute of Technology cut eight varsity sports, saving $485,000.
Bradley was also put in an interesting situation when trying to find things to cut because though the freshman class was smaller, it wasn't small enough to cut classes and programs across the board.
"If you have two less students in each class, that doesn't reduce the need of professors," Anna said. "So we had to find other ways of cutting back."
One significant cost saver was the transition of the course catalog from a hard copy to online only, he said.
Though this year's freshman class was higher than the goal set, enrollment is still down, and recruiting strong freshmen classes in the future will remain a top priority.
"The larger, richer institutions had to make immediate changes because they rely on their endowments so much, and many of their endowments were down 30 or 40 percent," Anna said. "It was kind of unusual because the smaller endowments are doing better."
Bradley's endowment took a 20 percent hit last year, but the university wasn't as heavily affected because the endowment isn't relied on to cover as much as those at larger schools are. The endowment here popped back above $200 million this year, but isn't back to where it was two years ago.
Overall, as a result of cautious planning, it seems Bradley's doing OK right now.
"We're being responsive," Anna said. "We're just trying to look to the future."


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New after-effect from COVID – logistics moves from cost of doing business to colossal headache
David Allan April 22, 2021 360 Views
Access to shipping containers is one of the many logistics challenges that have arisen during the COVID-19 pandemic. Photo courtesy of iStock/ronnachaipark
As if COVID lockdowns and their implications for supply and demand were not challenging enough, every stage of the nonwovens supply chain from resin through end-customer is wrestling with a global ocean shipping crisis that is forcing many to make changes in how they do business – often at significant cost in terms of additional operating expenses and reduced customer satisfaction.
As one nonwovens executive put it, "The big, dominating concerns today are not with supply and demand, which are not bad and in some cases are very strong. The big worries and areas of uncertainty are with freight and COVID."
Safety stocks
Observers told Nonwovens Markets about issues ranging from higher freight cost to the difficulty – sometimes the impossibility – of booking shipments on desired timeframes, with many considering strategies like trying to accumulate "safety stocks" or build extra time into regular delivery schedules.
A few plants are reported to have been forced to take short-term downtime because they could not get delivery of needed raw materials. In other cases, there are reports of Chinese plants shutting down temporarily for lack of containers for export shipments.
Optimistic market participants had said in January they were hoping logistics patterns would ease after Chinese New Year, but it was hard to find anybody who believed such predictions, which were not borne out in any case.
A superabsorbent polymer market player pointed out that the situation actually seemed to be getting worse ahead of the holiday, as companies rushed to get products out the door before the lunar new year holiday shut China down.
Some reports said virtually all containerships on Pacific routes were booked solid for the period from early January through the beginning of the holiday period on February 12.
Looking ahead, a fiber industry observer said his company has been pushing hard to dramatically increase shipments in the coming weeks to help customers build "safety stocks." An executive with a raw material importer said his company is maintaining "unprecedented" safety stocks, while another market participant said it is simply too difficult to build inventories given uncertain supply chains, not to mention the difficulty some plants face running all possible shifts because of local COVID infection rates.
One observer pointed out that the chaotic freight situation has been developing over the course of 10 months or more, making it seem less likely to him that it will resolve itself quickly.
Underlying cause
Freight industry experts say that what carriers and their customers alike are facing is not actually a shortage of containers – often called boxes in the shipping industry; it is the failure of the system to properly position containers for current market needs.
Given China's huge role in global manufacturing, a vast number of shipping containers is typically moving between China and major market regions such as Europe or the Americas. In what amounts to a structural imbalance, they generally travel outbound from China holding cargo, and are often returned empty, to be turned around and loaded onto outbound vessels once again.
The efficiency of globalized manufacturing depends on a fluid movement of containers. This system worked quite well until the early days of the COVID pandemic, when Chinese manufacturers were shut down by the nation-wide lockdown. At that time, containers were stranded for a time wherever they were when the lockdown began – either at a Chinese plant or port, or in between, or somewhere overseas – on a vessel, in a part, on the road or at a plant or warehouse.
About the time China's economy started back up, other major economies were entering some form of lockdown. So as China struggled to resume shipping products, it had to scramble to find an adequate supply of boxes.
Vessels out of service
At the same time, a few Chinese carriers took ships out of service rather than run them mostly empty, and some have not resumed operations because of the uncertainties on some trade routes.
Meanwhile, one expert said that an average annual capacity increase of 5% a year in global container numbers probably fell below 2% in 2020 thanks to COVID's disruptive impact on logistics and manufacturing industries.
Since then, logistics experts say huge numbers of boxes have been tied up in particular at various locations in the United States, with turn-around times at ports being stretched out considerably. As well, one source said some large U.S. logistics companies have tied up tens of thousands of boxes, using them as portable warehouses because they find it cheaper to pay demurrage charges than to rent new storage facilities.
Labor shortages
Because of COVID and a sporadic U.S. economic recovery, companies on the waterfront, at warehouses and in the trucking industry have periodically suffered from localized labor shortages, slowing the efficient movement of containers further.
Companies operating in the United States also continue to report a shortage of truck chassis – without which inland freight movements have slowed significantly, adding to the time needed to turn around containers and get them back to the port for shipments back to Asia.
One nonwovens manufacturer said it is getting increasingly difficult to recruit drivers in Europe as well, adding, "Being a driver is not a popular job – the pay is lousy and so are the working conditions."
Several executives said their typical day-time schedule includes a great deal more time dealing with delivery schedules than would usually be the case, raising the possibility that other issues could fall through the cracks, or that delivery mistakes could be made.
Dead ports
Some small ports in Asia and elsewhere have had to shut down operations in recent months due to a lack of boxes, earning the unfortunate nickname "dead ports."
With these mushrooming problems, the cost to procure a shipping container exploded in recent months. The global weighted cost index of the Shanghai Containerized Freight Index (SCFI) website (https://en.sse.net.cn/indices/scfinew.jsp) was at 2775 – equating to $2,775 per 20-foot container – on February 26, up from a little less than 1250 in October and a little over 1000 in August. Many nonwovens products are shipped in 40-foot containers, meaning the actual charges are twice the index values.
Observers say that while costs were rising before October, that is when the slope of the curve turned sharply upward, as the wide variety of global problems started to reinforce each other.
The index was actually 100 points higher in late January than it is now, although at this point it doesn't appear it has done more than back off slightly from the pre-holiday peak; index values like 1000 or 1250 look pretty far in the future at this point.
Huge cost increase
One nonwovens company executive said his container rates have gone up by about five times in a year, and that it recently cost almost $9,000 to ship a 40-foot container from China to Europe. He added that the rate from China to the United States West Coast would be a bit less while a shipment to the US East Coast would be modestly more.
In rare situations, typically involving smaller port-to-port combinations, increases in the past year have been more than that – reportedly rising seven times or even 10 times.
A fiber market participant pointed out that the combination of scarce boxes and skyrocketing rates affects all industries and all parts of the world today. Another observer cited problems affecting sectors ranging from low melt polyester fiber to elastic nonwovens.
A hygiene industry observer said some Turkish companies, normally very price-oriented, have increased SAP orders from Europe at the expense of Asian suppliers, even if it means paying higher prices for polymer, in order to temporarily shorten their supply chain and increase materials inventories.
A Chinese spunlace nonwovens manufacturer said the freight situation was not reducing his interest in developing overseas markets because of the profitability of such business, adding that his customers are the ones who have to pay any extra freight charges.
Who pays the freight varies widely, especially for spot business. European and North American companies that buy fiber of various kinds from Asia say it has gotten difficult to find suppliers willing to sell on a delivered basis.
With contract business, the party that pays for freight under the contract may simply have to absorb any additional cost. One SAP market observer said some contracts do include cost escalators that can kick in when delivery costs swing wildly, passing on some – but by no means all – of the recent freight cost increases.
In the SAP market, polymer is typically sold on a delivered basis, and the big buyers who dominate the market are said to have resisted reported efforts by Asian suppliers like South Korea's LG to abandon delivered pricing or to pass on freight surcharges. However, one market observer said Asian suppliers may try again to negotiate different terms the next time contracts come up for renewal.
Full-time logistics job
How long will the changes made in operations by many companies last? For example, will changes made in working capital or delivery lead-times be institutionalized? Will the current desire for more resilient supply chains translate into shorter supply chains? Most industry observers don't know. But one thing they are sure about – the current logistics mess has brought the issue front-and-center in many companies' board rooms.
* This article was originally published in Fastmarkets RISI's Nonwovens Markets newsletter. A bi-weekly publication, Nownwovens Markets provides concise reporting on the critical areas of the disposable and durable nonwovens sectors. To subscribe, visit nonwovens.com.
David Allan is editor of Fastmarkets RISI's nonwovens.com news site, its twice-monthly Nonwovens Markets newsletter and its Nonwovens Company Profiles asset database. He has been editor of the Fastmarkets RISI publications for 10 years; before that he spent 30 years in the printing paper industry, culminating in 11 years as a paper markets consultant. He can be reached at dallan@fastmarkets.com.


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Category Archives: Bluebirds
Bluebirds, Bluesfest, Music general
Hello dear occasional reader, and an explanation for this post's title. Late nights and pleasant early mornings spent catching up with friends have provided little opportunity for indulging in internet posting the last few days. Regrets? Nah. Not one. But the result is this belated and unapologetically lengthy catch-up. I hope you enjoy.
After a disappointing Day 1 and one brief 'wow'-like moment when I bumped into a couple of Bluebirds people (shout outs to Baily and his mum), the first full on WOW moment came on Day 2 with uke player Jake Shimabukuru (or as some bloke on his phone called him, 'Jake…with the really long surname'). Jake was simply amazing, with the most stunning, virtuoso display of ukulele playing I have ever heard. Now the uke is not an instrument I like; I put it up there with the recorder imagining it as some kind of 'wanna-be' real instrument.
But I will now happily cease my cynicism and admit that in the right hands it rocks! And to witness a crowd singing the words to Bohemian Rhapsody as accompaniment to Shimabukuru's instrumental interpretation is something I will never forget. This guy knew how to work a crowd but he had the chops to go with it. Stunning.
Band of Skulls was next on my list of acts to check out and I was hoping not to repeat the 1st night's experience with Sticky Fingers, given I hadn't heard BOS before either.
I shouldn't have worried however as the English 3-piece delivered an enjoyable and dynamic set that left me wondering why I hadn't heard them before and also why there were no CDs in the merch shop….the numbers of camera people about indicated this band has been tagged as one to watch.
BOS play a radio friendly alternative rock sound with a live ferocity that captures your attention and doesn't let go from start to finish. They are one of the tightest acts I've heard live and the interplay between drums and bass was solid as.
Another enjoyable encounter was 80s ska/pop act the Beat. Lots of tunes that got feet dancing and voices singing along. The abs on singer Ranking Roger, who must be in his 60s, had the younger ladies swooning and the older men guiltily sucking in their paunches….
After a short break for an excellent vegetarian meal it was off to Jeff Lang, another artist who I had heard much about but never seen in performance. And what a performance it turned out to be. Just him and a drummer and the revamped Juke Joint was captivated. Here too was the first blues performance of the weekend that I'd heard and it was like receiving a shot of adrenaline. Another truly 'wow' moment. Lang's voice has been criticised by some as weak and not suiting the music he plays. Well I'm sorry but while he doesn't have an authentic blues howl the man can more than hold a tune and if that isn't his strength his skills on various guitars more than over compensate.
The night ended with the Music Maker Blues Revue, a collective of older musicians from the American south being sponsored to try and keep their musical heritage alive. I caught the Revue briefly last year and recognised a couple of the players and boy, could they show younger artists a thing or two about playing together and having fun. Throw in some of the best guitar soloing I've heard in blues format and no way could they be worried about their heritage dying. And no one could deny them the use of those chairs on stage that's for sure.
So a full-on 'wow' sort of day. My Bluesfest had well and truly begun.
This day was going to prove interesting. Catching up with some acts seen the day before (BOS, Jake the uke man) and looking forward to some legends (John Mayall, Waterboys). And there were others too of course…
BOS and Jake were stunning again, particularly BOS who played a slightly different set and seemed over their jet lag from the day before. Just plain enjoyable. The rains well and truly came today although we were all prepared this time.
I caught the tail end of Skipping Girl Vinegar as I headed to the Mojo tent to catch Mariachi El Bronx. Unfortunately I left after only a few tunes partly due to not finding them that entertaining but also out of frustration at a group of younger people thinking that the seated area was a place to plonk themselves down and chat inanely – and loudly – throughout the show. This was not the first time this had happened (nor would it be the last) but it is sheer ignorance and people need to speak up and tell these idiots to clear off out of the tent to socialise. Point of notice to those who do this: no on has paid money to listen to you speak so piss off!
There…I feel better now…
Leaving El Bronx early let me see the last half hour of John Mayall's set at the Crossroads tent (he was down as a must-see for Monday). And wow…this man looked ill but at 80 he still has a strong voice and displayed virtuoso blues playing steeped in history that brought to life all those old records I have. Can't wait to hear the full set on Monday. Amazing.
The Waterboys were sensational. Thoroughly enjoyed their set which mixed older songs with newish ones although I'm not sure just how big an influence on other acts they have been (stage announcer stated they had influenced dozens…hmm). Anyway, while I always liked one or two songs I found this performance will stir me to listen to more.
If the Waterboys were good then Rodrigo y Gabriela were just stunning. To see and hear acoustic guitars played with such skill and passion will remain one of my all time festival highlights. The use of the guitar's body for percussive effect is something I've seen many a time but not like this. The interplay between these two Mexican musicians is such that I'm sure when one breathes in the other breathes out. A real 'wow' moment indeed.
Day 3 was to finish on yet another high with the Celtic folk punk sounds of the Rumjacks. Yes, there's more punk rock clichés in this lot to last a lifetime but their sheer energy and presence is something to witness. Piano accordion player Sarah-Marie is the highlight as she pogos and bounds around stage, rarely having time to catch a breath, black mascara and sweat running down her face. Doing that with a guitar is one thing but another thing entirely with a heavy instrument strapped to your chest. The whole band though fairly cranks things up and just exudes energy. What a way to end a night which we did after a quick stop at the excellent Burger Park and another encounter with rain. Back to home and beer and olives…
The 2nd last day was a bit of a slower one in terms of the festival with all of us enjoying a pleasant morning at the Beach Hotel. The ladies (and Kurt) spent some time at the markets while the lads spent some time with Coopers Ale…Kaylene bought me a cool paper feather made from sheet music…
The mud and smell from the festival were there well and truly today, begging the question why the once green areas hadn't been hit with some form of gravel or road base. Quite a sight.
Musically I took in some of the world sounds of Angelique Kidjo (very cool) and Gary Clark Jr (first appearance of an SG) while Sandy's and my 'date' at the cider tent was a fizzer after the cider ran out before we got there. Clark played solid electric blues but for me my focus was on seeing Frank Turner. Turner is someone I missed last time he appeared at Bluefest but after buying a couple of his albums on a whim and seeing DVDs of his live shows I was really keen to check him out. Together with his band the Sleeping Souls he put on one of the most enjoyable performances of the festival. He's made a bit of a name for himself in the last few years with the result being the audience singing along to nearly every song (except for the new ones). A great gig and for me Turner is fast becoming the Elvis Costello of his generation. Even my tired body managed to get involved!
The night finished with the final performance of the Rumjacks in a sparsely attended Delta tent (most were off seeing Ben Harper). Again, a top and exciting performance from the band with a full on mosh that started to get a little too full on for some. We only lasted half the set ourselves, choosing to leave early to miss the mass exodus that would occur with the end of Harper's set. Sarah-Marie's makeup made it past the first song this time…
Tired and weary we trudged through the mud to the car and home. One more day and the Bluesfest shuffle is definitely on..
Bluebirds, football
Grand final winners are definitely grinners
September 16, 2014 jaydeetp Leave a comment
Well…what can I say. The U15/U16 girls football team I coach won their grand final at the weekend and what a game and what a way to finish the season. The whole team turned up on the day and played out of their skins. They say you should save your best game for the grand final and the girls did just that. To win 3-0 was a great achievement but to outplay our opposition so much was a mighty effort. The team we played were the most consistent team over the latter part of the season – they are tough too – although right from the beginning I believed that if they could field a full list of players each week they would be very hard to beat. They proved it as well, being one of only two teams to beat us at all during the season (only once though!).
Anyway, I won't list all the girls here out of respect for their privacy but I do want to say very well done and an amazing achievement, especially after taking out the minor premiership as well! To say my first year of competitive coaching went well is really understating how I feel!
Grand Final Today!
Very excited today as the U15/U16 girl's football team I coach play in the season's grand final! They have already taken the minor premiership but this game will be tough as we play the team that finished 2nd in the competition. Southside features several players that also in the senior women's competition so they are not easy to play. We may have beaten them last time we played but no guarantees today. But the girls can do it…go Bluebirds!
BTW it's been a while since I wrote on here…show's just busy life has been…
football teamminor premiership
And we're off…
March 13, 2014 jaydeetp Leave a comment
Our local football (soccer) season is nearly under-way with most of our Bluebirds (www.bluebirdsufc.com.au) teams training. It was my turn yesterday, taking on two teams for the first time. The younger age group (Squirts 3-5year olds) was first up and with a dozen kids there it was pretty hectic. I thought I had things well planned but as usual, things didn't quite work out exactly as I'd hoped. Ah well…the kids seemed to enjoy it.
Then I trained the U15/16 girls and that was a session I wasn't sure how would go but it went really well. Great help from our manager and the girls certainly have the potential to do well. A couple of characters to keep an eye on on but that's fine; don't mind a bit of cheekiness as long as it doesn't adversely affect training or the team. It was a top session and I'm really looking forward to the season ahead…
Bluebirds Unitedfootball