text:
thepumphandle
Study: New method of mapping HIV transmission risk may be more efficient way to prevent infection
By kkrisberg on June 27, 2014.
Ideally, everyone should be tested for HIV and in fact, federal guidelines introduced in 2006 recommend routine HIV screening for all patients. In reality, however, only about half of U.S. adults have ever been tested for HIV and about half of the 50,000 new infections that happen every year in the U.S. are transmitted by people who are unaware of their HIV status. Such statistics recently led a group of researchers to ask if there's a more efficient way to go about curbing the HIV epidemic.
"We strongly support the concept of universal testing and treatment to limit or control the spread of HIV," Susan Little, faculty in the Antiviral Research Center at the University of California-San Diego, told me. "The problem with that approach is that here in the U.S., despite having the greatest health care dollar resources available, we're not universally testing or treating. …So if we have limited prevention dollars to spend, where might we focus our resources to have a much greater impact than if we used the same resources to try to reach everyone?"
Basically, Little and her colleagues asked this question: Instead of casting such a huge prevention net and hoping that people will fall in, could they shrink the net, attach a GPS unit to it and let it lead them to hotspots of high risk and greater preventive potential? They found that they could — and moreover, all the data they needed to do it was already available. Using the unique genetic HIV sequence from individual patients as a proverbial GPS device, the researchers were able to generate maps that pinpointed high-risk transmission networks that they hope can eventually direct prevention resources where they'll have the greatest impact. Here's how they did it.
Little and her fellow researchers, who published their methods and findings in the June issue of PLOS ONE, analyzed HIV sequence data among nearly 500 people recently infected with HIV as well as 170 of their sexual and social contacts in San Diego between 1996 and 2011. The sequencing data was already available and centralized as a result of testing HIV patients for antiretroviral drug resistance, which has become standard protocol in HIV care. Using the sequencing data, they pinpointed viruses from different individuals with a high degree of genetic similarity, which could suggest a transmission link. And from those links, they could map a network of HIV transmission and then model the likelihood of new HIV transmissions. (Little did caution, however, that viral similarity does not alone prove that a transmission occurred, only that the individuals are both part of a closely connected transmission network.)
"Not everyone who is HIV-infected is equally likely to transmit the infection to others," Little said in a news release about the study. "There are clusters of more active disease transmission. We can use this information to target treatment interventions to those most likely to transmit the virus to others and markedly reduce the number of new infections."
In mapping the networks, researchers were also able to map, in many cases, the direction of infection. When putting all the components together, researchers could measure the rate at which a network and sub-networks were growing and zero in on areas in the population in which HIV is spreading at a faster rate. Within a network, researchers then calculated a transmission network score that estimated the risk of transmission from a patient who is newly diagnosed to a new partner.
According to the study findings, high scores identified a group of patients who had significantly greater predicted risks of HIV transmission within their first year of living with the virus than patients with low scores. If put into clinical practice, the concept means clinicians could more precisely direct treatment and prevention education to patients at highest risk of transmission. Little and study co-authors Sergei Kosakovsky Pond, Christy Anderson, Jason Young, Joel Wertheim, Sanjay Mehta, Susanne May and Davey Smith write:
When adequately sampled, HIV-1 sequence analysis can help characterize local HIV epidemics. This network based study in San Diego, California, corroborated previous findings that higher (viral load) was associated with transmission risk and that early (antiretroviral treatment) decreased this risk. This study went further to identify that network connections at baseline also predicted future transmission risk, and prevention efforts targeted to these individuals may be a better use of prevention resources than random implementation or targeting individuals with higher number of sexual partners or recently diagnosed with a (sexually transmitted infection).
But wouldn't genetically linking newly infected patients to other patients violate medical privacy? No, Little told me. Clinicians would only get back a transmission network score. It works like this: When a patient's sample is sent to the lab to test for drug resistance, the lab could automatically search for sequencing similarities within its existing database, generate a score and relay only that score to the physician, who could then more precisely act to prevent further HIV infections. The doctor wouldn't know how many similarities were found or whom their patient might have had sexual contact with — they'd just get a score.
That score would ideally be much more telling than the kind of information that a doctor would normally collect during a patient encounter. For example, Little told me, a patient who identifies only one sexual partner may be at low risk for transmission. However, sequencing data could reveal that the one partner has dozens of potential partners, which offers unique insight into an underlying transmission network of which even the initial patient is unaware. Little admitted that while labs may be nervous about linking sequencing similarities at the moment, the scoring technique is a strategy that wouldn't first require a revision of medical privacy laws.
"These data are already available and we could start using it tomorrow," she said. "But we do need to figure out answers to some important questions."
In addition to ensuring that no one's medical privacy is breached, Little and her colleagues also want to know how much of an impact the new information would really make. Finding patients at high risk of transmission is only one part of the prevention puzzle; getting high-risk patients to adhere to a treatment regimen and modify their risk behaviors is another. Little noted that while newly infected patients do tend to engage in immediate behavior changes, risky behaviors tend to resurface over time. Still, the mapping method is a promising approach to help clinicians as well as public health practitioners maximize their prevention resources.
"Some people might read the study and think 'why are you targeting interventions when everyone should be treated' and I completely agree with that," Little told me. "This isn't meant to say that we should be targeting certain individuals because that's a better approach. It's that the approach of universal testing and treatment has well-documented failures. …Until we develop better methods to endorse and get people to accept testing and treatment, we're saying that if we really want to control the HIV epidemic, we may have the data we need to do that right now."
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 1.1 million people in the U.S. were living with HIV as of 2010, and about 16 percent don't know they're infected.
To read the full HIV network study, visit PLOS ONE.
Kim Krisberg is a freelance public health writer living in Austin, Texas, and has been writing about public health for more than a decade.
Public Health - General
disease mapping
HIV screening
CDC: Vaccination rates among kindergartners remain stable
In more encouraging public health news, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that vaccination rates among kindergarteners have remained stable, with the median vaccine exemption rate at 2 percent. Some states even reported an increase in immunization rates. In a study published…
Occupational Health News Roundup
At Reveal, Amy Julia Harris and Shoshana Walter investigate an increasing criminal justice trend in which defendants are sent to rehab, instead of prison. On its face, the idea is a good one, especially for people struggling with addiction. However, the reporters find that many so-called rehab…
Gun control laws can impact death rates. But we need more research to find what works.
Guns are the third leading cause of injury-related death in the country. Every year, nearly 12,000 gun homicides happen in the U.S., and for every person killed, two more are injured. Whether Congress will do anything about this violence is a whole other (depressing) article. But there is evidence…
At the Toronto Star, reporter Sara Mojtehedzadeh went undercover as a temp worker at Fiera Foods, an industrial bakery, to investigate why temp workers are more likely to get hurt on the job. Earlier this year, Canadian occupational health and safety officials brought charges against the company,…
Graham-Cassidy isn't a health care solution. It's a blueprint for less access, less value and less coverage.
In yet another attempt to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, much of the GOP justification boils down to one argument: that the ACA isn't working. Never mind that we don't really know what constitutes a "working" health care system for Republicans. For a while, Republicans said the ACA…


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The Absence je američki melodični death metal sastav sa skandinavskim utjecajima iz Tampe.

Povijest sastava

Osnovan je 2002. godine te nakon objavljivanja prvog dema potpisuju za diskografsku kuću Metal Blade i objavljuju debitantski studijski album From Your Grave 2005. godine. Dvije godine kasnije objavljuju drugi studijski album Riders of the Plague, nakon kojeg sastav napuštaju basist Nicholas Calaci i bubnjar Jeramie Kling, a zamjenjuju ih Mike Leon i Justin Reynolds. Svoj treći i zasada posljednji album Enemy Unbound objavili su u rujnu 2010. godine. Za vrijeme snimanja, bubnjar Reynolds doživio je prometnu nesreću te je zbog ozljede napustio sastav, a na njegovo mjesto vratio se Jeramie Kling. Godine 2013., dugogodišnjeg gitarista Petera Josepha zamjenjuje Per Nilsson iz sastava Scar Simmetry.

Članovi

Trenutačna postava
Jamie Stewart — vokal (2002.-)
Jeramie Kling — bubnjevi (2002. – 2007., 2010.-)
Taylor Nordberg — gitara (2013.-)
Joey Concepcion — gitara (2016.-)

Bivši članovi
Nick Calaci — bas-gitara (2002. – 2007.)
Justin Grant — bubnjevi (2002. – 2003.)
Patrick Pintavalle — gitara (2002. – 2015.), bas-gitara (2007.)
Christopher Tolan — gitara (2002. – 2003.)
Peter Joseph — gitara (2003. – 2013.), bas-gitara (2007.)
Mike Leon — bas-gitara (2007. – 2013.)
Justin Reynolds — bubnjevi (2008. – 2010.)
Per Nilsson — gitara (2013. – 2016.)

Diskografija
Studijski albumi
 From Your Grave (2005.)
 Riders of the Plague (2007.)
 Enemy Unbound (2010.)
 A Gift for the Obsessed (2018.)

EP-i
The Absence (2003.)

Singlovi i videospotovi
 "From Your Grave" (2005.)
 "Dead and Gone" (2008.)
 "Enemy Unbound" (2010.)
 "Oceans" (2013.)
 "Septic Testament" (2016.)

Vanjske poveznice
Službena MySpace stranica

Američki sastavi heavy metala
Sastavi melodičnog death metala

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


is an explanation rather than a definition.
IPV6. (see a previous mail).
to correspond to general practice.
a large scale would solve that problem.
DTD fragments should be given.
very unclear until much later.
to guess for people without English mother tongue.
that is part of the link after (show and actuate).
The use of 'cname's for roles is frightening.
Using URIs directly would simplify things a lot.
Next message: C. M. Sperberg-McQueen: "XML Schema WG comments on XLink and XBase"
Previous message: Martin J. Duerst: "I18N last call comments on XLink"


text:
International Association for Language Learning Technology
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FREE WEBINAR FOR NOVEMBER 10, 2022
October 10, 2022 Evan Rubin
Events, News, Webinars, Webinars - Upcoming
Moving 'towards' the Metaverse, and the implications for language teaching
What does the metaverse mean for us as language teachers or researchers and what is it?
Is this really something new or a rebranding of another idea?
What opportunities and/or drawbacks does the metaverse have for us and our students?
This presentation will begin with an examination of the fictional history of the metaverse, followed by technical innovations that led to our current stage of development, ranging from text-based creations, to 2D avatar-based environments, and on to low-immersion Virtual Worlds, all of which led to what many are (erroneously) calling the Metaverse today.
Presenter: Dr. Randall Sadler (Ph.D) is Associate Professor of Linguistics and Director of TESL and ESL at the University of Illinois. He teaches courses on telecollaboration, VR and language learning, and teaching L2 reading and writing. He has published in journals including CALICO Journal, ReCALL, LLT, Computers & Education, ELT, and in numerous edited volumes. His books include Virtual Worlds, Telecollaboration, and Language Learning (2012, Peter Lang), the Handbook of Informal Language Learning (2020, Wiley Blackwell), and New Ways in Teaching with Games (2020, TESOL). He is the current President of CALICO, the Computer-Assisted Language Instruction Consortium.
Date: Thursday, November 10, 2022
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Q: GCP/GKE Add Network Tags I am trying to find a way to improve our infrastructure as code situation in GCP. My hope was that I could

*

*Create a firewall rule whitelist based on target tags that are added by

*Making target tags part of the deployment yaml config.

My hope was that by adding tags in a deployment I could have it auto apply those tags to any compute resource or load balancer that it creates. That way a firewall rule could be created, by terraform, that applies to those tags.
Am I going about this the wrong way or is there a way to do this? This is as much about automating firewall rule management as it is about cleaning up unnecessary rules that may interfere with operations.

A: GCP is actively using network tags to tag resources affected by firewall rules (allow,block). Those tags are connected with Compute Engine instances, Managed Groups and others.
Kubernetes is using labels to tag resources used with the service (exposing your app).
Above network tags and labels are separate resources and they cannot be used together within GCP/GKE environment.
Please take a look on official documentation regarding those resources:

*

*Cloud.google.com: VPC: Network tags

*Kubernetes.io: Concepts: Labels

When you create a service of type LoadBalancer in GKE, you automatically create a forwarding rule for it. This rule can be later modified/edited. It can be edited to a state that it only allows requests from certain IP addresses like home/office etc.
It can be modified manually with GCP Dashboard -> VPC Network -> Firewall.
I found a workaround with Terraform that allows to modify existing forwarding rule created by a GKE.

Having above in mind I created an example for a LoadBalancer with Terraform and GKE. Steps:

*

*Spawning a workload.

*Exposing workload to external usage.

*Editing existing forwarding rule to block traffic from certain CIDR/s.

Assuming that:

*

*Terraform is installed and has access to GCP

*GKE cluster is already provisioned

*kubectl is set to connect to above cluster

For reference to above steps: Learn.hashicorp.com: Terraform: Provision GKE cluster
As for Ingress. Managing it will heavily depend on the solution used like:

*

*ingress-nginx

*ingress-gce
Spawning a workload
Below example nginx deployment will be used to respond to request:
resource "kubernetes_deployment" "nginx" {
  metadata {
    name = "scalable-nginx-example"
    labels = {
      App = "ScalableNginxExample"
    }
  }

  spec {
    replicas = 2
    selector {
      match_labels = {
        App = "ScalableNginxExample"
      }
    }
    template {
      metadata {
        labels = {
          App = "ScalableNginxExample"
        }
      }
      spec {
        container {
          image = "nginx:1.7.8"
          name  = "example"

          port {
            container_port = 80
          }

          resources {
            limits {
              cpu    = "0.5"
              memory = "512Mi"
            }
            requests {
              cpu    = "50m"
              memory = "50Mi"
            }
          }
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

Exposing workload to external usage
Below definition will create service of type LoadBalancer for the nginx deployment:
resource "kubernetes_service" "nginx" {
  metadata {
    name = "nginx-example"
  }
  spec {
    selector = {
      App = kubernetes_deployment.nginx.spec.0.template.0.metadata[0].labels.App
    }
    port {
      port        = 80
      target_port = 80
    }

    type = "LoadBalancer"
  }
}

output "lb_ip" {

value = kubernetes_service.nginx.load_balancer_ingress[0].ip

}

GKE will automatically create a forwarding rule and assign IP address for a Load Balancer. Terraform will not be aware of this forwarding rule and this forwarding rule will need to be imported to be able to modify it.
Please take a specific look on part lb_ip. After successful run of Terraform this part will output an IP of a LoadBalancer. This value could be used to identify the forwarding rule associated with the service.
Editing existing forwarding rule to block traffic from certain CIDR/s
As said above:

Terraform will not be aware of this forwarding rule and this forwarding rule will need to be imported to be able to modify it.

The issue here is that some self scripting is necessary to fully automate this workaround.
Forwarding rule name is necessary to have an ability to modify it.
One of the ways to extract the forwarding rule name from GCP infrastructure is:

*

*Get the LoadBalancer IP from:

*

*$ kubectl get svc nginx-example

*Get the forwarding rule name from:

*

*$ gcloud compute firewall-rules list --format=json

Disclaimer:
   Above command will output all firewall rules with details like target tags, priority and description in json format. LoadBalancer IP will be in the description section of a firewall rule.

*

*Extracted forwarding rule name should look similar to:

*

*k8s-fw-aefb2110aad9e11ea971d42010a9c00a

*Use above name to create a resource in Terraform:

*

*Create a desired definition of forwarding rule in file. Please take a look on below example rule and change according to your use case. This resource can be used as a template for another new resources. Please make sure that target_tags are the same as not modified version.
Example definition of a forwarding rule:
resource "google_compute_firewall" "YOUR-NAME-OF-FORWARDING" {
  project = "PROJECT-NAME"
  provider = google-beta
  name = "k8s-fw-aefb2110aad9e11ea971d42010a9c00a"
  network = "PROJECT-NETWORK"
  source_ranges = ["1.2.3.4/32"]
  priority = "1000"
  allow {
    protocol = "tcp"
    ports = ["80"]
    }
  target_tags = ["gke-PROJECT-NAME-gke-c6d3956c-node"] #
  direction = "INGRESS"
  }

*

*Import resource with:

$ terraform import google_compute_firewall.YOUR-NAME-OF-FORWARDING projects/PROJECT-NAME/global/firewalls/k8s-fw-aefb2110aad9e11ea971d42010a9c00a`

When issuing $ terraform apply you should be able to see desired changes in your forwarding rule like below (part):
 ~ source_ranges           = [
     - "0.0.0.0/0",
     + "1.2.3.4/32",
   ]

After applying your firewall rule to forward traffic should be modified!

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
Texas gun store owner opens fire on burglars, one dies from wounds miles away
(NBC) – A young man found dead on a roadside near Houston on Monday was a burglary suspect who had been wounded in a gun store burglary earlier in the morning, authorities said.
A 79-year-old military veteran and gun shop owner confronted "two possible burglary suspects" around 4:30 a.m. at his store in Crosby, Texas, about 25 miles northeast of downtown Houston, Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez said.
The Central Guns shop on 2025 Kennings Rd., in Crosby, Texas.Google Maps
"Gunfire was exchanged & suspects fled, but owner believes one was shot," Gonzalez tweeted.
Several minutes later, a wounded man in his 20s was found sitting outside a car in Baytown, about 10 miles away, officials said.
@HCSOTexas has two active scenes, possibly related. Prelim info: At abt 430am, at 2025 Kennings Rd, a gun shop owner encountered two possible burglary suspects. Gunfire was exchanged & suspects fled, but owner believes one was shot. At a 2nd scene, a male in his late teens/early
— Ed Gonzalez (@SheriffEd_HCSO) January 7, 2020
CPR was performed on the man before he was pronounced dead at the scene, according to Gonzalez.
"A couple pistols, believed to be taken during the burglary are recovered near the deceased male," Gonzalez tweeted.
Two other men were arrested at that second scene and the "vehicle they were in appears the be one of the vehicles used in the commission of the burglary," according to the sheriff.
by Dan Booth / Jan 15, 2021
ABILENE, Texas (KTAB/KRBC) - An Abilene family separated between the Key City and the Netherlands are one step closer to a brief reunion.
"I try to at least pretend I'm happy for our son, because I don't want him to feel all of this," Bente Riehn says.
After receiving advice to not fly to her native country the Netherlands because of concerns surrounding the pandemic, Bente Riehn unintentionally overstayed her 90-day visa.


The new development completes the regeneration of a prominent corner plot within Daventry Town Centre to create a new mixed use development on the market square.
The project comprised a mixture of new build and conversions to form twenty one new houses and apartments, with an additional twelve apartments created with the conversion of an existing school building. There are also three retail units, which are incorporated into the scheme to face onto the market square.


A brilliant debut for readers of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, in which three women must deal with the aftershocks of WWI and its impact on the men in their lives-a son, a brother and a lover. Their tragic connection is slowly revealed as the book unfolds.
Wake is a potentially poignant and gripping novel that follows three families whose loved ones served in the Great War. Based in London, the 1920's setting was presented in an eloquent and intoxicating way as it embraced the invisible shroud that the war had left behind.
The writing was fast paced as we get into the heads of the main characters wondering if there is life after war, and getting into the minds of veterans was devastating and haunting. A mother sees her dead son in all those who have returned – alive but broken, a sister wonders who the man is behind the face of her brother, as she ponders if there is life after losing a betrothed.
It was hard to tell the difference between the two younger women Hettie and Evelyn as their characters began to morph into each other but the older mother in the story helps break it up a bit. The manner of the death of her son in the war is a tragic mystery that connects some of the characters which provided an intriguing angle to the story.
Instead of focusing on survival and resilience the story circles around the characters with an ominous sense of continual loss. If you allow yourself to be drawn to the emotional hues to the novel this could be a very enjoyable reading experience.
The kicker was that it was going along at a great pace: full of life, death, love and grief, when the story abruptly ended thus making this novel catapult to the top of my worst endings ever list.


Are You a Thinker or a Feeler?
If you had told me 17 years ago when I came to work for Cook Inlet Tribal Council (CITC) that one day I'd be talking about how to create the world's first indigenous-developed video game, I never would have believed you. I also could never have predicted that this game, based on an Iñupiaq story and narrated in the language of my ancestors, would grow from CITC's focus on social enterprise.
But that's what happens when you work for an organization that's committed to self-sufficiency: You get creative.
CITC is a tribal organization that offers support for Alaska Native and others in our community. We focus on providing resources in education, employment, recovery from addiction and incarceration, and family preservation.
Since it was formed, CITC has focused its energy on developing its social enterprise branch in order to be less reliant on federal funding. When I first came on board, CITC offered services in information technology (IT) and accounting to other smaller nonprofits. But as I focused on growing those services, I began to understand CITC couldn't just invest in any old business. It was important to me that those businesses also somehow contributed to the self-sufficiency of our people.
So we started Coho Cup, a coffee bar and café, with the idea that we could create that first job back into the workforce for many of our participants. Coho Cup is now a supportive work environment where people develop basic employment skills, from showing up on time to working well with bosses and coworkers. It has become exactly the kind of business I envisioned CITC creating, one that funds itself and helps people stand on their own two feet.
Then our board set an ambitious goal for CITC: to have 50 percent of our income leveraged from self-generated sources. Let me tell you, we went through a lot of ideas on how to do this. I explored everything from storage businesses to funeral homes. But none of it was ringing true. None of it was lining up with the mission and values of CITC.
Sometimes the best innovations come from putting two ideas together. At that time, the board had challenged CITC leadership to embrace technology as a tool for preserving culture. Meanwhile, at home, I was watching my two teenage sons struggle with growing up as young Alaska Native men. They didn't necessarily have the most positive images of their people to inspire them. It was important to me that they engage with their wonderful Iñupiaq culture.
You know how some ideas are so crazy, they just might work? This was that kind of idea. When Gloria and I brought the idea to our board, they took a big, bold risk in taking CITC's hard-earned unrestricted cash — of which there wasn't a whole lot — and investing it directly into a video gaming company.
Of course, we didn't go into this blindly. I knew that to be successful, we would have to partner with a knowledgeable collaborator whose values aligned with our own. My colleagues and I did a lot of research to find the right fit, and in the end we joined forces with E-Line Media, an entertainment and educational video game publisher whose games tap into the natural curiosity and passions of gamers.
With E-Line, we created Never Alone (Kisima Inŋitchuŋa), a video game that delves into the traditional lore of the Iñupiat people and draws fully upon the richness of a unique culture to create a complex and fascinating world for a global audience. This is the first video game to be developed in collaboration with the Iñupiaq community, and eventually it led to the country's first indigenous-owned video game developer and publisher.
Inspired by Iñupiaq folklore and developed through partnership with Alaska Native elders, storytellers, and community members, Never Alone is the first title in a dynamic new genre of immersive video games bringing traditional stories from indigenous cultures to global audiences. Photo Courtesy of CITC.
Looking back on the success of Never Alone — which has earned numerous awards, garnered rave reviews, and inspired other organizations to develop their own entries in the genre of "world games" — it's easy to believe that its success was inevitable. But from the beginning, CITC's expansion on its own history of social enterprise was an out-of-the-box idea that involved a major risk.
I don't think I made this connection then, but CITC's history of relying on the creative thinking of its leaders was ultimately what made this risk a success. It would have been easy for any of us, myself included, to look at these two disparate things — Alaska Native culture and modern technology — and assume that they were opposing ideas that couldn't go together.
In the past, though, I had played an active part in repeatedly demonstrating that two seemingly unrelated ideas could combine to create something unexpected: CITC used the strengths of the for-profit world to generate funds for a nonprofit; we brought together those recovering from substance abuse and the challenges of business management. We'd even previously demonstrated that culture and technology could find ways to complement one another with our Fabrication Laboratory, a makerspace we developed in 2013, where young people use 3D printers, laser cutters, and other fabrication tools to create whatever they can dream up, including culture-inspired objects like masks and kayaks.
But simply smashing together two ideas isn't enough to grow CITC's social enterprise. As we explore new business opportunities, our criteria will always be: does it bring the wisdom of our past into the future, and does it align with our values? With one foot in our history and culture and the other stepping toward the future — that's how we'll create the next innovation that will pave the way for our self-sufficiency.
Amy Fredeen is the Chief Financial Officer and Executive Vice President for Cook Inlet Tribal Council (CITC) and has been with the organization since 2001. Fredeen also serves as Chief Operating Officer and as a Board member for CITC Enterprises, Inc., CITC's for-profit subsidiary. She is also Chief Financial Officer for E-Line Media, with whom she initially helped form a partnership to co-create Never Alone, the first video game made with an indigenous community.
Beyond her role with CITC, Fredeen is on the Board of Cook Inlet Native Head Start. She is a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants and the Anchorage Downtown Rotary International. Fredeen has a CPA and earned her Bachelor of Business Administration in accounting from Gonzaga University. Originally from Chugiak, Alaska, Fredeen is of shared Inupiaq and German descent.
© 2019 The STRIVE Group.


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Robotics Case Studies
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Product Handling Put to the Test at Twizzlers Candy Plant
Yaskawa America, Inc. Posted 02/07/2011
Twizzlers® candy from Y&S Candies, Inc., a division of The Hershey Company, is an American candy favorite, known for its sticky, pliable consistency and sweet fruity flavors. However, some of the qualities that make it such a satisfying treat also make it a product packaging challenge.
Y&S produces and packs all conventional Twizzlers® candy varieties in a 290,000-sq-ft plant in Lancaster, PA. Since 2000, it has added automation capabilities to most of its nine packaging lines, replacing manual operations as product demand has dictated. Most recently, the company automated two of its packaging lines with MPK 50 robots from Motoman that transfer the candy products from processing to packaging, without losing a single soft, sticky strand.
Twizzlers® Twists are made through a process where the candy is extruded onto a flat board and then dried. In the past, up to eight operators were needed on each line to remove the boards from the drying racks, pull the strands of candy from the boards, and then place groups of candy into the infeed of a flow wrapper for packaging. "Before automation, those manual jobs were basically our highest-risk operations," says Jake Wildes, packaging systems engineer for Y&S. "Those positions required a lot of repetitive motion."
Y&S's directive for Motoman was to find a solution capable of taking candy from a discharge belt and placing it directly onto film feeding a Hayssen flow wrapper. Y&S required that the candy be placed precisely in position on the film, which is fed into the machine on a 16-ft infeed, at a rate of 30 boards/min.
In Wildes' opinion, the biggest challenge for the Motoman system would be to place the candy where it belonged on the film the first time. "When Twizzlers® Twists are made, they are kind of like ropes. They are flimsy, and at times they can be sticky or oily. So they tend to stick to one another when you pack them into a bag," he says. "The hardest part is transferring that group of candy onto the wrapper film without losing strands over a transfer or having them hang up. Or when they get dropped on the film, they might fall out of order.
"We were trying to get away from any kind of traditional infeed—like a bucket infeed or a metering system. The Motoman system sets the candy directly onto the film, which eliminates all transfer points, eliminates pieces getting lost in the transfer, and eliminates the transfer that causes groups to become misaligned."
In conjunction with the Motoman robots, Y&S added what it calls a Skiver system to the lines that automatically removes candy from the board. Used for some time on another Twizzler line, the Hershey-engineered Skiver takes the Twizzlers from the board and groups them on a discharge belt in the same orientation they held on the board.
To precisely pick the candy from the discharge belt, Motoman's MPK 50 four-axis, 50 kg-payload robots use an aluminum boom that measures approximately 55 in. and is fitted with a series of five, six, or seven grippers, depending on the Twizzler® candy variety being run. Delrin thermoplastic grippers pick the required amount of candy from the belt, move to the wrapper infeed, track the film at speed, and release the product onto the film when triggered by a photoeye at the infeed. The robots are equipped with the Motoman DX100 controller.
In the six months since the new robots were installed, Wildes says Y&S has seen greater efficiency and productivity, as well as less film waste, and "labor savings are huge." He notes that both lines are running at speeds well above those achieved when the lines used manual operations, with one of them at times running 150% of the previous standard. "We also have less rework and waste, and less product being lost at transfer points," he adds.
By Anne Marie Mohan, Senior Editor, Packaging World Magazine, reprinted by permission.


Self Description: I am a very optimistic and sociable woman. I love people and try to enjoy every moment of this life.
Comments: I'm looking for a kind, sympathetic and strong-willed man to create a long-lasting relationship with.


My mother tells a story of when I was about three years old on our sailboat. I used to get so horribly sea sick that my father took some rope, poked holes in either side of a bucket and tied that bucket around my neck so that I could just let it rip, if you catch my drift. One day, someone asked me if I was having fun. Apparently, I lifted my little blond head, wanly smiled and said, "Yes!" That's an amazingly positive comment considering the fact that all the while my stomach was churning and I vomited involuntarily into the bucket for hours!
As the years went on, the sea-sickness didn't improve very much. I recall spending the first two days of our cruises severely under the influence of Marazine or Dramamine. I would occasionally wake up from a half-comatose "nap" on the deck with saliva dripping out of my mouth, my face completely adhered to the deck cushion, and realizing that half the day was gone and we were pulling into some harbor. Back in those days, my father used to tell me his secret for not getting seasick. He told me to look at the horizon. He said that the horizon didn't move. So while the boat was rocking under power of the waves, if I kept my eyes on the horizon, I wouldn't feel like I was rocking so much. He told me to stand in the middle of the cockpit, allow my legs to act like shock-absorbers and then focus my gaze on the line at the edge of the world.
It worked – especially after those first two days were over.
Now in adulthood, I still get motion sickness. And not just in cars or on boats. I get "life-drama" motion sickness. You know what that is, right? That's when everything in our life starts to spin at such a rapid pace that we feel nauseous. Have you ever laid in bed and felt your stomach doing flips as the thoughts of your recent crisis spin in your mind like a carnival ride? I hate that!
And in those times, occasionally my father's words come back to me – Keep your eyes on the horizon.
I know that the place I am in is not my destination. When I look ahead in my life, I know that whatever I am going through at this moment that is driving me to feelings of nausea, is a season. This has come to pass. This is not where I am dropping anchor. I'm on my way to my destination. The wind may have picked up and white caps may have formed on the waves, but I'm still moving forward. This is hard, but if I keep my eyes focused on my purpose and my future, I don't feel the "spins" as severely. Do you have a vision for your future that can keep you grounded as you move through difficult times?
He's done it before and He'll do it again. I remind myself that this time of turbulence might be new to me but I've been through tough times before and I will again. God has gotten me through all of the other turbulent seasons and He will get me through this one, too. I think back on all of the situations that baffled and scared me as my mind raced to the worst conclusions. And then I recall how after I committed my life and the outcome into God's hands, everything worked out for my good. His faithfulness never fails!
Remember, the horizon of God's faithfulness doesn't move: so take your position, keep yourself loose and relaxed, and focus your gaze on everything that is true, pure, honest, and commendable. Focus on these things!
Hear the echo of my father's words: Keep your eyes on the Horizon.
How do you usually respond when everything in your life is rocking as a result of a storm?
When circumstances are causing you to reel with shock, disappointment or sadness, do you want to be able to experience security in your heart?
19 We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure. It enters the inner sanctuary behind the curtain, 20 where our forerunner, Jesus, has entered on our behalf.
What this Scripture is telling us is that our hope in God is the anchor for our souls. He cannot lie and he will not change His mind about you. The writer of Hebrews has just outlined earlier in the chapter that God made enormous promises to Abraham, who waited patiently and received everything that was promised. God has made promises to you – promises to love you,to heal you,to strengthen you and provide for you. Do you know how to locate and access those promises?
The Word of God reveals His heart for us. Spending time reading the Word will encourage you as you see all the times that God protected His people and provided for them – even when they didn't deserve it!


As for what Klinsmann said, it makes me wonder if USSF president Sunil Gulati realizes that the pressure in this World Cup cycle is squarely on him.
Gulati admitted that the United States missed an opportunity to do something special at the World Cup in South Africa. But after bringing back Bob Bradley as coach, Gulati backtracked a bit.
"With a little time to reflect, more than a day or two, you look back and that was a good World Cup experience," Gulati said in a conference call. "That hasn't changed my view that we all would have wanted another game or two. Bob agrees with that; we've talked about it. So the disappointment comes from being in a situation where we had a chance to advance.
Talk about wishful thinking. Anyone who watched the World Cup would be hard-pressed to believe the United States was capable of taking Germany to overtime. Germany wasn't at full strength when it beat Ghana in regulation during group play, and it likely would have had an easy time with the Americans.
Think back to May of this year. Most U.S. fans believed a trip to the second round of the World Cup was inevitable. Group C was a cakewalk with Algeria and Slovenia in the pool. Yet the United States struggled in each of its games and won the group in large part because England was so inept.
A change of coaches would have been welcomed, but the stumbling block with Klinsmann appears to have been about control.
No surprises there. Even Joachim Löw has had battles about player development in Germany.
But Gulati wouldn't loosen his grip, even if it meant bringing in Klinsmann.
"Verbally we agreed on that the technical side is my side, and I should have a 100 percent control of it," Klinsmann told Victorine. "Written terms, they couldn't commit to it. At that point I said, 'Well then, I can't get the job done because I have to have the last say as a head coach for my entire staff, for all the players issues, for everything that happens with the team."
It is totally fine. It's clear that Gulati strung Bradley along (again) and no matter what happens in Brazil in 2014, Bradley is off the hook. Gulati wants control, so he has to suffer the consequences if the United States doesn't advance to at least the quarterfinals in Brazil.
That's got to be the benchmark. The U.S. made a stunning run to the quarterfinals in 2002. After a dismal showing in 2006 and an expected finish in 2010, there must be a return to the excellence we witnessed eight years ago.
And if there isn't, it's all on Gulati.


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Games to Download
Franklin: Bank Alone
Mr. Franklin is the main local Banker. Once upon a time he decided to go to the work a bit earlier. He noticed that bank is full with thieves and the money is even falling out of their bags. Your task is to stop them and collect and bring all money back in safe. Use Arrow keys to move. Press Ctrl + Arrow key to change direction. Press Space to throw the bomb. Use R to restart level, L to go back to levels map.
Hamster: Rund um die Welt
German version of the Hamster game. Help Hamster to travel around the World and discover different countries. Avoid enemies, use various pick-ups to finish all 30 levels and set the highest score. Use Arrow keys to move Hamster around the screen. Use various Pick-ups to simplify your task.
Hamster: Around the World
Help Hamster to travel around the World and discover different countries. Avoid enemies, use various pick-ups to finish all 30 levels and set the highest score. Use Arrow keys to move Hamster around the screen. Use various Pickups: Anchor - Stop at the first border, Nut - Become much faster than enemies, Weed - Enemies move slower, Cherry - Get extra points, Heart - Get extra life, Mushroom - All enemies stop.
Participate Winter Olympic Games 2010 with Miga. Set the highest score in all disciplines and You'll be the winner. In Skiing you have to pass all flags as fast as you can. In Ski Jumping you must get maximal speed for your jump, hold your balance and make a perfect landing. Finally Snowboard - Finish the track as fast as you can. Use arrow keys and Space (only in Ski Jump) to control our Olympic Games 2010 mascot. Submit your score.
Many gamers prefer games to be downloaded to their computer. This is not surprising because the downloadable games are often more perfect and have a beautiful graphics. Besides, you do not always have an opportunity to play online because there may be some problems with the internet connection and its speed, which limits the use of browser-based games.
13games.ru/ offers its visitors several games available for free download. For the fans of action games we offer to try "Franklin: Bank Alone", which will also need logical thinking to solve various puzzles. The protagonist of the game is Mr. Franklin, the famous banker. One day he leaves early from his work and sees that the inner rooms of the bank are full of thieves and stolen money fall out of their bags. The player's task is to catch the thieves in order to return all the stolen money and put them in the safe place.
For those gamers who prefer the arcades, our site offers two versions of the" Hamster". In "Hamster: Rund um die Welt" the Hamster travels around the world and discovers new countries. You must help him do this. To go through all the levels of the game, you need to run away from enemies. Collect and use power-ups that significantly simplify the game proceeding. To continue Hamster's journeys a game "Hamster: Around the World" was created, in which additional levels, new cities and improved bonuses appeared. For example, an anchor that keeps the Hamster on the first line, a nut that adds speed and marijuana that slows the opponents moves, a heart adding life, cherry giving extra points, and a mushroom that stops the enemies. In both versions the main character is controlles with the keyboard which is very convenient.
A Winter Olympics 2010 will appeal to the fans of simulators and sport games. Always wanted to participate in the Olympics? We give you the opportunity to visit the Olympic Winter Games 2010 with Miga, the bear. You need to take part in several types of competitions. In skiing you need to touch quickly all the flags and in ski jumping - to get as much speed as possible keeping balance and standing successfully on the ground. And in the snowboard racing bear should cover the distance as quickly as possible, avoiding trees and rocks simultaneously.
All these games areso funny and they have a beautiful graphics. They will surely take you into the virtual world and provide with a great portion of entertainment.


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West Kowloon Cultural District Authority Statement
The West Kowloon Cultural District Authority (the Authority or WKCDA) announced today, on the advice of both the Management Contractor (Gammon Construction Limited) and the Contract Administrator (Atkins China Limited) for the M+ project, the immediate termination of a small sub-contract with Lee Tack Building Services Limited (LTBS).
LTBS has repeatedly breached the sub-contract and in particular has failed to meet the sub-contract's requirements in respect of timely payment of wages to its employees. This is a serious matter and, despite trying to work with LTBS to help resolve the problems over the last three months, LTBS's failure to take appropriate steps leaves the Authority with no choice but to terminate the contract with LTBS with immediate effect.
Blue Poles Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary of WKCDA, had executed a Deed of Transfer and Assignment of a sub-contract with LTBS to undertake HVAC pipework and ductwork installation on the M+ project, after the Authority terminated the employment of Hsin Chong Construction Company Limited under the M+ main works contract in August 2018. The Authority has a robust monitoring system in place, ensuring deliverables of construction works meet the compliance demands.
The Authority reiterated that the construction progress of M+ will not be affected as the related installation work is close to its completion. The Authority, together with the Management Contractor and the Contract Administrator will ensure the remaining work will be completed on time. The Authority is aware that several LTBS workers have recently contacted the Labour Department over alleged unpaid wages. The Authority and its wholly-owned subsidiary Blue Poles Limited will closely liaise with the Labour Department and every action will be taken to ensure that they are paid in accordance with the relevant legislation.


I guess you could say my appetite for International travel started at a very young age.
When I was just two years old, my parents and I traveled to Peru to visit my aunt, uncle and cousins, who were living in Lima for a year.
In case you hadn't figured it out yet, that's me in the middle there with the sweet outfit, bottle in hand, and sassy attitude. To be honest, I don't remember much of anything from this trip, but I believe it was there that I was bit by the travel bug.
Nearly 35 years later, I made my return to this beautiful South American country, trading in the bottle for Pisco Sours and very badly in need of an adventure.
friend Dana, one of her first reactions was: "Come to Peru with Devin and me!"
As you know, Dana has become my travel partner in crime the last couple years. In our short time of knowing each other, we've visited South Africa, the French Riviera, Singapore, Thailand and Montreal together.
But, as it turned out, I suddenly no longer had a job and found myself with endless vacation time. I didn't need much convincing. I booked my flight just a few days later. Or in the words of our trip hashtag... #alpacamybags!
Unlike most of my trips, I did almost zero planning for this one, as Devin and Dana had done all the leg work. For maybe the first time since my Greece trip, I sorta just showed up and was along for the ride!
Our Peruvian adventure started in Lima, which is the largest city in Peru (population over 10 million), and also the country's capital. It's located on the central coast, overlooking the Pacific Ocean. We happened to visit during wintertime in Peru, so we didn't actually frequent the beach, but we still enjoyed waking up each morning to the sound of crashing waves and walking along the boardwalk. The coastline here is aptly named "Costa Verde" (green coast).
If you are traveling from a major U.S. city like New York or Los Angeles, you should be able to find a direct flight to Lima. If you are traveling alone (as I was before meeting up with my friends), I would recommend booking your airport transfer in advance. I used Taxidatum and highly recommend them, as they will greet you at the airport holding a sign with your name on it. Pickup and payment were flawless (you pay the driver in cash, and they accept American dollars ($20) or Peruvian soles (S/60)).
We stayed in the Miraflores district, where many of the tourists gravitate towards while visiting. Instead of opting for a hotel, Dana found an awesome Air BnB that had floor to ceiling windows looking out at the ocean. It was a perfect spot for exploring and enjoying the awesome restaurants the city has to offer.
What to do: If the weather is nice enough, you can't miss the paragliders dotting the sky along the Costa Verde. This seemed like a no-brainer to us, so we signed up for the 10-minute flight and were in the air a few minutes later. The kiosk is hard to miss; it's located right in front of the takeoff point, which is a grassy area in front of the Malecon boardwalk near Parque del Amor. You must pay in cash (either 260 soles or 80 dollars) and it includes an HD video on an SD card with a few selected still shots taken from the video. Even if you are afraid of heights (like Dana), I highly recommend this. It's not really scary at all, moreso a relaxing 360 degree view of Lima and the coastline. Sort of a one-stop-shop for sight-seeing, especially if your time in the city is limited.
I'll be completely honest with you... aside from the paragliding, most of our "activities" in Lima revolved around food. It started bright and early after waking up to our first day in Peru. We decided to take a stroll along the boardwalk, and scouted out this lovely cliffside, open air restaurant. Buena Vista Cafe is exactly that... a coffee with an amazing view. The girls kept it simple with eggs, but I opted for a more Peruvian flair with a breakfast tamale and got my first taste of Aji Amarillo hot sauce, made from Peruvian peppers (obsessed!) The food and coffee here are pretty simple, as this place is all about the view. It was a perfect place to kick off the trip.
La Mar Cebicheria: If you eat only one meal in Lima, make sure you have ceviche, as it's believed to have originated in Peru nearly 2,000 years ago. If you are unfamiliar, ceviche is basically raw fish marinated/cured in citrus juice, chile peppers and onions. Even if you've had it before in the states, it will taste much different, much better in Lima. For our ceviche lunch, we chose one of Gaston Acurio's restaurants, who is widely known as the king of ceviche and an ambassador of Peruvian cuisine. I didn't realize it at the time, but I've actually eaten at his restaurant by the same name in San Francisco, which was also great... but again, something about eating it IN Peru was a game changer. It's also located on Avenida La Mar in Miraflores, which is considered sort of the epicenter of ceviche in Lima, so if you are unable to get into La Mar, you have plenty of other great options on this little tree-lined boulevard.
We started with cocktails (I had that Pisco Sour in front), and ordered a bunch of different dishes to share. Many restaurants will serve ceviche with cancha which are roasted Peruvian corn kernels (top middle). I also fell in love with these and even brought some home. We got a classic ceviche mixto served in leche de tigre (top right), a tiradito, which is a variation of ceviche (bottom right), and also some empanadas and amazing grilled octopus (not pictured).
I was so inspired by the fresh ceviche in Peru, that we even took a ceviche class later in our trip. I also shared a recipe on the blog, which is a combination of Chef Acurio's classic ceviche, some of the techniques we learned in class and my own personal twists.
Central Restaurant: Lima is home to three restaurants on the World's 50 Best Restaurants, and 2 of them appear in the top 10. Central Restaurant currently ranks #5 on that list for 2017, so I made it my mission to score us a reservation here.
About 15 hours later, we were on our way to the Andes to explore Machu Picchu! Click here to read Part II of our adventure.


At just 20 years old, Jenny Rose is one to watch out for in the future. Debuting in 2010, Rose's first match was against veteran MsChif. The artist formerly known as "Jumping" Jamilia Craft earliest matches were against veterans Daizee Haze, "The Queen of Wrestling" Sara Del Rey, Sumie Sakai, Cat Power and Mercedes Martinez, even though she lost she proved that she is a fighter and can hold her own. Trained by Daizee Haze at ROH Training Academy, the Philadelphia native lived twenty minutes away from the school. The "Jumping" Jamilia Craft character was born as a tribute to Rose's idol joshi legend Kyoko Inoue, from the tassels hanging off her ring gear to the mask Rose's unique look was a perfect imitation of Inoue. In 2011, Rose's dream of training and competing in Japan came true. Rose packed up her things and relocated to the land of the rising sun to compete for Kyoko Inoue's Pro Wrestling DIANA where the character of Jenny Rose was born. Since returning to the United States, Jenny Rose has gone to compete in Women Superstars Uncensored as one half of Bones and Roses with Jessie "Bonesaw" Brooks, winning the IndyGurlz Grand Prix, WXW,Absolute Intense Wrestling and so many more promotions. Whether she's Jenny Rose or Jamilia Craft the future looks bright as there is so many things on the horizons for her, only time will tell.
Jamilia Craft made her professional wrestling debut on January 24, 2010 against then current reigning SHIMMER Champion MsChif for Pro Wrestling Respect, the match ended with Jamilia falling victim to MsChif's desecrator. Jamilia would then team up with fellow ROH Training Academy trainee Rayna Von Tosh to defeat MsChif and trainer Daizee Haze via disqualification one month later. On the weekend of April 10-11, 2010, "Jumping" Jamilia Craft made her SHIMMER debut on volume twenty-nine in defeat to current WSU Champion Mercedes Martinez. Jamilia and joshi Misaki Ohata would pick up a loss to the team of Daizee Haze and Tomoka Nakagawa that weekend. Jamilia would complete her SHIMMER experience that weekend after earning a victory over veteran Malia Hosaka.
Jamilia Craft captured the Dominion Wrestling Federation Women's Championship after defeating Jessie Brooks and Jesse Bell in a three-way on May 15, 2010. At Pro Wrestling Respect on July 18, 2010, Jamilia Craft defeated Mia Yim. With a little over six months experience, Craft made her debut for Ring of Honor on July 5, 2010 losing to Daizee Haze. Craft would return to ROH on July 19, 2010, this time picking up another loss to "The Queen of Wrestling" Sara Del Rey. Jamilia would return to SHIMMER for volumes thirty-three through thirty-six tapings on September 11, 2010. After picking up loses to Cat Power and "The Rate Tank" Kellie Skater, Craft picked up a win over Jessie Brooks.
At ROH's "Richards vs Daniels," Daizee Haze and her trainee were defeated by Nevaeh and Lady Jojo. Jamilia made her debut for Women Superstars Uncensored on November 6, 2010 at "Breaking Barriers," Craft was defeated by Rain. WSU Tag Team Champions The Belle Saints defeated Jamilia and Jennifer Cruz for the WSU DVD tapings that same day. On November 13, 2010, Jamilia suffered yet another loss to Sara Del Rey in ROH. After coming up short in previous encounters, Mia Yim and Jamilia finally got a win over Del Rey and Haze in Real Championship Wrestling on December 4, 2010. At a joint WSU/NWS show on December 11, 2010, Jamilia unsuccessfully challenged Angel Orsini for her All Guts No Glory Championship. Jamilia would pick up another victory in WSU over Allysin Kay at "Final Chapter 2011." At WSU's 4th Anniversary show on March 4, 2011, Jamilia Craft defeated Jennifer Cruz with the belly-to-belly suplex for the three count. On March 26, 2011, the team of Jamilia Craft and Mia Yim were defeated by Regeneration X(Leva Bates and Allison Danger) at the SHIMMER tapings. Jamilia would go on to team with Frightmare as apart of the NWS/WSU King and Queen of the Ring tournament. Jamilia and Frightmare would advance to the semi-finals before being eliminated by Jennifer Cruz and Nicky Oceans.
On June 25, 2011, WSU held their fourth annual "Uncensored Rumble," Jamilia Craft and Amy Lee were the soul survivors of eight woman elimination tag team match with the stipulation being the first person eliminated from the match will enter the Uncensored Rumble as entrant number one, the person that scores the winning fall for their team will enter the Rumble last, Amy Lee, Jamilia, Jana and Nikki Syxx and Amy Lee defeated Allysin Kay, Rick Cataldo, Monique and Jennifer Cruz, as a result, Amy Lee earned the right to enter the Uncensored Rumble last.
Following the footsteps of so many of her peers, Jamilia made a huge decision to pack up and head over to Japan to train and break her way into the joshi puroresu scene. On July 10, 2011, Jamilia debuted for joshi legend Kyoko Inoue's World Woman Pro-Wrestling Diana against Keiko Aono. Aono scored the pinfall following a falcon arrow. Jamilia also debuted a new look/ persona, dropping the "Jumping" Jamilia Craft character and becoming "Jenny Rose." While in Japan, Jenny got to compete against many joshi legends like Manami Toyota, Dump Matsumoto, Dash Chisako, and Kyoko Inoue. On September 4, 2011, Manami Toyota and Hailey Hatred defeated Rose and Kaoru Ito at Happy Hour. After a six month stint over in Japan, Rose would return to the United States. In January 2012, Jenny Rose would make her debut for WSU for "Blitzkrieg" taking on Jessie "Bonesaw" Brooks in a match that would end in a fifteen minute time limit draw. Manager exordinaire Rick Cataldo came out and berated both Rose and Bonesaw, both women attacked Cataldo as a result leaving Cataldo's new masked protege Ezavel Suena to make the save. This would lead to a tag team match at WSU's 5th Anniversary IPPV on March 3, 2012, Rose and Bonesaw picked up the win over Cataldo and Suena via Rose hitting Cataldo with the top rop crossbody for the win. On March 17, 2012, Jenny Rose defeated Niya to capture the WXW-C4 Women's Championship. Jenny Rose would continue to be on a roll as she won the IndyGurlz Grand Prix tournament on March 24, 2012, defeating partner Jessie Brooks, Kylie Pierce and Veda Scott in the finals with a double stomp to claim the victory. At RCW's "The Power," Jenny Rose and Kimber Lee were defeated by Mia Yim in a triple threat match. On April 14, 2012, Jenny Rose would make her debut for Absolute Intense Wrestling for "Girls Night Out 6." Jenny Rose would come up short in her debut as Hailey Hatred defeated her with the tiger suplex. The next day, Jenny Rose would compete in the NWS/WSU King and Queen of the Ring tournament. Teaming with Jeff Cannonball, just like the year previous Rose and her partner would be eliminated in the semi-finals by Jennifer Cruz and her partner Mike Dennis. At the WSU double tapings on April 28, 2012, Jenny Rose defeated Nikki Syxx. Jenny Rose would lose her WXW-C4 Women's Championship on May 19, 2012 to former champion Niya.


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Amir Khan describes jihadists as 'brainwashed'
In a speech in northern England, Khan said he is more British than UKIP. (File photo: Reuters)
By Staff writer Al Arabiya News Monday 13 April 2015
Boxing champion Amir Khan said he believe that militants are brainwashed, which pushes him to go to schools and talk to children to follow the "right path."
"Kids don't grow up thinking about going out and killing innocent people," Khan said at a community event in Northern England. His comments were widely carried by British media.
His remarks came weeks after three schoolgirls from east London fled to join ISIS in Syria. The trio disappeared during the February half-term holiday. They have been identified as potentially vulnerable to radicalization after a classmate managed to board a plane to Turkey before them.
Khan is a British boxer. His grandfather was born in Pakistan and came to Britain in the 1960s. Since the beginning of his career, Khan has been in the political scene.
Speaking at the same event, Khan - who has been previously attacked over his race - described himself more British than the UK Independence Party, UKIP, because he fought for the UK in the Olympics.
In response to claims that cultural tolerance has been decreasing in the northwestern town of Bolton, where UKIP is doing well, Khan responded: "I've got nothing but a lot of love here from a lot of people.
"But maybe it's because I'm probably more British than UKIP are because I represented the country in the Olympic Games."
When Liverpool's Henderson met Amir Khan
Boxer Amir Khan to visit Pakistan to show support for massacre victims
Amir Khan's dream boxing match faces hurdles amid Islamophobia
Boxer Amir Khan bailed after suspected assault
British boxer Amir Khan postpones Mayweather fight due to Ramadan


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1967: The Magic Toyshop
As I enter my fiftieth year (which I will celebrate simply for the fact of still being alive) I thought it would be interesting to commemorate the anniversary by reading some novels published in the year I was born – particularly when I realised that I had a copy of Angela Carter's The Magic Toyshop to hand. Though I have read some of Carter's short stories, this would be my first novel (and only her second). Whether reading the fiction of 1967 will enlightened me in any way about my own origins is debateable, but if it gives me the excuse to explore some writing from that period which I have so far neglected then it is certainly worth the attempt.
What struck me first about The Magic Toyshop was how similar it was to many of the books I read as a child, beginning, as it does, by separating the children – fifteen-year-old Melanie, twelve-year-old Johnathan, and five-year-old Victoria – from their parents. Sometimes this was caused by war-time evacuation; on other occasions, as here, it was the result of the parents' deaths. In fact, Melanie's parents are entirely absent from the novel, dying, as they do, while in America, the children meanwhile in the care of Mrs Rundle. Shortly after, the children must leave their comfortable middle class existence (with luxuries such as central heating which I certainly lacked in my early childhood) and live with their uncle Philip in South London.
Of course, The Magic Toyshop is not a children's book, as is apparent from its opening pages when one of its central preoccupations, Melanie's sexual awakening, is revealed:
"The summer she was fifteen, Melanie discovered she was made of flesh and blood."
One night she puts on her mother's wedding dress and goes out in the garden, only for the door to close and lock behind her. She realises she must climb the apple tree to return to her bedroom, and that she cannot do so while wearing the dress:
"So she must take off the dress and climb into the treacherous and deceitful night… She was horribly conscious of her own exposed nakedness. She felt a new and final kind of nakedness, as if she had taken even her own skin off and now stood clothed in nothing, nude in the ultimate nudity of the skeleton."
This moment wonderfully conveys Melanie poised (on the branches of the tree) between childhood and adulthood: the dress represents her desire to be a woman but also reveals she is missing her mother; climbing the tree is a return to childhood activities ("she had given up climbing when she had started to grow her hair and stooped wearing shorts") but her awareness of her nakedness (as with Eve) reminds us she is no longer innocent.
Uncle Philip rules his family – his wife, Margaret, and her two brothers, Francie and Finn – like a tyrant. "Do not," Finn tells Melanie, "treat your uncle lightly." Finn knows this well, frequently suffering Philip's violent outbursts:
"'Three minutes late! And you come dancing up in your stinking rags as if it didn't matter! Do I keep a boarding house for dirty beatniks? Do I? Do I?' And he launched a great, cracking blow at Finn's head."
Philip makes the toys which he sells – reluctantly, it seems, as he regards them more as works of art than playthings and doesn't like them touched. He is proudest of his puppets and will occasionally insist that everyone gather in the basement to watch one of his performances.
The novel is redolent with symbolism. Philip not only wants to control his puppets but those around him. Margaret is unable to speak and must write down anything she wishes to say, just as Philip has removed her voice entirely from their relationship. Melanie is made to perform as Leda in one of Philip's puppet shows where she is molested by a wooden swan of his invention. However, everything is grounded in Carter's description of the drab surroundings, which feel more fifties than sixties:
"Between a failed, boarded up jeweller's and a grocer's displaying a windowful of sunshine cornflakes was a dark cavern of a shop, so dimly lit one did not notice it as it bowed its head under the tenement above. In the cave could be seen the vague outlines of a rocking horse, and the sharper scarlet of its flaring nostrils, and stiff-limbed puppets, dressed in rich, sombre colours, dangling from their strings; but the brown varnish of the horse and the plums and purples of the puppets made such a murk together that very little could be seen."
In fact, it is, at times, a very Dickensian London, seen also in the grubbiness of the characters, particularly Finn:
"He wore washed-out, balding corduroy trousers, wrinkled with their own tightness. His clothes had the look of strays from a parish poor-box."
Melanie and Finn's relationship is also beautifully handled by Carter. She is both attracted and repulsed by him (his "insolent, off-hand, terrifying maleness"); he finds her beautiful but also young:
"He was a tawny lion poised for the kill – but was she the prey?"
The Magic Toyshop contains all the fear and thrill of growing up enhanced by Carter's uncanny ability to marry the grotesque with the everyday. I'm looking forward to reading more of her work.
Tags:1967, Angela Carter, magic toyshop
Posted in Angela Carter | 27 Comments »
Lost Books – Second Harvest
One of the most impressive novels I read last year was originally written in 1929. Hill (which I read in a new translation by Paul Eprile) was Jean Giono's first novel and it left me eager for more, though up against Giono's rather sporadic and disorganised appearance in English. Hill is the first of three novels said to comprise Giono's 'Pan trilogy', the second being Un de Baumugnes (Lovers are Never Losers) and the third Regain (Second Harvest). Both were translated into English in the 1930s, but Lovers are Never Losers seems not to have been reprinted (and is therefore not the easiest book to get hold of) whereas Second Harvest (translated by Henri Fluchere and Geoffrey Myers) was (in 1999 by Harvill).
Second Harvest, like Hill, is set in a sparsely populated village in the Provence area of France. In fact the village of Aubignane is so sparsely populated that when the novel opens it has only three inhabitants left: Gaubert and Mameche, both elderly, and Panturle, the only one with much life left ahead of him:
"Panturle was a huge man. He looked like a piece of wood walking along. During the heat of the summer, when he had made himself a sort of sun-curtain out of fig leaves and held himself erect with his hands full of grass, he was just like a tree."
That Panturle appears to be part of nature is not unexpected as Giono uses language in these novels to suggest that the landscape and the creatures (including people) which live there are inextricably linked. The wind, we are told, "waved about a little and beat its tail gently against the hard sky"; flames are "just like colts, prancing around elegantly without thinking of work"; in winter:
"The countryside shivered in silence…Every morning a russet sun rose in silence. With a few indifferent paces it strode across the whole breadth of the sky and day was over. Night heaped up the stars like grain."
Gaubert has been convinced by his son to leave as winter approaches – "He says he's anxious about leaving me alone this winter" – and it looks as if the village will soon be empty until Mamech asks Panturle, "If I brought you one, would you take the woman?" She does not ask this question because she has someone in mind but simply out of determination. The promise seems in vain, however, when Mamech herself disappears.
Our focus now moves to the knife-grinder, Gedemus, and the woman he travels with, Arsule. Arsule's back-story is an indication that Giono is never sentimental about the lives he portrays. A travelling entertainer, she is abandoned by her 'manager' and, when found the next day by a group of farm-workers, she is repeatedly raped. Gedemus then takes her in as both servant and mistress. His treatment of her as a useful asset rather than a human being can be seen in the way that, though they set off with him pulling his knife-grinding tools in a cart, she soon takes over.
Through a series of prosaic events which Giono describes in such a way to seem almost mystical, including Gedemus and Arulse pulling Panturle from a river and saving his life, Panturle and Arsule end up living together in Abignane. Panturle's symbolic rebirth ("He had begun to live again a few moments ago…") is the beginning of the rebirth of the village, best seen in his decision to plant grain again having lived alone by hunting.
As with Hill, Second Harvest is a simple story told with great subtlety. Giono's great skill is to display characters and landscape as one and in constant conflict. Even in writing of a way of life which was already dying out, there is an optimism of the will which is difficult to resist.
Tags:Jean Giono, second harvest
Posted in Jean Giono, Lost Books | 8 Comments »
We Who Are About To…
Some writers fade entirely from the common memory, others remain immortalised by a single work. The latter has been the fate of 'feminist science fiction writer' Joanna Russ. (The quotation marks are not intended to suggest disagreement: she was a feminist, and she wrote science fiction, but the description also seems an attempt to limit her). Her novel The Female Man (in print today, and, I suspect every day since its 1975 publication) is the novel which has come to define her, though she wrote five others, and numerous short stories. (To be fair, her non-fiction essay How to Suppress Women's Writing is still relatively well known). Now Penguin's new Penguin Worlds series, curated by Naomi Alderman and Hari Kunzru, has chosen another of her books as one of their initial five titles: We Who Are About To…
It will not surprise you to learn that We Who Are About To… is a novel about death. Both interpretations of the phrase's meaning ("Ave, Imperator, morituri te salutant") – is it a fatalistic acceptance of death or a plea for life? – run through the novel, which takes on the traditional SF trope of an emergency landing on an alien planet:
"In the event of a mechanical dysfunction, the ship's computer goes for the nearest 'tagged' planet, i.e. where human life is supposed to be possible, then ejects the passenger compartment separately… We're a handful of persons in a metal bungalow: five women, three men, bedding, chemical toilet, simple tools, an even simpler pocket laboratory, freeze-dried food for six months, and a water-distiller with its own sealed power pack, good for six months (and cast as a unit, unusable for anything else)."
The novel explores the difference between the passengers' attitudes to their situation, in particular the divide between our narrator, who believes they have no chance of survival, and the other passengers who retain hopes of some kind – "Already excited talk of 'colonization', whatever that is." Not only does SF generally endorse the view that the human spirit will overcome, but the novel form itself suggests as much – it's no accident that Robinson Crusoe, one of the earliest examples, is about survival. (For those who only read 'literary' SF, it may come a surprise that science fiction is by and large an optimistic genre). Not only does the narrator feel survival is unlikely, but also inadvisable:
"But I think that some kinds of survival are damned idiotic. Do you want your children to live in the Old Stone Age? Do you want them to forget how to read? Do you want your great-grandchildren to die at thirty? That's obscene."
Placing the narration in her hands prioritises her logical if bleak viewpoint, frequently making the other characters look ridiculous in their optimism, and in the way they easily retreat to ideas of gender roles long abandoned:
"Nathalie's life and yours and Lori's and Cassie's are too valuable to put in danger. You are childbearers."
When Cassie is furious with Alan for wasting water by taking a bath he says, "I don't think… that you ought to talk to me like that."
"I could take you over my knee and spank you."
When she still won't back down he begins punching her in the face. His strength outweighs any intelligence she possesses.
This, however, covers only the first twenty-five pages, and fails to do them justice: each of Russ' characters brings some vital ingredient to the novel's opening, and her philosophical intent also includes creating a religion. In the novel's second half, the narrator's attempt to leave the group and live alone is catastrophic (I'll say no more), and Russ follows fictional her proposition through to the end.
We Who Are About To… may be forty years old, but it is certainly not dated. It fully deserves to be rediscovered.
Tags:Joanna Russ, we who are about to
Posted in Joanna Russ | 4 Comments »
The Transmigration of Bodies
Yuri Herrera's Signs Preceding the End of the World was one of the best novels I read in 2015 and, while The Transmigration of Bodies (again translated by Lisa Dillman) may not quite match it, that does not prevent it from being another exhilarating slice of Herrera's magpie imagination. Here we are firmly in hard-boiled territory, though transferred to a city ravaged by the type of end-times plague normally associated with science fiction.
Its central character, the Redeemer, is a "fixer" whose job it is to "take care of stuff under the table at the courts:"
"The Redeemer prided himself on knowing about all the palmgreasing, hornswoggling and machinating in the city…"
He is sent out into the deserted city to resolve a 'situation': one family (the Fonsecas) have lost their son, Romeo, last seen being picked up in a van by members of another family (the Castros). In retaliation they have taken Baby Girl, and The Redeemer, as the go-between, must arrange the swap.
"So different and so the same, the Castors and the Fonsecas. Poor as dirt a couple of decades ago, now too big for their boots, and neither had moved out of the barrio: they just added locks and doors and stories and a shit-ton of cement to their houses, one with more tile than the other."
The Redeemer must walk the tight-rope between the two families, diffusing the gang-war which could erupt at any moment, and coping with the new difficulties of the epidemic such as army road-blocks (not to mention locate a condom so he can sleep with his neighbour, Three Times Blonde). As a thriller, the novel works well: the 'kidnapping' is not what it at first appears (I'll say no more) and there's more than enough jeopardy to go round. Herrera uses the noir genre to create a story which gives every indication of bleakness (and has some great hard-boiled lines like "Unhappy people aren't the problem. It's people taking their unhappy out on you.") but is strangely sunny in its conclusion.
This fits with a more general intention to use the genre conventions against themselves while ensuring the novel remains a tribute and not a parody. In our hero's relationship with Three Times Blonde, for example, it is she who calls the shots, he who regards the fact she even looks at him as a "miracle." (And also he who walks unexpectedly into her room). It's perhaps why Herrera resisted the temptation to write in first person. The Redeemer does, however, exist in the borderland between the criminals and the law, with a conscience which is blunted but intact.
The Transmigration of Bodies, though literally true, is a little literary for a noir title, though it has the inherent cynicism of suggesting a soulless world. In fact, this novel shows that, even in the bleakest circumstances, we can be redeemed.
Tags:transmigration of bodies, yuri herrera
Posted in Yuri Herrera | 6 Comments »
One Hundred Shadows
Hwang Junguan's One Hundred Shadows, a Korean novel originally published in 2010 and translated by Jung Yewon, is the second title from Tilted Axis Press. The novel has a fairy-tale quality to it, beginning with a young woman wandering lost in the woods:
"I saw a shadow in the woods. I didn't know it was a shadow at first. I saw it slip through a thicket and followed it in, wondering if there was a path, and thinking how familiar it looked. The woods grew more dense the deeper in I went, but I kept on going deeper and deeper because the deeper I went, the more the shadow drew me in."
The repetition (woods twice, shadow three times, deeper four) is typical of the novel's style, creating a hypnotic simplicity. The narrator, Eunygo, has been drawn into the woods chasing her own shadow. Only the intervention of her friend, Mujae, (perhaps) saves her. As they attempt to find their way out of the woods, he tells her the story of (perhaps) his father, who also saw his shadow "rise":
"If you spot someone who looks like you, it's your shadow, and once your shadow rises it's over for you, because shadows are very persistent, because you can't bear not to follow your shadow once it's risen. And then, looking like a ghost, he died."
Mujae links the rising of his father's shadow with his father falling into debt, and throughout the novel this phenomenon is connected to poverty and hopelessness. (As Mr Yeo says about his own shadow rising, "My life hasn't exactly been plain sailing so it was inevitable really.") All of the novel's characters are poor, and if you are fearing that the novel exists in an entirely allegorical landscape, nothing could be further from the truth. Once free from the forest, Eunygo and Mujae are firmly located in the world of working class South Korea:
"I worked at an electronics market, a ramshackle warren of tiny shops close to the heart of the city… The market was where I first met Mujae. I manned the customer desk and ran errands at Mr Yeo's repair shop, while Mujae was an apprentice at a transformer workshop."
These businesses are threatened by the demolition of the buildings in which they are housed. The first of these is knocked down with great ceremony during the novel:
"As for the way the headlines were making it seem as though the entire market had been demolished rather than just one of the five buildings, Mr Yeo claimed that the intention was to ensure a smooth passage for the final demolition by killing off business in advance."
This emphasises the impression we have of the novel's characters living on the margins of society, regarded as old-fashioned and past any use, rather like the electronic equipment Mr Yeo repairs, or the bulbs sold at Omusa, no longer available anywhere else.
One Hundred Shadows is also a love story of sorts, but one which refuses to be hurried. Mujae freely admits his attraction towards Eunygo, though with rather understated phrases such as "I like you." Eunygo is, it seems, keener to hide her feelings:
"Mujae asked me why I was sweating so much. The soup's hot, I said…"
"Are you ill?
Your face is flushed."
Intimate moments between them involve discussing the whorls of hair on their heads, and singing songs together. They also spend a lot of time eating. Some readers may find this gentle progression frustrating but I felt the fear of commitment an accurate reflection of their uncertain futures. The threatened separation from shadows also suggests a lack, an emptiness; it's no surprise that when they open a matryoshka (Russian) doll together, the innermost doll gets crushed.
One Hundred Shadows proceeds like a dream, a strange combination of vivid naturalism and uncertain symbolism, and is all the better for it.
Tags:Hwang Jungeun, one hundred shadows
Posted in Hwang Jungeun | 6 Comments »
The Empress and the Cake
Given that The Man I Became was narrated by a gorilla, I am astonished to announce that I found Linda Stift's The Empress and the Cake (translated from the German by Jamie Bulloch) the strangest of Peirene Press' titles last year. It begins when its unwitting narrator encounters an elderly lady who requests that they share a Gugelhupf (a cake popular in Austria): "A whole one is too much for me and they don't sell them by the half here." This is followed by a further invitation to accompany the woman to her apartment and share the half she has bought. ("My house keeper and I can't eat it all between us"). Two important aspects of the novel have already been introduced: the narrator's willingness to be swayed by her host (Frau Hohenembs) and an obsession with food.
Our narrator suffers from bulimia: once she has eaten a second slice of the cake she feels there is little point in stopping there, "the third I helped myself to without invitation because it was irrelevant now."
"I was abandoned by the day. A faint trance descended onto me like a silk cloth. I went into the bathroom and regurgitated the whole lot."
Already the narrative has been peppered with references to food and weight, however. "If only you knew the lengths I go to…to keep my figure!" Frau Hehenembs comments, while in the background her maid, Ida, is specifically introduced as "fat". Meanwhile, a second narrative introduces us to Empress Elisabeth of Austria who was famously fanatical about her figure:
"Her waist measured no more than fifty centimetres; a man could have put his hand right round it. This was no surprise as she barely ate a thing."
Frau Hohenembs relationship with Ida is a shabby reflection of the Empress and her maid, who is the narrator of the second narrative. Hohenembs herself is more than a little obsessed with Elisabeth (suggesting perhaps some connection to the maid, though as the Empress lived in the second half of the nineteenth century it seems unlikely she could be the maid, unless the novel is even stranger than I think). Not only does she have several pictures of the young Elisabeth in her home, but our narrator soon finds herself embroiled in a theft a duck press from a museum (used to squeeze the juice from carcasses which could then be drunk in lieu of eating, a method of 'dieting' used by Elisabeth). Later, further items are purloined as Hohenembs claims ownership through her unspoken relationship to the Empress.
Amid all the eccentricity, the novel is a distressing picture of bulimia. We learn in detail the lengths to which the narrator will go to to remain unnaturally thin:
"Often I'd leap up in the middle of reading the newspaper or watching an advertisement for diet products, stand on the scales and prove to myself that I hadn't shifted a gram either way since the previous weigh-in fifteen minutes earlier."
Closeted claustrophobically with the obsessions of these two women, there is little sense that men are to be blamed. Only Ida attracts a sexual partner in the course of the novel, and the narrator's repeated reference to 'Charlotte' suggests a previous relationship. In any case, Stift seems more intent on dissecting how it feels than analysing its cause (though in one reading of the novel, Frau Hohenembs and Ida are simply extensions of the narrator's psyche).
Just like Frau Hohenmebs, The Empress and the Cake may give the initial impression of charming quirkiness, but it is, in fact, grotesque, a reminder that, as Freud discovered, the horrors of this world can lie within the genteel drawing rooms of Vienna.
Tags:Linda Stift, the empress and the cake
Posted in Linda Stift, Peirene Press | 11 Comments »
Her Father's Daughter
In Marie Sizun's Her Father's Daughter (translated from the French by Adriana Hunter) a young girl must acclimatise herself to the idea of her father's return, a father who has been missing from her childhood having spent it as a prisoner of war in Germany. The novel is entirely from the child's point of view, but in the third person; this impressive technical feat ensures there is no disconnect between the viewpoint and the language, while at the same time delivering the perspective of the central character in all its innocence, irony and intuition.
"The child" (her name, patriotically, is France, but her mother's habitual "my darling" has seen this fade from use; her father will have different ideas) is at first mystified by the idea her father might return. "There isn't room here," she says. The impenetrability of her mother's response indicates that their closeness is threatened:
"The mother gives her that funny look again, slow, unreadable, secret."
To the child "her entire world and the only imaginable world, is her mother":
"And it's this secret, intimate world, their world for just the two of them, that the child can suddenly feel slipping away."
The father will not be the only thing to come between mother and child: there is also the memory of a trip to Normandy and a baby sister who did not come home with them, a memory of events which both the mother and grandmother deny ever took place – "It's like a dream but it isn't a dream."
Sizun brilliantly charts France's reaction to her father, an initial hostility ("Inside the child's head, in her body, something turns to ice") which slowly transfers itself to her mother. After all, it is she who has abandoned calling her 'my darling' and instead transferred that term of affection to her husband:
"The child can see she is no longer the object of her mother's adoration. The loved one is her father."
When the father tries to instil the discipline he believes has been lacking – for example, that she eat all the food placed before her – "it's towards her mother… that all her resentment is directed." She notices, but is not sympathetic towards, the change in her mother's character – weaker, deferential, a "docile wife". Reading between the lines (as the reader must) it seems the husband's absence has offered the mother as much freedom as the child. Now, with the guilt of a relationship while he was away to contend with, she vainly attempts to please him.
We can also see that much of the father's irritation is related to the war. He "listens to the radio from morning till night" and the first time he shows his daughter affection is on the day he hears that the Americans have landed. As her relationship with her father improves, however, the relationship between her parents deteriorates.
Her Father's Daughter is a wonderful evocation of childhood memories. It does not disguise the fact that memory is selective:
"No memories either of the days immediately after that first meeting. A black hole."
"Of the weeks, the few months that come next, what will one day be left in the child's memory?"
The memory of Normandy, which ticks like a time-bomb beneath the family, dismissed as a dream, existing, as it does, on the borderline of memory's beginning. The novel also evokes our early impressions of our parents and the way in which they can colour our long-term relationships. And, of course, it's also a story of the fading innocence, drifting briefly into second person to make that point:
"That was how one day you stop being a child and you end up calling yourself France, like everyone else."
Even the placing of the comma – whether the author or translator's decision – ensures the tone is elegiac, and confirms, above all, how beautifully written this is.
Tags:her father's daughter, Marie Sizun
Posted in Marie Sizun, Peirene Press | 13 Comments »
The Man I Became
Talking animals are staples of both satirists and Disney scriptwriters, so it seems entirely appropriate that Peter Verhelst's The Man I Became – which features a warped version of Disneyland as a shorthand for the American dream – should be told by a gorilla. (Translated by David Colmer, it was Peirene Press' first publication of last year). Its early chapters echo the Middle Passage as the narrator and his fellow gorillas, after capture, are walked through the desert until they reach the sea, "a new desert but blue, made of water and stretching away out of sight." Finally they arrive at the New World:
"Only when then enormous lights turned on did we see the hundreds of people behind the glass walls. Their mouths opened and closed but we couldn't hear what they were shouting. Or were they laughing? Why were they waving? Were they angry?"
This incomprehension is shared by narrator and reader alike: for both, the rules of the New World will be revealed slowly and often obliquely. Firstly, animal must aspire to become human: clothing, shaving, smiling, conversing – before a "baptism of fire" in the form of a cocktail party. The price of failure has already been made clear: "the thing that looked like us before the shave but trampled down, miserable, broken;" or, worse, fed to the Dreamland Maritime Cleaning Crew, "also known as the Great White family."
Dreamland, where the gorilla/human will now be employed, is portrayed as a theme park (his first experience is a ride on a roller-coaster), the Disney 'dream come true' of the American dream, the apex of human aspiration:
"We are, in a sense, the end point, the pinnacle. And that's why so many people come to see us. Not only to understand their own history better, but to see how they can better themselves as well… This is where people come to celebrate being accepted into the Big Dream."
The new humans are rewarded with gold Ds and mobile phones – "each promotion brings top-ups and new icons." In the Dome the animals participate in a 'recreation' of Earth's history from the world emerging from the darkness on beyond the present into a future in which children set off in a rocket with their robots. This section gives a good indication of the way in which the novel moves beyond allegory towards a dream state that borders on surrealism. The animals enter the show in an order that echoes their appearance at the cocktail party; when the rocket launches we are directed to a girl waving at a porthole, just as we were towards the face of a girl with "the sweetest, quietest, most delicate smile" on arrival in the New World (a motif which will reoccur later).
These ambiguities co-exist with biting satire, as we see when the narrator discusses the cost of his success:
"My schedule was so crammed, the only contact I had with others was during meetings… More and more often I used fashionable words that made people feel they were part of something exceptional."
The story ends in apocalypse and redemption: just as the narrator's initial identity was eliminated, so he moves beyond the one created for him – still human, but on his own terms. This gives us hope in the face of the novel's bleak world view (a hope hinted at in the opening chapter).
Verhelst imbues what could easily have been a one-note novel with astonishing richness and depth, a broken mirror in which the shattered reflection is sometimes immediately recognisable and at others only intuitively known.
Tags:peter verherlst, the man i became
Posted in Peirene Press, Peter Verhelst | 12 Comments »
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