text:
More of My Story: 1993 Letter That "Went Everywhere," According to Abbot Who Accused Me of Assaulting Him by Telling My Story — A Sequel
Mary Oliver, "The Chance to Love Everything," in Dream Work (NY: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1986), p. 9.
In the past three days, I've posted (in three installments — here, here, and here) a letter I sent to friends and colleagues in September 1993, explaining why I had resigned my position at Belmont Abbey College after I was given a one-year terminal contract for which the college officials refused to provide a reason. This is a sequel to that letter I sent to the same friends and colleagues in February 1994 — an update to the September letter:
Since I circulated my September 29th letter, several events have occurred that deserve to be added to the chronicle of my encounter with Belmont Abbey College.
First, after my resignation in August, 1993, I applied for N.C. unemployment benefits. When I did so, the state contacted Belmont Abbey College — a usual procedure — to ask whether the college had any statement regarding my resignation.
The college's business office sent a letter saying that I had turned down a bona fide job offer. The effect of the letter (an effect the college would have surely anticipated) was to block my application for unemployment, since state law does not permit one to draw unemployment benefits when one has rejected a good-faith job offer.
The college certainly had the option not to send such a letter to the state regarding me. Why it did so is, of course, a matter of speculation. It might be that it wishes to build a case that prohibits my claiming that there had been a conflict situation, in case of future legal action on my part.
On the other hand, many faculty at the college who know about this incident see the college's sending such a letter as an act of gratuitous vengeance, as the college's attempt to punish me even after I have resigned. I am told that, although other faculty members have received the kind of treatment I received at the college, I am the first who ever made an issue of it. Others simply disappeared, and no one knew what had happened to them. Because I have tried to fight back, faculty members think that I have earned even added hostility on the part of the college administration and monks.
At my lawyer's advice, I appealed the state's decision to deny me unemployment benefits. A hearing was held in the local office of the state unemployment commission. The chair of BAC's humanities division came to testify on my behalf, as did the chair of the business department. The humanities chair testified that in 1992-93, I had had the highest student evaluations of any humanities faculty member — something I had suspected, but not known until that time. The business chair testified that the college president had told him as late as February, 1993, that I could make a career at BAC, if I were willing to accept his withdrawal of support for a theology center.
The college sent as its witness a low-ranking employee in the business office, who had been at the college only one year. She testified that I had resigned after having been offered a contract for the 1993-94 academic year.
The officer who heard the case was persistently confused about why I had resigned. Despite numerous attempts on the part of my lawyer and two witnesses to explain that I had not had a tenure hearing and had not been turned down for tenure, he insisted on thinking that I had been rejected for tenure and had resigned because I did not want to teach my final year after the rejection. It seemed impossible to get the officer to understand that I had never been reviewed by a jury of my peers, that my tenure-track position was being terminated without stated reason and after I had done an outstanding job, and that all this had occurred by administrative fiat. The college's witness added to the confusion by stating that she did not know whether I had or had not had a tenure hearing — a really amazing thing for her to assert, when she has to have known I had not been at the college nearly long enough even to apply for tenure.
The officer ruled in favor of the college — not surprising, in view of the fact that N.C. is a "right-to-work" state which tends to give the benefit of the doubt to employers, in conflict situations. At my lawyer's advice, I appealed this decision to the state board, and in December received word that this board upheld the local office's judgment.
The upshot is, of course, that I am without any benefits of any kind, and have no health coverage, since I cannot afford to buy that. Several faculty members at BAC came to me in the fall to offer to loan money to me, and that (with a loan from my family), has made it barely possible for me to get by this winter.
What is very hard to accept is the silence of the monastery in the face of what seems to me to be such an unjust, uncharitable action. With all their economic security, how the monks can continue to uphold a college administration that behaves as this administration continues to behave towards me — that is difficult for me to understand. Unless, of course, the monks are at the very center of what has been done to me, as I have sadly come to conclude . . . .
Ever since I resigned from the college, a group of faculty members have constantly asked about my well being, but only one monk has sought to keep in touch with me, and his intent is to leave the community. All the other monks treat both Steve Schafer and me as pariahs, and we have no idea why we have merited such treatment.
In the fall, after my resignation, Steve invited a monk to dinner at our house. This was after a year of promises on Steve's part to extend such an invitation to this monk; but no date that suited all parties had been found. The monk accepted the invitation. But the night before the dinner was to take place, he called to say that he would feel uncomfortable being with us, because of what had been done to us by the college!
(Note in 2015: this monk later left the monastery to protest what had been done to us, and after he left the monastery, he told us that he had been given orders by the abbot and sub-prior not to go to dinner at our house. A novice who left the community and whom I had taught also come to me to apologize that he had not spoken to me on the campus when I said hello to him several times. He, too, told me that the novice master, who was the sub-prior and is now the monastic abbot, forbade all novices to speak to me.)
Perhaps it would be easier to bear the sense of being unclean, if one knew precisely what it was that had made one unclean. But to be told by people who represent the Lord who ate with outcasts that one has been unjustly made unclean, yet still ought not to be eaten with, that is really difficult to understand. To recognize that one is so alien to the Christian community that one is judged unworthy of table fellowship or economic sustenance, that is dehumanizing in a very decisive way.
This treatment has made Steve and me unable to want to share eucharistic fellowship with the monks, because we feel so unwelcome that it seems to break the bread of faith with the community is to pretend that a relationship of love exists, when it does not. It is painful to celebrate eucharist with a community, when one feels that no real community is present — painful not merely because of one's sense of exclusion, but because the very symbolism of the celebration is so grossly violated that the ritual seems to be divorced from all that it intends to proclaim.
At the very least, what has happened to us makes the claim of this Benedictine community to value hospitality very problematic. This hospitality seems very conditional. It seems to require that one approach the community as a broken sinner who receives the largesse of the community with penitent thanks, and that one accept gladly the whip strokes with which the bread is doled out. I don't say all this to make mean judgments about the members of the community, to whose hearts I have no access, and whom God alone must judge. I say it to indicate what the experience of exclusion has been for me, from my standpoint.
Again, perhaps it would be easier to adopt such an attitude if we had been informed of our crime....
The spring semester, 1993, was a foreshadowing of all this for me. Before Christmas, I had been invited to give a seminar to the monastic novices, and to lector in the spring at the Sunday liturgies. In the spring, I was never asked to give the seminar, nor was I ever asked to lector. And it was not as if the monastery did not know of this "oversight," because I mentioned them to the sub-prior. All this gave me the feeling that I had overstepped some boundary line — perhaps by speaking to the press in December, 1992, about feminist interpretations of the Virgin Mary? — and that word had gone out that I was to be shunned. When I passed monks in the hallways of the college in the spring semester, 1993, I had the distinct impression that I was regarded as unclean, not to be spoken to.
In addition to blocking my application for unemployment benefits, the college has continued to pursue me vengefully in another way even after I resigned. On November 16, 1993, a former student called to tell me of a conversation he had just had with the college president.
The student had seen the president in the college library, and had asked to talk with him about what had been done to me. The president invited him to talk outside the library. According to the student, the president told him that
▪ I had come into his office in December, 1992, and thrown down on his desk a letter of resignation;
▪ I had asked for a sabbatical;
▪ On several occasions, I had called him at home after midnight to "seek his counsel";
▪ he had protected me when the bishop was upset regarding comments I had made to the press;
▪ he had gone "toe to toe" with two trustees who wanted to see me fired;
▪ I had failed to "court" the "people who run the school";
▪ I had gotten too involved in "non-academic" matters;
▪ in addition to all this, "there were questions of lifestyle."
The first three allegations are simply untrue. I never submitted any letter of resignation to anyone before my August letter of resignation. I never asked for a sabbatical. I did ask for permission to seek funding to permit me release from teaching and administrative duties in order to work for a year planning a theology center. In the two years I was at the college, I called the president at his home only one time, at about 7 P.M., because a conflict had arisen regarding the dating of the John Wilcox lecture I mention in the preceding document. I would simply never call a college president at his house for any reason unless the situation were serious enough to warrant this, and I am certainly not in the habit of calling anyone after midnight — not after 9 P.M., for that matter.
As to the allegations regarding the bishop and pressure from trustees, these are things the president categorically denied when I asked him about them. I have no idea what the statements regarding non-academic matters and my not courting the people who run the school, mean. The shot regarding lifestyle is a cheap, unprofessional, unethical one, I have to say. If this had ever been a concern, why was I not informed of it? What business does a college president have saying such a thing to a student?
The student is reliable, in my opinion. He is an adult student who did his degree while working full-time, and has always impressed me as a guileless person. He called me immediately after his conversation with the college president, and he tells me that he wrote down what the president said shortly after that.
At around the same time that this conversation occurred, the faculty met. I am told by a number of faculty members that in the meeting, the business chair expressed concern that the college president has circumvented democratic procedure by setting up committees answerable to him alone. I am told that after this faculty member spoke, the monk in the theology department (who is sub-prior and is said to be being groomed to be the next abbot)* got up and said with evident anger, "Dr. Brosnan is the president, and we ought to let him make the decisions."
About the same time, one of the people whom I had contacted to be a lecturer in a projected theology lecture series for the summer of 1993 (which did not occur, due to lack of enrollment) sent me a copy of a letter she had just received from this monk. Despite the fact that I had done the vast bulk of the work to put this lecture series together, the monk had informed me in the summer of 1993 that he wanted to see the lecture series take place in the summer of 1994, but that I was not to have anything to do with putting it together for that summer. All was to be channeled through the monastery and the department of continuing education.
I reminded the monk that I had done most of the work putting the 1993 series together, and that, when a proposal was made to revive the lecture series (which had taken place up through the late 1970s at the college), an agreement had been that the series was to be under the sponsorship of the theology department and continuing education. I understood that this was to be the case, because the interference of the abbot had caused a previous lecture series to fail. Though the series was ostensibly under the sponsorship of the theology department (and drew such nationally known theologians as Charles Curran), the monastery's attempt to assert control over it had resulted in such tensions that the series had been discontinued. I also asked the monk how the theology department could sponsor such a series again, when it had been effectively dismantled, with my receiving a terminal contract and dismissal as chair, actions he had not protested.
Despite my questions, the monk has continued to project the continuation of this lecture series for 1994. He has even contacted the speakers I had lined up for the 1993 series. It was one of these who sent me the copy of the letter from the monk. She had refused to take part in the series as an act of solidarity with me, and had written the monk to say that she understood the lecture series had, in the past, been an example of free and faithful theological discourse, and hoped they would be in future, if they are revived.
The monk replied to this letter by writing to the lecturer, saying that he took her remarks as an implicit criticism of the college, and that she ought to come and judge for herself what the "atmosphere" of the college is like.
Where does all this leave Steve Schafer and me? I have exhausted all attempts to gain any sort of justice through the legal system or academic channels. I have contacted the Assoc. of Catholic Colleges and Universities, to be told that this organization does not have a grievance procedure for those whose academic freedom is violated.
I have also written the National Catholic Educational Association, to be told that they do not normally receive such complaints, either, but that practically all their member institutions adhere to AAUP academic freedom guidelines.
I have also lodged a complaint with the Southern Assoc. of Colleges, which is now pending.** Frankly, I do not have high hopes that this body will intervene. The president's conversation with the former student in November makes me even more crucially aware of the capacity of the college administration to lie boldly about my case. If one is lied about, how can one defend oneself? I am reminded of the story told by a patristic confessor: when someone came to him to say that he had gossiped about someone else, the confessor told the penitent to throw a handful of straws into the wind and go pick all of them up. The penitent replied that this was impossible. The confessor told the penitent, "It is even so with malicious lies told about others."
In a situation in which the injustice done to us seems so glaring that we wonder why we have so few advocates (we think of parallels between what can still happen to gay people in our society and the Nazi period in Germany, when well-meaning people stood by as Jews and others were rounded up), the only recourse Steve and I feel we now have is to go more and more public with our story. We are thinking and praying about this step, and would welcome advice. In some sense, if we do tell the story more publicly, our "victory" (or justice) is bound to by a Pyrrhic one, because we will have claimed a stigma that it has been in the interest of the college and monastery to attach to us.
On the other hand, what does anyone have, except one's story? If I cannot be a theologian and tell my story, claim my story, I'm not sure I want to be a theologian anymore. To trust my story seems to me to be an act of trusting the grace that has been in my life.
As I think about this, I am more and more convinced that such "problematic" stories as ours are not primarily problematic for us, but for the church. That is, I have long ago crossed whatever bridge I had to cross in order to reconcile my "lifestyle" with being a Christian, or being a Christian theologian. And since crossing that bridge, I have seen too many signs of grace to allow me to deny that God has led me or been in my life. To deny that, I would have to deny the very foundations of my existence.
The complexities with which I live now are, I am convinced, very much superimposed ones, ones that come either from active malice on the part of those who ought to listen more, and express condemnation less, or from passive malice on the part of those who have not stretched their imaginations to imagine the human reality of the lives of those they so readily dismiss with labels. In either case, it seems to me that I have an obligation to tell the story, and let the church deal with the problems it continues to create for people such as me.
By "church," I also mean, of course, the Catholic theological establishment in North America. The kinds of questions our story raises are ones that this establishment still too often refuses to entertain. But they are questions that must be entertained, and must be heard more and more, I think, as the Catholic theological establishment in North America becomes more and more diverse. There are still too many hidden barriers to advancement for gay and lesbian lay theologians in our theological establishment, too many crippling silences. We have to sit through too many theological discussions of justice and empowerment of the marginal, in which a very strange lacuna occurs with regard to the question of injustices done to gay and lesbian persons.
Or we have to hear all too often that the cause of gay and lesbian rights is legitimated only insofar as this (bourgeois? self-indulgent?) cause can ride on the backs of other presumably more legitimate causes, such as the advancement of "unjustly" marginalized groups. Perhaps the question of gay and lesbian rights is a bourgeois or self-indulgent one. Perhaps gay and lesbian people ought not to press for rights with the same confidence that other groups have of receiving a hearing on the part of the churches. But how can we make such judgments if we do not permit gay and lesbian people even to speak, without fear of reductionism, stigmatization, loss of job security, etc.? Shouldn't such judgments be made after meaningful dialogue has occurred? Otherwise, what is to prevent these judgments from being covertly homophobic ones?
These are some of the questions with which Steve and I are now dealing, as we think about whether (and how) to make our story more public. If you have responses or suggestions, we would welcome them. hanks again for lending a listening ear.
P.S. I have to append a note about something that has touched me very much, and has given me hope. Last week, a student I had taught in the Loyola Institute of Ministry, who had heard of what had happened to me, sent me $500.00 out of the blue. What made this even more touching was that I do not feel I really know this student well. I had taught her one class, and had done an independent study with her by mail after I came to Belmont. Her letter accompanying the gift says that I have given so much to her and other students, that she had long asked herself how she could give something back, and my present situation gives her the idea of a way that she can do so. In the midst of the darkness through which I am now walking, what is so meaningful about this extraordinary gift is its affirmation of me as a teacher....
Shortly after receiving this check, I got a call from the Loyola Institute for Ministry extension group in Charlotte. They, too, had heard of my plight and want to arrange a "solidarity night" in April….
*This is Placid Solari. He is, in fact, now the abbot of Belmont Abbey.
*SACS is, quite frankly, a joke when matters of academic freedom are under consideration. It has a long history of giving free rein to church-affiliated schools to violate the academic freedom of faculty, and it has a well-documented history of actually facilitating the harassment of faculty who protest violations of their academic freedom by church-related schools. Its chief officers adamantly refuse to open up any discussion of the violation of the rights of LGBT faculty, in particular, in SACS-accredited schools, many of which are church-affiliated. If anything, these patterns have become more rather than less evident during the current tenure of President Belle Wheelan of the SACS Commission on Colleges, an African-American woman who should, one would think, understand what prejudice and discrimination are about and how they affect human beings.
Labels: Belmont Abbey College, Catholic, discrimination, ethic of inclusion, gay, human rights, mercy, North Carolina, pastoral leadership, prejudice, SACS, theological exclusion, welcoming community
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Ventilation for Your Tight House — Part 2
Our guest, Sonia Barrantes, continues the conversation about the best options for a healthy, comfortable ventilation system
By Christopher Briley | September 17, 2015
Adam Cohen and Wolfgang Feist check out the inner workings of the Air Pohoda ERV. According to the manufacturer, this ERV can operate continuously at cold temperatures without the need of an electric resistance heater.
Image Credit: Photos #1 and #3: Air Pohoda
Image Credit: Photos #1 and #3: Air Pohoda	An installed Zehnder ComfoAir 350.
Image Credit: Photo #2: Alex Willson	The Air Pohoda ERV requires a bit more space than your typical ERV.	Working in tandem, a pair of Lunos through-wall ERVs are excellent for discrete, small, or hard-to-reach spaces.
Image Credit: Photo #4: 475 High Performance Building Products
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Our conversation with Sonia Barrantes continues. (If you missed it, here is a link to Ventilation for Your Tight House — Part 1.)
We've come to realize that we all want simple rules of thumb to guide our design process. Unfortunately, there isn't a rule of thumb for everything and we're going to have to rely on some common sense, good advice, and good old-fashioned engineering to get this balanced ventilation system right.
Our cocktails are refreshed and we're ready to go.
Hot products on the market. We talk about some examples of the latest ERV equipment out there, our experience with them and our excitement about the ones we haven't tried yet (Lunos, CERV, Air Pohoda, Zehnder).
Demand control ventilation. A feature that is new to the ERV market. These guys know when you need more fresh air and when you don't.
How many cfm? Sonia enlightens us on her rules of thumb for providing quantitative ventilation.
Continuous commissioning. Is the system you installed really performing as it should?
Maintaining balance. What do you do when the Viking range hood kicks on? How do we handle the imbalance? Sonia enlightens us.
A six-digit idea. Can't we have residential dryers that exhaust and supply directly with the outside air?
When should you hire a mechanical engineer? Sonia shares the idea that perhaps there are levels of service that an engineer can provide that are tailored to your needs.
Multifamily buildings. When the scale increases, how do we adapt these same ideas? Autonomous units or a consolidated system?
As always, Phil leaves us with a song that you should be listening to in studio. For this episode he chose one that everyone on your block will listen to when you play it: "Dimed Out" by Titus Andronicus.
Thanks for tuning in. Cheers!
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PODCAST: Ventilation for Your Tight House — Part 1
POSTCAST: Don't Be an Air Hole! — Part 1
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Chris: Hey, welcome back everybody! This is the Green Architects' Lounge. This is probably Part Two of the Ventilation podcast.
Phil: It definitely is Part Two.
Chris: All right. It's definitely Part Two. We've re-freshened our drinks, we're back at it, we've got Sonia Barrantes… (I'm sorry!)
Phil: Barrantes!
Chris: Barrantes.
Phil: Is that too much of a roll?
Sonia: No, that's great.
Chris: Barrantes. Barrantes. Barrantes. Right.
So, Sonia — now, let's see — we've covered HRVs, ERVs, whatever… Oh, we were going to talk about different kinds of ERVs and HRVs. Do you want to do that before we get into anything else?
Phil: Yeah, let's talk a little bit about that.
Chris: Off-mike, we started talking about all the different products we know. Phil, you started with the Lunos.
Phil: But, I mean, just to generalize: some of the products that we typically spec…
Chris: Yeah.
Phil: Sonia mentioned a product called Zehnder – which is a favorite. [See Image #2, below.] It's a favorite of the Passive House crowd, because it's high efficiency and low energy. Energy efficiency is a big deal.
Chris: And they'll come out and commission it themselves. You know, Zehnder will come out, and you can get a high level of confidence with that.
Sonia: They also do designs. So, if you send them your floor plans…
Chris: Right!
Sonia: …they will locate supply and exhaust…
Chris: So you don't need an engineer!
Sonia: …with their rainbow vision, they will place everything for you.
Chris: Exactly.
Phil: They're not the cheapest system.
Chris: Nooooo.
Sonia: Nope.
Chris: But you know, you get…
Phil: Well, put it this way: they're not the cheapest system, but they are the most expensive.
Chris: Well said. Well said. And there's a slew of others, from Venmar to…
Phil: Venmar is a really good system – we use that a lot. And it's got pretty low energy.
Sonia: RenewAire is good.
Chris: RenewAire. Is UltimateAir – is that one? There, that was one.
Sonia: There's also Fantech.
Phil: Fantech is more affordable, higher loads.
Chris: American Standard has some.
Sonia: Nah.
Chris: [He laughs.] Enough said!
Sonia: Yes.
Chris: They're not the most expensive.
Sonia: No.
Chris: There you go.
Phil: There are a few, fairly new players on the market. Air Pohoda is one. [See Image #1 at the top of the page.] Chris, you've just specified that recently.
Chris: Yeah. I'm kind of excited about this, Phil. So, Air Pohoda is a pretty cool device. It's bigger than your other ones. [See Image #3, below]. So, hey architects: you'd better plan for that.
Phil: Bigger is better.
Chris: Bigger is better, that's what I've…
Sonia: That's what she said.
Chris: I'm so glad you said that, Sonia.
But, like a Zehnder, the main trunks of supply and return come off the unit and they go to a manifold and then are dispersed in little Zehnder-like tubes, which are — my rule-of-thumb — (we'll talk about rule-of-thumbs later but) — I always have 12 cfm per tube. That's just stuck in my head – tell me if I'm wrong later.
Sonia: That is correct.
Chris: All right, yeah. Sweet! But, the cool part about this unit is that it's got these baffles in it.
You're going to talk about the Lunos probably in a little bit, where it reverses the flow of the air. So, one of the problems that you have (let's just pick a Venmar, you know, your typical Venmar unit): if it's zero degrees outside and it's been running for a while, well that core is going to get cold, very cold – in fact it's going to freeze up on you. And the unit detects that and so it runs in recirculation mode. It shuts off its connection to the outside and just recirculates interior air through the core until it thaws out. That's a little bit of an energy loss in having that.
The Air Pohoda has this very complex series of baffles within the core so it will actually reverse the flow of air through the core without reversing the supply and return in the house. So, it will – without you knowing it – it will just switch direction through the core to keep it the right temperature. So it can operate continuously down to super, super cold temperatures. It also has different filters in it. If you imagine an HRV filter as being something impermeable, like metal – a bunch of metal straws put together so close that they are imparting their heat on one another. And in an ERV, that filter is like Tyvek, you know, where that moisture…
Sonia: It's a heat exchange, although not a filter.
Chris: A heat exchange! Thank you, Professor. Doctor.
And so the Air Pohoda has both of these. It knows the relative humidity of the air going in, going out, and coming in from the house and being supplied to the house and it will switch to an HRV filter or an ERV filter. It will switch direction as it sees it and it will link to your sleek new iPad Touch device that you can go in and check on it whenever you want.
So, yeah. It's really neat.
Phil: It's not cheap.
Chris: It's not cheap. And it's from the Czech Republic.
Phil: Efficiency-wise, isn't it like a 96% efficiency?
Chris: Well, yeah. It's one of those classic sliding scales. It depends on which test you look at. Basically, we're seeing it – it's definitely 90+. But, you know, in the last house that we just did – and it's the one and only install I've ever done of it – the low end is low. A little too low. We need to bump it up. But the cool part is that the software – you can just tweak it (I could tweak it if I wanted, which is scary!). You know, it's not that simple. I shouldn't say it's that simple. You need to know what you're doing. But, there you go. Air Pohoda — boom!
Phil: So there's this other new product – it's called the CERV – Conditioning Energy Recovery Ventilator?
Chris: Right, which is exciting!
Phil: It's super-exciting; it's the magic box that they've had overseas for years. It's kind of like a first chance that us Americans have had to use something like this. And honestly, I don't know that much about it. I've talked about using it with another builder. They've only sold about 50 units so far.
It essentially uses an air-source heat pump. And it can provide conditioning up to about 8,000 BTUs – which is cooling to about 5,000.
Chris: That's sizable for your Passive House – if you're in a tight house – especially in our cold climate. Geez! That's all you would need.
Sonia: So that's like the American version of the Nilan.
Phil: Right. Right. Right.
Chris: Nice. And we'll put a link to that, because there's an article in GBA… right? We'll put that on the side. Check out the side over there.
Phil: It's very interesting, because it basically modulates itself. It can turn on and off when it decides that you need fresh air. It can also detect contaminants in the air.
Chris: No way!
Phil: Yeah.
Sonia: From high-pollution events?
Chris: From high-pollution events. Is that what you just said?
Phil: Yeah. So, stay tuned for this. It's pretty interesting. Right now they're not super-cheap – I think it's about eight to ten grand or so for an install.
Chris: But, that's like a Zehnder, though.
Sonia: A little more.
Chris: A little more than a Zehnder.
Phil: A little more, but this one has conditioning.
Chris: Right, exactly.
Phil: So, it's just another one that's coming on. People are thinking about this stuff and there are some better answers out there on their way.
Sonia: Is that demand-controlled ventilation (because you said it turns on and off as you need it)? So, demand-controlled ventilation (I forgot) in my ideal…
Chris: Yeah?
Sonia: …it would have that. So, basically you'd have a CO2 monitor somewhere in the house. And what it could do is – and Zehnder will do this (actually anything that takes an input signal) – as the carbon dioxide goes up — you have a party; Phil's making drinks…
Phil: That happens.
Sonia: It ramps up your ventilation. And then, everybody leaves and the carbon dioxide levels come down, and it ramps the ventilation down. So, demand-control ventilation is really…
Chris: Cool.
Sonia: …really cool.
Phil: From Green Building Advisor: "By all accounts, the CERV solves a lot of problems without using much energy. It provides balanced ventilation. It is smart enough to stop ventilating when the indoor air is clean. It increases the ventilation rate when the CO2 level rises — for example, when there are 20 people in the house for a party" — Thank you, Sonia. You're reading Martin Holladay's mind, here — "and decreases the ventilation rate when the CO2 level falls — for example, when the house is unoccupied." Smart.
Chris: Smart. Man, the future's bright, Phil and Sonia! It's going to be great.
Phil: We're going to talk about the Lunos. [See Image #4, below.] Sonia, what can you tell us about the Lunos?
Sonia: The Lunos is… basically, they're paired ceramic core fans – so they're great for retrofit because you can just put them right through the wall (there's no ductwork) – and what happens is they take turns. So, one sucks, the other blows. And as you're exhausting air, it heats up the ceramic core and then it reverses direction and the air comes in and the ceramic core…
Chris: Yes?
Sonia: …discharges its heat to that air. So, they tend to be fairly expensive for the cfm…
Phil: Mm-hmm.
Sonia: …but in the right application where you don't have room to run ductwork, or it's a retrofit like we've talked about.
Chris: Right.
Sonia: So, 15 (I think we said, Phil: 20 cfm?)
Phil: 15-20, yup.
Sonia: So, in an average-sized house (let's say 2,500 square feet) with three bedrooms, you need about 105 cfm. And you said it's about $1,000 per pair.
Phil: Right.
Sonia: So, it's starting to get up to the level of a Zehnder.
Phil: Right. But then, you talk about no ductwork.
Sonia: No ductwork.
Phil: A grand, and you poke it through a few holes in the wall.
Chris: There could be some times where you really need to ventilate a space that you can't get ductwork to, and that might be a way to do it.
Phil: I know.
Sonia: And it could be great for a room-by-room (you know, a bonus room or something like that) where you don't want to run ductwork.
Chris: And that was a great segue to talking about: How much ventilation do you supply to your people or spaces, because you just rattled off a real quick (dare I say) rule of thumb?
Sonia: I had some cheat sheets.
Chris: All right. Sonia, what's your rule of thumb for deciding "how much cfm do I supply?" How do I know what to do?
Sonia: Well, I start with the code. So, for ASHRAE it's the number of bedrooms plus one is the number of people, and a certain cfm per person, and then cfm per square foot. So I just rattled off that rule of thumb, but I've got some numbers. So, a 2,500 square foot house with three bedrooms is 105 cfm. A 1,000 square foot house with two bedrooms is 53 cfm. So you can kind of see the levels. And this is for fresh air coming into the house.
Chris: Right. And this is continuous?
Sonia: Continuous fresh air.
Chris: Right. Right.
Sonia: And the thing to remember though, is: there's the spirit, again, and then there's the letter.
Sonia: So, if I wanted, I could put a closet in my house and bring in 105 cfm and exhaust that out of that closet and technically I'm bringing in the right amount of supply air into my house.
Chris: Wow. That is awful.
Sonia: It's awful. It's not getting to my occupants. So, when we're talking about the mixing and Rob Aldrich, these are the things that we as architects and engineers need to make that we're considering — that it's not just "Oh, I've brought 105 cfm into the house." Rather, it's "where I brought it in and did it mix and is it going to be cold on my occupants."
Chris: Right. "Is it the right thing to do?"
Sonia: Right. Because if it's uncomfortable, they're going to turn it off.
Chris: Yeah. And they're going to call us and complain.
Sonia: Right.
Chris: And we'll have to explain ourselves.
Phil: Yeah, it's a good question: how many times do people install HRVs or ERVs and they just get turned off because they make a lot of noise or, if it's the summertime, they turn it off and they forget to turn it back on when they close the windows.
Chris: Right. Or, I don't know if you've ever (I'm sure you have, Phil) gone back and done some form of commissioning one way or another on a house, and… Like this last house with Air Pohoda I just mentioned, we learned, "Oh, we need to turn this thing up. You know? It's not supplying what we thought it would. It just needs to be tweaked a little" – which is great if the unit can handle that.
How many times – I think about in the past – I have several houses where we installed an ERV, patted ourselves on the back ("Good job!") and, you know, we followed the plan. But did we go back and do a Duct-Blaster thing; did we figure out exactly what the flow is out of each one of these ports going in and out of the unit? No. So… yeah? Is it okay? Probably.
Phil: Yeah, we've done that. Do you know how many times we've done that? Once.
Chris: Once?
Phil: Once. That's the honest truth. We rely on the folks doing the right thing.
Chris: That's awesome!
Phil: But we don't really know if they are doing that.
Sonia: How did it turn out when you went back and checked?
Phil: Pretty good. We did pretty good.
Chris: Pretty good — but you made an adjustment maybe?
Phil: We made a couple of adjustments.
Chris: Yeah. So, I mean — I'm just throwing it out there. It's a good thing to do. It's a learning experience, especially when the numbers are lower than you thought — significantly, in a couple of places. You say, "Woah! What happened here?"
Sonia: Well, it's really… I mean, it's going to be a cultural change… right? So right now, you get your furnace checked every year.
Chris: Yeah, right.
Sonia: Well, eventually it might be that once a year, your HVAC specialist comes and checks the balance on your system. It's called "continuous commissioning."
Chris: Wow.
Sonia: You never stop checking on it.
Phil: Mm-hmm. But there's got to be a fear factor involved to inspire people to do it. It's either going to cost them money or health. Otherwise — "Eh, it's fine."
Chris: Or comfort. But that's probably not going to happen.
Phil: No, I think they'll be less attuned to comfort.
Sonia: Well interestingly — again, Lawrence Berkeley National Labs, in their study, they found that the health-related deaths due to air quality rivals traffic accidents and infectious diseases.
Chris: No!
Phil: Are you serious?
Sonia: Totally.
Chris: Wow!
Sonia: Those guys don't lie.
Phil: Wow!
Sonia: They're serious nerds, so…
Chris: Well, I think that was the fact of the podcast right there.
Phil: Yeah. Scared straight!
Chris: Scared straight.
Phil: Commission your HRV.
Chris: Yeah. And install them.
Sonia: Install it.
Phil: Install it in the first place. How about that?
Chris: Great. Let's talk about this balanced system. Sonia, I've got this great house, and it's airtight, and then I've got this awesome Zehnder / Air Pohoda system. And then I walk over to my 1600 cfm Viking range hood and I turn that sucker on and my eardrums pop. What do we do? How do we handle makeup air? How do we handle the imbalance that we, as users, put on this?
Sonia: Well the first thing I would do, as an architect, is try to convince my client that they do not actually need 1600 cfm.
Chris: Amen.
Sonia: Then if you lose that battle, by code, if you're exhausting more than 400 cfm on your range hood, you have to provide a dedicated makeup air system that is actually interlocked with your range hood. So, that means when your range hood turns on, the makeup air system comes on. That's from the International Mechanical Code 2009, so the International Energy Conservation Code 2009 also says that the mandatory [maximum] airtightness at 50 pascals is… anyone want to guess?
Chris: Three!
Sonia: Seven.
Phil: Seven!
Sonia: So, at 400 cfm at a 7 ach50 house is where you have to put in makeup air…
Chris: Dang!
Sonia: Well, now we have a 0.6 or a 1.0 ach50 house, I think, logically, you can understand that it's going to be much less than 400 cfm where you have to worry about makeup air. And I think, later we're going to talk about all the bad things that can happen when you negatively pressurize your house.
Chris: Right. Well, I think we're there now.
Sonia: Really?
Chris: Yeah, let's do it. Yeah, so let's say that happens. I mean, it is very easy to find a range hood that goes 300, 500, 900, 600 cfm. Easy as pie.
Phil: Right. Especially if you're putting a range over an island…
Chris: Oh yeah.
Phil: It's going to suck from all sides.
Chris: Oh yeah. So let's talk about it now.
Sonia: Range hoods kind of get amped up about it. Right?
Chris: Well, yeah.
Sonia: So here's the thing: if you're cooking with a gas range top, you need to exhaust to the outside.
Sonia: So this whole "Passive House recirc'ing range hoods exhausting from the kitchen" – if you have a gas range, you need to exhaust to the outside. (That's because of all the nasty stuff that comes from combustion products of gas.)
Chris: Right. So, boom!
Phil: Don't screw around.
Chris: Right. Even if you're not even on this blog (energy-efficient in mind) and you just have a gas…
Sonia: Right. You need to direct-vent to the outside. So now if you have a tight house – whether or not you have a balanced ventilation system – you need a makeup air system that is separate from that. Right?
Chris: Gotcha.
Sonia: You can get away with, typically – so you need a minimum of 100 cfm – even in a tight house you can probably get away without using a direct vent. Passive House, you're on the line.
Sonia: So 100, 150 — you're probably okay. Once you start talking the 300 cfm fans need to really look at it. I actually had a friend, Andrew Calise — you might know him — Strategic Energy Group?
Chris: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, sure.
Sonia: So he's blower-door testing a development in the greater Portland area and he came to me and said, "These houses are so tight." And they not Passive Houses, they're just…
Chris: Tight.
Sonia: They're just tight. He's concerned that they're not getting the natural ventilation. So we go in there and we're doing a walk-around and I see that they have gas fireplaces, and I was like…
Chris: Woah!
Sonia: So they're going with exhaust-only.
Sonia: So, I helped him calculate – based on the tightness of the house – what they should set the exhaust-only bathroom fan to make sure they're getting their required ventilation. Then I see this gas fireplace and I say, "Wait a second. We have this continuous, exhaust-only fan and let's say they put in a 600 cfm range hood (or a 300 cfm range hood)…
Chris: Oh man!
Sonia: So you have to think about that. So I asked him to run the blower-door and negatively pressurize the house equivalent to what the possible cfm could be…
Sonia: And then read the negative pressurization. So, put 350 cfm out the blower door and then see what your pressure in the house is. And so, there are different ranges for if you have a closed combustion — so, if you have a natural gas water heater that gets its air from the outside and it's piped to the water heater…
Chris: It's closed. Right.
Sonia: It's closed, so you can go fairly negative.
Chris: Hmmm.
Sonia: If you have an open-combustion appliance (which could be a fireplace or a wood stove, anything like that), you can't go much more than 5 pascals before you're looking at potentially backdrafting very nasty stuff into the house.
Chris: And 5 pascals is, I mean, I'm just winging it…
Sonia: It's not hard.
Chris: That's like… you can get 5 pascals at like, maybe 70 cfm?
Sonia: It depends how tight your house is.
Chris: Yeah. I mean, that's easy. In that scenario, what would be a solution? This kitchen hood exhaust, let's say it cranks at 150 cfm (which is a respectable cfm). But if you've got a gas fireplace over there, then you're going to say, maybe you should put in a vent with a damper that's actuated when this thing goes on.
Phil: My sense is you're not going to like the "just crack a window" idea.
Sonia: Right. Well, I mean, you can do that. But the one thing you can't control is occupant behavior — right?
Sonia: So, the first owner might be like, "Don't worry about it. I'll crack a window every time." But then, the next owner may not. This is actually – if I were forcing the situation – I might put in a trickle vent. Right? Do you agree?
Chris: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah.
Sonia: And once you get above certain cfm's you actually have to power the air in… right?
Chris: Mm-hmm.
Sonia: So sometimes people bring the air in the basements…
Chris: Yup, that's right.
Sonia: So it mixes before it comes up. All I can say is the way you solve the problem — you have lots of ways to solve the problem, but you have to be aware that is a problem.
Sonia: That could be a problem. So, you're building super-tight houses; you know, there's the Viking range hood; 1200 cfm; 300 cfm. You need to think about it.
Phil: There's a very simple answer to this.
Chris: Don't put them in.
Phil. Yeah. Just eat out every night.
Phil: Or order in.
Chris: Is that what you do?
Phil: Order in is okay, too.
Chris: Yeah. Stop cooking!
Phil: That's what the Germans do.
Sonia: Well, now you can go to the electric cooktop.
Chris: Yeah, exactly. I was going to say…
Sonia: There's still some products, but you put a recirc'ing range hood, you get the grease and the smoke out, and then you let your balanced ventilation system…
Chris: Handle the rest.
Sonia: …handle the rest.
Chris: And that's a great Passive House strategy.
Phil: Right. I mean, do Passive Houses use gas to cook?
Chris: No! No. Absolutely not.
Phil: Right. So you just don't see it.
Chris: Does not happen.
Sonia: So, if someone has their heart set on a gas cooktop, you need to direct-vent and you just need to behave appropriately.
Chris: So, I was at a conference – I think it was the Passive House North America conference – and I forget who was talking, but they referenced a guy from Zehnder who was in the room who had this idea. Maybe you were there?
Sonia: Probably Aubrey Gewehr, maybe?
Chris: May have been, may have been.
Sonia: I don't know if I'm butchering that phonetically.
Chris: Maybe. But whoever this genius was, he came up with the idea of taking one of those downdraft ranges (you know, the Jenn Air whatevers) and just hacking that. Using that same ductwork, he put an actuator on it and just made it so when the hood goes on, the actuator opens. So, the air comes out – whoom! – right there. The makeup air is coming into the house at the Jenn Air location right next to the burners, so it just goes right under the cook surface and…
Sonia: So it just cools your food off as you're cooking.
Phil: I'm pretty sure that there's a product…
Chris: There should be!
Phil: …that Zehnder makes that's not available here.
Chris: Oh yeah?
Phil: Yeah. I know a little bit about it.
Chris: Oh, you're saying this like you're…
Sonia: …being so coy!
He's being coy about a fan.
Chris: I think he is! Well, Phil is "in the know" with the Zehnder higher-ups.
Phil: That's all I can say at the moment.
Chris: He's in the inner circle. Well, you don't have to share with us. I'll turn off the mike and you can tell me all about this…
Phil: Okay, I will.
Chris: …super-secret product.
Phil: Perhaps. Perhaps.
Chris: That's fantastic. Yeah, and while I'm on it, I have a "hot zig" or a six-digit idea – which we have every once in a while.
Phil: Zig away!
Chris: It's probably a hot zig, because I don't think you could make six digits off something like this. No! You know what? It's a six-digit idea for the first company like GE or Whirlpool or one of those guys. I mean, how simple would it be – you've got a dryer that exhausts – why not have a dryer that also supplies and exhausts to the outside? I mean, it's just its own contained air unit, so you turn it on and it doesn't affect your envelope — your air volume. You can seal the ductwork and just, it's its own thing. Wouldn't that be genius?
Phil: That doesn't exist?
Phil: It feels like it should.
Sonia: It exists on the commercial.
Chris: Does it?
Sonia: Yeah.
Chris: Oh, all right.
Phil: And is somebody making six digits from it?
Sonia: I'm sure they're making six digits on it.
Chris: All of my six-digit ideas are already…
Phil: So you're talking about, essentially like, a sealed wood stove or a sealed fireplace…
Chris: Yeah, why not a sealed dryer?
Phil: …that has an outside air intake.
Chris: Yeah. I've had a number of residential projects where it's time to choose the dryer. "What dryer should I choose?" — and, you know, there's always a certain number of cfm that that thing is going to eject from your house.
Sonia: I'm actually super-excited because Jake found a heat-pump dryer. Have you heard of these?
Chris: Oh yes!
Sonia: It won a technology award last year.
Chris: Nice!
Phil: I heard they're pretty cool, but they take a really long time to dry.
Sonia: Well, the condensing dryers definitely take a long time to dry.
Chris: This is different.
Sonia: I think the heat pump is different.
Phil: Oh, okay!
Chris: I'm very excited to hear about that.
Sonia: I listened to your Allison Bailes podcast…
Chris: Yes, yes.
Sonia: …and I almost drove off the road, I was so excited because he mentioned the second law of thermodynamics which happens to be a favorite of mine as well.
Sonia: So, as soon as I get some free time, I'm going to look at that from a second-law point of view…
Sonia: …because, if you're stealing heat from your Passive House to dry your clothes, then it's not necessarily a good thing. But the potential is really there.
Chris: Right. We must have been talking about my cold-climate refrigerator idea at that point.
Phil: Yeah, right.
Sonia: I don't know. I'm not sure.
Chris: That's all right. We won't go into that. Later, you guys will have to plow through the archives to find that idea. But anyway…
Phil: You have a question right here, Chris: "Wood stoves and fireplaces – are we still doing those?"
Sonia: We are.
Chris: Yeah, we've got clients who want them, and I'm in that position where we are heavily persuading them not to when it's a super-tight house.
Sonia: Have you been successful?
Phil: Well, we're going to fight here.
Sonia: Because, I've lost that fight.
Chris: Well, I've lost that fight.
Phil: Why say no? They're wonderful things.
Chris: I feel like we've had this conversation on the podcast before.
Phil: It's such a great elemental thing to have a fire in your house.
Chris: Yeah, I am a caveman inside and I want a fire.
Sonia: A caveman with gray hair.
Chris: Yeah, thank you.
Phil: Cavemen never got gray hair because they never lived that long – is that what you're trying to say? Back in the day?
Sonia: I just don't think they had gel.
Phil: Oh, okay.
Chris: I think she said "great hair," not "gray hair."
Sonia: Yeah — great hair.
Chris: Thank you, Sonia.
Sonia: You're welcome.
Chris: Up yours, Phil.
Sonia: The thing to think about is, what are they building the house for?
Sonia: If they are telling me they are building an energy-efficient house and they put a fireplace in, I'd be like, "Well, it's not energy-efficient, but if you want a fireplace, okay."
Sonia: So, Zehnder – once again, I'm partial to Zehnder – they have what's called a "fireplace protection mode."
Sonia: So, what happens is: if your fireplace starts to negatively pressurize your house (because it is pulling combustion air)…
Chris: Right, it's drafting.
Sonia: …the Zehnder will stop sucking air out of the house.
Phil: Really?
Sonia: It does some magic thing and basically you tell the Zehnder on the control panel that you, in fact, have a fireplace or a wood stove and it will monitor the pressurization of the house and it will stop sucking. [Editor's note: This description by Sonia Barrantes isn't quite technically accurate. For further information on this issue, see Comment #1 by John Rockwell on this GBA page.]
Phil: I think that's pretty brilliant!
Chris: I think that's the second biggest fact of the podcast right there.
Phil: That's great.
Chris: That's nice.
Phil: That's a five-digit idea, at least.
Chris: Oh yeah, at least! So, that's wonderful to know, and I wonder if other ERVs will pick up on that.
Sonia: And I don't know that other ones don't. I just know that Zehnder does.
Chris: Right. So what do you think the cfm output of a fireplace is? I bet somewhere in the archives at GBA, someone brilliant has said that. Martin probably knows. If he were here… [Editor's note: an open wood-burning fireplace consumes between 200 and 600 cfm of room air.]
Phil: He knows everything.
Chris: Yeah. But, again, there's another point where we have to provide makeup air usually. But you're thinking you can use the Zehnder?
Sonia: Oh I'm not saying you can use the Zehnder to provide the makeup air, because it's balanced ventilation — so, by definition, it doesn't provide makeup air. Right?.
Chris: Interesting. Well see, I thought – okay, this is a great conversation! – ERVs can go out of balance to a certain degree (which, I thought the rule of thumb was half of their rated cfm). So, if I am running the dryer, if the dryer is ejecting at 50 cfm, then my ERV can probably handle that (it's just supplying more than it itself is exhausting.). It is using the dryer to do that exhaust so, its efficiency is going to go down. The air is going to be closer to the outdoor temperature as that happens. So, a dryer is not as crucial if your ERV can handle that bump. But, if I am running the dryer and I turn on the kitchen exhaust or and I have a fire in the fireplace, then I might be 150, 200, 300 cfm and that may be beyond the entire capacity of the ERV. So, you need makeup air for those things.
Sonia: I don't know off the top of my head what the limits are for the ERV and, if you think about it, it is a hole through your wall.
Sonia: So, even if none of the fans are running, you have a direct connection to the outside.
Sonia: So, if you pull hard enough, you'll probably be able to pull makeup air through the ERV.
Sonia: But, we shouldn't design to that.
Chris: Right. Right. So, if we have a client – I have that client who says, "I want a wood stove; I'm going to have a wood stove. I have this wood lot. I want to (just whatever) — I want that caveman feeling of fire on these days." Even though I say, "Well, you're going to cook yourself out of your room, but that's fine if you want to do that."
Sonia: In that case, I would probably consider some sort of makeup air damper that opens. You know, you could put a temperature sensor in the chimney…
Chris: Oh!
Sonia: …and when it gets above a certain temperature, it opens a damper. But, keep in mind that the more complex…
Sonia: …the more you have to maintain, and the more things break.
Sonia: I might do something like that but, bring it into the house somewhere where it's not going to be a direct draft on somebody.
Sonia: Somewhere where it can mix before it gets into the house.
Phil: So, Sonia, at what point should someone hire a mechanical engineer?
Chris: Ooh, that's a good question!
Phil: Do you need a mechanical engineer in the house?
Sonia: That is a great question.
Chris: Well, yeah. Because houses… I mean, if you and I were doing a commercial building, we're hiring a mechanical engineer.
Phil: Yeah, we've got to have one.
Chris: It's just way too much to handle. But tons of houses get built without…
Phil: Yeah, most of them. And you know, Chris and I, we consider ourselves like we know what we're doing for the most part, and we rarely hire mechanical engineers for houses.
Chris: For houses.
Sonia: We're hiring Sonia for this bigger house that we're doing right now. It's very complicated, so we're going to need her help. But it's an interesting question: What's that threshold? How often do you get hired? When do you recommend people hire you?
Sonia: That is a great question. I think the first thing is it really depends on your team. So, if you as architects are really sharp – Kaplan Thompson and Briburn – and you guys are in this world — so you recognize when it gets beyond your comfort level. Right?
Sonia: If you have a really great contractor who can do the energy modeling and do the equipment sizing and do the distribution systems, and you have a good relationship, and they do good work (their ducts are sealed, things are installed correctly), then I would feel more comfortable going without a mechanical engineer. But, depending on the level of your team, and also we're going through this paradigm change in the building industry…
Sonia: …where now, all of a sudden, mechanical ventilation is being put into residential homes (which we never did before) – especially up here. We don't do forced air. Right?
Sonia: We have 4% openable windows and we're good.
Sonia: So I think, as we're going through this change, it would be more likely – and it could be a mechanical engineer who just helps you at the beginning: does some initial energy modeling, helps you with the equipment sizing, gives you some design tips to consider.
Sonia: And then maybe checks in again later in the design to make sure everything looks pretty good. And then it goes out to bid and maybe the engineer even reviews the bids from the contractors.
Chris: Nice.
Sonia: So, I think it's not necessarily like you get a full design – you don't need a mechanical engineer to run all your ducts or anything like that – but they should just kind of look over your shoulder and raise red flags and help with some basic calculations.
Chris: Nice! Good advice. All right, what else am I missing? Anything? What do you want to talk about, Phil?
Phil: I know we talked mostly about houses, but what about multifamily?
Phil: How does the equation change here? It certainly gets more complicated. And for a lot of architects doing houses, the next step is starting to do a couple of…
Chris: Larger, multifamily.
Phil: Do the systems change dramatically?
Sonia: They'd get bigger, potentially. Right? So, I mean, we can compartmentalize and we could put a single-family ventilation system in every apartment. But then Chris goes, "Holy [bleep], Sonia, look at all those building penetrations! That looks awful! And my amazing siding design is now compromised."
Chris: Right! Riddled.
Sonia: Riddled. It looks awful.
Chris: "Can we consolidate this and save some…?"
Sonia: So, the things you get when you have a single-family system is you have boost mode. Right? So, when you have a high-pollution event in the bathroom…
Sonia: …you can boost it. But, if I'm in a multifamily with a single unit that's serving multiple homes, I don't get that option, okay?
Sonia: Similarly, if I'm turning it down – so let's say I have one apartment that's full of kids and they're cooking a lot of pasta.
Chris: Yes.
Sonia: And in the next apartment I have a single, slightly older person. Right?
Sonia: Well, they all get the same ventilation rate. I mean, you could rebalance the system so that they get less. So either you turn down or turn up as a building and back down. And so those are things that you have to consider. I would say, on the balance, it makes sense to go with a consolidated system mostly for cost reasons. And then you just have to have a smart balancer and then – we talked about continuous commissioning – it really makes sense to go make and check it seasonally.
Sonia: Or as tenants change.
Chris: But if I had a developer or a client (or whatever, a combination of that) and they were adamant that, "No, everyone's going to have their own autonomy. Each unit." It's a condo or something like that. Then that would behoove the architect to design the exterior.
Sonia: Absolutely.
Chris: So that these features, these penetrations are thought about.
Chris: And are not missing from the elevations.
Sonia: And that's a great point. If you have a homeowners' association, if it's a condo…
Chris: True.
Sonia: …who's going to pay the electricity for the…?
Chris: Right. It can get complicated.
Sonia: It can get very complicated.
Chris: That's interesting. Do you think there's greater efficiency overall – from a macro level, from an alien looking down at the planet, and looking at this one building saying, "What's the better thing to do?"
Sonia: Well, ironically, in almost any other case, with larger systems you get economies of scale. But I have found (in my relatively limited experience) that with the larger boxes, you get lower efficiency. So, I'm not going to get 92% on 1200 cfm anymore.
Chris: Interesting. So, it might be more hardware, more product installed, but then it will each be at 90% as opposed to…
Sonia: And so now, when you're getting those lower efficiencies, you're probably talking about some sort of duct-mounted coil…
Sonia: …to condition the air (to heat it up or cool it down when it's really cold outside) because you're getting that "too cool" air.
Chris: Gotcha. All right.
Sonia: That would definitely be a time to bring in a mechanical engineer – if you're going multifamily.
Chris: Oh yeah. Oh yeah.
Sonia: That would definitely be the right time.
Chris: Oh yeah. If you're an architect doing a multifamily without a mechanical engineer, "Phssssst!"
Phil: Scared!
Chris: Bush league!
You need to get your act together. We're talking to you.
All right. I don't know. Phil, you feel good? Sonia, do you feel good?
Sonia: I feel great! With another cocktail, I'll feel better.
Chris: Hey! We can help you out.
Phil: I've got an idea: so let's play a rocking song to close out the podcast.
[The episode closes with a song by Titus Andronicus: "Dimed Out."]
Chris Stratton | Sep 23, 2015 03:12pm | #1
Kitchen ventilation comments, future prospects
Chris, Phil, and Sonia, thanks for a great conversation. Really interesting and informative. I do feel compelled to comment on and take issue with some of the things you said about kitchen ventilation.
A vented range hood should be installed for homes with every type of cooktop -- electric resistance, electric induction, or gas. It's not just the combustion pollutants that need to be removed, but also the pollutants generated from cooking itself. These latter pollutants are generated by electric cooktops just as much as by gas cooktops. Also, ovens should be vented.
Non-combustion cooking pollutants can include fine and ultrafine particles, acrolein, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons; chronic exposure to all of which carries non-trivial long-term health risks. Recirculating range hoods do not remove these pollutants. (there is one expensive model from vent-a-hood that claims to, but in general, they don't do much if anything). Here's a report that discusses this issue in not-quite-excruciating detail, if you're interested: http://eetd.lbl.gov/publications/addressing-kitchen-contaminants-for-h
We still have a way to go to calibrate our priorities for indoor air pollutants. In most houses, cooking is perhaps the most significant pollutant source from a morbidity standpoint, and it is not widely recognized as such.
And finally one caveat about the range hood cfm numbers you quote in relation to depressurization. It's certainly a real issue that needs to be considered for each home. However, we've found that there are often (nearly always) significant discrepancies between the advertised cfm numbers that manufacturers quote for their products and the measured cfm in installed conditions. It's not unusual for the measured cfm to be 50% or even 40% of the advertised flow. Sometimes even less. Range hoods that are HVI rated have HVI (i.e. third-party tested) flows listed in the HVI directory or on the product itself. These numbers tend to be much closer to the ones that we measure (i.e., the numbers we measure are typically 80-100% of the HVI numbers).
We're currently working on a capture efficiency test for range hoods, and have found that a well-designed range hood can remove 80% of cooking pollutants at 200 cfm for a typical 60,000 Btu/hr cooktop. If things go well, soon architects, engineers, contractors, and homeowners will have a new performance metric -- called capture efficiency -- to consider when choosing a range hood. Thanks for reading and thanks again for the conversation.
Christopher Briley | Sep 23, 2015 03:55pm | #2
Cooked food for thought
Thanks Chris! I always love comments that improve our blog and take the learning to the next level. Ever the student, I shall review your link and see what I can retain and incorporate into my ongoing work. I feel like this is an area that no one has completely figured out yet. It's a good reason to always cook on the grill outdoors and eat out at fancy restaurants.
John Rockwell | Sep 30, 2015 11:08am | #3
IMPORTANT SAFETY CLARIFICATION!
Our ERV/HRV Comfosystem DOES NOT monitor house pressure to detect if a wood stove is drafting or a clothes dryer is in use.
In winter, to prevent any condensate from freezing in the exchanger core, some HRV's intentionally go into a temporary imbalanced mode, ramping down the cold air intake while maintain exhaust fan speed. This depressurizes the house, and if a wood stove is in use, can result in back-drafting of combustion byproducts like carbon monoxide, a possibly fatal situation.
Therefore, in houses with wood stoves and fireplaces, the frost protection mode described above MUST NEVER BE USED. Our ComfoAir units must be set to "open fire program" to override the default of imbalancing to prevent depressurization. This is done during the system commissioning phase (a service we provide).
Instead, Zehnder provides an electric resistance preheater and/or a geothermal ground loop preheater for effective frost protection.
John Rockwell
Northeast Technical Sales Engineer
Zehnder America, Inc.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Thanks for all the info, I used the supplied hydronaut with the EK block and applied it in an 'X' pattern, maybe I should lap the CPU?
Miklkit, what were the programs you used to tout for FX systems to get around some of the windows shenanigans etc ( was there one for use with the instruction sets used by games like skyrim ?) Nasty cold weather has given me some basement time with my FX rigs .
The Bulldozer Conditioner is one of them, but the ICC Patch is the most important one as it removed the intel gimp in older programs. It wasn't until early 2018 that I got the first program that the ICC Patch could not find anything to fix.
I have that one on my desktop certainly one worth having - thank you .
8350 @ 5.2 ghz on a stock cooler PM me!
Just some benching to see if this clock can be used.
I'm kinda disappointed this Biostar board can't muster with better Memory settings. It's finicky as hell with what boots consistently. I've asked for a newer BIOS but hope is small.
It's still on 1.0.0.4c Agesa.
"30 fps isn't a design choice, It's a failure"
"Quickly put a hole in the man who tries to put 5 eggs in three baskets"
Last edited by Widde; 03-02-2019 at 05:46 PM.
HAH! that voltage! Look I need close to 1.600V for 4.1Ghz stability on mine sample.
Whats up guys, late to the party here but I snagged a used 1800x, going to use it in my emby transcode server/file server.
I have a 16gb 3200 16c kit (not Bdie) that I hope can also run at DOCP settings.
My cooler is nothing special, but hopefully good enough for stock. Its a Gamaxx 400.
Yeah I really lucked out on this chip. It wont do much more though without hideous amounts of voltage.
Heh. Yeah, my 1700 hits 3.925ghz at about the same voltage as yours.


text:
Page:United States Statutes at Large Volume 5.djvu/629
TWENTY-SEVENTH CONGRESS. Sess. III. Ch. 2. 1842. 593 Forrhe district 'ud c of New York southern district one tho · · ·u seven lrundféd antlllfifgr dollars; , , usmd Duma" ag". For the district judge of New Jersey, seven hundred and fifty dollars , For the district judge of Pennsylvania, eastern district, one thousand two hundred and fifty dollars; For the district judge of Pennsylvania, western district, nine hundred dollars; For the district judge of Delaware, seven hundred and fifty dollars; For the district judge of Maryland, one thousand dollars; For the district judge of Virginia, eastern district, nine hundred dollars; For the district judge of Virginia, western district, eight hundred dollars; For the district judge of Kentucky, seven hundred and fifty dollars; For the district judge of Tennessee, seven hundred and fifty dollars; For the district judge of Ohio, five hundred dollars; . For the district judge of North Carolina, one thousand dollars; For the district judge of South Carolina, one thousand two hundred and fifty dollars; For the district judge of Georgia, one thousand two hundred and fifty dollars; For the district judge of Louisiana, one thousand five hundred dollars; For the district judge of Mississippi, one thousand dollars; For the district judge of Indiana, five hundred dollars; For the district judge of Illinois, five hundred dollars; For the district judge of Alabama, one thousand two hundred and fifty dollars; For the district judge of Missouri, six hundred dollars; For the district judge of Michigan, seven hundred and fifty dollars; For the district judge of Arkansas, one thousand dollars; For the chief justice of the District of Columbia, one thousand three Judges of Divhundred and fifty dollars; tmi c°l'""l""· For the two associate judges of said District, two thousand five hundred dollars; For the judge of the Criminal Court of said District, one thousand dollars; For the judge of the Orphans' Court of Washington county, in said District, five hundred dollars; For the judge of the Orphans' Court of Alexandria county, in. said District, five hundred dollars; For the Attorney General of the United States, and the clerk and Attor¤wyGen— messenger in his office, and the contingent expenses thereof, three thou- ""'l* &'°' sand dollars; For the reporter of the decisions of the Supreme Court, six hundred Reporter of and fifty dollars. S¤r¤¤¤·<=°<··¤*- For the district attorney of Maine, one hundred dollars. Distriht ¤¤¢>1'- For the district attorney of New Hampshire, one hundred dollars. "°Y"· For the district attorney of Massachusetts, one hundred dollars, For the district attorney of Vermont, one hundred dollars. For the district attorney of Rhode Island, one hundred dollars. For the district attorney of Connecticut, one hundred dollars. For the district attorney of New York, northern district, one hundred dollars. For the district attorney of New Jersey, one hundred dollars. For the district attorney of Pennsylvania, eastern district, one htmdred dollars. _ For the district attorney of Pennsylvania, western district, one hundred dollars. Vox,. V.-75 2 z 2
Retrieved from "https://en.wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=Page:United_States_Statutes_at_Large_Volume_5.djvu/629&oldid=8680207"


text:
HomeDomestic NewsCoronavirus: Workers and oppressed face monster wave of evictions and foreclosures
Coronavirus: Workers and oppressed face monster wave of evictions and foreclosures
By Jerry Goldberg
In the midst of the Covid-19 crisis, housing activists have shown tremendous initiative in raising demands for moratoriums on eviction and rental payments during the emergency and in the months to come. Organizations like the Right to the City Alliance, Moratorium Now Coalition, Detroit Eviction Defense, Michigan Environmental Justice Coalition and others have called for canceling rent, mortgage and utility payments during the emergency and in the months that follow after it is lifted.
24 states have suspended evictions for at least some time during the emergency. However, in most cases there has been no canceling of rent payments, meaning that when the moratorium is lifted millions will face imminent removals from their homes. Out of work and with no income coming in, 31% of renters failed to pay their April rent, and the numbers are certain to go up in coming months.
The Covid-19 crisis appears to be leading to a housing crisis every bit as large as the subprime mortgage crisis of approximately 2005-2013. This crisis will offer openings for housing activists to intervene boldly to assert that affordable housing is a human right that must be guaranteed for all. But to be effective, we must learn from the lessons of the subprime disaster. Today, much of the rental market is now controlled by the same kind of Wall Street institutions that brought on the collapse of the mortgage industry, and who will surely be in line for a massive bailout at the expense of renters and their families if we do not intervene.
The Housing/Foreclosure Crisis of the Early 2000's
The housing foreclosure crisis was a product of the major banks and financial institutions perpetrating a massive predatory lending scheme. Beginning in the early 2000's they would train brokers to go into neighborhoods, especially where people of color predominated. These brokers would lure prospective home buyers, as well as existing homeowners, into taking out mortgages and home refinancings, based on inflated appraisals, and with no loan documentation required. The mortgages would contain low interest teaser rates for the first couple of years making the note affordable for a period. However, after a couple of years, the interest rate would dramatically adjust upward and the payment would become unaffordable. The mortgage holder was initially assured that when the adjustment occurred they would be able to refinance and remain in their home. But as the fraud grew, and the defaults multiplied, home prices plummeted, refinancings stopped, and millions of homeowners lost their homes to foreclosure.
The individual mortgages would be bundled into security instruments that were sold on Wall Street, at a rate of profit far greater than the similar rate on fixed rate securities. However, as the crisis intensified, and more and more mortgages failed, the biggest buyer of the subprime securities became Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, formerly quasi-government corporations, were taken over by the federal government and placed under the Federal Housing Finance Authority (FHFA) in 2008. In what amounted to a huge bailout by the federal government, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac used government funds to buy hundreds of billions of subprime mortgage securities. By 2009, Fannie Mae and Freddie owned or guaranteed about ½ of all outstanding mortgages in the U.S, totaling $4.8 trillion in residential mortgage debt. In addition, federal agencies including the Federal Housing Administration and Veterans Administration, insured approximately 20% of mortgages. This amounted to a virtual nationalization of the mortgage industry.
The beneficiaries of this nationalization were the very banks and financial institutions that created the crisis. As the backer of 70% of mortgage loans, when a home was foreclosed, the federal government would pay the bank that held the mortgage full value on what was owed, an amount far in excess of the actual value of the home. Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac would then carry out the eviction of the family that occupied the home (the FHA would purchase the home post eviction but still pay full value to the banks). This bailout amounted to hundreds of billions of dollars to the banks and financial institutions on top of the direct grant of $700 billion in TARP funds to the banksters.
10 million families lost their homes to mortgage foreclosures between 2006-2014, and this doesn't include "zombie" foreclosures, where families left before the process was completed. Detroit alone experienced 70,000 bank foreclosures. When you include the effect of tax foreclosures that derived from the bank foreclosures, Detroit, which once had the highest Black home ownership rate in the US, saw its home ownership decline from 192,043 in 2010 to 104,751 in 2016 (U.S. census bureau statistics). From 2005-2009, as a result of the foreclosure epidemic, median net worth across the US declined by 66% for Latinos and 53% for African American.
Foreclosure Crisis Changed Character of Residential Rental Market
After paying full value on inflated mortgages to the banks and financial institutions, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the FHA would then sell off the properties at drastically reduced prices to large investors. By 2016, 95% of the distressed mortgages on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's books were auctioned off to Wall Street investors. These investors would load up on foreclosed properties at a huge discount, and then make a quick killing on them as rental properties or through land contracts.
Over a period of years, as a result of this process, the residential home market, especially in areas where land values began to come back, became dominated by a small set of Wall Street investment companies. Just like the mortgage industry, the investors began to bundle hundreds of rental properties and sell them as Wall Street securities called real estate investment trusts, or REITS. These securitized instruments allowed the institutional investors to raise cash to purchase more properties, while paying interest on the bonds to the funds that purchase them.
Today, Wall Street's real estate grab of residential home rental properties has ballooned to about $60 billion, representing hundreds of thousands of properties. As of 2018, the largest single family rental property holders, all of which securitize their holdings, included Invitation Homes (formerly a subsidiary of Blackstone (82,570), American Homes 4 Rent (51,840), Progress Residential (20,000) Main Street Renewal (17,000), Tricon American Homes (18,800) and Front Yard Residential (12,416).
In Detroit, especially hard hit by the foreclosure crisis, this process went to the extreme. Investors would purchase blocks of hundreds and even thousands of homes for as low as $500 per home. They milked the properties for short term profit, performing no repairs and not even paying the property taxes that were owed. This contributed to causing mass tax foreclosures in the city, with over 25% of Detroit's homes foreclosed on for unpaid taxes from 2011-2015. In 2012, 90% of tax foreclosed properties were purchased by investors.
Just as with mortgage foreclosures, the investors holding residential rental properties are completely disconnected from the residents. Their only concern is milking the properties for maximum profits. They have to pay off the bondholders to whom they sold rental security instruments. They are quick to evict when lost rental payments cause their revenues to go down.
Detroit averaged 35,000 evictions a year between 2010 and 2017. IThe investors who purchased the homes in bulk through foreclosure auctions, or through special deals with the City or County when they exercised their right of first refusal and purchased homes pre-auction, are now responsible for the bulk of the evictions in 36th District Court. In a report titled Stopping the Eviction Machine in Detroit by Joshua Akers and Eric Cooney, the authors note that "one investor filed for more than 1700 evictions since 2009; another bulk buyer has filed for eviction more than 800 times; and 60% of the top 20 auction buyers experienced two or more eviction filings between 2009-2015.
Is a new government bailout on the horizon?
Faced with a large decline in rental payments in the current crisis, we can be sure that the pace of evictions by these investors will step up dramatically in the period to come. What will be the government's response?
A report by the Urban Institute, noted that as of 2017, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac already financed 34% of all multifamily rental housing. That same year, it was reported that Fannie Mae was backing $1 billion of rental securities issued by Invitation Homes, then owned by the Blackstone Group. There is some indication that the federal government was pulling back from being the owner or guarantor of residential rental securities in 2018. However, if the residential rental investors begin suffering lost revenue, similar to what happened to the financial institutions during the foreclosure crisis, it is likely the government will step in to bail out the investors at the expenses of the residents, just as they did during the subprime foreclosure epidemic.
Government action must be to defend the renters, not the investors
As the eviction numbers inevitably rise during the current state of emergency and in the months and perhaps years to come, housing activists must raise the demand that the government bail out the residents, not the investors and landlords. During the 1930's, there were foreclosure moratoriums in Michigan and 25 other states, won by the militant actions of the unemployed councils led by the Communist and Socialist parties. The Michigan Moratorium act, which was in force for 5 years from 1933-1938, provided that judges had to stop the foreclosures and then set a reasonable payment based on the homeowner's income. The Michigan moratorium and the others across the US were upheld by the Michigan Supreme Court in the case of Home Building and Loan Association v Blaisdell. This is a good model for the kind of moratorium on evictions and rental payments, with an accompanied affordable rent mandate before payments are reinstated, that is needed today and will be needed in the months to come.
We are for a nationalization of the rental industry, but such a nationalization must be to benefit the residents, not the investors. Housing is a human right and should be publicly owned and controlled. And that control should be exercised by tenant organizations, not landlords or servicers for whom profit is the number one concern.
The current crisis is showing the complete failure of the capitalist system, based on private ownership for profits, to function in the face of a global pandemic that is affecting all of humanity. The time is overdue to move forward to building a socialist society where public ownership based on production of services to meet the needs of humanity is the order of the day.
Coronavirus: Capitalist chaos, workers resistance and the dictatorship of the proletariat
The COVID-19 pandemic makes clear the need to cooperate despite political differences
STOP DETROIT SLUMLORDS AND COPS FROM EVICTING BLACK WOMEN!
February 25, 2021 fwstaff Domestic News 0
By Detroit Fighting Words Staff There has been a series of incidents over the last several months in the city where unscrupulous landlords engaging in sexual harassment against women are utilizing Detroit police officers […]
Coronavirus: The K-shaped recovery and the rise of zombie capitalism
August 25, 2020 fwstaff Domestic News 0
By Chris Fry From an August 19 CNBC report: Nearly 40% of Americans who lost a job or had a reduction in take-home pay due to Covid-19 can't last more than a month on savings […]
January 12, 2022 fwstaff Domestic News 0
By David Sole The COVID-19 pandemic year 2021 has seen the highest rate of inflation in about 40 years in the United States. The rapid increase in prices for all sorts of consumer goods is […]


text:
Wormanium, Institut for kulturhistorisk oplysning er en selvejende institution, der blandt andet udgiver tidsskriftet Skalk men tillige har stået for udgivelse af bøger og salg af kopier af genstande m.m. Wormanium blev stiftet i 1966.

Wormanium havde oprindeligt til huse i Forhistorisk Museum i Århus, men i 1969 flyttede institutionen ud til et nybygget hus på Jelshøjvej i Højbjerg ved Skåde.

Litteratur
 Harald Andersen: "Skalkenes Skalk" (Skalk 1981 Nr. 6; s. 26-29)

Kulturhistorie
Forlag fra Danmark
Etableret i 1966

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
from __future__ import unicode_literals

from functools import update_wrapper

from yepes.utils.minifier import minify_css, minify_html, minify_js

def minify_css_output(function):
    """
    A decorator that minifies the CSS output of any function that it decorates.
    """
    def wrapper(*args, **kwargs):
        return minify_css(function(*args, **kwargs))

    update_wrapper(wrapper, function)
    return wrapper

def minify_html_output(function):
    """
    A decorator that minifies the HTML output of any function that it decorates.
    """
    def wrapper(*args, **kwargs):
        return minify_html(function(*args, **kwargs))

    update_wrapper(wrapper, function)
    return wrapper

def minify_js_output(function):
    """
    A decorator that minifies the JS output of any function that it decorates.
    """
    def wrapper(*args, **kwargs):
        return minify_js(function(*args, **kwargs))

    update_wrapper(wrapper, function)
    return wrapper

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
This WE believe
gary - Irasburg, Vermont
This I believe is better expressed as this WE believe – what I believe is the collective expression of the beliefs of many people. My earliest […]
This I believe is better expressed as this WE believe – what I believe is the collective expression of the beliefs of many people.
My earliest experiences confirm this.
I believe in adoption because my parents adopted me.
I believe in the natural world because my elderly Scoutmaster taught me the name of a sprig of partridge berry that he held between his fingers.
I believe in baseball because my father knew that a roundhouse curve, thrown across the backyard, was a thing of beauty.
I believe in immigration because my mother still spoke the Norwegian of her parents, and because she believed that no Christmas was complete without Santa Lucia and pickled herring.
Every aspect of my life has been shaped by the beliefs of others.
I believe in tolerance because my high school track team was a coalition of Poles, Latvians, Italians, Puerto Ricans, Blacks, Jews, English, Swedes, Armenians, and one athlete with cerebral palsy and another who was autistic. We believed that through fights, through competition, and through workouts that each of us earned our place on the team.
I believe in freedom because one of my cousins served in Vietnam and his brother believed it was more important to be a conscientious objector. And because the father of both of these boys was a prisoner of war in Germany for two years.
I believe in marriage because my wife believes in giving all that she is to me.
I believe in education, because after thirty years of teaching, the students have helped me understand that in every classroom there are twenty-five teachers.
I do not believe alone – I do not believe at all, except that others have believed before me.
The Mission Mountains in Montana are my spiritual memory because my son took me to a hidden lake to fish for cutthroat trout. And he, like a high priest of fishing, said, "If I cast this fly a hundred times, one cast will be perfect, and I will catch a fish."
I believe in beaches because my father took me to fish from lonely jetties where we stood side by side in a space enclosed by sand and sunlight, wind and water. And because a beach is where my daughter found shelter for her troubled soul.
I believe in rebirth as I watch my wife nurture her garden of perennial flowers back to life.
I believe in community because in my small town a funeral is a celebration of a life well lived.
The world beyond my home adds to the montage of beliefs.
I believe in being humble because others pray for grace and compassion and hope better than I do.
I believe in vicarious experiences because I, like Lance Armstrong, have "danced on the pedals" through the mountains of the Pyrenees.
I believe in giving because when I secretly gave a sandwich to a naked Haitian boy, he gathered his friends around him, and without hesitation, split it ten ways. He believed in his heart that this was the right thing to do, and so now I believe it, too.
I believe in stories because when my eighty-four year old neighbor was run over by a car, I wrote a story about why, and I believe that my story, and his story, are both true.
Is this photo album, this scrapbook of beliefs, ever filled?
Today I believe more deeply in art because this morning my wife finished a collage of her trip to China, and in the center of it is a ceremonial vessel, a symbol that is centuries old.
I believe in the bond between a rider and her horse because today my daughter and her horse cleared a four-foot jump for the first time.
Does living in the present allow me to keenly observe the beliefs of others and see them as truths?
Do I believe in today as an entity unto itself because before my best friend died, he made a T-shirt that said, "Got no time to hang around" on one side, and "I ain't waitin'" on the other side, and that's the way he lived all his todays?


text:
· Saturday July 1st, 2000
Eleven Ken Whiteley "from-the-heart" originals about listening to ourselves, each other, and the world around us.
Listening quantity
SKU: BCD127-MP3 Category: MP3 Tag: Ken Whiteley
Ken Whiteley – Listening
After more than three decades of performing, writing, and producing music, Ken Whiteley just keeps getting bettter. Although he's already been nominated for six Juno awards, his new album "Listening" is perhaps his most realized work to date. Ken is a one-time member of the legendary Original Sloth Band and a current member of The Whiteley Brothers (with brother Chris) and Scarlett, Washington, and Whiteley (with Mose Scarlett and Jackie Washington). But he is also a respected solo musician who is equally versed in folk, blues, gospel, swing, and many other styles. His dynamic performances have won audiences over at clubs, festivals and theatres all across North America, whether he's moaning the blues, shouting the gospel, inviting his audiences to sing along, or wowing them with his instrumental abilities. With his new album "Listening," Ken continues his ever-increasing mastery of the roots music he draws from while at the same time expanding his artistic palette. "Listening" contains 11 Ken Whiteley "from-the-heart" originals about listening to ourselves, each other, and the world around us. Ranging from the gospel quartet-style of "Listening" to the middle-eastern tinged "Bird, Mole, Flower" to the jazz stylings of "Falling Snow" to the bluesy guitar-driven sound of "All I Need," this album will pull you in with its beautiful sounds and songs. And through it all is the positive, uplifting spirit that Ken brings to all his music. The album features outstanding vocal performances by Ken, Rebecca Campbell, David Wall, Pat Patrick, and Fathead's John Mays. Ken is also assisted by George Koller on bass, and by special guest, sacred steel player Chuck Campbell of The Campbell Brothers. Other guest musicians include Chris Whiteley, Ernie Tollar, Bucky Berger, Sharlene Wallace, Colleen Allen, Ben Grossman, Oliver Schroer, William Carn, and John T. Davis.
Produced by Ken Whiteley and George Koller.
Old Man's Table
Anne Lederman CAD $9.99 – CAD $16.00 Select options
Ken Whiteley & The Beulah Band
Ken Whiteley CAD $9.99 – CAD $16.00 Select options
A Few Simple Words
Grit Laskin CAD $9.99 – CAD $16.00 Select options


Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, is a syndrome caused by the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV). The immune system is altered by the virus, making the individual to be much more vulnerable to diseases and infections. This is the forum for discussing anything related to this health condition.


1. Students are required to take the occupied items in classroom 104 of the main teaching building on the City Campus and other leftover items in the public areas of the classroom before 6:45 on October 19 (next Friday); Otherwise, the items will be cleaned up by the university. The items cleaned up by the university will be temporarily stored in room 202 of the main teaching building. The unclaimed items will be treated as abandoned after 7 days (the deadline is 12 noon on October 26). The school does not assume responsibility for the storage of temporary items. If the items are lost or have some other problems, the responsibility has to be taken by the owner. Please take all your belongings when you leave the classroom and use the classroom appropriately.
2. The university will clean all the classrooms on the City Campus at 6:45am according to the actual situation.
3. From October 10th, the opening hours of the classroom 103 of the main teaching building will be extended to 12am, whether the university will open other classrooms in the future depends on the actual situation.