How can you still your cup if thoughts, without any ripple?
A vibration is usually the first sign of the stillness coming forth and expressing its full presence. Not a truck rumbling kind of vibration. But more like a motor – a pulsing, quickly turning motor that peers just above the consciousness, if you let everything else just fade away for a while.
Thus vibration is the color of the stillness, it's texture, it's odor. I call it it's texture for stillness is otherwise elusive in description, for words come from stillness. It is like the proverbial fish describing the water. It just is, the fish would say.
Our stillness is the water. It just is. It is our breath. Our light. Our life. We emerge from the stillness, and we return to the stillness, interrupted only briefly by the shortest of journeys we call a life. Yet, we quickly forge a path that is composed of everything but the stillness. We maintain that our path, our life cannot be full without filling the emptiness with the makings of reputation, opinion or desires. If we do it long enough, like the glass, we fill it to the point where nothing can be added, where the glass overflows and nothing new is retained, and only the old attachments become our existence.
Like the silence that remains even when noise overtakes our senses, the emptiness that is the infinite stillness remains, awaiting the tipping of the proverbial glass.
So what are we to do first? Empty the glass, but leave the tap open? In so doing, we just keep filling the glass. Maybe even more quickly if we discover that the glass is empty, a feeling we can't recall feeling maybe since our conscious memories, or shortly thereafter.
Doing nothing is essential for thinking to occur. Many of the most important thoughts are unintentional—they can be neither solicited nor cajoled but have a rhythm of their own, creeping up, arriving, and leaving when we least expect them. It is important to cultivate the lassitude of mind that clears a place for the arrival of what cannot be anticipated. Idleness allows time for the mind to wander to places never before imagined and to return transformed.
We must stop. Just stop. Just stop, knowing that it won't empty the glass, it won't bring forth the stillness and the infinite emptiness. It will simply cease to fill the emptiness, letting the same happen as with the glass, letting it just sit empty, slowly leaking and draining the vessel.
Although one would be tempted to tip over the glass and make it empty as quickly as possible, this would be the same as filling the glass with stuff. The action of emptying the glass more quickly than it can empty on its own is an act of filling the glass. Emptiness and stillness cannot be emptied and returned to its original form. It can only be left to return to its original nature under its own ways.
Only by returning to the stillness and the emptiness can you empty them of their baggage. Only by letting the stillness and infinite emptiness rest, just rest, can they float to the surface of the noise, the stuff, the actions, thoughts, feelings, sensations that have overfilled it for so long.
It is convenient therefore that simply being in the stillness and infinite emptiness is what is needed to both stop filling the emptiness, as well as emptying the emptiness.
How many days does it take to empty the glass? I guess it depends on the size of the glass, how much stuff is in the glass, and how leaky is the glass. It also depends how serious you are about stopping to fill the glass with more stuff.
Well, the glass is large, it's many years worth of filling. It's lots of stuff, large and small, sticky and runny, old and new, good and bad. Let's say it's full.
Perhaps we all carry an immemorial wound, an infinite loss, a self-exile we perpetrate on ourselves. It turns us into isolated entities stalking the earth in search of what we think we need—the temporary stays against ennui, despair, loss, and terror. But sooner or later, the wound can carry us toward its own remedy, if we only let it.
How leaky it is puts forth an interesting observation. If you are attached, sticky, clingy, to the many things in your glass, you may very well have described the importance of non-attachment, as attachment is effectively the recipe for making your glass water tight. You want a leaky glass? Bask in no-attachment. Then your glass will begin to leak, and empty itself of its contents.
As for adding new things into the glass, such things can only come from outside the emptiness and the stillness. The fewer these things are brought into your consciousness, the books and the media, the thoughts and the emotions, the wants and the fears. Both our world and our minds will find ingenious ways to continue to seek cracks and fissures to fill our space. Attaching to preventing them from entering is not the answer, as with attachement comes the clinging and glue that this external stuff needs to stick.
We can't stop the mind from attempting to fill the emptiness, no different than we can prevent the external world from trying to sell us corn flakes.
So, rather than resisting, allow them to try. Invite them to try. Openly tell them that they are more than welcomed to fill the glass. Tell the world. Tell your mind. Not just tell them, invite them. Warmly greet them and observe them wanting to fill your emptiness and silence.
Then let go. Then detach. Not dettach as in surrender, detach as in non-attachment. Just don't stick to them, and let the vessel stay empty. Let the vessel get really leaky, just letting these thoughts, ideas, sensations and emotions just come, and just leak out of the boat.
If you truly detach from the all, you will find your vessel as leaky as a sieve. It will just offer a bit of resistance in letting it go, but it will let it go, for it can't do otherwise.
And you will find yourself left with not much. Only stillness, silence, infinite emptiness, and nothing left for which to cling or attach to.
You become without need when you have nothing within you to cling to, to grasp, to attach to. For you become infinite stillness, infinite emptiness, and the voiding silence that accompanies them.
In stillness and silence you will find the infinite emptiness within which needlessness rest.
Buddhism teaches us that desire, for all the agony and ecstasy, is no match for the truth.
We need to give up something. We can't have it all. We can't try to layer wisdom on top of confusion. The spiritual path is about what we give up, not what we get.
On the mat, there are many days where the struggle to not use muscle becomes an endless frustration. Old habits of muscles and brawn creep in, which inevitably leads to my inability to exercise the technique. After several years, I've developed, patiently, an ever increasing awareness of the energy I use, and when I've gone beyond the balance point – the point where tension now reigns, and any technique will be fruitless against a much stronger Uke.
At that point, one of three things are possible. No more, no less.
Using more strength is evidently the choice by many who have learnt, as I did, that more muscle is the recipe to any stiff door, stubborn jar or rude guy in a crowded bus. This option is not without its proponents, although I have experienced once too often that there is always someone stronger, someone with more strength. Using the tug-of-war metaphor, we get even more back into it.
In the completely opposite direction is retreating, becoming soft and limp, a form of running away from the circumstance. Although there are places and times when retreating becomes the necessary course of action, such is not the case when in a situation where uke is clearly before us. In the tug-of-war metaphor, we drop the rope, or give it so much slack that we might as well just drop it.
This leaves us with the option most difficult to learn and accept, the option of giving up, but not giving up. In this option, the rope is relaxed to the point where tension becomes less, but never slack…simply not sending signals to the other. At this point of harmony with uke, there is no slack in the rope, but there is no tension either. Just connection, harmony, blending.
The more we can get the self out of the way, the more clearly we can see the effect of our thoughts, words, and action upon ourselves and others.
To achieve such a point of balance, harmony and blending, we must become invisible. Not the physical kind, but invisible to the tension and pressures that uke will exert in order to return tension to the moment. We must become transparent to the attempts to re-engage our physical and mental commitment, in essence, stay void of uke's efforts of reattaching us to the moment.
We must get the self out of the way, get the self detached from the getting, the wanting, the desired outcome. We become transparent and nothingness to uke's charge. We must surrender and give up getting to somewhere. We are always where we need to be, in the absolute present moment, as long as we remain aware of the fullness of the present.
At the point of balance, harmony and blending, there is silence, there is stillness, and there is nothingness. Although the world strives to fill our space with noise, attractions and desires, there is no room for any of this when we are at the point of harmony. In tension, there is much upon which the world can attach, much into which the body can grasp, much with which the mind can preoccupy itself. In slack, there is no contact, no link, no blending, and so the mind seeks to connect, the body grasps, and the spirit wavers.
Only in the moment of balance, the point where the slack has been fully removed, but tension is not given a home, does harmony manifest. At that point, a vibration becomes our state, a vibration like the vibration of the universe – subtle, profound and ubiquitous. Too much tension, and the vibration stops. Too much slack, and the vibration does not transmit – dampened by the loose rope.
Only when slack is fully taken, and tension is not given, does the vibration conduct. Calm, constant and steady contact, without tension and with no slack, leads to the awareness that is to know the infinite truth.
O'Sensei taught how to relax – not limp, weak and without tone, like the slack rope – but relaxed being without undue or excessive tension – without wanting or getting.
A point of harmony, balance and blending where one gives up getting, without giving up.


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Onward and upward: CdM long jumpers push themselves to the limit
Caroline Glessing and Jason Plumb are multi-event athletes for the Corona del Mar track and field program.
(Scott Smeltzer / Staff Photographer)
By Andrew TurnerStaff Writer
April 2, 2022 2 PM PT
The pinnacle of a career should be hard to reach.
Corona del Mar High School's Caroline Glessing and Jason Plumb — winners of the girls' and boys' long jump titles in the Orange County track and field championships last week — would like to believe that day is still off in the distance.
Always in search of bigger marks and faster times, in more ways than one, the Sea Kings' standout duo have been living parallel lives.
For Glessing and Plumb, meet day comes with a disclaimer: Satisfaction not guaranteed.
The name of the game is self-improvement. The greatest thrill, they say, is not a first-place medal, but rather, it is setting a new personal record in any one of their events.
Caroline Glessing won the girls' 200-meter sprints title in the CIF Southern Section Division 3 finals as a junior.
"That's always been my mentality my whole entire life," said Glessing. "I've always just wanted to do better, and the best I can do, because you can't compare yourself to other people, even in the classroom."
So Glessing admitted following the weekend, when she won the county title in the long jump with a mark of 17 feet, 9¾ inches, it was somewhat bittersweet. Her lifetime-best jump of 18-6 came at the end of last season in the unofficial state meet at Arcadia High School, which was put together after the CIF State track and field championships were canceled for a second consecutive year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
She found the humorous side regardless, recalling a moment in which she was handed the backpack given to the first-place finisher of the event at the county meet last season, only to have it taken away because she was the runner-up by a quarter-inch margin to Mater Dei's Madison Forbes.
The moniker student-athlete certainly applies to Glessing and Plumb, each of whom said they have cumulative weighted grade point averages north of 4.0. They committed to their respective colleges in October. Glessing will go to Yale; Plumb picked Cal, where his mother Liz and father Mike both attended for graduate school.
Speaking to the intersection between academics and athletics, Plumb indicated that the tools for success in one lead to better results in the other, especially preparation. As legendary basketball coach John Wooden said, "Failing to prepare is preparing to fail."
From his earliest school days at the Pegasus School in Huntington Beach, Plumb learned to value preparation. His consistency this season suggests he should prepare for a long spring. Through the county championships, Plumb had bettered 23 feet in all but one of his five competitions, winning all of them. He topped out at 22-11 as a junior.
Jason Plumb won the boys' long jump with a personal-best mark of 23 feet, 4 inches in the Orange County Championships.
"I was just talking to my long jump coach the other day, and he wants me to count out the steps that I take in my run-throughs leading up to the jump," Plumb said. "He's always saying you want to train your body so that your body will just do it. You want to program your body so it gets to the point where your body will just do it instead of you thinking too much about it.
"… To be successful on exams in school, you got to study a lot, you got to prepare a lot, and to be successful on the track, you got to practice, and you got to program your body."
Along with the long jump, Glessing and Plumb also compete in the 100- and 200-meter sprints, and they serve as the anchor leg on CdM's 400 relay teams. Glessing won the 200 in the CIF Southern Section Division 3 finals at Estancia High School in June, a happy day as it came with personal records in all three of her individual events.
Acutely aware that high school only happens once, Glessing has kept her focus sharp — just like she said she hopes her mind will be in old age.
Corona del Mar's Caroline Glessing crosses first in the girls' 200 meters in the CIF Southern Section Division 3 finals at Estancia High School on June 12.
(Don Leach / Staff Photographer)
"In track and in school, I'm very focused," Glessing said. "I'm very goal-oriented, and mentally, it's like a switch in my brain. I have these goals, and at the end of the season, I would write down these goals on my notebook, and the next day, I swear it was the weirdest thing. At state championships, I wanted to jump 18-6, and my last jump out of the six jumps, I jumped 18-6."
CdM jumps coach Doug Ford, who was sixth in the U.S. Olympic Trials in the triple jump in 1968, shared his thoughts on what makes Glessing and Plumb special.
"They just have that inner drive," Ford said. "They want to do better every time, and they're very receptive to the coaching to correct things so they can get better, which is really important. I was concerned that maybe they would lose some enthusiasm because they're going to go to college, they've already got the college acceptance, but they were both fourth in state last year, so they want to do better, which is great."
While not a couple, Glessing and Plumb did go to winter formal together, as friends, this year. The next big dance for the two of them will be at the Arcadia Invitational on Saturday, April 9, with the bright lights and top-tier talent to match.
"I think that once you build consistency, I think you're way more likely to jump well at the big meets, for say Arcadia," Plumb said. "I'm really looking forward to that meet. My coach is telling me that I'm due to pop a big one because I'm on this track of consistency … but I'm also improving."
Jason Plumb and Caroline Glessing, four-event track and field athletes, pose in the jumps pit at Corona del Mar High School.
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Andrew Turner is a sports reporter for the Daily Pilot. Before joining the Pilot in October 2016, he covered prep sports as a freelancer for the Orange County Register for four years. His work also has been used by the Associated Press and California Rubber Hockey Magazine. While attending Long Beach State, he wrote for the college newspaper, The Daily 49er. He graduated with bachelor's degrees in journalism and history. (714) 966-4611
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Stories of Honor
The St. Louis couple charged with waving guns at protesters have a long history of not backing down
Jeremy Kohler
Armed homeowners Mark T. and Patricia N. McCloskey standing in front their house along Portland Place as they confront protesters marching to St. Louis Mayor Lyda Krewson's house Sunday, June 28, 2020, in the Central West End of St. Louis. No shots were fired and the protesters marched on. The protesters called for Krewson's resignation for releasing the names and addresses of residents who suggested defunding the police department. Photo by Laurie Skrivan, lskrivan@post-dispatch.com
Laurie Skrivan
ST. LOUIS — When Black Lives Matter protesters marched up Kingshighway on June 28 and turned through an iron gate into the magnificent private street of Portland Place, they encountered a couple who have for years, nearly constantly, sued other people and ordered people off their property.
Personal-injury attorneys Mark and Patricia McCloskey became instant national figures when they intercepted protesters marching past their marble-faced palazzo at One Portland Place, aimed guns at them and demanded they get out.
Americans saw the story they wanted to see. Some saw respected professionals fearing for their safety, reasonably exercising their Second Amendment rights to defend their home from violent trespassers. Others saw an overwrought, older affluent couple, recklessly pointing their weapons and asserting their white privilege.
But public records and interviews reveal a fuller picture than emerged two weeks ago. They show the McCloskeys are almost always in conflict with others, typically over control of private property, what people can do on that property, and whose job it is to make sure they do it.
They filed a lawsuit in 1988 to obtain their house, a castle built for Adolphus Busch's daughter and her husband during St. Louis' brief run as a world-class city in the early 20th century. At the McCloskeys' property in Franklin County, they have sued neighbors for making changes to a gravel road and twice in just over two years evicted tenants from a modular home on their property.
Mark McCloskey, charged with waving gun at St. Louis protesters, to speak at GOP convention
The incident has become a contentious issue, as President Trump and Missouri Gov. Mike Parson have both denounced the decision to charge the couple.
Mark McCloskey sued a former employer for wrongful termination and his sister, father and his father's caretaker for defamation.
The McCloskeys have filed at least two "quiet title" suits asserting squatter's rights on land they've occupied openly and hostilely — their terms — and claimed as their own. In an ongoing suit against Portland Place trustees in 2017, the McCloskeys say they are entitled to a 1,143-square-foot triangle of lawn in front of property that is set aside as common ground in the neighborhood's indenture.
It was that patch of green protesters saw when they filed through the gate. Mark McCloskey said in an affidavit that he has defended the patch before by pointing a gun at a neighbor who had tried to cut through it.
This court record shows the McCloskeys challenged a Portland Place resident "at gun point" who they said encroached on their property.
The McCloskeys have filed many other lawsuits. They sued a man who sold them a Maserati they claimed was supposed to come with a box of hard-to-find parts. In one trip to the courthouse in November 1996, Mark McCloskey filed two lawsuits, one against a dog breeder whom he said sold him a German shepherd without papers and the other against the Central West End Association for using a photo of their house in a brochure for a house tour after the McCloskeys had told them not to.
"I guess we were saving gas," he would quip in a deposition in another case about why he filed two lawsuits at once.
Mark McCloskey has run off trustees trying to make repairs to the wall surrounding his property, insisting that he and his wife own it. In 2013, he destroyed bee hives placed just outside of the mansion's northern wall by the neighboring Jewish Central Reform Congregation and left a note saying he did it, and if the mess wasn't cleaned up quickly he would seek a restraining order and attorneys fees. The congregation had planned to harvest the honey and pick apples from trees on its property for Rosh Hashanah.
Mark McCloskey left this note after he destroyed bee hives placed just outside of the mansion's northern wall by the neighboring Jewish Central Reform Congregation.
"The children were crying in school," Rabbi Susan Talve said. "It was part of our curriculum."
Moreover, the McCloskeys have constantly sought to force their neighborhood trustees to maintain the exclusivity of Portland Place, accusing them of selectively enforcing the written rules for living in the neighborhood, known as the trust agreement.
They filed a lawsuit in St. Louis circuit court to try to force the trustees to enforce the neighborhood rules as written. The McCloskeys dismissed the claim, but the judge would not let them refile an amended version because it "failed to allege a justiciable controversy."
The McCloskeys appealed all the way to the state Supreme Court to try to make the judge allow them to refile their case, but the effort failed.
One of the rules prohibited unmarried people from living together. Several neighbors said it was because the McCloskeys didn't want gay couples living on the block. The trustees voted to impeach Patricia McCloskey as a trustee in 1992 when she fought an effort to change the trust indenture, accusing her of being anti-gay.
Mark McCloskey clarified in a deposition much later that the trust agreement barred unmarried people living together, regardless of their sexuality.
"Certain people on Portland Place, for political reasons, wanted to make it a gay issue," he said.
The former Portland Place trustee who was ordered off the trustee property said he had nothing good to say about the couple. "They've always been part of the problem, never part of the solution," Robert Dolgin said.
Albert Watkins, a lawyer representing the couple, questioned the relevance of any story delving into the McCloskeys' litigation history and asked the newspaper to submit written questions. The Post-Dispatch sent questions; Watkins didn't answer them. Watkins invited a reporter to come to his office to view a document in which McCloskey discussed his litigation history but said a reporter could not have a copy nor take notes from it. Watkins later declined to allow a reporter to interview his clients under the newspaper's condition that the interview be recorded.
Ownership and entitlement
By filing so many lawsuits, the McCloskeys opened a large window onto their values and ambitions. Their lawsuits center on obtaining land, keeping people off of it, and forcing people to follow rules or make good on agreements. Sometimes the suits are about collecting damages for harm done to them.
Mark McCloskey's first taste of ownership may have been on his 20th birthday, in 1976. A card from his parents, Bruce and Lois "Carol" McCloskey, would much later become an exhibit in a lawsuit against his father and his father's trust.
On his 20th birthday, in 1976, Mark McCloskey received this birthday card from his parents. The card said: "You are now the sole & only owner of 5 acres of the Phelps County Farm. Papers to follow. This is on the river — Luck! Happy Birthday! Mom + Dad." It would later become an exhibit in a lawsuit over property.
The card said: "You are now the sole & only owner of 5 acres of the Phelps County Farm. Papers to follow. This is on the river — Luck! Happy Birthday! Mom + Dad."
He also got a small box of earth from the family's 240-acre property to make it official.
His parents divorced in 1985. Bruce McCloskey never filed proper documents with Phelps County to transfer the title. When Mark McCloskey inquired with the Phelps County assessor in 1997, he got a letter indicating that what his father had filed was "not a legal conveyance of land."
Mark McCloskey would not let real estate slip through his fingers again.
In a May 2019 deposition in his ongoing lawsuit against Portland Place trustees, he explained how he and his wife came to own their home: through a lawsuit.
The couple met when they were at Southern Methodist University law school. After graduating in 1985, his first job was with a law firm in Dallas. They moved back to St. Louis in 1986. He got a job at Thompson Mitchell, now known as Thompson Coburn.
He testified his mother obtained his childhood home in Country Life Acres in the divorce. He and his wife acquired it from her when she couldn't afford to take care of it.
"When we first moved up to town, I drove Pattie through Portland and Westmoreland, and I said, 'You know, any time you'd like to, we can flip the country house out at Country Life Acres and buy a big townhouse here,'" he testified. "And she said, 'OK, let's do it now.'"
Mark McCloskey said his tax lawyer at the Lewis Rice law firm told him One Portland Place had just been sold. "I said, 'I don't think it's been sold. I would have heard about it.'"
The mansion had fallen into disrepair. The prior owner had heated it by using 48 kerosene heaters, according to a 2018 St. Louis Magazine feature that profiled the McCloskeys' long and expensive restoration.
McCloskey testified they bid on the house and signed a deal that would give them "right of last look" at any other contracts. He got a call indicating they could buy the house if they got the cash together by the next morning, but then found out Lewis Rice had arranged to sell it to someone else.
"I get to my office at about 4 o'clock in the morning. Pattie and I draft a lawsuit and file it when the courthouse opens, the (temporary restraining order) to prevent the sale. We set up a table at wherever Lewis and Rice was in those days and served every partner on the way in and served the president of Boatmen's Bank when he went to work the next day."
They ended up settling with the other buyer for an undisclosed amount and bought One Portland Place for $595,000, according to city property records.
The afternoon he sued Lewis Rice, he said, he got called into the managing partner's office at Thompson Mitchell. The partners were not happy he had sued Lewis Rice.
"He said, 'We're going to ask for your resignation,'" McCloskey recalled.
He filed a lawsuit against Thompson Mitchell for wrongful termination. One of the partners was Thomas Eagleton, a Democrat who had just returned to St. Louis after three terms in the U.S. Senate.
"I figured I'd sue him first," McCloskey testified. "I thought it would be fun."
But he said the courts "didn't think much" of his claim. He dismissed the suit against Thompson Mitchell in 1990. A judge dismissed the Lewis Rice suit the following year for lack of prosecution.
The couple's possession of their mansion was "a fun story," he testified. "I tell it frequently, usually with … a little more detail and more humor."
Family struggle
Mark McCloskey's relationship with his family deteriorated. He would claim years later that his father, starting in 1989, "became obsessed" with the idea that his son had become wealthy by "swindling" the assets his mother got in the divorce. He says the idea was put there by his sister, Patricia Richards, of Virginia.
In 1994, Mark McCloskey wrote a letter to his father about his "niggardly attitude" toward the 5 acres in Phelps County he had promised in the birthday card.
"The property is essentially worthless, it just struck me as bizarre that you would deny the existence of such a gift …," he wrote. "I spent several months of my life living out of a tent and building a log cabin there."
Mark McCloskey wrote a letter to his father about the five acres in Phelps County he had promised in 1976. The letter, written in 1994, became part of a subsequent court record.
His father largely wrote him out of the will in 2008, sparking a family feud that would last eight years.
In March 2013, in Phelps County, Mark McCloskey sued his father and his father's trust over the gift. The birthday card and earth, he claimed, were sufficient title because they met the legal definition of "livery of seisin," a ceremony performed in medieval England for the conveyance of land.
In 2016, a special judge ruled against him, writing that "Exhibit 1 attached to the petition is a birthday card, not a deed" and that it was too late to claim ownership of part of the farm. The archaic legal claim, the judge ruled "does not operate as a matter of law to transfer title to real property."
Mark McCloskey filed a defamation case against his father and sister in 2011, dismissed it in 2012, and refiled it in 2013. By the time of the final filing, Bruce McCloskey was living in a memory care unit in Ballwin; he died in 2014.
Mark McCloskey said his sister had spread rumors that he had held their mother hostage on Portland Place, denied her medical care, made her sleep on an iron cot soaked in urine, and plied her with alcohol until she died. He also said she claimed he was connected to organized crime, had tried to arrange for a contract killing of his sister, and had stolen 42 pounds of gold from his father.
He claimed his elderly father believed these things because he had lost his faculties, and repeated the falsehoods in public, damaging his reputation. He claimed the will was based on "insane delusions" and his sister's undue influence.
Patricia Richards declined to comment.
He made similar allegations against his father's longtime caretaker in a separate defamation suit, which he later dismissed.
Weeks after Bruce McCloskey's death, Patricia McCloskey sent a letter to the law firm handling his estate stating that any attempt to distribute the inheritance would likely be challenged in court.
Mark McCloskey dismissed the defamation case, but he sued his sister and his two brothers and their father's trust again in 2016, accusing all of them of "tortious interference" for pressing their father to cut him out of an inheritance.
The siblings settled with their father's trust paying Mark McCloskey $400,000, with all of them agreeing to drop all claims and never have contact with Mark McCloskey again.
Trouble on Portland
The lawsuit between the McCloskeys and the Portland trustees was the latest flare-up in a fight that has been going on almost since they moved in.
In 2002, the Portland Place Association sued to foreclose on the McCloskeys' house because they were refusing to pay dues. Mark McCloskey would later say in a deposition that he and his wife had refused because the trustees "weren't doing something, which was their obligation under the Trust Agreement."
The lawyer questioning him asked: Was it possible the issue was the trustees were allowing a gay couple to live there?
Mark McCloskey said he didn't know. "I know there has been an ongoing issue about the definition of single family in Missouri law, and that the (agreement) calling for exclusively single family residences wouldn't allow, technically, unmarried heterosexual people to live on Portland Place. … I know that certain people on Portland Place, for political purposes, wanted to make it a gay issue."
While taking a deposition of Portland Place trustee Daniel Ladenberger on Jan. 17, 2019, Mark McCloskey insisted it wasn't up to trustees to decide what rules to enforce. Rules can't be changed without 75% of the voters approving, he said.
"Do you recognize that part of the duty of a trustee is to protect the rights of the minority; to enforce the trust agreement even if a majority but less than 75% of the people would like to do away with those provisions … even if it's only 26% of the people who wish to have a provision enforced?"
After the McCloskeys bought their home on Portland Place, they built a 10-foot wall closing it off from Kingshighway, replacing a wall that would have allowed people to come through. In 2004, Dolgin wrote the McCloskeys a letter noting it had come to the trustees' attention that the McCloskeys had hired a contractor to do tuck pointing on the wall.
"No individual resident is authorized to do work on Portland Place property without the permission of the trustees," Dolgin wrote.
Mark McCloskey responded that he would no more ask permission to perform work on the wall than he would on his house. "Before you glibly throw around such statements in the future, produce some authority to verify it or be prepared to spend Portland Place Association money in defending a suit for slander of title. This isn't a game, and we aren't children."
Watkins, the lawyer representing the couple, is a friend of theirs and former neighbor who sued the Portland Place trustees in 2010 with a claim that he had tried to get them to take down a sick oak tree which later fell and damaged his property. Watkins lost and was ordered to pay the trustees court costs of $52,000.
A rocky road
The McCloskeys own a large property in Franklin County and have had conflicts with neighbors who access their homes by a gravel road cutting across the McCloskeys' acreage.
In 2013, Mark McCloskey saw a gravel truck on the road preparing to "grade and ditch" the road, and the couple, without notice to their neighbors, sought and obtained a temporary restraining order against them in Franklin County circuit court.
One of the defendants produced records of an easement indicating they could use the road. A legal battle dragged on for nearly two years, with one of the neighbors racking up $70,000 in legal bills and $9,000 in surveying costs.
That neighbor asked for sanctions against the McCloskeys for "committing a fraud" with their claim. The case settled with all parties paying their own costs.
In 2019, the McCloskeys sued another neighbor with a squatter's rights claim to 0.41 acres that were fenced off incorrectly and had been maintained by McCloskey and previous owners even though they did not have a legal title to it.
"The Parcel has been continuously possessed by the Plaintiffs and their predecessors in title for a period far in excess of 10 years and such possession has been, in fact, hostile, actual, open and notorious, exclusive, and continuous," the McCloskeys claimed. The suit is pending.
The McCloskeys also evicted two tenants from a modular home on their property in a period of just over two years. The first, a single woman with three children and her boyfriend, had lived there six months in January 2018 when the McCloskeys filed for eviction, claiming one rent check had bounced. The woman moved out and did not appear in court, and the McCloskeys got a $6,247 default judgment against the couple, which included attorneys fees and rent for the remaining months of the lease.
In an interview with the Post-Dispatch, the tenant denied she had missed a rent payment. She said she had showed up in court for the eviction hearing and that Mark McCloskey told her she had no chance of winning, so she left. She said she had no idea she owed them that much.
The second tenant signed a lease for $950 per month last November, and failed to pay rent in April and May. The McCloskeys filed an eviction suit on May 12 and Mark McCloskey filed an affidavit stating that he was not barred by federal law from evicting someone during the COVID-19 pandemic because the unit was not part of a federal housing rental program.
The tenant did not appear in court. A judge gave her until July 1 to clear out, and the McCloskeys got an $8,299 judgment against her for attorneys fees and the remainder of the lease.
A ruined life
While that tenant was clearing out, the McCloskeys had their encounter with protesters. "My life has been ruined," Mark McCloskey told CNN host Chris Cuomo two days later, as he defended his actions.
On June 28, about 200 protesters filled the Maryland-Kingshighway intersection, chanting, "This is what community looks like … this is what democracy looks like."
The group moved south to Lindell Boulevard and filled the intersection for several more minutes. "If we don't get it, shut it down!"
The protest moved north on Kingshighway again. At Portland Place, protester Derk Brown's live feed shows he is one of the first protesters to pass through the iron gate held open by protester Tory Russell.
Although the McCloskeys have displayed photos of a crumpled gate as evidence the protesters broke it down, the feed shows the gate is intact. It was not clear when it was damaged.
The first few protesters who enter the private neighborhood swerve away from the McCloskey house to walk in the street.
Immediately, Brown's feed captures Mark McCloskey under a massive portico on the east side of his mansion. "Hey!" he can be heard shouting. "Private neighborhood! Get the hell out of my neighborhood!"
None of the protesters are on his property — even the disputed triangle.
Brown zooms in on McCloskey, who is wearing a pink Brooks Brothers polo shirt, and narrates: "Y'all see? On my live feed … he got his rifle."
Mark McCloskey shouts, "Get out! Get out! Get out! Private property!"
A chant builds: "Whose streets? Our streets!"
Moments later, Patricia McCloskey can be seen in her front yard in her bare feet with a silver handgun, waving it at the protesters.
"We're gonna move, calm down!" someone yells.
"Put that gun away," someone else yells.
She comes closer to Brown, pointing the gun left and right. "Go!" she yells. "Go!"
One of the protesters yells, "We got kids in here! We got children!"
A chant builds: "Eat the rich!" She keeps pointing the gun.
"Why are you threatening?" someone asks.
"You need to calm down!" someone else says.
"Put your goddamn gun down!" someone yells.
"You're a coward, bitch!" a woman yells.
"Nobody wants to hurt you," another woman yells.
About 13 minutes go by with the McCloskeys on their front lawn in bare feet and protesters mocking them or asking them why they are threatening them with weapons.
The protest moves on to its destination: Mayor Lyda Krewson's house.
Patricia McCloskey would later tell Fox News host Sean Hannity that protesters said "they were going to kill us … going to burn down the house, that they were going to be living in our house after I was dead. They pointed to different rooms and said that's gonna be my bedroom, that's gonna to be the living room and I'm gonna be taking a shower in that room …."
Mark McCloskey said the flyer for the "riot" suggested that in addition to marching to Krewson's house, marchers were planning "a special surprise — something extra."
"That something extra was us," Mark McCloskey said.
Joel Currier of the Post-Dispatch contributed to this report, which was originally published on July 12, 2020.
Jeremy Kohler is an investigative reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
Follow Jeremy Kohler
Parson says the McCloskeys 'had every right' to wave guns and shout at protesters
Parson said he spoke with President Donald Trump about the situation.
St. Lou Fringe invites audience members to share applause virtually
It's the latest theatrical event to venture online.
Widow of murdered retired St. Louis police captain to speak at Republican National Convention
Ann Dorn's husband, David Dorn, was shot and killed June 2 outside a St. Louis pawn shop.
The McCloskeys defend show of weapons in Republican National Convention speech
Mark and Patricia McCloskey, lawyers in their 60s, both speak in the recorded message Monday night
McCloskeys sue UPI, photographer over iconic image confronting protesters
The couple said the UPI and Greenblatt's photo has contributed to their 'significant national recognition and infamy.'
'I'd do it all again,' says armed lawyer who confronted St. Louis protesters
'I believe … the only thing that kept those mobsters, that crowd, away from us is that we were standing there with guns,' Mark McCloskey said.
St. Louis couple who pointed guns at protesters saw threat by 'bad actors,' lawyer says; protester says he feared 'bloodbath'
The encounter played out on Portland Place, a private, gated street in the Central West End as protesters marched to Mayor Lyda Krewson's home.
Tony Messenger
Messenger: This wasn't the first time the McCloskeys pulled a gun to protect property, lawsuit says
In 2017, the McCloskeys sued to defend a sliver of property that they claim as their own and Portland Place trustees say belongs to the neighborhood.
Joe's St. Louis
Portland Place, where couple pointed guns at protesters, has long been home to wealthy St. Louisans
City attorney says private streets — which became popular in St. Louis in the 1800s — are not open to vehicular or pedestrian traffic.
Couple points guns at protesters marching to St. Louis mayor's home to demand resignation
A man and a woman stood outside a home on the private Portland Place in the Central West End, yelling and pointing guns at protesters as they walked by.
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Don't panic. You won't lose muscle if you take a week off from training.
After a three-week break, you might lose 5-10% of your strength mostly due to lost neural adaptations.
After three weeks, it's possible to lose muscle mass, but there are ways to mitigate the loss.
You don't gain strength by deloading. You reveal the strength you gained during your hard training cycle. Fatigue masks fitness. Deloads reveal it.
People notice overtraining when they start to lose strength and body weight, so their normal reaction is to train more, making things worse.
A planned deload to help reach peak performance or to recover from overtraining.
A short planned break (vacation or trip).
An unplanned layoff (sickness or injury).
Deloading and hiatuses from training are part of everybody's life. While it's my job to help people get the most out of their training, it's also part of my job to help them retain most of their gains when they're forced out of the gym.
It's a common approach to include a deloading period prior to a competition or "gym test." The theory is that you impose large stress on your body with 2-3 weeks of hard training, then you include 4-10 days of reduced training or active rest. This is called a taper.
Testosterone peaks (it's normal for it to get low during high-stress training).
The nervous system gets back to optimal function (as evidenced by a marked increase in grip strength tests 3-4 days into the taper).
Super-compensation of glycogen stores occur and the body stores more water inside muscles and less subcutaneously (possibly indicative of lower cortisol).
You're left with a body that's primed to function at its best. You don't gain extra strength by tapering/deloading for a peak.
You're simply revealing the strength you gained during your hard training cycle. Fatigue masks fitness.
When you accumulate a certain degree of systemic fatigue, you might only be able to function at 90 or even 80% of what you're capable of. The thing is, once you're past the beginner stage, you must train at a level that will cause some accumulated fatigue to stimulate further gains in strength and size, and the harder you train to make gains, the more fatigue you build up.
So, during a hard cycle you might be able to gradually add some weight to the bar (making you believe that you aren't plagued by fatigue), but the results you see in the gym and in your body are inferior to the real gains you're making, because fatigue masks your true level of fitness.
So, why not avoid accumulated fatigue altogether?
If you're training hard enough to get optimal gains it will lead to a certain level of accumulated fatigue. If you aren't building up a certain level of fatigue, then you aren't imposing a stimulus strong enough to force the body to adapt.
Important: Don't stop lifting during a taper. Sure, not training at all will help you recover faster, but it would be at the expense of timing and neural activation.
When I competed in Olympic lifting, I performed the most poorly when my coach had me do a taper where I wouldn't train at all 4-5 days prior to the competition. I lacked timing and felt out of the groove and not fully focused.
Don't spend more than one day without touching a bar when trying to maximize performance, even if it's only light training to stay in the groove.
Drop all assistance work, only doing the 3 main lifts.
Drop training frequency to 3 times during the week: Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and test on Saturday.
Perform the 3 lifts at each session, using submaximal weights.
Increase caloric intake by about 25%.
Most people make the mistake of decreasing calories when they taper. They think that since they're training less, they need less fuel. They're also afraid of gaining some fat if they eat more while training less.
you might have that could mask your fitness. By eating less you risk slowing down your recovery.
A certain amount of accumulated fatigue is normal when training hard toward a goal, but we don't want this to turn into an overtraining situation. When it happens you need to get out of that state as soon as possible.
Most people only notice "overtraining" when they start to lose strength and body weight (they also feel smaller and softer due to an increase in cortisol), so their normal reaction is to train more to kick-start the gains. But that will only make things worse.
Sometimes you need to get some real rest and get the body ready to train hard again, and that's often the hardest thing to do.Depending on the amount of accumulated fatigue, you might need 1-3 weeks of reduced training or even full rest to get back to normal.
You'll need to normalize hormone levels (testosterone to cortisol ratio mostly), reduce inflammation, and restore glycogen. When I face an athlete in that situation, I use a very aggressive approach because most of them don't have the luxury of taking a lot of time off.
Real life example: I work with a lot of CrossFitters. Last year one of them got into a severe overtraining state right as the Open started.
For those who don't know, the Open is where you qualify for the Regional championships and eventually the CrossFit Games. It's a series of 5 WODs, one per week for 5 weeks. If you don't finish in the top 48 in your region, you can't qualify for Regionals.
This individual had a great season at first, winning a few big competitions and getting in some pretty badass lifts, but right at the key moment of the season, she failed to finish her normal workout and sometimes started crying during subsequent sessions.
She started the Open dismally, not placing anywhere close to a qualifying spot. I told her to stop training altogether and only do the one competition WOD for the week.
She started to feel much better. During the 2 weeks prior to the Regionals, she got back into training, but we used micro-sessions: 15-20 minute workouts. We also continued with the supplementation protocol. Five days prior to the Regionals, she beat her personal best on the clean (235 pounds) and ended up placing 4th.
Application: When you've reached a true state of overtraining, it might take up to 4-5 weeks to get back into full form. In most cases, you'll be good to go in 2 weeks.
Still, this is unsettling for most people since they're afraid of slipping backward if they drastically reduce their training. Not so! In fact, they might slip backward if they keep training!
Stop hard training for one week. This will allow you to restore an optimal hormonal milieu, get rid of the chronic inflammation, replenish neurotransmitter levels, and restore glycogen stores. Sure, it might make the nervous system more sluggish, but in your case, the priority is to get your body back to normal fast, not to peak.
Protein pulsing has an anabolic effect, and it's not simply due to having more protein available. Rapidly going from low to very high blood amino acid levels stimulates protein synthesis, so during a period of detraining, you can maximize your chances of maintaining your muscle mass by using protein pulses. In cases of severe chronic fatigue, have 5 or 6 pulses during the day, but most importantly one first thing in the morning, one right before bed (ideally with the last solid meal being about 2 hours prior), and another pulse in the middle of the night if you wake up to pee. The faster you are when you take the pulse in, the more pronounced the effect.
Start training again after a week of rest. Use short sessions, 20 minutes or so. Try to do one every day. The reps should be low and the weight submaximal (70-85%). Do a minimal volume of work. I like to do only one exercise per day for 5 sets of 3-5 reps. Create minimal fatigue and activate the nervous system. Get back in the groove.
After the week of rest and a week of low volume training, most people will be good to go and can resume regular training. Some, however, might need one more week of reduced training. If you even have to ask yourself, "Do I need one more week of reduced training?" the answer is always yes. Better to err on the side of caution.
While I've worked with a lot of pro and high-level amateur athletes and bodybuilders in my career, I also work with average Joes.
Unless you're tied to a hospital bed, you won't lose any muscle mass if you take a week off from training. You'll feel smaller and more flat. But it's not because you're losing muscle mass. It's because your muscle tone is decreasing slightly due to the nervous system is a bit less "turned on." You also get rid of chronic inflammation in the tendons and muscles, both of which make the muscles look swollen, larger, and tighter. If the muscles feel "looser" and less swollen, it's easy to make the mistake of believing that they're smaller, but they aren't.
You might lose a small amount of muscle mass if you're away from training for two weeks, but it's not enough to make a big difference. Any lost muscle is quickly regained when you get back to training. My client who went away for 3 weeks looked a little bit "deflated" when he came back, but after one full week of training, he looked like he did before the trip.
When it comes to strength, losses can be a bit more rapid, but it's simply because you lose some neural efficiency. If you take two weeks off, you might lose a significant amount of neural efficiency so your strength might decrease a bit (5% or so, 10% for some). Don't panic about that because it'll come back to its previous levels within 2 weeks of resuming training.
When I know a client will have to miss training for 1-3 weeks, we'll do a training blitz right before the vacation. For 1-3 weeks (normally I do the blitz for the same length of time as the vacation), I amp up the training stress significantly. This means increasing the overall training volume by at least 50%. This can either be done by increasing the number of sets per exercise or the number of training sessions per week. Intensity (amount of weight lifted) remains about the same despite the increase in volume. The goal is to create a state of accumulated fatigue so that during the vacation the body recovers from the previous stress instead of detraining and regressing.
Application: If you have a planned lay-off from training coming up, increase the training volume by about 50% while maintaining training intensity. This will create a state of accumulated fatigue and during the off period the body will spend more time recovering and less time detraining. I like a 1:1 ratio of stress week to off weeks.
This is an individual thing. The longer it took you to attain your current level, the longer your gains will stay with you.
If you've been hitting the weights hard for 10 plus years, and have built a very stable foundation of strength and size, it will stay with you a lot longer than if you built your physique over one year. Gains made quickly are lost quickly.
Example: A former Canadian champion in Olympic lifting trained hard for about 15-20 years non-stop. At one point he was forced to take some time off from training (a career in the military and a very large family).
He stopped training for 5 years or so. When he got back into it, it only took him 2 or 3 months until his strength was back up to 90% of previous levels.
On the other end of the spectrum, one of my clients trained hard for a year and then stopped training for 8 months.
He lost 40% of his strength and about 10 pounds of muscle during that 8 months, which is very fast, and it took him 7 months to reach and exceed his previous level.
Young lifters who go on a cycle of steroids gain 20 pounds in a few months and lose everything they gained after they stop training for just a month. The gains came so fast that they hadn't stabilized.
Another factor relates to the type of training you do. The more "neural" your training is, the faster you lose strength. For example, if you're training almost exclusively with sets of 1-3 reps, you'll lose strength more rapidly than someone who trains mostly with higher reps.
The strength gains achieved through lower reps are largely due to neural factors, which are lost quickly, while gains achieved through higher reps are more stable. How much strength and size is lost will also depend on what you do during your forced layoff.
If you're physically active and keep doing the right things in the kitchen, then you'll preserve more strength and size than if you become completely sedentary and eat crap.
As a rule of thumb, you won't lose any strength or size from a one-week layoff. You might feel more flat after 4-5 days, but that has nothing to do with muscle loss – just a decrease in muscular inflammation, a decrease in myogenic tone, and maybe a lower level of intramuscular glycogen.
After a layoff of 2-3 weeks, you might lose 5-10% of your strength, but you won't be losing much muscle mass, and the loss of strength will be mostly due to lost neural adaptations. Once you go past 3 weeks, it's possible to lose muscle mass, but the rate at which you lose it is highly variable.
Most serious lifters will definitely start to lose some muscle mass between the third and sixth week of detraining.
There will be a significant loss in muscle mass in most individuals after 12 weeks. Although it's not scientific, most of my hockey players lose roughly 10 pounds of muscle mass during a season.
Keep in mind that we're talking about a period of approximately 7 months, but they're all generally doing some maintenance work once a week and they're keeping active by playing hockey.
That's roughly equivalent to a lifter not training at all for 3 months, so losses of 6-10 pounds of muscle during a 3-month layoff is what you can expect if you don't try to use the proper strategy to hold on to muscle.
If your break lasts 1-3 weeks and you remain somewhat active, you shouldn't lose much muscle, if any. You might feel more flat, smaller, and softer, but that won't be due to a decrease in muscle mass.
If you're forced to stop training for 3-6 weeks you'll start to lose some muscle, but how much can depend on what you do to prevent excessive losses.
Past the 6 week mark and you're bound to lose a significant amount of gains regardless of what you do, but the good news is that it's easier to regain lost muscle than it is to build it in the first place.
How quickly will I gain it back?
This is highly variable, but it will take you less time to regain lost muscle than it took you to build it in the first place.
While there's no set rule as to how fast we regain lost muscle, think in terms of a 1 to 1-time frame: It'll require about the same time to rebuild the lost muscle as the duration of the detraining period.
If you were away from training for 6 weeks, you should go back to your previous level of development and performance within 6 weeks of resuming hard training.
What can I do to cut my losses?
A big mistake: when people have to stop training, they also stop doing all the other things they were doing to maximize their gains while training.
They stop eating a muscle-friendly diet and often even start to eat more and more crap and less nutritious food; they go to bed later, get less sleep; become less physically active; and stop using supplements.
Their logic is that all those healthful things they do outside the gym are to enhance their training, but if they're not training, what's the point? They'll start to do things right when they get back in the gym, right?
But if you behave this way you'll lose muscle even faster. And you'll probably gain some fat in the process, making it more difficult to get back into shape.
The things that help you gain more muscle and get leaner while you train are the same things that will help stave off muscle loss and fat gain when you're forced away from training.
Keep doing all the good things you were doing to speed up your gains.
If possible, try to be even more diligent with the things you can still do to improve your body – follow a more solid nutrition plan, get plenty of rest, do more physical activity, and keep using some supplements that will help you retain your muscle mass.
Take any opportunity to train that you can, even if it's only once a week or even once every two weeks. Heck, even 10 minutes is better than doing nothing. If you can't train due to lack of time, try to fit in one single session every now and then. Every little bit counts to preserve muscle mass. If you're injured, try to find what movements you can do. Some people think that if they can't train as hard as they want, then it's a waste. Nothing is a waste! Sure, you might not make any gains, but every bit of preserved muscle is worth the effort.
Keep fat gain at bay. If you aren't training, chances are that you won't need as many calories as you normally do. Keep a stable protein intake (if you decrease it, you risk losing some muscle) and reduce carbs and/or fat to maintain your degree of leanness or even get a little bit leaner. Getting a better body is about being muscular and lean. If you can't get more muscular because you can't train, you might as well work on the other part of the equation!
Stay active. Look for things to do like walking, sprints, jumps, or carrying stuff at home. If you're in the mindset of trying to do as many things with your body as possible, you'll start to see many opportunities all around you without having to go out of your way to do them.
Stay intellectually involved in your training – read articles and books about training. Take the off time to assess yourself and design a good training plan for your return. These things will help you stay motivated. And during a break, you can take a step back and have a more objective view of yourself, your body, and what you need to reach your training goals.


A controversial Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense battery has arrived in Korea from the U.S. sooner than expected in a bid to preempt a change of heart by the next government here.
The arrival of the battery and handover of the necessary land in southern Korea practically ensures the completion of the deployment before the next election, even if President Park Geun-hye is removed from office next week.
The Defense Ministry on Tuesday said work to deploy the THAAD battery "has begun" and Korea and the U.S. will finish installing it "at the earliest possible date."
So far two mobile missile launchers with eight interceptors each have been transported by C-17 transport plane from Fort Bliss, Texas to Osan Air Base in Pyeongtaek. They are now at a U.S. military base.
Normally a THAAD consists of six launchers and at least 48 interceptor missiles, a powerful AN/TPY-2 radar that is the main reason China is against the deployment here, and control and communications units plus a generator operated by around 200 personnel.
The U.S. military said the THAAD deployment is not related to massive joint military exercises currently underway. The battery was expected between June and July, but North Korea's launch of a new ballistic missile is believed to have played a major role in speeding up the deployment.
The new missile, dubbed Pukguksong-2, is powered by a solid-fuel engine, which vastly shortens launch preparation time compared to liquid-fuel-powered missiles that must be refueled shortly before launch and take longer to set up.
One U.S. military source said, "The early deployment of the THAAD battery was decided several weeks ago, but both sides kept the schedule a secret."
One South Korean military source said, "We looked into the prospect of speeding up the deployment considering internal and external circumstances, including the rapid advancement of North Korea's nuclear weapons and missile technology." But the military source downplayed suspicions that the two allies want to make the deployment an established fact before the next presidential election, saying the decision was "unrelated to politics."
The Constitutional Court is presently deliberating the impeachment of President Park Geun-hye and is expected to arrive at a final ruling in the next few days. If the court upholds her impeachment, Korea must hold presidential elections within two months.
One intelligence source said, "The U.S. believes that the THAAD battery is essential to dealing with the North Korean missile threat and it would now be extremely difficult for the next president to scrap the deployment." And a former Defense Ministry official said, "The THAAD deployment plan could be changed if an opposition candidate becomes president. Korea and the U.S. probably wanted to avoid making the THAAD deployment a political hot potato in the upcoming elections."
The plan has already drawn intense opposition from China amid signs that Beijing is retaliating with economic chicanery. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told reporters Tuesday, "All the consequences entailed from that will be borne by the U.S." and Korea.
This handout photo from the U.S. Forces Korea on Tuesday shows the first elements of the U.S.-built Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense arriving at Osan Air Base in Pyeongtaek, south of Seoul on Monday.


text:
Posts Tagged Adam Guettel
The Undercover Soundtrack – Stephen Weinstock
Posted by Roz Morris @Roz_Morris in Undercover Soundtrack on October 7, 2015
The Undercover Soundtrack is a series where I host a writer who uses music as part of their creative environment – perhaps to connect with a character, populate a mysterious place, or hold a moment still to explore its depths. This week my guest is theatre composer and fantasy novelist Stephen Weinstock @s_weinstock
Soundtrack by Fela Kuti, Beach Boys, Alice Coltrane, Benny Goodman, Brian Eno, the Doors, Jack Bruce, George Harrison, Beethoven, David Lang, Adam Guettel
Having marveled each week at how writers use music to flesh out a character or bring emotional life to their work, I feel like a fraud. These authors put on a particular piece to evoke what they write, but that feels like a magical act of synesthesia to me. So why does this poor fraud need music to write? In 2003, Apple introduced iTunes and the computer playlist, and I began my series, 1001, The Reincarnation Chronicles. For each of its 1001 chapters a character recounts a past life story, creating a karmic puzzle for the ten linked souls, the qaraq. The playlist became a writing tool to give me courage for this daunting task.
For Book One of the series, The Qaraq, I had to hold a lot in my head as I wrote: introducing ten characters in their present lives in suburban New Jersey, and fitting together the first puzzle pieces of their history. That they all lived as different body parts of a single prehistoric dragonfly is proof enough of the Qaraq's reincarnations, but when reveal this epiphany?
I need concentration to manage this material. To minimize distracting shifts within my eclectic playlists, I often select long cuts, like Fela Kuti's half-hour jam Look and Laugh.
My favorite listening process is a 'contest,' where I intersperse a playlist with ten recent downloads, then narrow them down to a 'winner.' A current winner: The Beach Boys' gorgeous, new That's Why God Made the Radio.
But assessing winners while writing requires concentration on the music. I realized one function of my listening is procrastination, re-organizing the next half-hour of songs, or mixing in every Andante from Mozart's first fifteen symphonies. Perhaps I need distraction from the heady multiple structures. On the other hand, often I don't notice the music and get on a roll. Deeply meditative pieces help this flow, like Alice Coltrane's incomparable Journey in Satchidananda.
The energy of a composition provides another clue to why I listen while creating 1001, The Reincarnation Chronicles. Sometimes I need a perky track for stimulation, like One O'Clock Jump from the famous Benny Goodman Carnegie Hall Concert.
By contrast, in the morning on the train, or after work, I need peace, like the gentle repetition of Brian Eno's ambient Music for Airports. For my latest book, The Qaraq and the Maya Factor, I contemplated the effect of Maya, the Hindu concept of worldly illusion. Blocked by the trivial details of everyday life, the Qaraq loses its power of memory, the higher awareness of reincarnation. I did not seek music to evoke a meditative mood, but in developing the theme of how Maya hinders and helps, I heard a lot of ragas and minimalist music. An unconscious influence?
So I examined if music had an unconscious effect on my work. The Qaraq's past life tales are full of wild imagination and experimental writing styles. My brain conjures up atomic particles having a love spat, an alien performing arts school where dancers train their nerves rather than their muscles, or an Ice Age tribe that copes by re-configuring the calendar to include three seasons, excluding winter.
I hope music triggers my imagination, and I make quirky selections for my playlists: a rarely heard track from a familiar artist, like Indian Summer by The Doors; a song off the beaten path, like Jack Bruce's He the Richmond, from his masterful Songs for a Tailor; or hard-to-find gems, like George Harrison's first film soundtrack, Wonderwall, the Indian collaboration he did during The Beatles.
But if an unconscious process, I may never know if music is the spark.
It pains me to think I cannot access music's emotional depths to deepen my writing. The writing process is painful enough. When I stare into space wondering how the next word will appear, it's comforting to have music in my ears, like a virtuosic arpeggio from Glenn Gould's brilliant reading of Beethoven's Piano Concerto #1 making me think, You can do this!
Despite its fanciful whimsy, The Qaraq and the Maya Factor has emotional moments, which were difficult to write. The Egyptian stories start humorously, with a pyramid tomb salesman, but lead to a terrifying vision of immortality, the dread of living endlessly with no relief from conflict. Can I access the pain of this emotion through music? I sobbed inconsolably when I heard David Lang's ethereal The Little Match Girl Passion last winter, after seeing homeless people freezing on the sidewalks of New York City.
The beauty of it is a balm while writing, but it can't make me write better.
A final test
For me, music and text exist on separate levels. The final chapter of The Qaraq and the Maya Factor is like a novella, where all the characters' present-day dénouements thread through an epic past life tale. The first European translator of The Thousand and One Nights faces a moral crisis whether to fabricate tales to complete all 1001 sections of the collection. A mysterious ally lures him to a secluded chateau, full of cats costumed as fairy tale characters, and guides him to an emotional epiphany.
Playing a tune that always give me shivers, like Come to Jesus, by Richard Rodgers's grandson, Adam Guettel, might inspire the struggle, the mystery, or the passion of this scene. But I only experience the duet on its own terms; it doesn't bring the words alive. Am I a lost cause?
Looking back on this chapter, I am pleased with it: the way the Qaraq's issues reflect the tale (complexity); the misty locale of the magical chateau (energy); the translator's fantastical epic discovering the Nights (imagination). I feel moved by the impassioned encounter between the translator and his ally. Maybe music did have some psychic influence on the writing when all is said and done.
Stephen Weinstock is the author of 1001: The Reincarnation Chronicles. You can find more information on the series and the upcoming ebook giveaway here . Find Stephen on Facebook. 1001 will be an 11-book series, contain 1001 chapters and past lives, and take the rest of Stephen's life to complete. Book 2 is here. Musically speaking, Stephen worked for years as a composer in the theatre. He won his 15 minutes of fame for the experimental sound-theatre work Mt. Quad at San Francisco's Magic Theater, developed and team taught the first curriculum for opera/musical theatre writing at New York University, and created music for dancers at the Martha Graham School of Dance, Juilliard, and LaGuardia Arts HS (the 'Fame' School), where he continues to bring young dancers to physical, emotional, and spiritual ecstasy every day. Find him on Twitter as @S_Weinstock.
1001 nights, 1001: The Reincarnation Chronicles, Adam Guettel, Alice Coltrane, Beach Boys, Beethoven, Benny Goodman, Brian Eno, David Lang, fantasy, fantasy series, Fela Kuti, George Harrison, Hindu, Jack Bruce, Martha Graham School of Dance, Maya, reincarnation, San Francisco, Stephen Weinstock, The Doors, The Qaraq and the Maya Factor, undercover soundtrack, writing with music


text:
import chalk from 'chalk'
import indent from 'indent-string'

import {exec} from './async/child-process'
import {ITest, ITestGroup, TestRepo} from './test-repo'

interface ITestResult {
    test: ITest
    stdout: string
    stderr: string
    success: boolean
}

interface ITestGroupResult {
    testGroup: ITestGroup
    testResults: ITestResult[]
}

export class BitScriptRunner {
    constructor(readonly testRepo: TestRepo) {}

    async run() {
        const groupResults = await this.testGroups()
        this.summary(groupResults)
    }

    async testGroups(): Promise<ITestGroupResult[]> {
        const groupResults: ITestGroupResult[] = []

        for (const group of this.testRepo.groups) {
            const testResults: ITestResult[] = []

            for (const test of group.tests) {
                let stdout = ''
                let stderr = ''
                let success = false

                try {
                    const res = await exec(test.file)
                    console.log(`${chalk.green('✔')} ${group.name}/${test.name}`)
                    stdout = res.stdout
                    stderr = res.stderr
                    success = true
                } catch (e) {
                    console.log(`${chalk.red('❌')} ${test.name} ${test.file}`)
                    stdout = e.stdout
                    stderr = e.stderr
                } finally {
                    if (stdout != '')
                        console.log(indent(`stdout:\n${indent(stdout, 4)}`, 4))
                    if (stderr != '')
                        console.log(indent(`stderr:\n${indent(chalk.red(stderr), 4)}`, 4))
                }

                testResults.push({
                    stderr,
                    stdout,
                    success,
                    test,
                })
            }
            groupResults.push({
                testGroup: group,
                testResults,
            })
        }
        return groupResults
    }

    summary(resultGroups: ITestGroupResult[]) {
        let total = 0
        let passed = 0
        let failed = 0

        const testResults = resultGroups.reduce( (tests: ITestResult[], group) => tests.concat(group.testResults), [])

        testResults.forEach( result => {
            if (result.success)
                passed++
            else
                failed++
            total++
        })

        const metrics: string[] = []

        if (failed != 0)
            metrics.push(chalk.red(`${failed} failed`))
        if (passed != 0)
            metrics.push(chalk.green(`${passed} passed`))
        metrics.push(`${total} total`)

        let statusEmoji = ''

        if (failed == 0)
            statusEmoji = chalk.green('💯')
        else
            statusEmoji = chalk.red('⛔')

        console.log(`${statusEmoji} Tests: ${metrics.join(', ')}`)

        if (failed != 0)
            process.exitCode = 1
    }
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


My 1st cinema setup...next on the list a floating wall!!
Discussion in 'Members DIY Home Cinema Showcases' started by angelgrant, Jan 21, 2008.
As you can see it's my first setup but i'm proud of it....hey things can only get better and better they will....next on the little project list is a floating wall just like Grooves livingroom then i can hang it on the wall where it belongs!!
cheers mate, on another note i just recieved my free 5 HD's through the post last night so felt like christmas all over again...only had a chance to hear fast and furious tokyo drift...gotta say awsome sound in dolby digital plus .
looking forward to starting the floating wall build, but before i start the build i;m thinking of buying a PS3 purely for the bluray capabilities!! feel like i'm missing out on some awsome deals on this forums...blue rays going for 7 to 10 pound grrrr!


Thank You Lord for this Thanksgiving Day.
I have a few words I have to say. Thank You for breath to live, for the Holy Spirit to give, For eyes to see, for the strength to be free, For ears to hear, for words that appear, For a mouth to speak, and knowledge to seek. For my hands to act, for my feet on track. For my heart to love, for gifts given from above, For my mind to do Your Will, for my soul to be still. For my body to live, for actions to give, For all my remaining days, to sing Your praise.
For the birds and the bees, for being on my knees, For colourful butterflies, for the joys and the sighs, For trees dressed in green, for a world to be seen, For mountains so high, for the clear blue sky For oceans so deep, for on beaches to sleep. For Your Animal Kingdom, My thanks from within.
For a house and a bed, warmth, light and bread. For music and sound My thanks are profund. For vision and sight, And the glorious night For weather so pleasant, For angels – heaven-sent For the sun that shines, for the jewels that are mine. For family and friends, for love that never ends For life everlasting, in Your Love I am basking For the language of prayer, for always being There. For the miracle of creation, For free gift of salvation. Thank You for You Lord, Your love is my reward.


text:
(-) Staff (22)
Asia Center (4)
Entertainment and Sports (1)
Housing Finance (1)
Innovative Financing (3)
International Finance and Macroeconomics (4)
Policy and Regulation (5)
Regional Competitiveness (3)
(-) Asia (14)
(-) Medical Research (8)
Laura Deal Lacey
Executive Director, Milken Institute Asia Center
Laura Deal Lacey is the executive director of the Milken Institute Asia Center based in Singapore. She was the institute's first employee...
Carole Biau
Director, Global Market Development
Carole Biau is a director for Global Market Development at the Milken Institute, where she launched and now leads the IFC-Milken Institut...
Tanisha Carino
Executive Director, FasterCures
Tanisha Carino, Ph.D., the respected senior executive with more than two decades of experience in academia, government, and the private s...
Cara Altimus
Director, Center for Strategic Philanthropy
Dr. Cara Altimus is a director at the Milken Institute Center for Strategic Philanthropy where she leads the Center's neuroscie...
Belinda Chng
Director, Policy and Programs, Asia Center
Belinda Chng is director for policy and programs at the Asia Center. Headquartered in Singapore, the Asia Center extends Milken Institute...
Amos Garcia
Senior Associate, Asia Center
Amos Garcia is a senior associate at the Milken Institute Asia Center based in Singapore. His current research focuses on aging, infrastr...
Alison Harwood
Senior Fellow, Global Market Development
Alison Harwood is committed to promoting finance as a force for positive change. She is a Senior Fellow with the Milken Institute's Globa...
Curtis S. Chin
Milken Institute Asia Fellow; Former U.S.Ambassador to the Asian Development Bank
Curtis S. Chin, a Milken Institute Asia fellow, has served as a trustee of World Education Services of New York and is a former U.S. amba...
E'Lissa Flores, PhD
Associate, Center for Strategic Philanthropy
Dr. E'Lissa Flores is an associate on the Center for Strategic Philanthropy's biomedical team where she leads several neurology related d...
Ekemini Riley
Dr. Ekemini A. U. Riley is a director of the Center for Strategic Philanthropy where she provides individual philanthropists and fou...
Hilary McConnaughey
Senior Associate, Center for Strategic Philanthropy
Hilary McConnaughey, a Senior Associate, has spent nearly a decade of her career in philanthropy, advising foundations, corporations, and...
Daniel Pham, Ph.D.
Associate Director, Center for Strategic Philanthropy
Dr. Daniel Pham is an associate director at the Milken Institute Center for Strategic Philanthropy. He utilizes his expertise in scientif...
Glorimar Barrios
Glorimar is an Associate at the Center for Strategic Philanthropy where she supports the Center's design thinking and workforce developme...
Kotaro Tamura
Asia Fellow; Chairman, Japan Intelligence Initiative; Former Senator and Parliamentary Secretary
Kotaro Tamura is an Asia fellow at the Milken Institute, chairman of the Japan Intelligence Initiative and a former senator and parliamen...
Cesar Purisima
Asia Fellow, Milken Institute; Founding Partner, IKHLAS Capital; Former Secretary of Finance, Republic of the Philippines
Cesar Purisima is an Asia Fellow of Milken Institute. He is a founding partner at IKHLAS Capital. He currently serves on the boards of th...
Dino Patti Djalal
Asia Fellow; Founder, Foreign Policy Community of Indonesia
Dino Patti Djalal is founder of the Foreign Policy Community of Indonesia, a nonpartisan, nonprofit forum launched in 2014, and an Asia F...
Ian Tann
Associate Director, Business and Program Development, Asia Center
Ian Tann is an associate director in the Business and Program Development team in Asia. He is working with the director of business ...
Reuben Abraham
Asia Fellow; CEO and Senior Fellow, IDFC Institute
Reuben Abraham is CEO and Senior Fellow at IDFC Institute, which has a mandate to investigate issues of economic development and growth, ...
Ann-Marie Eu
Associate Director, Communications, Asia Center
Ann-Marie Eu is the Associate Director of Communications for the Milken Institute Asia Center in Singapore. She is responsible for raisin...
Perry Wong
Managing Director, Research
Perry Wong is managing director of research at the Milken Institute. Wong is an expert on regional economics, development and econometric...


I encourage everyone to make a list like the one above, to share the threads that you find most helpful. To see how, click here.
As you can read, below, I had my own 18 year struggle with TMS. It played a huge role in my young adulthood and I think that no one should have to live with TMS pain. Therefore, as I was recovering, I decided to found a wiki about TMS where people could share their experiences as peers. That was 6 years ago, and I am now the president of The PPD/TMS Peer Network, the 501(c)(3) nonprofit that runs this website. I have also presented at the TMS conferences in Ann Arbor, Los Angeles, and New York, as well as the TMS Master Class in New York.
What I have learned the most from are are my own experiences (see below) and what I have read on this forum. I do put a lot of effort in behind the scenes, though. To help people understand where my time goes, I put together a todo list a couple years back.
Feel free to hit me up on Facebook or LinkedIn.
TMS first started affecting me when I was a teenager. I was a bit of computer hacker, typing away on my Mac plus, when my forearms began to hurt. I visited a doctor about it, and was told that I had tendonitis from too much typing. I was sent to occupational therapy and told that I needed to be careful about typing too much.
Unfortunately, despite my best efforts, the "tendonitis" only got worse. As time progressed, the amount that I could type or mouse before my symptoms started to flare up got smaller and smaller until, five years in, I couldn't type more than a couple sentences without some sort of flare up. Worse, the "RSI," as I now called it, began spreading into my neck and back. I became very limited in the amount of time that I could spend sitting in certain chairs, looking down at papers on a desk, or even writing.
Eventually, I graduated college. Holding any sort of job was a challenge, but I still had to support myself, so it felt like a struggle to survive. The pain levels always got worse when I did certain activities, and I had been trained to believe that if I didn't stop doing those activities the pain level would keep getting worse until it was excruciating. Experience had taught me that the worse I let it get, the more rest it would take to "heal."
My hands were so sensitive that I would develop writers cramp after writing even a very small amount of text. I tried using voice recognition software many times (I own 5 versions of Dragon NaturallySpeaking), but whenever I did, my throat started to hurt. That terrified me because I didn't want to have to drastically limit my speaking the way I felt I had to drastically limit my computer use and handwriting. If that happened, how could I hold a job?
That was the way that my life was for over 10 years. I chose my jobs based on what I felt would give me the best chance of healing. I avoided dating because I felt like I needed to focus on getting some financial security. When I did date, I refused to get married because I felt like it was all that I could do to keep myself employed without worsening my RSI, so I knew that I couldn't be a good father or husband.
I had come across Sarno's ideas years ago, mostly from Paul Marxhausen's postings on the Sorehand mailing list. However, they felt to far-fetched to me at the time, so they didn't help me. What finally convinced me was stumbling across and reading a bunch of TMS success stories last December that were written by people whose experiences were extremely similar to my own. That convinced me to push my boundaries a little. Doing so went terrifically, which helped me believe the ideas more. Eventually, the whole process snowballed, and now I don't limit my day to day activities at all and am enjoying athletic activities that I had avoided for a long time. I still have occasional flareups, but they don't bother me, even though I am doing far more than before. I just ignore the symptoms, and feel like I have my life back.
Almost immediately after recovering, I started thinking about starting a wiki, because I wanted to share what I had learned with other people who were still sick. Since it was reading other people's success stories that cured me, the first thing that I decided to work on was the Success Stories by Symptoms & Diagnoses page. I want everyone to be able to find a list of success stories by people "just like them," as well as information about their specific diagnosis or symptoms.
I also always thought of the wiki as being part of my healing plan. I had had recoveries like this before, but had always relapsed. The immense investment that I have made in the nonprofit has forced me to commit to Sarno's ideas. I'm very proud of what I've done on the wiki, and helping people through it is slowly becoming part of my identity. I'm an extremely private person, but I just told my first work friend about it, and have finally mustered the guts to put my success story up. After all of this, how could I possibly not commit to Sarno's ideas?
How can I install a new icon. I want change the current one of my pet.
hi forest can you tell me how to delete an old thread o the sub forum page?
Hi Forest, I watched your success story video on YouTube and was curious about a few things. While experiencing your RSI symptoms, did you also experience general hand weakness and clumsiness in addition to the cramping? Were you ever diagnosed as having Carpal Tunnel (with or without an EMG)? Also, how are your symptoms these days?
Nope, not CT. Only TOS, and not much nerve involvement. I did have some hand clumsiness and weakness. Always good to work with a TMS doc, though, as I can only speak to my own experiences. My symptoms are good these days. If I type a lot, they are sore, but I ignore it and it doesn't affect my life.
This Wiki is an amazing display of what the human spirit can do. Thank you!
"...I suspect English isn't his first language..." What is that supposed to mean? That I don't know what I express in english?
Pt 3: Perhaps some users wouldn't mind lending out their book as long as the borrower pays "to" and "return" shipping costs. What do you think?
Pt 2: Perhaps another user owns the book Healing Back Pain, or "The Presence Process: A Journey Into Present Moment Awareness" by Michael Brown and wants to ship me their copy temporarily to read. Shipping soft cover books via USPS is very easy and affordable. Users can reach an agreement on paying for shipping costs.
Pt 1: Hi Forest. I wanted to suggest we start a "Book Club" thread where users can state the TMS books they own (and have already read) and agree to ship the books to other members around the country while that user sends a copy of their book to the first user. For example, I own and read The Mindbody Prescription and The Divided Mind by Sarno. I am happy to send these to another user who would like to read them.
Part 2 of my message: I don't remember my password. When I click on "forgot password", I type in my username (email) and then it says that my username does not exist so it won't send me a temporary password to reset it. Can you help?
Hi Dasgo, you appear to be logged in to the forum just fine. You don't need to log in to the wiki. See this for the difference: http://www.tmswiki.org/forum/threads/forum-faqs-frequently-asked-questions.1618/#whatiswiki .
Hello Forest. I am having some issue with logging in. I can log into the forum (it will pre-populate my username and password), but if I navigate away to other pages, it shows me as not logged in. When I click on "log in" again, it doesn't pre-populate my username and password, as it does on the forum page.
Health anxiety is epidemic and encouraged by the society we live in.
Hi, thanks for creating this community. I could already run and I got so much worse from one day to next that I did not think it was even possible. I'll go to the success stories. page crying.
Thanks for putting together the wiki as well as sharing your story.
I hear you. It's hard to understand how it narrows your life and the fear that that causes unless you've been there.
Forest, you say that you just ignore the symptoms and they don't bother you. Do the symptoms actually go away with this TMS healing or is it just a way to ignore it?
Heya, diver, they generally go away, though sometimes it takes a while. Of course, if I focus on something else, the time inbetween is better.
Forest, how did you manage to focus on something else when the typing gets progressively harder and harder as the cramping/pain increases? Any suggestions?
Where do I start post?
Hi Forest, I'm new and have written my story. Where do I go to share it and get help with my tms symptoms that's at the end of my story?
Forest, I'd like to delete my account. This has been a great community and service for many. I appreciate it. I can't find info on how to delete an account. Do you have a link, or do you need to do it? Wishing you all the best and great healing for the lives you have touched and helped. Peace.


A man wounded a Pinellas County deputy and K9 officer after fleeing a traffic stop early Friday morning before turning the gun on himself, according to the St. Petersburg Police Department.
ST. PETERSBURG — A driver fleeing from a traffic stop early Friday shot a police dog rounding a corner then a deputy sitting in his car before taking his own life, police said.
The violent sequence of events began around 2 a.m. and centered on a four-block stretch of 3rd Avenue S, from 30th Street S east to 26th Street S.
Pinellas County Sheriff's Sgt. David Stang Jr. was shot twice in the shoulder and was listed in stable condition Friday at Bayfront hospital. Stang, 51, has worked more than 17 years with the Sheriff's Office.
Titan, with the St. Petersburg Police Department K9 division, was hit in the front left paw and was recovering from surgery Friday at a veterinary clinic.
No shots were fired by law enforcement officers during the incident, police said.
The body of the man described as the shooter, 23-year-old Elijah Johnson of St. Petersburg, was found with what appeared to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound, police said.
Johnson has been arrested more than 15 times, starting at age 12, largely on drug charges and most recently last month, according to state records.
But grieving family and friends, waiting at a hospital in hopes of seeing his body, said Johnson had been turning his life around recently and questioned whether he died by suicide.
The Pinellas-Pasco Medical Examiner's Office had no information Friday about a cause or manner of death.
Police had stopped Johnson for a traffic violation, but details about the offense and the car he was driving were not avialable Friday.
Because of his criminal history, including charges of driving without a license, he was known to St. Petersburg police, said spokeswoman Sandra Bentil. Johnson had a current driver's license, according to state records.
Johnson was pulled over at Third Avenue S and 30th Street S by members of the Violent Crimes Task Force. He initially stopped, then drove off, abandoning the vehicle near Third Avenue S and 26th St. S.
Officers didn't pursue Johnson, but aerial surveillance and a K9 unit were called in.
Officer Greg Shone was following Titan's lead as the dog rounded a corner near the intersection and was hit once by a bullet. Shone, who was not injured, pulled the dog close and administered aid.
Meantime, Stang had joined the search in an unmarked cruiser with emergency lights on when Johnson fired into the car near Third Avenue S and 27th St. S, police said.
"Whether the bad guy charged the car and shot or whether he shot at a distance, that's something the investigation will have to reveal," Gualtieri said. "I wouldn't go as far as to say it was an ambush, but it was that type of a situation. It appears he was caught by surprise."
Johnson was found dead shortly afterward, but police did not say where.
Johnson was arrested in March 2015 for fleeing and eluding a police officer and sentenced to up to 180 days in jail. He also was sentenced to 20 months in state prison in July 2016 following an arrest on charges of possession of synthetic marijuana and cocaine.
In 2016, he was arrested in connection with celebratory gunfire.
Johnson's mother, Kijuangila Johnson, said she was on the phone with her son the night before his death and they were planning to attend an upcoming family reunion in Fort Pierce.
She said Johnson had been working hard to overcome mistakes he'd made and was proud to have saved the $4,000 required for him to have his license reinstated.
She said her son worked in the kitchen of Stillwaters Tavern on Beach Drive and had his own business restoring clouded headlights. The restaurant confirmed Johnson was an employee there.
Johnson also had completed his GED and enrolled in trade school for cosmetology, his mother said.
Johnson's uncle Rodney Jenkins said his nephew grew up and died in a south side neighborhood where it's tough to be a kid.
Now, the family will be pressing to learn whether the police who hunted for Johnson son might have fired their weapons after all.
"We just want clarity," Jenkins said. "We want to know exactly what happened."
Times Staff Writers Divya Kumar and Carl Lisciandrello and Senior News Researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report. Contact Daniel Figueroa IV at [email protected] Follow @danuscripts.


Thank you for joining us for The Pipes Magazine Radio Show—the only radio talk show for pipe smokers and collectors. We broadcast weekly, every Tuesday at 8 pm eastern USA time and are available on nearly all podcast sites and apps. Listen on your computer, tablet, phone and even in the car! Our Featured Interview tonight is with Pipe Maker Todd Bannard a.k.a. "Sasquatch" on the pipe forums. Todd is a carpenter in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. He has been making pipes since 2008. He prefers to make classic shaped pipes rather than freehands. His pipes are all stamped BST, an abbreviation for "Briar, Sweat, and Tears." In Pipe Parts, Brian will talk about two different American pipe makers from the past - of two different styles - whereby their pipes have held good value for the collector. Sit back, relax with your pipe, and enjoy The Pipes Magazine Radio Show!
I never thought much of DeJarnette's pipes. Always felt his pipes were cumbersome. Different strokes I guess. Never seen a Frey.
Fun interview with Todd though. For a little bit I thought all you were going to get was one word answers out of him. Turned into a fun interview. Loved his comment "….and I'll be the next Bo Nordh".
An interview with a very excellent pipe artisan and a man with an honest, intelligent, and practical perspective on the life of an artist.
Basically, you make art for enjoyment and for expression, not for enrichment. That only happens if you have a body (of work) to leave behind, for MOST artists.
I love classically shaped pipes too, and a hand made bulldog, for instance, is much more demanding than a freehand, imho.


text:
ULAANBAATAR CITY TOURS Sukhbaatar SquareGEOTOURISM MONGOLIA2020-01-24T06:09:37+00:00
Ulaanbaatar City Tours – Sukhbaatar Square
Ulaanbaatar City Tours, Homestays & City Travel Information – Mongolia
Ulaanbaatar City's Sukhbaatar Square, located right at the center of Ulaanbaatar City and is the main location of Mongolia's national ceremonies and celebrations for the public. Ulaanbaatar's main square was built for General Sukhbaatar after he passed in 1923 – the exact location where his returning troops celebrated victory after defeating the Chinese at Khiagt. Since then, Ulaanbaatar's main square is now adorned with the General's statue build in 1946 in time for the 25th anniversary of the national revolution. The four-meter-tall statue of the general sits atop an eight-meter high base, with fourteen lions holding thick chains together, surrounding it, symbolizing the sanctity of Mongolia. The statue was renewed with a bronze replacement in 2011 for the 90th anniversary of the national revolution. The statue also has a plaque with the General's quote saying that it's in our hearts to unite and reach places that man has never reached before.
SPECIALIZED ULAANBAATAR CITY TOURS & EXPERIENCES:
Ulaanbaatar City Tours – Legendary Art of Mongolian Archery
Ulaanbaatar City Tours – Mongolia's Famed Horse-head Fiddle
Ulaanbaatar City Tours – Learn Mongolia's Khoomei Throat Singing
Ulaanbaatar City Tours – Ancient Elite Art of Calligraphy
Ulaanbaatar City Tours – Asia's Famed Brush Arts
Ulaanbaatar City Tours – Social Empowerment
Ulaanbaatar City Tours, Homestays and Sightseeing Attractions
Ulaanbaatar City is the capital of Mongolia. Geographically, Ulaanbaatar city sits on the banks of River Tuul and in a valley between four mountains. According to the 2016 consensus, Ulaanbaatar City has 9 districts spread over 470,000 acres of land and 1,440,447 people, with 67 percent being under the age of 35.
Ulaanbaatar City originated in 1639 as a ger palace gifted to Zanabazar, when he was proclaimed as the First Bogd Khan. Following the nomadic ways, the city moved throughout the country 28 times before it grew too big to move in 1855 and settled in its current location. In the early days of Ulaanbaatar City's history, it served as the political and religious center for Mongolia.
By the 19th century, the once palace had turned into a proper city with religion, government, politics and trade with a population of twenty-thousand people. In 1924, the modern foundation of Ulaanbaatar City was divided into 13 districts, 4 of which were revamped into new districts in 1965, 5 were abolished and the youngest district was instated in 1992 when Ulaanbaatar City was declared the capital of Mongolia once again.
ULAANBAATAR CITY TOURS Sukhbaatar Square