John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum • View topic - Heart Music - Taichung -Taiwan.
Heart Music - Taichung -Taiwan.
Post subject: Heart Music - Taichung -Taiwan.
This is the third studio I've designed for Taiwan. 112F was the first followed by ff studio.
I must compliment the builder who built these studios. Without doubt the best builder of my designs.
Post subject: Re: Heart Music - Taichung -Taiwan.
This looks unreal John! Wow!
It appears that you've made the mistake most people do. You started building without consulting this forum.
That place looks great, John! Beautiful design.
And beautiful workmanship too, especially in those diffusers! Just: "wow!". The carpenter did a really, really outstanding job on those. I can see why you praise him so highly. It's not easy to build even simple diffusers and have them look good, but some of those are not simple at all! And they look incredible. A master craftsman for sure, who clearly takes pride in his work.
I'll be that place sounds every bit as amazing as it looks.
Yes Stuart - a wonderful craftsman - he also built ff studio.
Thanks John! Appreciate that. If I ever need a studio built in Taiwan, I know who I'm calling for the construction! That guy is amazing.
I've been taking a closer look at this, and I'm even more impressed than before! I just noticed how you did the variable panels in studio B. Wow! Very cool design. If I'm ever in Taiwan, I'll make sure to try to get a tour of that place, just to hear what that room sounds like in real-life. It must be awesome to have that much variability!


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1. As a senior living in Cleveland Heights, I have many questions about services available not only for seniors, but also their caregivers. Whom I can speak with about this?
There are two Social Workers with Masters degrees on the Office on Aging staff. These qualified individuals are available to talk with you (via the phone or in person). They have information on the following and more:
Nursing Homes,
Transportation and Activities
Call 216-691-7377 or email Jaime White or email Linda Katz.
2. What kind of services are offered to those senior residents who are homebound?
Meals on Wheels of Cleveland Heights, Inc. in conjunction with the Office on Aging provides meals to residents unable to cook for themselves, including a hot lunch and cold supper. Information on a variety of community resources is available through the Office on Aging's licensed social workers - contact the Office on Aging at 216-691-7377 or email Amy Jenkins for information. Volunteer opportunities are available for adults to serve as Meals on Wheels drivers and packers. Call 216-691-7377 or 216-571-6659 or email Marlene Perez.
3. My mother needs assistance in traveling to various places throughout the City; is there someone I can contact for help?
The Office on Aging provides van transportation to senior residents who are not eligible for RTAs ADA paratransit service. Cleveland Heights seniors can be driven to medical appointments, shops, the Senior Activity Center, banks and other errands. Call 216-691-7377 or email Amy Jenkins for information on rides to the Center. For other transportation needs, call Carol Forté at 216-691-7194 or email Carol. The Office on Aging provides van transportation to senior residents who are not eligible for RTAs ADA paratransit service.
4. Does the City provide any health services to its senior residents?
Health services include annual flu shots, blood pressure checks, health information and screenings to Cleveland Heights seniors age 60 and over. Health screenings and lectures held at the Senior Center, can include anything from bone density scans to fall prevention talks. Call 216-691-7377 or email Amy Jenkins for dates and times of these services.
5. What activities are available to senior residents?
pened in 2002, the Senior Activity Center - housed in the Community Center at One Monticello Boulevard - offers a variety of classes, discussion groups, clubs and programming for seniors. Activities range from:
Variety of Games
Wellness Programs - Including Yoga, Strength Training, Tai Chi, and Pilates (Some of the Most Popular Classes)
Bus trips are also planned and include entertainment, food, shopping and more. One of the Senior Center's most impressive and significant amenities is its state-of-the-art Computer Center, which provides hands-on classes for every level of computer use. Tutors are available to help. Van rides are available to and from the Senior Activity Center for senior residents not eligible for RTAs ADA paratransit service. Call 216-691-7377 for additional information or see the monthly newsletter, News for Senior Adults (PDF).
6. Is there any kind of publication distributed to seniors to keep them informed of activities and events?
The Office on Aging newsletter, News for Senior Adults, is distributed monthly. Senior Activity Center classes and Office on Aging programs are highlighted, as well as other important information pertaining to the senior community. See the latest copy (PDF).
7. Where can I pick up an application for programs such as Golden Buckeye Card and Homestead Exemption?
The Office on Aging, located at the Senior Activity Center (Monticello Boulevard and Mayfield Road) provides applications for Federal / County / State programs such as BMV Handicapped Parking cards and the HEAP Program. Living Will Declaration and Health Care Power of Attorney forms are also available. In addition, senior residents can set up a free, half-hour legal consultation with the Office on Aging's Elder Care Attorney. Contact the Office on Aging at 216-691-7377 or email Amy Jenkins for additional information.
Finally, senior residents can also find out what benefits they are entitled to by logging onto the Benefits Checkup website; if computer assistance is needed, a volunteer at the Senior Activity Center can provide free and confidential help. Call 216-691-7377 to make an appointment.
8. Where can I receive information on senior housing options?
Information on alternate housing arrangements - nursing homes, assisted living, group homes, home sharing and subsidized apartments - can be obtained through the Office on Aging. Call 216-691-7377 for information, or email Amy Jenkins.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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On 1 April 2008, artist film-maker Luke Fowler was announced as the winner of the inaugural Jarman Award presented at the Serpentine Gallery.
Fowler was selected from a shortlist of four artists which also included: Duncan Campbell, Andrew Kötting and Emily Wardill.
Luke Fowler wins the Jarman Award 2008
This exceptional young talent fuses the most unusual subjects and images to stunning effect.
Jarman Award 2008 jury panel on Luke Fowler
James Christopher, Film Critic, The Times
Isaac Julien CBE, artist filmmaker
Julia Peyton-Jones and Hans Ulrich Obrist, Serpentine Gallery
Nic Roeg, Filmmaker
Lisbeth Savill, Partner, Head of Film Team, Olswang and Film London Board Member
Ali Smith, Author
Jan Younghusband, Commissioning Editor, Arts and Performance, Channel 4
To launch the inaugural year of the Jarman Award Film London and More4 also invested in Derek, a major new feature length biopic directed by Isaac Julien.
As the winning artist, Fowler received £20,000, co-sponsored by Film London and More4, in partnership with the Serpentine Gallery as well as a commission of four short films from 3 Minute Wonder, Channel 4's documentary shorts strand. Entitled The Tenement Films, they are a series of portraits of four diverse individuals brought together through a shared residence - a flat in a Victorian tenement in the West End of Glasgow.


January's Kindred Mom theme is Freedom in Motherhood, and in Episode 52, host Emily Sue Allen talks with guest Meredith McDaniel, a mom and licensed counselor, about postpartum anxiety and how to recover well from birth. Author of Breaking the Fear Cycle, Maria Furlough joins Emily for a conversation about navigating fear during and after the loss of one of her sons, offering practical strategies for overcoming fear as a mother.
Meredith McDaniel is an author and licensed counselor in North Carolina. She has been married to her husband Ben, who is on Young Life staff, for 12 years. She spends most days shifting roles from writing, counseling, to mothering her 3 elementary aged children. Meredith is passionate about helping women discover who they are & experience the full life they were intended to live. She strives to offer hope in somewhat dark places + help others taste of the land of milk+honey. You can hear from Meredith & receive her newsletter and a free gift: Manna for Mundane.
Her first book is releasing with Revell early next year in January of 2020. You can find more of her writing on Instagram and on her website.


Large farm market with ten greenhouses home to bedding plants, hanging baskets, perennials, and all your growing needs. Upick peas, beans, tomatoes, and raspberries. Fall attracts visitors to the 8 acre corn maze, designed to amaze.


CaptinCrunch wrote: For the month of November we have climbed up to +5.4 for the monthly average. Models are all over the place as Ntxw stated, nothing is concrete as far next week goes, but I will take normal temps over above any day of the week.
Its been really hard to overcome these fast above normal starts. DFW is outnumbering cool months with warm months 12:1 since 2015. That is an unfathomable number. And we thought the warmer months in the 2000s 2:1 was wicked, small compared to now.
It really is crazy. Also, I believe we have probably shattered records for the least amount of record lows durung that timeframe. I was thinking we would start to see a global step down post super nino but temps just spiked again in October.
Exactly, Super El Nino was more than just a once in 50 year event, it has had lingering effects on the global weather patterns. I think it's one reason why the upper level winds have remained warm for the last 24 months, and it may take another year before we see any global step down in temps. I still don't see this winter being as warm as last winter, and while we my not see the average number of freezes (33) here in NTX, we will see more than the (14) we got last winter.
What the heck kind of a system does the Euro put into the GOM next week? Not sure i recall seeing something like that.
TeamPlayersBlue wrote: What the heck kind of a system does the Euro put into the GOM next week? Not sure i recall seeing something like that.
Cat 5 in the Gulf?
Frontogenesis-related closed low over the Gulf? If it were September on a decaying stationary front in the Gulf, I'd be more interested in it.
Edit: 2nd half of Dec might not be all bad, some signs of a better pattern.
I saw that posted elsewhere, it was valid for Christmas Eve of all days(the end of it east of here anyway)..
The 0z GFS is so boring, no real rain, nothing extreme on temps, but at least, there's no 80s after tomorrow.... progress?
Are we going to have any days below normal?
Not really. Average is low/mid 60s now, looks pretty close to that.
It looks lime a really bleh pattern setting up. Dry and seasonally mild. The biggest problem that I see is that the NPAC shuffles around and there is no cold air in WCAN. So, when we do get a break and a cold push comes the source region will be above normal. That happened a lot the last two winters.
Yeah we need the wave train to kick back west just a bit more.
JB's winter forecast. Snowfall on the left and temps on the right.
84 here. The forecast for today was suppose to be 88, with it being 3:30, I don't see that happening. For tomorrow they've updated the high to 58 with N. winds at 25-30 mph and gusts at 40.
The 12z Euro EPS seems to offer some hope in the longer range, if only for some rain. Depending on evolution, there could also be some decent cold.
bubba hotep wrote: The 12z Euro EPS seems to offer some hope in the longer range, if only for some rain. Depending on evolution, there could also be some decent cold.
I hope it's right. We could really use some rain around here. Been quite dry lately.


Symptoms, a physical exam, and the results of imaging tests, and blood tests might suggest that a person has bone cancer. But in most cases, doctors must confirm this by testing a tissue or cell sample and checking it with a microscope (a procedure known as a biopsy).
Accurate diagnosis of a bone tumor often depends on combining information about what bone is affected and which part of the bone is involved, how it looks on x-rays, and what the cells look like under a microscope.
Other diseases, like bone infections, can cause symptoms and imaging results that might be confused with bone cancer.
Bone metastasis can also look like primary bone cancer. Bone tumors are more often caused by cancer that has spread to the bone from some other part of the body. This is a bone metastasis. A single bone metastasis can have the same signs and symptoms as a primary bone tumor, so many doctors require a biopsy to diagnose a patient's first bone metastasis. After that, new bone metastases can usually be diagnosed based on x-rays and other imaging tests.
Most bone cancers show up on x-rays of the bone. The bone at the site of the cancer may look "ragged" instead of solid. The cancer can also appear as a hole in the bone. Sometimes doctors can see a tumor around the defect in the bone that might extend into nearby tissues (such as muscle or fat). The radiologist (doctor who specializes in reading x-rays) can often tell if a tumor is malignant by the way it appears on the x-ray, but only a biopsy can tell for sure.
A chest x-ray is often done to see if bone cancer has spread to the lungs.
CT scans are helpful in staging cancer. They help show if the bone cancer has spread to your lungs, liver, or other organs. The scans show the lymph nodes and distant organs where there might be cancer spread.
MRI scans are often the best test for outlining a bone tumor. They are very helpful for looking at the brain and spinal cord.
Bone scans can show if a cancer has spread to other bones. It can find smaller areas of metastasis than regular x-rays. Bone scans also can show how much damage the cancer has caused in the bone.
Areas of diseased bone will be seen on the bone scan as dense, gray to black areas, called "hot spots." These areas suggest cancer is present, but arthritis, infection, or other bone diseases can also cause hot spots. Other imaging tests or a bone biopsy may be needed to know what's causing the change.
PET scans use glucose (a form of sugar) that's attached to a radioactive atom. A special camera can detect the radioactivity. Cancer cells absorb a lot of the radioactive sugar because of their high rate of metabolism. PET scans are useful in looking for cancer throughout your entire body. It can sometimes help tell if a tumor is cancer or not cancer (benign). It's often combined with CT scans to better pinpoint some kinds of cancer.
A biopsy takes a piece of tissue from a tumor so that it can be looked at with a microscope and tested in the lab. This is the only way to know that the tumor is cancer and not another bone disease.
If it is cancer, the biopsy can tell the doctor if it's a primary bone cancer or cancer that started somewhere else and spread to the bone (metastasis). Many types of tissue and cell samples are used to diagnose bone cancer. It's very important that your biopsy be done by a surgeon with experience in diagnosing and treating bone tumors.
The type of biopsy done is based on whether the tumor looks benign (not cancer) or malignant (cancer) and exactly what type of tumor it most likely is (based on x-rays, the patient's age, and where the tumor is). Some kinds of bone tumors can be diagnosed from needle biopsy samples, but larger samples (from a surgical biopsy) are often needed to diagnose other types.
Whether the surgeon plans to remove the entire tumor during the biopsy will also impact the type of biopsy done. Sometimes the wrong kind of biopsy can make it hard for the surgeon to later remove all of the cancer without having to also remove all or part of the arm or leg containing the tumor. It also may cause the cancer to spread.
There are 2 types of needle biopsies: fine (aspiration) and core. For both types, a drug is first used to numb the area for the biopsy.
For fine needle aspiration (FNA), the doctor uses a very thin needle and a syringe to take out a small amount of fluid and some cells from the tumor. Sometimes, the doctor can aim the needle by feeling the tumor if it's near the surface of the body. If the tumor is too deep to feel, the doctor can guide the needle while looking a CT scan. This is called a CT guided needle biopsy and it is often done by an x-ray specialist known as an interventional radiologist.
In a core needle biopsy, the doctor uses a larger needle to remove a small cylinder of tissue (about 1/16 inch in diameter and 1/2 inch long). Many experts feel that a core needle biopsy is better than FNA to diagnose a primary bone cancer.
In this procedure, a surgeon needs to cut through the skin to reach the tumor to remove a small piece of tissue. This is also called an incisional biopsy. If the entire tumor is removed (not just a small piece), it's called an excisional biopsy.
These biopsies are often done with the patient under general anesthesia (drugs are used to put you into a deep asleep). They can also be done using a nerve block, which numbs a large area. If this type of biopsy is needed, it's important that the surgeon who will later remove the cancer also be the one to do the biopsy.


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Why T.S. Eliot Has Remained an Enigma
Vijay Seshadri on the Historical Forces that Shaped Him
Via Ecco
By Vijay Seshadri
In 1917, T.S. Eliot published, in a print run of five hundred that didn't sell out until five years later, his first book of poems, Prufrock and Other Observations. As with a lot of first books by young poets, the publication of Prufrock had a little of a made-in-the-hood, let's-put-on-a-show quality to it. The book wasn't actually a book but a pamphlet, and the publishing house wasn't actually a publishing house but a London periodical, The Egoist. The Egoist is recognized now as a short-lived and astounding incubator of literary modernism. Then it was one of the tribal organs of a small, youthful or recently youthful, "advanced" coterie of intellectuals and artists who were sure they were doing something new but (except for James Joyce) probably didn't know exactly what it was they were doing and couldn't have imagined how significant they would become.
A contributing spirit of the periodical was Eliot's coconspirator and pal Ezra Pound, in his goofy and benevolent village-explainer period rather than his ugly and malevolent world-explainer period or his shattered and tragic self-explainer one. He prevailed on the magazine to lend its imprint to Prufrock, and, also, subsidized the publication with money he got from his wife. The literature Pound loved he loved so much it might have seemed to him that he was its author. He'd announced, a little mystifyingly, that Eliot had modernized himself on his own (Pound was a big modernizer) and had appointed himself Eliot's manager. Eliot, with his customary passivity—which was also cagey; Pound nicknamed him Possum—seemed fine with letting Ezra think he was Ezra's invention.
One of the first reviewers of Prufrock—again, as is often the case with first books—was a friend of the poet's, Conrad Aiken (who became a major poet himself). The Eliot biographer Peter Ackroyd says that Aiken knew what Eliot was up to better than Pound did. Aiken had known Eliot since college, but sustained friendship doesn't seem to have compromised his appraisals. He says in his review that the author of Prufrock is a "bafflingly peculiar man." This bafflingly peculiar person was launching his literary career in a time that was going to make him radically more peculiar—though not more baffling (which word implies a problem still looking for its solution, and a perplexity that might, eventually, be resolved) but, instead, enigmatic (which word implies something active and energetic, and a mystery that we can't pluck the heart out of ).
The Eliot who could be called baffling was Eliot circa 1914, the writer of the Prufrock poems, which were written before the war and peopled by Bostonians. He was like a character in a Henry James story, with a foot in America, a foot in Europe, and a hypertrophied brain living somewhere unmappable. He was, almost comically, a revised, new-century version of James's Gilded Age poor, sensitive gentleman—hardworking, but an intellectual drifter; hiding out in graduate school; trying to keep his parents off his back while depending on their subsidies; prissy and jejune. By 1917, though, he'd stepped from Jamesian fictional paradigms to other, more harrowing ones (though James can be pretty harrowing). He was saying about himself, "I have been living in one of Dostoevsky's novels."
What happened? One answer is that Eliot had relinquished the camouflage of those vanities that he insinuated into the character of Prufrock—the satiric armor disguising a youthful insecurity, the self-satisfied conceit that the world was comatose when it wasn't absurd, the faux French Symbolist weariness. He was now plunged in karma (a word he would have accepted; and an idea that doesn't represent reward or payback but defines the circulating force and interactions of a moral and spiritual ecosystem). He wasn't disembodied anymore, dispersed, arrested, paralyzed, superannuated—"a pair of ragged claws scuttling across the floors of silent seas"— and had outgrown his equivocating, temporizing, he's finding-himself period (which, to be fair, produced great poetry).
He'd made a leap of faith and was dealing with its karmic consequences. He was, in fact, discovering consequentiality itself, and arriving at those first operative adult realizations about the nature of time and change that, twenty years later, would find their place in the beautiful, encircling, Heraclitian meditations of the Four Quartets. Eliot's early interest in Indian texts, though benign and as much philological as speculative, was what we would now call Orientalist, and was unreconstructed by our standards. (Later, in his partiality for hymns to imperialism like Kipling's "Recessional"—where the "lesser breeds without the Law" make their appearance—the Orientalism took on a pernicious tinge.) But his study of Vedanta had at least the advantage of giving him a developed understanding of illusion and an appreciation for the complex and subtle laws of action and reaction, change and permanence. (Around this time, he was actually thinking of becoming a Buddhist.)
He'd recently got married—impetuously and, it turned out, disastrously—to Vivienne Haigh-Wood, an English girl who was what used to be called "nervous" (he could have been described that way, too), whom he'd met through an American friend. He had responsibilities. He was a breadwinner, a published poet, and a working reviewer and essayist who supplemented his meager writerly income with a day job in a bank. He was hanging out with Bertrand Russell and Virginia Woolf and other formidable people whose sophistication had a savage quality to it, which it was his obligation to survive. (Russell, under the guise of friendship and solicitude for the young, struggling couple, wound up seducing Vivienne.) His feet and head were finally in the same place, in London, which was in England, which was in Europe, and he was experiencing the tensions and pressures of literary commerce; the anomie of office work in a vast capitalist enterprise (Lloyd's of London); and the anguish of a marriage quickly becoming a source of arduous, painful, confusing dramas and entanglements. (Looking back after Vivienne's death, in 1947, he was to say, "To her the marriage brought no happiness . . . To me it brought the state of mind out of which came The Waste Land.")
A more significant answer, though, more significant than his domestic agonies to the question of Eliot's state of mind, more significant than the dolor of office life and the struggle to build a career, was, of course, the war, the First World War, the war to end all wars. As far as great art can be explained, it is the war that explains the riveting, destabilizing drama, bitterly accurate irony, prophetic judgment, ominous atmosphere, and nervously alive and enveloping crepuscularity, at once melancholy, desperate, baleful, unnerving, and vulnerable, of "The Waste Land."
Like Flaubert's God, Eliot is everywhere present in his work but nowhere apparent.
It has mostly gone without saying in the critical tradition that Eliot can't be understood or appreciated without understanding the effect the war had on him. It has mostly gone without saying because the war has been understood as a given and has been said to explain everyone at or around Eliot's age who came into contact with it. But the specificity and emotional intensity of what Eliot achieved in "The Waste Land"— arguably the most influential poem of the English language—is imperfectly served if the poem is seen as another artifact of the Lost Generation. The effect of the war on Eliot is an inexhaustible subject. No other work of art in the West of the stature of "The Waste Land" is so immediately and intimately wedded to a major historical cataclysm while being, moreover, radical (in the original meaning of the word) enough, at once close enough and distant enough, imaginative enough, ingenious enough, unreminiscent and unprecedented enough to take the measure of human catastrophe of that order. Pound might have been thinking of "The Waste Land" when he said that poetry was news that stays news.
Industrialized warfare had been around for a hundred years or more, but the Western world, and the world of Eliot's London generation, was now introduced with a vengeance to its fullest development in its most mechanized and inhuman form. Eliot was a non-combatant. (He tried, and failed, because of a series of bureaucratic impediments, to enlist after America entered the war in April of 1917.) But though he didn't see action, he was in his way as much a war poet as Wilfred Owen or Robert Graves (something that couldn't be said about Pound). The war didn't just, as he might have put it in a laconic moment, modify his sensibilities. The war invaded him and imprinted itself onto his deeper psychic layers. "The Waste Land" is overpowering in its sense of the isolation of the spirit trapped in violent materiality. That sense isn't derived from a Vedantic predilection for seeing life as a painful illusion or a Gnostic antipathy to the body (though these are functional elements in the poem) but is a local and particular response, however circuitous the development, long the gestation, and indirect the realization, to the experience of witnessing, only a few steps removed, systematized carnage.
The reports Eliot was getting in 1917 were gruesome. Here is an example, a battlefield description from a letter written by a soldier in the trenches, which letter was enclosed in a cover letter written on June 17, 1917, and sent to the British magazine The Nation, which published it on June 23:
. . . a leprous earth, scattered with the swollen and blackening corpses of hundreds of young men. The appalling stench of rotting carrion mingled with the sickening smell of exploded lyddite and ammonal.
Mud like porridge, trenches like shallow and sloping cracks in the porridge—porridge that stinks in the sun. Swarms of flies and bluebottles clustering on the pits of offal. Wounded men lying in the shell holes among the decaying corpses: helpless under the scorching sun and bitter nights, under repeated shelling. Men with bowels dropping out, lungs shot away, with blind, smashed faces, or limbs blown into space. Men screaming and gibbering. Wounded men hanging in agony on the barbed wire, until a friendly spout of liquid fire shrivels them up like a fly in a candle. But these are only words, and probably convey a fraction of their meaning to the hearers.
They shudder, and it is forgotten.
The writer of the cover letter to The Nation was Eliot himself. The letter that he enclosed was written by his brother-in-law, Maurice Haigh-Wood, who had been on the front since before he was nineteen. (Maurice Haigh-Wood survived the war.) Along with the terror and agony, the pity and rage that a description like this invokes, Eliot must have had reactions consistent with the peculiar person he was. A characteristic of his essays is a strong, though mostly unexamined, metaphoric physicalism in the language he uses to think about art and culture, along with hints of an underlying sense that literature produces effects that are best analyzed if we approach them with analogies drawn from science. In his most famous essay, "Tradition and the Individual Talent," he compares the poetic imagination to a filament of platinum that catalyzes a chemical reaction. This way of thinking might well have been derived from a psychosomatic susceptibility.
As deeply attuned to moods and impressions as he was, as attuned to verbal acts and as open and vulnerable to the images made by words, as high-strung as he was, Eliot probably responded to language that affected him in ways that seemed physical; and had feelings that would have poisoned him in just the way he says, in his essay on the play, that Hamlet's life and capacity to act were poisoned because of feelings he couldn't articulate or objectify. Eliot must have felt accounts like the passage in the letter previously quoted as illnesses. Strange as it may seem, given how tormented the poem is, how bitter its ironies are, the cure to those illnesses, the release by articulation and objectification, was the shape-shifting, gravitationally dense, translucent, hypnotic, strangely radiating musical orb that is "The Waste Land."
T.S. Eliot had as much cultural authority during his lifetime as any writer of any era in the history of the English language. That authority tends to occlude for us the crisis-ridden poet in whom "The Waste Land" was growing. It's hard to discern that Eliot among all the other Eliots who have lived in the literary and public mind for the most of the past hundred years. Eliot the setter of standards. Eliot the lawgiver. Eliot the elitist, lover of rank and hierarchy. Eliot the Defender of the Faith. Eliot the establishmentarian—"classicist in literature, royalist in politics, anglo-catholic in religion." The sporadically, depressingly, dishearteningly anti-Semitic Eliot. The Christian Eliot. The Christian-identity Eliot. Eliot the incomparable literary analyst, who created a whole climate of opinion. Eliot the supercilious literary analyst who made preposterous (but perfectly timed) invidious judgments in passing ("About Donne there hangs the shadow of the impure motive"; "Hazlitt, who had perhaps the most uninteresting mind of all our distinguished critics"). Eliot the editor. Eliot the gatekeeper. Eliot the playwright. Eliot the prizewinner. Eliot the snob. Eliot the intellectual show-off. Eliot, who was turned into a statue by the time he was fifty, and then was put on a plinth and buried up to his neck, like a Beckett character buried in sand, by a storm of critical attention. Eliot the celebrity, friend of Groucho Marx.
But even if we could see that young poet (young as far as poetry is concerned), we still probably would only see the enigma more plainly, and not uncover much of anything useful about him—useful in the sense of satisfying a curiosity about the paths by which intense experience is turned into art, in the way, for example, that Keats's letters are useful. This is because Eliot doesn't share. His own letters—at least the ones that have been made public so far—are, with rare exceptions, like the one excerpted earlier (in which he is quoting someone else), uninformative, and are consistent with the person who was the orchestrator of his own absence. (Not for nothing did the critic Hugh Kenner call his Eliot book The Invisible Poet.) To no other great writer of his era have we as readers a personal relationship, an emotional identification, that is so tenuous. Eliot isn't "relatable." He doesn't invite companionship. He's the most guarded of the modernist writers, the most vigilant about patrolling the no-man's-land between the self and what it creates.
We know those other writers, arguably, in the ways we know the people in our lives. The reticent, "classical" ones, like Cavafy, and the ones who inhabit masks or fables, like Pessoa or Kafka (all three of whom have more than a little in common with Eliot when it comes to their rhetorical choices), we know as well as we know the ones who, like Proust or Lawrence, were prone to be autobiographical. Even saying we don't know him like we know the others seems not true or false but, instead, the product of a conceptual mistake, a category error, and an error that he could have predicted. The famous sentences from "Tradition and the Individual Talent" read: "Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things."
Like Flaubert's God, Eliot is everywhere present in his work but nowhere apparent. He transformed the rectitude characteristic of the Puritan culture from which he came into a principle by which to govern the artifacts of his imagination, and he applied that principle with impressive consistency. Eliot the person functions as the vanishing point of the long perspective lines of his poetry. Even when he puts himself, rather than a dramatic persona, in his poems, that self is, when it isn't just the grammatical subject, either the existential self of the penitential lyrics or the transcendental subjectivity of the late meditations. The accidental location of that subject in geography and history is the fluorescent dye that allows us to detect the motion of time and reveals the contours of a spiritual topography.
Instead of personality, Eliot draped a transparent veil over his material, one that has optic properties that shrink, elongate, or magnify the enclosed dramatic and symbolic action, and impart a hyperreal clarity (though not a simplicity—Eliot is a "difficult" poet, whose difficulty is fundamental) to that action. Instead of emotion, we are given what he famously called its objective correlative—"a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion." The force of "The Waste Land" is inseparable from the impersonality of this correlative. Its impersonality is crucial to its aura of perpetual freshness—and the impression it gives that it is permanent—which it has never lost. In fact, in its postapocalyptic, dystopic atmosphere, its gender-bending, its bitter consciousness of sexual violence perpetrated on women, "The Waste Land" is not only news that has stayed news but also current events.
"The Waste Land" also proposes new ideas about poetry that are as thrilling as ever. The opening passage, introduced by the indelible first line, is like the Louis Armstrong trumpet cadenza that opens the Hot Five's "West End Blues," announcing, with the same ringing articulation, the birth of an art form. The disenchanted vision both opposes and reinforces, and is reinforced by, the energy of the transitions, their unexpectedness, and the joy (a strange but appropriate word to use in the context of a work so dark) their juxtapositions excite. When "The Waste Land" was published, its techniques of collage and multivocality and its cross-cultural, globalized field of reference were as striking as its transitions.
Over time, because Eliot taught us a new way of assimilating knowledge into poems, those elements have become familiar. The transitions, though, are as radical as ever and, paradoxically, as inevitable because they both create and are created by the fragmentation of the poem's surface. One of the achievements of "The Waste Land"—and of modernism from Cézanne on—is to make form equal to content as a bearer of significance. The violence inside the poem, the violence experienced by the civilization for which "The Waste Land" is a lamentation, is made vivid to us as much by the abrupt leaps the poem makes from fragment to fragment as by the representation of the effects of that violence on the poem's personas.
Eliot disassembled the poem of his time. He disassembled not just the normative Edwardian-Victorian poem of his time but, also, the "advanced" poem of his time. Texts like "The Comedian as the Letter C" and "Le Cimetière marin," both of which were published almost concurrently and were considered radical in their day, seem, looking back, late Romantic, like the music of Elgar or Richard Strauss, when compared with "The Waste Land." Rather than Stevens or Valéry, the figures of his era with whom Eliot has, at least in the years before his conversion to Anglo-Catholicism, the most in common are probably (as unlikely as it sounds) Duchamp and Brecht.
A conceptual, deconstructionist irony governs everything from the actions and transactions of "The Waste Land" to the tongue-in-cheek endnotes—which pull the rug out from under the reader, which "alienate" the reader from the experience he or she or they have just had. The conceptual elements, combined with the impersonality and the philosophical skepticism characteristic of Eliot even in his period of faith and Christian apologetics (he was as well trained in philosophy as any poet in the history of the West), create a separation not only between the poem and the poet and the poem and the reader but, also, between the poem and itself.
Ezra Pound was said to have a golden ear. Eliot's ear was better.
The innovations of "The Waste Land," though they were Eliot's, came out of the collective European mind in the aftermath of the war. That they happened doesn't seem mysterious now. What is mysterious is the way the radical new ideas about movement and development, the conceptual superstructures, and the scholarly apparatus engender a deeper unity and integration and enhance and intensify the poem's revelatory power. Many people have imitated Eliot, but no one has been able to reassemble along new lines and reintegrate so completely what was so energetically disassembled. Part of this has to do with Pound's brilliant editing of the poem (which Eliot never failed to acknowledge), but only a part. There is something inherent in the work that makes it whole. That something derives from its mood and music.
Eliot was a master of mood, and mood gives the poem a binding energy and reconciles its fragments into an emotional whole. Eliot had a profound sense of musical structure, which everywhere sustains the development and modifies the jaggedness and abruptness of the drama. "The Waste Land" is filled with passages and effects in which the musical satisfaction is as rich and complete as the literary satisfaction. One is the wonderful broken chord at the end of the first stanza that occasions the shifting of grammatical moods from the declarative to the interrogative that begins the second stanza, and that creates a shock of delight. Another astonishing example is the sostenuto ("Ganga was sunken, and the limp leaves / Waited for rain . . .") that initiates the tremendous fable of the thunder that closes the poem. The withdrawal of tension and the narrative soft-pedaling there, before the poem engages its final crescendo, is as exquisite a fusion as there is in poetry of dynamics and rhythm with meaning, myth, and image.
Ezra Pound was said to have a golden ear. Eliot's ear was better. His diction occupies a sweet spot between the demotic and the aristocratic, and, because of the tension between them, remains convincing, without a trace of the archaic or the futuristic, as close to or as far away from the diction of the twenty-first century as it is from the diction of the twentieth or the nineteenth. The rhythms of the poems, early and late, are local and global. A diffident meter runs evenly just under the surface of the lines and phrases—a beautifully quiet but unwavering metrical presence. An overall sound design disciplines and enlivens each syllable of the poems. The French Symbolists, who were Eliot's first poetic influence, wanted poetry not just to be musical but to arrive at the abstract condition of music. Eliot's poetry arrives at that condition and arrives there without sacrificing for the sake of abstraction, for the sake of a purely musical motive and a meaning that is internal to the text, what he saw as also essential to poems—stories, characters, dramas, human voices, concrete meaning, psychological states, pictures of the world.
"The Waste Land" poses a question to which only God could be the answer.
Eliot is an American poet. People have said it before: only an American could have come up with his idea of Europe when he came up with it. The other American poet, the other great American poet, who has an ear comparable to his is not Pound but Walt Whitman. Whitman's sonic education was ahistorical and biblical, while Eliot's derived directly from the study of English prosody and its classical antecedents. Whitman was writing operas and symphonies with large forces. Eliot was writing chamber music, implicitly in the beginning and explicitly at the end, in the "Four Quartets." But like Eliot, Whitman had a mastery of wide sonic intervals; a terrific ability to modulate between large- and small-scale aural effects; and a wonderful purity, a delicacy, and a delicate control, of tone, a natural diction that never grows stale. And in both Eliot and Whitman the individual notes and the chords resonate in a vast echo chamber where sound itself has a spiritual meaning.
This introduction to Eliot's poems is being written in the bicentennial year of Whitman's birth. It's tempting in this context to triangulate Eliot the poet by means of Whitman. It's also apt and useful. It's also addictive. Once the comparison is made it can't be shaken off. It says a lot about the poets, about poetry, and about America. The contrasts are so sharp that by them alone the comparison is justified. Whitman's rhetoric is frank and personal. Eliot's is the opposite. Whitman repeats himself. Eliot never does. To say that Eliot had even a passing enthusiasm for democracy would be to stretch credulity. Whitman was self-educated. Eliot had the best institutional education available in the America of his time. Whitman is the poet of happiness as decisively as Eliot is the poet of unhappiness. They exist at the opposite poles of spiritual life. God hangs out with Whitman. God is Whitman's homey. Whitman presupposes God. Even in his most intense spiritual writing, Eliot infrequently and gingerly mentions God.
The mystical union in Whitman is like a function of his body, as inevitable as breathing. Eliot's poetry, on the other hand, from "The Waste Land" on, is the enactment of a journey along the via negativa, the path of penitence, abnegation, suffering, dark nights of the soul, the path that traverses the stony places, passes by empty cisterns and exhausted wells, through dead lands, cactus lands, valleys of dying stars. "The Waste Land" poses a question to which only God could be the answer. All the major poems Eliot writes after "The Waste Land" are singular events—defined by rhetorical and metrical inventions designed for those events alone—that document the stages of a search for that answer, one that is excruciating, carried on in both hope and doubt. And as rich and round as it is, as satisfying to the mind, the beatific vision, when Eliot finally arrives at it in the Four Quartets, is muted, solemn, intellectual, and diffident even in its ecstasy.
We love Whitman, and we don't love Eliot—or, rather, we don't seem to be able to establish that personal relationship to Eliot that would be a necessary condition of our loving him. Whitman insists on that personal relationship. Eliot forbids it. But love isn't why we read poetry. Poetry is why we read poetry. To separate ourselves from the enchantments or disenchantments these two central makers of American poetry impose on us, and to see them just as their poetry makes it possible to recognize how much they actually have in common, Whitman's imposition of friendship on his readers is as much a rhetorical trick as Eliot's forbidding that same friendship. Both poets disappear into their poems, as all great poets do, whatever the fiction they use to address the reader. Eliot is thought of as a cold poet, but it can be convincingly argued that Whitman is, too. (We disdain Eliot's politics, and think of Whitman as our representative—though Whitman was tickled pink to see America steal large chunks of Mexico and contemplated with impassive neutrality the extinction of American Indians by the onslaught of Manifest Destiny.)
And, beyond this, the similarities cascade: Both were revolutionary, and both were original—which aren't the same thing. The techniques and possibilities of poetry were vastly expanded by both of them. They were both visionary, and they were both public figures, teachers of their visions. Both were transformed by living through a bloody and terrible war. The scale of their ambition was enormous and exactly the same, and they both, astonishingly, realized that ambition. They were both committed to a transcendental motive, one derived from their common nonconformist American religious culture. They both believed life is a spiritual experience, and poems are meant to embody that experience. They can be seen as companions. To say it again, we read poetry for poetry, and on that basis if it's an honor for Eliot to be thought of as a good companion for Whitman it's just as much an honor for Whitman.
They belong together in important ways, in essential ways. In their influence on others and on the culture at large, there are no other American poets quite like them. One of the singular insights Eliot has in "Tradition and the Individual Talent" is the phenomenological paradox that the present changes the past. Our present, our woke present, democratic, aware of positionalities, alive to difference, requiring at least the rhetorical gestures of frankness, openness, tends to cling to Whitman and not to Eliot. Our present, though, has many elements that Eliot understood but Whitman didn't. In fact, in his urban angst, his apocalyptic consciousness, his feeling for the real dangers of experience, his recognition that spiritual insight is not a joy, or not a joy only, but a terrible necessity, it just might be Eliot who has stopped somewhere and is waiting for us.
A penny for the Old Guy
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us—if at all—not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.
From The Essential T.S. Eliot by T.S. Eliot, with an introduction by Vijay Seshadri. Used with the permission of Ecco.
Vijay Seshadri
Vijay Seshadri was born in India in 1954 and moved to America as a small child. He is the author of four books of poetry, as well as many essays, reviews, and memoir fragments. His work has been widely published and anthologized and recognized with a number of honors, including the Pulitzer Prize.
The Saint and I: On Augustine and Writing About Mothers
What I Learned Speaking to Fidel Castro's Personal Chef
EccoT. S. EliotThe Essential T.S. EliotThe Waste LandVijay SeshadriWorld War I
The Saint and I: On Augustine and Writing About Mothers When I described the first essay assignment to my undergraduates, I emphasized that they were to make an argument, not give...


cooking utensil's - spoon, spatula, tongs, etc.
These prices are on a 24 hour basis, so we expect you back on or before the hour you left. There is a +25% daily rate for the first hour, and +50% for the second hour, after a one hour grace period. After that you will be charged another day.


These are some compelling and powerful vision statements that I gathered.
Ogilvy & Mather: To be the agency most valued by those who most value brands.
Boehringer Ingelheim: Value through innovation.
Rockwell Land, Inc.: To create quality living.
PriceSmart: To become part of our members' quality of life.
Philippine Association of Secretaries: To inspire and equip all office professionals to attain excellence.
International Rice Research Institute: To improve the well-being of present and future generations of rice farmers and consumers, particularly those with low incomes.
Wal-Mart: We exist to provide value to our customers.
Walt Disney: To bring happiness to millions.
Johnson & Johnson: To alleviate pain and disease.
Foundation for the Rotary Soup Kitchen, Food Bank and Training Center, Inc: To make a difference in the lives of people towards self-responsibility and caring for each other.
Note that these vision statements are not simply "wordsmithing." They create an inner sense definitely distinct from the daily routine chores of the people in these organizations. Their vision allows them to be truly alive and contributing to something bigger and nobler than their current business environment, not just for profit or salary.
The vision is "inspiring,"not vague wordy platitudes or simplistic statement of the obvious.
Consider this vision: To be able to unite in love dedicated and devoted men and women in business, in the profession and in other human endeavors to help implement and carry out the goals, projects and programs of (name of organization deleted) of feeding the hungry, of bringing hope, of reclaiming values, restoring dignity and self-image, and in lifting the spirits of the needy in this part of the world by teaching them to help themselves…and the rich to help the poor, fulfilling the adage that: if you give a man fish, he will eat for a day; if you teach him to fish, he will eat the rest of his life, thereby promoting international understanding, goodwill and cooperation, to the glory of God and service to mankind.
So what makes a vision statement meaningful and motivational? Mr. Albrecht summarizes them into three components.
1. A focused concept—something beyond platitudes; a value creation premise that people can actually picture as existing.
2. A sense of noble purpose—something that is really worth doing; something that can create value, make a contribution, make the world a better place in some way, and win people's commitment.
3. A plausible chance of success—something that people can realistically believe to be possible and, if not perfectly attainable, at least plausible to strive for.
To add to that a vision is long-term. It is not a plan, it is the purpose for your plans. A vision endures and captures the mind, body and soul of the people affected by it and gives them a bigger reason for everything that they will think about, do, say and feel about your business.
Moreover, there are important principles to follow when you go into a visioning process.
1. Visioning must engage the emotions and must create a tension within the people crafting them. Visioning is not an exercise of the mind or a word game. It must reflect what they care and feels strongly about most.
3. All stakeholders must get involved and take an active role in crafting the vision from the first to the final step of the visioning process and its implementation; from planning, gathering, discussion and analysis of issues of your business ambitions to the finalization of the vision statement. Of course, you cannot bring everybody around the table. A carefully selected core group representing all stakeholders spanning all levels of your organization could do the task after all views and feelings are expressed.
4. The vision must be stated in the language that expresses the emotions of the people who will live it. It is best to state your vision in Filipino if your employees are Filipinos. The native language would better unleash the proper emotions and move them toward the vision. Who needs an English-perfect vision that nobody understands anyway? Likewise, who would commit to their heart a 100-words vision statement?Kahit pa siya nakaukit sa bato o nakasulat sa magandang papel at nakalagay sa isang magarang kuwadro.
5. Implement. Implement. Implement. There is a need to narrow down the vision and focus on how to implement. A vision is a compass, an indicator of direction and makes people understand the value of what they are doing. Protect it from becoming a cliché or from gathering dust in the filing cabinet.
6. The next steps are to determine the Mission, Values, Goals and Performance Measures.
World Peace. A world without a vision will soon perish. Create your own picture of the preferred future you seek to create, your image of a world at peace.


text:
Michele Maatouk Sharecast News
PNC Financial Services to buy BBVA's US operations for $11.6bn
PNC Financial Services has agreed to buy the US operations of Spain's Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria for $11.6bn in cash.
Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria Sa
Cboe ES 35
Cboe Europe All Companies
Cboe Europe All Companies ex UK
Cboe Europe Finance Sector
Cboe Eurozone 50
Cboe Eurozone All Companies
BBVA's US subsidiary, BBVA USA Bancshares, is based in Houston, Texas, and operates 637 branches in Texas, Alabama, Arizona, California, Florida, Colorado and New Mexico. PNC said that when combined with its existing footprint, the company will have a coast-to-coast franchise with a presence in 29 of the 30 largest markets in the US.
PNC's chairman, president and chief executive officer William S. Demchak, said: "Our acquisition of BBVA USA will accelerate our growth trajectory and drive long-term shareholder value through a strategic deployment of the proceeds from the sale of our BlackRock investment.
"This transaction is an opportunity to navigate our future from a position of strength, accelerating PNC's national expansion strategy while drawing on our experience as a disciplined acquirer."
PNC said on Monday that it expects the deal to be around 21% accretive to earnings in 2022 and to substantially replace the net income benefit from its passive equity investment in BlackRock that was divested in May 2020.
The transaction, which has been approved by the boards of directors of both companies, is expected to close in mid-2021.


Brand New are making waves. Literally.
Brand New made quite an impact recently at a show in Cape Town. Watch the fantastic (and incredibly wet) end to their set below.
P.S. The good bit happens about 17 minutes in.
Yeah, that's Jesse Lacey jumping into a swimming pool. Marvellous.
The band tour the UK in September with Basement.


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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
EU-Russia Year of Science 2014 to launch in Moscow
by Tina Costanza
25 Nov 201373 Views
Twelve months of celebrating and promoting co-operation in science and technology between the EU and Russia, the EU-Russia Year of Science 2014, kicks off at an event in Moscow today.
Throughout the next year, about 200 events across Russia and in EU member states will highlight joint achievements, successes, and the potential for future co-operation in research, innovation and higher education.
Some of those events will be dedicated events, others will include a strong focus and/or special sessions on EU-Russia co-operation on science and technology.
The EU-Russia Year of Science 2014 involves scientists, innovators, enterprises, and research organisations, as well as the greater public.
The timing of the Year of Science falls in conjunction with key related events in 2014, including, the launch of the new European Union research framework programme Horizon 2020, the renewal of the EU-Russia Science and Technology Agreement, the launch of the Russian State Programme, and the Federal Targeted Programmes for R&D.
These programmes provide the basis for a new balanced relationship in science, technology and innovation based on shared responsibility through co-funding and programme-level co-ordination, according to the European Commission.
EU-Russia flags image via Shutterstock
Related: science, EU, deals done, Russia
Tina Costanza has held senior editorial positions at daily newspapers in Ottawa and Toronto
Sky calls for outstanding women in STEM to pursue €30,000 bursary
Your next move could mean our next breakthrough
Be part of a globally successful team
Google slapped with €1.49bn EU antitrust fine over ad practices
BT Ireland and Paradyn sign 10Gbps cloud connectivity deal
How many women actually make it to senior management in the EU?
EU's controversial copyright directive will now become law after approval
More from Discovery


Intel R ICH9 Family USB2 Enhanced Host Controller - 293C is a USB Universal Serial Bus device. This Windows driver was developed by Intel. The hardware id of this driver is PCI/VEN_8086&DEV_293C.
Download the driver setup file for Intel Intel R ICH9 Family USB2 Enhanced Host Controller - 293C driver from the link below. This download link is for the driver version 8.3.0.1011 released on 2007-02-05.
This driver received an average rating of 3.5 stars out of 60240 votes.
Take a look at the list of detected driver updates. Scroll the list down until you locate the Intel Intel R ICH9 Family USB2 Enhanced Host Controller - 293C driver. Click on Update.


A world of wonder awaits. Start your journey with a three night stay at one of our luxurious city central hotels.
Stroll this magnificent city at your leisure. Situated on the banks of the River Vltava in central Bohemia, this beautiful city is rich in history and home to some of the world's most striking architectural wonders. There's no need to plan ahead – your Tour Director is on hand to take care of everything.
At the confluence of three rivers, Regensburg offers a rich tapestry of experiences, from its medieval Old Town to the Bavarian Forest on its border. Freechoice: Join the group for an enjoyable walk around Regensburg or hop on a local ferry and sail the Danube Gorge to view historic Weltenburg Abbey, where you can sample beer from one of the oldest monastic breweries in the world. Alternatively, you could take a leisurely cycle on your own to the Walhalla monument with your Tailormade GPS device.
Freechoice: Take an excursion to the medieval Czech town of Cesky Krumlov and discover its World Heritage-listed old city, or journey to Salzburg and explore the birthplace of Mozart, and the city backdrop for the film 'The Sound of Music'.
Freechoice: Be guided through Melk's magnificent 18th century Benedictine Abbey. Alternatively, if you're feeling more active, embark on an enjoyable guided bike ride along the river from Melk to one of the most enchanting villages in the region, Dürnstein – at your own pace, of course. Sundowners: As the day ends, you'll get to take in the fine views of the breathtakingly beautiful Wachau Valley. You'll be in very fine company, and can expect a wonderful ending to a magnificent day. Of course, we can't take all the credit for this one. It's nature who provides the view, we're just bringing the drinks.
Today you have options galore. Freechoice: Take a guided tour of Bratislava or Schönbrunn Palace, and witness the sheer opulence of the Habsburg Empire. Alternatively, visit the world-renowned Spanish Riding School and either tour the stables or see the famous Lipizzaner Stallions perfecting their skills during their morning exercise program. Or why not taste your way around the local market on our Shop with a Chef tour with your on board chef. Enrich: Breathe in the opulence and luxury of Palais Liechtenstein while enjoying a glass of fine Austrian Sekt. Then be enthralled by an enchanting private Viennese evening concert featuring the timeless music of Strauss and Mozart.