text:
excerpt: Anne Lauterbach and Grace Paley
COMPLETE FILM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yinwf2lkm8w
www.amazon.com/ Milestones
you can stream it here:
https://ovid.tv/details/_6044950060001
MILESTONES is a lilting, free-associative masterpiece that follows dozens of characters — including hippies, farmers, immigrants, Native Americans, and political activists — as they try to reconcile their ideals with the realities of American life. In intimate discussions of subjects from communal living to parenting, pregnancy to family, Vietnam to Cuba, city life to country life, and the workplace to the bedroom, the film's diverse protagonists negotiate jealousies, relationships, and the logistical challenges of their rapidly changing world. Shot in vivid color 16mm, using innovative, layered sound design and editing techniques as well as slides and archival footage, Milestones tracks its subjects through scripted and unscripted moments. It follows them as they share their emotions and dreams, their idealism and disillusionment, their triumphs and defeats of the past, as well as the possibilities for the future. "[MILESTONES] traverses the entire nation and marks the passing of an era… Kramer's most unforgettable expedition."—Melissa Anderson, Artforum (2011) "As sad and compassionate a movie as I have ever seen... An attempt to keep alive one of the noble, impossible promises of its time."—A.O.Scott, The New York Times (2008)
view the full 3hours and 8minutes
MILESTONES di Robert Kramer e John Douglas
Film capitale degli e sugli anni 70, Milestones (1975) è un vortice esploso di frammenti di documentario e di finzione, di società e individuo, di tensione comunitaria e ripiego nel privato, di parti filmate e materiale (spesso fotografie) di repertorio. Tutto si interseca con tutto, il Vietnam con le persecuzioni degli indiani con le vite di questi (numerosi) personaggi che vivono la propria vita discutendola e ridiscutendola.
and ICE (an early Kramer film w/NEWSREEL)
Milestones (1975)
'Milestones,' a Film on Radical Youth
By RICHARD EDER Published: October 8, 1975
If it had rained only 20 days; Noah and his passengers would have had to disembark and find a way to live in their same old water-logged country. The nineteen-sixties in America turned into the seventies. The waters of protest had seemed to rise pretty high, but when the New Left's ark grounded it was still somewhere in California.
"Milestones" is the most honest, complex and moving film exploration yet made of what has happened to the survivors of what came to be called the Movement: the young people who were radicalized by civil rights campaigning and the Vietnam war into forms of passive and sometimes active resistance.
The authors of "Milestones," Robert Kramer and John Douglas, are veteran radical film makers. They made a documentary in North Vietnam in 1969, and a year later Mr. Kramer wrote and directed "Ice," a fictional film about guerrilla warfare in the United States.
Both men remain Marxist revolutionaries, at least in theory. But the marvel of "Milestones,"which will be shown tonight and Saturday at Lincoln Center, is that it is not so much advocacy as a voyage of discovery, propelled by the author's own uncertainties.
It looks at the battered politics, the groping lifestyles, the search for meaning of a whole sector of society that has lost its revolutionary tactics and certainties but remains apart. One that lives turned inward, but uneasily, in a tangle of hope, futility, experimentation, apathy, valor and self-analysis.
The film's authors have taken more than 50 members of the Movement and shown them as they are living now: on communal farms, in burned-out squatters' premises, shared apartments, lofts, and on the road. They are experimenting with nudism, drugs, homoerotic groupings, crafts, farming, personal relationships of every conceivable size and shape, and even local radical politics.
There are dozens of sequences in which the characters talk, reminisce, discuss their problems, join and break up. The scenes are written—fictional to that extent—but they concern the real thoughts and experiences of those who enact them, and their authenticity is overwhelming.
The young prophets are older, the burnishment of five years ago—most came from a glossy upper middle class—now slightly blurred, their ideas tentative. They circle around the void left by their old commitments. The future is a bed they have slept in too long.
They are people trying to make decisions for a life whose rules they are devising at the same time. They are often tired, confused, incompetent.
There are more bright pieces in this mosaic than can possibly be mentioned. In a communal farmhouse, at sunset, a young man makes his farewells, saying vaguely "Maybe I'll visit a few middle-sized cities." Once on the road he remarks to his companion that he has had trouble relating to the friends he has just left.
A mother and her two grown daughters try to disentangle their past relationships. "You kids have a better relation to your feelings than I did. You trust them," she says.
A young man, just out of prison for helping military deserters leave the country, revisits his former comrades and makes them—all pulled slightly into their private worlds — uneasy. "There's something beautiful going on in Peter, but also he's frigid and brittle," one girl says.
Peter, the former prisoner, keeps reappearing, tentative, uncertain, a symbol of all those the film is about. He talks with a potter who finds his workshop both a haven and a prison. He talks with his doctor father—both of them are marked and gentled by the bitter differences that flared between them in the past, but they are not really closer.
The movie is full of the children of these wandering souls. They are bright, brave, overstimulated, carried too long from place to place, kept up too late too often. They would be more assured in their gypsy life if their parents had more assurance about it themselves.
"Milestones" has some flaws. It lasts three hours and a quarter, though for most of the time it is so absorbing that only in the last half-hour—a childbirth scene that seems to me seriously misjudged—does the length really tell. The complex interweaving of its characters makes for some initial confusion. One or two of its scripted sequences seem stagy.
But there are so many affecting and instructive things in it—it is a deadening and unhealthy part of American life that there has been so little news from a sector from which formerly there was so much—and it is made with such a compassionate, hilarious, and desolate eye that it must be seen.
MILESTONES, directed, photographed and written by Robert Kramer and John Douglas; produced by Barbara Stone and David C. Stone. At the New York Film Festival. Running time: 195 minutes.
Mama . . . . . Mary Chapelle
John, blind potter . . . . . John Douglas
Erika . . . . . Kalaho
Lou, with beard . . . . . Lou Ho
Helen, film maker . . . . . Grace Parey
Elizabeth, Heeln's daughter . . . . . Tina Shepherd
Karen, gives birth to Lella . . . . . Suie Solf
Joe of Joe's Bar . . . . . David C. Stone
Peter, released from prison . . . . . Paul Zimet
Robert Kramer and John Douglas interviewed
"Reclaiming our past,
reclaiming our beginning"
by G. Roy Levin
from Jump Cut, no. 10-11, 1976, pp. 6-8
copyright Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media, 1976, 2004
My interview with Robert Kramer and John Douglas took place at the Cannes Film Festival, May 17, 1975. We talked about their film, MILESTONES, which was shown there as part of the Critics' Fortnight series.
Robert Kramer, born in 1940, was one of the founders of Newsreel and has made six films: FALN, a documentary about American imperialism in Venezuela, 1966; IN THE COUNTRY, 1966, THE EDGE, 1968, and ICE, 1970, three features about the growth of the New Left; PEOPLE'S WAR, a documentary made in Vietnam at the invitation of the North Vietnamese with Douglas and Norman Fruchter, 1969; and MILESTONES, with Douglas, 1975. In 1970, he and Douglas were part of a political collective in Putney, Vermont. At present Kramer lives in California where he is completing a new film on Portugal and Angola.
John Douglas, born in 1938, was a civil rights worker for SNCC in the South in the 1960's and was one of the early members of NEWSREEL. He has made four films: STRIKE CITY, a documentary about a group of black farmers in Mississippi, 1966; SUMMER 68, a documentary about radical Movement activity in the U.S. culminating in the Chicago 68 Convention, 1968; PEOPLE'S WAR, with Kramer and Fruchter, 1969; and MILESTONES, with Kramer, 1975. At present Douglas lives in New York City.
MILESTONES was written and directed by Kramer and Douglas; produced by Barbara and David Stone; shot by Douglas; lighting by Philip Spinelli; sound by Spinelli and Jane Schwartz; research and sound editing by Marilyn Mulford. It's in l6 mm color; 195 minutes long.
LEVIN: What first gave you the idea for MILESTONES? It seems it was a film that grew organically."
DOUGLAS: It came after four or five years when we hadn't made any films at all. After working in Vermont, we got to a place where we had to look at our own lives in terms of what we were going to do. Filmmaking was something that we had been really close to and was something that we could rely on in a certain way, given the confusion of that time. We'd lived and worked together for a long time. We'd worked on PEOPLE'S WAR together with Newsreel, and that in certain ways, had been this really strong and clear period of time for us. We tried to bring together different aspects of the past period we had initially felt to be really clear and strong, and show how lives had grown through that period of time. We wanted to piece together those different parts of our lives in a way that seemed to represent a growth and development in a whole different aspect of political work.
LEVIN: Are you saying that you wanted the film to explore what had happened to you and your friends, and people like yourselves, during that period of not making films?
KRAMER: Well, yes, if you want to say that we make films out of our lives. It's like one of the characteristics of how we end up defining filmmaking for ourselves, which is that the scope of the film is the scope of our concerns. It's not like a product. We mine what we're living through. And that's been true for the other films and documentaries we've made—that they're basically concerned with whatever our experience was at that time. A lot of people say that the 70s is like a time of falling away from political militancy. There's a sense in which that's true—if the emphasis is put on the word militant, and a strong, sustained confrontation with the powers that be.
But there's another sense in which that's not true, because we came to a dead end, and it seemed as though we couldn't continue to be militant in that same way. That's to say we didn't have the stamina. We didn't have even a perspective that could carry us through. What certainly began for us was a period of time which represented a falling away from day-to-day political work as we had defined it before.
We traveled a lot, and got a better sense of what was going on around us everyday. At the same time we began to reclaim our personal history. As we got a better sense of what was going on around us every day, that was reflected in all the traveling in the film. Personally, it was the first time I had spent a lot of time traveling in the United States.
LEVIN: When you first started going around the country visiting, were you shooting?
KRAMER: No. We were just traveling, going to Glacier, stuff like that. We're really talking about this whole period when we basically stopped doing anything and weren't making a movie. We were finding ways to live, doing what we had to do to live; but we were traveling a lot, bumming around. And it wasn't always together—it was in different combinations of people. And part of that process was the splitting up of our collective and just getting out.
The second thing is the claiming of our personal histories in terms of our families. In a lot of ways—earlier—we had to find our political life in a way that cut us off, say from our parents, from our own earlier experiences which we had denied. It seemed that militant politics back then had rejected all that. And so for me anyway, it was really important to reclaim my past, and to think about the different kinds of importance that culture had, that poetry had for me—the really striking discoveries, for example, of how important the Beat Poets had been, how important Ginsberg had been for me personally. It's just that none of it fit in with our politics at the height of our activity. Then suddenly discovering that the importance of these things was way beyond the limits of the politics and culture that I had been a part of was really crucial ... and the relationship to my parents and.. even the relationship to what had been good in my education, which I had thought about only in negative terms. A lot of that is reflected in the film in the sense of families, of people trying to find ways to get back into contact with their parents—and with each other—and to explore that past.
DOUGLAS: I was rejecting my son, who was a year old at that point, and so there was a period of time that I lived with him. That was like eight or nine months of trying to piece together what hat relationship was about, because prior to hat there was no way for me to deal with that at all. There was no way to even prepare for that reality.
KRAMER: And I had been rejecting a very deep and important relationship that I had been unwilling to wrestle with in a new way. I had just been ignoring completely my sort of complete isolation.
Then the third thing is reclaiming our beginning—which is a process that's really only beginning to pick up now—beginning to reclaim our history in America, in the sense that there is an American history of opposition to imperialism that's much deeper and broader than we knew.
A concrete example is the Communist Party, which I have no special love for, but which I had no knowledge about at all during the 60s—it's just that there were very heroic periods in the party's history. And that's a history shared by zany, many other groups which had a strong and militant resistance that preceded ours—and we had arrogantly felt that we were the first ones who had said, "This is fucking shit." But now to begin to understand that we're the children of that past and there were things for us to learn from that. The reflection of that in the movie is, say, the old woman at the beginning, that immigrant history. So the film emerges out of that period.
I was in New York doing mostly aikido, which is sort of like tai chi, and we didn't have any plans, but finally we generated this script. The script doesn't have a story. It builds up from all the fragments of the things we've been doing.
DOUGLAS: It came out of people, ideas, situations that we wanted to see in the movie, people that we had lived with, had been close to.
KRAMER: Our method of working was basically we kept a file over a period of six months in which every time there was an image or a bit of dialogue or a thought or a character that appeared, we'd just put the bit of paper into the folder and never even bother to look at it. Then one day I sat down and sent John a 50-page packet, which was nothing more than these images in an arbitrary order determined in an hour by throwing them on three different piles. Then we didn't do anything for another few months, just talked about it all, and made a few more notes. Then, at a crack, we sat down and tried to do a thing some kind of film could come out of.
How much is script and how much is verite? It's hard to give percentages—but you could say that overwhelmingly the film is scripted. But the film is not cinema verite, is not a documentary, in that sense. Scenes like the old woman in the beginning aren't scripted, but we asked all the questions and we sometimes told her what we wanted her to say. And we shot enough footage so we could basically compose her. The historical footage around her doesn't relate to her at all—I mean it's not from her life. In fact it's a free mixture of some photographs from her life with material from the immigrant past.
LEVIN: Okay. The cost of the film, where the money is from, the distribution of the film, what's going to happen with that, and why and how is the film at Cannes and why are the two of you at Cannes. To take a few questions at one time.
DOUGLAS: David and Barbara Stone, whom we had worked with in Newsreel, they found $30,000 from London—where they live now. That was like a whole chunk to start making a movie with. The film finally cost maybe twice that much.
KRAMER: About the distribution—there are a lot of problems with that; the length, the content, the style. The best that we could hope for in distribution is that the film would open in New York, get good reviews there and then go to perhaps eight other major cities in the kind of theatre that could support that kind of film, and stay in those theatres for a while and do well; and then have a broad university and community distribution. Unless there was something really surprising, that's what we could hope for. The way the system is set up now, it's still based on this high regard for Europe, so in order to get into a New York theatre and make some kind of a deal, we basically have to have same kind of credentials for the film—unless we had a lot of money to buy a house, which we don't.
So you come to Europe. That's one of the traditional underground film strategies, and it's the one our distributor knows best anyway and is best suited for us. So the way it's working is real simple: Cannes is the most important festival—it's a total marketplace, and at the same time there's a high degree of critic's attention. So here we are in Cannes, and the film will open in Paris in the fall. But the most important things are the reviews that come out of Cannes and the possibility that it will go into something like the New York Film Festival—which we don't know about yet—and then right from there into a New York theatre.
[MILESTONES was subsequently in the New York Film Festival—GRL]
So that's the reason the film is in Cannes. And the reason we're in Cannes is our pact with the film. Basically it's a personal favor to Barbara and David (Stone). It's been very interesting, because we've had a very privileged existence as filmmakers: we've been in a position where we haven't had to raise the money that much ourselves; we've been lucky to have producers, distributors who have supported us down the line, and we haven't had much relationship with the whole machinery that makes the film industry run. So though I feel that it's terrible here—it's almost unredeemed at any level—it's been very important to be here. At one point it was explained to us that our being here was like another 50,000 admissions in Paris.
DOUGLAS: It's part of the reality of getting a film distributed on this level, which we haven't taken on in that way in the past.
KRAMER: Another thing that's sort of related to that: one of the characteristics of the people in the film is that they're not actually connected to society, or to the economic base of society in a clearly definable way. They have jobs and everything else, but they have an almost lumpen lifestyle in which they drift. In a sense that's true for us as filmmakers in that we haven't had any relationship either to the financing or the distribution of these films, although we did in the case of Newsreel. Now the other step is that we don't have a relationship to the world of filmmakers. I don't know many. filmmakers, John doesn't know many. In the last five years we have not talked to filmmakers. And one of the things that's come up here is the question of what is our responsibility as filmmakers.
DOUGLAS: Each of us tried to talk with filmmakers before we left the country, because in our past experiences we had been connected to a political group of filmmakers, and the work on this film has been in incredible isolation.
LEVIN: One of the things implicit in what you've been saying is that before, when you made films. for Newsreel, there was an alternate distribution system, and now, in effect, what you've done is gone over to a commercial distribution system. What do you see in the implications of that switch?
KRAMER: It's not quite the case, because Newsreel was actually supported by commercial distribution. From the very start, Barbara and David Stone had the knowledge to place Newsreel films in theatres in these eight cities, to move them in universities. It's not strictly like a commercial distribution, but it's definitely in the l6mm market—and also in Europe. So the hidden financing of Newsreel was the ability to actually move the films commercially. And we therefore were able to spend all our time on non-commercial distribution, on what you could call political distribution.
Can we make films that will really say what we want to say, and can they really go into theatres, and can we do even better than MILESTONES? I mean, hasn't MILESTONES raised the question for us of still holding back, the obscurity of the form, that there seem to be ways to open that material to other people in another film? The problem, very simply, for me, is that if we're going to be filmmakers and we do films all the time, somehow we can solve those problems. But if films serve the function of coming up every three or four years as a way of assessing all the material that we've lived through, and sorting it out in that way, we won't be able to do it.
LEVIN: Have you made any decisions about future plans, about whether you're going to be fulltime filmmakers or whether you're going to go on being politically involved people who sometimes make films?
KRAMER: We don't have any real plans. What is clear is that it would be terrific if we were invited to the Republic of South Vietnam now, and we were able either to assist them, or ourselves make a film, say in a small village, which actually documented in some detail the incredible upheaval of people actually being able to take power into their own hands, it would be such an amazing film to make and it would be such a joy to be any part of something like that. But that's like out there, and the reality of it is that we don't have any plans—or that I don't have any plans.
DOUGLAS: At this point I feel we really want to find some way to continue to work on films for some period of time. That was part of the commitment to work on this film—which I don't see as an isolated film—but tine to really explore that as a commitment. No so much in terms of my making films, but really trying to see how we can continue to work on films, and to find a group of people to work on films that need to be made at this point.
LEVIN: The earlier films were propaganda films, they wanted to make a point, to say that America did this, that or the other thing, as in Vietnam, and that this was bad news. The political purpose in that sense is not clear in this film, MILESTONES, and presumably you're still interested in those same political problems, and in that same political way of dealing with life and making films. So, in what way do you see MILESTONES as being politically relevant?
KRAMER: The way into it in this case is somehow through people's lives, through people's lived experiences in the attempt to expose the choices that we've made and what they mean within the context of America right now. That's important political work. Now there are a lot of different questions. One of them is like the particular class of the people involved: basically déclassé middle class people. I mean they're for the most part white In white America, and the choice to focus on them is again a choice to say that we're going to make a film about the reality that we know. If we claimed the film was a political declaration, then we'd be in a lot of trouble, because we haven't filled out the whole spectrum.
DOUGLAS: I think it's interesting that when we finished MILESTONES that the Vietnamese were victorious, simultaneously; it's coincidence. I feel that we're now pushed into a whole new space, that we were pushed into a whole new space a couple of years ago in relationship to like seeing how we could identify and work clearly politically.
But the trouble spots were our lives, our reality and our relationship to the society. And I think that in a lot of ways that that's one thing the film really, really makes clear—the real isolation, the incredible inability to be clear about what those choices should be; but at the same time talk about the real problems that people have to deal with and solve in their own lives. In other words, it was the first time that we had been able to deal with that, and not just in our film, but even in our own lives on a certain level. So I think of the film as valuable, as honest to the extent that it opens up some of the real and deeper problems of our lives.
LEVIN: It also relates to what you said at the conference after the showing of the film the other night, that when you made films for Newsreel, you made films within a political structure, and that now you have no political structure, and you're making films simply as private persons who have to make personal decisions as to the film. Isn't that problem in making the film in effect one of the problems presented in the film?
DOUGLAS: That's right.
KRAMER: But it's all one piece, sc that basically, dependent on the mood we were in, if you ask what's the political significance of the film, we might say, we make no claims for its political significance because the space that it grew out of was the space in which that was the basic question—what is the political significance of our lives? And that's the guilt that basically everyone in the film experiences at one level or another.
DOUGLAS: The openness of the dialogue in the film, the dialogue between two people, constantly, could be almost a dialogue between the two filmmakers because of their isolation.
KRAMER: And the clear politics that grew out of the 70's couldn't be carried forward because of our own limitations. It's the responsibility of revolutionaries to claim all the good things in the world, in the revolution, not to make lives that rule it out, not to say, you can't have beautiful films, for example. You can have beautiful films and be a revolutionary. It was an error of Newsreel to believe that to proletarianize was to uglify.
There's a wonderful thing in a book on Cuba, an argument very early in the revolution because America had withdrawn all of the glass producing materials, about what should Cuban glass look like. The first thing they came up with were all kinds of pissy yellow, and it was one position in the Central Committee—it became a Central Committee issue—that that was fine because there were a lot of other things that had to be done. But Che took the position that revolution is not about ugliness and they carried on through—it was a specific technological problem—until they had finally produced a kind of glass that didn't turn everything into this milky, unappetizing sort of thing.
LEVIN: In the late 60's and early 70's there seemed to be a clear crisis situation, and there seemed to be something to focus on, work toward, and it seemed as if people were really moving forward, changing things. But that focus seems to be lost now, dispersed. In a sense a lot of that movement and the ideas have been co-opted, right? And our politics don't seem to be anywhere near as clear as they were. What a lot of people seen to have ended up with is a personal life style. It's not meant as a reproach, but I don't see that the film deals with that.
KRAMER: I don't agree with that. It seems to me that in a certain sense there is far more crisis in America than ever before, that imperialism has entered its final crisis, and that we're going to be called upon to carry out much clearer tasks now. The second thing is that I think we have a better politics now than we ever had before, that we're at the beginning of a really rich anti-imperialist politics. And I think that elements of that politics are in the film. What's missing in the film is the specific struggle against the state, and it's absolutely true that that's a failure of the film—there's no question about it.
I guess it's not there because it took the making of the film to realize what had fallen out of our lives—and one of the sections is all about that. But I think it's still wrong to think that the film doesn't address that, because what the film describes is the situation where people choose not to make that fight. It's a small investigation about a large group of people in the United States who have been a very important force over the last fifteen years.
And I think that one of the things that the film also reflects is a real attempt to change the idea of who our friends and enemies are—and that really has to be a foundation of our politics. That's why you really need a creative Marxism-Leninism. You need a scientific tool, the beginning of some kind of mechanism for actually being able to dissect a situation so you can figure out in some objective way who you should be working with and who you shouldn't be working with. And the answer becomes that you should be basically working with almost everybody and hating very few people.
After so many years of struggle, the revolutionary government comes into Saigon and declares amnesty for everybody except for a very, very few. That's really a tremendous lesson. It's not just about forgiveness or humility, it's about science, an understanding that people can change.
Directed by Robert Kramer and John Douglas
US 1975, 16mm, b/w and color, 195 min.
With Mary Chapelle, Grace Paley, Susie Solf
Milestones is a richly observed, many faceted portrait of those individuals who sought radical solutions to social problems in the United States during the 1960s and 1970s. The film cuts back and forth between six major story lines and more than fifty characters as it scans across a vast American landscape to explore the lifestyles and attitudes of those survivors of the American left who faced both personal and political transitions in the period following the Vietnam War. The filmmakers touch on such subjects as black and Native American rights, on the readjustment experiences of a Vietnam veteran and an ex-convict, on parent-child relations and the family, and on sexual alternatives, communal farming, drugs, and regional politics.
Pauline Kael Reviews
US (1975): Drama
195 min, No rating, Color
An acted-out cross-section view of what the young radicals of the 60s are doing in the 70s--how they're trying to find a revolutionary way of life. It's so long (195 minutes) and so miserably structured that the viewer can't tell who is living with whom, or where, or what the economic base of any of the groups is. The directors, Robert Kramer and John Douglas (who also wrote and edited the film), cut back and forth among people living in communes and burned-out apartments and on the road, who talk about their feelings, and the need to be open about those feelings, in banal, strangely indirect, and abstract terms. It's all so maundering and haphazard that it looks like an after-apocalypse movie; this is certainly part of the point, but we never get to understand what the directors' principles of selection were. With Douglas playing a blind potter, Grace Paley playing a filmmaker, and David C. Stone as Joe, of Joe's Bar.
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-ca-second-look-20111211,0,5572894.story
A Second Look
By Dennis Lim, Special to the Los Angeles Times
Before he made it, the great radical filmmaker Robert Kramer described "Milestones," the 1975 epic of post-counterculture America that he co-directed with John Douglas, as "the last film." "Everything has to be in it," Kramer said. "All the play of the heart. All the fullness of feeling."
True to his promise, "Milestones," newly available on DVD through Icarus Films, contains multitudes. In a film that stretches and sprawls and often seems to overflow its bounds, dozens of characters around the country ó on communes, in cities, on the road, starting families, finding work, reintegrating into society after time in prison ó wrestle with what it means to live in the hangover of their dashed utopian aspirations.
Kramer was one of the founding members of the Newsreel collective, a major force in the production of antiwar agitprop during the Vietnam War. ("People's War," one of their better-known films, depicts the conflict from the perspective of the North Vietnamese.)
The Icarus two-disc set includes an earlier film, "Ice" (1969), and even in the '60s, Kramer's picture of his radical-left brethren was never idealistic or straightforward, and often clear-eyed and critical. A near-future thriller with the textures of cinÈma vÈritÈ, "Ice" is set in a dystopian America that is at war with Mexico. As a band of guerrilla fighters gets ready to wage an armed insurgency in New York City, the film dwells on the divisions among its members and the thickening climate of paranoid infighting.
Kramer moved back and forth between fiction and documentary, and frequently blurred the two modes. "Milestones," which he and Douglas dedicated to the North Vietnamese and based on their experiences living on a commune in Vermont in the early '70s, has elements of documentary (an on-camera birth, for one thing) but was largely scripted. Some of the nonprofessional actors appear essentially as themselves, while others adopt personas (the activist and writer Grace Paley plays a filmmaker named Helen).
In Cahiers du CinÈma, the critic Serge Daney termed it the "anti-'Nashville,'" referring to the Robert Altman film of the same year that employs a similar tapestry structure (Daney accused Altman of treating his characters as "contemptible fauna, a derisory Southern zoo"). In its attention to the flux of moment-to-moment experience and the sense of being plunged into unfolding lives ó scenes beginning and ending in medias res ó "Milestones" often recalls the films of John Cassavetes.
To watch "Ice" and "Milestones" is often to feel somewhat adrift and unmoored, and this is part of Kramer's political point, the terms of engagement he sets for the viewer. With their large networks of characters and their searching, open-ended forms, these are films that insist on the unpredictability and complexity of life as it is lived. The experience of watching them ó making our way, without clear narrative signposts, through unresolved conversations and events whose significance often remain elusive ó mirrors the experience of its characters.
A few years after completing "Milestones," Kramer moved to France, where he was a critical favorite, and where he lived until his death in 1999. He returned to Vietnam to make "Starting Place" (1993), a portrait of postwar Hanoi, and to the States for another epic, the allegorical road movie "Route One/USA" (1989).
It is hard to overstate the importance of "Milestones" as a time capsule, a definitive chronicle of the end ó and the legacy ó of the '60s. The questions it raises about the tensions between the individual and the group were especially urgent at a historical moment when the ideals of collective action and resistance were colliding with the realities of the Me Decade.
Times have changed, but those questions remain. As one of the characters in "Milestones" puts it, "Revolution's not just a series of incidents but a whole life." The central concern of Robert Kramer's cinema ó how to reconcile the personal and the political, or in other words, how to live a meaningful life ó is a timeless one.
http://blogs.indiewire.com/tedhope/archives/guest_post_wanda_bershen_red_diaper_productions/
Milestones in others' words
by Bill Horrigan
from Jump Cut, no. 10-11, 1976, pp. 9-10
Judging from the comparatively scant attention paid to MILESTONES in this country, one might be surprised to learn of the extensive coverage it received in France following its Cannes showing last year. Those so inclined could argue this is simply the latest installment in a long series if discredited U.S. phenomena being rescued from neglect and rehabilitated by the French (Jerry Lewis being a notorious example). But in this instance, to leave it at that would be to ignore the particular inhering irony—an irony deriving from the fact that MILESTONES is at least an attempted meditation on, and engagement with, an historically specific culture that is distinctly U.S..
MILESTONES has failed to redound to much consequence in its native land. One can interpret this as evidence of the United States' mistreating its artists as usual, or as evidence of the film's generally inept political analysis, or indeed as any type of evidence, depending on one's sympathies. The readings it has received in France—I am here referring especially but not exclusively to the lengthy discussion of it inCahiers du Cinéma, nos. 258-59—have been ones that begin by noting that the radical movement, its traces and its ruins, dealt with in the film has no previse equivalent in Western Europe. Yet MILESTONES' status as exemplary political film is to a large extent based on an unquestioned faith in the documentary veracity of what Kramer and Douglas have presented.
While such cultural relativism may not necessarily be an absolute liability (after all, the auteur theory, virtues and limits aside, emerged from a comparable misunderstanding of actual Hollywood procedure), with MILESTONES one can argue that it is, in fact, of some consequence. The film pretends to nonfiction about a political environment that claims a unique legacy and practice. While a U.S. audience expresses ideological dissatisfaction based on the distance between Kramer and Douglas' rendering of the "truth," the French audience evidently feels no such impulse, having, precisely, no assurance that things are otherwise than as given in the film.
It is one thing to acknowledge that a sizeable portion of the global population believed the United States to be exactly as Hollywood had self interestedly fabricated it. But one operates in a different register with MILESTONES, since its achievement is assumed to reside not simply in its depictions, but in the exemplary nature of what is depicted. What is scarcely acknowledged in most of the French criticism is the nature of the reference. This criticism focuses instead on artistic mediation principally on the level of narrative structure, with minimum doubt expressed as to the accuracy of the scenes from political lives sketched by Kramer and Douglas.
Nearly every French film journal that reviewed the film did so in favorable terms, though characteristically praise is offered up with only the most cursory comments on the political line maintained by the film. In describing what is, if it is nothing else, a self-styled political film, this amounts to a rather serious omission.
Positif, nos. 171-72, for example, traditionally sympathetic to Hollywood cinema, could be talking about any favored auteur's latest masterpiece:
"No other extreme-left radical movement, in any other country, has produced an equivalent of this film, at once exemplary and inimitable. Kramer's latest work confirms his place in the front ranks of those searching for a new language with which to articulate their humane and political points... In a sense the most exemplary metaphor (and in all of Kramer's work) is that of the clay the potter fashions... MILESTONES does not surprise those who already know Kramer's work."
The film itself is thus absorbed into a discussion of its position and significance in the context of the directors' careers.
Generally, both Positif and Écran 75, no. 42, are trading in abstractions, and the reviews fail to recognize the points at which the film becomes problematic both cinematically and politically. It is less surprising when, to choose two less than random examples, Le Monde and Le Nouvel Observateur fail likewise. The following quotation, undifferentiating and romantic, could have been taken equally from either of the film magazines instead of La Monde, its actual source:
"It grows like a cell, expanding with its own vital intensity.... It flows like a great river swollen by st


text:
Q: Configurable significance for numbers in java's String.format()? I'm tasked with writing function to format a set (coordinate) of doubles with a configurable significance. I now have:
public String dPath(int sign) {
    return String.format ("%s %." + sign + "f %." + sign + "f", prefix, this.x, this.y);
}

which works:
Movement m = new Movement(3.14159265, 2.7654321);
Assert.assertEquals("m 3.142 2.765", m.dPath(3));

Is it possible to do it without String concatenation? Current implementation looks a bit unnatural, but that may also be attributed to the unnatural use case?

A: Just for good measure.
return String.format(String.format("%%s %%.%df %%.%df", sign, sign),
        prefix, this.x, this.y);

A: Maybee something like this?
public String dPath(int sign)
{
    String pattern = "%s %.signf %.signf";
    pattern = pattern.replaceAll("sign", String.valueOf(sign));
    return String.format(pattern, prefix, this.x, this.y);
}

A: One could use a MessageFormat, with for numbers a separate NumberFormat. The code is a bit much, but one nice aspect is the localisation: thousands separators, a decimal comma for French, and so on.
MessageFormat format = new MessageFormat("{0, string} {1, number} {2, number}");
if (0 > sign || sign > 10) {
    sign = 3;
}
DecimalFormat decF = new DecimalFormat(".##########".substring(0, sign + 1);
format.setFormatByArgumentIndex(1, decF);
format.setFormatByArgumentIndex(2, decF);
return format.format(prefix, this.x, this.y);

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


A Burntwood man is celebrating his 91st birthday with millions of people on Twitter and Facebook after a photo of him went viral this week.
Fred Wright, who was 91 yesterday (Monday 14th August), was snapped enjoying his birthday cake when he attended the St Giles Computer Social Group last week.
He's attended the group, which meets at the Lichfield hospice, for a year or so and is the oldest member, said St Giles Community Engagement manager Ian Leech.
"Fred's a fantastic example of someone who is still learning in their tenth decade so it seems a brilliant opportunity to show that on social media," he said.
"We expected maybe a hundred likes on Facebook and some retweets but we really didn't expect the response we got!
Twitter analytics show that Fred's picture has reached more than 5 million people and has been retweeted more than 43,000 times and on Facebook has been liked 2700 times and shared more than 2000 times.
Messages have come from across the globe and he's had birthday messages from Boy George, Janice Long and Barbara Dickinson, plus a host of others.
He's even got his own hashtag #MakeFredFamous which has been picked up by hundreds of Tweeters.
Fred celebrated his birthday with family but is looking forward to catching up with the computer club to see just how far his photo has reached.
Fred's technology journey started when a family member bought him a tablet and he joined the computer group to get online.
"I spotted a story in the local paper about the group and decided to go along and it's been lovely to learn so much and to be part of the group, which is really friendly," he said.
"I never expected to be famous like this though but it's great to be able to help the club and the hospice.
"I use the internet for things like YouTube – I love opera and follow singers on there and as an artist, I enjoy watching other artists paint.
St Giles CEO Emma Hodges said the response to #makefredfamous was phenomenal and really demonstrated the positive impact of social media.
"Our volunteer led computer group encourages local people to come together, chat, learn and make new friends," she said.
"Fred's story really shows that it's never too late to start learning and we've seen so many positive stories shared about older people engaging with technology.


text:
"); $('ul#mobile_menu').addClass('added-class'); ddp_menu_3_socials = ' '; // ddp_menu_3_socials = ddp_menu_3_socials.replace(/"/g,'/"'); $("
"+ ddp_menu_3_socials +"
").insertBefore('.et_mobile_menu > li:first-of-type'); }, 1000); })(jQuery);
JENNIFER DEGL
AUTHOR, SPEAKER, MATERNAL & NEONATAL HEALTH ADVOCATE
Latest Release!
Many children want to know their birth stories
and ask questions like:
1. How big was I when I was born?
2. Can I see a picture of me after I was born?
These questions can be difficult to answer when your baby was born prematurely.
I was Small, But Now I'm Tall is an engaging book for a child who was born prematurely, telling the tale of their earliest days in life in simple terms that kids can relate to. It tells the story of a baby that was born much too early and spent many months in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). This premature baby, like many others, overcame the obstacles that threatened her survival and grew into a strong child.
ORDER your copy now!
Praise & Reviews
"I Was Small But Now I'm Tall is a wonderful book showing how one child overcame numerous challenges and emerged victoriously. This feel-good story may help other children born prematurely or others struggling with challenges. Author Jennifer Degl offers encouragement for children and their parents who may be experiencing problems reaching milestones like other growing children. I like the comparisons of her size – "And I weighed 2 ounces less than a basketball" – so people get a true feeling of how small and light she really was. Imagine holding a baby in the palm of your hand. Children will love the rhyming words, while parents will enjoy the subtle messages."
— Reader's Favorite
"I Was Small, But Now I'm Tall is a much needed book to help our preemie children to understand how far they have come. Well done!"
— Kristy Love, Executive Director, National Perinatal Association
"I Was Small, But Now I'm Tall, is the second children's book written by Jennifer Degl, who once again succeeds at bringing comforting words and insurmountable hope to families who experience the trauma of delivering a fragile and premature baby. It will be a treasured story for hundreds of parents and children for years to come, and undoubtedly will be on my recommended reading list for the NICU families I care for".
— Sara Mosher, President of Patient+Family Care, NICU Nurse
"With its whimsical illustrations, I Was Small, But Now I'm Tall provides a fun way for parents to share their own stories of concern and caring with their growing NICU baby. Families will enjoy reading this book with their former preemie, and celebrating the life they share today."
— Sue Hall MD, MSW, Neonatologist, Author, Advocate
Other books by Jennifer Degl
Stuck in Bed
2018 Purple Dragonfly Book Award Recipient and
2019 Mom's Choice Awards® Gold Recipient
"Stuck in Bed: The pregnancy bed rest picture book for kids … and moms" is a book about pregnancy bed rest from a child's perspective. Kids ask a lot of questions, and this mom answers them with optimism and excitement. She reassures her son that although things will be different for a little while, the two of them can have a lot of fun in the meantime!
From Hope to Joy
From Hope to Joy: A Memoir of a Mother's Determination and Her Micro Preemie's Struggle to Beat the Odds In this gripping memoir, Jennifer Degl brings her readers on an emotional roller coaster: from the decision to get pregnant despite warnings from her doctors—and nearly dying four times during her pregnancy—to the birth of her daughter, Joy, seventeen weeks early, and this tiny baby's fight to survive.
© 2021 Jennifer Degl. All rights reserved. Powered by 1106Design

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
====================
A Simple EC2 Example
====================

First, let's look at how we could call the ``DescribeInstances`` operation
of the ``EC2`` service in an interactive Python session::

    >>> import botocore.session
    >>> session = botocore.session.get_session()
    >>> ec2 = session.get_service('ec2')
    >>> operation = ec2.get_operation('DescribeInstances')
    >>> ec2.region_names
    [u'us-east-1',
     u'ap-northeast-1',
     u'eu-west-1',
     u'ap-southeast-1',
     u'us-west-2',
     u'us-west-1',
     u'sa-east-1']
    >>> endpoint = ec2.get_endpoint('us-east-1')
    >>> http_response, response_data = operation.call(endpoint)
    >>> http_response
    <Response [200]>
    >>> response_data
    {u'Reservations': [{u'Groups': [{u'GroupId': u'sg-4e970e7e',
       u'GroupName': u'notebook'}],
     u'Instances': [{u'AmiLaunchIndex': 0,
       u'Architecture': u'x86_64',
       u'BlockDeviceMappings': [{u'DeviceName': u'/dev/sda1',
         u'Ebs': {u'AttachTime': u'2012-10-16T20:00:21.000Z',
          u'DeleteOnTermination': True,
          u'Status': u'attached',
          u'VolumeId': u'vol-bc71579a'}}],
       u'ClientToken': '',
       u'EbsOptimized': False,
       u'Hypervisor': u'xen',
       u'ImageId': u'ami-30fe7300',
       u'InstanceId': u'i-fde9cece',
       u'InstanceType': u'm1.small',
       u'KernelId': u'aki-98e26fa8',
       u'KeyName': u'aws_mitch',
       u'LaunchTime': u'2012-10-16T20:00:13.000Z',
       u'Monitoring': {u'State': u'disabled'},
       u'NetworkInterfaces': [],
       u'Placement': {u'AvailabilityZone': u'us-west-2a',
         u'GroupName': '',
         u'Tenancy': u'default'},
       u'PrivateDnsName': u'ip-10-248-19-167.us-west-2.compute.internal',
       u'PrivateIpAddress': u'10.248.19.167',
       u'ProductCodes': [],
       u'PublicDnsName': u'ec2-54-245-81-77.us-west-2.compute.amazonaws.com',
       u'PublicIpAddress': u'54.245.81.77',
       u'RootDeviceName': u'/dev/sda1',
       u'RootDeviceType': u'ebs',
       u'SecurityGroups': [{u'GroupId': u'sg-4e970e7e',
         u'GroupName': u'notebook'}],
       u'State': {u'Code': 16, u'Name': u'running'},
       u'StateTransitionReason': '',
       u'Tags': [{u'Key': u'notebook', u'Value': ''}],
       u'VirtualizationType': u'paravirtual'}],
     u'OwnerId': u'419278470775',
     u'ReservationId': u'r-9b4f3ca8'}],
    u'requestId': u'4b056261-922b-4ce1-a739-1af345ada6f7'}
    >>>

The first thing we do is import the :py:mod:`botocore.session` module and then
create a :py:class:`botocore.session.Session` object.  The ``Session`` object
provides the main interface into the :py:mod:`botocore` module.

Once we have a :py:class:`botocore.session.Session` object we use it to
find the :py:class:`botocore.service.Service` object which represents
the ``EC2`` service.

Then, we use the service object to lookup the
:py:class:`botocore.operation.Operation` object for ``DescribeInstances``.  We
also look up the :py:class:`botocore.endpoint.Endpoint` object that
represents the HTTP endpoint we use for this service in the desired region.

Finally, we call the operation using the
:py:meth:`botocore.operation.Operation.call` method.  This method takes the
:py:class:`botocore.endpoint.Endpoint` object as the first parameter and
then accepts any number of keyword arguments that will be passed on to the
service as parameters of this operation.

The ``call`` method returns a tuple.  The first element of the tuple is
the ``http_response`` object.  The ``botocore`` module uses the
`requests <http://docs.python-requests.org/en/latest/>`_ package to
handle the HTTP layer so this will be a normal
`Response object from requests <http://docs.python-requests.org/en/latest/api/#requests.Response>`_.  The second element is the data from the
service request in the form of standard Python data structures.

If we wanted to pass in some parameters to ``DescribeInstances``, say a
``filter``, it would look like this::

    >>> http_response, response_data = operation.call(endpoint, filters=[{'name': 'instance-state-name', 'values':['pending']}])
    >>> response_data
    {u'Reservations': [], u'requestId': u'41d17b1d-e0c7-4d44-b856-eab8e706389e'}
    >>>

In this case, there are no instances in the ``pending`` state so no results
are returned.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


Oregon Health and Science University, OR 97239 USA.
University of Washington, WA 98195 USA; University of Washington, WA 98195 USA.
Linköping University, Department of Clinical and Experimental Medicine, Division of Cell Biology. Linköping University, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences. Oregon Health and Science University, OR 97239 USA.
Low-frequency hearing is critically important for speech and music perception, but no mechanical measurements have previously been available from inner ears with intact low-frequency parts. These regions of the cochlea may function in ways different from the extensively studied high-frequency regions, where the sensory outer hair cells produce force that greatly increases the sound-evoked vibrations of the basilar membrane. We used laser interferometry in vitro and optical coherence tomography in vivo to study the low-frequency part of the guinea pig cochlea, and found that sound stimulation caused motion of a minimal portion of the basilar membrane. Outside the region of peak movement, an exponential decline in motion amplitude occurred across the basilar membrane. The moving region had different dependence on stimulus frequency than the vibrations measured near the mechanosensitive stereocilia. This behavior differs substantially from the behavior found in the extensively studied high-frequency regions of the cochlea.
Oregon Health and Science University, OR 97239 USA; Oregon Health and Science University, OR 97239 USA.
Oregon Health and Science University, OR 97239 USA; University of Michigan, MI 48105 USA.
Sound processing in the inner ear involves separation of the constituent frequencies along the length of the cochlea. Frequencies relevant to human speech (100 to 500 Hz) are processed in the apex region. Among mammals, the guinea pig cochlear apex processes similar frequencies and is thus relevant for the study of speech processing in the cochlea. However, the requirement for extensive surgery has challenged the optical accessibility of this area to investigate cochlear processing of signals without significant intrusion. A simple method is developed to provide optical access to the guinea pig cochlear apex in two directions with minimal surgery. Furthermore, all prior vibration measurements in the guinea pig apex involved opening an observation hole in the otic capsule, which has been questioned on the basis of the resulting changes to cochlear hydrodynamics. Here, this limitation is overcome by measuring the vibrations through the unopened otic capsule using phase-sensitive Fourier domain optical coherence tomography. The optically and surgically advanced method described here lays the foundation to perform minimally invasive investigation of speech-related signal processing in the cochlea. (C) The Authors. Published by SPIE under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Hearing depends on sound-evoked deflections of the stereocilia that protrude from the sensory hair cells in the inner ear. Although sound provides an important force driving stereocilia, forces generated through mechanically sensitive ion channels and through the motor protein prestin have been shown to influence stereocilia motion in solitary hair cells. While a possible influence of prestin on mechanically sensitive ion channels has not been systematically investigated, a decrease in transducer currents is evident in solitary hair cells when prestin is blocked with salicylate, raising the question of whether a reduced prestin activity or salicylate itself affected the mechanotransduction apparatus. We used two- and three-dimensional time-resolved confocal imaging to visualize outer hair cell stereocilia during sound stimulation in the apical turn of cochlear explant preparations from the guinea pig. Surprisingly, following application of salicylate, outer hair cell stereocilia deflections increased, while cochlear microphonic potentials decreased. However, when prestin activity was altered with the chloride ionophore tributyltin, both the cochlear microphonic potential and the stereocilia deflection amplitude decreased. Neither positive nor negative current stimulation abolished the bundle movements in the presence of salicylate, indicating that the observed effects did not depend on the endocochlear potential. These data suggest that salicylate may alter the mechanical properties of stereocilia, decreasing their bending stiffness.
Oregon Health and Science University, OR 97201 USA.
Johns Hopkins University, MD 21218 USA.
The exceptional sensitivity of mammalian hearing organ is attributed to an outer hair cell-mediated active process, where forces produced by sensory cells boost sound-induced vibrations, making soft sounds audible. This process is thought to be local, with each section of the hearing organ capable of amplifying sound-evoked movement, and nearly instantaneous, since amplification can work for sounds at frequencies up to 100 kHz in some species. To test these precepts, we developed a method for focally stimulating the living hearing organ with light. Light pulses caused intense and highly damped mechanical responses followed by traveling waves that developed with considerable delay. The delayed response was identical to movements evoked by click-like sounds. A physiologically based mathematical model shows that such waves engage the active process, enhancing hearing sensitivity. The experiments and the theoretical analysis show that the active process is neither local nor instantaneous, but requires mechanical waves traveling from the cochlear base toward its apex.
Exposure to loud sounds can lead to both permanent and short term changes in auditory sensitivity. Permanent hearing loss is often associated with gross changes in cochlear morphology including the loss of hair cells and auditory nerve fibers while the mechanisms of short term threshold shifts are much less well understood and may vary at different locations across the cochlea. Previous reports suggest that exposure to loud sounds leads to a decrease in the cochlear microphonic potential and in the stiffness of the organ of Corti. Because the cochlear microphonic reflects changes in the membrane potential of the hair cells, this suggests that hair-bundle motion should be reversibly altered following exposure to loud sounds. Using an in vitro preparation of the guinea pig temporal bone we investigate changes in the micro-mechanical response near the cochlear apex following a brief (up to 10 - 20 minutes) exposure to loud (similar to 120 dB) tones near the best frequency at this location. We use time-resolved confocal imaging to record the motion of outer hair cell bundles before and after acoustic overstimulation. We have also recorded larger-scale structural views of the organ of Corti before and after exposure to the loud sound. Conventional electrophysiological techniques are used measure the cochlear microphonic potential. As has been previously reported, following acoustic overexposure the cochlear microphonic declines in value and typically recovers on the order of 30 - 60 minutes. Hair-bundle trajectories are affected following the loud sound and typically recover on a somewhat faster time scale than the microphonic potential, although the results vary considerably across preparations. Preliminary results also suggest reversible changes in the hair cells resting potential following the loud sound.
Yamashita, T., Hakizimana, P., Wu, S., Hassan, A., Jacob, S., Temirov, J., . . . Zuo, J. (2015). Outer Hair Cell Lateral Wall Structure Constrains the Mobility of Plasma Membrane Proteins. PLOS Genetics, 11(9), Article ID e1005500.
St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, Memphis, Tennessee, United States of America.
Linköping University, Department of Clinical and Experimental Medicine, Division of Neuro and Inflammation Science. Linköping University, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences. Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden; Karolinska University Hospital, Stockholm, Sweden.
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California, United States of America.
St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, Memphis, Tennessee, United States of America; University of Brigthon, Brighton, United Kingdom.
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California,United States of America.
Linköping University, Department of Clinical and Experimental Medicine, Division of Cell Biology. Linköping University, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences. Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden; Karolinska University Hospital, Stockholm, Sweden.
Nature's fastest motors are the cochlear outer hair cells (OHCs). These sensory cells use a membrane protein, Slc26a5 (prestin), to generate mechanical force at high frequencies, which is essential for explaining the exquisite hearing sensitivity of mammalian ears. Previous studies suggest that Slc26a5 continuously diffuses within the membrane, but how can a freely moving motor protein effectively convey forces critical for hearing? To provide direct evidence in OHCs for freely moving Slc26a5 molecules, we created a knockin mouse where Slc26a5 is fused with YFP. These mice and four other strains expressing fluorescently labeled membrane proteins were used to examine their lateral diffusion in the OHC lateral wall. All five proteins showed minimal diffusion, but did move after pharmacological disruption of membrane-associated structures with a cholesterol-depleting agent and salicylate. Thus, our results demonstrate that OHC lateral wall structure constrains the mobility of plasma membrane proteins and that the integrity of such membrane-associated structures are critical for Slc26a5's active and structural roles. The structural constraint of membrane proteins may exemplify convergent evolution of cellular motors across species. Our findings also suggest a possible mechanism for disorders of cholesterol metabolism with hearing loss such as Niemann-Pick Type C diseases.
Objectives Questionnaire studies suggest that hearing is declining among young adults. However, few studies have examined the reliability of hearing questionnaires among young adult subjects. This study examined the associations between pure tone audiometrically assessed (PTA) hearing loss and questionnaire responses in young to middle aged adults. Materials and Methods A cross-sectional study using questionnaire and screening PTA (500 through 6000 Hz) data from 15322 Swedish subjects (62% women) aged 18 through 50 years. PTA hearing loss was defined as a hearing threshold above 20 dB in both ears at one or more frequencies. Data were analysed with chi-square tests, nonlinear regression, binary logistic regression, and the generalized estimating equation (GEE) approach. Results The prevalence of PTA hearing loss was 6.0% in men and 2.9% in women (p less than 0.001). Slight hearing impairment was reported by 18.5% of the men and 14.8% of the women (p less than 0.001), whereas 0.5% of men and women reported very impaired hearing. Using multivariate GEE modelling, the odds ratio of PTA hearing loss was 30.4 (95% CI, 12.7-72.9) in men and 36.5 (17.2-77.3) in women reporting very impaired hearing. The corresponding figures in those reporting slightly impaired hearing were 7.06 (5.25-9.49) in men and 8.99 (6.38-12.7) in women. These values depended on the sound stimulus frequency (p = 0.001). The area under the ROC curve was 0.904 (0.892-0.915) in men and 0.886 (0.872-0.900) in women. Conclusions Subjective hearing impairment predicted clinically assessed hearing loss, suggesting that there is cause for concern as regards the future development of hearing in young to middle-aged people.
The precise mechanical behavior of the basilar membrane (BM) at low frequencies is still unknown. To address this issue we use an in vitro preparation of the guinea pig temporal bone to investigate the mechanical behaviour of the organ of Corti at the apex of the cochlea. Confocal laser interferometry is used to record the nanometre displacements of both Hensens cells (HeC) and the BM in response to sound and electrical stimulation. We show that at low frequencies, the BM exhibits greatly reduced sound-evoked movement (similar to 35dB less) and no current-evoked movement, when compared to the HeC at the same position along the spiral. The BM best frequency is found to be an average of 52Hz (0.35 octave) higher than the HeC best frequency. In addition, we demonstrate that BM motion is not affected by inhibition of somatic electromotility or by blocking the mechanoelectrical transduction channels. We therefore propose that the BM primarily acts as a passive support structure at the cochlear apex. We suggest that the micromechanics of the cochlea that are vital to low-frequency amplification and frequency selectivity take place predominantly at the surface of the organ of Corti.


I am not a photography expert or a lighting specialist and even though I have a good camera - I rarely use it. Instead I use my Iphone. So yesterday I needed to set up a photography area for the new business. It's going to be important that the treasures I find are photographed as best I can.
It's hard to get good light here in Tassie but I think between 2 different areas I have set up I should be okay to take fairly good photographs throughout the year.
I am starting to get a few things together for props too - It's going to be fun ! An old cane basket, a wooden apple crate, a rusty old tin and this louvre door. Of course I always have lovely linens and lace too.
I am totally in love with this cameo choker which will be one of the very first treasures I offer for sale in March when I launch the business. I took some lovely photographs of it yesterday. I just hope I can resist the urge to keep it. That is going to be one of the biggest dangers with unearthing beautiful treasures - Letting them go ! I will try my very hardest.
I couldn't resist sharing this photo with you of Boo and Dreamer curled up together. They are such great mates and obviously snuck away on their own for a quick nap - They babysit Harry most of the day and are ever so patient with him.


text:
SCHEDULE 1U.K. Consequential Amendments
House of Commons Disqualification Act 1975 (c.24)U.K.
1In section 1 of the House of Commons Disqualification Act 1975 (disqualification of holders of certain offices and places), in subsection (1), before paragraph (a) insert—
"(za)is a Lord Spiritual;".
F12U.K.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
F1Sch. 1 para. 2 repealed (24.10.2002) by 2002 c. 24, ss. 16, 18(2), Sch. 4
Government of Wales Act 1998 (c.38)U.K.
3F2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
F2Sch. 1 para. 3 repealed by Government of Wales Act 2006 (c. 32), s. 163, Sch. 12 (with Sch. 11 para. 22), the amending provision coming into force immediately after "the 2007 election" (held on 3.5.2007) subject to s. 161(4)(5) of the amending Act, which provides for certain provisions to come into force for specified purposes immediately after the end of "the initial period" (which ended with the day of the first apppointment of a First Minister on 25.5.2007) - see ss. 46, 161(1)(4)(5) of the amending Act.
Scotland Act 1998 (c.46)U.K.
4In section 16 of the Scotland Act 1998 (exceptions and relief from disqualification from membership of the Parliament), in subsection (1), for paragraph (b) substitute—
"(b)he is a Lord Spiritual."
Northern Ireland Act 1998 (c.47)U.K.
5In section 36 of the Northern Ireland Act 1998 (disqualification from membership of the Assembly), in subsection (6) (exception for peers and clergy), for paragraph (b) substitute—
SCHEDULE 2U.K. Repeals
Short title and chapter
Extent of repeal
The House of Commons (Clergy Disqualification) Act 1801 (c. 63). The whole Act.
The Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829 (c. 7). Section 9.
The Clerical Disabilities Act 1870 (c. 91). In the first Schedule, paragraph (1)
The Welsh Church Act 1914 (c. 91). Section 2(4).
The House of Commons Disqualification Act 1975 (c. 24). Section 10.
The Representation of the People Act 1983 (c. 2). In Schedule 8, paragraph 19.


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Back | Home / Community Associations / / Article
Is Reserve Funding Mandatory?
Can an Association Legally defer the funding of Reserves Necessary for Repairs and Renovations?
By Tyler P. Berding, Esq.
There is a continuing debate in community associations over how much cash an association must set aside to adequately fund its operations and reserve accounts, and at what level the assessments must be set to obtain that cash from the members. Boards of directors frequently face the dilemma of whether to raise monthly assessments in the face of member resistance, or to defer funding certain budget line items—typically reserve funds—to a later time.
California has a mandatory funding statute for community associations. Civil Code Section 1366 says: "Except as provided in this section, the association shall levy regular and special assessments sufficient to perform its obligations under the governing documents and this title." 1 It uses the term "shall" and that means assessments adequate to do the job are mandatory up to the limits of the board's authority. In California, the board has the authority to increase regular assessments up to 20% over the prior year and can impose a special assessment of up to 5% of the gross budget, all without a vote of the members.2 So the authority is there. But does the board have to use it?
Legislators use the word "shall" when they want to eliminate options. So as used in Civil Code Section 1366(a) it is the intention of the legislature that boards of directors of community associations are legally obligated to assess as necessary to fully meet the "obligations" of the association. But what, exactly, are those obligations? In terms of the association's operating expenses, it's a pretty easy call. Such expenses as water, garbage, management, pool maintenance, and insurance bills are current ongoing expenses. If you want the service, you have to pay the bill, usually monthly. The discussion of those obligations begins and ends during budget committee meetings each year, and once those expenses have been projected, there can be little argument but that they must be paid currently, from monthly assessments. If the board does not want to raise the amount of the assessments over the previous year, its only legal option is to insure that the expenses in the budget match the projected income. Obviously, directors can decide to cut certain expenses and make other adjustments designed to keep the overall cost of ownership low if they so choose. But once they agree on a budget, the obligations are clear and the law requires them to assess as necessary to meet those monthly obligations.
Reserve funding is another matter. Until it's time to put on a new roof or paint the buildings, expenditures from the reserve fund are not required, so the question that usually arises is: "Why is it necessary to fund these obligations now?" This question feeds into the debates mentioned above--should assessments be raised currently to save enough for future reserve obligations, or should we simply wait until it's needed and then look to the owners for a special assessment, or apply for a bank loan?
Recent surveys indicate that most associations are doing some of each--saving some money but relying on a special assessment or a loan to fund the balance. We say "relying" as if that were part of a conscious plan because these surveys also reveal that the average association has only 50% of the cash in reserves that its reserve study calls for. So if it is now time to replace the roof and the association only has 50% of the cash it needs, then some alternate sources of funding will have to be tapped, or the project will have to be deferred until the cash is available. Whether that is truly the plan or not is unknown.
The most commonly used alternatives are special assessments, bank loans, or deferral. Special assessments can work to fund a big construction project if the owners have the wherewithal to pay them. It also depends on the law of the state. In some states, there is no restriction on the amount that an association can specially assess. The only limitation is political resistance, but the basic authority is there if the association chooses to use it. In California, however, special assessments that exceed 5% of the "budgeted gross expenses for that fiscal year"3 require approval of the members of the association. This has the effect of taking control out of the hands of the board of directors and placing it in the hands of the members. And while this may be the Populist's choice, it complicates things immensely because self-interest, and not the community's interest, often influences the vote. If the board and management do an excellent job of explaining the need, if the members can afford the assessment, if all of their long-term interests are reasonably similar, and if they have been adequately warned, over the years, that this was indeed the plan, it might pass. But what if it doesn't? Given all of the hurdles above, that is always a distinct possibility.
Seeking a loan from a bank to fund a major repair project is a common alternative chosen by boards. In some states, that is the preferred alternative to both special and regular assessments. One argument for using borrowed funds is that the owners who will most enjoy the improvement are the ones who will pay for it, since repayment will be spread over the life of the new roof. In most years, such loans would be readily available, but we have to question whether it would be the best choice in a down economy when lending is more restricted. Moreover, the cost of the project will increase using borrowed funds—not just because of the interest paid on the money borrowed, but also the interest lost on the savings from assessments that would otherwise be earned. Finally, the long-term debt load assumed by the association will limit the association's access to capital for other purposes.
The last ditch alternative would be deferring necessary work to a later time. This has the obvious drawbacks of raising near term repair expense, decreasing property values, and causing owner inconvenience due to an increase in the incidence of leaks or other damage. Also, in an inflationary economy, the cost of the job increases each year it is deferred. This can induce a downward spiral: the association lacks the cash to perform the work because reserves have not been funded adequately over time; a special assessment to bridge the gap will add significantly to monthly assessment payments and so the owners will not approve the special assessment to fund the job or to make the payments on a bank loan; the work is deferred; the price of the work goes up and becomes less affordable; deteriorating conditions causes loss of market value; owners perceive a loss of investment and are even more reluctant to approve the injection of new capital; condition and market value continues to decline, and so on.
So do the provisions of Section 1366(a), that a board of directors "shall levy regular and special assessments sufficient to perform its obligations..." specifically include the obligation to currently fund reserves? Unlike some other states, like Hawaii, there is no express mandate in California law but there are strong arguments to be made that funding from assessments is what the legislature intends. The only evidence of a contrary intent is Civil Code Section 1365(3)(C) which requires a board to give owners notice of: "The mechanism or mechanisms by which the board of directors will fund reserves to repair or replace major components, including assessments, borrowing, use of other assets, deferral of selected replacements or repairs, or alternative mechanism."4 The argument is that since these alternates are acknowledged, they must be authorized. It is important to note, however, that an obligation to disclose the use of an alternative funding scheme is not tantamount to an endorsement of or authority for the use of, the alternative.
Section 1365(C)(3) is also at odds with the reserve study section of the code which requires that a board adopt a funding plan, and which mentions only the use of regular or special assessments for that purpose. It states: "The plan shall include a schedule of the date and amount of any change in regular or special assessments that would be needed to sufficiently fund the reserve funding plan."5 It is also at odds with Section 1366(a) itself which obligates the board to levy regular and special assessments, but says nothing about using other alternative funding sources.
We also have to look at the board's fiduciary responsibility to the association and given the political and economic vagaries, pitfalls, and additional expense that would accompany reliance on special assessments, bank loans, or deferral, it is likely that a board which elects to assess at a level less than the funding requirements set by the reserve study could very well face a future legal challenge to that decision. We are aware of at least one matter where that has already happened. A judgment obtained on such a claim most probably could not be avoided by the association or its members, and it is questionable whether the association's liability insurance would indemnify the association against such a loss.
Our recommendation is what you probably have come to expect from our treatment of these subjects in the past: prudence, fiscal responsibility, and a board's fiduciary obligations to its members, require something more than just waiting until the roof needs to be repaired before looking for funds. Meeting the funding levels in the association's reserve study by gradual accumulation through regular assessments, along with periodic inspections, is the safest, most predictable method yet devised for meeting future repair obligations.
California Civil Code Section 1366(a)
California Civil Code Section 1366(b)
California Civil Code Section 1365(3)(C)
California Civil Code Section 1365.5(e)(5)
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Thompson: Time for a 'frank discussion' about fighting terrorism
Thompson addressed the VFW Tuesday.
(CNN) - Fred Thompson, the all but announced Republican presidential candidate, suggested Tuesday that the nation was in denial when it comes to the threat of terrorism.
"I don't think that yet as a nation we have come to terms with the nature and the extent of the threat facing this country," Thompson said while addressing the annual convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Kansas City, Missouri.
Calling terrorism "a global threat" to the United States, Thompson pointed out that he thought the United States was at a crossroads and told the veterans "it's time that we had a frank discussion in this country at the highest levels with both parties as to what it's going to take and the unity we're going to need" to battle terror.
Thompson also faulted those calling for a troop withdrawal from Iraq, saying it would hurt the overall fight against terrorism.
"Some people in this country apparently think that if we can pull out of Iraq, our problems are going to be over. You and I know better than that. We know that Iraq is an important front in this war," Fred Thompson said to an audience of combat veterans on Tuesday.
(Related video: watch part of Thompson's remarks at the VFW convention)
Filed under: Candidate Barack Obama • Fred Thompson
Comments (166 comments)
Did Michelle Obama take a swipe at Clinton?
Barack and Michelle Obama at the Iowa State fair last week.
WASHINGTON (CNN) - Did she or didn't she?
That's the question some political observers are asking about recent comments from Michelle Obama, the wife of Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama, that could be interpreted as a swipe against her husband's chief presidential rival Hillary Clinton.
In Atlantic, Iowa last Thursday, Michelle Obama pointed to the strength of her own family and said the next president must be "somebody that shares our values."
"Is he somebody that respects family? Is he a good and decent person?" Michelle Obama asked the crowd about the next president. "Our view is that if you can't run your own house, you certainly can't run the White House."
The comments went largely unnoticed until an article in Tuesday morning's Chicago Sun Times suggested the statement was an indirect swipe against the Clintons, whose previous marital problems have been well documented.
The accusation immediately got top billing on The Drudge Report, a conservative Web site, and Obama himself was asked about the comments in a conference call earlier Tuesday.
The Illinois senator emphatically denied the comments were aimed at his rival and added, "There was no reference beyond her point that we have had an administration that talks a lot about family values but doesn't follow through."
He also noted that his wife often speaks about children and families in her campaign remarks.
Katie McCormick Lelyveld, Michelle Obama's communications director, also told CNN, "the only family Mrs. Obama was talking about was the Obama family."
- CNN's Alexander Mooney and Martina Stewart
Filed under: Candidate Barack Obama • Hillary Clinton • Michelle Obama
Bloomberg to deliver poverty address
CNN Political Research Director Robert Yoon
Bloomberg denies he is considering a presidential bid.
WASHINGTON (CNN) - New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg will deliver a major policy address on poverty next week in the nation's capital, the latest in a string of national events that his office says is unrelated to a possible White House bid.
Bloomberg will discuss his recent initiatives in New York City to combat poverty in a speech sponsored by the Brookings Institution's Center on Children and Families. The event will be held on Tuesday, the same day the U.S. Census Bureau will release its annual report detailing income and poverty levels in the nation.
"The mayor said he is not running for president, but he's going to use his time in office to work on the issues important to the city and important to the country," says Lindsay Ellenbogen, a Bloomberg mayoral aide.
Bloomberg, who left the Republican Party in June to become an Independent, has denied rumors that he is mulling a third-party run for president. He most recently addressed the issue in an interview on the HDnet television network with journalist Dan Rather.
"Nobody is going to elect me President of the United States. What I'd like to do is to influence the dialogue. I'm a citizen," the mayor told Rather in a quote confirmed by Bloomberg's office.
Filed under: Michael Bloomberg
Romney targets illegal immigration, Giuliani in radio ad
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney campaigns in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, last week.
WASHINGTON (CNN) - Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney Tuesday stepped up his ongoing attack on cities with what he calls sanctuary policies for illegal immigrants - including rival Rudy Giuliani's home city - with a new radio ad set to air in crucial campaign states Iowa and New Hampshire.
"Immigration laws don't work if they're ignored," the ad's announcer states. "That's the problem with cities like Newark, San Francisco and New York City that adopt sanctuary policies. Sanctuary cities become magnets that encourage illegal immigration and undermine secure borders."
"Legal immigration is great," Romney himself says in the ad. "But illegal immigration, that we've got to end. And amnesty is not the way to do it."
He also advocates in the ad cutting back on federal funds to cities that adopt sanctuary policies.
- CNN Ticker Producer Alexander Mooney
Filed under: Immigration • Mitt Romney • Rudy Giuliani
Thompson, Obama live at the VFW forum
Fred Thompson appeared at the convention earlier Tuesday.
WASHINGTON (CNN) - Likely White House hopeful Fred Thompson and Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama are addressing the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in Kansas City, Missouri Tuesday.
Click here to watch video of the event, courtesy of our Kansas City affiliate KCTV. And for instant analysis, reaction, and live blogging from KCTV's Fred Logan, click here.
Primary calendar madness
Watch CNN's John King size up how all the changes will affect the race for the White House.
WASHINGTON (CNN) - With so many recent changes to the 2008 presidential primary calendar, how's a political junkie to keep track? CNN Chief National Correspondent John King is doing it for you.
Filed under: Primary Calendar
Raw Politics: Biden's ad making waves
Watch the latest edition of Raw Politics.
WASHINGTON (CNN) - In the latest edition of Raw Politics, CNN's Tom Foreman reports on Sen. Joe Biden's new Iraq ad running in Iowa, Rep. Bob Filner's assault charge, and Sen. Leahy's warning to the White House.
Filed under: Raw Politics
Obama picks up support from Iraq vet/Congressman
WASHINGTON (CNN) - Right before he addresses the VFW National Convention Tuesday, Sen. Barack Obama will announce that Pennsylvania Rep. Patrick Murphy is backing his presidential bid, a well placed source tells CNN.
Murphy, an Iraq war veteran, was elected to Congress in November 2006 and his victory was one of many that helped propel House Democrats into the majority.
Obama, an Illinois Democrat, is scheduled to speak at 12 p.m. ET to the VFW conference, which is taking place in Kansas City, Missouri. The Murphy endorsement will be unveiled during a 11 a.m. conference call.
- CNN Political Editor Mark Preston
Filed under: Candidate Barack Obama
Congressman faces assault and battery charges
Filner, above, has been charged with assault and battery.
WASHINGTON (CNN) - Rep. Bob Filner, D-California, faces misdemeanor assault and battery charges related to an incident that occurred Sunday night at Dulles Airport, where he allegedly pushed a United Airlines baggage claim worker.
"The individual allegedly attempted to enter an area authorized for airline employees only, pushed aside the employee's outstretched arm and refused to leave the area when asked by an airline employee," said Courtney Prebich, assistant media relations manager for the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority (MWAA), in a written statement.
"When MWAA officers arrived a few minutes later, the man had left the office and was waiting in the area of a bag carousel.
"Officers interviewed him and witnesses and released him. Before the individual left the airport, officers advised him that the airline employee would be pursuing charges."
The airline employee appeared Sunday night before a Loudoun County magistrate and a summons was obtained charging the 64-year-old, eight-term congressman with assault and battery, a class 1 misdemeanor.
Filner is scheduled to appear Oct. 2 in Loudoun County General District Court.
Filner's press secretary did not immediately return a call seeking comment.
Analysis: Change v. experience
WASHINGTON (CNN) – So what are Democrats looking for – change or experience?
Some years, voters are looking for experience. That's what got Richard Nixon elected in 1968, when the country was in turmoil because of racial violence and the Vietnam War.
Other years, voters are looking for change. That's what got Jimmy Carter – a one-term governor of Georgia – elected in 1976 after the Watergate scandal.
And now?
"I don't want 'Bush-Cheney Lite.' I want a fundamental change," Illinois Senator and presidential candidate Barack Obama told supporters at a campaign event in Concord, New Hampshire.
Presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton, D-New York, makes the case for her experience. In a recent interview about her foreign policy differences with Obama, the former first lady told CNN's John King that she knows "diplomacy takes a lot of hard work."
"I think that Senator Obama does represent change. Senator Clinton has experience,'' Bill Richardson said in the first Democratic debate in Iowa. The New Mexico governor added, "With me, you get both.''
Which do Democrats want? They're not sure.
Filed under: Presidential Candidates


One of the main reasons of CDN popularity now days is Google (and other searching engines). Google has started using pagespeed as a ranking factor, that's why website CDN (and boosting that it can give) is now in use of many businesses and webmasters. CDN however provide a faster experience for customers (users) and this definitely influence on users satisfaction and consequently – on sells. An additional reason of CDN popularity – is a big growth of mobile users, who more depend on speed than usual desktop users with stable internet connections.
A content delivery network, CDN, is a collection of web servers located in different geographical areas to deliver content faster and more efficiently to users in each geographic region or area. Mechanism chose a server for delivering content to a specific user based on a different evidence. It can be server with fewest network hops or it can be a server with a quickest respond time. Anyway, it is typically based on measure of network proximity. The result of a website CDN is a far speedier service for the end user, which consequently influence on the customers experience.
CDN Boosting can be shown in improving of site's loading time, improving performance in local search and maximizing website's uptime. As it stated above, loading times are critical ranking factors for search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing; therefore improving of site's loading time make it better in terms of SEO. Better performance in local search by CDN is achieved by allowing website to rank in local search results all over the globe; this leads to extending of site's global reach. One of the side benefits of CDN boosting is improving of website's uptime assurance; with CDN even if one server goes down, website will be served elsewhere on a regionally based server. Despite all the above there are situations, when CDN is not the optimal and advisable action. First of all using CDN is costly, for some companies it isn't worth the outlay. CDN is really more a tool for bigger established websites than small sites with a small business area. In addition, there are other far cheaper alternatives to make website load faster for small websites. Another thing, which may require attention is blocking of CDN IP address by some organizations, or even countries (it is really uncommon, more so in Far East and for popular free CDN services).
If decision of website CDN is taken, there are few steps to make a CDN host for a website. First, it is important to make sure that all other processes to improve the website done before creating a CDN account. There are plenty of CDN services and companies, both paid and free, from which to choose based on price, quality, geographic spread of servers and other reasons. When the CDN company selected, it is relatively simple to set up a CDN for the site. All the actions can be divided in three groups – creating and accessing to CDN account, creating a CDN resource and setting up the CDN to work with the website. Basically, to create a CDN recourse means to choose data, which should work with CDN. While setting up the CDN, geographical location of servers will be selected and CNAME (name of urls in CDN) will be created.


Margot works for CORE Education as a future-focused facilitator supporting teachers, leaders and students. She supports the development of CORE online and workshop programmes, tailoring them to meet the needs of our participants.
As an experienced and innovative educational leader, Margot draws on experiences from both primary and secondary, to work alongside a number of schools across Aotearoa, New Zealand, transforming learning, leading and development in a personalised, future -focused way. This includes working closely with leadership teams, leading professional learning, and facilitating online learning.
Margot works as a change leader supporting principals and lead teachers to develop modern learning pedagogies as schools transition into more innovative learning environments. She plans and delivers in-depth, contextually relevant professional development programmes which build teacher capability and best practice over time.
Over the past 10 years, Margot has actively promoted the value of networks of schools working collaboratively to build teachers capacity to support their learners. As cluster lead for a global project New Pedagogies for Deep Learning (NPLD), she works collaboratively across seven countries, including our Aotearoa NZ cluster of schools. This project uses sound pedagogical practices, authentic real life learning design protocols plus effective use of digital technology to accelerate and deepen student learning.
Margot has strengths in guiding schools through the Master Planning process – both as a CORE facilitator and chairperson of a Board of Trustees. This involves supporting schools to understand the valuable link between pedagogy and space throughout all stages of the design process, and collaboration between educators, architects and facilitators to ensure planning and design decisions are led by and evolve accordingly. She has facilitated tours of innovative learning environments looking at schools in New Zealand and Melbourne.
develop strong networked learning opportunities across schools.
plan PLD that supports the development of innovative learning practice.
use a variety of review tools; tools include the eLearning Planning Framework, Educational Positioning System(EPS), and the NPDL Coherence Framework .
regularly reflect-learn-implement using an effective collaborative inquiry framework.
increase school capability to effectively use social media, online spaces and virtual areas to build learning connections / learning environments.
Building strong understanding of quality instructional design.
Ensuring effective online and virtual (webinar) delivery techniques which ensure all participants (learners) experience effective PLD from various locations nationally or internationally.
2014: RTLB Canterbury clusters expo -event management and keynotes - Modern Learning Pedagogy, How can MLEs support our learners?
I'm a connected educator who enjoys networking, meeting new people and looking for innovative learning opportunities. I believe digital technologies can accelerate and support deep learning for all.
I live in Christchurch with my husband and two children—who are experiencing future-focused education in 21st century classrooms. I love being on holiday away from all technology with my family and a good book!


The amount of trash generated in Sedgwick County last year was down about 8 percent from 2008, county commissioners learned today.
Environmental resources director Susan Erlenwein reported that the county generated 411,377 tons of trash last year, or 1,127 tons per day.
Residents generated 4.67 pounds of trash per day in 2009, down about 9 percent from 2008, Erlenwein said.
Construction and demolition waste — lumber, concrete and other building materials — was up about 15 percent last year, she said. About 193,000 tons of construction and demolition waste was taken to the landfill last year.