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Jacob Holdt – Not Born in the USA, A Vagabond's Views
Posted on April 30, 2015 December 3, 2017 by Editorial @ ASX
"The only thing that has any meaning for me in my journey is being together with these lonesome and shipwrecked souls. My photographic hobby is really nothing more than an exploitation of the suffering, which will probably never come to contribute to an alleviation of it. But I still can't stop registering it because in some way or other it must get to the outside world."
– Jacob Holdt, American Pictures
By Jon Vankin, The Daily Advocate for Williams College, January 1986
In Denmark, where Jacob Holdt is from, the government keeps a central register of its citizens. If you lose touch with a friend or a relative, all you need is an address where the person once lived and about $10, and you can find who you're looking for.
"That is something they call invasion of privacy in America," Holdt says. "I feel in so many ways they have many good ideas in America, but they constantly hurt themselves. I met people who lost touch with their brothers 20 years ago and who've not ever seen them since and there's no way of finding them again."
Almost 15 years ago, Holdt shunned the security of his safe European home and arrived on the western shore of America with $40 in his pocket and a big yellow sheet with the painted words, "Touring USA from Denmark." In the next five years he would hitchhike over 100,000 miles through virtually every region of the United States without much more than his thumb, the plasma of his blood and a long braided beard on which to get by.
The thumb would take him from place to place. His blood plasma, which he would sell, brought him $5 twice a week from blood banks, and the facial braid was often the conversation piece that opened his way to friendships with the strangers who gave him their hospitality.
In five years as a virtually penniless vagabond, he never once slept outdoors. "Because of their alienation, Americans are more able to develop more instant hospitality and warmth toward strangers than in more settled countries like in Europe, where they may have close friendships, but there is also a clannish mentality," Holdt believes. "For the vagabond, this society works better — the disposable society, as it's called."
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He had tea in the garden of a Mrs. Pabst, wife of a multimillionaire brewer. When Holdt showed her the photographs he had been taking in his travels, Mrs. Pabst would shriek, "I hate these lazy animals. Why don't they get jobs?"
He has returned to America now, though not as the same type of vagabond that he was between 1971 and 1976. He gives talks, at colleges mainly, about his experience and alerting those who listen to the desperation he has seen existent in America. And he sells his book, American Pictures. Which is what he was doing on the Williams College campus last week, where he spoke and showed his slides in conjunction with the college's marking of Martin Luther King's birthday.
As he traversed the country then, he photographed everything he saw. He took pictures — color slides mostly — of crippled men sitting on the sidewalk ignoring their crutches as they got drunk on the streets on Christmas Eve in New York City, of black couples exchanging a kiss through prison bars, of Southern blacks working in slave conditions, in shacks with no running water. All these people donated their hospitality to him as surely as a millionaire donates money to some art museum.
But it was not just the poor whom Holdt encountered. He found an equal, even greater loneliness among the middle and upper class Americans who were equally hospitable. "I really met a lot of lonesome Americans in those years," he recalls. "And I'm not sure so much in black society as in white society. The blacks have developed a language for meeting and communicating on that level of society. I found the greatest loneliness in white technocratic society. Often space engineers from Houston and such people who travel around. It really seemed like deep loneliness. I could really feel it because they took it out on me. Often very wealthy people."
Usually, the way they would "take out their frustrations" on Holdt was simply by talking, and talking and talking. "There was a great need to reveal all kinds of things about their lives. Not so much in me telling them anything, but simply a need to talk to somebody about their frustrations," he says.
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He spent time with a "millionaire playboy," whose photograph appears in American Pictures nude, drunk, with an equally nude and drunk woman sprawled across a motel bed, and who, after meeting Holdt, immediately sold all of his "assets" and became a vagabond himself. He stayed at an outpost of the Rockefeller clan. He had tea in the garden of a Mrs. Pabst, wife of a multimillionaire brewer. When Holdt showed her the photographs he had been taking in his travels, Mrs. Pabst would shriek, "I hate these lazy animals. Why don't they get jobs?"
But it was not all an outpouring of magnanimous spirit that Holdt found in the United States. He was robbed at gunpoint in San Francisco just four days after he arrived in this country. "That was a good start. They took all my blood money, from the blood bank. But what really happened was that it shocked me and set me on this road," Holdt recounts. "I had to find out where all this anger was coming from."
He had guns pulled on him four separate times in his travels, but still isn't sure how close he came to getting killed. "You must ask the muggers about that. Most of them were just normal, nice human beings. What makes somebody pull the trigger is not evil or anything. It's an instant feeling of anger. I have no idea what went on in their minds. From being threatened to actually being shot is still a step," he says.
"I hardly see the injustice anymore," he says. "That's the process of becoming American, that you start accepting these things around you."
In a sense, though, Holdt felt that he was always taken advantage of, and that he was always taking advantage of the people he met. "People who invite somebody home like this do it for selfish reasons," he says. "To be entertained, or the need to be with a person. Some Christian couple might pick me up out in the cold and have me sit and pray with them, but in the final sense I felt it was to feed their own sense of doing something for their fellow man. When you boil everything down it's all egoistic. But that doesn't take anything away from it, as long as it's good things people do."
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Often, when Holdt was picked up hitchiking he received just what most hitchikers do, a ride from place to place. But when his hosts opened up to him or when he could open them up with some various stories of his travels, he says he never felt guilty about anything he received. "I felt they gave me these things because they had a need to express some feeling. That's why nobody should feel guilty about being a vagabond. A vagabond has a strong social mission. First of all, caring for all those lonely people who are around. That's a very important duty in modern society, which is so alienated."
Holdt was kicked out of his high school in Denmark after two years. He was fired from a string of jobs. As a "deep-down conservative" youngster he had always wanted to join the Danish Royal Guard, but when he found that he couldn't shoot a gun at a man-shaped target, much less a human being, the army kicked him out too.
It was not long after that he came to Canada, then crossed another border to embark on his meandering odyssey. On his lecture tour, he travels with his Danish wife and child, in their car. He always has a supply of books and posters to sell, which go fast. His four-hour slide show, also called American Pictures, packs college lecture halls. He keeps alive the six years of his life he spent as a vagabond.
"I hardly see the injustice anymore," he says. "That's the process of becoming American, that you start accepting these things around you. That's also the danger of course. That's why I have to rely so much on my past experiences because I had clear eyes at that time. Things have only gotten gotten worse since then. Almost everything I describe in the book is worse today. Hunger, poverty and so on. It's getting worse these years."
http://www.american-pictures.com/
(All rights reserved. Text @ John Vankin. Images @ Jacob Holdt.)
Posted in Essays and tagged American Road Trip, Archive Highlights, Culture, Jacob Holdt, Road Trip, Social Critique, Social Justice, Social Margins.
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RICHARD AVEDON: "Richard Avedon's "In the American West"
Posted on April 9, 2015 April 9, 2015 by Editorial @ ASX
David Beason, shipping clerk, Denver, Colorado, 7/25/81
Richard Avedon's "In the American West"
By Max Kozloff
"Sometimes I think all my pictures are just pictures of me. My concern is… the human predicament; only what I consider the human predicament may simply be my own. " – Richard Avedon
No one has smiled in an Avedon portrait for a long time. If there was pleasure in their lives it left them in the act of posing, or rather, confronting his lens. One sitter, de Kooning, told Harold Rosenberg that Avedon "snapped the picture. Then he asked 'Why don't you smile?' So I smiled but the picture was done already…." The photograph of de Kooning and the quote appeared in Avedon's Portraits (1976), an image-gallery of famous people in the arts and media. A disproportionate number of them look either snappish or torpid and tired . . . oh so tired . . . unto death.
At the end of that book, in a suite of shots that record the progress of his father's cancer, the subject is described as literally wasting away. But this is a progressive account not so much of the flesh dying off, but more of his father's terrified knowledge of his decomposition – a conclusive rush of dismay that gives Portraits its unstated theme.
Avedon's most recent portrait effort, In the American West, published by Abrams in I985, furthers that theme, once again by a characteristic emphasis at the end of the book. There, in studies of slaughtered sheep and steer, he insists upon such details as glazed and sightless eyes, blood-matted wool, and gore languidly dripping from snouts. As his father was the only unprominent person in the first campaign, so the animals are the only nonhuman subjects in the second. It's as if Avedon were each time underlining his philosophy by breaking his category. Adjoining the guignol presences of the animals are ghoulish images of miners and oil-field workers, as befouled by the earth as the animals by their spilled entrails.
Avedon's portraiture of "ordinary" westerners is on the whole darker and more cutting than his earlier work. It's essential to the effect of the current subjects that they be presented as unaware of his designs on them. For Avedon's program is supraindividual. He wants to portray the whole American West as a blighted culture that spews out casualties by the bucket: misfits, drifters, degenerates, crackups, and prisoners-entrapped, either literally or by debasing work. Pawns in his indictment of their society, his subjects must have thought they were only standing very still for the camera. Even those few in polyester suits who appear to have gotten on more easily in life are visualized with Avedon's relentless frontality and are pinched in the confined zone of the mug shot. In photography, this is the adversarial framework par excellence. He could rely on knowledge of this genre to drive home the idea of a coercive approach (which he frankly admits), and of incriminated content. But why should he have imitated a lineup? And why, since this is his personal vision, should he refer to an institutional mode?
The answer to these questions should probably be sought in the politics of Avedon's career, or rather, his career in the politics of culture. With him, style has always been understood as political expression, and the will to style but a reflection of the will to power. Translated into photographic terms, this becomes a matter of visually phrasing the relations between the subjects and the photographer. For example, either the sitter can be depicted as apparently possessing the means to act freely, or the photographer can be perceived as free in the exercise of control over others. In his fashion work for over thirtyfive years, Avedon configured the myth of the hyper-good life of the ultramonied in the bright expressions and the buoyant gestures of expensively outfitted women who flounce through a blank or glittering ambience where there is always enough room for them to open their wings, even in close quarters. No one had more success in vectoring the physical ease with which splurge maneuvers. No one could fake a more lacquered spontaneity. Unquestionably Avedon called the shots in the studio, but his was the kind of work in which mastery nevertheless had to disguise itself, hold itself in check.
Though they were literally his creatures behind the scenes and in the throes of picture production, the fashion models were imaged to have a magnetic, even commanding effect. The conceit of the genre asserts that subjects are constant narcissists and photographers are professional adorers. Fabricated through the collective resources of a large and nervous industry, the final spectacle, a self-centered object of regard, was something that existed only to lift up and draw in the gaze of the viewer. The high-fashion photograph mimics a situation in which the viewer is supposed to be captivated by styles of material display. Of course its commercial message was thoroughly bonded to the psychic lure and social symbolism of the picture. All those with craft input into the fashion image were contributing to a mercantile semblance of a court art in a democratic society.
In the late forties and early fifties, there developed an American market for an idiom of literal swank and sniffishness. Avedon led the way in adapting this largely continental mode more appropriately to our manners. He made his figures approachable, innocently overjoyed by their advantages, as if they were no more than perpetual young winners in life's lottery. It was Avedon, too, who set the pace for contemporary narrative scenarios of fashion display. Into the sixties he managed to waft via the faces of his mannequins the sense that their good fortune had hit very recently – say the second before he opened the shutter. When unisex became chic, and fetishism permissible, he filtered some of their nuances into his design. He could also suggest that the glamour of his models drew the attention of sports and news photographers, whose styles he sometimes laminated onto his own. (This was a snap for someone who grew up on Steichen and Munkacsi, and knew about Weegee.)
Insights into the crossover of genres and the convergence of modern media gave Avedon's work its extra combustive push. He got fame as someone who projected accents of notoriety and even scandal within a decorous field. By not going too far in exceeding known limits, he attained the highest rank at Vogue. In American popular culture, this was where Avedon mattered, and mattered a lot. But it was not enough.
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In fact, Avedon's increasingly parodistic magazine work often left -or maybe fed- an impression that its author was living beneath his creative means. In the more permanent form of his books, of which there have been five so far, he has visualized another career that would rise above fashion. Here Avedon demonstrates a link between what he hopes is social insight and artistic depth, choosing as a vehicle the straight portrait. Supremacy as a fashion photographer did not grant him status in his enterprise -quite the contrary- but it did provide him access to notable sitters. Their presence before his camera confirmed the mutual attraction of the well-connected.
Unlike the mannequins, most of the sitters had certified personalities, and this perked up Avedon's interpretations with extra dividends of meaning. The early portraits worked like visual equivalents of topics in the "People are talking about . . ." section in Vogue; they fluttered with cultural timeliness. When he showed Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller lovingly together, it was as if each of them took manna from the other in a fusion of popular and highbrow icons. The first book, Observations (1959) with gossipy comment by Truman Capote, spritzes its subjects with an almost manic expressiveness. They are engaged at full throttle with their characteristic work, so that the contralto Marian Anderson, for instance, has a most acrobatic mouth. These pictures were engendered well within the fashion mold (publicity section), but they led gradually to a break into a new, anxious politics of the image.
Avedon's second book, Nothing Personal (1964), tries to evoke something of its historical moment, although it would seem hard to suggest the duress of the sixties through portraits alone, even when arranged in narrative sections. It opens with foldout tableaux of wedding groups, in which a number of ordinary people rehearse their festiveness, as if they were models. There after, we get sitters known for ideological heaviness, positive or negative depending on the readership: the Louisianian politician Leander Perez, George Lincoln Rockwell, Julian Bond, and so on. They scowl, salute, or look clean-cut; that is, they are made to impersonate their media image with breathtaking simplicity and effrontery. One symbol is assigned per person, and one thought is applied per image. Almost at the end, Avedon treats us to a group of harrowing, grainy action closeups of inmates in madhouses, and he concludes the book with happy beach scenes.
These wild technical and mood swings are worked up in a jabbing, graphic magazine-like layout, as if Avedon thought that a book audience had as short an attention span as a fashion-mag public. One gets the strange feeling that while the illustrations are present, the feature articles are absent. In their place is an essay by James Baldwin, at his most self-indulgently alienated and bitter. Not only does his prose fail to mention the pictorials, it has nothing to do with them, regardless of the occasional avowed racists Avedon depicts. There is something half-baked about the way the book seeks to move visually from the emphatic trifles of the fashion media to the "relevance" – a word then in great currency of political statement.
Baldwin lashes out at the unmitigated nastiness of the American scene, but Avedon does no such thing. This impresario of haute couture at Vogue and Harper's Bazaar lacked the credentials to offer any sort of critique from below. Even when it would seem to be suggested by a tendentious icon, there was no moral energy in his outlook. We're in a world only of angles, not of values. The book offers an uneasy sequence of sentimental, tart, sycophantish, and pitiless images. A group portrait of D.A.R. officials comes on simultaneously as a takeoff from Irving Penn's Twelve Most Photographed Models (1947) and as a satire on genealogical arrogance, but is too respectful to succeed on either count.
One of the most vivid faces in the history of portraiture is also here, that of William Casby, an ex-slave. One of the most significantly disturbed personalities in our post-World War II history, Major Claude Etherly, bombardier of the Enola Gay at Hiroshima, makes an appearance, though he does not create an impression. Nothing Personal certainly grabs one's attention, but it doesn't add up. It's so busy figuring out its strategies that it gives the reader the idea that Avedon had no time to respond to anyone. Much of the album assumes a clarity of purpose that is not realized in a design chopped up by willful and unexplained thematic jumps.
Like crossed wires, the messages in this curious album seem to have shorted out. Thereafter, we no longer see a rhetoric infused through the junction of image-sets or portrait scenarios. Strangely enough, such a liberation does not appear to have refreshed his sitters. A pall now generally falls over them, and their body language is constrained to a few rudimentary gestures. Avedon, in fact, would take the portrait mode into a new, antitheatrical territory. Visualized from familiar rituals of self-consciousness and self-scrutiny, portraits offer specific moments of human presentation, enacted during an unstable continuum. Whatever their apprehensions, sitters hope to be depicted in the fullness of their selfhood, which is never less than or anything contrary to what they would be taken for (considering the given, flawed circumstances). What ensues in a portrait is usually based on a social understanding between sitter and photographer, a kind of contract within whose established constraints their interests are supposed to be settled. In his fashion work, Avedon dealt with models whose selfhood had been professionally replaced by aura. His career was a function of that aura. Presently, engaged with sitters, he found that their selfhood could become a function of his aura.
Avedon did nothing so crass as to intimidate his subjects since it was much simpler and more effective to put forth his indifference to the portrait contract itself. While depicting people, his portraits carry on as if they were describing objects of more or less interesting condition and surface. Though this deflates his subjects, such a radical procedure is just as evidently not hostile . . . not, at least, consciously hostile. Nothing Personal anticipates the route Avedon was to follow, and is already aptly named. Portraits, a much later book (1976), gets very close to its subjects in terms of physical space and is now decisively removed from them in emotional space. The noncommittal titles of these projects are ideological clues intended to suggest the absence of individual bias.
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Many of the details in these newer portraits are very articulate socially and culturally, but the visualizing instinct behind them is certainly opaque. The photographer wants to do justice to the presence of the sitter, at that particular moment, though only insofar as he can make a certain kind of Avedon picture, or cause a sensation. (Ideally, the two would go together.) Avedon demonstrates such a long-term superiority in the contest of wills in portraiture that even the occasional assertiveness of a subject does not compromise the unconcernedly abusive look he had begun, in the sixties, to achieve and be known for. For all that they are sentient and experienced people, his subjects consented to exposure since it was still hard to imagine anyone like him taking their feelings so little into account. The contrast between what is presented and how it is processed generates the unsettling effect of the Avedon portrait. Let there be no mistake, that effect is here the equivalent of intended content.
Harold Rosenberg spoke of Avedon's "objective cruelty" (when photographing Warhol's scars), and then went on to write of the photographer as a difficult, reductionist artist, like Newman or Still. This is spectacularly wrong, since it implies that Avedon wanted to practice an ideal, difficult truthfulness, whereas he's a most equivocal, advantage-taking realist, and knows it. As he himself says about the western portraits: "Assumptions are reached and acted upon that could seldom be made with impunity in ordinary life." The big 8-by-10-inch camera is, then, an alibi for a most transgressive stare. Such a stare doesn't come from painting, of course, but it does stem from a knowledge of the German August Sander, whose catalogue of social types Avedon makes much harder edged, and of Diane Arbus, whose ecstatic, guilty transgressions Avedon routinely refrigerates.
An assumption of extreme, hard-headed realism is brandished through Avedon's portrait work. There is, for instance, the highly specific dating of these pictures, as if the day as well as the year of exposure mattered. This is extra, inessential information – and quite typical of a realist attitude. Then, too, one notices the clinical approach, the pronounced, unshaded clarity of sight and the emphasis on physical data. Further still, if Avedon's glamour imagery was known to be highly fictive, then his realist portraiture, through an altogether mechanical turn, would have to stand for everything unglamorous. In his recoil from the sentimental, Avedon hardly stops anywhere along the line until he gets to the unsparing and pugnacious. Even his young westerners seem to have a meanness knocked into their faces and only a bleak life in the future. Realists are thought to look the world unflinchingly in the face, and their credibility is supposedly increased the more imperfections they record.
In realist territory, Avedon had to compensate for his well-earned reputation for smart, commercial stagecraft, and he protests, accordingly, in the hands-off direction of these "dumb," do-nothing poses. The subjects are understood to be engaged with (or are caught in) nothing more than an unschooled or archaic attempt to comport themselves, which they more or less fumble, thus revealing their actual character.
But the question remains: what is convincingly revealed in these images? I, for one, am persuaded of the grumpiness of most of the sitters at the moment they were photographed. One sees this expression often in photographic culture, when people aren't getting help from the stranger behind the camera, and don't know why he should be trusted. It's a kind of squint, and it hardens them. In a book containing I06 pictures of westerners, this arid psychological atmosphere prevails so completely that it rules out the freshness of any open, one-to-one human contact. The subjects are individuated according to their varied circumstances and histories, but not by their moods. Whatever public foreknowledge might have made it difficult for Avedon to obtain his results in his own social circles during the first half of our decade, they could be brought off more easily among any group unaware of his national reputation, such as these somewhat defensive but unsuspecting westerners. Their need to plead their case went deeply, he says, but "the control is with me." If his insistence upon this control is necessary to legitimate himself as a realist artist, no matter at whose expense, he nevertheless fails to accomplish realist art.
Again, his sophistication about photographic pictures prepares him to encompass and accept this judgment. As he introduces the western gallery, Avedon writes, "The moment {a} fact is transformed into a photograph it is no longer a fact but an opinion. There is no such thing as inaccuracy in a photograph. All photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth." How remarkable that his critics have not thought to quote him a little further on in this statement, where the deep, internal conflict of Avedon's portraiture asserts itself. On one hand, he arranges it so that the sitter can hardly shift weight or move at all, supposedly because the camera's focus won't allow it. The hapless subject has to learn to accept Avedon's uncompromising discipline (as if the lens and the photographer were the same). On the other hand, "I can heighten through instruction what he does naturally, how he is." In the end, "these strategies . . . attempt to achieve an illusion: that everything . . . in the photograph simply happened, that the person . . . was never told to stand there, and . . . was not even in the presence of a photographer."
One either remains speechless upon reading this total denial of his working program in the American West, or one sees that it applies covertly to fashion photography. Such stridently mixed signals and elemental confusion about self-process have something to say to us about the derisive qualities of the work itself. I think not only of the fact that voyeurism is the chic metaphor in fashion (none of the models are supposed to be aware of the photographer), but also that fashion has always been an imagery of material display -and that's what Avedon's western portraiture consciously amounts to. The blank, seamless background thrusts the figures forward as islands of textures of flesh, certainly, but also of cloth. Nothing competes with the presentation of their poor threads, nothing of the personal environment, nothing that might situate, inform, and support a person in the real world, or even in a photograph. At the same time, the viewer is left in no doubt about the miserableness and tawdriness of their lives- for their dispiriting jobs or various forms of unemployed existence are duly noted. An ugly comparison is invited between all these havenots and Avedon's previous and much better defended "haves." It is one thing to portray high-status and resourceful celebrities as picture fodder: it is quite another to mete out the same punishment to waitresses, ex-prizefighters, and day laborers.
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Where is the moral intelligence in this work that recognizes what it means to come down heavy on the weak? Even the thought that such hard luck cases might arouse class prejudice does not surface in the book's text. All that would be required for "polite" society to imagine these subjects as felons would be the presence of number plates within the frames. In the mug shot, the sitter's selfhood is replaced by an incriminating identity in a bureaucratic system. Avedon has gained a cheap, enduring dominion over his sitters by reference to this mode, but executes his pictorial versions of it very expensively, and therefore, innovatively. He not only used a view camera of much greater optical potency than needed and exposed around I7,000 sheets of film in "pursuit of 752 individual subjects";(1) he also enlarged his photographs to over life-size and had them metal-backed for exhibition in art galleries and museums. The disproportion, technical overkill, and sheer obsessional freakishness of this campaign work as factors of stylistic insistence. And without question, he succeeded, for one can definitely recognize any of these pictures as an Avedon at sixty paces.
For fashion photographers, the problem of "saying" something, of having any conceptual obligation to picture a world, is solved before any film is exposed; they know who the client is. The action and the enjoyment of fashion photography is bound up entirely with distinctions of craft, flair, and setting – the equivalents in their commercial context of imaginative vision in an artistic one. For all their harshness, Avedon's portraits belong to the commercial order of seeing, not the artistic.
Just the same, the western album is his most arresting book. I am thoroughly downcast by his terrible perspective on the West (in a background text Laura Wilson, his assistant, more or less implies Avedon's special receptivity to damaged subjects), but that is his right. Obviously, whole spheres of western culture – the sun-belt retirement communities, the new wealth grown up through oil and computer development, the suburban middle class -are ignored in Avedon's gallery. He is definitely obsessed by a myth based on geographical desolation, rather than engagement with any real society. Just the same, those who complain about his unfair visual sampling are quite off the mark; let them tell us what sampling is fair. But if I ask what is the principle of this sampling – for example, personal animus, political critique of western culture and conditions, or humanist compassion for social casualties – I don't get any legible reading at all, and suspect that there isn't one. It's not that the subjects don't incite judgment or sympathy – they do that automatically because they're human and we're human. Rather, Avedon counts on their shock value, on this level, to get us absorbed by the way they look.
It's certainly true that the picture of the blond boy exhibiting the snake with the guts hanging down is a sensational image. Likewise, the hairless man literally coveted with bees. And who can forget the Hispanic factory worker with the crisp dollars cascading down her blouse, or the unemployed blackjack dealer, with a face made of dried leather and bristle, whose sport jacket is a tantrum of chevrons? Nothing seems to come out right in these faces, and so many others, that have a breathtaking oddness. They make terrific pictures. In 1960, Avedon did a real mug shot of the Kansas murderer Dick Hickock, protagonist of Capote's In Cold Blood. He printed it next to a larger one of Hickock's father (taken the same day), in the Portraits book. Here is some evidence of an avid look at the genetics of American faces for whatever might be reckoned as pathological in them. In the current gallery, that pathology seems to have come home to roost, at such close graphic quarters that it's a relief to know that these are only pictures, and the subjects won't bite.
Pictures may be only their mute selves, but for Avedon they are everything, a totality. The photographer thinks that you ultimately get to know people in pictures, as if there is some arcane, yet clinching knowledge to be gleaned from the image. Strangely enough, it had been the inadvertent resemblance of his earlier western portraits to nineteenth-century ones that led the Amon Carter Museum of Fort Worth to commission Avedon to do this series. If any such work is recalled to me, it would be medical photography of the last century. Doctors had sick people photographed to exhibit the awesome hand of nature upon them. Later, the subject might be lesions.
Avedon photographs whole people in the "lesion" spirit. In the New York Times of December 21, 1985, he asked, "Do photographic portraits have different responsibilities to the sitter than portraits in paint or prose, and if they seem to, is this a fact or misunderstanding about the nature of photography?" Well, if he had to ask, the question certainly indicates his misunderstanding of the medium. But more than that, the question symptomizes a failure of decency that no amount of vivid portrayal will ever redeem, because the portrayal and the failure are bound together in the malignant life of the photograph, each a reflection of the other.
In the American West.
Photographs 1979-1984.
Photographs by Richard Avedon. Preface by John Rohrbach. Foreword by Richard Avedon. Background by Laura Wilson.
Harry N. Abrams, New York, 2005. 184 pp., 120 tritone illustrations, 11×14″.
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(© Max Kozloff. All rights reserved. All images © copyright the photographer and/or publisher)
Posted in Other and tagged In the American West, Max Kozloff, Richard Avedon, The New York School.
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Almost a month after his plane plunged into the Pacific, U.S. Army Air Force bombardier Louie Zamperini was weary of sharks circling his life raft. As Laura Hillenbrand details in her New York Times bestseller Unbroken, dozens of sharks were tracking Zamperini's every move, waiting for him to fall in the water and become their next meal. That was in 1943.
Since then, the number of sharks in the world's ocean has declined by as much as 90 percent, and being adrift at sea isn't quite as scary a prospect as it would have been three-quarters of a century ago.
So, which ocean is the healthy one — Zamperini's shark-infested waters, or the one where more than 70 million sharks are harvested annually for soup?
In order to know if the health of the ocean is good or bad, getting better or getting worse, we have to know what our targets are. Targets are points of reference for assessing current ocean status, and they depend on personal perspective. Catching fewer fish is good for conserving biodiversity, but bad for food security and fishermen. An increase in coastal tourism may be good for local economies, but bad for working waterfronts.
Assessing health in light of these often-conflicting desires requires setting targets; developing reasonable targets has been one of the foremost challenges in creating the Ocean Health Index. Before we get too deep into the issue of perspective, why bother setting ocean health targets at all? First, it's important to clarify exactly what a healthy ocean looks like. Clarity is essential for science, and equally essential for communicating beyond the scientific arena. It forces us to choose targets that are scientifically defensible. Quantifiable targets can provide policymakers with the raw materials to create ocean regulations that have teeth.
In addition, by bringing the endgame into focus, ocean health targets make it possible to track progress toward recovery in less healthy places and celebrate successes in others. Think about your reaction if your doctor told you that you need to lower your cholesterol, but didn't give you a target number to shoot for. Would you be motivated to make lifestyle changes? Not likely. How would you know if you were making significant gains? You wouldn't. These same issues apply to measuring ocean health.
So what are we aiming for? What do Ocean Health Index targets look like?
Simple questions, complicated answers. We have defined targets that are ambitious, yet achievable, conditions in a healthy ocean. Two examples include a biodiversity target to reduce the number of species listed as threatened and endangered, and a target for marine livelihoods that strives to maintain or increase the number of jobs, job quality, and economic revenue in marine sectors.
Our focus on achievement is intentional, and contrasts with an alternative approach which would have framed the Ocean Health Index around limits, or what to avoid. It's analogous to Zamperini deciding to focus on getting rescued while he was adrift at sea, rather than choosing to make his goal not dying. Sometimes a simple mental shift can make a big difference. A focus on targets is much more constructive than a focus on avoiding negatives.
The example targets above for biodiversity and marine livelihoods put into practice the notion that a healthy ocean is not a pristine ocean, empty of human beings. We have embraced the idea that people are central to creating and maintaining a healthy ocean. It allows us to establish targets that are ecologically and socially realistic.
The Ocean Health Index evaluates the current status of each benefit against its target. There are 10 benefits, each with several subcategories. For instance, one of the things people desire from the ocean is food, and food can be obtained from both wild fisheries and aquaculture, so there will be separate targets for each.
The targets for each benefit come in two flavors. One measures the current status of a particular benefit compared to the best possible value. This type of target is similar to human health targets, such as keeping our cholesterol under 200 or maintaining a normal body temperature of 98.6 F. For example, fishing too much — or not much at all — can, in the long run, lead to lower catches than would fishing just the right amount. Fish too much and you might not leave enough adults in the water to populate the next generation; some stocks will not replenish themselves as quickly as they could. Fish too little and you're not catching as many fish as you could. So the Ocean Health Index relies on a target of harvesting the maximum sustainable amount of seafood from wild fisheries in any particular place.
The other type of target measures current ocean condition relative to where we've been. This is similar to the targets we think of for the economy. For example, what is the value of the GDP relative to last year, or what is the Dow Jones Industrial Average today relative to where it was last week? In the case of the Ocean Health Index, for example, we compare the historical capacity of mangroves and other coastal habitats to regulate climate through carbon storage 30 years ago to their capacity to do so today.
As we mentioned above, setting targets has been a challenge because people enjoy and use the ocean in so many different ways. To address this issue, we have designed "selfish" targets for the Ocean Health Index. That is, we define what is to be achieved for each ocean benefit one at a time. The target for sustainable seafood is not mindful of the target for maintaining biodiversity. The target for maintaining biodiversity is set without concern for the desired state of coastal economies. And so on.
Some of our peers have argued that targets set one at a time reveal a fatal flaw because ocean benefits don't exist in isolation. In fact, our approach embraces this idea. We know that the different choices we make about how to manage the ocean have costs and benefits. Necessary trade-offs emerge in the Ocean Health Index because what's good for achieving a target for one part of ocean health might not be so good for another part. Communicating this push and pull of different ocean uses as plainly as possible has been a cornerstone in our work. The solution we've decided upon is not a perfect one, but it is the best we can do given current scientific understanding.
In addition, the target-setting approach we're using is not as strange as it may seem at first blush-we see it all the time in reports on economic indicators. Targets for all of them are defined to encourage growth. However, it is usually the case that not every economic indicator can increase at the same time. If new home sales decline, the fraction of occupied rental properties will increase. Similarly in the Ocean Health Index, if tourism and recreation attain target levels in a particular place, chances are that water quality will not achieve its target because of the pollutants associated with coastal development.
Measuring ocean health requires knowing where you want to be, and recognizing that not everybody will feel similarly. To answer the question of which ocean is the healthy one — Zamperini's ocean, teeming with sharks, or an ocean that is (seemingly) safer for people to swim in, the answer is definitively both. The Ocean Health Index allows these tensions to materialize organically and transparently.
And, while Zamperini (or our mothers) are never likely to believe that it is healthy for us to swim in an ocean teeming with sharks, we may be able to convince them that some people probably feel otherwise.


I am an enthusiastic, self-motivated Graphic Designer / Web Designer with more than 20 years of experience designing for many different sectors as a free-lance and 10 years working as a full-time Web Designer for La Presse, one of the largest French-speaking newspapers of North America. I enjoy working with clients and being part of a team where creativity and a cheerful attitude are considered valuable. In constant mutation, I react to changing trends with excitement and an open mind.
Nuglif offers the daily news industry a powerful and sustainable business model that is fully adapted to the needs of today's readers and advertisers.
As a graphic designer, I've been working for La Presse, (one of the 50 best-printed papers in the world), since 2000, when the site cyberpresse.ca was launched. Since then, many other sites have been added to this network and I've been participating with 3 other designers and a team of programmers in the development of one of the most successful information websites in its field.
Not only is Cyberpresse first among news sites in terms of volume of monthly visitors and average number of daily visitors, but it also leads in statistics that measure readers' commitment,suchastheamountoftime spent on the site, the number of pages read and repeat visits.
Chez Brasil, Your Brazilian Home in Montreal !
¡Mi casa es tu casa!!!
We were 2 Brazilians residents in Montreal offering a "home away from home" in two beautiful houses in the trendy Plateau district in Montreal. Our homes were colourful, comfortable and cozy...everybody felt at home – hence the name «Chez Brasil». The Plateau Mont-Royal is reputed to be among the most cultural districts in Canada, boasting an interesting array of original cafés, restaurants, boutiques, cinemas and events.
Many of our guests were people who arrived in preparation to immigrate, to attend congresses or simply to enjoy a holiday as tourists. They have become our friends and represented a growing network of contacts spreading the word about the "joie de vivre' ambiance characterized by the love of music so much a part of our Brazilian culture.
Hélio Barki Department Store LTD.
Atthe endof mycourse, I wasaskedby the boardofInter-DecCollegetohead up anew Graphics departmentthatwouldproduce advertisement for all the schools belonging to theLaSalleCollegeGroup.
I've been using Photoshop for more than 22 years now, since I graduated in 1996 in Computer Graphics. I'm fully equipped at home as well and used to follow all updates.
Same time of experience for Illustrator, which I use all the time for vectorial graphics, together with Photoshop.
Since this Software appeared on the market, I started using it and I work in conjunction with Photoshop and Illustrator to build dynamic Wireframes.
I have a long experience of working with video presentations. At Nuglif, during the development of La Presse+ platform, I was asked to create many video tutorials in how to use the application, and After Effects was the software I used for that.
Also another software that I use a lot, specially when I have printed jobs to do.
I'm an amateur photographer and have a special passion for Image Retouching. Lightroom is my favourite.
I'm very well skilled in Power Point and have a lot of experience creating nice presentations for many clients.
I own all Microsoft softwares and use them in my daily basis.


Most people think the world of Horror fandom is like a family. They believe that there is an overwhelming sense of acceptance and community and that we all stand united, hand in hook against whatever adversity the world can throw at us. For the most part this is all true but there is another side to the horror world as many of us know. It can be sinister, it can be competitive…I've only been a horror blogger for a couple of months and I've already been shot twice! Yes, the sad truth is that no matter how harmonious we like to imagine this world is, there are things that divide us. Freddy or Jason?….Fast Zombies or Slow? Kane Hodder or Derek Mears? Evil Dead or Army of Darkness? Any of these questions can cause an instant eruption of war between your average dedicated deadite but there is a deeper fault line running through the horror community for decades threatening to tear apart the very fabric of everything that we have worked so hard to build.
It will come as no surprise to anyone that I am talking about the Hip-Hop Horror Turf Wars that erupted in the late 1980's and have only gotten stronger since. When hip hop or "rap" became mainstream it almost immediately began to take off in popularity. Along with its meteoric rise it ignited incredible passion among its fans. That passion took the form of completely new forms of dance, an unprecedented level of poetic expression and the light speed evolution of electronic music. Unfortunately that passion came with aggression, division, and sometimes even violence. Once the world of rap entered into its inevitable partnership with horror movies the division only became worse.
It began small, various hip-hop artists speaking about their fandom of slasher films, giant monsters, and the supernatural…horror directors like Sam Rami and Wes Craven taking on DJ duties at some of the hottest LA nightclubs, and who can forget Stephen King's short lived segment on Yo! MTV Raps. Soon every monster, unearthly creature and undead slasher began to actively campaign for hip-hop representation. They arrived in Los Angeles by the dozen going to the offices of major record labels, meeting with top executives, slaughtering them and then starting the process all over again. Finally gold was struck, the all American first family of spooky entered in to the ultimate partnership with a struggling, up and coming rapper by the name of MC Hammer. The collective life experiences and vibrant lust for life enjoyed by the Addams's seemed to be just what Mr. Hammer needed and he was plucked from the depths of total obscurity soon becoming the toast of the town with hit record after hit record. His popularity grew so much that at its peak he became nearly too legit to quit.
After Hammer's success the floodgates opened and rappers were joining forces with masters of monster movies all across America. Will Smith or the "fresh prince" as he is known on the streets joined forces with the imitable Frederick J "Freddy" Krueger, when Krueger himself senselessly murdered Smith's long time partner DJ Jazzy Jeff. Smith later said that the rhymes he created with Krueger where not only the freshest he had ever created but also the dopest. He also proclaimed Freddy one of the best natural scratchers he had ever seen. The arrival of the Fresh Prince marked a 180 degree turnaround in Krueger's career following the end of his 8 year partnership with the Fat Boys who, after defecting from the Krueger Camp announced a newly signed contract with Michael Myers.
Their first hit song under the agreement "Devil's Eyes (Pass the Fries)" shot straight to the top of the Killboard Top 100 Horror Charts. It wasn't all success though …for instance when Chucky and Vanilla Ice formed their infamous White Boys and Killer Toys alliance it turned out to be a huge flop and effectively ended both of their careers. And Young MC's ill fated "Dance Off" with Pumpkin Head in the follow-up video to his hit "Bust a Move" became a laughing stock.
Some people weren't content to enter into collaborations, and became crossover artists in their own right. When C&C Music Factory released their single "Things that Make You Go AAAAAHHHH!" The world fell in love with their new blood, gore and pyrotechnic driven performances. Even international artists got into the act. Seamus O' Shame (The Leprechaun) actually became a rapper. He made his debut with a song entitled "Lep In The Hood" at the end of a movie with a very similar title. After releasing his album he realized he could lay down some ill tracks and bring people unspeakable pain at the same time and he never looked back.
While the def jams were flying fast and loose and the money was rolling in, there was something much more ominous brewing below the surface. Turf wars and minor scuffles had began to break out as to who ran what horror neighborhood. The leprechaun laid claim to the Tiny Terror Zone which did not go over well with Chucky or The PuppetMaster Puppets. Jason and Michael Myers left untold death and destruction following the terrifying Silent Lumbering Killer Wars of '83.… It all got bad and then it got worse. For decades, record labels and horror movie producers turned a blind eye choosing to focus only on the millions of dollars they were raking in and ignoring the loss of both life and street cred. Sadly, something happened in 2010 that would make the world take notice, when Jackie Earl Haley and Samuel Bayer conspired to do the unthinkable. They murdered Freddy Krueger in cold blood. The worlds of horror, hip-hop, and hip-hop-horror fell silent. They realized that money and fame had gotten in the way of what really counts, poetic expression…and ultra violent gory movies. It was decided by all parties involved that everyone needed to get back to basics and to start doing what they did best. With that in mind, all horror/rap partnerships were dissolved.
Recently it seems as though there have been signs of a mild renaissance in the world of horror rap. Will Smith in partnership with the Saw franchise released the song Getting Jiggysaw With It and it seems to be doing fairly well in the charts so far. We can only hope that this time things will be different. That we can have a real sense of community and produce works that are all about art and not about money or "turf". Together we can live in a world that undead, horribly disfigured, psychotic serial killers like Freddy Krueger would be proud to call home. With that in mind I hope that each of you can sit back, relax…and have a nice day!


text:
Auburn Citizen - April 19, 1985
Tom Petty explores roots on new album
By Frank Spotnitz
The Citizen Auburn - Friday, April 19, 1985
NEW YORK -- Tom Petty had been working on his new album, Southern Accents, for the better part of two years and had reached the conclusion that there was no way he could finish it by the end of 1984.
Partly out of anger, partly out of despair, Petty last October slapped his left hand against the wall of the stairwell outside his Los Angeles recording studio and broke three bones.
The album still was incomplete and now Petty had to face the possibility he would never play the guitar again, or perhaps for only short periods.
"I think from the time I did it, I just realized what I was up against and I just set my mind to healing it," Petty said in a telephone interview from Los Angeles.
Only now getting his guitar-playing ability back after months of not being able to play at all, Petty is calling together his band, the Heartbreakers, in preparation for a summer tour in support of Southern Accents, his first LP since 1982's Long After Dark.
It is Petty's first "concept" album, exploring the attitudes toward Southerners and those that Southerners have toward themselves, and it makes several changes in the Heartbreaker sound, which is traditionally dominated by the organ and electric guitars.
The difference is most noticeable in the album's stunning first single, Don't Come Around Here No More, a brooding piece of work that adds the sitar, a cello and female backup singers to the band's usual arrangement.
It was co-written by Dave Stewart of the technopop British act, the Eurythmics, whom Petty met along with his produer Jimmy Iovine one night last summer. The two immediately hit it off and Petty estimates had written Don't Come Around Here No More within 30 minutes of their meeting.
Petty rose to prominence in 1977 with the hit Breakdown. He continued to have minor hits until the release of 1979's Damn the Torpedoes, which was a critical and commercial smash, producing Top 20 singles including Don't Do Me Like That and Refugee.
Petty, a Gainesville, Fla., native, said the idea of writing an album about the South came to him while he was touring in support of the Long After Dark LP and making frequent visits to Florida.
"Initially, I was going to do it as a double album," he said. "I write 26 songs and got really immersed in it and it was just too vast. I had to trim it back. It was a harder album to record than to write."
On the title track, Petty begins:
"There's a southern accent, where I come from
"The young 'uns call it country
"The yankees call it dumb."
Petty said the song commented on prejudices directed at and shared by Southerners.
"I've lost a lot of my Southern accent," said Petty, who has lived in Los Angeles for 10 years. "But when it's strong, and if you were in New Jersey or someplace, there would be that tendency to think you were stupid because you're talking with a Southern accent."
The album's final track, The Best of Everything, was intended for 1981's Hard Promises record, but when it did not fit there, Petty offered it to ex-Band member Robbie Robertson for The King of Comedy soundtrack he was producing.
Robertson added to the song a horn arrangement and the work of his own former bandmates, Richard Manuel and Garth Hudson, but disputes between the soundtrack's record company and Petty's kept it from being released. That's when Petty decided to use the song for Southern Accents.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Morin is a yellow chemical compound that can be isolated from Maclura pomifera (Osage orange), Maclura tinctoria (old fustic), and from leaves of Psidium guajava (common guava). In a preclinical in vitro study, morin was found to be a weak inhibitor of fatty acid synthase with an IC50 of 2.33 μM.  Morin was also found to inhibit amyloid formation by islet amyloid polypeptide (or amylin) and disaggregate amyloid fibers.

Morin exhibit inhibitory action against IgE-mediated allergic response.  Morin treatment significantly down-regulated expressions of BLT2, NF-κB, and Th2-cytokine (TNF-α, IL-1β, IL-4, IL-6, and IL-13) in lungs of murine model of allergic asthma.

Morin can be used to test for the presence of aluminium or tin in a solution, since it forms characteristically fluorescent coordination complexes with them.

Glycosides
 Morin-3-O-arabinoside
 Morin-3-O-lyxoside

References

Flavonols

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


From TAMIR 3.01ct cushion, VS1 fancy light yellow diamond. GIA report #2171142518 1.41ct total fancy yellow round brilliant diamonds. 0.41ct total F-G/VS round brilliant diamonds. 18K yellow gold and platinum Size 6. Can be resized to fit. Ring also available with alternative sizes and colors.


Friday Firsts: Meet Dan R.
How long have you been at Max Oxygen? 1 month.
How did you get referred to Max Oxygen?Nick Nielsen. We are family friends. I told my brothers I wanted to do this and they had dropped in with Nick before. I jumped in with both feet and just started!
How many people know you're doing this CrossFit thing? (First rule: always talk about CF). Just friends and family I think!
Favorite thing about Max Oxygen so far: All of the different workouts. I like the variety! I don't have a specific movement I enjoy most, but it's cool meeting new friends. I'll let you know when/if I ever dread something!
When do you typically WOD? Usually the 4:30 PM class.
Tell us one thing we don't know about you from your high school days. I swam all throughout high school, I went to state for that. I like CrossFit because it is like swimming in many ways. Swimming is very much an individual sport, but there is also an important team aspect. I've found this to be in true in CrossFit as well.
Best thing you've learned about this experience: I'm a little more open to trying new things since starting.It is cool to try new things. Workouts I didn't think I could ever do, I am now completing. I'm working on toes-to-bar. I never thought I could do those, and now I'm really progressing.
I enjoy the workouts a TON! People are great, so I have no complaints!
Who pushes you the most (during WODs)?The coaches push me the most. I've had Coach Bryan and Coach Jess the most and they correct my form and changes I wouldn't have noticed myself. All of the coaches are great at that.
Doing this (CrossFit)-ha! I look cooking. I'm a comic book nerd, so I look at Spiderman comics often and watch the movies!
What is your 9-5 (job)?I' m a Transformer at Pioneer (located in Johnston) for soybeans, so I make soybeans for production.
It's Intern Morgan's last blog post as she finishes her final papers for her Master's program. Below is some information she has gathered about our affiliate and some thoughts from your coaches. Enjoy. We'll see you all tonight! Happy Anniversary!
What better time to thank coaches and members, including those who continue to contribute to the ongoing success of MO2DT. Take a look at some of the things that make us special.
Coach Kristen Atkinson comes in close, she's been through all the transitions.
Members Matt Klein and Nate Liedke are also up there in years.
...Coach Dilon Flanders has worked out at all the gyms in Des Moines since the beginning of time, so maybe he counts to.
Jess Pilling: For me, the hour(s) I am coaching is (are) the best part of my day. It pushes me out of my comfort zone, it allows me to connect with the athletes, some days I get to do this with nearly every single athlete and it is a zen-like feeling when I get into my coaching zone, my brain doesn't think about anything else, not the to-do list, home, family or Boston things. I am laser focused on movement and fixing form, teaching skills, encouraging and celebrate athlete's abilities and sprinkling a bit of fun and laughter in there too. The hard work and effort I see each day in the athletes and coaches pushes me to continue to improve and learn more as a trainer and grow as a person.
I think every other trainer would agree, they give up a bit of their free time to coach classes because it's one of the best parts of their day too.
Nick Pilling: The most rewarding thing for me is a simple thank you from members when I'm able to help them take a positive step forward in their life. Maybe it's helping them with a movement they've been struggling with, maybe it's helping them modify a workout, maybe it's being their safety net and encouraging them to step outside their comfort zone, or maybe it's helping them just have the best hour of their day. It's when they say "thank you" as they leave the gym with that look on their face that says you helped take them to a place they weren't planning on going 60 minutes ago.
Kristen Atkinson: Seeing people succeed. Even the adjustment of like, one little movement. That can make a huge difference and is fun to see. Even little things make me smile. Like tonight for example (a few months ago), at the 6:30 PM class, several people improved their form. Aliz and Ashley both improved in a lift. I also just love a positive atmosphere. We are all motivating and encouraging here, and that's something that doesn't happen everywhere.
Brett Sandy: The most rewarding part for me, is to watch our athletes progress over time. I've been doing this a while now and have had the opportunity to watch a lot of people come in as newbies and flourish into veteran crossfitters. There is definitely a proud Dad moment watching them get their first pull-up, double under, or new PR.
CrossFit, and Max Oxygen especially, has dramatically changed my life from who I was when I started almost 7 years ago. I can honestly say That owe a majority of who I am now to crossfit. My drive, my work ethic, my health, and friendships have derived through crossfit. So in short, I owe crossfit and Max Oxygen my loyalty for all its given to me.
Leah Vos: I love working at Max Oxygen. I find the expectation of excellence to be extremely motivating, whether it be as a coach or as a member. Safety and form are put before speed strength and aesthetics, which makes this a lasting and effective way of exercise. We as coaches are expected to be relentless and to pursue excellence, and we are always encouraged and given opportunity to continue learning. I love the community and the opportunity it provides me to meet people from all different walks of life.
Dilon Flanders: For me the most rewarding part of coaching is watching people do things that never thought they would be able to do. Watching people work hard and accomplish incredible things.
The most rewarding thing in my 1.25 years coaching here has been our athletes pulling me out of that nasty pit. Hearing people say things like "Thanks for the tip, Reid. That really helped!" and "Yes! Reid's coaching our class!" has brought me such a joy. It's reassuring to know our athletes want me to lead their class. We share a joke here and there, we get into the nitty gritty of how they can improve a certain lift or movement, we suffer through the WOD together (okay...THEY suffer, but I remain by their side the whole time, cheering them on). When the class is over, I've done my small part in improving their day, and little do they know that they've done the same for me.
Bryan Lloyd: The biggest reward for me as a Coach is the moment when an athlete "gets it". The sudden realization of how a movement or skill is supposed to feel and function with their body and what it's real-world application would be. This can be achieved with a simple cue or a lengthy explanation and demonstration, but either way when they "get it" they never forget and that is my most favorite part of coaching.
Dan Saar: My favorite part of coaching is finding that cue for someone that is struggling with a movement that gets them over the hump and makes the movement click for them. I feel a sense of accomplishment, but more importantly, I'm really proud of the athlete for sticking with it and trusting me and the other coaches to help them improve.
This has been my home away from home for about five years now, and the people are amazing. I also know that everyone, including coaches, athletes, and friends of the gym also go above and beyond for the box without question, so it's easy to do the same.
We've also got some significant behind the scenes people to help us run smoothly. Thank you to Lindsey and Zach have essential parts to this community as well. They put in hours each week keeping the box tidy. As well as when Jess hosts events or wants photos taken They organize and clean equipment and deep clean the floors so the space stays tidy. Please give them a "thank you" next time you see them in class!
Thank you to Jordyn Eckert who maintains the barbell and rig cleanliness. Believe it or not, those bars don't spin on their own.
Zak Sheeder maintains the website and updates all things computer related and creates apparel designs. Why do you continue to go above and beyond for Max Oxygen?
Jordyn: The most meaningful part of being part of the crew is knowing I help make it possible for athletes to have a fun and rewarding time in the gym. Making sure our most utilized equipment is clean and cared for so we can spend more time slanging and banging some weights around and less time worrying about cleaning equipment after we use it.
Even if you haven't formally trained for Dam to Dam, like the before-I-Was-A-CrossFitter would have when training for a 12.4 mile race, you are more than ready for this. You CrossFit.
Now I won't say your feet will not hurt because I can almost guarantee that they will. You haven't spent hours and miles on your feet pounding the pavement. But you have been training. You've been lifting weights overhead, doing repeat 200-400 and 600 meters, practicing your pistol squats and KB swings, and improving your Olympic weightlifting technique, even sandbag getups have helped you prepare for this race. You've been doing functional fitness that can be applied to every day tasks and transfers over to nearly any other sport you want to do on a whim.
Why? You've spent time in aerobic training which is high power output(think "Fran" or Wednesday's SDLHP, Run, Push Press, Run workout) and high intensity. It builds muscle, whereas aerobic (distance running) BURNS muscle. Think of a sprinter's body (defined muscles) verses a marathoner's body (skin and bones, very little muscle) looks like.
Greg Glassman wrote about this in "Metabolic Conditioning" in the CrossFit Journal Article..."Ultimately the CrossFit position on metabolic conditioning, or "cardio", is summed in two points: • Anaerobic training can match endurance training for aerobic benefit. • Metabolic training with varying and mixed exercise modalities avoids specificity of adaptation allowing for additional first wave – cardiovascular/ respiratory adaptations, and increased functional strength.
The clincher is that CrossFit athletes have demonstrated improved endurance performance without endurance training, and even more amazingly, in clinical trials CrossFit's high intensity regimen has produced improvements in endurance measures that rivaled those achieved through programs comprised largely of endurance efforts."
While you will not win the race, you haven't specialized in endurance running, you are competent enough to hold a steady place, finish in the top 30% and quite possibly even PR your time at this distance!
Here is my challenge for you: When you hit the last mile, pick up your pace, gradually getting faster and end in a sprint. You will thrive in the final kick, this is where your CrossFit trained body can out-kick endurance runners, it's what you're used to. So sprint it out!


Every year the anarchist movement has its biggest get-together at the London Anarchist Bookfair at the end of October. But there's a lot of similar events going on between now and then, and we've done a roundup below so you're never short of a book or two.
Stalls from the likes of East Anglian anti-fascists, Cambridge SolFed, PM Press and Freedom Fibres. Talks announced so far include ground breaking undercover investigator, hunt sab and author of Outfoxed Mike Huskisson, DIT Collective with more TBA. Keep up with what's being announced here.
The Sheffield bookfair is one of the longer-running around Britain, with this being its eighth year of hosting a wide range of stalls, talks and film screenings. Details and audio of some meetings from previous years can be found in their archive here.
Further details TBA, keep an eye on their website.
Organisers say this is the first anarchist bookfair in town (as far as they know), points if you know better! Stalls, meetings, films, food, refreshments and even a kids' area. Followed by an afterparty from 7pm with live music and bar — £5 donation or less if you're skint.
Organised by the Alliance for Radical Booksellers and featuring the annual Bread and Roses award for radical literature, the London Radical Bookfair is fast becoming a fixture in the activist summer calendar.
Now in its 12th year, WSM folks say it'll be sometime in Autumn if it happens. Organised by the Workers Solidarity Movement, keep an eye out for their updates.
Booking forms for stalls, meetings and inclusion in the programme are being sent out around the beginning of May. Email mail [@] anarchistbookfair.org.uk if you want a copy of the booking form or leaflets.The biggest gathering of anarchists in Britain and always full of fascinating talks, workshops and of course more books than you can shake a red and black stick at. Many smaller publishers including Freedom launch their latest titles on the day.
For updates, check their website and Facebook pages.
Norwich: Happened in August last year, the organisers feel it went well and are hoping to do it again in 2017 but no details as yet. 2016 event here.
Have we missed you out? Get in touch with us via [email protected] or @freedom_paper. For a listing of bookfairs worldwide, check out the anarchist bookfairs blog.


Il bra a sostegno medio Nike Just Do It Swoosh è realizzato in tessuto traspirante con taglio all'americana che assicura pelle asciutta, comfort e libertà di movimento.
This high-performance, microfiber, polyester fabric drives sweat away from the body and moves it to the fabric surface, where it evaporates. As a result, Dri-FIT fabric helps you stay dry and comfortable.


"If you want to have a great future you have to think about it in the present, because when the future's here you won't have the time". [Nathan Myhrvold, ex-CTO of Microsoft].
I've been building software products for data management, engineering and manufacturing for the last 20 years. It allowed me to gather experience in diverse fields – industries, customers, technology, organization, management, communication.
I'm passionate about using technologies and building businesses that transform the way people work in engineering, manufacturing and enterprise. My biggest enjoyment moments is to see how technology is solving real customers' problem.
At Beyond PLM, I'm consulting companies in engineering and manufacturing domain. My primarily area of focus is data and product lifecycle management strategy. It cover diverse set of topics – software vendors, products, technologies, processes. I'm also mentoring startup companies in both hardware and business software domain.
Newman Cloud is a new business I started in 2016 with the with a mission to help manufacturing companies conduct more efficient business in 21st century environment. We develop openBoM– new cloud-based bill of materials and inventory management tool for hardware startups, manufacturing, and supply chain.
At Autodesk my focus was search and data technologies. Over the course of the time in different groups I was responsible for PLM360, Vault and Search.
I co-founded Inforbix in 2010. We built cloud-based semantic search and big data tools for engineers. We pioneered a new way for engineers to solve product data problems. It was fun and a lot of work to make things happen. Autodesk acquired Inforbix technologies in 2012.
I spent 10 years working for SmarTeam, Enovia, Dassault Systems. I held various positions in R&D group and company management. I led dev teams, working with customers and partners.
At Decision System Israel I developed data management and CRM applications. My team was developing components for Professional Help Desk (PHD) startup in Stamford, CT. Sold to CA in 1998.
In early 1990s, I was working for Autodesk reseller in Israel. I created AutoCAD apps, did pre-sale, customer support and training.


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Discover the Deserts
Desert Shopping
From boutiques to bargains, vintage to boho-chic, you'll find it here
In-the-know visitors make sure to come to the Palm Springs area with room in their suitcases. Bargain hunters make a beeline for the town of Cabazon, home of Desert Hills Premium Outlets and an impressive list of designer brands including Prada, Burberry and Gucci. Nearby Cabazon Outlets offers more great deals on clothes, shoes and homewares.
In Palm Desert, the wide, artwork-and-flower decorated street known as El Paseo has boutiques, galleries and shops trendy enough to earn it the nickname 'The Rodeo Drive of the Desert'. The Gardens on El Paseo retail complex is especially luxurious—a great destination for wandering on warm evenings before having dinner at one of its outdoor cafés—it really doesn't get much better than this. Creativity also plays a big role in Palm Springs, where the Backstreet Art District features artist-owned galleries and working studios, giving you a chance to chat with artists as well as buy their one-of-a-kind pieces. Browse shops in the appealing Uptown Design District, a hot-bed of vintage and contemporary treasures in Mid-Century Modern buildings as retro-chic as the items for sale inside.
More Palm Springs area shopping
PREMIUM OUTLETS
Backstreet Art District
Kodiak Greenwood
Anza-Borrego Desert State Park
Greater Palm Springs Convention & Visitors Bureau
Palm Springs Shopping
The strike of a golf club, the hum of the wind buffeting towering sand dunes, the splash of a dive into a perfect pool. The desert region is a sensory feast.
Following winter rains, springtime wildflowers paint the desert with colour.
Death Valley National Park holds the record for the hottest temperature ever recorded (54°C in 1913), while the deserts of Joshua Tree National Park have giant boulders and alien-like yucca plants. At Anza Borrego, California's largest state park, discover amazing spring wild flowers. The oasis like Palm Springs region (two hours' east of Los Angeles and three hours north east of San Diego) has golf resorts, mid-century modern architecture and every spring, the epic Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival.
At 282 ft. below sea level, Badwater in Death Valley National Park is the lowest point in the contiguous United States.
Mountain-Size Sand Dunes, Mysterious Singing Rocks
The largest national park outside Alaska, Death Valley is an almost unfathomable place. The park's 3.3 million acres encompass mountain-size...
Hipster cool in the desert
Fed by underground springs, the desert comes alive here, not only with signature palms, but also with a string of resort communities—Palm Desert,...
Luxury Resorts in the Desert
Relax at spoil-yourself spas under the desert sun
Pampering just comes with the territory in the California desert. Maybe in the old days, desert visitors had to pack in supplies and sleep on the...
Rugged mountains, vibrant sunsets & uncountable stars
Boulders and buttresses, rugged mountains, gold mining ruins, desert plains dotted with the oddball trees, this is a weird place....
This is the sense of the desert hills, that there is room enough and time enough.
Mary Austin
Shopping is an art form in California. Whether you are in search of the perfect cocktail dress or an authentic Mexican piñata, you will find it here. Want to sample fresh fruits and...
Prayitno/Flickr
Saddle up for Stagecoach, the country cousin held in the same venue—the Indio Polo Grounds south of Palm Springs...
Courtesy of Stagecoach
Swing clubs and racquets where the pros do in the Coachella Valley
With world-class golf courses set against dramatic desert landscapes and top-quality tennis courts beneath towering palms, two sports get classy...
Courtesy of Elvis Presley Estate
Swing into Sinatra cool in Palm Springs
Filled with distinctive post-World War II buildings designed by leading architects of the time, Palm Springs is America's Mid-century Modern mecca...
The lowest golf course in the world is Furnace Creek in Death Valley, at 214 feet below sea level.
Events in the Desert
From edgy rock n' roll to haute fashions, find your fest in the desert
For all of the desert's natural splendor and outdoor destinations, creativity comes with the territory, too. Throughout the year, the region finds ways to celebrate art, design, music, and film...
The Lumineers at Coachella by Lucas Himovitz
Wild, remote & unforgettably beautiful
The park's combo name pairs the name of famed Spanish explorer Juan Bautista de Anza, who crossed this desert in 1774, and the Spanish word...
Riverside County Fair & Date Festival
Want a date? You're guaranteed to get one at this Coachella Valley extravaganza honouring the sweet, sticky fruits of local date palms. Sip creamy date shakes (said to be one of the best...
Kate Bolin/Flickr
David A Lee
LGBTQ Travel in the Deserts
Experience a scene that really heats up when the weather starts to cool down
Fabulous pool parties. Stylish bars and impeccably designed hotels. Pampering spas and energetic nightclubs. Lavish events. There's no question...
6 Unforgettable Desert Parks
Vast landscapes, spectacular desert vistas
Both vast and intimate, the California desert is a region that ranges from arid, barren expanses to oasis-like canyons with hidden waterfalls. Towering sand dunes rise above the desert floor,...
Joshua Tree National Park by Alex Farnum
Courtesy of Bureau of Land Management
Amboy Crater
Hike into a 6,000-year-old volcanic remnant
Designated a National Natural Landmark in 1973 and located just off historic Route 66, Amboy Crater is an example of geology creating geometry- it...
Photo by The Greater Southwestern Exploration Company/Flickr
Fossil Falls
Rushing river, sculpted black lava
The truth is that the name Fossil Falls is a bit of a misnomer. After all, there are neither fossils nor a waterfall here. But a walk through...
California Welcome Centers in the Deserts
Warm weather, abundant attractions
The warm air may draw you here, but any number of other attractions will keep you coming back. It could be the innovative spas in Desert Hot...
California's New Desert Monuments
Find beauty, wildlife, and solitude in three of America's newest national preserves
You could call it a monumental achievement: In February 2016, three new national monuments were created, protecting a combined total of 1.8 million acres of California desert. The names of the...
Ann Marie Brown
Designated a National Natural Landmark in 1973 and located just off historic Route 66, Amboy Crater is an example of geology creating geometry- it's an almost perfectly...
Top California Yoga Retreats
If your desire is to improve your yoga practice and recharge in a beautiful place, California offers some world-class options any time of year. Here is a half-dozen...
Discover the San Francisco Bay Area
The first hit of this city's unmistakable techy-ness starts right off the bat—if you get here by plane. Meet Space Observer, a 26-foot white-and-chrome robot that...
This region, in California's north-east corner, is known for mountains, forests, waterfalls, and amazing, safe to visit volcanoes. The region, a 3 hour drive north of Sacramento, takes its name from the rugged Cascade Mountains and their signature peak in state, 14,180 foot/4,322 metre Mount Shasta, a volcano.
California Welcome Centers in Shasta Cascade
With crashing waves along the coast and soaring redwood trees blanketing miles of uncrowded parkland, this is one of California's most spectacular regions. The largest city, Eureka, is roughly a 5 hour drive north of San Francisco. But what a drive: lush wine country, charming hamlets, spouting whales, and breathtaking sunsets.
The western foothills of the Sierra Nevada Range, defining California's eastern border, are known as the Gold Country, named after the rich Mother Lode discovered here in the mid 1850s. While gold is still found in the region, new riches include white water rafting, tucked away towns, farm fresh dining, and award winning wines.
California Welcome Centers in Gold Country
On the western oceanfront of Northern California, at the state's distinctive bend along the coast, lies this breathtaking region. It is framed by an unforgettable gateway, the iconic Golden Gate Bridge, spanning the mouth of San Francisco Bay. Explore diverse cities, picturesque hamlets, family friendly beaches, coastal parklands, and wine country, including Napa and Sonoma wine country, 1½ hours north of San Francisco.
Spotlight: Alcatraz
California Welcome Centers in the San Francisco Bay Area
Nicknamed 'California's backbone,' this region of towering granite peaks defines much of the state's eastern boundary. Visit Yosemite Valley, Lake Tahoe, Mammoth Lakes and the giant trees of Sequoia/Kings Canyon National Parks. All within a day's drive of either San Francisco or L.A. In winter, enjoy snow sports. In summer, go hiking, mountain biking, fishing, or boating.
California Welcome Centers in the High Sierra
Running right down the middle of California, this broad region contains some of most productive farmland in the world. Wine country around Lodi features big, bold reds. Further south, Fresno has a lively arts scene.
California Welcome Centers in the Central Valley
In this narrow strip of coastal hills and valleys, discover romantic towns, including Carmel by the Sea, historic Monterey, and elegant Santa Barbara, nicknamed 'the American Riviera.' The region's classic drive along Highway One, linking San Francisco to Los Angeles, visits Big Sur, Hearst Castle, wine country and kick back surf towns.
California Welcome Centres in the Central Coast
This dramatic region takes up the south-eastern half of the state. Remarkable desert parklands, including Death Valley, Joshua Tree, and Anza Borrego, provide an extraordinary chance to explore, while the oasis like allure of Palm Springs, 3 hours north-east of San Diego, offers sunny resort style getaways, with golf, tennis, spas, and high end shopping.
California Welcome Centers in the Inland Empire
This sunny region along the state's southern coast is California's most populated region, best known as the capital of the entertainment industry. Here, film stars really do work in Hollywood, play in the surf at Malibu, and shop in Beverly Hills. Looping motorways make the car king, but the region also has a surprisingly good network of buses and light rail, a hassle-free way to explore.
Spotlight: Long Beach
Spotlight: The Getty Center
Tucked between San Diego and Los Angeles Counties, this region is known for flawless beaches and 'the happiest place on earth,' Disneyland Resort. Anaheim, the theme park's home, offers a surprisingly hip vibe in a refurbished downtown. Newport Beach has dazzling yachts, Huntington Beach has iconic surfing, and Costa Mesa beckons with top shopping.
California Welcome Centres in Orange County
This sun and surf region is known for some of the best weather and warmest water in the state. San Diego, the state's second largest city, is home to the San Diego Zoo in Balboa Park, one of the world's great urban parks. For family fun, play at SeaWorld San Diego and LEGOLAND California Resort. Inland, discover surprising mountain towns like Julian, known for orchards and apple pie.
California Welcome Centers in San Diego County


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Home » How Does a Venture Capitalist raise funds?
How Does a Venture Capitalist raise funds?
Leave a Comment / Education, venture capitalist / By Ayaan Bhattacharjee / June 17, 2022 July 14, 2022
What is Venture Capital?
These investments are private equity in nature. They are offered by investment firms or institutions to early-stage start-ups and developing organisations with tremendous growth potential (in terms of the number of employees, annual revenue, the scale of operations, etc.). In trade for equity or a share in the company, venture capital firms or funds invest in these businesses in the early stage.
They risk investing in high-risk start-ups in the hopes of witnessing a few of the businesses they back prevail. These fundings have a high risk of failure since start-ups face a lot of uncertainty. Start-ups in high-tech areas such as information technology (IT), clean technology, and biotechnology are typically founded on a new technology or business model.
Venture capital is also a tool for the public and private sectors to operate jointly to create an organisation that systematically creates enterprise networks for different industries and enterprises, permitting them to expand and advance. This organisation assists in identifying prospective new companies and providing financing, technical expertise, mentoring, personnel acquisition, strategic partnerships, marketing "know-how," and business models.
These businesses are more likely to flourish once integrated into the business network, as they'll become "nodes" in the search networks for designing and building items in their field. However, venture capitalists' decisions are frequently skewed, reflecting traits such as overconfidence and the illusion of control, which are common in entrepreneurial choices.
Details about venture capital fund
Venture capital fund
Venture capital funds are a pooled investment vehicle that makes investments in startups in exchange for a share of the company's ownership. Venture capital is a sort of private equity in which investments are not listed on a public stock exchange.
Investors can profit from venture capital funds in a variety of ways. A "liquidity event," for example an initial public offering (IPO) or a merger with some other company, is the most common way for a fund to obtain returns. The proceeds will subsequently be dispersed pro-rata among the fund's investors.
A "general partner" (GP) is the manager of a venture capital fund. They are in charge of obtaining funds from a pool of investors, and investments, picking and monitoring the fund's operational, accounting, and legal elements. A GP will often select investments based on an investment thesis, which will target a specific market sector and/or investment stage.
What Support Venture Capital Funds Give to Startups?
A company's success is heavily reliant on venture funding. According to HBR, more than 80% of venture investors' money goes towards establishing the infrastructure needed to grow the business, including expense investments (production, marketing, and sales) and balance sheet investments (providing fixed assets and working capital).
Several venture fund managers advise their portfolio firms in addition to funding. Several VC firms have developed a reputation for assisting portfolio companies with recruitment, access to follow-on investment, customer acquisition, and other issues that startups face.
How do VCs raise funds?
The VC firm seeks out limited partners (LPs) for the new fund during the capital-raising phase. The procedure can take months or even years, depending on the firm's reputation, fund strategy, and market conditions. The fund is usually closed to new investors once the target investment level has been attained.
What techniques do venture capital funds use to develop and disperse returns?
Typically, VCs make money when one of their portfolio businesses does one of three things:
An initial public offering (IPO) on a public stock exchange allows a portfolio company to go public.
A portfolio firm merges or acquires another company; or
The fund's shares in a portfolio company are sold to another entity by the fund management.
Before releasing returns to investors, funds may wait for all of their positions to depart, or they may distribute returns when liquidity events occur.
Stages Of Venture Capital Funds
Pre seed investment
It is when you start building your product or service prototype to see if your idea is viable and comes before the phases of venture finance. VCs are unlikely to grant capital in exchange for equity at this time, so you'll have to rely on your resources and contacts to get your firm off the ground. Many entrepreneurs seek advice from founders who have had comparable pre seed investment experiences. With this guidance, you may start designing a winning business concept and a credible business strategy.
Seed stage startup
In the seed stage startup, the business now has some experience and can show that it has the potential to grow into a thriving enterprise. You'll need a pitch deck now to show VCs that your idea is a good investment possibility. The majority of the little sums you raise in the seed stage startup are used for particular tasks such as market research, business plan development, management team formation, and product development. The idea is to raise enough money today to show prospective investors that you have the ability to scale and grow.
Series A funding
The initial round of venture capital funding is called Series A funding. At this point, your company should have finished its business strategy and created a pitch deck that focuses on product-market fit. You're fine-tuning the product and building a customer base, demonstrating a steady revenue stream and ramping up marketing and advertising.
Series B funding
Your business is now ready to expand. This stage of venture finance supports actual product manufacturing, marketing, and sales operations. Series B Funding is not the same as Series A funding. Series B investors want to see real performance and evidence of a commercially viable product or service to justify further financing, whereas Series A investors want to see the potential. Investors will be more confident in you and your team if you demonstrate that you and your team can succeed on a broader scale.
Series C funding
When you reach the series C funding stage, you're on a growth path. You've made it, and more money will enable you to develop new products, expand into other markets, and perhaps buy other firms. It takes about 2-3 years to get to this stage on a fast track, where you're generating exponential growth and steady profitability.
Series D funding or mezzanine stage
Given that its products and services have gained sufficient traction, the company may decide to go public at this point. The money you get here can be utilised for things like:
Acquisitions and mergers
To drive out competitors, price reductions and other tactics are used.
Investing in the procedures leading up to IPO.
When it comes to extending your consumer base, strategy, fine-tuning your market, recruiting the best team members and eventually succeeding, having a venture investor who can advise your company as a board member is particularly beneficial. Here comes InvestorBase which provides a platform to new founders and helps them guide them in the right direction of raising funds. Here, they can search for desired investors and get the insights which are required for them to pitch. Thus, there's no need to fear that any idea will not work. Just come up with good ideas and InvestorBase will help provide a platform for pitching to the relevant investors.
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InvestorBase helps founders find and contact investors, and provides them insights to be more successful in their fundraise journey.
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