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7 tips for taking a car loan from family
By Margarette Burnette Margarette Burnette's Twitter profile
Jul. 15, 2011 /
Borrowing from family
If you need to borrow money for a car, but your credit isn't great, the people closest to you may be more willing than a bank to lend you money. But borrowing from family and friends can lead to problems if you're unable to pay back the car loan, says personal finance expert Susan Hirshman, author of "Does This Make My Assets Look Fat?"
However, when borrowing from family or friends is your only option, you can take steps to help smooth the process. "The goal is not to jeopardize the relationship," she says.
Here are seven tips from Hirshman and other personal finance experts on how to plan out an auto loan from family and friends, while keeping the friendships and family ties intact.
Get documentation
Make sure the key terms of the auto loan, such as dates for repayment, amount and interest charges, are spelled out in writing and agreed upon by all parties, says Michael Kresh, a certified financial planner and president of M.D. Kresh Financial Services in Islandia, N.Y. Borrowers can use online search engines for promissory note templates, he says.
Getting a promissory note in writing adds formality to the car loan process and limits personal stress on all parties, Kresh says. "As a borrower, the tendency may be to pay the family member last, after all the other monthly bills are covered," he says. "Having written documentation can help the borrower view the loan with the same sense of importance as their other obligations."
Understand tax laws
It's important for the lender to record the transaction as a car loan and not a gift, Kresh says. Otherwise, the lender would be considered a donor in the eyes of the Internal Revenue Service, and they may have to pay gift taxes if the transfer of money is greater than $13,000, he says.
Another tax concern to consider is the interest charged on the car loan. "If the lender doesn't charge interest (at market rates), then the IRS may consider the exchange a gift," Kresh says.
There also can be tax implications for borrowers who don't repay auto loans from relatives or friends. The IRS may consider a forgiven loan as income and try to collect income tax, Kresh says. His advice for all parties is to talk to a tax expert before making any large-scale exchange of money.
Investigate peer-to-peer lending
Borrowers who can't get an auto loan from a financial institution should consider using a peer-to-peer lending company such as Prosper.com or LendingClub.com before borrowing from family members and friends, says Beth Frazier, founder of The Women's Investment Group in New York City.
These sites match borrowers with individual lenders who may be willing to lend money that could be used to buy a car, Frazier says. But because the money is coming from a third party and not a family member, debtors don't have to face their lenders at Thanksgiving dinner.
The key to getting a loan from a peer-to-peer lending site is to convince potential investors to fund the objective. "On some sites, you have to be able to sell your story. That means explaining why you need a new car, and why it's necessary. If your story is not convincing, the lenders may not lend you any money," Frazier says.
Plan for defaults
All parties should agree on what should happen if the borrower is unable to repay the car loan, and it should be documented in the loan agreement, Kresh says.
Could the lender have the right to take ownership of the car and sell it to repay the auto loan? Will the debt be forgiven? These are difficult questions, but it's easier to face them and be on the same page before money changes hands, he says.
Communicate often
If you know you'll have a hard time paying back the car loan in a given month, call before the payment becomes late, Hirshman says.
"I work with family members all the time who tell me that if their relative was just open and honest about what was going on with his finances, the relationship would be so much better," Hirshman says.
"Instead, the borrower may say that he'll pay the money in two weeks. Then two weeks comes and goes, and the borrower doesn't say anything. It becomes a huge elephant in the room," she says. "You may not discuss it, but it's always there."
Another part of communication is being willing to listen if family members criticize some of your purchases, Hirshman says. For example, if you eat at a lot of restaurants, then someone who loans you money may wonder why you're not eating at home more to save.
"If you borrow money from family members or friends, they may become judgmental, and you have to be prepared for that," she says.
Consider a co-signer
If a relative co-signs a car loan with you at a bank, then the relative still assumes financial risk, but the funds would initially come from the financial institution instead of the relative's savings, Frazier says.
"I don't normally recommend that relatives co-sign a loan, but I understand parents or other close relatives may be more likely to do it because of the love factor," she says. As long as the co-signer knows that this will be a part of their debt, too, it could be a solution for obtaining an auto loan.
Decide if the expense is necessary
If you're going to borrow money, make sure the auto is a necessity and not just a new car you don't need, Kresh says.
Take into consideration what you can afford to borrow and stick within those limits, he says.
"If you're looking at unconventional loan sources, such as family members and friends, for something as conventional as buying a car, you have to ask yourself if you're really just trying to spend too much money," says Kresh.
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Visible light transmittance (VLT) is the amount of light in the visible portion of the spectrum that passes through a glazing material. This is a key input to optimizing daylighting. And since good daylighting can help offset electric lighting and its associated cooling loads, understanding VLT is critical to designing high-performance buildings.
Visible light transmittance is influenced by the glazing type, the number of panes, and any glass coatings. Visible light transmittance of glazing ranges from above 90% for clear glass to less than 10% for glazing comprised of highly reflective coatings on tinted glass.
In Sefaira, you have the ability to input a VLT value in the Properties section of the Plugin. Since Sefaira analyzes a single-plane model, it will apply a VLT to your glazing planes and will treat things like mullions or frames as shading. As a result, when considering VLT values informed by glazing options, you should apply the center-of-glass value rather than the assembly value.


User bio I'm a time traveler. I can focus upon moving my physical and mental self to another place in time. My trips can take years of what you procieve as "time" but, i always return to the same spot and time as when I left giving the illusion I never moved.
This is a signature from the past!
Hannelore the Great: GAH! Stop poking and prodding me. I'm not cattle.
Squire Vince: CHUCH NORRIS BATMAN SPARTAN!
Phoenixocracy: Unless...Batman IS a Spartan..


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Freely Forgiven
Ex-convict given a second chance
By Emmy Houk
Danny Amos was born into a family of bank robbers. "Everybody on my dad's side of the family were all criminals," the 65-year-old recalls. "My dad robbed several banks—him and some of his family. I was my dad's number one. He kept me with him all the time."
Danny sits in the stairwell of a former courthouse where he once attempted an escape.
When Danny Amos was 10 years old and his father was in prison, his mother gave him up to the state. She had seven other children, and Danny fought with her boyfriend. She was fed up with Danny, so she decided to let the government raise him instead.
A year after Danny's mother abandoned him, police arrested him for stealing. The juvenile court system judged him to be incorrigible, which gave the prison guards room to treat him however they saw fit.
"They would have me bend straight over and put my head between their legs," Danny remembers. "They'd pour water on my back and take the palms of their hands from way up high and come down. They'd leave a print on my back."
During his time in the juvenile system, Danny was often placed in solitary confinement. For 90 days at a time, he received small amounts of food and had little light.
"They would put me in solitary for anything they wanted to." His sharp features grow sharper as he recounts the events. "It made me hard, and it made me [have] two personalities. I had that monster in me, and then I had the good in me."
Struggle to Survive
Danny was released from the juvenile system when he was 15 and immediately dove back into a life of crime. "I knew from experiences with my family that robbing was a way of getting finances, and it was so easy."
Danny now serves at Alliance Church of the Valley.
He met a girl and got married when he was 17, which led him to steal more because he needed to take care of her. In 1970, when he was 19, Danny was arrested. Not long after, his wife gave birth to their daughter.
At first, he had only a six-year sentence, but his wife kept pressuring him to come home and be with her and the baby. He tried to break out many times to be with them but was unsuccessful.
"I've got numerous attempts and escapes in my record over the years," Danny notes. "However, I ended up with so much time I didn't care anymore." He added five more years to his sentence for every attempted escape.
Over the course of his imprisonment, Danny was placed in 34 different U.S. prisons. "When you become violent, they try to separate you from the people that you're mixed up with by moving you around," he says. In addition, he was punished with solitary confinement for 13 years at one time. "The chances of me making it [out] were zero to none."
Danny called out to God: Old man, look. I've tried everything else. Help me find some good people. I don't want to be around criminals no more. Let me make it out there.
Healing for Body and Mind
A few months later on May 27, 2015, Danny had served his sentence. He was free after 50 years in prison. Nichole Strom became his parole officer.
"[Ex-convicts] need somebody in their lives 24/7 who can help them learn how to make good choices and do things right," says Nichole, who contacted several churches to find a mentor for Danny.
Jeff Naegelen, Nichole's pastor at Alliance Church of the Valley (St. Croix Falls, Wis.), was the first to respond. When he approached a church member, Dana Frank, about the mentorship, Dana prayed and accepted. Nichole then asked Danny if he would meet Jeff, Dana, and her coworker Anna when he got out, and he agreed.
Danny at home, enjoying a favorite pastime, painting.
"I trusted her because everything she had said to me so far had been true," Danny says. "She fought for me, and I'd never had nobody on the correction's side fight for me. She's my angel, my bodyguard."
The five met at Nichole's office after Danny was released to ensure he and Dana were a good fit for a mentoring relationship. "I had a gut feeling that he was a good person, that he was straight up and wasn't phony," Danny says.
The group took Danny to Walmart with a $250 gift card from the church to purchase essentials such as clothes, a watch, and a phone. They didn't know his sizes because he had worn a prison uniform for most of his life.
Danny had multiple health problems when he was released. Not only was he fighting cancer, but he also was struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) from the violent prison life. While he received treatment, he lived at Serenity Home, a shelter that reaches out to the homeless, including ex-cons who want a better life.
For the first several months, he was in the hospital three times a day and had many anxiety attacks. He awoke from dreams about prison, thinking that he was still there. The church community, however, helped him to get the treatments he needed.
After seven months, he was declared cancer-free.
Receiving Life
Because of his incarceration, Danny had never learned to drive, cook, use a phone—or even a can opener. "I was like a newborn baby out here," Danny recalls. "I was still going by the only thing I knew about: survival. And then I go to this new world out here, and it was nothing like it was when I was a kid. It was all like I was in a dream world."
Dana taught Danny how to live again. "Everything that I experienced with Danny was like [teaching] a child," Dana says.
Danny's goals were simple too—"to stay out of jail and to get a Chihuahua and a truck." Using everything that Dana taught him to do, Danny now partially supports himself as a handyman and has a driver's license. He calls himself Handyman Dan and has purchased equipment that allows him to help the community.
For many months, Danny searched for a place to live on his own. A woman in the community, Dorene, rents a home to Danny with the intention of having him own it one day. "She gave me a place to rest my head when nobody else would rent to me," Danny says.
Dana and Danny spend some time together at Dana's farm.
Not only has the church family blessed Danny, but Danny also has been a helpful addition to the church. He is now an active member of Alliance Church of the Valley. He and Dana serve at church events together, cleaning dishes and doing other tasks. For Christmas Danny spent an entire month's disability check on toys for the church's kids.
Dana has sacrificed much to mentor Danny. He has lost many friends, including two who would not allow Danny to come to their wedding. Mentoring Danny has been a learning experience for Dana as well. "It's brought a lot of reminders like, 'We've all got pasts, and you don't judge somebody by it,'" Dana says.
Danny now mentors others like himself, ex-cons who have no life direction. Any time he can, he helps these people, whether they're male, female, or juveniles. His dream is to open a place like Serenity where ex-cons can get back on their feet and find purpose.
Danny has begun to witness to his sister as well. When she was going through a tough time, he told her to go in the bathroom, shut the door, and just talk to God like she would with anyone else.
Because of the outstretched hands of this church family, Danny has received Christ's forgiveness. "Danny definitely knows he's been forgiven," Dana says. "I think he has turned it over to the Lord."
7 responses to Freely Forgiven
Charlotte Belton says:
This is a beautiful story, which is a great testimate as to why it is so important to serve others. Not only does it give us the chance to feel joyful, but more importantly it changes lives; not only does caring for others bring goodness into the life of the receiver but also it brings joy to the giver. It starts a chain reaction! Love, and kindness are always important, especially in such a difficult world. With more love, compassion and respect, which starts with ourselves, we can make this world a much brighter place to live in. To be happy is everyone's right, and should be our mission in life.
Mally says:
Tremendous video and article. As a recovering addict I am thankful for the "risk" takers in the body of Christ!
Dan Humphrey says:
We work closely with our court system, working with men and women coming from jail or prison as well as 1st time domestic violence offenders. Most do not have good role models. We teach tools to help with communication and conflict resolution. We provide "allies" to come along side these "neighbors."
Our mission statement, "Touching the lives of people, offering hope to the hurting. In our minds, the Hope is Jesus Christ, the True Healer of all wounds.
May God bring more "Dana's" into the lives of people!
What a blessing. I have a grandson incarcerated in prison and pray that when the time come he will have someone like Dana to help and direct him. He has found the Lord and is trusting and growing in Him. God Bless
Tammy weber says:
Touching story….
I know parole officer nicole. She said to me after I praised her: "it's a true statement that God has a plan to use us/teach us/ guide us,in all situations in life. And that we just act with our best instincts, and sometimes blessings happen. Yes, she is Danny's angel!!
Judy Griese says:
What a testimony! What God can do when someone is willing to give of themselves. Danny God Loves You So Much.
sue sogla says:
Way to go! Danny and Dana! You guys are so sweet and special! Continue on! Love you both!
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


You'll never miss the start of a Titans game with this fun Chrome Wall Clock! The clock face is printed with your team's team colors and logo and finished with a simple, chrome frame. Decorate your dorm room, man cave or den with this decorative clock to show your loyalty to your favorite team. Makes the perfect gift for Titans fans, students, and alumni!


A four alarm fire at 1375 E. Walker Rd. on Sunday proved to be a total loss of a home, garage, and camper trailer were lost to the flames.
Sandusky, Elk Township, Carsonville and Applegate Fire Departments responded to a report of a camper fire inside a garage type building.
First responders arrived to find the structure, including the home were fully engulfed in flames. Officials report that a person was living in the camper for a period of months while it was parked inside the building.
All four fire departments were kept busy for a number of hours while transporting more than 75,000 gallons of water from Sandusky's water tower, to help extinguish the fire.
The exact cause of the fire is still under investigation, but officials report that no residential electric service was being used at the address.


Past and present issues of women including current the #MeToo movement are explored through a collection of dramatic, humorous and thought-provoking, monologues, poems and dance. All the material is written by women. Sunday performances are followed by an audience talkback.


KM Elite Products have built up a reputation for producing the best product in each category. The ever expanding range includes KM Elite Ultimate Oil for horses and canine, Flaxseed Oil and the ever-popular Ultimate Treats. This also ranges across to head collars and lead ropes, all of which are highly popular with riders.
The best thing is not just the great quality but also the affordability of their products also. Where riders may incur stock outs for items such as supplements, this is not such a problem, cost wise. From head collars to tendon boots, lead ropes, whips and of course their supplements, you will see how sensibly priced their products are. This brand enables excellent value for money for riders.
The KM Elite Airshock Tendon Boots offer the perfect boot offer fantastic protection and support and feature a lightweight, flexible and durable design. You can expect this tough, durable design also with their KM Elite Airshock Young Horse Fetlock Boots, perfect for competition and everyday use. From their supplement range, their KM Elite Flaxseed (Linseed) Oil contains essential Omega oils – 3, 6 and 9. This is highly recommended for all riders looking to improve their horses coat and shine. This is also very good for the horses immune and digestive system. There are a great number of similar products which also offer great health benefits alike also.
This really is a brand which offers the whole lot for a horse rider / owner. From equipment to supplements and everything else in between, you could buy almost everything you need from this single brand. Best of all to further confirm how great they are, their products all offer incredibly great value for money. You get premium products but not at an unaffordable price.


The harvest mouse is tiny - an adult can weigh as little as a 2p piece! It prefers habitats with long grass, but you are most likely to spot its round, woven-grass nests.
The tiny harvest mouse lives in long tussocky grassland, reedbeds, hedgerows, farmland and around woodland edges. It is mainly vegetarian, eating seeds and fruits, but will also eat invertebrates. Harvest mice build a spherical nest of tightly woven grass, high-up in the tall grasses, in which the female will give birth to around six young.
The harvest mouse has pale, ginger or yellow fur, and a white belly. Its tail is almost hairless and nearly as long as its body.
Found in England, south of Yorkshire.
The harvest mouse is the only British mammal to have a prehensile tail: it can use it like a fifth limb, holding on to grass stems with it.


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The access and use of the images is governed by the Terms and Conditions here.
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These images cannot be printed or used in commercial advertising. They can't be commercially exploited, on sold or used in a way that would be offensive or defamatory to City of Melbourne, That Startup Show, or any person depicted in the image. Users should properly credit the image, and not represent the User is the creator of the image.
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Note: If you wish to use an image for purposes outside of the stated license purposes, please contact That Startup Show at team@thatstartupshow.tv.
All images are made available under licence from City Of Melbourne & That Startup Show.


Sink into the inviting design and explore the comfort of the Fluff bed. The plush headboard is complemented by a bed filled with soft feathers and polyester fibers. The choice of fabric, eco-leather, or leather personalizes the soft look of this therapeutic piece.


Xiaomi Mi Play (4GB RAM 64GB 4G LTE) is 2018-released handset, offering elegant and stylish contours with colored ceramic back and slim construction. Mi Play features Full Screen Display with 80.1% screen-to-body ratio, flaunting a 5.84-inch IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen with 16M colors, 2280 x 1080 pixels resolution and 432ppi pixel density. The smartphone comes with Android OS v9.0 (Pie) preloaded on to its 64GB internal storage with full access to Google Play Store. The handset is backed by a Mediatek MT6765 Helio P35 chipset featuring a powerful Octa-core CPU and a 4GB RAM for sublime app operation and gaming.
The device is equipped with a superb 12MP+2MP Dual rear facing camera with some of the most striking features such as PDAF, LED flash, panorama, HDR and HD 1080p video recording at 30fps. The handset also brings a magnificent 8MP front cam as well with HDR and 1080p video recording. Some other noteworthy specs of the Xiaomi Mi Play (4GB RAM 64GB 4G LTE) are Dual SIM Standby functionality, 4G/LTE network support, PowerVR GPU, Wi-Fi, GPS, with A-GPS, GLONASS, Bluetooth v4.2, microUSB 2.0, fingerprint sensor, accelerometer, gyroscope, proximity sensor, compass, fast battery charging and a non-removable Li-Ion 3000mAh battery.


text:
Q: How to delete a foreign key record with Entity Framework? I've got two models - Parent and Child. When I delete the Parent, I was hoping the Child would get deleted as it has a ForeignKey attribute however that's not the case. I could add logic within the Parent repository's Delete method as shown in the commented out code below but I was wondering if that's required of if there's a simpler way to go about this?
public record Parent
{
    [Key]
    public Guid Id { get; set; }
    public string Name { get; set; }
}

public record Child
{
    [Key]
    public Guid Id { get; set; }
    [ForeignKey("Parent")]
    public Guid ParentId { get; set; }
    public string Name { get; set;}
}

public void Delete(Guid id)
{
    /*
    var children = _dbContext.Childs.Where(c => c.ParentId == id);
    if (children != null)
    {
        foreach (var child in children)
        {
            _dbContext.Childs.Remove(child);
        }
    }
    */

    var parent = _dbContext.Parents.FirstOrDefault(p => p.Id == id);
    if (parent != null)
    {
        _dbContext.Parents.Remove(parent);
    }

    _dbContext.SaveChanges();
}

A: If the model in the databaseContext snapshot has ".OnDelete(DeleteBehavior.Cascade)" you could just include the table and the child data will be removed.
var parent = _dbContext.Parents.Include(parent => parent.Children).FirstOrDefault(p => p.Id == id);

For this to work you should also make a list of Children in the parent model:
public record Parent
{
    [Key]
    public Guid Id { get; set; }
    public string Name { get; set; }

    public IEnumerable<Child> Children { get; set; }
}

This is the link to the Microsoft documentation

A: Include the Child when querying the parent as the following:
    var parent = _dbContext.Parents
        .include(p => p.Child)
        .FirstOrDefault(p => p.Id == id);

Then call remove as you already doing.
Also, you may want to consider the OnDelete behavior to define what happens to Child when you delete the Parent. If you want the Child to be deleted when the parent is deleted use "Cascade" delete behavior. This can be done at database level in Child table definition similar to the following:
CONSTRAINT [FK_Childs_Parents_ParentId] FOREIGN KEY ([ParentId]) REFERENCES [Parent]  ON DELETE CASCADE

or at EF context level as the following:
protected override void OnModelCreating(ModelBuilder modelBuilder)
{
    modelBuilder
        .Entity<Parent>()
        .HasMany(e => e.Childs)
        .WithOne(e => e.Parent)
        .OnDelete(DeleteBehavior.ClientCascade);
}

Further related details from official Microsoft documentation here

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
Message of cameraderie: the courier championships come to Chicago
Nico Deportago-Cabrera and Christina Peck.
[This piece also appeared in Checkerboard City, John's weekly transportation column in Newcity magazine, which hits the streets in print on Wednesday evenings.]
Mayor Daley's campaign to host the 2016 Olympics in Chicago failed, but local bike messengers are realizing their dream to bring the Olympics of two-wheeled delivery to town. As the athletic action heats up in London, this weekend hundreds of couriers from around the globe will converge in our city for the 20th Annual Cycle Messenger World Championships, with a packed schedule of races, arts events and parties celebrating their unique lifestyle.
Championships-related events have been taking place all week, with the main competitions happening all day Saturday and Sunday, starting at 10 am, in the south parking lot of Soldier Field, 18th Street and the Lakefront Trail, next to the sled hill. Other highlights include track racing at the Ed Rudolph Velodrome in Northbrook, a nighttime "alleycat" (messenger-style race in live traffic), a movie night with courier-themed films, an opening party featuring punk-rock legends Agent Orange and the infamous Messenger Prom. Check out the full schedule of events here.
After work last week at a River North dive bar called Snickers, as Metallica blared on the sound system, Christina Peck and Nico Deportago-Cabrera, two of the key organizers of the "champs," offered background on the event and a preview of what to expect. Peck formerly rode for Intercept Courier and now does fleet maintenance for Zipcar, a car-sharing service, by bike. Deportago-Cabrera is an owner-rider with Four Star Courier Collective, Chicago's only worker-owned courier company.
"Messengers are notorious for talking up how fast they are or how much work they're capable of doing," Deportago-Cabrera says. "The world championships are a chance for people to see who's the fastest. But they're about more than just competition. This is a yearly gathering where you get a chance to meet people from all over the world who do the same things we do, who share the same relationships with our bikes and with our cities. It's like a big family reunion."
The 2009 champs in Tokyo – photo by Christopher Dilts.
Peck says roughly 350 competitors are expected, with contingents coming from all over the United States, Canada, Central America, Europe, Japan and Australia. "We've already got someone in town from Lausanne, Switzerland, which is where the championships are taking place next year," she says. "When you start seeing hundreds of people with messenger bags riding around town in a pack, you'll know what's going on."
The main competition at Soldier Field will simulate a day of work as a Chicago courier, according to Deportago-Cabrera, who designed the course. "We're essentially constructing a city on the course that mimics the Loop with one-way streets and checkpoints that are like office buildings," he says. "You're going to be delivering boxes and envelopes, the things we carry in our bags every day. It's not only going to test how fast you can ride but how smart you can ride and how well you can coordinate your deliveries to be as quick and smooth as possible. The one who can do it the most efficiently will be the messenger world champion."
The idea is to give the visitors a sense of what it's like slinging packages all day in the Loop. "A huge thing about Chicago is it's flat and it's built on a grid," Peck says. "The most challenging thing about this city is the weather, and that even if you know where a building is that doesn't mean you know how to get into the building. It takes a while until you know how to access the loading docks, or learn which security guards you can sweet talk to get into the building a different way."
The $100 registration fee for racers covers entry to all champs-related events. Non-messengers, a.k.a. "civilians," are welcome to compete, but Deportago-Cabrera cautions that even the fastest Lycra-clad roadies might not be able to handle the logistical challenges as well as the average courier. If you aren't the competitive type, spectating should be a blast as well, and there's no charge to watch. "I really enjoy racing cyclocross [steeplechase-style competitions on heavy-duty road bikes] and the coolest thing about 'cross is that it's on a closed course so that everyone can hang out and watch and get rowdy," Peck says. "The championships are going to be like that. We'll have a beer garden set up with cheap PBR and Old Style and a nice view of the race."
Deportago-Cabrera adds, "The course is designed so there'll be plenty of good places for people to camp out, watch the race and heckle the riders. There's something punk rock about messenger races, where you can take yourself seriously but every now and then you have to laugh at yourself." Accordingly, the last major messenger gathering here, the 2008 North American Cycle Courier Championships in Garfield Park, featured plenty of tomfoolery. Race volunteers portrayed rude mailroom staffers and grumpy security guards, and a guy in a chicken suit stole the bikes of couriers who didn't lock up before making deliveries. Deportago-Cabrera and Peck promise there'll be plenty of similar shenanigans this weekend.
Poster image by Ryan Duggan.
Peck also recommends that civilians show up for the Messenger Prom, now in its eighth year, Saturday at 8pm at Groovemaster Studios, 1719 South Clinton. The cover for unregistered attendees is $15 for singles, $20 for couples and $10 for dates of registered racers. Expect to see plenty of scruffy couriers and their pals dressed in a wide range of ironic eveningwear: everything from powder-blue tuxedos to slinky sequined dresses to giant banana costumes.
The organizers hope that spectators at the champs will get a better idea of what messengering is all about. "If you've ever wondered about that person that you thought was an idiot for cutting [blowing a red light in] some intersection downtown, what was going through their brain, you should come check out the championships," Deportago-Cabrera says. "This event is a celebration of messengers, but we'd love for the rest of the city to join us and get a taste of what it is we're into, what makes us tick."
John Greenfield
John has lived in Chicago since 1989 and has worked a number of bicycle jobs, from messenger to mechanic to managing the Chicago Department of Transportation's bicycle parking program, arranging the installation of over 3,700 bike racks. He writes regularly for Time Out Chicago, Newcity, Momentum and Urban Velo magazines and works at Boulevard Bikes in Logan Square. View all posts by John Greenfield
Posted on August 3, 2012 August 6, 2012 Author John GreenfieldCategories Bicycling, Chicago, EventsTags Christina Peck, Cycle Messenger World Championships, messengers, Nico Deportago-Cabrera
9 thoughts on "Message of cameraderie: the courier championships come to Chicago"
BlueFairlane says:
I'd go, but it would just make me sad as I pine for days gone by. Getting old is a bitch.
I'll be there taking photographs and hanging out. It's gonna be pretty hot so I hope there are some lake breezes.
John Greenfield says:
Are you an ex-messenger like myself? If so, I encourage you to show up for the events like I've been doing. You'll feel like an elder statesman!
I am, in fact, an ex-messenger. I did about two years with Standard Courier (#803) … and yeah, Standard was crappy in many ways, but they were good to me, so I didn't see much point in hopping around. The money was bad, but it was honestly more than I'd made writing for a daily newspaper in Kentucky, and it was a lot more fun. I wound up having to quit for health reasons, and the treatment wrecked me enough that I couldn't go back. I'm way too far out of shape now to compete with these guys, but I expect they'll have a blast. And it will probably be a blast watching them.
I may head down there anyway. If I do, I'll see if I can track you guys down.
It was a lot of fun to see the race. Did you make it?
I tried to go on Saturday, but there wasn't a clear spectator area or a particularly welcoming vibe.
I dropped by on Sunday and almost everybody there was a race participant. Everyone I talked to was really friendly (look for a write-up on Grid Chicago later this week). I'm an ex-messenger myself, but I can imagine that a crowd of nothing but messengers might seem a little intimidating to someone who's new to the scene. With the hot weather on Saturday, I'm guessing people might have been a little grumpy as well.
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Here is the main game note from the team level: The Dolphins are barely better than the Bengals. They struggled to defeat that Brandon Allen-led, then Ryan Finley-led Bengals.
This game was 7-6 Bengals at the half, and you didn't know who the better team was…it looked like Cincy, really. Miami's defense clamped down and the Bengals didn't score in the 2nd-half, then lost their QB in the 4th-quarter…and then there was no way Cincy was getting back into the game.
A defensive struggle/offensive ineptitude struggle – just one TD for each team in the game. Miami was 1-for-10 on 3rd-downs.
Cincy falls to (2-9-1)…losers of seven of their last 8 games. Probably going to lose out and finish (2-13-1) and snag the #3 pick in the draft. Worst thing for them is to beat Dallas and send the Cowboys ahead of them in the draft order this week.
Miami has won seven of their last 8 games and are now (8-4). They need two wins, probably, to be a wild card…but they may lose their next 4 games in an epic collapse to the finish because of the schedule and starting Tua. KC-NE-LV-BUF ahead is likely trouble. (9-7) might be their best case – and if they get to (9-7) while losing Week 16 at Las Vegas…then the Raiders are likely in, and Miami out. We see (9-7) for Miami and more out than in.
-- I gotta express this, first and foremost…Tua Tagovailoa (26-39 for 296 yards, 1 TD/0 INT, 3-3-0) has no business starting in the NFL. Tim Tebow was a more impressive left-handed thrower.
I'm not trying to harp on Tua because I scouted him as 'average' with worries…where 100.1% of the highly paid draft/football analysts all worshipped the ground he walks on. I don't need to lie/massage my points to help me look good. There is no victory in me holding a bad hand while telling myself it's a good hand. If you know my work – you know I am the first to admit a possible error and then a full error if needed, and changing course. I 'call them like I see them'…and I call things better than anyone in football, especially at QB scouting. That's not an opinion, that's a fact. My record is on full display daily.
And what I see with Tua…is a MAJOR problem.
I re-watch Miami/Tua games hoping to see something to disprove what I see live, but it only confirms/is worse than I thought each time. Tua is a horrible NFL QB prospect right now. And I don't see glimpses of him growing out of it.
Tua has two bad high school offense throws he makes over and over…
1) Looks one way then quickly pivots to the other side of the field and throws it before he even sees what's happening. Tyrod Taylor comes to mind as someone who does this from time-to-time – it's mildly deceptive occasionally, but Tua goes to this well way too much right now – and Tyrod could pull it down and run if he saw his pivot option covered right before the throw. Tua can't run near as well.
No one throws more passes to covered receivers, to nowhere, to places where the WR isn't than Tua in games – because the WR might change a route based on coverage and Tua isn't even looking, he's just throwing to what the play/route 'should be' or was planned first option to be.
I'm telling you he's going to have a game ahead with like 3-4-5 picks in 2-3 quarters of play, and then the panic should start (it should have already started)…but the first time it happens it will be excused away until the next one and the next one.
2) Tua play action, rollout fake and throw short immediately. NFL defensive coordinators will figure out that Tua is always rolling to his left…and when they blitz that and cut it off, he's done. When he faces Belichick Week 15, it's going to be a bloodbath.
Miami's passing game is built simplistically around Tua's limitations. Miami has played a lot of bad teams in Tua's initial run as starter or got up via defense and been able to stick with simplicity/protection. When a stronger defense challenged Tua so far…it's a problem.
12 of 22 for 93 yards and 3 sacks vs. the Rams in his debut – you want to excuse it for his debut. But then 11 of 20 for 83 yards and sacked 6 times…and then benched for about a quarter vs. Denver.
You should bet KC -7.0 for this week as fast as you can, but while simultaneously taking a small, early position in betting New England +2.5 ahead now for Week 15…because the Tua exposure is coming this week most likely…in a blowout loss to KC. The risk being they'll send Fitz into that NE game halfway and ruin it. Brian Flores seems pretty (institutionally) committed to Tua, so not sure he'll bench him without an injury excuse.
I would call Tua a left-handed Dwayne Haskins right now, but that would be an insult to Haskins. That's how bad this looks. I'm not joking. It's surreal how bad he's playing and yet how gushing the mainstream is about how great he's playing – they see the wins, and just assume. They are about to get embarrassed here.
Tua is worse than rookie year Sam Darnold right now. And like Darnold, not the physical size/tools to fix it/change it…like Josh Allen was able to.
-- As I'm watching Tua flounder (1 of 10 on 3rd-downs against Cincinnati…are you kidding me?), I am watching Brandon Allen (11-19 for 153 yards, 1 TD/1 INT) be calm, cool, and collected against a top NFL defense with no O-Line to protect him.
Allen is better than Tua right now…and it's not even close. And that's not to say Allen is playing glowing football, he's just solid in a tough spot.
I am changing my Bengals' WR projections back to near Burrow levels…what they lose with Allen's talent (compared to Burrow) they can make up some in volume/down in games/garbage time.
-- Allen seems to like Drew Sample (7-49-0/7) more than Burrow did.
5.5 rec., 44.5 yards, 0.50 TDs per game with Allen the last two games/Allen's two starts.
It doesn't look magical/it's pretty basic...but it's something among the TE riff-raff.
-- Tua's best throw is to Mike Gesicki (9-88-1/11) because when Tua throws his blind balloon balls…Gesicki is tall enough to try and go get them. He has been…or did this game. A TD in each of the last two weeks, but just 2 catches Week 12…then 9 this week. It's all so erratic. KC is likely to have a plan for this simplistic throw.
-- Lynn Bowden (1-11-0, 4-41-0/4) is working some slot WR and some tailback, normally I'd get FF-excited about that BUT Bowden does not look like an NFL starting WR or RB talent to me. Not at all. He's getting some touches by attrition here, but I don't see much upside or future so far. There might be a game he gets 5-6-7 catches as the short game/quick throw guy, but not for many yards or TDs or break away after the catch ability.
It's still early, too early to make a definitive call…but I don't love what I see. His original draft team had the same fears apparently…trading him before the season even started.
-- Gio Bernard (13-30-0, 2-0-0/2) seems like he has fallen off a cliff the last 4 weeks, but there's two things to consider…
1) Faced PIT-WSH-NYG-MIA the past 4 weeks…all top 10 NFL defenses. Faces Dallas this week…not a top 10 defense.
2) He's getting the majority of the work regardless. They trust him and Zac Taylor is desperate to win. Gio should get good touches this week v. DAL. Not so hot vs. PIT Week 15. A possible gem Week 16 v. HOU.
-- Emmanuel Ogbah (2 tackles) had just two tackles and no sacks here…one of our top 3 projected IDP scorers going into this week because of the sack potential against Cincy. Miami did sack the QB 6 times in this game, just no Ogbah sacks…but not for a lack of trying – he had a stellar 5 QB hits in the game, just didn't get his sacks.
The entire Cincy defense registered 2 QB hits on Tua, by comparison.
50 = Gaskin
35 = Gio
17 = Perine


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The Irish Province of the Order of Carmelites (O.Carm.)
Zimbabwe Carmelites
Celts Among Shona
Bishop D.R. Lamont
LayCarmel
Celts among the Shona
Deep in the Heart of Wedza
Mel Hill, O.Carm. First published – 1955.
Their correct name is the Little Company of Mary, but they are everywhere known as the Blue Nuns or simply as the Blues. It has nothing to do with their temperament. Their foundress, Mother Mary Potter was simply bubbling over with humour. They became known as the Blues in popular parlance because they wear a blue veil, whereas most nuns wear a black one. The next thing one would notice about them is that they are a young Order and they have all the fervour, ideals and enthusiasm of youth. They are what is technically known as a 'mixed Order,' that is to say, they combine a life of prayer with the active apostolate, which in their case is nursing. They consecrate their lives to the maternal heart of Mary as she stands on Calvary and intercede with her for the sick and dying. They do not neglect the role of prayer.
This side of their lives is of particular importance on the mission field where there are so many demands on their time and the Blues are wise enough to know that they won't suddenly develop the spirit of prayer on the missions if they haven't developed it before they get there. In Africa the Blue Nuns have two European hospitals, one in Harare (Zimbabwe), and one in Port Elizabeth (South Africa); they have two African hospitals, one in Wedza (Zimbabwe) and one in Korstan (South Africa). The staff in all these places are mostly Irish and thanks to the spiritual training they get at Milford House and the medical training they get at St. John's Hospital, Limerick, people of all denominations are agreed that the Blue Nuns run the best and most efficient hospitals on the African continent. Their mission in Wedza was opened last year; it is out in the bush over 100 miles from Harare. It's not exactly the place I'd choose for a picnic. I did the journey once from Harare and I nearly had to go to bed when I got to the hospital; the usual story, bad roads, car bogged down in mud, etc.
However, the Reverend Mother there had a soft Tipperary brogue which gave me a new lease of life and I managed to struggle through a meal before I presented myself to the Jesuit Fathers who live a mile down the 'road'. The father in charge there was a German with an Irish brogue. Apparently he had been a patient with the Blue Nuns one time and he picked up the accent during his sojourn in one of their hospitals. He did not dream at the time that one day he would have a community of Blue Nuns on his mission, but it looks as if there is a destiny which shapes our ends, rough hew them how we will.
Wedza is an African Reserve. Reserves are big places, as big as an Irish county and sometimes bigger. No white men are allowed to live in a Reserve unless they happen to be missionaries and as a matter of fact a white man must get permission from the Local Commissioner before entering a Reserve. The land is mostly poor, consisting of sand and rocks, and a good many of the men have to go off to town to earn enough money to provide for their families; a good many of the men, but not the ngangas. These 'doctors' are always sure of making a living. This is where the Blue Nuns' hospital comes in. It helps to break down superstition and to dispel ignorance which the ngangas thrive on. The Apostolate of the doctor and the nurse in Africa cannot be exaggerated and without Catholic hospitals, our schools would do very little good. The nuns in Wedza are also trained in maternity work and this too is a great gift to the people. Where there are no hospitals the infant mortality rate is alarmingly high, as most of the people know nothing about germs and less about disinfectants. There is a maternity block in the hospital at Wedza with cots attached to the beds, no baby sitters are necessary; the mother can shake the cot by simply moving it with her feet. They even have a hot water system installed, as up-to-date as anything you'll find in Europe.
This was one of the things that impressed me most during my visit to Wedza: to find such amenities out in the bush miles from anywhere. However, the thing that surprised me most was the healthy complexions of the sisters there. Most nuns are supposed to look pale and delicate like a lily gown in a hothouse, but the nuns in Wedza looked like an advertisement for Palmolive soap. The local people are at a loss to understand this as most white women in Zimbabwe are dried up and bleached from the sun and they cease blushing as soon as they get out of the cradle. An African once told me that he reckoned the sisters had their own witchdoctors who supply them with the secret of perpetual youth. At any rate there is about these a freshness and a vigour and a zeal and irrepressible gaiety that no African can resist, and many a hard-bitten missionary has steered his truck for Wedza when, after a week slogging around the bush, he found himself like Ruth, sick for home and the alien corn.


The system will use steam in a turbine to generate electricity to run the plant and recover waste energy from the turbine to meet additional energy demands. This makes dual use of the energy used to power the ethanol process.
"This is very exciting for POET and renewable fuels. We are already much better than gasoline in overall emissions. Finding ways to make additional use of steam is a great opportunity to improve our environmental footprint even more," POET CEO Jeff Broin said.
POET already employs a number of strategies to lower energy use in its biorefineries. The patented BPX process uses enzymes instead of heat for fermentation. Additionally, heat is shared between processes such as distillation and evaporation to get maximum production with the minimum amount of energy use.
All of the upgrades are expected to be complete in 2017.
POET, one of the world's largest ethanol producers, is a leader in biorefining through its efficient, vertically integrated approach to production. The 29-year-old company has a production capacity in excess of 1.7 billion gallons of ethanol and 9 billion pounds of high-protein animal feed annually from its network of 27 production facilities. POET, through its joint venture with DSM, also operates a commercial-scale cellulosic ethanol plant in Emmetsburg, Iowa.


One is the car with the old paint; the other is the new paint job.
Both paint jobs are 13349, Crystal Blue - the stock code D, with blue interior and a blue top. The problem is, I can't seem to find a good idea of the blue convertible tops out there. Would you guys know the name of the top color, and who might make the closest to the original color/style top?
White would be really hard to keep clean. You could always do black.
I would also vote white, to give a nice contrast to the blue.
If you do want a blue top, call the places that offer them and ask for a color sample (swatch). Most reputable companies will do that, free of charge in most cases.
Does Year One do fabric for convertible tops? I wouldn't know since they only carry A body stuff.
Yes they carry the tops for about 200 dollars for this year of Cutlass.
Yes - this is where Lady's top came from (Kee brand).
The PO replaced it 3 years ago and he also gave me the color sample chart that he used to choose the color by.
White was always hard to keep clean. Got a black top and it always looks clean...always, no matter what. Problem is, I think white looks nicer...oh well.
I needed a blue top also for my 69, spent 9 months looking for the correct blue - it is not out there. The closest thing you will find is from aro2000.com in NY. Fusick made the recommendation, and after speaking with them, and trying Year One, Kee, SMS, Original Auto, etc, I went with them and could not have been happier with the color. Blue on blue is classy!
Blue for sure, white tops are for boats.
You could always go Champagne. An original 67 colour top thats pale enough to give some contrast and off-white enough to look OK even if it's slightly grubby.
If it'll be a weekend car kept indoors then white would look nice against the blue and I agree with the silver wheels suggestion. Failing that I'd stick with the original blue top.
Love 67 convertibles,..just a great looking car. Is it the 320hp 330V8 model?
You could always go with a pea green alligator hide top.
I do agree that black and navy would look nice, too - even an off white. Just something to provide some contrast. I would not try to match the top and paint together.
white against blue is great looking, definitely hard to keep clean but when your done cleaning it POP, WOW if looks great. I did see that champagne color in the chart for 67's that would look classy I bet.
Fashionista!!!! but why get a top to match your suit?????
The black will give your Cutlass a much cooler look. There is NO white on your car anywhere, yet the tires, rubber and shadows will always match black to black. Another suggestion is that a black top will also work well with argent wheels. I love the idea of a blue boot, not matter what color top you put on--smart!
I vote for keeping the blue. I think it looks cool, plus it's semi-rare.
Considering this thread is nearly 12 months old, have you put a new top on it yet and how is the make-over coming along?


Washington, D.C. – Congressman Matt Cartwright (PA-17) released the following statement regarding House passage of H.R. 6 SUPPORT for Patients and Communities Act on Friday. Cartwright is a cosponsor of H.R. 5776, the Medicare and Opioid Safe Treatment (MOST) Act, which was included in the SUPPORT Act and provides for Medicare coverage of certain services furnished by opioid treatment programs.
Expanding Medicare coverage of Opioid Treatment Programs (OTPs) and Medication-Assisted Treatment (MAT).
Mandating Medicaid coverage of all forms of MAT.
Permanently allowing nurse practitioners (NPs) and physician assistants (PAs) to prescribe or dispense buprenorphine for treatment of opioid use disorder (OUD).
Expanding the type of providers who can treat patients with buprenorphine for OUD.
The bill passed both the House and Senate, and now awaits the President's signature. More detailed information can be found in the bill's text by clicking here.


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NBA player robbed by 2 women he brought home from club, report says
By Crimesider Staff
December 21, 2015 / 12:11 PM / CBS News
NEW YORK -- New York Knicks forward Derrick Williams may have thought he had gotten lucky, but he ended up getting robbed, CBS New York reports.
Williams and friends were said to have been out at Up & Down, a downtown Manhattan club aptly named for the evening that started with Williams and his roommate taking two women home from the club with them after an earlier victory in the team's NBA game, and then waking up at 7 a.m. Sunday only to realize the women had disappeared with a Louis Vuitton backpack and an estimated $617,000 in jewelry.
Police are still investigating, and no arrests have been made, according to the station. Sources said there was no indication the incident was part of a larger pattern.
First published on December 21, 2015 / 12:11 PM
Top Democrat urges FBI to investigate "troubling" FaceApp
Schumer suggested that the Russian-developed app could be the latest wave of Russia's counterintelligence campaign against the U.S.
Criminal charges dropped against actor Kevin Spacey
The actor had pleaded not guilty to a charge of indecent assault and battery
Heat wave scorches U.S.
A record-breaking heat wave is hitting much of the U.S. CBS News weather producer David Parkinson joined CBSN with the forecast.


There are two upcoming events in Florida with Anthony Robbins which are Unleash The Power Within and Date With Destiny.
UPW 2017 event in Florida is held in Palm Beach, FL from 9th -12th November 2017. At Tony Robbins' UPW seminar, you will be able to develop the understanding, mindset and skills to create change in your life and defy your own limitations.
DWD 2017 in Florida is a 6-day LIVE event with Tony in a supportive environment of total immersion! At this event, you will decide and create your own life-changing experience. You will connect with your ultimate purpose and ignite your passion to achieve your ultimate goal and vision of your life in all areas.
Tony Robbins is a household name. Whether you know him from his books, podcast, live events, or even just know his name, Robbins' name is always associated with one thing: success.
The life coach's goal is to help you bring happiness, success, and satisfaction back into your life! And he doesn't settle for just helping you meeting your professional goals, or advising you on how to have a better marriage: Tony Robbins offers bulletproof advice regardless of what aspect of your life you may be struggling with.
I first heard about Tony Robbins back in high school. I was asked to do a project on the famous life coach and was immediately taken back by how much his words resonated with me. What started off as a couple books red, quickly turned into an admiration and student-like need to learn more. It has been around 10 years since I was first introduced to Robbins and his philosophy. Now, many books and live events later, I decided to write an article sharing with you some of my favorites: "What Did I Learn from Tony Robbins".
As a lost high schooler, this teaching truly spoke to me. By focusing on my own goals rather than focusing on all the doubts and predictable hurdles I would have to go through, I learned more about the "Unleashing the Power Within" me. And now, as an adult, I still stand by this teaching, which continuously helps me not only set my own goals but gives me the required motivation to put in the work to achieve them.
This is perhaps my all-time favorite teaching. The idea that we are all masters of our own future is a great source of motivation! By taking past failures, learning from these mistakes, and then move on to the goal in life armed with new knowledge is truly a great tip on how to grow both as an entrepreneur and as a human.
Be a student of possibilities.
Make sure you are open to every possibility that may be presented to you. Just say yes! Be open to new and exciting projects which may end up being a turning-point in your life, and make sure you always take each new challenge with curiosity, willingness to learn, and motivation! On the other hand, don't neglect the research needed to bring the opportunities to you! Be proactive and find a complete set of possibilities from which you may choose from, that is, make sure you can create your own possibilities!
At the end of the day, once we stop learning or stop wanting to improve ourselves, we will stagnate. It doesn't matter if you are looking for improvement in your personal or professional life, the key is to always strive to become a better "you". A great tip I can give you here is live events. These short yet highly valuable events can definitely help you motivate yourself into continuously improve yourself by giving you proven tips and tricks!
Lastly, be appreciative of what you have achieved. Instead of taking each project or each major life achievement as a given, take the time to appreciate the time and work you have put into yourself and/or your work. Sometimes we may expect certain things in life that simply we will never achieve. Don't focus on these expectations, be them achievable or not, but rather focus on working hard, and celebrating your accomplishments.
These were just some of my favorite lessons I have learned over the years from Tony Robbins. As an incredible mentor, life coach, and author, I am sure the lessons we have all learned from him so far, won't be his last. I hope you enjoyed this article, and remember: stay motivated, work hard, and appreciate your life achievements.


Square Enix Forums > Games > Hitman Series > Hitman GO > Hitman go: What is rank of your hitman ?
View Full Version : Hitman go: What is rank of your hitman ?
Thanks for giving us so wonderful game. I really like it once i join it first time after got game from scdkey. Thanks for the special offer. I was have another choice then. I have playing it everyday and more than 6 hours a day. Almost took all my spear time. I have not got high rank . But i think i will do my best to do it. I am shying to told you that i just got 65.
What is about your game ?


text:
Author: Iain Biggs
Disciplinary Agnosticism and Engaging with Ecologies of Place
Artist and researcher Iain Biggs discusses Creative Engagements with Ecologies of Place, his new co-authored book about the possibilities of creative work, ensemble practices and disciplinary agnosticism in seeking alternative and inclusive ways of belonging to this world.
2,250 words: estimated reading time = 9 minutes
In December 2020, and after a great many years of work, Mary Modeen's and my book Creative Engagements with Ecologies of Place: Geopoetics, Deep Mapping and Slow Residencies finally appeared. This post aims to give some idea of what sort of book this is, along with some idea of how, and why, it has the content it does.
Creative Engagements with Ecologies of Place, by Mary Modeen & Iain Biggs
As we make clear from the start, and despite the sixty-eight colour images of works we referred to, it's not really an 'art book', at least in the usual sense. Instead, it's a book about the possibilities of 'ensemble practices', creative work viewed as drawing on concerns found in art, education, issues of place and what Felix Guattari calls ecosophy. Nor is it a book of theory, although it deals with a wide range of ideas from many different disciplines. Our central aim is to encourage readers, whatever their background, to understand their particular skills and knowledge in larger, intra-related contexts so as to contribute to the 'joined-up' thinking and action necessary to face the global changes now taking place. We're not interested in providing an argument based on a set of specialist practices or a particular form of disciplinary or interdisciplinary thinking. Instead, like Donna Haraway, we want to encourage readers to find practical, creative ways to 'stay with the trouble' in all its many dimensions.
Towards 'placed-ness'
So, a brief outline of the book's contents. Chapter One outlines the basis of our position and, in particular, considers the importance of three geo-poetic thinkers to our concerns — Gary Snyder, Kenneth White, and Robert Frodeman. This also allows us to distinguish their approaches from our own. Chapter Two goes back to fundamentals by considering how we take in the world through our senses. It takes the reader on an imagined walk so as to explore the relationship between embodiment and place, the visible and the invisible, the phenomenological and the numinous. Chapter Three then sets out what we mean by slow residency and explains why we don't offer a single definition of deep mapping. It then outlines a possible pre-history of deep mapping and gives examples of current practice.
'Queen Bee and Mobile Hive performance', Buzz Lab interns, Plains Art Museum, Fargo, North Dakota, 2017.
Photo: Christine Baeumler
Chapter Four is based on a long interview about her work with Christine Baeumler, an artist, environmental educator, community activist, and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Art at the University of Minnesota. Her collaborative work with both her local community and Dakota people living in Minneapolis St Paul resulted in a number of land reclamation projects, including transforming an abandoned railway marshalling-yard into what is now the Bruce Vento Nature Sanctuary. Her recent Buzz Lab project with young people employed as paid interns created a pollinator garden and developed strategies to highlight the socio-environmental value of bees, butterflies, and other pollinators. Chapter Five investigates the values inherent in perception, and especially as this is central to the ways in which place is perceived. In it, the processes by which the threads of cultural value relating to a particular site generate understanding are unpicked.
Chapter Six looks at questions around collaboration. It includes a look at the gap between the idea of 'interdisciplinary research' and the way interdisciplinary collaborations tend to work out in practice. Here we're concerned with the ways the presuppositions of the knowledge industry distort collaboration to maintain the status quo. As an alternative, we discuss what we call 'creative communities of practice'. Importantly, it includes a shortened version of the South African artist, environmental researcher, and writer Hanien Conradie's text The Voice of Water: Re-sounding a Silenced River, which provides a compelling example of collaboration with the more-than-human.
Chapter Seven consists of eleven examples of practices that offer inclusive and open creative approaches to a range of current concerns. Approaches that, for example, embrace the complexities of living in a world that has become inexorably multicultural, while also respecting and valuing the local, the specific, and the idiosyncratic. Chapter Eight is based on exchanges with the Australian designer, landscape researcher, curator, and educator Gini Lee. Her Stony Rises deep mapping work is representative of an inclusive, relational approach to issues of place and environment that has informed her numerous collaborations, enabling her to explore possibilities across a wide variety of conventionally disparate roles.
Chapter Nine draws on extensive conversations between Mary Modeen and Alexander and Susan Maris, who live and work at Kinlock Rannoch in the Scottish Highlands. We see their work as enacting the vital materialism proposed by Jane Bennett, Karen Barad, and others; an inclusive approach that makes possible what Donna Haraway calls 'tentacular thinking'. Chapter Ten, 'Fieldwork' Reconsidered, is a plea for more holistic and grounded approaches to creative learning in its fullest sense. For a shift away from what Geraldine Finn calls "high altitude thinking" towards direct experience and awareness of our placed-ness. Towards a better understanding of knowledge as embodied, enacted, and always subject to the contingencies of human and more-than-human worlds. And towards a more open awareness that attends to multiple voices in different registers and differently placed. A fieldwork, then, that's enacted in and through our active awareness of the porosity of the human and more-than-human, of place and time, of self and community.
Disciplinary agnosticism
Now for the 'how' and 'why'. The Czech poet and immunologist Miroslav Holub pointed out in 1990 that we have an unrealistic view of the work of both scientists and artists. Work that, in both cases, is actually located within a small, subtle, largely confined — if at times pervasive — domain with regard to society as a whole. Furthermore, both scientists and artists are, for much of their times, actually engaged in a whole variety of other, more mundane and everyday roles and activities. Against the assumption that the artistic or scientific mentality is a singular, exceptional and all-consuming role, Holub suggests an alternative view. Rather than the current overemphasis on the different practices and methodologies of scientists and artists, he focuses on their need to acknowledge that these differences are insignificant compared to their common obligations. 'Obligation' Mary and I paraphase as the need to obtain, and act on the basis of, an informed understanding of the distinct but intra-related ecologies of selfhood, the social, and the environmental. Recognising that common obligation is a key element of the inclusivity of ensemble practices.
However, developing an ensemble practice requires an agnostic attitude towards the realpolitik that underwrites the authority that disciplines and professions claim in relation to the production and circulation of knowledge. An agnosticism that allows us to separate the 'use value' of specialist knowledge from the intellectual and social power of categorisation and exclusion derived from it. Disciplinary agnosticism is basically a strategy to by-pass what sociologists of knowledge see as the way in which dominant forms of knowledge production are able to insist that all other knowledge claims be judged according to the dominant set of criteria. In extreme cases, this means that nothing recognisable as knowledge can be produced outside of the socially dominant form. Put briefly, disciplinary agnosticism insists on what Isabelle Stengers and other thinkers call a "decolonization of thought". So how did we arrive at this position?
A carrier bag theory of ensemble praxis
Iain Biggs Hidden War (with and for Anna Biggs) from Iain Biggs '"Listening at the Borders" introduction, acknowledgements (and an intervention) in Iain Biggs, ed. Debatable Lands Vol. 2. These Debatable Lands (Bristol, Wild Conversations Press, 2009).
Photo Iain Biggs
The archaeologist and anthropologist Barbara Bender's work, like that of her friend the political geographer Doreen Massey, show that:
"landscapes refuse to be disciplined. They make a mockery of the oppositions that we create between time [History] and space [Geography], or between nature [Science] and culture [Social Anthropology]"
(quoted in Doreen Massey 2006: 'Landscape as a Provocation: Reactions on Moving Mountains'. Journal of Material Culture. 11(33), p. 33).
This understanding is complemented by the polymath Cliff McLucas, a key figure in the development of deep mapping, who writes in There are ten things I can say about these deep maps that deep maps should: "bring together the amateur and the professional, the artist and the scientist, the official and the unofficial, the national and the local". In her chapter 'The Politics of Spirituality. The Spirituality of Politics' in Why Althusser Killed His Wife: Essays on Discourse and Violence, 1996, the feminist philosopher Geraldine Finn identifies the tension between that shared obligation and a form of reason preoccupied with categorisation. She states that:
"…the contingent and changing concrete world always exceeds the ideal categories of thought within which we attempt to express and contain it. And the same is true of people. We are always both more and less than the categories that name and divide us."
The sociologist Zygmunt Bauman points to the profoundly negative social consequences of over-emphasis on the categorical; it's encouraging and enabling 'othering' by promoting an ethically neutral 'objective detachment'. One that erodes what Hannah Arendt calls the animal pity by which all normal persons are affected in the presence of physical suffering and, in addition, has estranged us from all other-than-human life.
Lastly, Bruno Latour supports the link between disciplinary agnosticism and the ability of ensemble practices to help renegotiate the relationship between local and global when he writes:
"What counts is not knowing whether you are for or against globalisation, for or against the local; all that counts is understanding whether you are managing to register, to maintain, to cherish, a maximum number of alternative ways of belonging to the world".
(Down to Earth: Politics in the New Climate Regime 2018 pp. 15-16).
Both disciplinary agnosticism and ensemble practices assume a particular sense of self that's constituted in and through relationships, attachments, and connections. Our understanding here draws on the psychoanalytic thinking of Gemma Corradi Fiumara and Felix Guattari, the post-Jungians James Hillman and Mary Watkins, the artist-turned-anthropologist A. David Napier, and the sociologists of religion Paul Heelas and Linda Woodhead. I don't have the space to enlarge on this here but, if you want the detail, it's set out in a chapter on 'Ensemble Practices' in the recently published Routledge Companion to Art in the Public Realm.
So, finally, who is this book written for? When we were writing, I had in mind the various very different individuals I'd helped navigate creative Masters and Doctoral projects. Individuals who, while they share a desire to understand and transform some aspect of the material world, have surprisingly little else in common. Drawing on Ursula K Le Guin's recently republished essay The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, I'd like to hope that we've assembled the beginnings of a 'carrier bag theory of ensemble praxis', one that will be able to hasten the end of the deeply problematic story that, to borrow from Le Guin again, might be called 'The Ascent of Man as Hero'. I hope that, instead, we can encourage readers to engage with another, less toxic and more inclusive, story. The one about how we can each best learn to register, maintain, and cherish as many alternative and inclusive ways of belonging to this Terrestrial world as possible.
Creative Engagements with Ecologies of Place: Geopoetics, Deep Mapping and Slow Residencies, by Mary Modeen & Iain Biggs is published by Routledge (2021).
Iain's coauthor, Mary Modeen, is Professor of Contemporary Art Practice at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design. She is an artist/academic whose research links creative practice with interdisciplinary academic studies in the humanities, particularly philosophy, literature, feminist and indigenous studies. Her work usually combines creative art practice and writing.
Five Notes on Thinking Through 'Ensemble Practices', Iain's previous post for ClimateCultures, introduces ideas of ensemble creative practices to describe how the work of Christine Baeumler incorporates a multiplicity of roles and skills, illustrating "an individual's mycelial entanglement in multiple, interconnected tasks, connectivities and interdependences, all of which will, to a greater or lesser extent, involve creativity understood inclusively." Iain's chapter on 'Ensemble Practices' appears in the Routledge Companion to Art in the Public Realm, edited by Cameron Cartiere & Leon Tan (Routledge, 2021).
Iain mentions the work of fellow ClimateCultures member Hanien Conradie, a fine artist concerned with place and belonging, informed by the cosmology of African animism within the complex human and other-than-human networks that encompass a landscape. Her ClimateCultures post Writing on Water shares a collaborative film of her ritual encounter with the River Dart in Devon and her work with places where nothing seemingly remains of their ancient knowledge — including The Voice of Water: Re-sounding a Silenced River, which Iain refers to.
Iain also mentions Ursula Le Guin's The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction. Fellow ClimateCultures member Philip Webb Gregg also discusses this essay — where "Le Guin explores the idea of the bag being the oldest human tool. In doing so, she is able to show how the stories we've been told our entire lives have deceived and misled us." — in A Personal History of the Anthropocene – Three Objects #12, his contribution to our series A History of the Anthropocene in 50 Objects.
You can explore ideas and examples of geopoetics through the Scottish Centre for Geopoetics and its journal Stravaig — where ClimateCultures member James Murray-White is one of the editors.
An independent artist, teacher and researcher interested in place seen through the lens of Felix Guattari's ecosophy, working extensively on 'deep mapping', other projects and publications.
Author Iain BiggsPosted on 24th March 2021 Categories Challenges of Creative EngagementTags Artists, Books, Collaboration, Creativity, Culture, Eco-social arts, Ecological Understanding, Ideas, Key Words, Learning, Nature, Place, Practice, TheoryLeave a comment on Disciplinary Agnosticism and Engaging with Ecologies of Place
Five Notes on Thinking Through 'Ensemble Practices'
Artist and researcher Iain Biggs shares thoughts on the place of artists, and of creative ensemble practices, in a culture of possessive individualism that must urgently address its chronic failure of imagination in the face of eco-social crisis.
"Art is a parasite that feeds upon the corpus of culture. Its insularity is just a conceit…."
– Simon Read
One — driven to be part of the problem
The Great Below: A Journey Into Loss is Maddy Paxman's account of facing the consequences of the death of her husband, the poet Michael Donaghy, from a brain haemorrhage at the age of fifty. She has worked as a counsellor in women's health, a music teacher, musician and painter and currently teaches the Alexander Technique. She writes:
"Although I don't think of myself as an artist, in that I am not 'driven', painting is a form of expression that seems necessary to me and I miss it when it's not part of my life."
This sentence, which comes towards the end of her account of her relationship with the husband she loved deeply, a man very clearly 'driven' to the exclusion of much that did not immediately concern his poetry, gives me pause for thought. In part because I recognise all-too-clearly the need to paint that she speaks of. In part because I think that, indirectly, her observation relates to the performance artist Andrea Fraser's claim that artists are not part of the solution to our current socio-environmental crisis, as many assume, but part of the problem.
That sounds like a betrayal of both my own work and that of many people I deeply admire, at least until I think about the art world's financial reality, its 'big hitters' — Jeff Koons, John Currin, Damian Hurst, Odd Nurdrum et al. What is the nature of the work such artists produce if not an expression of the culture of possessive individualism, the global economics the culture feeds and is fed by, and the deepening epistemological crisis in which current presuppositions about creativity are embedded? And that's clear even before we link these things to an environmental situation that, in all probability, is now nearing its terrible endgame.
Two — the Great Derangement
As it happens, Andrea Fraser is simply restating in variation concerns raised by the artist-turned-anthropologist A. David Napier, the liberation psychologist Mary Watkins, the writer, poet and art critic Thomas McEvilley and, most recently, the writer and academic Amitav Ghosh. Despite a lifetime spent making and teaching art, I find myself sharing their various concerns. So I want to raise two possibilities.
Firstly that, if we have a stake in the arts, we should now very seriously consider in what ways the arts, in the culture of possessive individualism, have and are enacting just the chronic failure of imagination that Ghosh calls the 'Great Derangement'. Not as some kind of quasi-masochistic guilt-trip in the best Protestant tradition, but as a necessary step to re-orienting our notions of creativity.
Cover to 'The Great Derangement'
Artist: Jill Shimabukuro
Secondly, that we might ask ourselves whether the tendency to psychic monomania that Maddy Paxman describes as 'driven-ness' can be addressed by radically rethinking the nature of creative activity from a more inclusive perspective. Might it not be both more productive and more accurate to consider the attention and skills associated with arts practices, not as an end in themselves that justifies the artist as a 'driven' individual, but as catalysts or models for larger ensembles of heterogeneous skills, concerns and activities? Ensembles that would retain the psychic (if not necessarily the economic) benefits of a creative practice, but at some distance from the assumptions, expectations, and protocols central to the hyper-professionalised art world to which Andrea Frazer refers. Considering increasingly heterogeneous creative practices as compound ensembles might be a useful step towards reversing the situation in which art serves to perpetuate the culture of possessive individualism, and with it the Global North's Great Derangement.
Three — ensemble practices
In the past I've used the term 'mycelial' to describe how the work of Christine Baeumler incorporates the roles and skills of citizen, neighbour, artist, university teacher, student of ecology, researcher, curator, mentor and, more recently, fortune-teller and student of shamanism. Maybe 'ensemble practice' is a better term, more able to consolidate the more inclusive understanding I'm reaching for. To stress an individual's mycelial entanglement in multiple, interconnected tasks, connectivities and interdependences, all of which will, to a greater or lesser extent, involve creativity understood inclusively. If nothing else, the concept of 'ensemble practices' posits the parallel notion that individuals are themselves compound, multi-relational ensembles, supporting by extension a view of the artist that does not presuppose an exclusive hyper-individualism.
Akin: compost, strawberries, Letraset, pencil, watercolour and gesso on paper
Artist: Luci Gorell Barnes © 2019 www.lucigorellbarnes.co.uk
Four — between self and other
I think we now need to face the fact that the symbolic function of the artist in the culture of possessive individualism is to epitomise the notion of individual exceptionalism; to reinforce the presupposition that creativity is 'owned' by exceptional and self-contained individuals in ways that reinforce currently orthodox notions of personhood, nature and society. We are in reality, of course, constituted quite differently, in and through our connections, attachments and relationships. Consequently, I'm intrigued by the distinction Paul Heelas and Linda Woodhead make in proposing a spectrum of identity positions between a 'life-as' at one extreme and 'being-as-becoming' at the other.
'Life-as' requires massive investment in a monolithic psychosocial identity, one that must oppose or deny all values, connections, and relationships that do not reinforce its coherence. It lacks, that is, the basic capacity for empathetic imagination that enables us to negotiate the constant movement between self and other, to properly engage in and with the multiplicity of psychic, social and environmental realities in which we find ourselves. At the other end of their spectrum is a sense of selfhood as coexistent with the psychosocial and environmental multiverse — fluid, relationally contingent, mutable, open-ended.
The psychosocial and political stakes here are simple. To face our eco-social crisis, we must now find ways to attend to, sustain, and cherish as many ways of belonging in the multiverse as possible if we are to adapt to an unprecedented need to change. This cannot be done by investing in any 'life-as', including 'life-as an Artist'.
I am done with apple picking now: knife marks, apple juice, watercolour, pencil and gesso on paper
Five — placing the artist
Do we now need to differentiate 'life-as an Artist' from an involvement in making art that's ultimately predicated on the understanding that the self cannot be reduced to a categorical identity? Isn't this what's implicit in Edward S. Casey's distinction between a 'position' as a fixed postulate within a given culture and a sense of 'place' that, notwithstanding its nominally settled appearance, is experienced through living experimentally within a constantly shifting culture? If so, then isn't what 'places' those who acknowledge the ensemble nature of practices itself predicated on negotiating multiple psychic, social and environmental connections, attachments, and relationships? On an open engagement with the productive tensions between experience and category, reality and representation, life and language?
Iain's notes on ensemble practices relate to a book chapter he has recently submitted for the ecology section of an anthology, The Routledge Companion to Art in the Public Realm, which should be published later this year. "These are, as the title suggests, simply notes and lack the references, etc. which will appear in the final chapter when it sees the light of day."
When working on these notes, Iain had in mind the work of two visual artists. Simon Read — who he quotes at the beginning — is an artist who fosters projects on a collaborative basis and who has immersed himself in environmental debates where collaboration on an interdisciplinary level is vital. Luci Gorell Barnes — who has herself recently joined ClimateCultures — is a visual artist whose participatory practice and responsive processes aim to help people think imaginatively with themselves and others. Iain and Luci have worked together on various projects, including a 'deep mapping' workshop that I took part in at art.earth's Liquidscapes symposium in 2018. When I approached Luci, she generously agreed for me to use her images as an accompaniment to Iain's text.
You can read more of Iain's reflections on Amitav Ghosh's The Great Derangement (2016, published by University of Chicago Press) on his blog. In the book, Ghosh asks "Are we deranged?", seeking to explain our imaginative failure to grasp — at the level of literature, history, and politics — the scale and violence of climate change.
Fellow ClimateCultures Member Cathy Fitzgerald uses the term 'eco-social art' for her own works, which she also describes as ensemble practices: "often involving art and non-art activities and many ways of knowing from art, ecophilosophy, science and traditional and local knowledge and practical experiential knowledge."
Author Iain BiggsPosted on 10th September 2019 16th May 2020 Categories Challenges of Creative EngagementTags Adaptation, Artists, Climate Change, Collaboration, Creativity, Cultural Change, Ecological Understanding, Environmental Change, Identity, Interdependence, Others, Participation, Place, Practice, Urgency, Visual ArtLeave a comment on Five Notes on Thinking Through 'Ensemble Practices'


On Saturday, June 6, a team of 17 men & women, consisting of 14 Central members and three guests, provided a concert and shared the Word at the Potosi Correctional Center in Bonne Terre, MO. Potosi is a maximum security prison that houses the "death row" inmates and most of those men who are serving life sentences.
About 140 men came out to hear Randy Mayfield and the "All-Star Band" give an almost two hour concert that featured the music of Johnny Cash as well as some worship and praise music. Central member Ted Winters also shared a strong word of faith with the guys and presented a clear Gospel message.
It was a hot day but after a lot of prayers, God held back the rain that had been predicted earlier in the week and the concert went on and was well received by the inmates and the prison guards who were also present. A special thanks to Central's missionary, Randy Gruber, who set up the concert and who oversees the Set Free and Emmaus ministries at Potosi and in other area prisons throughout Missouri.
Randy and other Central members have been to Potosi over the years to minister and share in worship, but this was the largest event and the first outdoor concert. We hope to do it again in the future. Thanks to all of you who prayed for the day and continue to pray for the message and music to bear fruit in the lives of the guys living at Potosi Correctional Center.


text:
The 'Identity Detective' series
IGNORING GRAVITY
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Rose Haldane, journalist and identity detective, reunites the people lost through adoption. The stories you don't see on television shows. The difficult cases. The people who cannot be found, who are thought lost forever. And each new challenge makes Rose re-live her own adoption story, each birth mother and father, adopted child, and adoptive parent she talks to, reminds her of her own birth mother Kate. Each book in the 'Identity Detective' series considers the viewpoint of one person trapped in this horrible dilemma. In the first book of the series, Ignoring Gravity, it is Rose's experience we follow as an adult discovering she was adopted as a baby. Connectedness is the story of a birth mother, her hopes and anxieties, her guilt and fear, and her longing to see her baby again. Sweet Joy, the third novel, will tell the story of a foundling, a baby abandoned, and how the now elderly woman is desperate to know her story before it is too late. Who is Rose Haldane? Watch the Series Trailer…
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Mary Gaitskill "It wasn't fast, partly because I had to learn to ride horses in order to write it."
[on writing 'The Mare', in an interview with 'The Bookseller' magazine]
[photo: serpentstail.com]
American writer Mary Gaitskill is well-known in her native land, but has passed under the radar in the UK. Her third novel, The Mare, may change things. Velvet is a streetwise 11-year old Dominican girl living with her single mother and younger brother in a tiny apartment in a deprived part of Brooklyn. Eligible for the Fresh Air Fund, Velvet takes a free summer holiday with Ginger and Paul and discovers the stables next door. There she is entranced by a mare, a rescue horse called Fiery Girl. As Velvet is besotted with the horse, so Ginger becomes besotted by the child.
Gaitskill's original idea was for a film, not a novel. She wrote a 30-page treatment in 2007 and sent it to her agent who said it wouldn't work because it didn't know if it was either a dark, gritty story or a Walt Disney story. Gaitskill said she wanted it to be both. She tried to forget about it, but couldn't, wrote 50 pages and kept writing.
She had initially thought she could watch other people ride and ask questions, but that didn't work. "I very quickly learned I didn't even know enough to realise what people were doing. So I had to do it myself." She spent three years learning to ride even though she was afraid of horses.
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