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Laos is still somewhat of a hidden gem, having a sense of purity and authenticity that makes it feel less affected by tourism than its neighboring countries. In Luang Prabang, the alluring new Rosewood hotel that recently opened is located in a lush area with waterfalls. The resort is just far enough from town to feel like an escape.
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England has an abundance of great gardens and landmark hotels, but perhaps nowhere do they come together more harmoniously than at Gravetye Manor in Sussex.
Located in the center of Marrakech and dating back to the 18th century, La Mamounia was originally a garden given to Prince Al Mamoun as a wedding gift from his father, the Sultan. The hotel opened in 1923 and soon drew an international elite, including Winston Churchill (for whom one of the bars is named).
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Out of the Margins
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diaCRITICIZE
Bài Tiếng Việt
EssaysLiterature
Publishing Your Novel Won't Cure You
Abbigail N. Rosewood
Most debut novels are projects of confession, pleas for understanding, manifestations of an author's attempt to rescue herself. My own debut novel, If I Had Two Lives, was for me the beginning of a wish–a harsh whisper after years of silence, a blindfolded dive into the many tunnels of the subconscious to emerge with something resembling a clear thought, a spark of feelings. Beyond the desire for social acknowledgment, however, there also simmered a more insidious hope: publishing my novel would cure me.
From the "If I Had Two Lives" trailer directed by Ash Mayfair.
What did I hope to be cured from? I didn't know, only that I was nurturing vague thoughts: I shall be absolved, I shall be free, I shall be understood, finally, finally, I shall not be underestimated again, I shall not be hurt again, not in the ways I'd been, I shall be loved–this last the most dangerous. I didn't identify from whom I might receive such love–friends, family, or strangers–but it is a dream that guarantees disappointment. "If I had two lives, I would…" sounds like the beginning of a wish, and it is, but more than that, having two lives is a reality for many people, not one they would want if they had the choice. I didn't get my childish wish fulfilled in publishing my first novel, but what I've gotten is something infinitely more complex, something real.
"Our neighbors know you as the girl who tries to jump off the roof," my ex said.
"Huh," I tried to remain composed while wishing we lived somewhere more private. "It only happened once–" I said.
"That's not the point."
"Okay, what's your point?"
I wondered why he'd told me that, if I'd embarrassed him. In my mind, I was already conjuring justifications of why I'd attempted a rather unpoetic leap into the void/concrete: I was trying to get away from my ex, I knew the height wasn't enough to kill me, but perhaps just enough to shatter all my bones. We were living in an apartment complex full of colorful characters. We'd seen our landlord, who lived on the first floor, throw out her boyfriend and his belongings at least once a month. The middle-aged woman in the apartment to our left, who worked the cashier at our town's supermarket, had come banging on our door in the middle of the night, accusing us of stealing her laptop after having dropped it off with my ex and asking him to repair it earlier that same day. Her roommate, a Craigslist and eBay entrepreneur, proudly told me of all the ways he'd avoided the IRS. I'd thought I was in the right company, close to people who publicly suffer, but perhaps the death drive was always repulsive to behold whether you lived in the bourgeois part of Brooklyn or a run-down neighborhood in southern Oregon. Nature wants to propagate, to multiply, so it must be unnatural to withdraw, erase, and fade.
When I was eighteen, my then-boyfriend gave me an expensive red dress with the price tag still attached. The dress was beautiful, but more appropriate for a thirty-year-old woman⎯the age I'll be next March. At the time, I was confused by his gesture. I put on the dress, which was strapless and bearing cups for someone with at least C-sized breasts. My own barely filled an A cup. The bundle of red fell to my hip in one swoop. I burst into tears and tried to rip the fabric off my body. I knew my ex fantasized about large, bouncing breasts and so I thought that he was trying to communicate, via the dress, his vision of what I needed to be. (It turned out he didn't have the subtlety to say it with a gift, though he did bluntly tell me a few months later to get implants.) I proceeded to cry-scream while tearing the sheer organza into sheer ribbons. My ex-boyfriend pushed his back against the wall, bewildered by the strength of my anger.
What he couldn't understand was that the dress had triggered my fear of not being a good enough girlfriend, which meant I wasn't a good enough person, which also meant I wasn't a good enough writer and I would never get published. It wasn't logical, but my brain engineered quite a few such original equations, and they all had the same outcome. I was late on paying the rent, which meant I was a bad person, which also meant I was a bad writer, and therefore I would never get published. I'd missed my period…therefore I would never get published. All my anxieties rushed downstream towards my biggest fear⎯never writing anything of substance and never publishing. The conclusion was natural: to unlatch myself from the circuitous chain of psychosis, I had to get published. Desire is a cancer, rapidly invading every cell of one's being. Writers try to quench their desire by feeding it experiences, love affairs, emotional dramas that, like storms, pass and leave peace behind. Yet, wanting is the first state of being a child is born into. As I read and wrote in an attempt to tame my inner child⎯a personal monster⎯I wondered if hers was a particular hunger that grew all the more expansive, insatiable, the more she was fed.
I am sad often, without cause, without direction, without significance. Some people call it depression, a chemical imbalance. Others deem it inspiration, unmanaged self-love, or simply hunger. Over the years I've oscillated between rejecting, embracing, protecting, and resisting this state of perpetual melancholia, and for now, I've decided to rest comfortably in its all-encompassing isolation, its exhibitionist urge to be seen⎯to manifest in me and through me. As a writer, already I am luckier than most, able to use language as a tool to externalize sadness, shape it and therefore contain it. My uncle, a painter, once told me, "You have an illness, but it can be cured." I don't know if that's true or if I would want to be freed from a companion that, while cutting, has also been generous. Because I was sad, I wrote thousands of words that became a novel. Doesn't it pay, then, to be so helplessly forlorn? How many more words will I need to write, how many more nightmares will I need to trap, before I come to the same conclusion as Sylvia Plath, David Foster Wallace, Virginia Woolf, Ernest Hemingway? How many syllables until I reach the calm before the epiphany that the search will have to end sometime?
The people who are most dejected, I would like to believe, are also the ones who most ache for life's beauty and are first to react to its gifts, a snowflake atop a bird's beak, a sudden adagio in a symphony, an excavator beside the skeleton of a building and nobody in sight. I'm struck by nothingness while the greatest tragedies fail to move me. I've heard that this kind of numbness is a sign of the pervasive melancholia that drives so many artists to create breathlessly as though possessed, emptying pieces of their souls into their work until there isn't much left for themselves. I wonder if this is why some of the most talented artists I know look dead while alive.
A book as form, as object, is both God and Satan. God because it is infinite in its scope, yielding to a singular vision, and particularizes hope. Satan because no matter how much a writer has already surrendered, completely, foolishly, it is not enough. A book is a losing bargain. A novel is a work-in-progress long after the final draft, the release date, even as it lies abandoned underneath sandy-wet bathing suits or forgotten in a car's trunk, even as its pages are used as kindle for fire. A novel is a regret, a longing, a scream that refuses to die. After my novel came out, I was confronted with all the desires that compelled me to write in the first place. It is almost comical how much I expected this one object made of pulverized trees to solve. I desired for publishing to help me cease desiring. I believed it would.
It is tempting to indulge in the delusion that publishing your first novel is a war to end all wars. Of course, not all writing comes from a place of pain and not all writers suffer from depression. For those who do, it is important to know that there are other ways to manage chronic melancholia such as therapy, medication, etc. It is both foolish and unsafe to think publishing one such solution. When a writer publishes for the first time, there come multiple waves of euphoria, first with finding an agent–the first professional to believe in the work–then finding an editor who thinks the book deserving of readers, and finally the moment the author sees their bound copy in a store. Euphoria is beautiful, but it isn't sustainable. I was ecstatic, of course, for a time. But after the exhilaration dissolved, I still had myself to face. This time, however, I was equipped with something different, a new weapon to combat those inner demons–I had knowledge. I now understood that there is no magical elixir to remedy depression, no one-stop solution. I felt for the first time in control of my brain, aware of its tricks and empty promise: "When I get this⎯I will finally be happy." Happiness isn't conditional, it is work that we must do on ourselves, for ourselves. It isn't contingent on external circumstances, even if that circumstance is the fulfillment of a lifelong dream.
In 2017, I went to see a therapist for the first time with the sinking realization that having sold my book to a publisher hadn't changed me. In the therapist's office, which was carefully curated with a trailing philodendron and a few framed pictures, I sat and cried for ten wordless minutes. He too began to weep, fogging up his glasses. We were like children, communicating with the most basic of tools. I was impressed by his willingness to be vulnerable in front of a patient, but I never came back. I love writing because words, when assembled to particular rhythms, hold up like glass–reflective and shimmery with illusions. I convulsed against therapy for the same reason. Analysis, similar to writing, was a mirror, but one stripped of dreams. Without the rhythms, fractured illusions, tricks of light that make hard truths beautiful, complicated feelings are but a clinical three-letter abbreviation. I started to resent the very word⎯depression⎯its diagnostic arrogance, its simplicity.
Still, perhaps I should have gone back to the therapist, perhaps instead of silence I should have said:
I lost my father before I understood what the concept of father meant. In one way, I never felt that loss, and in another, it haunted everything I wrote. When I was quite young, my mother left without saying goodbye for reasons both clear and opaque. 'If I Had Two Lives' was born from what felt like a vanishing–my mother's disappearance and then her mysterious reappearance nearly a year later through the disembodied voice of her recordings on cassette tapes. Listening to these tapes was for me like a hug, which briefly soothed, then was followed by a hunger more gnawing, more acute than before. My desire to write this book coincides with my desire to clarify–to identify and locate the pain, to position that pain onto the map of my life and assign it meaning. Writing was for me a process of questioning–I could ask as many questions as needed. The more I asked, the more true it seemed that parts of the answers were inherent in the questions. This novel was my project of meaning. Yet its publication has only accentuated my guilt. I don't know who precisely I've betrayed in order to write it, but I feel sure that I've betrayed someone. At the end of the film Mother! directed by Darren Aronofsky, it seems clear that the creative process is a continual betrayal of ourselves, our loved ones, our own memory–a crime, a serial murder that as artists, we must commit again and again. How to go on with that.
I once wished for publishing to cure me, but now I know the most optimistic outcome would be that I might have words left to utter, to delay my desire for death–the inevitable. Such a thing is hard to face and even harder to admit because it seems cowardly, but it has taken me a long look at my own ambition to know that no matter what I may or may not accomplish, I cannot change my death wish. Publishing acknowledges a writer's ability to package suffering into something saleable. It does not cure. It does not save. David Foster Wallace said, "I strongly suspect a big part of real art-fiction's job is to aggravate this sense of entrapment and loneliness and death in people, to move people to countenance it, since any possible human redemption requires us first to face what's dreadful, what we want to deny." My first act of truth then, since publishing fiction, is to not deny.
In How to Die: An Ancient Guide to the End of Life, philosopher Seneca invites us to die well, and writes that in order to do so we must prepare for death. Some may find his stoic views pessimistic, but I think they give the artist's battle with her inner demons a purpose, a chance at meaning. The world would be a kinder place if more people admitted to wanting to die. Except for the rare occasions of whispered rage to a significant other while in bed–the nonbeliever's confessional booth–I've never publicly admitted that urge to self-destruct, self-erase, and commit the great mortal sin of murdering myself.
At seven, I wanted to die for the first time. I'd spent hours dialing a number that led only to static, trying to reach my mother. I would not be able to reach her that night, or many more nights after that. I had school the next morning and still stayed up screaming, pleading with the silent receiver. It was the first time I encountered my primal fear and rage. I tried to cut my stomach open with plastic scissors.
At fourteen, I had a best friend who was just as suicidal as myself. Our death wish was perhaps the only thing that drew us together. We experimented, half-serious, half-play, with a metal hanger, with water, with the simple blade of a knife. We flirted with collusion by laying down in the middle of the road and sprinting away moments before impact.
At eighteen, I exited my body and yielded it to someone else to do with it whatever he liked.
At twenty-one, I tried to hurl myself off the roof of my apartment complex.
At twenty-nine, I write.
To write is to die well. To prepare for death is not inherently tragic and can even be meaningful. For those marked with sorrow, it is not only good but necessary to never arrive, to always have to try again⎯to stall death and choose life if only for a few syllables longer, even if it means circling back to that moment of childish whimpering into the receiver, of bargaining with static until the body cracks from yearning. Though I sometimes fail at living life with the vigor and love it deserves, wanting to die well seems to me a worthwhile aspiration. I no longer write to hush or still my personal demon, to satisfy her boundless greed and desires, but in spite of those things, I write. These days I'm not so preoccupied with a cure. I quickly return to labor again on my keyboard, to wrestle once more with words. I want to forget the first book, everything I've written, how I've arrived at the original trauma so that I may take a different path, more deliberately this time. Trauma is large, it contains multitudes–Walt Whitman might have agreed. Perhaps all writing is a dissection of the first hurt, a way to view it laterally, vortically. With dedication, a few secular prayers, focus and luck, I would be able to find her again⎯the monster, the child⎯a little more willing this time to guide me into the depth of her wounds, to help me understand. And the more I surrender, the more I seem to gain.
Abbigail N. Rosewood was born in Vietnam, where she lived until the age of twelve. She holds an MFA in creative writing from Columbia University and lives in New York.
Her debut novel, IF I HAD TWO LIVES, has been hailed as "a tale of staggering artistry" by the Los Angeles Review of Books and "a lyrical, exquisitely written novel" by the New York Journal of Books. The New Yorker said "the novel poignantly conjures the difficulties of reconciling the present with an 'ungraspable history.'" An excerpt from IF I HAD TWO LIVES won first place in the Writers Workshop of Asheville Literary Fiction Contest. abbigailrosewood.com
Elizabeth McLean Dec 19, 2019 at 3:11 pm
This is a stirring piece. The author is fully in charge of her emotions and of her narrative. Well done.
Most Anticipated ARVN Memoir: "Surviving the Vietnam War and Its Aftermath"
Vũ and Dương's sweeping memoir unveils to the English-language reader a three pronged journey that would otherwise be held in mystery: the work of Vietnamese war correspondents during the Việt Nam War, the experience of South Vietnamese citizens, particularly women, imprisoned in Communist "re-education" camps, and the agonizing captivity of refugees held as hostages by Thai pirates.
Dismantling the Old Boys' Club: Thuc Doan Nguyen & Hollywood
I think Hollywood has and still most of the time employs their friends from "the old boys' club," people who look alike and think alike and have similar views about women. This will only change when Hollywood actually values true inclusion, especially when so many studies and articles show doing right by marginalized groups equals a ton more loot at the box office.
Book Review: The Beautiful Ones Are Not Yet Born
And so this is the ultimate loss, the thing that haunts us the most, because it's the ghost of not being heard through the sound of the gun, through the sound of War, through the voices of others. This is the lesson that carries itself throughout The Beautiful Ones Are Not Yet Born.
If you like what you read here, please consider making a donation to DVAN via Intersection for the Arts.
diaCRITICS is a blog that showcases voices and stories from writers, artists and culture-makers of the Vietnamese and Southeast Asian diaspora on and from all shores. We publish poetry, fiction, essays, reviews, visual art, and more. Our founding editor and publisher is Viet Thanh Nguyen. diaCRITICS is a project of the Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network (DVAN).
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What followed was a child-like curiosity, when you discover a new world you weren't even aware existed. It was the start of an adventure, on which I spent summers working on organic farms, started urban agricultural projects and attended conferences on alternative food systems. I was submerged into a cascade of inspiration, and I experienced a sense of community and empowerment through collective work backed by a global network of permaculture activists, scholars and practitioners.
It was the simplicity of the permaculture principles and its way of approaching the social and natural system as something interconnected, by which I was fascinated. Namely, designing landscapes, which mimic the patterns and relationships found in nature and produce food, fibre and energy for provision of local needs. By doing so, permaculture contributes to small local changes that are directly and indirectly influencing actions in fields like sustainable development, organic agriculture, appropriate technology and intentional community design (Holmgren 2013).
But whenever I left the safe space of my little eco-bubble, I was confronted with critiques of people who told me that what I was doing was not enough to feed the world. That a few permaculture farmers could not eradicate famine, and there was no way permaculture could cope with the pressure that the inevitable population rise will bring on the food system. I was told that we don't have time for the "slow" gains of an agricultural system based on permaculture and that prevailing food insecurity forces us to find faster solutions now (see the critical analysis of Fraňková et al. 2016; Alcock 2009, and Jarosz 2011, regarding the root causes of the food insecurity narrative).
Hearing this always knocked the wind right out of me. Such arguments leave you wordless. Maybe it's because they make you realise the privilege you hold of coming from a country where your grandmother's generation was the last one that really suffered from hunger. Or because you don't quite have hard data at hand on how many people can actually be fed by small-scale agriculture (see the article by the International Institute for Environment and Development on this issue).
And then, there was this appalling statistic that cast a shadow over everything I was fighting for. How could I stick to my local engagement, when there were still 805 million people who were chronically undernourished in 2014 according to estimations of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO, IFAD & WFP 2014).
Statistics make for powerful arguments. They even melt away my aversion to 'big-ag' when I see a picture of what a future food landscape could look like. The photograph of Luca Locatelli, named "Hunger Solutions", won the second prize of the Word Press Photo awards in 2018, and is one such picture. Industrial farmland surrounded by experimental parcels touching the very horizon of a little piece of the earth somewhere in the Netherlands. Suddenly such a scenario appears to be persuasive when we think of combating hunger.
And then, there is also the old Malthusian argument, as if raised from the dead (if it ever died) to remind us that actions are urgent. This simplified formula that an increase in population will inevitably lead to a lack of food and to misery for all humanity, and that therefore we must act immediately to avoid the worst (see this book chapter about Malthusian theory).
The unruly activism to secure food and the desire to help those lacking food provision, however, can blur our understanding of the root causes of hunger or undernourishment for some and affluence for others, although there is indeed enough food produced for everyone to eat (Eric Holt-Giménez 2018, and the interview with Eric Holt-Giménez). Examining and listing the reasons why this imbalance exists could go on forever. For me, it starts with land dispossession in the Global South.
Throughout and after the official colonialist era, when plantation economies were being established for capital accumulation, the local people were made bereft of their very means of subsistence (Nally 2011). Costa Rica is exemplary for such development, where banana enclaves were established in the Caribbean region of the country in the end of the 19th century and most of the land was owned by the foreign United Fruit Company (today Chiquita). Local people not only became dependent on the employment by the company but their whole life – communication, commerce, mobility – was determined and controlled by the plantation owners (Wagner 2012). Today, we see much of this land being converted to produce fuel crops; biomass that serves mostly the fuel demands of the Global North, instead of being used to feed the local communities (see the report of World Rainforest Movement 2016).
However incomplete this list might be, it shows that uneven power structures are weaved into the past and present agro-food system. It goes some way in explaining the inequalities engrained in our global food system and how abundance and scarcity can co-exist. It clearly demonstrates a notion of what Michel Foucault describes as the biopolitics of "make live" and "let die". A concept explaining a political rationality which takes the administration of life and populations as its subject, in order to enhance livelihood conditions (and to 'make live') for some while "let die" of others. The food (in)security narrative was nourished by a rhetoric of improvement of agricultural productivity with the aim to promote agrarian capitalism especially in Global South countries. However, the integration in global agrarian markets rather increases the dependencies of Global South populations and their vulnerability in situations of economic and environmental crisis in which they are often literally left to die (Nally 2011).
Notwithstanding, the food (in)security narrative is so powerful, that even the phrase "WE have to feed THEM" becomes normalized and the inherent reproduction of racism and unequal power structures are portrayed as being for the greater "good" of the undernourished.
Nevertheless, such phrase certainly depicts a process of what Edward Said and other post-colonial theorist call 'othering'. A process in which 'the others', 'the subaltern' without agency, are placed somewhere outside a discourse, while the power of a few truth-holders is emphasized. So, it is the Dutch Scientist or a World Bank employee who presides over the agency of the entire peasantry.
They suddenly appear and provide the world solutions to problems they created in the first place, just like the Men in Grey do (see the summary of the novel 'Momo'). Those narrow-minded individuals of Michel Ende's famous novel "Momo", who are stealing humans their time. Those who are preaching efficiency and progress and are making us think that technology and the perfect allocation of means, of money, of time or even of water and nutrients to grow plants will be the solution to the major challenges humanity is facing today.
Such narratives make us forget what environmental history has taught us. Namely, that every innovation throughout human history was accompanied by unforeseen side effects. That every new solution increased the complexity of society and created new problems which were solved by new innovations, which created new problems… and finally paved the way for what environmental historians call a risk spiral (Winniwarter 2010; Haberl et al. 2010). Nevertheless, Men in Grey push their agenda of technology-based solutions and progress.
many, many, many, many different places.
I feel like someone has refused me my agency, and the one of all these many people in society who believe that a local, just and regenerative agri-food system is possible.
But instead of quoting the dreamy lines of another band, we should rather think about addressing global hunger by dismantling the legal, institutional and biotechnical mechanisms such as trade tariffs, agricultural subsidies or intellectual property rights behind the food (in)security narrative.
Imagine if we worked on addressing the root causes of hunger, instead of going down the risk spiral? When we do so, when we understand hunger through the lens of biopolitics or other lenses provided by post-colonial theory, we might understand that there will never be one solution for such a complex world. But that there are a thousand alternative practices already in place and people embracing them in their very contexts.
Let your differences work as one.
Elena Louisa Alter holds a Bachelor degree in Environmental and Political Science and is currently doing her Master in Social Ecology at the Institute of Social Ecology in Vienna. Besides studying, she is engaged in educational work carrying out seminars related to climate justice, gender justice and alternative economic practices. She also enjoys writing poems on her own blog and guest articles for a German feminist online magazine.
Eric Holt-Giménez. 2018. Can we feed the world without destroying it. Polity Press. Cambridge.
Fraňková, E., Haas, W., Singh, S.J. (Eds.). 2017. Socio-metabolic perspectives on sustainability of local food systems: new insights for science, policy and practice, Human-environment interactions. Springer, Cham.
Jarosz, Lucy. 2011. Defining World Hunger. Scale and Neoliberal Ideology in International Food Security. In: Culture & Society. Vol. 14/1. pp. 117-139.
Nally, David. 2011. The biopolitics of food provisioning. In: Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers. New Series. Vol. 36/1. pp. 37-53.


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Portugal's prime minister has 'total political confidence' in justice minister
PoliticsPortugal
The Prime Minister has expressed "total political confidence" in the Minister for Justice, Francisca Van Dunem, and argued that the "lapses" in the CV of European Public Prosecutor José Guerra originated from a note from the Justice Policy authority.
In recent days, Francisca Van Dunem has been at the centre of a controversy after several media reports that in a letter sent to the EU in 2019, the Portuguese executive presented false data on the government's preferred magistrate as European Public Prosecutor, José Guerra – after being appointed by the High Council of Public Prosecutors – after a committee of experts considered Ana Carla Almeida the best candidate for the post.
In the communiqué, António Costa begins by stressing that "it is up to the Government to choose the candidates to represent Portugal in the European Public Prosecutor's Office".
However, according to the Prime Minister, "to ensure impartiality in this choice, the Government presented a draft law – which parliament approved – giving the highest councils of the Public Prosecutor's Office and the Magistrature, independent bodies in the management of magistrates, the powers to select the names of magistrates to be appointed by the government".
"The Supreme Council of the Public Prosecutor's Office approved an ordered list, with José Eduardo Guerra as the first to appear. The selected members were also heard at a hearing in parliament and subsequently by a selection committee appointed by the EU Council, which brings together the governments of all the member states. The opinion of this Committee, which is not binding, did not produce any grounds or argument on the part of the Government to change the choice made by the Supreme Council of the Public Prosecutor's Office", observes the Prime Minister.
As for the errors in José Guerra's professional résumé, which were contained in a note sent to the EU, the Prime Minister maintains that these are "two lapses which are not relevant to the selection process".
"Moreover, the CV of the proposed candidate, which appears in the file submitted to the EU Council, does not contain any inaccuracies. In any case, today the Minister of Justice asked the Portuguese Ambassador to the EU to formally correct those lapses, which was done", António Costa later noted.
Furthermore, according to António Costa, it was found "that the lapses originated from a note produced at the Justice Policy authority.
"The Minister of Justice [Francisca Van Dunem] today accepted the resignation of the Director General of Justice Policy, Miguel Romão", the Prime Minister added.
Portugal: Costa announces UK flight ban
ChinaPolitics
Blocking EU-China agreement on the basis of the US would be a "bad sign", says Costa
Guinea-BissauPolitics
Guinea Bissau: Portuguese prime minister to make state visit before Christmas
Lusa - Guinea Bissau - 09/12/2020
EU-African Union summit will not take place until 2021, Costa said


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This comprehensive training program was developed by Fleming College, in consultation with manufacturers, and focuses on innovative thinking, continuous improvement skills and high-performance behaviors.
Inherent to the training is the development of skills that reduce interpersonal conflict, promote an acceptance of diverse viewpoints and promote an active participation in complex problem-solving. The curriculum focuses on developing leadership skills, project management, creative problem-solving and continuous improvement methods.
The program will follow a modular format with each skill set being reinforced by the classroom content, personalized coaching from an experienced change expert and an in-depth applied project. The curriculum is delivered in mostly half-day training sessions every two weeks for 17 sessions, culminating in the presentation of the applied project.
Prior to the program, participants will complete a Character Strengths Self-Assessment, which focuses on their positive core characteristics. We will debrief the results in the first session to give insight into your personal strengths, your approach to situations as well as an awareness of the ways others approach the same situation or problem. This learning will help participants gain more confidence in the strengths they bring as well as increase their ability to value the strengths of others.
The remaining two sessions in this module will focus on the application of concepts learned throughout the program, projects check-in and mentoring/coaching. Participants will have an opportunity to discuss in detail what they are learning and how they are applying it to their own workplace situations. These sessions also assist participants with effective project management to keep the Lean applied projects on track.
Poor communication can be a major cause of conflict and poor productivity. This module focuses on increasing interpersonal skills and effective communication to reduce workplace conflict, resulting in more positive and productive relationships as well as less time spent rehashing old issues. As communication skills are a core part of leadership, the development of these skills is also built into other modules, such as the applied project, high-performing teams, presentation skills and individual coaching sessions.
This module aims to develop a mindset of Continuous Improvement, supported by techniques and tools that are essential to implementing and supporting the change process. Participants will learn how to identify and respond to internal and external factors that will determine when and what types of change initiatives are required. We will focus on environmental scanning, identifying trends, implementing and measuring successful change, organizational readiness, risk assessment and the leadership role in implementing and sustaining positive change.
In this module participants will learn the proven, practical methods of successful project management with a continuous improvement perspective. They will also will learn how the elements of project management are applied during each phase of a project's life cycle and the implications of project management on leadership skills. These techniques will help establish priorities and effectively manage the various stages of the Lean applied project ensuring a successful completion as well as a tangible portfolio outcome.
For manufacturers to be successful change must be both intentional and continuous. Lean Six Sigma focuses on building critical thinking and problem-solving skills that are proven catalysts for creating strategic organizations. Participants will discover, how Lean tools build capacity in designing/leading effective change initiatives, promote creativity and spur innovation. A Lean mentality is a comprehensive approach to organizational change and continuous improvement. In this module, participants will gain the skills to recognize improvement opportunities as well as waste, initiate basic Lean assessments and implement practical basic Lean tools to for change and process/service improvements. We will also identify tools and techniques to increase customer focus and productivity and integrate sustainable business practices. Participants will learn to support their employers with the initial resources to apply Lean principles and tools.
This module explores the skills to foster successful teams in the workplace. Participants will learn the differences between a group and a team and the techniques for creating team charters, vision statements and team values. They will discover how to identify stages in team development and how to support members through the process. This module will also focus on how to improve problem solving and decision making at the team level, and how to be team players.
Building on material covered in previous modules, participants will learn techniques to help them think creatively and critically. These skills can help analyze information to respond to a wide variety in organizational, professional and personal situations. We will examine how creative thinking differs from critical thinking, and how these skills relate to our own role and the role of a leader. Participants will assess their own creative and critical thinking skills and develop strategies to improve these skills for themselves, an individual or a team. We will also explore the difference between thinking and knowing and the implication to business operations.
This module gives participants the tools they need to make powerful presentations that are well organized, concise, and believable. Participants will discover the essential elements that will help them be more relaxed, confident, and skilled in relating to their audiences. This module breaks down the process, from analyzing a situation before creating the content, defining the presentation objective to make it compelling and developing content using the Audience Questions Technique to creating powerful openings and provocative closings. We will also identify key elements for creating visuals to support the message. Participants will gain the skills to command respect, trust and credibility from their audience.
This culminating module give each participant the opportunity to present their Lean applied project to their manager and colleagues at their place of business. This final program module gives participants a platform to reflect on the program learnings and tangible benefit to themselves and their businesses.


This topic only applies to VPOP3 Enterprise.
If you want to use session encryption for connections to VPOP3 Enterprise then you need to install an certificate. The certificate should be for the server name used to connect to your VPOP3 server, eg mail.mycompany.com or vpop3.mycompany.com. You should have a name defined in your domain's DNS records for this server name (an A, AAAA or CNAME record), and your email clients should be configured to use that name when connecting to the server. If you don't do this, then you may get warnings that the certificate name doesn't match the server name. In that case, the connection will still be encrypted, but you lose the benefit of knowing that you are connecting to the correct server (and you aren't subject to a man-in-the-middle attack).
VPOP3 requires the certificates to be in the common PEM format. This is different from the format used by some other Windows software such as IIS etc, but is used for other software including most Linux servers, so it is commonly supported.
Generating and using certificates can be complicated so we recommend either purchasing them directly from us, or from another company which can help with getting them in the correct format for you. If you can get the private key & certificate chain in a suitable format for a web browser such as Apache, then that same private key and certificate chain can be used with VPOP3. Unfortunately, we cannot help with converting private keys & certificates from other formats to PEM format, but there are articles on the Internet explaining how to do this using command-line tools such as OpenSSL.
The basic mechanism is that you need to generate a CSR (Certificate Signing Request) and Private Key file for your server name using a tool such as OpenSSL or similar. You then submit the CSR to a Certificate Authority such as GeoTrust, Thawte, Comodo or others, and prove your identity to them to show that you are eligible to use that server name (this proof may be as simple as replying to an email to the chosen domain, or as complex as having to send authenticated documents through to them depending on the certificate requirements).
The Certificate Authority will then reply with a signed certificate. You should append the "certificate chain" certificates (supplied by the CA) onto the supplied certificate and install them into VPOP3.
To load the certificate into VPOP3, go to Services -> General ->SSL Settings. Copy & paste the private key PEM file (including the leading -----BEGIN PRIVATE KEY----- and trailing -----END PRIVATE KEY----- lines) into the SSL Private Key box and copy & paste the full certificate chain (including the -----BEGIN CERTIFICATE----- and -----END CERTIFICATE----- lines) into the SSL Certificate Chain box, and restart VPOP3.
The instructions below use the command-line OpenSSL tool. You can obtain a pre-compiled version of this toolset from Shining Light Productions.
Enter the details requested by the tool. The most important value is the Common Name value which should be the server DNS name - eg mail.mycompany.com.
This will create two files: vpop3sslk.pem is the file you need to install into the VPOP3 SSL Private Key box, csr.csr is the file you need to send to the certificate authority for signing.
Once you have the signed certificate back from the certificate authority, open it in Notepad++ or a similar text editor and append the certificate chain files required by your certificate authority (these are different for different CAs, and change from time to time so we cannot tell you exactly what to do here). Then copy & paste all that into the SSL Certificate Chain box in VPOP3.


Manufacturing exports make up $1.45 trillion or 7.8% of US GDP. Today more than 20% of all US manufacturing jobs depend on exports. The United States is currently renegotiating trade agreements with a number of its trading partners, potentially threatening billions of dollars of US exports and millions of jobs across the country. The top 10 states with the most jobs are California, Texas, Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, New York, and North Carolina. Protecting US exports protects US manufacturing jobs.
Backing out of KORUS hurts the U.S.
Threatening to withdraw from the US Korea Trade Agreement (KORUS) should not be taken lightly.
South Korea is an important U.S. trading partner, providing parts and services to American manufacturers and affordable quality products to US consumers. The potential impact of withdrawing from KORUS would be noticeable, especially when it comes to consumer electronics, transportation equipment and chemicals where South Korea ranks fifth, sixth and ninth, respectively, in terms of U.S. imports from individual countries. While some of these products are sold straight to consumers (TVs, cars, smart phones, etc.), other items are purchased by manufacturers to produce goods in the U.S. For instance, chemicals are used by U.S. manufacturers to create anything from packaging to medicines.
Withdrawing from the agreement would increase prices for those goods in the U.S., and there would be no meaningful impact on the trade deficit.


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Learn what the current 30-year fixed mortgage rates are.
By Joel Anderson August 6, 2018 Mortgages 101
The 30-year mortgage has been the gold standard for American homeownership for decades, providing the average American the ability to afford buying a house by spreading the costs out across much of their adult life. Over the years, it has proven an enormously popular option for mortgages, accounting for approximately 90 percent of new mortgages in the U.S. in 2016.
Given how important the terms of a mortgage can be to a family's financial health, potential homeowners need to find out what a good interest rate on a mortgage loan is. Here's a closer look at representative mortgage rates you'll find when searching for a 30-year mortgage. Keep reading to learn what the different rates can mean to the cost of the loan and what you should expect when you're ready to take the next step in buying a home.
30-Year Mortgage Rates for Fixed-Rate Home Loans
Although different 30-year mortgage rates do rely on some factors that are the same for everyone — like interest rates and the yield on 10-year Treasury notes — other things like your credit score and how much money you have for a down payment will play into what rate you can get. When it comes to finding the best fixed-rate mortgage, however, it helps to start by researching the rates currently available.
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Here are the 30-year mortgage rates offered by some of the most popular lenders:
Lender 30-Year Mortgage Rate 30-Year Mortgage APR
Quicken Loans 4.625% 4.889%
Wells Fargo 4.750% 4.810%
Bank of America 4.625% 4.792%
JP Morgan Chase 4.625% 4.701%
US Bank 4.750% 4.825%
Rates accurate as of July 31, 2018.
The difference between the mortgage interest rate and the annual percentage rate reflects the additional fees and costs associated with a mortgage, meaning the APR represents a more accurate reflection of the total costs of the loan.
These are all examples of fixed rates, meaning that you can lock in your rate for the life of the loan. That's different from variable-rate loans, for which the rate can change over time. Getting the fixed rate comes with less risk of seeing your rate climb as interest rates change, but a variable rate can be a beneficial choice if interest rates decrease during the life of the loan.
Small Rate Differences Can Save You a Lot of Money
At first glance, there might not be a big difference between rates offered by lenders, but even a small difference can make a big impact on the cost of the loan.
Looking at the sample rates, the difference between the largest and smallest rate is just 0.125 percent. Over the full course of a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage on a $600,000 home with 20 percent down, that 0.125 percent difference in rates can mean a big difference in what the loan will cost you.
The 4.625 percent interest rate in the above scenario would cost you $408,433 in interest over the course of 30 years, whereas the 4.750 percent rate would cost you $421,405 — a difference of approximately $13,000.
What Is a 30-Year Fixed Mortgage?
The 30-year mortgage originated during the Great Depression. Home loans used to require a whopping 50 percent down on the value of the home with just five years to pay back the remainder of the loan, and most loans were rolled over into another five-year loan at its end. With the collapse of the banking system at the end of the 1920s, however, banks stopped offering new loans and foreclosures spiked — approximately 250,000 households every year from 1931 to 1935 lost their homes.
A major push by the Roosevelt administration helped remake the mortgage industry, turning the 30-year mortgage into the new norm. These new, longer mortgages were more affordable and opened homeownership up to a much larger portion of the American population.
Over the decades, the 30-year mortgage has remained popular, with the length of the loan conveniently lining up with the typical length of a person's career. Young borrowers can expect to continue paying off their mortgage over the course of their working years, finally paying the loan off in time to eliminate the expensive monthly payments before entering retirement.
Click through to learn how long it takes to buy a house.
More on Mortgages
The Ideal Salary You Need to Own a Home in Your State
How to Find Small Home Loans Under $50,000
12 Essential Money Tips for Every Phase of Life
Joel Anderson
Joel Anderson is a business and finance writer with over a decade of experience writing about the wide world of finance. Based in Los Angeles, he specializes in writing about the financial markets, stocks, macroeconomic concepts and focuses on helping make complex financial concepts digestible for the retail investor.
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1990s / BBC / Festivals / Music Festival / Past Daily Backstage Weekend
Oasis - With two of the world's best loved dysfunctional family members.
Oasis – Glastonbury 1995 – Past Daily Backstage Weekend
by gordonskene · Oct 20, 2018
Oasis – With two of the world's best loved dysfunctional family members.
https://oildale.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/22001116/Oasis-Glastonbury-1995-June-23-1995.mp3
Oasis – Live At Glastonbury 1995 – June 23, 1995 – BBC Radio 1 –
Oasis in concert from the 1995 Glastonbury festival this weekend. One of the bands that helped define the British Rock scene from the early 90s onwards (otherwise known as Britpop – a name I can't stand). A lot has been written about them – a lot of comparisons have been drawn about them – everyone from The Beatles to Led Zeppelin, if you really have to draw a comparison.
Oasis were a force unto themselves – forget about the famously dysfunctional relationship between the brothers Gallagher, Oasis came along at a time when the 90s were in need of that extra push – that element which would take it over the finish line, something to re-establish Britain as the creative center for contemporary Rock. And they did it. Oasis felt right at home on U.S. radio – Some Might Say, Don't Look Back In Anger and Roll With It became anthems of a sort.
And despite the famously contrived rivalry between Oasis and Blur, they represented the giant next step in the evolution of the genre; one we're still processing and one which has proven very influential over the ensuing years.
This 1995 Glastonbury appearance puts the band at their peak. Despite all the carping and fist-fights between Noel and Liam, they put the sharp sticks down long enough to turn in some magnetic and engrossing live performances, of which this is one.
And even though there have been rumors and speculation about a reunion of the brothers and the original lineup of Oasis getting back together, the chances are unlikely – and in the case of Noel, pretty unnecessary at the moment. I don't know if you've had the change to check out High Flying Birds, but Noel as a solo artist has been doing surprisingly (or not surprisingly) well. With three albums all in the top 10, it's almost a case of better-off-without-you, at least for now.
Whatever eventually transpires, or if it's left up to devoting reams of paper and endless words based on "what-if's", Oasis will always be regarded as the band that put it all in motion – and that will never go away.
In case you missed them the first time around, or if Glastonbury from 1995 has become a faded memory, here's a reminder.
Play loud.
Next story Cloud Nothings – Live At London Calling 2012 – Past Daily Soundbooth
Previous story It's October 21st, 1967 – You're A Teenager – You Live In San Francisco – You Missed The Summer Of Love – You're Catching Up
Echo & The Bunnymen – In session – 1979 – Past Daily Soundbooth
Adorable In Concert – 1993 – Past Daily Soundbooth
February 24, 2002 – The View From Ramallah


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Chemical cross-linking of pleckstrin in human platelets: evidence for oligomerization of the protein and its dissociation by protein kinase C
McDermott, Alison and Haslam, Richard (1996) Chemical cross-linking of pleckstrin in human platelets: evidence for oligomerization of the protein and its dissociation by protein kinase C. Biochemical Journal, 317 (1). pp. 119-124. ISSN 0264-6021
Official URL: https://doi.org/10.1042/bj3170119
The major substrate of protein kinase C (PKC) in platelets is the 40 kDa protein, pleckstrin. Addition of the homobifunctional reagent, bis(sulphosuccinimidyl)suberate (BS3), to platelet lysate, cytosol fraction or to electropermeabilized platelets resulted in cross-linking of pleckstrin to give higher-molecular-mass complexes of 68 kDa, 90 kDa and 100–120 kDa respectively, which were visualized by immunoblotting with an anti-pleckstrin antibody. Higher levels of cross-linking were observed in permeabilized platelets than in platelet lysates. The yields of the cross-linked complexes were much reduced after dilution of platelet lysate or lysis of electropermeabilized platelets and, in the case of the 90 kDa and 100–120 kDa species, after activation of PKC by phorbol 12-myristate 13-acetate. Similar experiments with purified pleckstrin indicated that the 90 kDa and 100–120 kDa species consist, at least in part, of pleckstrin dimers and higher oligomers. After incubation of purified pleckstrin (0.45 mg/ml) for 1 h with 2 mM BS3, about 25% of the protein was present in cross-linked species. The results indicate that pleckstrin undergoes a reversible self-association that can be prevented by phosphorylation of the protein, and also interacts with an unidentified platelet protein of about 28 kDa.
C700 Molecular Biology, Biophysics and Biochemistry
Faculties > Health and Life Sciences > Applied Sciences
Becky Skoyles


There are a number of programs, government-sponsored and otherwise, that are designed to help aspiring homeowners find and get approved for a mortgage that works for them.
Among these are first-time homeowner loans insured by the Housing and Urban Development Department, mortgages and loans insured by the USDA designed to help people living in urban and rural areas, and VA loans, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
In today's post, I'm going to give you a basic rundown of VA loans, who is eligible for them, and how to apply for one. That way you'll feel confident knowing you're getting the best possible deal on your home mortgage.
VA loans can provide soon-to-be homeowners who have served their country with low-interest rates and no private mortgage insurance (PMI).
If you're hoping to buy a home soon and don't have at least a 20% down payment, you typically have to take out private mortgage insurance. This means paying an extra insurance bill on top of your monthly mortgage payments. The downside of PMI is that it never turns into equity that you can then use when you decide to move again or sell your home.
VA loans may also help you secure a lower interest rate, or give you some negotiating power when it comes to discussing your interest rate.
Finally, VA loans set limits on the number of closing costs you can pay in your mortgage. And, if you've ever bought a home before, you'll know how quickly closing costs can add up.
There are some common misconceptions about who can apply for a VA loan? So, we'll cover all the bases of eligibility.
There are some restrictions to these eligibilities. For example, your chosen lender may still have credit score minimums.
There are two main steps for applying for a VA Loan. First, you'll have to ensure your eligibility. You can do this by checking the VA's official website. Be sure to call them with any questions you may have.
Next, you'll need a certificate of eligibility. The easiest way to acquire one is through your chosen lender. If you haven't chosen a lender, you can also apply online through the eBenefits portal, or by mailing in a paper application.
Once you have a certificate, you can apply for your mortgage and you'll be on your way to buying a home.
Sweeping economic shifts, like a rising Dow Jones or lower unemployment rates, can affect the housing market. As the number of Americans buying houses increases, the sell price that you could get for your house might go up as well. If the housing market hits booming levels, you could get nearly twice as much for your house within five to seven years of the date that you bought the property.
As a seller, there may be little better news than hearing that house prices are going up. Yet, should you be in the market to buy a new house, this upward swing could spell disaster.
What could happen if you buy a house during a housing market boom is that you could enter a mortgage agreement that has you paying more for a house than the house is actually worth. You might not realize this until after the housing market starts turning sharply in the opposite direction.
By then, it could be too late. It's this very type of housing market swing that played a key role in the development of the Great Recession. You could regret housing prices shifting too far upward even if you're a seller.
How is this possible? When housing prices rise to the point that the house prices become bloated, although you can yield a significant profit should you sell your house, you may quickly watch those profits evaporate when you buy another house, especially if every house available for you to purchase cost nearly as much as the house you just sold. This is because bloated housing costs can eventually set everyone back.
Comparable housing prices show that you could get nearly double or more for your house than you paid for it less than four years ago, and yet, you have done absolutely nothing to improve your property.
You're not the only one who doesn't want to pay too much for a house. People shopping for homes like the one you may have just put on the market also don't want to invest more in a house than the house is actually worth.
One reason for this is that the price of the house isn't the only costs that you'll take on if you buy a home. Insurance, association fees, general maintenance, property taxes and repair costs are other expenses that you could get saddled with. Several of these additional costs are directly linked to the price that you paid for your house.
Over priced homes can also place a drag on the entire housing market. This is truly an area where greed causes extensive damage. You may have to do your homework to avoid being pulled into an inflated housing market. But, you can avoid buying a house that's over priced if you practice patience.


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Franciscan University of Steubenville
Forming those who form others.
Formation Coursesclose
There are many avenues through which catechists can get formal training. Our principal training vehicle, Franciscan at Home, draws together the best of the Franciscan University Catechetics Program, the St. John Bosco Conference, and the latest in online education. There also are opportunities for homeschool families, online graduate studies, and more from Franciscan University of Steubenville.
Formation Resourcesclose
Franciscan University has produced a prodigious amount of material over the years that can help you be a better catechist. Here you will find videos, audio clips, magazines, books, brochures, and other resources produced by University faculty, conference speakers, and an array of collaborators. We are pleased to make much of it available for free, with a handful of items requiring a subscription or purchase.
Formation Eventsclose
The annual St. John Bosco Conference for Catechists and Religious Educators at Franciscan University is our premier event, bringing catechetical experts from all over to share their expertise through general sessions and specialized tracks. We also host on-campus academic conferences on catechetical topics, and speak all over.
Formation Teamsclose
The Catechetical Institute brings together the world-class faculty of Franciscan University's Catechetics Program with key collaborators from all levels of ministry. These skilled professionals teach our Franciscan at Home online courses and speak at our St. John Bosco Conference, academic conferences, and other events around the country. Through the Catechetical Institute, they can also assist your diocese, parish, institution, or local community in achieving greater excellence in passing on the faith.
The Franciscan University Catechetical Institute forms Catholics who form others in the faith. Through courses, conferences, advice, and resources, the institute supports clergy, parents, and all those responsible for the work of catechesis and evangelization, as they carry out Christ's command to make disciples of all nations.
Bosco Conference
Bosco is just around the corner! Visit our events page to sign up now!
Formation Tracks
Check out FranciscanAtHome.com to see the ministry tracks that are currently available!
A Father To Us All
Father Michael Scanlan, TOR, had an impact that reverberates throughout the Church. Learn more about his legacy.
New workshops are continuously being added to our learning platform at franciscanathome.com! Click here to visit the website now!
You will find an ever increasing array of materials- audio, video, and print- on our "Resources" page.
Catechetical Review
Take a look at the latest issue of our long-running magazine, The Catechetical Review.
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Steubenville, OH 43952 USA
ci@franciscan.edu
About the Catechetical Institute
The Catechetical Institute at Franciscan University exists to train and support the key catechists in any situation—priests, deacons, parents, or laity, whether professional or volunteer. Through conferences, online workshops, videos, audio, personal mentorship, and a wealth of resources produced by Franciscan University, all involved in the work of catechesis will find new ideas, new approaches, new techniques, and a new confidence to do the work of catechesis.
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© 2021 Franciscan University of Steubenville


The sound boards are custom made and programmed! We can even custom program the sound board to act differently for your needs. Contact us for more info!
This sound board interfaces with the counter to synchronize gun burst sounds to the ammo count and barrel flashers as seen on the PR counter page. The sound board can be programmed with up to 5 different gun sounds as well as one gun empty clacking sound. You choose the sounds you want!
When the board is powered up and the trigger wires make contact, the counter will count down and the sound board will play out randomly selected gun burst sounds. The sound board will continue to string together gun burst sounds as long as the trigger wires are touching. When the counter expires at 00, the sound board plays out a looping gun "clack" sound to emulate out of ammo. You can also choose to have Marine chatter come over the airwaves if there is no activity for 15 seconds. This gives you the added realism that you have comrades in the field helping you out!
We can also customize and program the sound board to fit your needs. Extra costs may be involved. Any standard wav file (up to 16sec worth!) can be recorded onto the sound chip which suits your prop. Contact us for more info!!
The sound boards run off a 9V battery. They are fairly loud using a good-sized speaker with no extra amp needed. There is also an 1/8" audio out jack to connect up a different speaker or headphones. Headphone use may require a volume control cable, available from Radio Shack.
This sound board cannot mix 2 or more sounds together. It is capable of playback only, and can only playback one sound at a time. But, it can store many different sounds and play them out based on button presses, timer events, etc. We are offering this board as an affordable alternative to our Vortex USM. Hence its sound quality is not as crisp and clean as the Vortex USM. This board's frequency range is 150 Hz to 4kHz.


I'm still awake and should be going to bed soon. My husband went to bed between 12:30am and 1:15am. The dog keeps getting up, sleeping by me, and then goes back into the bedroom.
I've been playing PartyPoker all night and surfing EBay for deals. First I looked for my replacement seville candle holder, Buffy stuff, Angel stuff, then rare books. It's never too early to get ideas on things to buy my husband.
Earlier we saw Million Dollar Baby. Wow! At his work we saw A Question of Silence which I didn't care too much for, but I can see how it was shocking when it came out. We then saw The Fourth Man which was very good. The main actor looked familiar to me but I couldn't place him. The last thing I saw him in was Ocean's Twelve. It seems he comes from a talented family as there are several painters and his brother wrote The Vanishing.
Now I'm just blathering on about nothing.


A series of objects inviting interaction and the contemplation of planetary balance and imbalance.
Balance in a time of ecological imbalance has become an essential theme for an art collective that embraces the participation of viewers and shifts their role from one of onlooker to one of colluder. With handstands for re-envisioning the world and a seesaw for shifting the landscape, we collude in planetary outcomes.


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Kim Leine
Writing Between Male and Female
"I'm feeling my way, and that can be a good way of approaching literature."
"I think many authors see it as a challenge to write as the other sex," says the award-winning Danish-Norwegian writer Kim Leine in this portrait. Leine's writing evolves from the experiences he had living 15 years in Greenland, but he constantly gets inspiration from the classics: "I compete with them and communicate with them and try to outdo them. Or I feel challenged by them. It's a continuous exchange with what I'm reading." Read more …
"I have no formal literary training," says Kim Leine, "I'm feeling my way, and that can be a good way of approaching literature. You don't know what you're doing but you're driven by desire and the joy of telling a story and the joy of reading as a starting point. I try to recreate it. That's why it becomes a smash-up of things that are intuitive and not planned." During the writing process, Kim Leine is simultaneously reading: "I'm influenced by what I'm reading and compete with it and communicate with it and try to outdo it. Or I feel challenged by it. It's a continuous exchange with what I'm reading. That's very important. I use that technique very deliberately."
Leine writes his books in Norwegian and in Danish. He admits that restlessness has characterized his writing style ever since his groundbreaking debut with 'Kalak' (the title is Greenlandic for 'fucking Greenlander'), an auto-biographic novel in which he described his years living as a nurse in Greenland, becoming addictive to alcohol and drugs. Leine felt different when he met Greenlanders and spoke their language: "In a way, I felt freer. And perhaps more unrestrained and maybe even happier, less controlled," he says.
When Kim Leine started the trilogy about Greenland, he saw independence for Greenland as an absolute necessity. "But now I see it differently," he says. "It might not end with Greenland becoming independent. But it's a paradox. I still see it as an absolute necessity. And at the same time, as an absolute impossibility. Impossible paradoxes are very good starting points for novels," Leine states.
Kim Leine (born 1961 in Telemark, Norway) is an award-winning Danish-Norwegian author, whose work has been translated into 20 languages. He was born in Norway but moved to Denmark as a teenager. He lived and worked in Greenland for 15 years. His acclaimed debut novel, the autobiographical 'Kalak', 2007, is based on his time and experiences in Greenland. Many of his books are set in Greenland, including the novel 'Profeterne i Evighedsfjorden' (published in English as 'The Prophets of Eternal Fjord' in 2015), 2012. In 2013, he was awarded the Nordic Council Literature Prize for the novel 'The Prophets of Eternal Fjord'.
Kim Leine was interviewed by literary critic Erik Skyum-Nielsen at Hirsholm island, Denmark, in August 2020.
Camera: Klaus Elmer
Edit: Kasper Bech Dyg
Supported by: C.L. Davids Fond og Samling
Other videos in this series: A Closer Look at Danish Writers
"Poetry is a bodily thing that takes over."
Peter Laugesen
Walking the Tidelands
"The world is very overwhelming and other people are very overwhelming."
Ursula Andkjær Olsen
"If you get distracted and can't find peace and quiet in the world, such as in big cities or on the internet you should walk away from it."
Walking Provides Inner Peace
"Lots' of people have money and fame, but they aren't satisfied. They are stuck on the treadmill."
Peter Høeg
On Fame
"You believe it, and you immerse yourself completely..."
Helle Helle
"You're a Greenlander when you're queer."
Niviaq Korneliussen
To be a Greenlander
"This Locking-down the mall Nonsense did not sit well with me in the least as my craving for Hand Sanitizer and Butter-Biscuits was now grown immense".
Harald Voetmann
Hans Christian Andersen's Quarantine Diary
"Writing was my salvation"
Suzanne Brøgger
One Long Letter to the World
"I am what is around me."
Henrik Nordbrandt
A Poet's Odyssey
"The writing of a novel can be therapeutic."
Inside a Writer's Process
"The answers are inside us."
We Swim in Language
"I think depression is a very basic thing in creation."
Madame Nielsen
Such a Pain Such a Beauty


Alabama author Carol Trant Dean's "Day of Destruction" records survivor accounts of the day a deadly EF4 tornado struck Enterprise High School and the struggle to come to terms with the devastating event.
The tornado, with winds of more than 170 mph, took the lives of eight Enterprise High students and one nearby resident on March 1, 2007. It was the worst U.S. tornado strike on a school since the 1960s. The tornado outbreak began in Kansas the day before and spread east claiming 20 lives and producing 56 tornadoes before the storm system moved into the Atlantic after producing a final twister in North Carolina on March 2.
Dean, a licensed professional counselor, worked with the Enterprise school system and was part of the healing process in the aftermath. "Day of Destruction" records firsthand accounts of school and community members a few years after the disaster. She not only preserves their stories but a bit of each unique journey toward healing.
The book has eight personal accounts of that day, including Reese, the principal, assistant principal, guidance secretary, school nurse, a student and sister of one victim, the elementary school counselor and the author's. It chronicles four students who experienced difficulties in the aftermath.
"Day of Destruction" is at times a tough read. It provides an up-close account of the horror and the emotional and physical trauma the community endured as chaos descended. But it also shows the resilience of a community while offering guidance on dealing with tragedy and loss.
The book is in part dedicated to the Enterprise High School Guidance Department, with profits donated to the department to help students.
One gem in Dean's book is a poem written by Virginia Kelly, at the age of 87. She could see the devastation of Enterprise High School from her backyard. Her poem, "A Tornado Is:," provides a stirring conclusion to a powerful book.
The former Birmingham Police officer continues to serve in her corporate security role.


Another one I took on my way home. The sky and trees looked too perfect.
The sky does look good. This photo somehow feels mysterious overall, don't know how to explain other than the trees position, but it's good.
Beautiful sky shot love the trees and the wild blue light !!
I love your photos... the quality and perspectives are nice!
This is beautiful! Stunning colors!
I can't wait! The trees around here look beautiful when they're fully alive. I think when the leaves return i'm going to do a follow up piece to this picture. Try and get the same angle and everything.
That's beautiful, a really lovely shot.
Thank you! I thought it looked like a painting, too!!


Add a data-validation object to the sheet. The data-validation object defines the type of data-validation to be applied and the cell or range of cells it should apply to.
Appends a group of values at the bottom of the current sheet.
Returns a cell object based on the given coordinates.
Calling cell creates cells in memory when they are first accessed.
Produces cells from the worksheet, by column. Specify the iteration range using indices of rows and columns.
If no indices are specified the range starts at A1.
If no cells are in the worksheet an empty tuple will be returned.
Produces cells from the worksheet, by row. Specify the iteration range using indices of rows and columns.
Move a cell range by the number of rows and/or columns: down if rows > 0 and up if rows < 0 right if cols > 0 and left if cols < 0 Existing cells will be overwritten. Formulae and references will not be updated.
The print area for the worksheet, or None if not set. To set, supply a range like 'A1:D4' or a list of ranges.


Magnificent big Japanese wood lacquer Document Box with an inner tray, made with maki-e and hiromaki-e and nashiji technique decorations of flower bushes and blossoms on top and sides of the cover and the body of the box. The painting work is done over ruby-red basse- taile- like background. The interior of the box, the bottom and the tray are made with black lacquer. 13 1/2" long x 11" wide x 6" tall.
Japanese Meiji Period top quality unusually shaped Satsuma vase, made and signed by Shizan. The top of the vase is made with flying cranes in various positions; on the lower part of the vase there are butterflies in a net. Please see the pictures. The center of the vase, its top and bottom are finely decorated with various decorations. 6 1/2" tall x 2" D.
Japanese Taisho Period (1912-1924) wood lacquer box made with maki-e technique over flowers with fine nashiji, made with maki-e and hiromaki-e lacquer work techniques. 9 1/2" long x 7 1/2" wide x 1 3/4"tall.
Japanese Taisho Period (1912-1924) wood lacquer box made with maki-e technique over millwhells over water made with fine nashiji. The background is black lacquer color. 9 3/4" tall x 8" x 5/8"
Big and very finely painted Japanese Meiji Period Satsuma Vase with two big decorative shields, one depicts six samurai , and another panel depicts three samurai with katanas and naginatas, a water jar and a landscape on a background. The background as well as the bottom of the vase have partly raised and partly gilded enamel. The vase is signed by the artist. It is 15 3/4" tall x 9" D.
Japanese Meiji Period multi-metal Kogo with a low-relieved finely engraved shakudo and gold Irises with leaves, signed by an artist. The signature is engraved. The interior of the box is silver-plated. 2 1/2" x 2" x 5/8".
Japanese Meiji Period fine silver wire -wireless Kyoto style partly gold-stone gorgeous Cloisonne Vase with indescribable detailed decorations. It has uneven grey enameling over the interior. 15" tall x 7 1/2" D.
Japanese Meiji Period HIRADO Okimono of two fighting Shishi in dynamic positions. The Okimono has an unglazed bottom and a couple spots with iron oxidation. There are couple original bake hairlines, normal for a piece of this age. 8 1/2" long x 6 1/4" tall x 6 1/4" deep.
Unusual Japanese late Edo -early Meiji Period stylized Bronze Okimono of an elephant with green jade enamel tusks and eyes. It has a beautiful brown patina, some wear to enamel over the ends of the tusks. There is a seal-signature on the bottom. 6 3/4" long x 5" x 5 1/2"
Giant magnificent Japanese 1905 Studio Porcelain Vase with life-like decorations of flower blossoms, branches and a butterfly over the tone changing background of light-green to green color. The upper part of the vase is finely decorated with a scene of nine flying birds. There is a mark of Japanese - Russian war of 1905 on the bottom of the vase. The Vase is 24 1/2" tall x 7 1/2" D.


text:
The robust redhorse  (Moxostoma robustum) is a redhorse-type fish that lives in the freshwater streams of the eastern United States. It was previously called the smallfin redhorse.

Taxonomy
Using a  specimen from the Yadkin River of North Carolina, naturalist Edward Drinker Cope first described the robust redhorse as Ptychostomus robustus in 1870. The original specimen was lost or destroyed, and by the late 19th century, all mention of the robust redhorse had ceased. It was thought to be extinct until several unidentified fish specimens were collected from the Savannah River and Pee Dee River in 1980 and 1985. In August 1991, biologists with the Georgia Department of Natural Resources officially rediscovered the species when five specimens of the fish were collected in the Oconee River, and identified as robust redhorse.

Description
M. robustum is a large, fairly long-living animal compared to other members of its family;
the fish can weigh up to  and live for up to 27 years, although it averages  in length and  in weight. M. robustum'''s body is thick, or "robust", its fins are rose-colored, and it has a fleshy lower lip.

 Distribution and habitat M. robustum'' is found in the eastern United States from the Cape Fear River drainage in North Carolina's Peedee River drainage, south to the Oconee River system, part of Georgia's Altamaha River drainage.
They live in both rocky and silty pools or less turbulent areas of small and medium rivers, and are also found in reservoirs and other water impoundments.

References

External links

Moxostoma
Fish of North America
Fish described in 1870

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
Science, Belief, and Rational Debate
Planning for Crisis Communications
Heritage Foundation: Nuclear Supply Chains Key to Revival
The 100-Nukes Solution
House OKs Grid-Siting Reform, but Only in the West
Uranium: A Strange and Fascinating Story
TREND: The Realities of the Nuclear Renaissance Emerge
Looking for Cash? Look at Inventory
Global Warming: It's a Regional Zero-Sum Game
Power to Your People, Right On
What Do Americans Think About Energy and the Environment?
Most Americans simply don't have clue about energy and environmental issues, according to a Zogby poll commissioned by the conservative Manhattan Institute.
At least since the energy crisis of the early 1970s, the U.S. has wrestled with the difficult question of how best to ensure an adequate energy supply while protecting the environment. This question continues to play a role in our political debates. Whether, and how, public policy might reduce reliance on imported oil, encourage lower-emission vehicles, and spur the development of new or cleaner sources of power are all regular matters of public discussion and concern.
Believing that prudent policies require a well-informed citizenry—one well versed in the facts—we (the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank) sought, with the help of survey research conducted by Zogby Associates, to determine what Americans believe about energy and environmental issues and the extent of their knowledge.
Americans Don't Have the Facts Straight
Building on similar research from 2006, we report here on the January 2009 responses of 1,000 Americans, chosen to be representative of public opinion generally, on matters such as the sources of U.S. energy, the extent of the oil supply, the rate of global warming, the safety of nuclear power, and the promise of renewable-energy sources. Our poll, Energy & the Environment: Myths & Facts, revealed that the views that many Americans hold about a wide range of these issues remain, in key ways, factually inaccurate. For example:
Forty-nine percent of respondents believe Saudi Arabia exports the most oil to the U.S., while just 13% correctly identified Canada as our top foreign supplier. According to the Energy Information Administration (EIA), the U.S. imported 58.2% of its petroleum (including crude oil) in 2007, but only 16.1% of all imports came from Persian Gulf countries.
More than 67% believe we can meet future energy demand through conservation and efficiency. Historically, in contrast, energy demand actually increases alongside efficiency gains. And because energy use is not static, conservation leads to only marginal reductions in demand. The EIA projects global energy consumption to increase 50% from 2005 to 2030 and U.S. energy use to increase 11.2% from 2007 to 2030.
Just 37% correctly answered that no one has ever died from the actual generation of nuclear power in the U.S. Though the U.S. has not built a new nuclear-power reactor since the nuclear meltdown at Three Mile Island in 1979, 104 active reactors safely generate roughly one-fifth of our nation's electricity.
Sixty-three percent of those surveyed believe that human activity is the greatest source of greenhouse gases. In fact, such emissions are significantly smaller than natural emissions. The burning of fossil fuels is responsible for just 3.27% of the carbon dioxide that enters the atmosphere each year, while the biosphere and oceans account for 55.28% and 41.46%, respectively.
Fewer than 28% correctly believe that U.S. air quality has improved since 1970. According to the EPA, the six most common air pollutants have decreased by more than 50%; air toxins from large industrial sources have fallen nearly 70%; new cars are more than 90% cleaner, in terms of their emissions; and production of most ozone-depleting chemicals has ceased. These reductions have occurred despite the fact that during the same period, gross domestic product tripled, energy consumption increased 50%, and motor vehicle use increased almost 200%.
Citizens Need to Know the True Costs
There have been some notable changes since our 2006 survey. Americans are more likely to believe that spent nuclear fuel can be stored safely and that offshore oil drilling can be conducted in an environmentally sensitive manner. Half of those surveyed feel spent nuclear fuel can be safely stored, while 64% of respondents favor expanded offshore drilling. As policymakers call for increased energy independence, it is noteworthy that a large portion of the public is favorable toward abundant domestic energy sources that could lessen our reliance on foreign oil.
Additionally, considering the momentum behind renewable energies and carbon-emission regulation, it is noteworthy that almost half of respondents believe renewable-energy sources will not replace fossil fuels and uranium any time soon—91% of our electricity is generated by fossil fuels and uranium and the EIA projects that 85% of our electricity in 2030 will be generated by such fuels—and that a plurality (49%) do not think reducing carbon emissions will be simple or inexpensive. Given the significant push for greater use of renewable energies and alternative fuels and repeated warnings about mankind's impact on the global climate, policymakers must be guided by, and Americans deserve to know, the realities of meeting energy demand and the true costs of "going green."
Energy & the Environment: Myths & Facts is intended as a primer for educators, journalists, and public officials—for concerned citizens generally—as we seek twin goals: an energy supply sufficient to fuel continued economic growth and environmental policies that will protect public health and the quality of our lives.
—Drew Thornley is an independent policy analyst focused primarily on energy, environmental, and natural resources. He is the author of a forthcoming article on wind energy for the University of Houston Law Center's Environmental & Energy Law & Policy Journal. He currently teaches business law at Concordia University in Austin, Texas.
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Wendy Nichols, a member of Labour's ruling national executive committee who chaired the Monday morning debate at the party's conference in Liverpool, appealed for delegates not to boo when the results were announced, after heckling emerged following a separate vote on Sunday.
Shadow chancellor John McDonnell said the "real people's vote" would be a general election and said that if there was another referendum there should not be the option to remain.
Labour is expected to discuss several motions on Brexit at its conference, and it remains unclear what the proposal on a second referendum might be - it could be a clear backing of a vote or something less black-and-white.
'Jeremy Corbyn promised a radical expansion of democracy in the economy and wider society and this logic must extend to the Labour Party too.
He added: 'But I was elected to empower the members of the party.
Many within the party support mandatory open selection contests for all MPs ahead of every election.
The country's path out of the bloc is even more unclear after weeks of positive noises about the prospects of clinching a divorce deal and one on a future trading relationship, the mood between Britain and the European Union turned sour on Thursday. He told the Sunday Mirror newspaper "I'm not calling for a second referendum".
Mr Watson told The Observer: "Jeremy and I were elected in 2015 to give the Labour Party back to its members".
Andrew Adonis introduced at People's Vote rally as "the politician who went from Bambi to Rambo".
The rule change for future leadership contests does not alter the 10% threshold for the number of MPs' nominations which a candidate must gather to get on to the ballot paper, but also requires would-be leaders to secure nominations from 5% of constituency parties or 5% of members of trade unions or affiliated organisations.
The report also claims that the device will have a 6.41inch display screen which could explain why the device is larger now. As spotted by Slashleaks , the poster also has the company's tagline "Never Settle" on the smartphone's wallpaper.
Heitkamp said earlier this week that the committee should investigate Ford's claims and she should be allowed to testify. Cramer later added that he feared that such accusations would prevent "good people" from seeking high office.


Hi guys, Carers Rights day is almost upon us again, it's on Friday!
I guess, it's the right time to look back and see if, for Carers, anything has really changed!
Are we still fighting the same fight and struggling on alone or have we Carers gotten a better deal?
I really feel, that kinda depends on where you live and if your local Authority has embraced SDS (Self Directed Support) or not!
Coo and I have been lucky!
Where I live in Ayrshire, the Local Authority has been very pro-active and supportive so SDS is a reality here for over 50 families who agreed to test the water and try it on for size! The word from the Carers I've been in contact with? Well, it seems most have had a positive experience and this new way of providing care and support for both the disabled person and their family has worked well!
I've definitely found SDS a positive experience and to be totally honest, it's the most effective support Coo and I have ever had! Just the comfort in knowing help and assistance is there when we need it, not having to worry all the time about where funding will come from or even if there will be enough in the pot, has relieved a lot of pressure and stress. The flexibility that has allowed us respite breaks when things have been at their most difficult too, have made things a lot less stressful and easier to manage.
It's not so everywhere though! In fact it's really a bit of a mixed bag and that dreaded postcode lottery comes into play. On my Carers Scotland Committee team, I know Carers in Highland and in central areas, who have moved to SDS and are having a good experience too but too many Carers in other areas are still struggling on alone!
I've found the biggest strain this year has not been from the usual sources, neither health, caring nor disability - it's been from our own government and media! Just how sad is that!
The people we elected and trusted to support and care for the most vulnerable in our society have let us down! Their aggressive 'War on Welfare', their attempts to dismantle the much needed support and funding from our Welfare State system, has by far been the greatest struggle currently faced by Disabled people and their Carers!
(just over £1 an hour!) but we Carers save the government as much money as they'd need to fund another NHS!
Please try to remember this before you attach the horrid 'Benefits Scrounger' label!
Carers need support not scorn!
Keep faith in better days and keep strong!
Hi and thanks Jayne. I suppose it's hard for some people to understand how it really is and I guess we Carers just don't have much choice in the matter really! It's not that we want to be frugal about things, it's just that we must or we won't manage it all! I wish it were different but it is what it is so we've got to do the best we can haven't we!
I'm getting my bits together too for family pressies, I found some lovely fabric with wine-bottles and grapes - my sisters love their vino! lol so I'm happy to be pootling with my sewing machine in the next few weeks!


Born together Friends Forever. Twins one-piece set. Twin baseball one-piece set. Raglan bodysuits. newborn twins outfit. Twins outfit.
This adorable set of shirts features the definition of a twin: Born together, friends forever.
Choose a set of shirts in any combo of colors. If you need two different sizes please let me know in the notes to seller at checkout!
Great looking product! We are very happy with the delivery time especially for a custom product. Our twins look so cute with these on!