text:
O Marlin Model 1889 é um rifle de repetição por ação de alavanca, projetado por Lewis Lobdell Hepburn, lançado em 1888 pela Marlin Firearms Company de North Haven, Connecticut. Esse foi o primeiro rifle de repetição com sistema de ejeção de estojos pela lateral.

Histórico
O Model 1889 era comercializado com a designação de "New Safety Repeating Rifle" (um rifle mais seguro que os concorrentes), era um modelo de tamanho médio, redesenhado a partir do Model 1888. A diferença fundamental, era o topo sólido e o sistema de ejeção de cartuchos já deflagrados pela lateral.

As melhorias internas do Model 1889, incluíam um sistema de travamento mais robusto e um sistema de pino de percussão que impedia o disparo até que o ferrolho estivesse travado na posição correta. Também utilizava um mecanismo que erguia o cartucho automaticamente, fechando a extremidade do carregador depois que a ponta do cartucho havia passado pelo mecanismo de elevação, evitando que o próximo cartucho entrasse no mecanismo provocando "engasgos", uma melhoria fundamental, visto que o rifle era produzido nos calibres .32-20, .38-40 e .44-40.

O Model 1889 padrão na linha de produção, tinha cano de 24 polegadas, podendo ser octogonal ou redondo, no entanto, canos de medidas diferentes podiam ser encomendados em intervalos de 2 polegadas até o máximo de 32 polegadas. Com variantes de tamanho menor, esse modelo é considerado a primeira carabina da Marlin, a maioria com canos de 20 polegadas, e pouco mais de 300 com canos de 15 polegadas. Mais de 55.000 unidades dele deixaram a fábrica entre 1889 e 1903. Na época, o Model 1889 era considerado "o estado da arte" em relação a rifles.

Fatos correlatos
O Model 1889, era a arma preferida de Annie Oakley, estrela do "Buffalo Bill's Wild West show" e de Frank C. Miller, do "Cheyenne Frontier Days Wild West Show" (Irwin Bros), ocasionando a seguinte declaração de Miller em entrevista concedida em 1915:

Ver também
 Winchester Model 1886
 Marlin Model 1881
 Marlin Model 1888
 Fuzil
 Carabina
 Marlin Firearms

Referências

Ligações externas
 Marlin Model 1889
 MARLIN DATES OF MANUFACTURE
 Marlin - 1889 Centennial , 32-20 Caliber, 21" Barrel
 Meet the $50,000 Marlin Model 1889 Lever Action Rifle
 1889 Marlin 38-40 Vídeo
 1889 Marlin 38-40 Shooting Range Vídeo

Armas de fogo da Marlin Firearms
Fuzis de alavanca


text:
The Blue Room Said the Wishmaker
by Yaroslav Barsukov
Originally published in Grantville Gazette Volume 85, September 2019
Run, whispered the monkey part of Andrew's brain. Scramble back the way you came.
His head only reached up to the djinn's nipples, although the creature sat in a mockery of the Buddha pose: a mound of flesh rising in the warehouse's center. Those sausage fingers, Andrew thought, could crush a spinal cord as easily as they would a moth. Yes, there were chains which snaked toward the walls and coiled round two concrete pillars. Yes, a good twenty feet separated him from the djinn.
Rays of dusty sun crossed on the giant torso, accentuating folds of fat which spilled over the chains. From under the eyelids, irises glimmered, frozen, into space.
Turn around. Run. But Andrew licked his lips and took a step forward, and another. And then a wave rushed over him, as though his brain, tired of making him sweat, decided to try a fresh trick. It was hard to feel sorry for the djinn—bald as a newborn baby, too alien, too monumental—but still, those chains dug trails in the skin.
Lagoa, he reminded himself, Portuguese beach. The postcard in his pocket, a house by the sea, a new life.
The man in the 'office'—a makeshift room in the warehouse's corner, big enough for two people, with a wood veneer desk and an overripe orange of a straight-from-the-sixties Naugahyde chair—had quoted him the maximum sum he could ask for. No 'what do you want,' simply an amount in dollars.
Andrew coughed. "How do you know what I . . ."
The fellow reached for a round object wrapped in tinfoil. A burger. For a moment, the reek of McDonald's drowned out the odors of an old building, of caked dust, of termite-infested wood.
"Three types of people come here." Munching. "The ones who can't wait to fuck someone, the ones who have someone ill at home, and the ones who think they need money. The first two, you know, there's usually life in their eyes."
Try it, Andrew thought, go try living my life, pal. A cubicle in an office with paper-thin walls, printer's grunts puncturing the day with that regularity which produces psychopaths, a boss who's ten years younger than you, and, finally, the reward: an evening in a two-room flat overlooking the yard with the trash bins. Waking up the next morning with a woman whom you still love, but also hate for the paths and forks you've taken from her.
Even if he himself didn't deserve a second chance, Margaret did.
The man studied him from behind the horn-rimmed glasses and repeated the sum.
"You tell the djinn your wish. Then he'll start saying stuff."
"Stuff?"
"Stuff. Don't matter. He pauses, you respond positively."
"What do you mean by 'respond?'"
A sigh. "He'll say things. Once he stops, you say: 'yes, great.' "
"So what you're telling me is, he'll actually talk to me?"
"He'll talk bullshit." The fellow fiddled with the burger. "They're not as tasty when cold."
Andrew waited.
"Listen, the djinn talks bullshit, okay? No one knows why. No one cares. What we do know is, you need to answer positively."
"What if I don't?"
This warranted another glance from behind the glasses. "Well, you've already paid for the service."
He had indeed. His whole year's bonus.
"What I'm saying is . . ." The man crumpled the tinfoil into a ball. "You're welcome to try, of course."
That was all the introduction he'd received.
Something dry cracked under Andrew's boot, and at that moment the djinn opened its mouth and coughed. And that came out so human—simple and mundane like the bleached sunlight through the panels in the warehouse's roof—that Andrew stumbled and flapped his hands to prevent himself from falling.
Two diamonds between the eyelids rolled, left to right, and rested on him.
Chill crept up his back. There you go, it's time, he said to himself. Come on, spit out your wish. But instead, thoughts pushed their way into his head about the burnt omelette he'd had for breakfast, and also a radio slogan he'd heard on the bus: 'First, Best, Live.' First. Second chance.
He pulled the postcard from his chest pocket and tried to imagine the watercolor sun warming his fingers. That bungalow on the picture—in his imagination, it was him and Margaret standing on the front porch.
"Lago . . ." He cleared his throat. "Lagoa. I want money to buy a house on the Portuguese beach. I want . . ." He said how much.
The silence swung, spilled, pushed at his eardrums—and then, without warning, popped with a rolling basso. "Cold grapes in the morning."
"I beg your pardon?" Andrew said.
Silence. Frozen irises.
"Okay. Cold grapes, right." What had the guy told him? Respond positively? "Yes . . . Grapes are tasty, yes."
"Sun through the clouds."
"Strong wind. Hurricane."
Andrew ran the tip of his tongue over his lip, but the moisture only coated his skin. He didn't consider a hurricane a good thing by any measure, but perhaps, if seen as a pure force of nature . . .
"Great," he said. "A hurricane is . . . awesome."
"Tsunami."
"Tsunami . . . Tsunami's wonderful, too."
"Ruined houses, drowned bodies, non-functioning household items under the water."
Shit.
Somewhere overhead, a plane rumbled.
Andrew glanced back at the anteroom's door. Next to it, an opaque glass window revealed vague shapes and colors. Was the guy still there? Had he gone to the bathroom? Wandered out for a smoke?
What the hell am I supposed to say to that? Andrew wanted to ask him. But then again, the fellow had already given him the answer.
Lagoa. The beach. Margaret.
"That's great," Andrew said.
"Burnt cities. Charred flesh."
He drove his nails into his palms. These are words, simply words.
"People suffering from nerve damage. Muscle damage."
Andrew didn't hear his own response.
The mound of flesh in the warehouse's center paused. The thick lips parted in what, on a human face, could've been taken for a smile. "A girl in Santa Fe Children's Hospital, in the blue room behind door 27, dying of melanoma."
Andrew gasped and stared at the djinn.
Sibling streets, featureless concrete underfoot, house under graphite clouds, door, broken elevator, stairs, another door. Home.
He bent to unlace his shoes, but straightened again, afraid he would throw up. "A bit late today," Margaret's voice said from the living room. He didn't answer and stumbled into the kitchen.
The cup of coffee he hadn't had the time to finish in the morning still stood on the table. The evening seeped through the windows, turning the cup and the oilcloth and the magnets on the fridge into pieces of evidence, accusations on a decayed film stock. Where have you been? What have you done? Andrew sat and squeezed his left wrist to stop his hands from shaking.
Light steps: behind his back, Margaret stopped in the door frame.
"Hey. Has something happened?"
"Nothing," he said, staring before him. "Nothing out of the ordinary."
"All right, you don't want to talk—you don't have to. I'll make tea if you don't mind."
Clink of the teapot's lid—bubbling of water—gentle clop against the gas ring. The sounds clothed him, allowed his thoughts to flow. The shaking subsided.
He said, "You know what people say, like the words . . . The words are tangible."
"Well, some are. You keep playing cold fish, you might get a kiss from the frying pan—that's tangible, for sure."
He rose his eyes at her: Margaret studied him, leaning against the stove, grinning. Jokes degrade with life, Andrew thought; they had laughed at Monty Python sketches when they'd first met.
"What's going on, Andrew?"
He licked his lips. "Do you know if there's a children's hospital in Santa Fe?"
"Oh boy. What's gotten into you today? How should I know?"
"Santa Fe—it's on the Mexican border, isn't it?"
Margaret sighed and turned to the whistling teapot. "Santa Fe's in the northern part of New Mexico. Nowhere near the border. Whether they have a children's hospital—well, who knows. Perhaps they do."
She put another cup in front of him, and he breathed in the tea's bitter steam.
When she took her place across the table, he grabbed her hand. "Forget it. Everything will be all right. We'll be all right, that's what matters."
"Life," he said.
"What's happened? Did you cheat on me, Andrew?"
"No, no, no! Of course not! I mean this." He waved around the kitchen. "We need to get out of this, this . . . Away from this flat, from this oilcloth."
She circled her cup's ridge with her finger. "I thought you liked the oilcloth. We bought it together, remember?"
"I mean it metaphorically, Margaret. You know I mean it metaphorically."
On the window sill stood a vase with fresh flowers. Yellow spots against the glass—narcissi, but these weren't her favorites. She had probably bought whatever was available at the marketplace two blocks away. It bothered Andrew he couldn't recall what Margaret's favorite flowers were.
He should've talked to her before going to the djinn.
She said something, but he didn't hear her, feeling for the postcard in his chest pocket.
They drank tea, they ate, then she left the kitchen. From the living room came a gentle staccato on an iPad. Andrew circled the kitchen table. It was a matter of few clicks to check his bank account: his smartphone lay on the edge, but he didn't dare touch it, as though the thing were hot, as though he'd really cheated on Marge and she would catch him in the act of scrolling through a lover's message.
He'd wanted to take the initiative, to buy them a new life. Now it all turned into something else.
He wasn't afraid the djinn hadn't delivered, he realized. He was afraid it had, because that would mean the words in the warehouse could carry significance, that somewhere in Santa Fe, a man in a white coat could be scribbling in a notebook the bends and curls of a diagnosis. Or a little human being was already lying on an operating table, white sclera, sticks of hands stretching from a hospital gown.
In bed, half-wrapped in sweaty sheets, the breathing next to him slurring into an occasional purr, he couldn't sleep. Each time he was ready to close his eyes, a car's lights x-rayed the room through the blinds. A group of guttural voices crept down the street, up again; somewhere, perhaps behind an open window, a woman coughed regularly, as though prompted by an invisible machine.
I could set a watch by the fucking sounds, Andrew thought.
He reached for his phone.
In the bathroom, he sat hunched on the tub's edge. The screen's rectangle glowed, dimmed, brightened, dimmed, glowed again. He puffed out air and opened the bank's online interface, only to close it seconds later.
Then again, money doesn't magically appear on one's account, and even a djinn might be a slave to business hours.
He turned off the screen, then turned it back on and googled 'Santa Fe.'
'Children's hospital.'
A bottle-green building came up, a brick lined with steel plates. Rows of windows squinted dead-eyed at the camera, reflecting the gray of the street, the clouds, something else. The blue room behind door 27, Andrew remembered. Must be the second floor—and, for a moment, an impression washed over him that should he pinch his fingers apart, the picture wouldn't blur, wouldn't dissolve into pixels, that he would see a face behind the window.
He refined the search with 'melanoma,' but the only new results were photos of brown spots eating the skin.
"Thank you for visiting us on such a short notice."
Andrew's account manager wore a perpetually tired look and a red tie Andrew imagined to be a pipe through which Mr. Dijkstra's superiors were draining blood from his face.
A glass wall separated the whitewashed room from the bank's main hall, and there was a plant in the corner, of that sad office variety that can survive in the desert.
The phone had rung at eight a.m., and Mr. Dijkstra hadn't really explained why he was calling: he conversed in a fluent business speak, juggling necessities and deadlines. It could mean anything, Andrew thought, picking at the cuticle on his thumb. For the first time, it occurred to him that financial institutions might have a problem with his particular method of wish fulfillment.
The possibility, however, prompted a twinge of relief, as though bureaucratic hurdles would absolve him of any guilt. Then he thought of the postcard and imagined white sand spilling between his toes, his hand holding Marge's.
Marge deserved compensation for all the years in the flat overlooking the trash containers.
"Sorry for calling you so early," Mr. Dijkstra said.
"It's fine." Andrew coughed and stifled the impulse to put his hands on his legs.
"Would you happen to know a certain Mr. Dieter . . . erm . . . Dieter M. Clarkson?"
"No. No, I don't think so."
"Former stockbroker, died around a week ago?"
"Nope. If there was a problem with his death, shouldn't the police . . ."
"Oh no, that's not what I meant. Not at all." Mr. Dijkstra shuffled through a few sheets of paper, taking them from one pile and putting them on top of the other. "He made the news two years back, during the Herbalife collapse. I just thought you might've known him."
"I have absolutely . . ." Andrew breathed in to get his heartbeat under control. "No idea who the guy is. Was." Here it comes, whatever it is.
"Well, apparently, his will included a very peculiar clause. Yesterday, we've selected twenty accounts at random and transferred a portion of his savings to them." Mr. Dijkstra raised his eyes. "Yours was one of them. Congratulations, sir."
The account manager named the sum.
Andrew swallowed.
"Like I said, it was only a part of his savings, of course. Apparently . . ." Mr. Dijkstra did the paper sheet trick again. ". . . he's been very satisfied with the services the bank has rendered him. A decade-long client, you know. Such people . . . When they die, they leave a void . . ."
"You said he'd died more than a week ago?"
"Yes, erm . . . Eight days, to be precise. He was ninety-two, so no wonder, so to speak."
"No wonder."
"It's a huge transaction, Sir. Now that we've talked, I can release . . ." Mr. Dijkstra turned to his laptop and rapidly hammered in something that could've been a small poem. "There you go, Sir."
The room flowed before Andrew's eyes. "Anything else I need to do, any papers to sign?"
Mr. Dijkstra blinked. "No, I've transferred the money, everything has been taken care of. Happy to have you as our customer."
Andrew nodded and rose, and Mr. Dijkstra jerked to his feet to shake his hand.
"Thank you," Andrew said.
His gaze landed on the office plant. Fungus blemishes marked half of the leaves.
Brown spots, eating the green.
He shuddered and turned to the red tie. "Goodbye, Mr. Dijkstra."
It was only after he'd taken a seat on the bus that he allowed himself to realize what had happened. The djinn had delivered. This was it. Minus the breath-stained windows and the creaking of the engine and the reek of worn leather, this was the moment he'd been imagining for the past six months.
It didn't feel the way he'd thought it would.
He took out the phone and looked up the properties in Lagoa, only to find himself blindly scrolling the page. Non-functioning household items, charred flesh, and Santa Fe, the girl in Santa Fe—he had said those horrible things, even if he only responded positively. Yes, back at the warehouse it all seemed surreal.
A thought floated up in an opposite of free fall: the money's in your account, old sport, so is it real enough for you now?
Was he responsible for Mr. Clarkson's death, too? Had his wish killed the girl with melanoma?
Andrew shook his head, the page on his phone came into focus, and that's when details began to stick out. Here, his favorite villa in the Algarve district. Now that it was within his reach, he realized how small the bedroom was: a carefully selected photo angle made it look bigger, but in reality, the room must compare to his kitchen.
He googled 'Lagoa,' and a picture popped up of the same stretch of coast that had gotten him all fired up half a year ago, when he'd passed the shield in a travel agency's window—only now it was a wider angle, a different time of day. Gone were the golden glow and the cerulean blue, replaced by brown, gray, in a uniform, plain sunlight.
There were probably empty beer cans in the sand.
With his fingertip, he traced a circle inside the sweaty stain on the bus's window. Everything returns to its starting point; he would be taking Marge from one row of trash bins to another.
Door, broken elevator, stairs, door.
"Is it you, Andrew?" Margaret's voice said from the living room.
"I thought you'd left for work, Marge."
She walked into the doorway. "I'm leaving now—I've been working from home since morning. I told you yesterday, don't you remember?"
She wore a cocktail dress, her hair in a neat chignon, a woman looking five years younger than her age.
"Power outage at the office, Andrew?"
"Do you fancy our flat?" he said.
She licked her lower lip. "Darling, you do realize you're behaving weirdly, right? I don't remember—have you ever come home at twelve? Are you all right?"
"Do you fancy our flat?"
"Yes. Yes, I actually do, if you so want to know. It's homey."
"But doesn't it bother you that the windows overlook the trash?"
"Only half of them." Margaret reached for the shoes. "The other half look out onto the street."
"Yes. A noisy one, too."
"You remember how they threw a street festival last year, and we sat on the sill?"
He remembered. Autumn evening, sky breathing cold, white picnic tables strewn with glowworms of lanterns.
He also remembered Marge saying—faint smile, listening to jazz chords flowing—'Don't you love our place?'
Did she? Was Lagoa all him, his dreams, his own escape?
She said, "We can do it anytime, you know that, right? Doesn't need to be a special occasion. Why don't we do it today? Sit on the sill, drink some coffee. Maybe look for faces in the clouds."
Bitterness on his tongue, as though after gulping down green tea. What would he tell her? That he didn't deserve what she was offering, that he'd tried to fix their life and possibly killed a child in the process?
"I have a headache, Marge. Sorry. That's why I'm back home. I can't concentrate because my head's trying to split itself in two."
"Oh." She stopped putting on the shoes and straightened. "Oh. Is it your migraine again?"
"I don't know. Don't think so. Just a regular hellish headache, don't fret about it."
"I'll see if we have anything for the pain." She turned toward the kitchen, but he caught her by the arm.
"Marge, it's okay. Really. I'll take a nap, wake up a new man afterwards."
He held his palm on the door after she'd closed it.
It took almost a whole day for the train to crawl from Kansas City to Santa Fe—flying would've been easier, but Andrew hated flying. He hadn't told Margaret the truth; in her world, he'd gone on a business trip to California.
He shared the compartment with a chunky fellow in shabby jeans and a T-shirt that said 'Super Rider.' The guy had the eyes of a sad puppy and seemed to exist on the border between sleep and wakefulness, and he snored—or so Andrew thought until he heard him produce the same sound while staring out the window. Maybe he had nose problems. Or maybe these weren't snores at all but grief, parceled into spasms, pushing itself out.
The phone stirred in Andrew's pocket. Marge. Marge shouldn't hear the engine noise. He could wait for the next station to call her back—but who knows how short the stop would be, how long the conversation.
'Sorry, in a meeting now.' A green bubble popped up in the SMS chat, one more step down the rabbit hole he'd dug out for himself.
Balding hills darted by, occasionally a carton of a house or flaking telephone poles. At some point he dropped into the warm bowl of drowsiness and dreamed that the fat guy stood and took off his shirt, revealing chains under folds of flesh—and suddenly it was the djinn, sitting cross-legged on the train berth, and Andrew kept repeating 'melanoma, melanoma' to him, only this time the djinn silently begged him to stop, shaking its head, snoring-weeping.
The fat guy looked in the opposite direction when they crammed themselves into the train's sweat-reeking vestibule.
Santa Fe didn't register with Andrew. The city existed as though behind a membrane, trees and cinnamon houses, dogs and people joining each other in a strange choreography where he didn't know the steps.
But the green brick of the hospital was real.
The lamps smoldered, throwing sterile light onto the brown-gray of the walls and the linoleum. Nobody had stopped him—the nurses' station stood abandoned.
On the second floor, two women trudged past him, the older one covering her mouth with a tissue. Somewhere ahead, a baby cried in a counterpoint to a baritone.
Door 27 had the wood pattern of a ribcage; his hand froze an inch from the faded faux-gold knob, and he licked his lips.
More voices, clear now, rolled at the end of the corridor. ". . . know where Christine is? Is she at the ambulance station?"
That was it, all the time for deliberation he'd been given. Andrew touched the doorknob, breathed in, and pushed.
The door opened into an empty room. No toothbrushes or tubes of paste lining the sink's edge, no sheets on the bed, no pictures framing the salad walls. No household items. White rectangle of the single window, creating more shadows than light. In the draught, curtains fluttered, caressing the radiator, a relic with dust caked permanently into its wrinkles.
Maybe his memory had pulled up the wrong number, maybe it was the wrong room; the djinn had said 'blue.' But the next second, Andrew's gaze landed on the towel hanging by the sink. He walked up to it and lifted the cloth with his fingers, and then the only thing he could see was the picture embroidered into it, of a dinosaur, a blue dinosaur kicking a soccer ball.
He bent over, and all the unfulfilled ambition, all the feverish anticipation, all the shame and the doubt, the good things and the bad, round and edgy, plain and salty, poured out of him in dry sobbing. The blue dinosaur smiled at him as though Andrew were a child, as though, by the virtue of taking the towel in his hands, he had become the next of the room's residents.
Five minutes passed, maybe ten—he wasn't sure anymore. He stumbled back into the corridor. A group of children stood by the door, all school-age, six or seven or eight: the sounds must've drawn them out of their own tiny habitats. A boy, wearing a jeans romper suit, held a teddy bear to his chest.
"Do you know who was the last patient here?" Andrew pointed to the room. "Kids? Was a girl in there? Did you know her?"
They kept silent, staring at him.
"Why are you looking at me? It's not my fault! Not my damn fault! I'm not guilty!"
He stomped his foot at them, but none of them moved. A girl with big gray eyes started silently crying.
Oh shit. "I'm sorry." Andrew waved his hand. "Hey, little one, I'm sorry, I'm sorry."
He reached out to her, but she took a step back, an unsure, wobbly step.
"Birgit," said the boy with the teddy bear. "It was her room. Her mom came every day. She brought us ice cream cake once, with sprinkles."
Andrew wiped his eyes. "Thank you. Thank you. I'm sorry."
The lobby now had some life to it: a tall nurse stood behind the station's counter, writing in a skinny logbook.
"Excuse me? Miss?"
She raised her head. Her eyes widened, and he thought, I must look terrible.
"I realize how weird this sounds, but I need to ask you. I . . . just need to know, you know? I need to. What's happened to Birgit, Birgit, the girl from 27?"
"Sir, are you a relative or . . ."
"I'm not . . ." He shook his head. "I just need to know."
To his right, fresh yellow flowers stood on the counter.
"Sir, you probably shouldn't be here," the woman said.
"I know. Listen, I know, I understand. But please, listen, I can't . . . Please. Please, I'm begging you. You have to tell me what's happened to her. Something happened to me three days back, too, and it may . . . Please."
The nurse squinted and studied him in a strange way, as though trying to remember, but not quite being able to place him.
He said, "The girl, did she die of melanoma?"
She drew a long line along the logbook's margin. "Birgit. Yes, she died of melanoma."
Andrew exhaled, and his legs went soft; he had to prop himself against the counter. "When?"
"Two months ago."
Two months. Two months, so way before his visit to the warehouse. Not his fault, then.
It's not my fault, he said to himself, it's not.
Little faces, rompers, hands clutching a teddy bear.
"How many children are in here?"
She named the number.
"Nobody stopped me on my way in. You're understaffed." He glanced at the lamps, the walls, the linoleum. "Does the hospital accept donations?"
She made a noise while he was writing the cheque, the same half-snore the guy on the train had made. Andrew raised his gaze to her: her eyes were red.
"So miracles do happen," she mumbled. "I didn't believe it would work."
He opened and closed his mouth. "Miss?"
"Nothing. I'm sorry, it's nothing."
When she took the cheque and peered at the sum, her eyes widened again. "Oh. Oh my. Thank . . . Please, wait here. I'll get someone—a doctor, or someone from the administration. Anyone. Thank you so much. I've never . . . Please, give me a second."
Andrew caught her by the arm. "Did you say 'miracle?' Have you visited it? Is there one in Santa Fe?"
She stiffened like a mechanical toy whose winding had run down.
"Doesn't matter," he said. "Do you understand? It doesn't matter. There's nothing bad about it. If you visited a djinn, I'm happy. Doesn't matter what you said in there. You've got your donation."
She gave him a long stare.
"It's fine," he said and squeezed her elbow in an imitation of handshake. "What do you call these flowers?"
"Freesia. Thank you again."
Outside, fresh evening wind sighed at him, flapped his coat's tails, raised small whirlwinds of leaves at his feet. Before him, hives of bureau buildings stretched toward the dark blue, toward the clouds carrying the ochre tint, the same sky he'd seen on the day of the street festival. He took out the piece of cardboard from his pocket, threw the final glance at the bungalow, and tore the postcard up.
He smiled, remembering Marge and the frying pan. It wasn't such a bad joke after all.
He kept smiling as he walked toward the train station.
I'll buy her freesia, he thought, and then we'll sit on the sill at midnight and look out into the yard, past the garbage containers, into the moonlight.
1632 Fiction
Giants in the Earth
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I Have a Proposal For You!
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Life at Sea in the Old and New Time Lines, part 6: Lest You Drown
A Puritan Voice, Part 8
Baen's Universe Annex
A Matter of Choice
Adrift in Space-Time
Notes from The Buffer Zone: Heroic Lazy Sods
Hot Off Ring of Fire Press!
This Issue's Cover- 93
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


A BOOK REVIEW BY ALEX GRANT.
"THE BLUE EDGE OF MIDNIGHT"
A nominee for an Edgar Award 2003 as Best First Novel.
Newcomer King bravely takes on very familiar territory – The Florida Everglades and their rambunctious denizens : mostly outlaws descended from C18th pioneers who detest the encroachments of progress upon their once virgin swampland paradise - in his debut mystery THE BLUE EDGE OF MIDNIGHT. A milieu that has seen many a mystery novel sink without a trace weighed down by naturalistic detail and disdain for hard-core hicks stuck out in the sticks.
Yet he manages to skirt around almost every cliché of this rural redneck type of 'gator-ridden and snake-infested yarn. His hero is a reclusive former cop from Philadelphia, umder-achiever and self-defeatist Max Freeman, who is atoning in the wilderness after his accidental slaying of a twelve-year old back on his beat. Freeman is also recovering from an unfaithful wife, and yet he cannot resist still playing amateur detective after a young girl's dehydrated corpse is washed up on his doorstep. She is one of a handful of children abducted and left to perish in his vicinity. The State of Florida is in an uproar over these kids being stolen from under their parents' very noses.
Understandably Freeman swiftly is elected the chief suspect and the deeper he digs himself down into the molasses-thick murk the more he draws the attention of the police and the FBI to his peculiar hermit's existence Fortunately Freeman has the help of a clever lawyer Billy Manchester in keeping him out of custody. The killer seems to infallibly be one step ahead of Max and is determined to implicate him thoroughly in the serial murders. When Freeman is aided by a mysterious gaggle of back-country boys, the sons of pioneers whose animosity towards strangers is legendary, this quartet of woodsmen have their own reasons to catch the culprit. Nonetheless with their collusion he is able to redeem himself in part by finding one of the girls still alive. The apparent murderer is also located but is found dead by his own hand.
Max is not convinced that the case is solved so neatly and still wants to go it alone in his quest for personal redemption. Writer King gives the story a powerful sense of urgency as his fish-out-water protagonist plunges further and further into a treacherous wilderness,,the Everglades which are described with a loving attention to detail - so much so that you can smell the brackish air and taste the silty water on almost every page, He never lets the local colour and flora and fauna slow down his narrative in the least. It remains the sinister backcloth to the terrible crisis that Max Freeman must undergo in order to fully regain his manhood and take his appropriate place back in civilized society.


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Home › News › Innovations
Polo Rugby line launches iPhone app for custom shirts
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Polo Ralph Lauren, the fashion company behind the Polo and Club Monaco brands, said on Thursday 10 September its smaller Rugby brand is launching an iPhone application that lets users design their own shirts.
Rugby from Ralph Lauren store - Photo: www.rugby.com
Rugby, launched in 2004, is a collegiate-inspired brand that targets young adults and has a dozen stores across the United States. The move comes as brands ranging from computer maker Dell to Starbucks use popular networking sites to boost sales and communicate directly with users.
Rugby's new application, available this week for Apple iPhone and iPod touch devices, lets consumers design their own version of 19 different products, including varsity sweaters, rugby shirts, polo shirts and hooded sweatshirts.
Buyers can personalize their shirts by adding patches that include numbers and letters. They can also upload photos of themselves, choose hairstyles, skin tones and backgrounds, and model their creations, which they can share those pictures with friends via email or Facebook.
David Lauren, senior vice president of advertising, marketing and corporate communications and Ralph Lauren's son, said the move reflects what the company calls "merchantainment" or "a blending of merchandising and entertainment."
"That has been very compelling for the customer, but really a natural evolution of what we've already done for 40 years," Lauren said.
The company, which has already launched iPhone applications giving users a taste of its Ralph Lauren Collection runway shows, is not alone.
Designer Norma Kamali also is launching an iPhone application to coincide with her Spring 2010 runway show, taking place on September 17 at a Manhattan Apple store. Kamali's application will let users buy clothing, including offerings from her high-end line and her line at Wal-Mart Stores, through their phones.
Lauren said consumers can get an online peek of its Ralph Lauren Spring 2010 show, following the show, which takes place next week.
(Reporting by Martinne Geller; additional reporting by Jan Paschal; editing by Andre Grenon)


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How Ranveer and Deepika are making money?
Sanskriti Media
Published Wednesday, June 26, 2019
As the profits from the film Simmba are being distributed, Ranveer Singh is roaring the loudest. The actor who came on board the Rohit Shetty directed film as a shareholder holding profits from the sale of all rights of the film as well as the ticket sales, has earned a whopping sum of money putting him on par with the Khans, Akshay Kumar and Ajay Devgn.
"Ranveer also had Padmaavat releasing last year and Simmba came towards the end of 2018 spilling on to 2019. The satellite, digital, overseas and other rights of Simmba went for a whopping amount of Rs 100 crore and the box office netted Rs 240 crore which meant that the producers' share from the box office was over Rs 120 crore plus the amount received from other sales including satellite, digital music and overseas. With this, Ranveer has now shot into the superstar league," adds our source.
No wonder now that wifey and top star Deepika Padukone too has taken the same deal for Chhapaak and the couple have a profit sharing in Kabir Khan's film '83 as well.
"The buzz in the trade is that she is being paid Rs12 crore for Chhapaak apart from being a 20 per cent partner in the profits. As for '83 they are equal partners along with Reliance and Kabir Khan apart from Ranveer taking Rs 13 crore as his fee and Rs 12 crore for Deepika," informs the trade source.
Akshay Kumar is one actor who tries to make his films as inexpensive as possible by taking a cut in the salary and making sure he gets a huge share of the profits. "In fact for certain films he takes Rs 20 crores as his remuneration and takes 80 percent of the profits of the films. The production cost of such films are not more than 25-30 crore and around 15-20 crores go into the release and distribution of these films. Sometimes it is around 25 crores also depending on the project and the number of screens the makers get," says a movie business analyst.
Salman Khan usually goes in for a Rs 50 crore fee plus a 50 percent share of the profits on account of also being a producer of the film. In his case he has a back end deal for the satellite and hence he takes the satellite rights of the film for which he already has a deal with a channel. Ditto with Shah Rukh Khan as well whose company Red Chillies always is a producer. Aamir Khan as he himself admitted, goes for a profit share and does not charge for the film to make it financially viable. Ajay Devgn too has a similar back end deal for satellite and takes that as his fee. If he is the producer of the film, he has further profits. And for the VFX of his films his company NYVFXwala (with the initials of his kids Nysa and Yug) gets to bill for it. Ranbir Kapoor had reportedly taken Rs 20 crore as his fee for his last release Sanju plus a 25 per cent profit share.
Others from the younger lot too are into back end satellite deals. "Both Varun as well as Tiger Shroff also have these deals where their monies are based on a deal worth around Rs 30 crore from satellite these days," adds the analyst.
The trend of back end deals emanated in Hollywood and is being done very successfully by many Hollywood stars who are part of multi-million dollar movie projects and it does seem that Bollywood too is going the Hollywood way.


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Laurina mutation affected Coffea arabica tree size and shape mainly through internode dwarfism
Lécolier A., Verdeil J.L., Escoute J., Chrestin H., Noirot M.. 2009. Trees, 23 (5) : p. 1043-1051.
The two varieties-Bourbon (B) and its natural mutant Bourbon pointu (BP)-of Arabica coffee (Coffea arabica L.) differ by an epigenetic, monolocus, and recessive laurina mutation that results in pleiotropic effects, such as tree dwarfism and tree-shape modification. The objective of the study was to search for the origin of the differences in size and shape of the tree both at the macroscopic (length and number of internodes, branching angle) and at the microscopic levels (size and number of cells within the internode pith). At the macroscopic level, the laurina mutation acted only by decreasing the internode size. Neither the angle of branching nor the number of internodes was influenced by the mutation. At the microscopic level, the mutation lowered mainly the number of cells present along the longitudinal axis of the internode, and, at a lesser extent, the cell height. Especially, the internode size decreasing explained both the tree dwarfism and the tree-shape modification. In fact, the laurina mutation strengthened the dwarfism of plagiotropic internodes when compared to that of the orthotropic ones, and such an impact was mainly due to a strong cell number decrease. To summarize, two major pleiotropic effects of the laurina mutation can be explained only by a modification of the trade-off between meresis and auxesis during the internode growth. This opens new perspectives for the characterization of the other effects at the hormonal level, and then, for the identification of the gene at the molecular level. (Résumé d'auteur)
Mots-clés : coffea arabica; languedoc-roussillon; réunion
Thématique : Génétique et amélioration des plantes; Anatomie et morphologie des plantes


Born Gustrafizal Busra on August 13, 1965 in Payakumbuh, West Sumatra, Gus tf Sakai is a prolific writer of prose and poetry, the latter under the name Gus tf. His works have been widely published over almost thirty years and he is regarded as one of Indonesia's leading contemporary writers. His collection of short stories, Kemilau Cahaya dan Perempuan Buta (The Dazzle of Light and the Blind Woman) was co-recipient of the first Lontar Literary Award in 2001. As part of that prize, in 2002, the collection was translated into English and published by the Lontar Foundation (under the title The Barber and Other Short Stories). That same year, the book received a literary prize from the National Language Board. He has published several novels, as well as many novellas and collections of short stories and poetry. In 2004, Gus tf Sakai was named Indonesia's recipient of the SEA-Write Award, presented annually by the Kingdom of Thailand. In 2007 his collection of stories titled Perantau was chosen by readers of Tempo newspaper as best book of the year and also won the Khatulistiwa Award. Among numerous prizes, Gus tf Sakai received the "Dedicated Writers Award" presented by Kompas newspaper in 2010. Gus tf Sakai returned to live in Payakumbuh with his family in 1996 where he has pursued his passion for writing in his native West Sumatra. He is a master storyteller who explores the mystical and traditional elements of Indonesian folklore within the processes of modern Indonesian society.


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Q: Finding different rows between Pandas dataframes, while preserving all original data from one df I have the following actual data:
actual.code actual.distance
a             1
c             6
e             10

And also the following interpolated data for all observations:
interpolated.code   interpolated.distance
   a                     2
   b                     4
   c                     7
   d                     4
   e                     9
   f                     1

And I want the following output:
 output.code    output.distance
     a                 1
     b                 4
     c                 6
     d                 4
     e                 10
     f                 1

So for any rows where I don't have the actual data, I want to use the interpolated data. I tried an inner join but that didn't seem to work, as I want to keep all observations from the first dataframe, and only use data from the second if necessary.

A: A long version is to use merge while keeping the indicator in the result, and then then replace the interpolated.distance with actual.distance based on the indicator:
df_merge = df1.merge(df2, left_on="actual.code", right_on="interpolated.code", how="right", indicator=True)
df_merge["interpolated.distance"] = df_merge["interpolated.distance"].where(df_merge["_merge"] != "both", df_merge["actual.distance"])
df_merge.drop(["actual.code", "actual.distance", "_merge"], axis=1).sort_values("interpolated.code")

# interpolated.code interpolated.distance
#0          a                  1.0
#3          b                  4.0
#1          c                  6.0
#4          d                  4.0
#2          e                 10.0
#5          f                  1.0

Or another option, you can use combine_first() with df1 as the calling object which will be prioritized when the values are picked up, Basically set the codes from both data frames as index, and combine the distance with actual.distance as the calling object, this will prioritize the values from actual.distance if the codes match:
(df1.set_index("actual.code")["actual.distance"]
 .combine_first(df2.set_index("interpolated.code")["interpolated.distance"])
 .rename_axis("output.code").rename("output.distance").reset_index())

#output.code    output.distance
#0     a              1.0
#1     b              4.0
#2     c              6.0
#3     d              4.0
#4     e             10.0
#5     f              1.0

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


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Мом ( «насмешка, хула») — в древнегреческой мифологии бог насмешки, злословия, критики. Сын Нюкты и Эреба, брат Гипноса. Статую бога Смеха воздвиг Ликург. Упоминается в баснях. О придирках Мома упоминает Платон.

По его недоброму совету Зевс допустил Троянскую войну, ибо Мом ненавидел людей и богов, помогающих им. В конце концов за бесконечные порицания богов (Зевса, Афины, Посейдона) Мома изгнали с Олимпа.

Лопнул от злости, когда не смог найти ни одного недостатка у Афродиты.

Действующее лицо сатировских драм Софокла «Мом» (не дошло ни одной строки) и Ахея Эретрийского «Мом».

Рецепция
Мом — популярный персонаж в европейском театре (в том числе музыкальном) XVII—XVIII веков — во Франции
(опера Анри Демаре «Любовные похождения Мома»; 1695), в Англии (сатирическая пьеса Дж. Драйдена «The secular masque»; 1700), в Германии (действующее лицо кантаты И. С. Баха «Состязание Феба и Пана»; BWV 201).

В XX веке Мом — действующее лицо серии романов «Бездна голодных глаз» харьковских писателей Г.Л. Олди, мошенник из повести Бориса Акунина «Пиковый валет» и др.

Мом — главный герой поэмы Костаса Варналиса «Испепеляющий свет».

Литература
 Лукиан. Зевс трагический; Собрание богов.
 Н. А. Кун. Мифы Древней Греции.
 Современный словарь-справочник: Античный мир. Сост. М. И. Умнов. М.: Олимп, АСТ, 2000

Примечания

Древнегреческие боги
Боги по алфавиту

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


In the movie, Natalia (Sofía Del Tuffo) returns home after the sudden death of her mother. Natalia's sister and her friends have decided to go searching for a esoteric plant. She joins them on their journey, not anticipating the darkness she will soon encounter.
Luciferina is loaded with truly frightening moments. In fact, the scares often build upon each other, until they reach a shocking crescendo. I must admit that I jumped a few times, despite the fact that I'm a real veteran of these kind of movies!
The terror blossoms from a variety of independent sources. There are supernatural events that are pretty creepy all on their own, but they are supported by the reality of abusive relationships and the possible side effects of powerful stimulants.
Drugs are used to reach another level of existence, or to reveal a hidden world in this film. In that way, it is very much like Ken Russell's Altered States (1980). The more demonic events also reminded me of The Evil Dead (1981) and even The Ring (2002) for a moment or two.
This movie provides an extremely fresh take on the concept of possession and exorcism. Not such an easy thing to do in such a well-established genre. Calzada must be a fan of Ken Russell, since he also includes themes reminiscent of The Devils (1971).
Luciferina will definitely fuel your imagination. Should you believe what you see, or will it turn out to be no more than an illusion? In the end, you'll have to decide for yourself. Is Lucifer a living entity, or does he just represent the worst in all of us?
Luciferina has received a high definition release from Artsploitation Films. The movie is unrated and presented in Spanish. The English subtitles are easy to read and there's also an SDH option. The film's trailer is also included on the disc.


text:
Visiting the Island of Malta
Haven for the non-heroic traveler
By Mary Gordon
Anders Overgaard
When I was first offered the opportunity to travel to Malta, I had a couple of immediate associations, neither of them saturated with the spirit of vacation. One was The Maltese Falcon, the quintessential film noir, in which Humphrey Bogart is betrayed by Mary Astor, and accompanied in betrayal by Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet. I don't know about you, but when I think of a relaxing few days, Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet aren't my companions of choice.
My second, vaguer association was with the Knights of Malta. I believed that people were made Knights of Malta primarily for having donated a lot of money to the Roman Catholic Church. Francis Ford Coppola must have had the same idea, because The Godfather, Part III opens with the induction of Michael Corleone-- after he has given millions to the Church to aid poor children in Sicily-- into the Order of St. Sebastian, a thinly disguised Knights of Malta.
I was also a little unclear as to Malta's exact location. I learned that the country is made up of three islands: one named Malta, and two smaller ones, Gozo and Comino. They are some 60 miles south of Sicily and 160 miles north of Libya. The main island is only 95 square miles.
Leaping from geography to history, as is my habit, I learned that Malta, like Sicily, has been repeatedly colonized, first by the Phoenicians-- from 800 to 600 b.c.-- then by Carthaginians, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Normans, and all of the grand European powers, until the islands came under the Aragonese (now Spanish) crown in 1282. Enter the Knights, to whom King Charles V gave Malta as a home in 1530. In 1565 the Knights repelled a Turkish attack on the islands, and they seem to have spent the next 250 years like fraternity boys on a spree. Coleridge said of the Knights (who were nominally supposed to obey vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience), "Every respectable family had some one knight for a patron as a matter of course; and to him the honour of a sister or a daughter was sacrificed, equally as a matter of course. But why should I thus disguise the truth?Alas! In nine instances out of ten, this patron was the common paramour of every female in the family." (At present, the Knights of Malta are engaged in charitable work; they are in charge of the St. John Ambulance Corps.) In 1798 the Grand Master of the Knights surrendered to Napoleon, and Britain and France fought over the islands until British rule began in 1800. Independence did not come until 1964.
What induced me to get on a plane headed for Malta was primarily two things: the assurance that the waters around it were the cleanest and the clearest in the Mediterranean; and the information that Caravaggio, who had been commissioned by the Knights, left two paintings there. The blue Mediterranean and my own (semi)private Caravaggios. And, crucial for me: it is possible to get around Malta by public transportation. That is to say, I could experience the Mediterranean without having to deal with those lunatics who drive at 120 miles per hour. Another plus: English is one of the two dominant languages.
I flew from JFK to Heathrow, where I learned while waiting for my connection that most of my flight companions were Irish bowlers on their way to Malta for a European bowling tournament. Somehow, this didn't make me feel as if Marlene Dietrich could have played me in the film. On board, I heard at least a hundred choruses of "When Irish Eyes Are Smiling." One team member had brought a guitar. It was, thankfully, only a two-hour flight.
My spirits improved when I reached Le Meridien Phoenicia, just outside Valletta's City Gate. The Phoenicia is a relic of the most agreeable aspect of British colonialism. A former villa, of honey-colored stone, marble-floored and surrounded by palms, it suggests the possibility of relaxation divorced from the anxiety of looking good in front of nubile European youths in Lycra. My room had a terrace and a view of Valletta's harbor-- encircled by walled fortifications, it was originally used for military defense, though the pleasure boats now docked there called up only peaceful associations. I made my way to the pool on a lush walkway past hibiscuses and oleanders, the cook's herb garden, and a pen of chickens that I decided not to get to know, in case they might be dinner. A young man with typical (as I would learn) Maltese coloring-- dark hair, ruddy skin, light brown eyes-- was happy to bring a Cinzano Bianco to my chaise. I was feeling much, much better. I was thinking of staying poolside for good.
But I am, by nature, too guilty a traveler for such a thing. If I can visit at least one sight on the day of air travel, I have broken the curse of the 20th century. So I showered, dressed in light clothing (at six, the air still held the midday heat), and walked through the City Gate toward the center of town.
Valletta has the charm of a second-string Italian city-- which is a very great charm indeed. Such cities provide a sense of openness, opulence, and grandeur without the pressure of 50 can't-miss sights you'd be a fool and a wimp to pass up. Though most of Valletta's architecture dates from the 16th and 17th centuries, the majesty of the Baroque makes itself felt without an overwhelming sense of monumentality. Wooden balconies, usually painted bright blue or green, give the great stone buildings a domestic personality. The streets are wide, and although Valletta after eight isn't Times Square (most younger people live in the trendy suburbs), the Mediterranean custom of taking a passeggiata gives Italophiles a taste of the pleasantly familiar. Valletta is built on a plateau, and the streets dip drastically down to the water-- some have steps cut into them. Everywhere there are delightful vistas and glimpses of the sea.
I came upon St. John's Co-Cathedral, whose severe façade looks more military than ecclesiastical. But the interior is splendid: in the grandest tradition of the High Baroque, every inch of wall is covered by arabesque carving. The floors are marble tombstones, tone poems in amber and black whose mosaic patterns allegorically depict the lives of the Knights buried underneath. Some are sumptuous, with designs of fruits and flowers; others are heraldic, based on coats of arms. On one a grinning skeleton holds in his bony hand an illuminated book.
My heart beat faster as I walked toward the cathedral museum, where the Caravaggios were exhibited. The museum was closed, but the guard told me it would open in the morning.
"The Caravaggios are there?" I asked excitedly.
"Oh, Miss," he said, and his light brown eyes were sad. "Only one is there. The better one, The Beheading of St. John the Baptist, is being restored in Florence."
I felt like someone who has seen a silver bowl full of caviar at the head of the table, and when it's finally passed to her, discovers that it's empty. There was nothing to do for my sorrow but drink a pistachio milk shake. I sat in Republic Square, at the Café Cordina, under a leaf-covered arbor; a man on a portable organ played once-popular Italian songs-- "Volare," "Santa Lucia." The waiter asked if I was Russian. No, American, I said. His reply was music to my ears: "Not many Americans come here." Another good reason to visit Malta. There aren't many places left where an American seems exotic.
In my fatigued state, the safety and quiet of the Valletta streets were a relief. No one was shouting; no one was begging; the store windows and walls were free of pornography. It was perfectly possible for a tired, middle-aged woman, even a New Yorker, to make it to her hotel without feeling the shadow of menace over her shoulder.
I dined at the Phoenicia's restaurant, the Phoenix, which has a shipboard feel to it. Green-and-white awnings flapped, and a breeze cooled the sultry evening air. The specialties were enjoyable but unremarkable-- I had a tomato-based octopus stew and the local Maltese white, a light and quite pleasant Pinot Grigio. My waiter was young, eager, and friendly. He asked if I was German.
i had an early breakfast on the terrace, watching the white sails in the harbor; then I took a swim-- by eight the weather was more than warm enough-- and decided to devote my day to a walking tour of Valletta.
At 9:30, the cathedral museum opened. If the St. John wasn't there, at least the St. Jerome was. I stood alone in a dark room, part of the cathedral. Rows of religious paintings from the Renaissance covered most of the walls. And there, lit by a bulb that seemed to be the pure light of artistic inspiration, was a painting whose obvious greatness made my heart stop.
Caravaggio's St. Jerome is bare-torsoed. His hairless chest is muscular, his arms strong. He is not a young man. His baldness makes a wrinkled plane of his forehead, furrowed from the labor of writing. He grips a pen; his other hand is tense with effort and concentration. On his table are a skull, a crucifix, a rock, and a candle in a brass holder. In the dark background is a red hat, which relates to the red of the cloak covering the lower half of his body just as the wrinkles of his belly rhyme with the wrinkles of his forehead. This is a painting about no longer being young, about the struggle of writing in the face of death, whose approach is not distant.
The painting is in Valletta because Caravaggio, who had what might be called impulse-control problems (he left Rome for Naples after killing a man in a drunken squabble), jumped at the chance to be named Knight of the Order of St. John and thus endowed with respectability. The painting is marked with the Maltese cross, symbol of the order. Unfortunately, Caravaggio got into trouble in Malta; he is said to have fought with and wounded one of the Knights. The story goes that his brief bid to improve his reputation ended in a prison sentence, and that he escaped the island in secrecy.
After my siesta I changed into a sleeveless blouse, then set out for St. Paul's Shipwreck Church. Cheerfully, the caretaker showed me a variety of silk remnants: printed ones, pastels, and bright monochromes. I could have my pick to drape over my shoulders-- women can't enter a Catholic church in Malta with bare arms.
St. Paul is an important presence in Malta. The Acts of the Apostles tells of his Maltese shipwreck, probably in a.d. 60, as he was voyaging from Jerusalem to Rome to stand trial for inciting a riot in the Holy City. Once in Malta, St. Paul cured the father of Malta's Roman governor, Publius. The governor converted, and Christianity was established in Malta.
One church altar displays a silver reliquary. Through its central glass window, surrounded by diamonds, I glimpsed what is believed to be St. Paul's right wristbone.
As I walked up and down Valletta's streets, I was conscious of the island's British past. That cutesy side of the English sensibility-- you know, the one that invented tea cozies-- had made itself known here in establishments like Cuddles Nursery School and the Teeny Weeny Shop, which sells children's clothing. But there were hints that the colonial experience hadn't been completely digested-- little mistakes such as a hairdresser's called Noel's Talking Hair, and an ice machine in my hotel called the Sanity Dispensing Machine.
Reflecting on these signs, I went to St. Paul's Anglican Cathedral. Unlike St. John's Co-Cathedral and St. Paul's Shipwreck Church, the Anglican cathedral is in the British style: purposely simple. One wall is covered by a floor-to-ceiling gold-and-wine-colored brocade. There are needlepoint kneeling cushions with heraldic designs, and pencil drawings of Victorian ladies rather than saints. An epitaph to a governor's wife reads LOVELY IN SO MANY WAYS, which suggested to me more a soap commercial than the promise of eternal life. How different this airy, unoppressive openness was from the seriously decorated Baroque interiors of the Catholic churches-- as different as a pencil drawing of a lady in curls is from a reliquary with a wristbone, as different as LOVELY IN SO MANY WAYS is from the image of a skeleton holding a book in its bony fingers.
I paid a late-afternoon visit to my Caravaggio, swam in the hotel pool, then went to the Castille Hotel's rooftop restaurant. The view of the harbor was delightful; in the distance I could see fireworks. The dinner represented the best of British cooking. The grilled sea bream (a white-fleshed fish that tastes something like trout) was wonderfully fresh, served, in the British style, with boiled potatoes and two vegetables. My waiter asked if I was Italian.
At midnight, standing on my terrace for a final breath of night air, I noticed fireworks again. The man at the hotel desk told me they were for a festa, the Feast of St. Paul, which was being celebrated in Rabat, a city southwest of Valletta, next to the medieval village of Mdina.
Next morning I put my plans for the Mediterranean aside to go to the festa at Rabat. I decided to take a bus to the Mdina city gates. Maltese buses, painted yellow and orange, look like those anthropomorphic vehicles in children's books: their headlights seemed like smiling eyes, their fenders generous, laughing mouths. I enjoyed traveling with mothers and babies, with cuddling teenagers, with toothless grandfathers wearing caps and three days' growth of beard. Above the windshield, in script, were the words PLAY AS YOU GO.
Mdina on Sunday was a ghost town, and my heels rang on the cobblestones. The streets were treeless and austere; there was a distinctly southern feel to the village. I made my way down the road to Rabat and was told that the real festa would begin in the evening. So, in the spirit of the feast, I took another bus to St. Paul's Bay. Above the windshield of this one: LIFE IS HEAVEN.
St. Paul's Bay is said to be the location of the actual shipwreck. The beach is rocky; people were lying on large boulders, hard little islands over which they spread towels and drinks. In one secluded section a group of women sunbathed topless. I created a scenario in my mind: St. Paul, known for insisting that women cover their heads in church, lands here 2,000 years later, shipwrecked once again. Ragged, dying of thirst, he approaches the rocks. A group of topless women stand up and confront him. "Okay," they tell him, "we'll wear hats. But no tops."
The whole town of Rabat was out for the festa. Several strong young men, dressed in satin garments for the occasion, carried a life-size statue of St. Paul, teetering on their shoulders. This was not the ferocious pleasure-denying patriarch, but a shy uncle who's trying to enjoy the party. Everyone threw confetti at the statue. Houses were decorated with flowers, mostly artificial. People sold candy and drinks on the street. And everywhere, fireworks proudly declared the spirit of celebration. On the bus back to Valletta, teenagers flirted and grandmothers clucked their disapproval.
I felt I'd earned my day at the beach, and I chose one called Golden Bay. The sea was an opalescent green. Dramatic cliffs hung over the water, making for an exciting contrast with its calmness. The beach was crowded (it was, after all, July), but not unbearably so. And the water was, quite simply, heaven-- irresistibly warm, the waves playful but unalarming and so clear that you could see to the white, sandy bottom. One garish hotel stood in the distance, but tourism had not yet spoiled the pleasures of the place.
The next day I took a taxi, a Mercedes driven by a silver-haired man, to the landing for boats going to the Blue Grotto. We drove along a spectacular cliff road, past a small, rocky inlet full of traditional Maltese luzzu (fishing boats) painted in shades of dark blue, rose, yellow, and red, with the necessary evil eye always present on the prow.
At the boat landing was a typical collection of seaside establishments: fish-and-chips joints, T-shirt and souvenir shops. Five other tourists (two English, three German) and I sat in a peacock-blue motorboat. Sailing in and out of grottoes, I saw colors so bright they looked unnatural-- a metallic, chemical blue that seemed as if it must be manufactured. As the tide went out, the rocks revealed themselves in various layers to be rose-colored, purple, and bluish gray. My eye was fed with a procession of vividness: the color of the water, the rocks, the boats, the blue sky, and the threatening, gray, overhanging rocks.
Back in Valletta that afternoon, I treated myself to a traditional date cake, whose anise smell had attracted me for days. If I say it was something like a hot Fig Newton, it sounds as though I didn't like it. But I did. It was warm, and sweet, and deep-fried, and it tasted of dates and anise. Delicate it was not, but I found myself looking forward to buying one for every bus trip.
I left the old-world comfort of the Phoenicia the following day to move to a new hotel outside the city. The taxi drive to the Westin Dragonara did not fill me with hope. I passed through Sliema, the desirable place for prosperous Vallettans, full of hideous contemporary architecture, including a series of jerry-built apartment buildings. The shopping area is crowded with McDonald's, Kentucky Fried Chicken, and Wimpy Bar franchises. I became nostalgic for Republic Square, the Café Cordina, my date cakes. I feared for a Malta that catered, if not to American tourists, to tourists for whom McDonald's is the lunch of choice.
The Westin Dragonara, which had opened three months before my arrival, gave the impression of having been finished 10 minutes before I checked in. The paint didn't seem quite dry. It could have been a hotel anywhere in the world: the same overlarge hallways, the same polished faux marbre floors, the carpet with the residual smell of a new car, the queen-size beds with flowered spreads. But my view of the Mediterranean was spectacular, and I could see, beside a dock for swimming, a large, kidney-shaped pool surrounded by chaise longues to which waiters were bringing food and drinks.
My nighttime tour of St. Julian's, the village where my hotel was located, proved dispiriting for a person my age. Street after street was crowded with discos filled with students who had come to the city to learn either English or Italian, and with young (very young) travelers on cheap (very cheap) package tours. Music blared; video games buzzed, whined, and made exploding noises. I was happy to have a brandy on my terrace, and to make plans for a trip the next day to Gozo.
Gozo, at only 26 square miles, is less crowded than the main island. It's a place of farmers and fishermen. In spring it is green and flowering, but this was not evident in July. Tradition has it that Gozo is the island where the nymph Calypso held Odysseus captive for seven years.
My first stop was the unprepossessingly named Fungus Rock, where a supposedly valuable medicinal plant prized by the Knights was found. I took another boat ride, this one through the Azure Window, a natural rock arch leading to more grottoes with the same dramatic colors as the Blue Grotto. Everywhere I went on the island there were screaming birds, crashing waves, a pervasive smell of wild anise, and hypnotic views-- sheer cliffs dropping down to still, blue waters. I asked my driver to take me to the luxury hotel Ta' Cenc, a villa overlooking the sea, with stone floors that were marvelously cool, generous arches, bougainvillea in terra-cotta pots around the pool. I determined to remember it, because it struck me as the perfect place to begin a love affair, or perhaps a novel, or to get over the end of either or both. It would also be a good place to have a quiet, parenthetical nervous breakdown. It expressed a sense of luxury with the lightest possible touch; even asking for a brochure was a peaceful experience.
I spent my last day in Malta at my old stamping grounds in downtown Valletta, of which, I realized, I'd grown incredibly, protectively fond. There was something about the utter absence of pressure-- there wasn't even anything I particularly wanted to buy in the stores, lace doilies and brass knockers being the major exports. The only Maltese falcon I saw was a refrigerator magnet. I looked into the Grand Master's Palace, raced through rooms of armor, enjoyed the tapestries and the marble staircase and the courtyards with their opulent-- and, in midday, much-longed-for-- shade. I realized that I would miss the colorful blue and green balconies, the streets with their steps leading down to the sea, the polite, puzzled waiters with their light brown eyes. I prized the ease that I felt, the sense of calm and good order and gentle pleasures that soothed the overstimulated and abraded modern urban soul. Then, reluctantly, I went back to my modern hotel.
But modernization can often give with one hand a gift equivalent to what it has stolen with the other. On my last night, I had dinner at a new restaurant at the Dragonara, the Compass Rose. The young manager was terribly anxious that his new menu, a blend of Eastern and Western cuisine not familiar to the Maltese or the typical tourist's palate, would be appreciated. My meal-- tuna sashimi and chicken with lentils-- was first-rate, the best I had in Malta, the equal of any at fine restaurants in the world's major cities. I wished that this restaurant could be in Valletta's Republic Square, in an old palazzo with a marble staircase and a blue-green balcony.
The future of Malta, however, seems to be in Sliema and St. Julian's, with their international mega-hotels, health clubs, and ubiquitous discos. Perhaps the Malta I learned to treasure is on its way out. I recommend that the traveler who has a taste for one great painting, Baroque architecture, pleasant public transportation, and superb beaches get to Malta soon before it becomes another place whose quiet charm is rumor, lost in the vague accounts of visitors who stopped for a little while and then moved on.
Air Malta flies to Valletta from London (3 hours), Paris (3 hours), Rome (1 hour), and Frankfurt (21/2 hours). Pack for warm weather. Thankfully, when Valletta's streets were designed in 1566, it was with summer heat in mind-- a gridiron pattern allows breezes to pass through the city.
Le Meridien Phoenicia The Mall, Floriana; 800/225-5843 or 356/225-241; doubles from $195. Recently bought by the Meridien chain, this colonial building near Valletta has 136 rooms, eight suites, and a pool set amid seven acres of private gardens.
Castille Hotel Castille Square, Valletta; 356/243-677; doubles from $82. The largest of the 39 guest rooms in this converted palazzo are on the first and second floors.
Westin Dragonara Resort Dragonara Rd., St. Julian's; 800/228-3000 or 356/377-884; doubles $116. This resort, with 311 rooms and 30 suites, opened in April 1997. It has the only casino in Malta.
Ta' Cenc Hotel Sannat, Gozo; 356/556-819; doubles $112. A modern resort with 64 rooms, and 19 suites in individual beehive-shaped buildings called trulli.
The Phoenix Le Meridien Phoenicia, Floriana; 356/225-241; dinner for two $30. French/Mediterranean fare with a five-course prix fixe dinner. Try the Maltese octopus stew.
Castille Hotel Rooftop Restaurant Castille Hotel, Valletta; 356/243-677; dinner for two $11. While the restaurant usually serves French and Italian food, a special national menu is offered on Fridays. Have the rabbit stew (Malta's national dish), made with potatoes and other vegetables in a wine sauce.
Compass Rose Westin Dragonara, St. Julian's; 356/377-884; dinner for two $46. Start with the Mediterranean dim sum (there's even a rabbit spring roll) at this fusion restaurant. Another favorite is the beef fillet on fried Chinese noodles, with black-bean sauce and locally caught prawns.
St. John's Co-Cathedral St. John's Square, Valletta; 356/225-639. Don't let the austere façade fool you; it hides a Baroque interior and an extensive selection of Flemish tapestries-- not to mention the Caravaggios, both of which are now on view in the museum.
St. Paul's Shipwreck Church St. Paul's St., Valletta; 356/223-346. Local lore has it that St. Paul was beheaded near this lavish church.
Grand Master's Palace Palace Square, Republic St., Valletta; 356/222-294. Erected more than 400 years ago, this is the magnificent home of Malta's president and parliament.
—EMILY BERQUIST
The Tiny, Car-free Islands of Sweden's Koster Archipelago Are Your New Dream Summer Destination
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Get Ready NYC, Tiny House Glamping Is Coming to Governors Island


text:
Q: GUI web scraper in Python and Tkinter EDIT
Ok, so here is my whole code so far:
from selenium import webdriver
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup as bs
import requests
import time
import os
import Tkinter as tk

def get_page():
    global driver
    driver = webdriver.Chrome()
    driver.get(url)
    last_height = driver.execute_script('return
                      document.body.scrollHeight')
    while True:
        driver.execute_script('window.scrollTo(0,
        document.body.scrollHeight);')
        new_height = driver.execute_script('return
        document.body.scrollHeight')
        if new_height == last_height:
            break
        else:
            last_height = new_height

#This function uses BeautifulSoup to parse through the page source and find images.
    def get_img():

        sp = bs(driver.page_source, 'html.parser')
        for image in sp.find_all('img'):
            images.append(image)

#Create folder which will contain downloaded images.
    def make_dir():
        if not os.path.exists('Downloaded images'):
            os.mkdir('Downloaded images')
        os.chdir('Downloaded images')

#Function which saves images.
    def save_img():

        x = 0

        for image in images:
            try:
                url = image['src']
                source = requests.get(url)
                with open('img-{}.jpg'.format(x), 'wb') as f:
                    f.write(requests.get(url).content)
                    x += 1
            except:
                print 'Error while saving image.'

root = tk.Tk()
root.title('Image Scraper 1.0')
tk.Label(root, text = 'Enter URL:').grid(row=0)
e1 = tk.Entry(root)
e1.grid(row=0, column=1)
e1.insert(driver.get(url))
button1 = tk.Button(root, text = 'SCRAPE', command =scrape_site).grid(row=3, column=1, sticky=tk.W, pady=4)
button1.pack()

root.mainloop()

I tried to put the whole scrape_site function in tkinters button command=, which is stupid i see this now, and obviously it doesn't work. As you can see, I copied whole tkinter code to main scraper file. Any thoughts? I will appreciate any input :)

I recently posted my question about web scraper, which downloaded images of cats. This time I decided, that I will make another step forward. I want to make GUI web scraper which will download images from website which user will input in tkinter Entry widget. Is this even possible? I also created two .py files: one for script of scraper and second one for gui. Can it be stored this way or should it be one file?
Here is the scraper code which opens and scrolls page (using selenium), it works fine. My only question is: how to put it in tkinter? :)
def get_page():
    global driver
    driver = webdriver.Chrome()
    driver.get(url)
    last_height = driver.execute_script('return document.body.scrollHeight')
    while True:
        driver.execute_script('window.scrollTo(0,
               document.body.scrollHeight);')
        new_height = driver.execute_script('return
               document.body.scrollHeight')
        if new_height == last_height:
            break
        else:
            last_height = new_height
get_page()

A: As mentioned in my comment, you should modify get_page to take url as an argument.
The simple example below shows how this might work but with the get_page function replaced (I don't have selenium).
try:
    import tkinter as tk
except:
    import Tkinter as tk

def get_page(url):
    print("Getting cats from {}".format(url))

class App(tk.Frame):
    def __init__(self,master=None,**kw):
        tk.Frame.__init__(self,master=master,**kw)
        self.txtURL = tk.StringVar()
        self.entryURL = tk.Entry(self,textvariable=self.txtURL)
        self.entryURL.grid(row=0,column=0)
        self.btnGet = tk.Button(self,text="Get Some Cats!",command=self.getCats)
        self.btnGet.grid(row=0,column=1)

    def getCats(self):
        get_page(self.txtURL.get())

if __name__ == '__main__':
    root = tk.Tk()
    App(root).grid()
    root.mainloop()

You can enter the URL in to the Entry widget, press the button and the URL is sent to the function.
If your get_page function is in a separate file, just import it using from my_other_file import get_page where  is the name of the python file that contains the get_page function


RoFI is a platform of modular robots developed at Faculty of Informatics at Masaryk University. The platform is designed for building larger robots (RoFIbots) from a small number of module types.
The modules of the platform can connect together using RoFI dock. Mechanically connected modules can communicate over TCP/IP and share power.
If you have comments or questions about RoFI, please send an email to rofi at fi.muni.cz.


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text:
Cette page concerne des événements qui se sont produits durant l'année 1978 dans la province canadienne de Colombie-Britannique.

Politique

 Premier ministre : Bill Bennett
 Chef de l'Opposition :   Dave Barrett du Nouveau Parti démocratique de la Colombie-Britannique
 Lieutenant-gouverneur : Walter Stewart Owen puis Henry Pybus Bell-Irving
 Législature :

Événements

 Mise en service du second  Kiskatinaw River Bridge , pont routier métallique situé à Dawson Creek.
 Mise en service, entre Port Coquitlam et Pitt Meadows, du  Pitt River Bridge , pont tournant, démoli en 2010.

Naissances

 4 avril à Victoria : Jesse Fibiger, joueur professionnel canadien de hockey sur glace.

 6 avril  à Comox : Thomas Herschmiller, rameur canadien. Il a obtenu la médaille d'argent olympique en quatre sans barreur en 2004 à Athènes.

 11 mai à Victoria : Ryan Wade, joueur professionnel canadien de hockey sur glace.

 14 août  à Comox : Brett McLean, joueur professionnel canadien de hockey sur glace. Il évolue au poste de centre.

 2 décembre à Victoria : Nelly Furtado, auteure-compositrice-interprète et actrice luso-canadienne.

Décès

Voir aussi

Articles connexes

Liens externes

Notes et références

Chronologie de la Colombie-Britannique
1978 au Canada


One Cineplex is set to introduce the first ever Dolby Atmos cinema in the sultanate, featuring a high definition sound system that allows viewers to enjoy an immersive audio experience at the movies.
The Dolby Atmos cinema, which will make its public debut on January 25, has overhead speakers and several wall-mounted surround channel speakers – in addition to the usual screen speakers.
With the new surround sound technology, movie goers will be able to feel a more dramatic ambience and hear three-dimensional effect audio in the cinema, delivering sound from every angle.
The Dolby Atmos system is only available in Cinema 1 of One Cineplex which will be screening "How To Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World" as the first Atmos movie.
The latest cinema has opened its doors on January 17 to the public playing movies "Glass" and "The Kid Who Would Be King" in the normal screening theaters.
For ticket pricing, Dolby Atmos movie will be a $1 add-on to the normal ticket rate.
One Cineplex has four theaters which accommodate 106 seats per cinema while another two bigger theaters – Cinema 1 and 2, each has 170 seats.
The cinema is located on the third floor of Onecity Shopping Centre located in Sg Hanching, just next to International School Brunei.
For more information, contact them at 2338250 or visit their Facebook and Instagram @onecineplex.


> > 10GigE solutions for those issues will results in more expensive NICs.
>more for my nics - to put intelligence in the nic rather than the switch.
rates will NOT be based on "cards that plug into a backplane".
buffering, it gets a lot more expensive.


Picnics, bike rides, and warmer temperatures are all signs that springtime has officially arrived. What better season to take advantage of the great outdoors?
These students featured in the 2000 Aesculapian Yearbook, courtesy of the Baylor College of Medicine Archives, spent some vacation time at national parks. On the left, students are pictured in a tree at Big Bend National Park. On the right, students took in some beautiful scenery at Yosemite National Park.


text:
Hannah Brown Now Has a Song About Her Thanks to Country Singer Jake Owen
"Well, this is one way to get a song written about you," The Bachelorette's Hannah Brown tweeted in response to Jake Owen's song. "This is some catchy shade @jakeowen."
The BachelorThe BacheloretteCelebritiesHannah BrownBachelor Nation
Watch: Peter Weber on Hannah Brown Crashing "The Bachelor"
Hannah Brown has been The Bachelorette, won Dancing With the Stars…and now inspired a country song?
Jake Owen debuted his song "Alabama Hannah" via a Twitter Live video on Thursday.
"Monday night, my girlfriend had the damn TV on and all you heard about on the new Bachelor was 'Alabama Hannah.' It was just 'Alabama Hannah. Alabama Hannah.' Everywhere! She just won't go away," Owen said.
The 38-year-old musician then revealed he's actually met the season 15 star. As Bachelor Nation will recall, the crooner performed his hit "Made For You" during her one-on-one date with runner-up Tyler Cameron.
"She's a cool girl," Owen continued. "This is not even a dig at the actual Alabama Hannah."
But as he watched Peter Weber and Brown reunite on Monday's season premiere of The Bachelor, he "started feeling something for this Peter guy" and was inspired to write a country song.
"If you've given somebody multiple opportunities to take you as a lover, and not only did they, like, kind of just be like, 'No, you're not my thing,' but then they [also] just go on with their life—ask other people out, like things don't work. Like, you know, this has nothing to do with the actual Bachelorette," he explained. "This is just everyday life."
He then played the tune.
"Alabama Hannah, what do you want? If it's love that you need, well then honey, it's gone," he began. "You had your chances. So, won't you leave me alone. Alabama Hannah, won't you go on back home."
He also sang about Weber's experience that first night.
"'Cause I've been out here in California. I've been soaking up the sun. There's lots of pretty ladies. I can't pick just one," he continued. "I'm flying high, got peace of mind—already raised the bar. Now you're showing up here tonight. Who do you think you are?"
From "Roll Tide" references to windmill nods, the song covered it all.
"You're a beauty queen and a dancing star, and I think you'll be just fine," he sang near the end. "Alabama Hannah, girl, won't you get out of my life? Girl, get on with your life."
Alabama Hannah (live from the barn)
https://t.co/0gSLuioEtM
— Jake Owen (@jakeowen) January 10, 2020
Needless to say, the song caught the attention of Bachelor Nation.
"My man @jakeowen speaking his truth to Hannah B on behalf of Peter #TheBachelor," Chris Harrison tweeted.
Even Brown reacted to the number.
"Well, this is one way to get a song written about you," she tweeted. "This is some catchy shade @jakeowen."
She also replied to Harrison's tweet writing, "Better just be his truth Christopher. I'm not just chop liver now—you still have to love me and try to understand my mess."
"Haha you know I'll always love you girl," Harrison tweeted back. "You're family and family sticks together through the good, the bad and the mascara...now that's a country song."
Better just be his truth Christopher. I'm not just chop liver now—you still have to love me and try to understand my mess. @chrisbharrison https://t.co/v8JhX3e3pc
— Hannah Brown (@hannahbrown) January 10, 2020
Watch the video to hear the tune.


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Do I have to tell buyers about my house's murderous history?
My husband and I purchased our home a couple of years ago in an estate sale. We got it for less than asking since it had languished on the market for several months—because, well, someone was murdered in it. Now, we're preparing to sell. Do we have to tell potential buyers about the death?
Lucky for you, the Real Estate Council of Ontario takes a harder stance on disclosing dysfunctional bathrooms than it does on divulging grisly axe murders. You're not legally obligated to tell buyers about your house's violent history, so long as there are no lingering effects on the home's appearance or function (e.g. bullet holes in the walls, REDRUM written in blood on a bedroom door). Keep in mind, though, that a buyer's real estate agent is obligated to point out anything she knows about the property that might be unsettling to her client before making an offer, so prospective buyers are likely to learn the truth anyway. Better to be up front about the murder—and the lack of paranormal activity you've experienced in your two years there—than risk having buyers back out as they're getting set to sign the paperwork.
An earlier version of this post stated that real estate agents are obligated to point out anything that might be unsettling to their clients before closing. In fact, a buyer's agent should do so before the client makes an offer.


text:
[Cancelled] RSIS Seminar by Ambassador Joseph Yun, Distinguished Visitor, RSIS; and Senior Advisor at The Asia Group and at the US Institute of Peace (Former US Department of State Special Representative for North Korea Policy)
US Policy Options for North Korea
17 Feb 2020 15:30 - 17:00
The KeyPoint, RSIS
Type: Lectures / Seminars
For Enquiries: [email protected]
In view of public health considerations due to the escalating situation involving the Novel Coronavirus (Covid-19) outbreak, the abovementioned seminar has been changed to a closed-door roundtable.
Lecture Abstract
After the lofty promises of the Singapore summit in June 2018 between President Trump and DPRK leader Kim Jong Un, we are back at square one. Perhaps the situation is even worse, because today the US confronts a nuclear challenge greater than the one President Trump faced two years ago. The DPRK has more nuclear weapons, perhaps as many as 60 nuclear devices, as its ability to produce additional fissile material has been unchecked. Pyongyang has also improved its nuclear capable missiles through continued testing of short and intermediate range missiles. Viewed from Pyongyang, North Koreans also believe that their lot is no better despite the diplomatic campaign which resulted in three meetings with Trump, as well as four meetings with Chinese President Xi. US-led sanctions are all in place; DPRK remains politically and economically isolated from the rest of the world; malnutrition and hunger remain all too common throughout the country. So what now? Ambassador Joseph Yun will discuss four basic options for the US to deal with the DPRK nuclear weapons program: back to "fire and fury;" a "military option" to end the DPRK nuclear program; accepting a nuclear North Korea; "arms control" negotiations. Ambassador Yun will conclude by suggesting a path forward, which is to implement the key elements of denuclearisation and normalisation of relations as spelt out in the June 12, 2018 Singapore Joint Statement.
Joseph Y. Yun, recognized as one of the nation's leading experts on relations with North Korea, as well as broader US-East Asia policy, most recently served as Special Representative for North Korea Policy. Currently, he is Senior Advisor with The Asia Group, a DC-based strategic consulting firm, and the U.S. Institute of Peace, an independent and non-partisan federal institute working on peace and reconciliation issues throughout the globe. He is also a Global Affairs Commentator for the CNN. Yun's 33-year diplomatic career has been marked by his commitment to face-to-face engagement as the best avenue for resolving conflict and advancing cross-border cooperation. As Special Representative on North Korea from 2016 to 2018, Ambassador Yun led the U.S. efforts to align regional powers behind a united policy to denuclearize North Korea. He was instrumental in reopening the "New York channel," a direct communication line with officials from Pyongyang. As Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs (2011-2013), Yun led efforts to normalize diplomatic relations with Myanmar. Yun also served as Ambassador to Malaysia (2013-16). Before joining the Foreign Service, Yun was a senior economist for Data Resources, Inc., in Lexington, Massachusetts. He holds a M. Phil. degree from the London School of Economics and a BS from the University of Wales.
In view of public health considerations due to the escalating situation involving the Novel Coronavirus (Covid-19) outbreak, the abovementione ...


text:
Home » Novel approaches to home-based education – Hazel Clawley
Novel approaches to home-based education – Hazel Clawley
By Peter · November 4, 2013 · Comments Off on Novel approaches to home-based education – Hazel Clawley
Books & Reviews, CPE / PEN News and Comment, E-briefing, Think Pieces and Provocations · Tagged: Hazel Clawley; home-based education, home education
Novel approaches to home-based education
Skellig by David Almond (1998)
My Name is Mina by David Almond (2010)
Home School by Charles Webb (2007)
The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender (2011)
David Almond's novel Skellig came out in 1998. It won the Carnegie Medal, the Whitbread Children's Book of the Year and a string of international prizes. It is written for children and about children – the teller of the story is an adolescent boy, Michael – but is such a gripping and profound tale, so well told, that it speaks to all ages.
Michael discovers a strange being in the crumbling garage in his garden. The creature seems barely alive, is dressed in filthy tatters, and has a craving for 27 and 53 from the Chinese takeaway ("food of the gods!"), washed down with Newcastle brown. It appears to have wings. Could it be an angel? Michael shares his discovery with Mina who lives a few door away, and who, to his surprise, doesn't go to school. "My mother educates me," she says, because "the mind needs to be opened out into the world, not shuttered down inside a gloomy classroom".
The book isn't "about" home education; it's about the angel (?) Skellig, and about Michael's desperate concern for his new baby sister struggling for life in hospital. But for readers of this journal who value home-based education, the glimpses we are given of Mina's life have a special interest, particularly the contrasts between her way of learning and Michael's school-based education. One day, Michael finds Mina in her front garden copying a drawing of a bird's skeleton into her sketch book. "You're doing science?" he says. She laughs at his simplified labelling of what she's doing. "See how school shutters you," she says. "I'm drawing, painting, reading, looking. I'm feeling the sun and air on my skin. I'm listening to the blackbird's song. I'm opening my mind. Ha! School!" Because of his worries about his baby sister, Michael has some days off school. His dad is concerned: "Maybe you could go back soon, eh? Don't want to miss out on too much." "I learn a lot from Mina", says Michael. "She knows about lots of things, like birds and evolution." Another day, Michael takes his homework into Mina's garden. She mocks his quiz-like worksheet. She flicks through the book he has brought from school, and says it looks good – "but what's the red sticker for?" "It's for confident readers," he says. "It's to do with reading age." "And what if other readers want to read it?…And where would William Blake fit in?…'Tyger! Tyger! Burning bright / In the forests of the night.' Is that for the best readers or the worst readers? Does that need a good reading age?" She later apologises for this outburst: "One of the things we hate about school is the sarcasm that's in them. And I'm being sarcastic." As her mum says, "She's a madam sometimes."
So how did Mina come to be home-educated? How happy I was to find that David Almond has provided the answer to this question in his prequel to Skellig, entitled My Name is Mina, published in 2010. The flyleaf of the paperback edition is full of praise from reviewers: "joyous", "life-affirming", "exquisite", "poignant". Even the Times Educational Supplement is there with the rest. Yet not one quote indicates that the book is in fact a glorious celebration of autonomous learning and deschooling.
Mina tells her own story in this book. She is in love with words, and playing with words is one of her great passions. The typography of the book mimics the handwritten pages of her journal, with some words shouting from the page in bold black slashes, some pages white on black (her journey to the Underworld, for example) and much concrete poetry. This love of words and story-telling does not stand her in good stead at St Bede's Middle. Her teacher insists that nothing should be written without a plan. This seems like nonsense to Mina, but she wants to be what they call "a good girl", so she does try. Her plan meets with approval but, as she records, "When I started to write, the words wouldn't keep still, wouldn't obey. The words danced like flies. They flew off in strange and beautiful directions and they took my story on a very unexpected course. I was very pleased with it…" But the teacher is not impressed. "She held the plan in one hand and the story in the other. 'They do not match!' she said in her screechy voice."
Things come to a head on SATs day. Mina describes the stress at St Bede's: "Everybody was so concerned that everybody would all turn out to be better than the average of children of our age throughout the country! Everybody was so concerned that we would get Level 4 and Level 5 and Level 99! We shouldn't get worked up about it, though!…Just relax! JUST RELAX!" Mina relaxes, and sets about her essay: Write a description of a busy place. She calls it "GLIBBERTYSNARK", and writes two rip-roaring pages of nonsense full of invented words and original spellings. She achieves Level 0 (Well Well Well Below Average), causes her teacher to swear in front of the whole class ("You are an utter bloody disgrace!") and, to the Headteacher's relief, is removed from school by her mother.
Mina's mum is a single parent who (fortunately) works from home. In order to spend more time with Mina, she cuts down her working hours. This means they have very little money for luxuries like travel – they travel in their minds, through books, dreams, conversation and writing. They are very happy. "I love being home-schooled, when we don't have to stick to subjects and timetables and rules." "We learn so much, and wonder so much, and explore so much, and ideas grow and take flight… Mum says it can't last forever, though. She says I'll become too isolated, especially as I'm an only child. She even says that schools aren't really prisons and cages. Yes, they bloody are! I tell her. She shakes her head and grins. Language! she says."
Even Mina, who hates school, sometimes thinks it would be interesting to run one herself. Instead of "lessons", she would introduce "extraordinary activities" (of which she gives examples throughout her book). Before opting for home-based education, Mina and her mum agreed that she should spend a day at Corinthian Avenue Pupil Referral Unit. "I enjoyed the day. I learned a lot. It taught me that misfits can fit together in weird ways. It taught me that even as a misfit I might fit into this weird world. I liked the people there… But it wasn't the right time. I needed to be at home with my mum." Nevertheless, Corinthian Avenue shows her that it is possible for adults and children to learn happily together in a supportive, accepting place.
A very different novel about home education is Charles Webb's Home School. Published in 2007, it was hailed as the long-awaited sequel to The Graduate (yes, the novel which inspired the film starring Anne Bancroft and Dustin Hoffman). The seductive Mrs Robinson has morphed into "Nan" to Benjamin and Elaine's two home-educated sons. I found the book laugh-out-loud funny, but I know that it wasn't well received in all home-educating circles, so be warned. Unlike the David Almond novels, it is in no way a children's book.
Charles Webb and his wife in fact home-educated their own children in New York State, just as Benjamin and Elaine attempt to do, and like the parents in the novel, they encountered much opposition from the school authorities – though I trust their solution to the problem was less extreme than Benjamin's! Does Webb share "Benjamin and Elaine's conviction that a child's natural learning impulse must be allowed to develop freely, unfettered by direction from above any more than is strictly necessary, and that if this freedom is permitted, innate curiosity will guide the child to the objects of greatest interest and relevance to its life…"? Probably, though let's hope that in his case it didn't result in one of his children constructing a working guillotine behind the house, as Benjamin's Jason was keen to do. (A family discussion nipped that idea in the bud, fortunately.)
Some home-educators who lead otherwise fairly middle-of-the-road lives (like our own family) will allow themselves a wry smile of recognition at the arrival on the scene of Garth and Goya and their children. They live in the backwoods, and spend much of the year travelling the country and "sponging" (Elaine's word) on other home-schooling families. They are "complete professional hippies" (Elaine again), "bums…slobs…an embarrassment". Benjamin has a soft spot for them, seeing them as "the great shock troops of the movement, forging the way for the rest of us."
Unlike The Graduate, Home School doesn't have a great ending. The plot rather fizzles out, which is why I don't see it becoming a film, but I found much to enjoy. Home educators can be guilty of taking themselves too seriously at times.
Finally, I'd like to mention a fine, though strange, novel which is about childhood, and which, just in passing, touches on what we might call flexi-schooling – though done informally and without permission. Set in Los Angeles, Aimee Bender's The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake is a family story told by a young girl who has the ability to taste in food the emotions of those who made it. She has a gifted brother, Joe, who is outrageously bored in class: the teacher keeps him amused by giving him her handbag to sort through while the rest of the class works on simple addition. His mother finds a short-term solution to the problem by inventing frequent doctor's appointments (no one questions this for several months) and taking him (along with his pre-school sister) out and about to the shops, the park and the market, to "discover the world on his own", as she puts it. This happy state of affairs doesn't last for long, and when the school authorities realise what is going on, Joe returns to full-time schooling, and his mother is placed on "mom probation" permanently. Joe's childhood continues to be disturbed and unhappy.
Hazel Clawley
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