text:
Now, Levenger
August 21, 2013 August 21, 2020 ~ Deanna Kreisel
"Let me explain to you one of the key elements involved in the writing process. Because it may seem outwardly that the pen and the paper and the chair play an important role. But they're all somewhat incidental to the actual using of the brain." — Jerry Seinfeld to George Costanza
Once again Jerry gets it right. The actual using of the brain can be hard and lonely, and those nurtured in the bosom of late capitalism are very good at avoiding the hard and the lonely through the contemplation — and even better, the acquisition — of material things. And those of us who have chosen lives requiring the regular production of writing in exchange for the means to procure material things have a particularly vexed relationship to the beautiful pens, elegant paper, and luxurious chairs that seem, according to the Levenger catalogue, so necessary to the endeavor.
In case you have never received a Levenger catalogue in your mailbox (perhaps you have been living off the grid, or have been incarcerated in a federal prison for the past 15 years), allow me to describe it: this cool, glossy quarterly hawks writing paraphernalia of all kinds, from fancy paperclips to six-hundred-dollar glass-front bookcases. Fountain pens, leather book satchels, clip-on lamps: the full range of luxurious accoutrements for the discriminating reader is available in its pages. It even boasts that most unassailable imprimatur of postmodernity, a subtitle: "Tools for Serious Readers." I think of it as "Props for Intractable Procrastinators."
The Levenger catalogue falls into what we might call the Lifestyle Category of mail-order brochures. Along with Hammacher Schlemmer and J. Peterman, Levenger seems to offer its perusers not just consumer products at inflated prices, but an entire self-image. [1] Since Levenger caters to writers and readers, and as an English professor I have a pretty hefty investment in thinking of myself as both, I would seem an ideal target for this particular brand of hucksterism. Yet I resist. For some reason, the Levenger ethos disturbs me, even as I leaf guiltily through each new number the second it arrives. I suspect that my discomfort springs directly from a deep, roiling pool of neurotic bugaboos regarding work, class, prestige, and autonomy. You may think that this is a lot to read into a simple direct-marketing sales tool. You would be wrong.
The underlying philosophy of the Levenger empire is complex and occasionally contradictory, and like all the world's most sophisticated thought systems, richly repays close study. It is best grasped in a numbered-outline format suitable for review during leisure moments in your home or car:
If you cannot think of what to write, buy something. Expensive cherrywood objets facilitate — nay, enable — the creative process. The ideal Levenger audience seems to consist of middle-aged former English majors who took a wrong turn somewhere, accidentally landed lucrative jobs in the financial sector, and now feel guilty about both their riches and their unfinished novels. Judging by the snippets of prose visible on the thick, creamy pages of the handtooled leather journals for sale in the catalogue, these people face other obstacles as well: "… and then we went into a small antiques shop to browse. Just the type of place I would be sure to find the perfect gift for Candace. Searching through the trash and treasures, I … [words obscured by corner of second handtooled leather journal stacked on top of first] a lovely music box that … picture frame." And there, tantalizingly, the entry stops. Levenger Land is full of these little gems: "… and then the next evening, we all got together for sushi and a show. It couldn't have been a better night for it"; "… and then later on that same day, around dusk, he sees the bag on the front walk. Curious, he opens it and you would not believe it, but there happened to be about 50 or more…." There seems to be a lot of narrative suspense in the Levenger world ("and then…"), coupled with an obsessive need to record banal details of everyday life. It's a painful image, all of these memoirists manqués, filling up their expensive notebooks with the most snoozeworthy observations imaginable. Yet such is the strange comfort of the Levenger philosophy: while these writers are unlikely to set the world afire with their prose, at least they will toil away surrounded by beautiful ottomans, brilliant pinpoint reading lamps, solid hardwood couchside tables, smooth-edged leather bookmarks and paperweights, and mysterious "caddies" of all kinds.
There is an unnecessary object suitable for every unnecessary task. Flipping through the Levenger catalogue is a vertiginous exercise, wherein one becomes increasingly aware of all the desires one never knew one had. A miniature gooseneck lamp just for my computer keyboard? Eureka! A three-hundred-dollar tilting bedside reading table? Love it! An all-in-one wallet and PDA holder? Why, yes — this is the perfect solution to the organizational problem I never quite knew I had! Granted, all catalogues depend on the fulfillment of arcane desires, but most of them cater to needs, or at least categories of needs, that the consumer is already aware of when she picks up the latest issue and starts leafing through it on the toilet. I may not need another pair of L. L. Bean hunting boots right at this very moment, but I do, generally, need waterproof footwear. The Levenger catalogue seems designed for people who want to want something new, and depend on the Levenger marketing people to tell them what that new thing might be.
My most recent unnecessary-object obsession is something from the "Levenger Studios" called an Annotation Station. It consists of a long weighted leather strip ("smooth suede underneath protects paper") with slots for holding Post-It notes, flag markers, and a yellow highlighter. This is the perfect gift for the dedicated marginaliaphile, someone who really wants to mark the hell out of his books ("How true!"). Who are these people, one wonders? Surely casual readers have no need to annotate their books so heavily. Cheapskate intellectuals and impoverished students tend to take books they need to read out of the library — and are hardly likely to drop thirty bucks on a fussy doodad for which they would only be mocked by their peers. Even more bizarre, however, is the imagined "lifestyle" of the perfect consumer of this item: "As your reading venue moves from desk to chair to bed during the day, you can bring this bookweight with you and have your marking tools together in one place…. The Annotation Station is the solution to 'Oooh, I'd love to mark this passage… but I don't feel like getting up.'" From desk to chair to bed during the day? I don't feel like getting up? The potential market for this item must be quite narrow indeed: brilliant, intellectually omnivorous consumptives with large inherited fortunes. Perhaps Shelley could have given one to Keats for Boxing Day.
Everything in the world can be, and should be, encased in leather. In addition to your standard briefcases, checkbooks, and journals, Levenger offers cowhide coverings for the following items that you never knew needed the protection and beauty of real leather: PDAs, legal pads, passports, travel alarm clocks, Post-It notes, magazines, notepads, index cards, tissue packets, miniature key-chain photos, measuring tapes, airport ID cards, three-ring binders, cell phones, cell earphones, digital camcorders, and seat cushions. In addition, they offer leatherbound versions of the following classics: toiletry bags, pen and pencil cases, stationery boxes, desk sets, fountain pen hutches, photo albums, money clips, and something called a "self-cleaning eyeglass case." I am particularly fond of the leather laptop pad and cord organizer, which enables you to keep your notebook computer from slipping around on your desk (a perpetual problem for sea captains everywhere) and also eliminates annoying cord clutter at the back of your computer.
If it weren't for the sober financier-type prose that appears on many of the memo pads and organizers featured in the catalogue ("Product Development Meeting"; "Sales Team Luncheon"; "Review Résumés") — which coexists uncomfortably with the lucubrations of the memoirists — one might imagine that Levenger Land is populated by hordes of kinksters and fetishists. Why else all the leather? Of course, it's likely that the cowhide obsession springs from a somewhat less exotic quirk: the American middle-brow horror of "unsightly" objects. It's a small step from macramé Kleenex-box covers and toilet-paper cozies to the "luxury feel" of "soft, full-grain Napa leather" entombing every single electronic gadget you own. Heaven forefend anything look functional.
I am not a vegetarian or an animal-rights activist, but the Levenger catalogue gives me pause. It seems unlikely to me, after perusing the myriad leather coverings on offer here, that there can possibly be enough cows dying peacefully of old age in the world to supply this apparently insatiable demand. [2] Indeed, according to the helpful article "Tanning Research Update" published by the USDA Agricultural Research Service, "cattle hides are the most valuable coproduct of the meat packing industry." Apparently, more than 35 million cowhides are produced in the U.S. each year, 60 percent of which are exported to other countries to the tune of one billion dollars; the remaining hides are tanned domestically and turned into four billion dollars worth of finished leather. [3] That's a lot of cows. The folks at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals are all over this, and have used similar statistics to attack the complacency of people exactly like me who think that buying leather goods is nowhere near as evil as draping oneself in the hides of fluffy little doe-eyed minks. [4] (There's a reason that Cruella de Ville does not have any major endorsement contracts, while the Marlboro Man does.)
When I think about why, exactly, Bessie and Clarabell might be dying untimely deaths — because mid-level account executives feel they look more professional with their legal pads covered in animal skin — I feel a bit of guilt and a bit of remorse on behalf of humankind. But mostly I just feel judgmental. It's one thing to imagine Elizabeth Bishop dashing off letters in a Notabilia Notebook with Leather Cover, and quite another to imagine "Hi Larry, Please call me to schedule a meeting with Jim and the marketing team" thus forever enshrined.
Of course the writer of these lines is guilty of the worst kind of snobbery: reverse. (Pace Katharine Hepburn in The Philadelphia Story, who accuses Jimmy Stewart of being "the worst kind of snob, an in-tee-lyec-tual snob.") Who am I to begrudge the tassel-loafered, titanium-watched crowd the thrill of writing down their weekend pensées in a costly leather-covered tome? Shouldn't I, in fact, be encouraging this very behavior? Shouldn't I even feel a bit proud, of my profession and avocation, when I see evidence of a burgeoning interest in all things literary? Whence, then, this deep and abiding resentment? I suspect it springs from the uncanny, and intensely uncomfortable, sense of recognition I feel whenever I leaf through the catalogue. Of course I want these beautiful objects, and of course I cannot afford most of them — this goes without saying. I am no different than anyone else who drools over a velvety smooth Majorca briefbag — with the possible exception that I get to feel a tinge of smug self-righteousness about the very fact that I cannot afford it. ("Because I've dedicated myself to the life of the mind!") But the sense of recognition runs even deeper: I, too, often feel paralyzed by the difficulty of producing lucid and compelling English prose. I, too, would rather fantasize about furnishing my study in cherry-veneer Danish bookcases than actually sit down and, you know, write. I cringe when I read the dull scribblings on the pages of Levenger journals because I fear that my prose is equally deadly. And worst of all, I live in constant fear that I may never produce any more of it at all. Yeah, sure, I wrote a bunch of stuff in the past, but that could very well be it!
The Marxist philosopher and literary critic Walter Benjamin, in his unfinished masterwork about the shopping arcades of nineteenth-century Paris, grasped the strange confluence of writing, avoidance, shopping, and materialism embodied in the Levenger catalogue. Over the course of 13 years, he compiled quotations, notes, and fragments describing the culture of modern industrial capitalism — under such disparate categories as fashion, literature, architecture, advertising, photography, prostitusion, and boredom — as refracted through the lens of the Parisian shopping mall. His writing methodology reflected his subject matter: the bric-a-brac of the shop window, where juxtaposition renders precious objects and junk indistinguishable, was mirrored by the bric-a-brac of the writer's desk, where index cards with jottings about Baudelaire rub up against scraps of paper.
Benjamin insisted that the method of his project, which he termed "literary montage," freed him from some of the most burdensome and difficult aspects of writing: "I needn't say anything. Merely show. I shall purloin no valuables, appropriate no ingenious formulations. But the rags, the refuse — these I will not inventory but allow, in the only way possible, to come into their own: by making use of them." Yet he also understood that this openness came at a price, that the unbounded and amorphous nature of his project also courted authorial anxiety, confusion, and regret: "To great writers, finished works weigh lighter than those fragments on which they labor their entire lives." While it may be going too far to say that Benjamin made an explicit connection between the actual physical fragments of his writing — evocative and beautiful yet risky and haunting — and the commodities on sale in the arcades — enchanted and precious yet reviled and abject — certainly the comparison is there for the making. What he describes, dissects, and dismisses he is also clearly deeply attracted to. One can almost imagine him fantasizing that a better pen and some smoother paper might lighten the "labor of his entire life." [5]
Please bear with me here, for I'm about to discuss sabbaticals. I fully understand that it is the grossest ingratitude to utter even a whiff of complaint about uninterrupted chunks of research and writing time, and the gentle reader is free at this point to throw up her hands in disgust. Yet I found the experience of my one sabbatical intensely difficult (and I suspect many academics, freelance writers, and work-at-home folk would confess to the same ambivalence). All of a sudden, I was struggling on a daily basis with what I had thought of as the most mundane exigencies of human existence: having a shower, getting dressed, making sure I exposed my pasty skin to a certain amount of rickets-preventing sunshine every day. While I found it exhilarating to roll out of bed and head straight for the computer with fresh thoughts percolating in my head, there was also the horrifying possibility that I would accomplish absolutely nothing useful on any given day. It's one thing to remain unwashed and uncombed for twelve hours because you're on a creative roll; it's another thing to sit ungroomed in front of your computer all day and produce nothing worth keeping — or worse, do nothing but read E! Online.
I recently re-read my journal from graduate school (written in composition notebooks purchased at CVS), and was shocked to discover that apparently I have been dealing with this procrastination problem for some time. "Resolutions," reads one humiliating entry from my dissertation-writing year. "1. Shower before coffee. 2. Dress before sitting down to write." It's not that I didn't produce anything, of course — I managed to finish the dissertation and get the Ph.D., and I still manage to crank out enough academic prose every year to remain respectable. It's that I haven't gotten any better at the psychological aspects of the writing process: it's still so bloody difficult. And for some reason I don't find it comforting to be reminded that others share this difficulty. When my friends confess that on non-teaching days they often stay in their jammies "writing" until late afternoon, I don't feel heartwarming recognition and fuzzy camaraderie. I feel slightly shocked. I want the inspiration of a fantasy role model: someone who writes effortlessly, fluently, clad perhaps in a fetching cinched-waist bouclé jacket and coordinating trousers, or at least a cashmere twinset. I certainly don't want to be confronted with evidence that there's an entire consumer industry aimed at people who clearly have trouble sitting down to work, who fetishize the tools of scrivening and calligraphy at the expense of actually producing anything beautiful or interesting to read. And that's why I hate the Levenger catalogue.
But this is a fairly obvious insight. Everyone knows how difficult, lonely, etc., the writing life is supposed to be: after all, the stock romantic image of the struggling poet always involves — in addition to a garret, a sundrenched cat, and a charmingly antiquated typewriter — a wastebasket artfully overflowing with crumpled-up pieces of paper. No, I suspect that what really disturbs me about the Levenger catalogue is something deeper and even more squirm-inducing than the painful reminder that what I've chosen to do every day of my life can sometimes be kinda hard. (After all, it's not as hard as breaking rocks.) Perhaps, I tremble to suggest, the Levenger Doctrine is perfectly cogent, valid, true, and correct — and this is why I hate it. Perhaps the Levenger people, in some profound and inexplicable way, understand certain psychological and spiritual dimensions of the writing process better than I do.
I'm not talking about the uncanny suspicion I sometimes get, leafing through the catalogue, that the entire production is a parody and I a hoodwinked rube. How else to explain the one-third-page entry for the (undoubtedly admirable) reference work Words that Make a Difference? Just below the catalogue description of the book, which presents "1,238 of the language's more elusive but compelling words," there is a little buff-colored box with a blurb from Steve Leveen (a.k.a. Levenger) himself: "This book can be a secret weapon for lifelong learners who want to boost their vocabulary and gain the lifetime of benefits that come along with that." That come along with … that? Perhaps you might want to dip into Words that Make a Difference every once in a while yourself, Steve. Can this be real, or is it an elaborate joke?
Joke or no, it is not as snarky postmodern hipsters that I imagine the Levenger people commenting on litterae humaniores. Their insights, I suspect, are more subtle and elusive. In addition to the frustrated-genius, crumpled-paper model, another romantic version of the writer subsists, perhaps on a slightly more subterranean level, in the popular imagination. This is the image of the logorrheic prodigy whose words flow practically unbidden, like bodily effusions, regardless of nefarious external attempts to silence them. Anyone who writes for a living or avocation occasionally gets to experience magical little stretches of time when words flow copiously from the pen, and everything that flows is sheer gold. Everyone gets to be clad in a metaphorical bouclé jacket from time to time. The "Writing in Prison" version of this phenomenon is perhaps the most widely represented. Oscar Wilde, Antonio Gramsci, Leonard Peltier, Reinaldo Arenas — all managed to produce important work under the most adverse conditions imaginable, quite frankly putting the rest of us dilettantes and poetasters to shame. Even Geoffrey Rush, as the Marquis de Sade in Quills, manages to make scribbling manifestos in shit on the walls of one's cell look simultaneously effortless and glam.
Popular images of writers thus seem to fall at two extremes of the spectrum: creative types are either hopelessly blocked, or conspicuously incontinent. Words either won't come, or won't stop: there doesn't seem to be any room in the middle. Writing is not allowed to appear a workmanlike activity, involving routine tasks, mundane repetition, diligence, and sheer ass-in-the-chair persistence. The Levenger catalogue doesn't pander to either of these extremes. Their depiction of the writing lifestyle strikes out, admirably, for new territory. The Levenger World is one in which writers (and readers) carefully gather the tools they will need to accomplish the task at hand, painstakingly prepare their immaculate work environments, ponder in advance what they need to do and how they will go about doing it. They plan and notate and underline and schedule. They neither wad up reams of paper in poetic frustration, nor fling their words on the walls of their prisons using their own blood. They are dull. They are probably extraordinarily productive.
Blaise Pascal, in his 1670 collection of notes toward a projected defense of Christianity, suggests that faith follows action; we can induce a spiritual or intellectual result by creating the material conditions it requires. "You would like to attain faith, and do not know the way," he advises. "Learn of those who have been bound like you, and who now stake all their possessions…. Follow the way by which they began; by acting as if they believed, taking the holy water, having masses said, etc. Even this will naturally make you believe." [6] Perhaps there are times when the only way to feel like a writer, to have faith in your ability to produce something, anything, worth reading, is to act like a writer: pick up your Mont Blanc pen, lean back in your oxblood leather chair, let your gaze rest on your New World Chairside Globe, and wait for inspiration to strike. Stake all your possessions, suggests Pascal. Little did he suspect.
But this lets the purveyors of these props and the petit-bourgeois who use them off the hook. I feel a bit squeamish speculating — even briefly, even waggishly — that the rituals and accoutrements of an ancient religion (however much I disavow it) are akin to the lucite bulldog clips and natural-cherry bill caddies of Levenger. Not out of any sense of religious propriety, mind you — but because I just can't let go of my annoyance with the people I picture buying these items. People who, I imagine, run around loudly proclaiming their Love of Reading when they're not busy producing dull-as-dirt diary entries in "microbrewed" Gemstone Green ink.
In a recent essay in The New York Times Book Review, Cristina Nehring hilariously skewers a young man sporting an "I'm a Reader!" button at her town's annual book festival. As she points out, this newly pervasive attitude of readerly self-congratulation is as nonsensical as it is annoying: "It is easy to fetishize things that we imagine are on their way out. In the age of Comcast and America Online, books seem quaint, whimsical, imperiled and therefore virtuous. We assume that reading requires a formidable intellect. We forget that books were the television of previous years." [7] What irritates Nehring is the vacuity of much public discussion of books. The mere act of reading has become an acceptable substitute for having any thoughts or informed opinions about what one has read. I see this attitude filtering down (up?) to the level of the college classroom, where in recent years I've noticed more and more students complaining about the specialized vocabulary involved in analyzing literature. "Why can't we just talk about how we feel about the novel?" and "Why do we always have to read so much into everything?" are comments that I'm starting to hear more frequently among even upper-level students. Thirty years from now, will some of these same students begin to regret how little they got out of their undergraduate literary studies, notice a real lack in their own intellectual development, and promptly go on-line and order an Italian leather bookcover from Levenger to fill the void?
The fact is, attaining real cultivation and expertise as a reader is utterly unrewarded by this culture. By "expertise," I don't necessarily mean formal education. Most of the people whose thoughts and writings I admire have one thing in common: they have dedicated themselves to a more or less full-time pursuit of knowledge and, for lack of a better word, erudition. The writers I admire long ago decided that The Life of the Mind is an admirable life. And in order to pursue this life, they have made sacrifices. It goes without saying that unless they are independently wealthy or best-selling authors, people who have devoted themselves to arts and letters cannot afford most things in the Levenger catalogue. But even more disturbing, these people also don't have much cultural capital or prestige, or even get much basic respect for their vocations. It is not a glamorous thing, to be a writer or a teacher in America. But for some reason, sporting expensive versions of the tools of these professions is.
Not that it really matters. I don't care all that much about great financial success, and I imagine most people who've chosen to write for a living don't either. (Of course, it would be nice if people who have made other choices would stop referring to our summers, spent either frantically researching and writing in order to justify our existence in the academy or at least torturing ourselves with a blinking cursor, as "vacation.") No, the fact of the matter is, most writers, academics, and teachers probably don't spend too much time regretting the Lexuses and the summer houses; if we did, we would have chosen other professions. We don't want to have it all. We just don't want the stockbrokers to have it all, either.
You've made your bed, Mr. and Ms. Levenger Shopper; now lie in it. Sorry, but you don't get to have glittering wealth, cultural capital, and a cushy retirement — and get to walk around feeling smug and self-important about your Dedication to Reading. If you chose to major in marketing as an undergraduate — and doubtless complained to your literature professors that they were "reading too much into" the novels that you wanted just to enjoy for the plot — then you now reap the rewards of that decision. If you want to drop a sawbuck on vocabulary-boosters like Rare Words and Samuel Johnson's Dictionary ("the dictionary that declared your independence"!?), that's terrific. Just don't be such a prig about it.
To be clear: I absolutely do not begrudge people really wanting to learn later in life. I think it's fabulous when people ask to audit my classes because they want to study literature seriously. But I resent the dabbling mentality: I resent the way the Levenger catalogue seems to suggest that you can skip straight to the wisdom and cultivation and suede elbow patches without putting in a lot of hard intellectual work first. About ten years ago, an ad appeared in the back of The Economist, which has haunted me ever since I first saw it. (In fact, the yellowed clipping has been on my office door wherever I've taught since graduate school). The ad is for a series of recorded lectures called "The Great Minds of the Western Intellectual Tradition": "[P]erhaps you once vowed that some day you would plow through all the great thinkers of the Western world…. But you know you never will. Frankly, it would require a minimum of several years of withdrawal from active life, and devotion to intense effort and concentration. Now, at last, here is a feasible way to enjoy the intellectual adventure of a lifetime. A way you can comfortably grasp the essence and consequence of each thinker's greatness, in leisure moments in your home or car." [8]
Yes, God knows we should all avoid "devotion to intense effort and concentration" — this dictum is one of the cornerstones of the American ethos. ("Isn't there some kind of summary, some sort of market-report version of these writings I can just flip through instead?") Somehow this ad manages simultaneously to fetishize the Great Thinkers and make those very people seem faintly pathetic for having wasted their time in "withdrawal from active life." They should have just come up with this stuff during leisure moments in their homes and cars.
The program features "6 widely acclaimed lecture professors on audio and video cassettes," who are doubtless supplementing their own sub-par salaries by helping buff up the cultural patinas of CEOs and robber barons who are too involved in active life to actually do any reading. The set-up creates an image of university professors as the new court jesters: fey, whimsical folk who live mostly on the margins of society, yet are occasionally summoned to give a little intellectual sheen to an event before being sent back to their book-lined hidey-holes. You slept through these very same lectures in college, but now that you've realized a bit of Culture might help you succeed in the cutthroat world of corporate finance, you call in some geek backup. The whole Great Minds enterprise reminds me of a stock sitcom premise: Schoolyard Bully repeatedly knocks down little Poindexter, whose nose is always buried in a book, and keeps breaking his glasses. But weeks later, when Bully needs help studying for a history test — you guessed it! — Poindexter is there for him, and the two become fast friends. Hijinks ensue when Bully refuses to acknowledge his shameful new pal at the class pizza party, but all comes out right in the end when (after a brief moral struggle) he publicly sticks up for the nerd in the face of his bully-colleagues' taunting, learning a valuable lesson along the way about the basis of real friendship. He gets a B-minus on the test.
The cost of this videotaped omnibus is — brace yourselves — four hundred forty-nine dollars and ninety-five cents (Virginia residents please add 4.5% sales tax). And this is in 1996 currency. While spending this much dough on videotaped lectures doesn't seem as morally reprehensible to me as, say, spending twice that amount on a chocolate-leather-covered desk chair, it's not the money part that toasts my cheese. It's the way the product is pitched: the people who put this compendium together clearly know their market, and they know that the way to sell these tapes is to emphasize how easy it will be to acquire the superficial semblance of learning. You can "comfortably" grasp these concepts in your snippets of spare time. When I last checked, there was nothing comfortable about the thoughts and writings of "Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Moses, Jesus, Marcus Aurelius, Augustine, Aquinas, More, Machiavelli, Bacon, Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, Newton, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Smith, Rousseau, Kant, Burke, Montesquieu, Hegel, Marx, Mill, Kierkegaard, Darwin, Freud, Nietzsche, James, Ayers, Quine, Wittgenstein, Weber, Habermas, Kuhn, Rorty, Foucault, Rawls, Levi-Strauss, etc." Isn't the discomfort of these people's ideas the whole point? But if you have the cash, you can skip over the pesky learning part and get straight to the pretentious-cocktail-party-banter payoff: "[j]ust listening to these lectures — whether you decide to supplement them by browsing through the texts of the works discussed or not — will give you a grasp of the intellectual history of the Western world possessed by as few as one out of every thousand Americans." And when you happen to bump into one of these very few Americans — a marginalized adjunct lecturer, a struggling writer, or an impoverished journalist — perhaps you can bond over your shared status as Serious Readers.
Levenger now has its own version of the salad-bar approach to intellectual accomplishment: the newly published Little Guide to Your Well-Read Life, written (and read, on the optional audio CDs) by Steve Leveen himself. [9] The secret to being a Serious Reader, apparently, is to "give yourself permission to read your way." This method includes "[b]eing able to give up on a book with no guilt" and "discovering the full power of audiobooks." Speaking as a literature teacher, I had always thought of these techniques as "failing to complete one's assignments" and "cheating." Granted, consenting adults reading for pleasure should be absolutely free to stop reading a book whenever they want, or to listen to Sally Struthers reading the audio version during their morning commutes. But do we need to purchase a self-help book to tell us this? My idea of a guide to the well-read life would involve pushing casual readers beyond their limitations rather than letting them off the hook for not finishing Crime and Punishment, which Steve discovered two-thirds of the way through was "not enough crime and too much punishment." [10] But what do I know? Apparently I have failed, as yet, to grasp the most important lesson of all: that "a well-read life has little to do with how many or even which books you read." You don't say.
I'm not sure I'm any closer to understanding the real source of my annoyance with the Levenger catalogue. Perhaps I simply don't have enough leisure time to devote to a proper study of the text. After a certain amount of analysis, I feel I grasp the basic Levenger philosophy, but that doesn't fully explain the depth of my animus. Sour grapes? Bitter self-recrimination? Do I really want a Lexus after all? Since we're all supposed to be dirty Marxists in the academy, I'll just take the easy way out and assume it's about the money. I ask you this favor, Gentle Reader: look deep into your heart, and contemplate the state of your own soul. Are you a Levenger buyer? Have you purchased anything from this catalogue in the past five years that cost more than ten dollars? (Everyone's allowed to slip a little.) As you made this purchase, did you imagine yourself — even briefly — appearing more erudite, intellectual, or learned as a result of this new acquisition? If so, then the next time you're tempted to blow over a thousand bucks on a Samuel Johnson Club Chair (matching Ottoman available), instead please consider donating this sum to your local public library or literacy campaign. Or better yet, volunteer as a tutor yourself, and spend some of your leisure moments with someone who might really want to become a reader. Seriously.
[1] According to the American Direct Marketing Association, nearly 20 billion consumer catalogues were mailed in the U.S. in 2007. Direct Marketing Association, Statistical Fact Book, 30th ed. (2008): 70.
[2] Back in late June 2005, when I started my intensive research for this essay, the Levenger website was even advertising something they termed "Leather Lollapalooza," with up to 60% off cowskin-covered items.
[3] Doris Stanley, "Tanning Research Update," Agricultural Research 46.11 (November 1998): 12-13, http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/AR/archive/nov98/tan1198.htm.
[4] "Leather: Animals Abused And Killed for Their Skins," PETA Media Center, http://www.peta.org/factsheet/files/FactsheetDisplay.asp?ID=58.
[5] Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project, trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press), 2002.
[6] Blaise Pascal, Pensées, trans. W. F. Trotter (New York: Modern Library, 1941), 83.
[7] Cristina Nehring, "Books Make You a Boring Person," New York Times 27 June 2004, late ed.: 7.23.
[8] The Economist, 19 October 1996: 91.
[9] You can read more about the book on Steve's website, http://www.yourwellreadlife.com. There are, of course, many pricey leatherbound accessories to purchase as accompaniments to Steve's reading system.
[10] "About Steve Leveen," http://www.yourwellreadlife.com/home/bio.asp.
Posted in Capitalism, Crankiness, Materialism, Writing	Blaise PascalLevenger CatalogueWalter Benjamin
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The Warfighter Information Network-Tactical (WIN-T) was able to seriously upgrade following the Army's approval to lead full-rate production and fielding of the Win-T Increment 2.
This advanced capability adds a level of safety in addition to providing real-time information and allowing commanders to stay informed.
The WIN-T has been labeled the "digital guardian angel" because it reduces putting the number of Army personnel in danger while allowing a full-functioning, cyber-secure system.
The WIN-T has already been used by soldiers in the Middle East, Korean Peninsula, and in West Africa. It has also been utilized in Army training centers across the country. Since it has been used by thousands of soldiers already, improvements based on their experiences have already gone into effect. System communication, technologies to reduce functionality size, and overall costs have been addressed due to the feedback of soldiers who have already used the WIN-T.
These system updates will allow those in command to implement the full force of the Army to accomplish security and force protection through the strategic and tactical differentiation.
Your Agency's Budget Has Been Slashed. Now What?


Sony Drops New Trailer for SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDERVERSE And It's a Hoot!
This new trailer for SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDERVERSE was released today (watch it below) and it's quite a fun (and funny) watch, apart from being a cool preview of the upcoming computer-animated feature film. Directed by Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, and Rodney Rothman, the movie stars Shameik Moore as Morales alongside Hailee Steinfeld, Mahershala Ali, Jake Johnson, Liev Schreiber, Brian Tyree Henry, Luna Lauren Velez, and Lily Tomlin.
The movie is based on the Miles Morales iteration of Spider-Man from Marvel Comics. The story is set in an alternate universe from Sony's other Spider-Man properties, but introduces a shared multiverse, in which Spider-Man crosses parallel dimensions and teams up with the Spider-Men of those dimensions to stop a threat to all reality. Thinking you are the only Spider-Man and suddenly discovering there are a whole bunch of Spider-Man (and Women) serving these alternate universes can be quite a shock. That's the fish-out-of-water premise of INTO THE SPIDERVERSE, which opens into a delicious action film combining in-house computer animation by Sony's Imageworks with traditional hand-drawn techniques inspired by the work of Miles Morales's co-creator Sara Pichelli.
Critically-acclaimed composer Daniel Pemberton is scoring the movie. In little more than five years, Pemberton was named "Discovery of The Year" at the World Soundtrack Awards, collaborated with iconic filmmakers including Danny Boyle, Ridley Scott, Stephen Gaghan, and Aaron Sorkin, and received Golden Globe and BAFTA nominations. Pemberton's credits so far include OCEANS 8 (2018), STEVE JOBS (2015), THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. (2015), KING ARTHUR: LEGEND OF THE SWORD (2017), GOLD (2016), ALL THE MONEY IN THE WORLD (2017), and MOLLY'S GAME (2017).


Below you can find step-by-step installation instructions for our various products. This will help you to get the job done. Also, specification notes are available. If further assistance is needed, feel free to contact our Customer Service Manager.


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Tegan and Sara Had Lollapalooza's Most Inclusive Show
Jeff Benjamin
Barry Brecheisen/WireImage
At at time in our country when many minorities and marginalized groups of people are feeling distraught and worried, leave it to Tegan and Sara to make sure that literally everyone felt included at their set at Lollapalooza Day 2.
The folk sister duo never got overtly political, but instead found ways to promote equality of all sexes, ages, sexualities, and the overall Lolla crowd in general. Tegan and Sara opened with their debut single "Back in Your Head" from 2007 before moving into "How Come You Don't Want Me" from 2013's Heartthrob. The theme of the night was set when Sara yelled, "This is going out to the VIP" ahead of the first verse, before later adding, "This verse is for the general population!"
The singers focused on the entire crowd, making sure both the right and left side of the crowd were screaming equally loud, with Sara having a particular fondness for the small VIP section, giving the two dozen or so attendees a ton of shoutouts through the set. At one point, Sara even ran down into the crowd to go hug and say hey to a few VIPs...but then made sure to go high-five a ton of people in the first rows of the right and lefthand sides of the stages—a decision Tegan declared "politically, a smart move."
T&S continued on their set with classics like "Nineteen" ("I want to dedicate this to my fellow 19-year-olds," Tegan joked. "You'll never be as young as you are now"), and their most recent single "Boyfriend" (their subtle queer anthem that the band introduced by saying, "This one's for all of you!"). But the duo kept the crowd equally entertained with their onstage banter, at one point commenting on the rain evacuation that cut Lorde's short set ("I wish we could bring Lorde out, but we don't know her") and the aerial advertising for Trojan Bareskin Condoms (Sara specifically mentioned she imagined a woman was flying the plane touting the condom banner being advertised above the crowd). Tegan and Sara also gave a special treat to their longtime superfans in the audience, confirming they'd be coming to Chicago on Nov. 4 as part of their acoustic tour celebrating the 10-year anniversary of The Con.
"We had so much fun at our third Lollapalooza," Tegan told the crowd before moving into final song "Closer," adding, "We'll be back in November and Sara is really a people person who really likes the VIP. Those are the big takeaways." But perhaps the biggest takeaway was that all are invited to Tegan and Sara's shows, not only to dance and laugh from their onstage antics, but feel like you're being seen at a time when lots of people need that additional comfort making their set the most inclusive and safe at the festival.
Stay tuned to Fuse for on-the-ground coverage from Lollapalooza including show reviews, artist interviews and much more throughout all four days. Below, watch our Lolla interview with Tegan and Sara as they talk about their upcoming The Con X: Covers album and more:
Future LGBTQ History
More Lollapalooza
Lollapalooza 2019 Lineup: Lil Wayne, Ariana Grande, J Balvin And More! + Spotify Playlist
Galantis And MAX Give Everyday Advice at Lollapalooza 2018
From Soundcheck to Stage with Billie Eilish at Chicago's House of Blues
Galantis And MAX On "Satisfied"
Jessie Reyez Gives Everyday Advice at Lollapalooza 2018
Fresh Off The Stage With Bazzi At Lollapalooza 2018

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
CAIR-LA to Join Coalition Rally in Front of Saudi Consulate Protesting Human Rights Abuses
Posted by Ibrahim Hooper 1575sc on June 27, 2019
(LOS ANGELES, CA, 6/27/2019) – On Saturday, June 29, the Greater Los Angeles Area office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-LA) will join a coalition of civil rights activists and allies conducting a rally in front of the Royal Consulate of Saudi Arabia to protest the continuous and unchecked human rights abuses by the Saudi government.
SEE: Freedom for Dissenting Voices: Justice for the Imprisoned
The rally is sponsored by the Muslim American Society Public Affairs & Civil Engagement Committee (MAS PACE), CAIR-LA, Code Pink: Women for Peace and other allies and organizations.
WHAT: Community Rally for Justice For The Imprisoned: Freedom for Dissenting Voices in front of the Saudi Consulate in Los Angeles
WHERE: 2045 Sawtelle Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90025
WHEN: Saturday, June 29, 1-4 p.m.
WHO: MAS PACE, CAIR-LA, Code Pink, We Are All America, ICNA Social Justice, Usuli Institute, Syrian American Council, Islamic Center of Hawthorne, Party for Socialism & Liberation, West Coast Islamic Society
CONTACT: MAS-PACE GLA Director Yasmeen Azam, 714-924-4627 or yasmeen.azam@masgreaterla.org; CAIR-LA Communications Manager Eugene W. Fields, 714-851-4851 or efields@cair.com
In a statement, MAS-PACE GLA Director Yasmeen Azam said:
"We have seen time and time again, numerous reports of individuals, activists, journalists, and scholars whose lives are brutally cut short or imprisoned simply for speaking up. The gross abuse of power and denial of basic fundamental rights to life and liberty cannot be ignored.
"We appeal to all people of conscience to raise their voices against this injustice and to prioritize the honoring of life and scholarship. Freedom for dissenting voices without state coercion is fundamental to human rights. It is of moral imperative that we mobilize to support the freedom of our prominent scholars and many others."
In a statement, CAIR-LA Executive Director Hussam Ayloush said:
"It is morally disgraceful that a nation considered a long-time ally of the United States would engage in human rights abuses, including curtailing freedom of speech and freedom of assembly and political dissent. It is imperative that our government stands against these abuse of international freedoms, especially when conducted by countries enjoying permanent normal trade relations status."
The coalition calls for the Trump Administration to respect and stand boldly for the freedom of political expression. Additionally, all elected representatives are urged to demand the Saudi regime guarantee international freedoms such as freedom of speech and freedom of assembly for all of its citizens.
CAIR-LA is Southern California's largest Muslim civil liberties and advocacy organization. Its mission is to enhance understanding of Islam, protect civil rights, promote justice and empower American Muslims.


text:
Talasio (¿? - c. 630) fue un eclesiástico suevo, obispo católico de Astorga desde c. 588.

Nacido en el seno de la familia de los Camaño, perteneciente a la nobleza del reino suevo, Talasio fue señor del promontorio Nerio y de las islas Cíes, en la costa de Galicia; estuvo casado con Indegunda, sobrina del rey visigodo Atanagildo, y tomó el estado eclesiástico tras quedar viudo.

Hacia el año 588 fue nombrado obispo de la diócesis de Astorga, sufragánea de la de Braga, que estaba encabezada por su hermano Pantardo.
Ambos hermanos participaron en el III Concilio de Toledo presidido por Leandro de Sevilla y Eutropio de Valencia el año 589 en tiempos del rey Recaredo, en el que se decretó el abandono del arrianismo y la adopción del catolicismo como religión oficial del reino visigodo de Toledo, que tan solo cuatro años antes había conquistado y anexionado el reino suevo.

No hay noticias de este personaje más allá de su asistencia al concilio, aunque algunos autores creen que debió vivir al menos hasta el año 630.

Referencias

Obispos de Astorga
Obispos de España del siglo VI
Obispos de España del siglo VII
Suevos en España
Hispania visigoda
Nobles de España del siglo VII

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


Download "Martens Proceedings ESA L(...).pdf"
(2013) ESA Living Planet Symposium, Proceedings.
Martens, Brecht, Hans Lievens, Jeff P Walker, R Panciera, M Tanase, A Monerris, Y Gao, X Wu, and Niko Verhoest. 2013. "An Alternative Roughness Parameterization for Soil Moisture Retrievals from Passive Microwave Observations." In ESA Living Planet Symposium, Proceedings. European Space Agency (ESA).
Martens, Brecht, Lievens, H., Walker, J. P., Panciera, R., Tanase, M., Monerris, A., Gao, Y., et al. (2013). An alternative roughness parameterization for soil moisture retrievals from passive microwave observations. ESA Living Planet Symposium, Proceedings. Presented at the 2013 ESA Living Planet Symposium, European Space Agency (ESA).
Martens B, Lievens H, Walker JP, Panciera R, Tanase M, Monerris A, et al. An alternative roughness parameterization for soil moisture retrievals from passive microwave observations. ESA Living Planet Symposium, Proceedings. European Space Agency (ESA); 2013.
Martens, Brecht, Hans Lievens, Jeff P Walker, et al. "An Alternative Roughness Parameterization for Soil Moisture Retrievals from Passive Microwave Observations." ESA Living Planet Symposium, Proceedings. European Space Agency (ESA), 2013. Print.


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Back | Quick Contact +420 725 53 55 55 | Steak House, Lidická 42, Praha 5 - Anděl
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Drinks Menu Wine List
Top-class South American dishes made with original recipe
...This is a part of colourful South American – particularly Argentinian and Brazilian – cuisine from the country of native Gauchos, exclusive owners of local Pampas, experts on meat who intertwined their blood with European migrants, mainly from Spain, Portugal and Italy.
Welcome in a unique world of genuine traditional South American cuisine...
Argentinian meat pie ................................. 110 Kč
Beef carpaccio with jalapeňo peppers, rucola and crispy herb bread 70g ................................. 299 Kč
Spicy liver served with crispy toast 150g ................................. 110 Kč
Carne montevideano
Steak tartar with orange skin, oregano and chilli, served with crispy toast
120g ................................. 210 Kč
Goat cheese with walnuts, and rucola, served on crispy herb bread ................................. 165 Kč
Beetroot carpaccio with goat feta cheese and fresh rucola ................................. 110 Kč
Strong Argentinian broth served with potatoe and salsa verde ................................. 65 Kč
Indian soup - red beans, corn, chicken and pork meat, vegetables ................................. 75 Kč
Venezuelan see food soup - fish, mussels, aniseed liquer, baby octopus, prawns ................................. 199 Kč
Salad with sheep feta cheese marinated in jalapeňos peppers
Lettuce, cucumber, tomatoes, capsicum, carrot, olives, feta cheese
................................. 179 Kč
Lettuce, chicken breasts, bacon, parmesan, dressing, herb bread / 3 pcs of wild Argentinian prawns
................................. 189/289 Kč
Mix of lettuce with lime dressing ................................. 129 Kč
Cebiche
Cebiche can be marinated in "tiger milk" or in "amarillo tiger milk"
Sea bass cebiche 100g ................................. 190 Kč
Mussels cebiche 100g ................................. 110 Kč
Salmon cebiche 100g ................................. 190 Kč
Octopus cebiche 100g ................................. 220 Kč
St. Jacques scallops cebiche 100g ................................. 275 Kč
Tiger prawns cebiche 100g ................................. 220 Kč
Cebiche degustation set 200g ................................. 360 Kč
Prawns and octopus marinated in garlic oil served with crisp toust ................................. 320 Kč
Marinated dorada ................................. 385 Kč
Salmon fillet with fennel - onion ragaut 200g ................................. 290 Kč
Rib eye steak with chimichurri sauce 300g/600g ................................. 550/999 Kč
Striploin steak with chimichurri sauce 300g/600g ................................. 530/999 Kč
Flank steak with chimichurri sauce 300g ................................. 495 Kč
Rumpsteak (heart of rump) with chimichurri sauce 300g ................................. 440 Kč
Tenderloin 250g/500g ................................. 660/1270 Kč
Striploin steak with chimichurri sauce
(dry aging beef from Spanish Galicia)
Grilled slices of argentine beef
(tenderloin, striploin, rib eye) with baked potatoe and grilled chilli pepper
Lamb ribs marinated in thyme 750g ................................. 330 Kč
Leg of lamb marinated in thyme 250g ................................. 290 Kč
Vyzrálá hovězí žebra (plemene Aberdeen Angus) pečená na grilu, podáváná s vinmeládou (cena dle skutečné váhy) 100g ................................. 129 Kč
Obrovský luxusní burger "El Barrio de Ángel"
se salsou chimichurri, habaňero a omáčkou s koriandrem
Choice of various types of meat served on a special table charcoal grill Create your own parrillada "Buenos Aires" (for two persons, minimum 800g). Parrilladas are served with salsa chimichurri, habaňero and criolla.
beef fillet 100g ................................. 250 Kč
rump steak 100g ................................. 145 Kč
striploin steak with chimichurri sauce 100g ................................. 175 Kč
pork fillet 100g ................................. 110 Kč
pork ribs 250g ................................. 100 Kč
1/2 of boneless chicken 350g ................................. 210 Kč
lamb leg 100g ................................. 110 Kč
lamb ribs 250g ................................. 125 Kč
chorizo 100g ................................. 60 Kč
morcilla 100g ................................. 60 Kč
provoleta 150g ................................. 165 Kč
Skewer La Boca
Choose your own skewer "La Boca". Špízy jsou servírované se zeleninou (250g) a omáčkou chimichurri.
heart of rump 300g ................................. 500 Kč
chicken breast 300g ................................. 245 Kč
chorizo 300 ................................. 245 Kč
Pork, chicken and others
marinated in red wine and onion served with hot salsa
Pork filet
marinated in herbs and mix of Argentinian spice
marinated in Argentinian spice and lemon juice
Steak of pork
marinated in aji molido spice
Pollo "Porteňo" - ½ of boneless chicken ................................. 210 Kč
Chicken breasts "Abelardo" with skin
marinated in lemon juice and Argentinian oregano
Home-made Chorizo
(pork and beef sausage)
Home-made Morcilla
(home-made argentinean black pudding sausage)
200 ................................. 165 Kč
Cheese Provoleta with argentinean oregano ................................. 165 Kč
Homemade pasta and risotto
Spaghetti "aglio, olio e peperoncino" ................................. 150 Kč
Creamy risotto with dried tomatoes, goat cheese and fresh rucola ................................. 160 Kč
Risotto with seafood, fennel, saffron and chilli ................................. 290 Kč
with white truffle oil, wild mashrooms, spring onion and parmesan
Baked potatoes with cream ................................. 45 Kč
Fresh vegetables ................................. 65 Kč
Rice "Condorito" ................................. 40 Kč
Green beans with bacon ................................. 45 Kč
French fries ................................. 40 Kč
Creamed spinach with garlic ................................. 50 Kč
Mashrooms with lemon juice ................................. 60 Kč
Home-made bread *we recommend ................................. 35 Kč
Garlic bread ................................. 45 Kč
Grilled vegetables ................................. 65 Kč
Grilled corn on the cob ................................. 60 Kč
Grilled pineapple ................................. 60 Kč
Homemade sauces
Salsa chimichurri ................................. 40 Kč
Salsa chimichurri tradicional ................................. 40 Kč
Pepper sauce ................................. 40 Kč
Mustard sauce ................................. 40 Kč
Sauce with coriander ................................. 40 Kč
Hot pepper sauce ................................. 40 Kč
Creole sauce ................................. 40 Kč
Home-made jelly with caramel ................................. 76 Kč
Grilled pineapple with vanilla cream ................................. 76 Kč
Chocolate cake with plums and brandy ................................. 76 Kč
Vanilla créme bruleé ................................. 76 Kč
El Barrio - All Rights Reserved © 2017
HiPromotion.cz © 2017


Over the last 2+ weeks we have had company stay here with us, family and friends in for dinner and smores, and said good bye to fellow "Host's" here at Farragut. Frank and Lynn called us the other night and invited us out to their home for dinner. They've owned their home in Coeur d'Alene since the early '80's and have just finished a beautiful remodel in their kitchen. Frank is quite a "contractor" and has completed 3 different projects over the last couple of years, and has done a beautiful job doing it. We also had dinner with Larry and Pauline last week. They introduced us to a new "Italian" restaurant that I thoroughly enjoyed and then we followed that with a dinner party at The Greenbriar Inn. They have a jazz group on the weekends and with Larry and Pauline celebrating their 38th anniversary we all throught this was the right place to be.
_Then we got a call from Bonnie and Doug Rohrer. They were on their way from Mount Vernon, Washington to spend the weekend with us. We had been on their backs to get over here and finally they obliged. Having Bonnie and Doug here gave us the opportunity to have a "get together"…Bonnie, Doug, Frank, Lynn, Larry, Pauline, and Louise and I, all have something in common, we all met here in Coeur d'Alene in early 1980. We have had the opportunity to see one or the other since, but this is the first time that "all" of us have gotten together in one place for a very long time.
_and moved into our new campground "Snowberry". Snowberry is still located here at Farragut and happens to be the same campground that we hosted 2 years ago. We were here for the month of September and the first week of October but for this visit, we'll leave on the last day of September. It has, and will be, a very quick two months. Snowberry is about twice the size of Gilmore and all the sites are set into the tall evergreens. With over 3000 acres here at Farragut, we are favored with large and semi private camp sites. I've only had one camper get a little pissed at me, but all the rest have been here to have a great time. You can't win them all… Yesterday we had the largest group leave and that meant we had the largest group of campsites to clean and get ready for today…39. It took us about 4 1/2 hours and left us with some muscles we didn't know we had. To work off the sore muscles we took to the lake. Grabbing the kayak out of the back of the car, we put into Lake Pend Oreille for a couple of hours. We haven't taken the opportunity to kayak near as much as we had wanted while here but we're trying to make up for it now. This gave us another chance to paddle into Button Hook Bay and back on the other side of the bay.
_We've also been able to get into a little biking in with our hiking as well. Biking is new for us now but with a little practice we hope to expand the limits of our campground. I haven't done much biking since being a youngster and for Louise, it was even a little longer. 2 years ago, we did take a ride on the "Hiawatha Trail". That ride was on a slight downhill slant, through 5 tunnels (1 a mile long) and over 7 trestles.
__http://sites.google.com/site/brupeg/home . Peggy is a wonderful writer and Bruce, well he's a "wonderful guy"…(just kidding Bruce)…Louise and I both look up to them as leaders in our own travel adventures. Today we decided to run up to Sandpoint. We were looking for lunch and it also gave us a chance to look through town. It has been a few years since we were last there. Unfortunately the economy hasn't helped them much. Let's hope for better times. One thing that I haven't mentioned in my journals is our new find, or should I say Louise's find...Ralph's. Ralph's is a laundomat/espresso establishment in Bayview and also known to be "The Place" to get all the "dirt" that is happening in Bayview.
_There are times when I have to look toward the heavens and say "Thanks for Ralph's" when my need for a Latte hits.


text: Q: hashicorp-boundary HashiCorp Boundary, a new open source project that enables practitioners and operators to securely access dynamic hosts and services with fine-grained authorization without requiring direct network access.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
package com.amazon.example.snake.aws;

public class KinesisTaskResult {
	String attributeString = null;
	int attributeNumber;
	String errorMessage = null;

	// Getters and setters

	public String getErrorMessage() {
		return errorMessage;
	}

	public String getAttributeString() {
		return attributeString;
	}

	public void setAttributeString(String attributeString) {
		this.attributeString = attributeString;
	}

	public int getAttributeNumber() {
		return attributeNumber;
	}

	public void setAttributeNumber(Integer attributeNumber) {
		this.attributeNumber = attributeNumber;
	}

	public void setErrorMessage(String errorMessage) {
		this.errorMessage = errorMessage;
	}

}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
By Elliot
It was during my sophomore year of college that the Xbox 360 really started to take off. The original Xbox was still around, but most of my circle of friends had moved on from the previous generation of consoles to the 360 era. I don't know how it was for you, but for me and those around me we all had an Xbox 360. Playstation just didn't grab our eyes. Games like Halo had come in and changed how I played games. Halo parties, where we would take 4 Xboxes and link them together to play 16 player matches of Halo quickly became a normal Friday night. It was magical, groundbreaking, and an excuse to spend all of Friday night at a friend's house.
Then Halo 2 and with it Xbox Live. If you were around during that time, I don't need to tell you how game changing that was. If you weren't, just look around you now. Online gaming is what it is today because of Xbox Live and games like Halo 2. Gone were the Friday nights at a friends house. Here to stay were the long nights, next to the blue glow of a screen with a headset on, talking about how garbage the person on the other end of the microphone was; and what you wanted to do to their mom.
Online games got better too, and quickly. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare was one of those games. Just about everyone had that 4th Call of Duty game. My roommate and I would find ourselves coming home from class in the evening, logging into our school's internet. On campus we were able to play with anyone else that had a 360. Hours upon hours would be spent playing Modern Warfare with other people who lived on campus.
Then came games like World at War, Modern Warfare 2 (the best in the series), and Black Ops. Each one bigger, and arguably, better than the last. And like anything, when you release a new version of the same thing year after year, you get diminishing returns. Unless your Apple, people will still buy the same phone every year, whole sucker being born everyday with that one, I guess.
It's to the point now where most people don't even bat an eye at the new Fall release of Call of Duty. I haven't really noticed them the past few years. There are quite a few shooter games out these days, the most popular ones seem to be battle royales. I've moved on from my college days, and with that my love of the shooter has dwindled, and Call of Duty is no longer on my gaming radar.
That was until this year, and a new free to play version, Call of Duty Mobile (COD Mobile) has been released. Releasing on October 1st of 2019, 24 days before the actual "big" release of this year's main game, a remake/reboot/rehash of Modern Warfare; it's here to tide you over till then. And to be honest, I'm kinda sold on it.
I don't think shooters work well on mobile phones. I even have a hard time with shooters and controllers. Once you make that switch to PC it's hard to argue that shooters can be better on anything else. Disagree? I don't care, your opinion is invalid, because I am not capable of rational thought. Is anyone even reading this? Let me know.
Booting up the game was pretty simple, and much like other games of this nature you are immediately greeted with a login screen, please connect to social media before playing, so we can spam posts into your feed in an attempt to trick your friends into playing as well. Also, agree to our terms of service, it's legit, and I'm sure they're not collecting data to sell to other companies…
After all of that you go right into a training mode. I was playing on an Iphone 8, so not the biggest screen, I found the type to be a little small, maybe it's my age, but I just kept pushing the button the game highlighted, trying to get through the tutorial. I know I'm poo pooing on it but the tutorial really was simple, and effective. One of the things I do like about this game is how they handle the controls. You can be basic, which is what I went with, after all I am basic. This mode does the shooting for you when you have someone in your cross-hairs, you use the left half of the screen to move your character forward/backward, the right half to move the cross-hair, almost like having two analog sticks. It doesn't matter where you put your finger on the screen, as long as it's on that half of the screen, it will work. And, it works well. I would play more mobile shooters if this was the method they used.
Like most of these types of games, it is filled to the brim with micro transactions, loot boxes, and battle passes. I COD Mobile has this in spades, no exception here. I don't know what I can say that would be new to add to this discussion. Not a big fan, I get games need to make a profit to justify their existence. It's here, it's pretty standard, in your face, constant barrage as you are just trying to play. No one really likes it, I've said enough.
There is a battle royale (BR) mode here as well. I did not play the last Call of Duty, Black Ops 4, but I know there was a BR mode to that as well, and it was well received for the most part. The one on Mobile requires you to reach level 7 in order to partake, makes sense, learn a little about the game before you actually go in. Level 7 took almost no time at all to get to. I found the battle royal not as fun as the normal run and gun death match. The BR took too long, and it really seemed as though I was always playing against the computer.
At least on initial release I found that I was playing against the computer more often than against actual people. It was very noticeable when I was playing against people vs the computer, I usually lose when playing against other people, I'm a terrible old man. My team would clean house when we were playing against the computer, and it took away from my fun, I could care less about being able to beat some bad AI.
You can add you friends, and there are clans that you can enjoy. Playing with your friends isn't hard to do, and does add to the enjoyment. The voice chat isn't great, but for a mobile phone game it is better than some other options. Thankfully there were not a pile of nasty teenage boys screaming, the only time I heard people talk was when I was playing with friends.
Like most mobile games, ads are everywhere. Every time you log back into the game you are bombarded, and of course the buy button is three times the size of the close button. I found it bothersome, but not surprising. I could easily see how a child, or manchild could click the buy button by accident. User beware.
Overall for mobile first person shooters this is the best one I've tried. But let's not forget that this is a FPS on a mobile phone. This just isn't a genre that belongs on a phone. If you must, then have at it, but I would rather spend my time on other games.
You can listen to our episode on Call of Duty Mobile on Anchor, or wherever you find your podcasts.
Elliot is a part of the weekly Budget Arcade podcast. Find him on Twitter at @Elliot_Argues You can also find his other podcasts; Tessa and Elliot Argue, and Wall Pull where you find podcasts.
Labels: Android, Budget Arcade, free to play, Iphone, multiplayer, Podcast, Review, Video Game


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Home » World » S. Arabia, UAE, Egypt and Bahrain cut diplomatic ties with Qatar over terrorism
S. Arabia, UAE, Egypt and Bahrain cut diplomatic ties with Qatar over 'terrorism'
World5 Jun 2017 6:22 AM GMTby Arun Mishra
Riyadh [Saudi Arabia] : Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Bahrain have broken off diplomatic relations and all land sea and air contacts with fellow Gulf Arab state Qatar over allegations that the latter is encouraging terrorism and extremism.
Riyadh has accused Qatar of backing terrorism and extremism, while Bahrain has charged Qatar with interfering in it internal affairs.
Saudi Arabia had decided to sever diplomatic and consular relations with Qatar "proceeding from the exercise of its sovereign right guaranteed by international law and the protection of national security from the dangers of terrorism and extremism,"The Guardian has reported.
Saudi Arabia said the move was necessary to protect the kingdom from what it described as terrorism and extremism.
Bahrain's foreign affairs ministry issued a statement that it would withdraw its diplomatic mission from Doha within 48 hours and that all Qatari diplomats should leave Bahrain within the same period.
The ministry's statement said Qatari citizens needed to leave Bahrain within two weeks and that air and sea traffic between the two countries would be halted. It wasn't immediately clear how that would affect Qatar Airways, one of the region's major long-haul carriers.
(ANI)
Tags: Saudi arabia UAE Egypt Bahrain terrorism Yemen Bahrain Qatar ties


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OPPO A15 Camera Details Revealed; OPPO A15s Could Also be Coming Soon
by Anvinraj Valiyathara October 8, 2020 October 8, 2020 0
OPPO has recently started teasing the arrival of the OPPO A15 smartphone in India. The handset has a promo page on the Amazon India website. The launch date of the phone is not revealed yet, but it is likely to go on sale through the upcoming Great Indian Sale that is set to begin on the retailer site on Oct. 17. The landing page of the phone on the retailer site is now updated with new information its rear cameras.
The Chinese manufacturer has revealed that the OPPO A15 is equipped with a triple camera system on its rear. It comprises of a 13-megapixel main shooter, a 2-megapixel macro lens, a 2-megapixel depth sensor, and an LED flash. These are housed inside a square-shaped module placed at the top-left corner of the device.
OPPO A15 rear cameras
The rear side of the OPPO A15 is also equipped with a traditional fingerprint scanner. The other details of the smartphone are expected to be officially confirmed in the coming days. Some of the key specs of the device are already known through its FCC certification.
The FCC listing of the OPPO A15 revealed that the device has a CPH2185 model number and it houses a 4,230mAh battery with 10W charging support. The handset will offer users with connectivity ports such as a 3.5mm audio jack and a USB-C port.
Apart from India, the OPPO A15 is also expected to arrive in Thailand, Indonesia, and Europe since it has bagged vital certifications in these markets. A tipster recently revealed the existence of what appears to be a variant of the OPPO A15. The device is dubbed as the OPPO A15s and it has received approval from ECC and IMDA (Singapore) authorities. There is no information available on the specs of the OPPO A15s handset.
Qualcomm will reportedly partner with ASUS to develop its own gaming smartphones
Redmi General Manager Hints Arrival of New Devices This Month; New Redmi K30 Series Phones Speculated


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Home » News » Hyderabad's Greenko to Set Up Pumped Storage Project of 11 GWh in Madhya Pradesh
Hyderabad's Greenko to Set Up Pumped Storage Project of 11 GWh in Madhya Pradesh
By Saur News Bureau/ Updated On Tue, Jan 10th, 2023
At present, the firm delves into both wind and solar of capacity of more than 500 MW. These are spread across various districts of Madhya Pradesh.
Greenko has been setting its sights on large energy storage projects. Recently last year, Greenko emerged as the lowest bidder by a significant margin for NTPC Renewable Energy's auction to set up interstate transmission system (ISTS)-connected energy storage systems of 3,000 MWh capacity.
Hyderabad-based clean energy firm Greenko Group is set to invest Rs 10,000 crores in a Pumped Storage Project (PSP). The storage project is to be established near Gandhi Sagar in the Neemuch district of Madhya Pradesh. At present, the firm delves into both wind and solar of capacity of more than 500 MW. These are spread across various districts of Madhya Pradesh.
The pumped storage project will boast of a daily storage capacity of 11 GWh (Gigawatt hours) and will store infirm renewable electricity when the demand hours are leans. It will be despatched later to aid the state's growing peak power demand, thereby promising cost savings.
In addition to meeting demand, the project will help Madhya Pradesh with its its statutory RPO (Renewable Power Obligation) while also helping the state meet its notified ESO (Energy Storage Obligation) targets.
The said project will create employment opportunities for more than 4,000 people. Greenko currently operates wind and solar of over 500 MW capacities, across five districts of Madhya Pradesh. To be commissioned in December 2024, the said project will be ISTS network-connected.
Greenko has been setting its sights on large energy storage projects. Recently last year, Greenko emerged as the lowest bidder by a significant margin for NTPC Renewable Energy's auction to set up interstate transmission system (ISTS)-connected energy storage systems of 3,000 MWh capacity with a minimum of 500 MW capacity to be installed pan India. The firm also recently launched India's first integrated green energy storage project, whereby solutions will be accessed though a cloud based platform for users who consume energy on large scale such as firms and DISCOMs.
Madhya Pradesh has also been increasingly focussed on accelerating its renewable energy share and is fast-emerging as a renewable hotspot. Amazon also set up its hybrid project in Madhya Pradesh. In October 2022, the state announced that it is looking at RE investments worth 50000 Cr by 2027.
Tags: 11 GWh, Discoms, Energy Storage Obligation, Greenko, India's first integrated green energy storage project, ISTS, Madhya Pradesh, Peak Power Demand, Pumped Storage Project, RE investments, Renewable Power Obligation


Captivating drivers with alluring style, versatile practicality and gas sipping efficiency! Nissan prioritized comfort and style by including: tilt and telescoping steering wheel, cruise control, and a split folding rear seat. Smooth gearshifts are achieved thanks to the efficient 4 cylinder engine, and for added security, dynamic Stability Control supplements the drivetrain.


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A suburban ballet student moves to Chicago, where she's introduced to hip-hop culture at her inner-city high school and explores interracial romance.
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2:31 Save The Last Dance
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Pilot Season: Sean Patrick Thomas Joins the CW's The Selection
Sean Patrick Thomas has been cast on the CW pilot The Selection, according to The Hollywood Reporter. CW's The Selection finds its Prince in Ethan Peck
Wed, Feb 29, 2012
The O.C. This episode is called...
The O.C. This episode is called "The Cliffhanger," and a tequila-filled Johnny falls off a cliff at the end of the episode, so we won't know what becomes of him until next week. I get it. Thanks for asking me to wait until the last 10 minutes, Fox promo department! It was worth the wait. Or not. But I did rather enjoy Ryan telling Marissa he doesn't want to see her until she works out this whole Johnny whatever-it-is. I also enjoyed an actual conversation between Marissa and (yes) Kaitlin. It's the one where li'l sis talked about her big sis and used some sort of ice-cream analogy. The ice-cream talk had me thinkin' a pint of butter pecan needs to be in my very near future. That is if stonerSeth doesn't get to it first. Being overly emotional watching the teen "tearjerker"
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Home Others Politics ELECTION WATCH: Pulse Asia releases latest nationwide survey results conducted December 1-6,...
ELECTION WATCH: Pulse Asia releases latest nationwide survey results conducted December 1-6, 2021
Pulse Asia Research, Inc. has released last December 22 its findings from its latest Ulat ng Bayan national survey conducted December 1 – 6, 2021 using face-to-face interviews on the May 2022 Elections.
Accordingly, the latest nationwide survey is based on a sample of 2,400 respondents aged 18 years old and above with a ± 2% error margin at 95% confidence level.
With around five (5) months to go before the May 2022 elections, former Senator Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos, Jr. enjoys the support of 53% of Filipino adults. He led in all geographic areas and socio-economic classes, majorities in Metro Manila (61%), the rest of Luzon (51%), Mindanao (64%), Class ABC (53%), and Class D (54%). See Table 1 below.
In 2nd place is Vice-President Maria Leonor "Leni" G. Robredo, who has a voter preference of 20%. Manila Mayor Francisco "Isko Moreno" Domagoso (8%), Senator Emmanuel "Manny" Pacquiao (8%), and Senator Panfilo "Ping" Lacson (6%) follow next.
The said survey also had Francisco "Isko Moreno" Domagoso leading with 23% as their presidential choice should their original pick for president end up not pursuing his/her candidacy. Sharing 2nd place in terms of second-choice voting figures are Senator Panfilo "Ping" Lacson (17%) and Vice-President Leonor "Leni" Robredo (14%) while in 3rd place are Senator Manny Pacquiao (11%) and former Senator Ferdinand Bongbong Marcos, Jr. (11%). See Table 2 below..
Meanwhile, Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte leads the survey for vice-president with 45% followed by Senate President Vicente "Tito" Sotto III with 31%. Senator Francis "Kiko" Pangilinan was a far third with 12%. Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte got a clear voter preference in Mindanao (82%) and in Metro Manila (45%). See Table 3 below.
On the other hand, Senate President Vicente "Tito" Sotto III topped the highest second-choice voting preference (32%) should their original choice would not continue his/her candidacy for vice president. Second place is shared by Senator Francis "Kiko" Pangilinan (16%) and Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte (13%). See Table 4 below.
In the senatorial race, among the 48 candidates included in the senatorial list for the present survey, 14 have a statistical chance of winning with Taguig City-Pateros Representative Alan Peter Cayetano in 1st place with 64.1%. Trailing him in 2nd place is Mr. Raffy Tulfo (60.0%) and Antique Representative Loren Legarda (58.7%), who share 2nd to 3rd places. Sorsogon Governor Francis "Chiz" Escudero has the support of 53.9% of voters, which equates to a statistical ranking of 4th to 5th places. Completing the top half of probable winners are former Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) Secretary Mark Villar (51.3%, 4th to 6th places) and Senator Juan Miguel Zubiri (49.5%, 5th to 6th places). See Table 6 below.
Finding themselves in the bottom half of those with a statistical chance of winning in next year's senatorial election are: (1) former Vice-President Jejomar "Jojo" Binay (44.7%, 7th to 8th places); (2) Senator Joel Villanueva (41.6%, 7th to 9th places); (3) Senator Sherwin Gatchalian (40.1%, 8th to 9th places); (4) President Rodrigo Duterte (35.8%, 10th to 14th places); (5) Mr. Robin Padilla (35.6%, 10th to 14th places); (6) Senator Risa Hontiveros (35.5%, 10th to 14th places); (7) former Senator Jinggoy Estrada (34.4%, 10th to 14th places); and (8) former Senator JV Estrada Ejercito (32.1%, 10th to 15th places).
Read more details in the link below.
December 2021 Nationwide Survey on the May 2022 Elections
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Red No 8 from a series of 12 red abstract paintings based on silence and the multitude of emotions it can bring, from the very awkward to feelings of pure bliss.
Ships in a cardboard box and ready to hang from United Kingdom. Credit card, bank transfer and PayPal accepted.


All abstracts and posters should be written in English, and should be submitted in time.
All contributions must be original (i.e. not been published elsewhere), follow academic writing, structure and methodology. Submissions will be blind-refereed by at least two anonymous reviewers who will decide whether the proposed abstracts will be accepted or not. Following the acceptance of the abstract, the author(s) will be provided with specific guidelines for the submission of a full paper to an academic journal of those respresented at the Congress.


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Salarabad (, also Romanized as Sālārābād) is a village in Howmeh Rural District, in the Central District of Behbahan County, Khuzestan Province, Iran. At the 2006 census, its population was 513, in 89 families.

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Populated places in Behbahan County


The city will announce Tuesday an expanded grassroots campaign to fight the growing number of discrimination and bias attacks that have taken place in New York recently.
The city's Commission on Human Rights said there has been a 30 percent increase in reported hate crimes this year, especially against Muslim, Jewish, LGBTQ and other minority New Yorkers.
Carmelyn Malalis, the commission's chair, said she and her team will expand the agency's anti-discrimination hotline and create a "bias response team" that will directly respond to reported incidents.
[The commission] "is using every resource at its disposal to inform people of their rights and encourage them to report acts of bias and discrimination," she said in a statement.
The hotline, 718-722-3131, will now have 10 people, double its current amount, who will document bias complaints and inform callers about their rights. Since Election Day, the hotline has received 30 to 50 calls a day, according to Malalis.
The commission will also hit the streets to provide assistance to victims of bias incidents in person. Ten members of the new team will be stationed throughout the five boroughs and reach victims of bias attacks or discrimination based on tips and referrals from the NYPD, New Yorkers and other sources.
The team will inform the victims about their options and encourage them to file a discrimination complaint with the commission.
"We've been doing this before, but now we'll be able to get to people faster," said Seth Hoy, a spokesman for the commission.
The team members will also reach out to community members where bias incidents take place and inform them about the laws that protect New Yorkers.
Human Rights Commission members will kick off their expanded programs Tuesday morning along with other city agencies and several City Council members, such as Rosie Mendez and Brad Lander. The groups will be at subway stations throughout the city to distribute brochures that have a fact sheet on discriminatory harassment and religious protections.


I was wrong. And because it never happens I'll go ahead and admit it. This time.
Mind you, I could've gotten away with never owning up to it, as I never wrote about the reservations I had about going to Italy. But you've stuck with me this far, and so I cannot tell a lie.
So, to be honest I kind of dreaded going to Italy. After my experiences in Belgium I didn't like the idea of going somewhere that was known for not being accomodating to English. My reservations were totally misguided. While there's been many times I've have to use a make-shift sign language (like dramatically acting out putting on and taking off a heavy backpack then turning a lock- to ask for a "left luggage" service) for the most part everyone's been proficient enough in English to help me with what I need, or were friendly, creative, and patient enough to play charades. On top of that, Italy (minus Milan which you already know I'm not a fan of) has been absolutely gorgeous and full of wonderful people.
I'm so glad to be out of Florence.
Don't get me wrong, I loved Florence; it's my favorite sized for a city. After two days I can already instruct tourists on where to go and give directions- which feels great. My favorite cities are ones I can do that in two or three days. But the litter of tourists quickly became unbearable.
So Lavanto is just a little town, but on the Riviera there are 4 other small cities, all along the coast- and all gorgeous. Unfortunately, all but one or two are closed because of some sort of rockslide, but more on that later.
In fact, I wrote this at dinner then went out on the beach and wandered around 'til I found an open bar... where I ordered wine and only had a 2€ coin (it cost 4€) but he gave it to me instead of breaking my 20.
PS, the little tripod truck is becoming increasingly common, there was at least 4 in that little parking lot. And that delicious food is gnocchi, with tomato and basil sauce... oh my God. Amazing. Top 3 favorite meals of Europe.


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One Nation Under God
Vatican: The Holy See
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Our family lives near a cemetery area bordering the western edge of the Archdiocese of Chicago. The area was once remote, but with urban sprawl the area now lies now in a population center. On one side of busy Roosevelt Road is Mount Carmel Cemetery, the place where Chicago's Catholic cardinals are buried. It's also the final stop for notorious mobster Al Capone. Death can bring us together in a way that life does not.
On the other side of the road is Queen of Heaven Cemetery, where section after section is dotted with the gravestones of people who came and went with little, if any, notice. But section 18 is different. There lie 25 people, their graves marked by a common monument. Another 68 could be with them in body, and probably are with them in spirit. Their notoriety came with their deaths on perhaps the saddest day in Chicago history.
December 1, 1958 was a typical Chicago day being lived out in a typical Chicago neighborhood. The neighborhood was filled with Italians, Irish, and Poles, working class Catholics who sent their kids to the local parish school. Like many others of its time, Our Lady of the Angels School was crowded. The baby-boomers were being educated, and the Archdiocese educated so many of them. Those boomers were often educated in decades old buildings operating under an equally old building code. OLA's classrooms, corridors and stairwells were heavily wooded. As many as thirteen layers paint and varnish had been applied to ceilings, walls and floors. There were few fire doors and no sprinklers. The fire alarms were not linked to the fire department.
As students and teachers were finishing their work that day, something was happening in a basement stairwell. A trashcan was burning. Tremendous heat built under the stairwell until it broke a nearby window, fanning the fire up stairwells and into the ceilings under the roof. Just below were six second-floor classrooms with 329 kids and six nuns. In minutes superheated heavy black smoke closely followed by fire filled the second floor corridor and cut off their escape paths. The fire was out of control before anyone knew what was happening.
What followed was a daytime nightmare. Firefighters were called too late to check the advance. Horrified parents and neighbors watched and listened as kids climbed over each other to reach second floor windows – the only way out. "Help! Help! Save us! Save us!" they screamed. Panicked children jumped 25 feet, breaking legs, spines, and skulls. Their broken bodies piled one on another. Parents brought ladders, only to realize that they were too short. A father unable to reach his son watched him die. When firefighters arrived, a locked gate blocked their trucks. They scrambled up ladders and began to pull the pleading kids down as quickly as possible. There were so many that they only had time to drop some. Then time ran out. The roof collapsed on filled classrooms, turning kids into torches. One room exploded in flame. As a fireman watched, screaming children pressed against the windows sills just inches from him instantly folded. Experienced firefighters who thought they had seen it all wept and vomited at the sight of unrecognizable, charred, even fused children, some carried away in pieces.
The suffering has continued long after the fire was doused. Burned and broken children, many still living, were physically and emotionally scarred. Their parents were forced to carry the heartache of loss and the regret of sending their kids to school. Even the children safely escaping the fire didn't escape with everything. They lost their childhood that day.
Now 52 years after the OLA fire, another fire rages out of control. On January 22, 1973, our country legalized the killing of the innocents. The death toll has reached 53 million unborn babies. They have not been gathered into a final resting place marked with a fitting monument. Most of their dismembered bodies were flushed down a toilet or dropped into a disposal. Their survivors live totally shattered lives filled with guilt, regret, anger, and self-abuse. Yet as a culture, we have become oblivious to it all.
On January 22, hundreds of thousands will converge on Washington D.C. for the annual March for Life. But not everyone can be there. So the bishops have proclaimed January 22 as a day of "penance for violations to the dignity of the human person committed through acts of abortion, and of prayer for the full restoration of the legal guarantee of the right to life." The intended focus is on the unborn. Sadly, in some parishes the day will go unmarked. In others its message will be diluted with talk of other social concerns, and worse, even distorted. One local church bulletin published a supposed pro-life litany trying to distinguish "pro-birth" from "pro-life." In our apathy and lack of focus, we have closed our ears to the screams.
So perhaps we should remember Jonah's march through Nineveh proclaiming that in 40 more days the wicked city will be destroyed. Realizing their predicament, the king and the people proclaimed a penitential fast and changed their ways. Since ancient times, fasting has provided great spiritual benefit. By denying ourselves food, we become more disposed to listen to God's word and more mindful of the needs of our brothers and sister. It's no surprise that in our self-indulgence we have given up fasting. It may be no coincidence that our culture has been sliding ever since.
We as Church should proclaim a penitential fast to end legal abortion, a weekly fast that we may hear God's word and that He may forgive us for allowing legal abortion to continue. It is a fast long overdue. Who knows? Maybe we will again hear the screams for help.
And do something about it.
Paul V. Esposito is a Catholic lawyer who writes on a variety of pro-life topics. He and his wife Kathy live in Elmhurst, Illinois, where they raise their six kids.
© Paul V. Esposito 2011. Culture of Life. Permission to copy and distribute for pro-life purposes is granted. Comments? Visit us at http://www.the-culture-of-life.com/
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© 2008 Paul V. Esposito