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Defending Champion Ariya Jutanugarn of Thailand is back to defend her title in the girls' division, but an extremely strong field of girls' are sure to make it difficult to repeat; while an elite field has assembled in the boys' division at the 37th Junior PGA Championship presented by Under Armour and Heritage Food Service Group, July 31-Aug. 3, at Sycamore Hills Golf Club in Fort Wayne, Ind.
"We have an outstanding field of juniors in both divisions once again," said PGA of America President Allen Wronowski. "It will be exciting to see the next generation of golfers competing at a spectacular venue for a junior major championship and spots on our 2012 U.S. Junior Ryder Cup Team."
The 72-hole Championship will feature a 54-hole cut to the low 30 boys and 30 girls, including ties. Each year the field includes past winners of the Championship, PGA Junior Series event champions, PGA Section winners, many of Polo Golf and Golfweek's top-ranked players, and selected national junior tournament winners.
Headlining the girls' field, alongside Jutanugarn, will be her sister Moriya, who is ranked third in Golfweek's Junior Rankings.
Moriya recently competed in the 2012 U.S. Women's Open and won the 2012 Scott Robertson Memorial in May.
Eight of the top-10 players in the girls' Golfweek Junior Rankings are scheduled to compete.
They include: Ashlan Ramsey of Milledgeville, Ga.; Alison Lee of Valencia, Calif.; Karen Chung of Livingston, N.J.; Casie Cathrea of Livermore, Calif.; Esther Lee of Los Alamitos, Calif.; and Gabriella Then of Rancho Cucamonga, Calif. Cathrea, who is competing in her third Junior PGA Championship, finished tied for fifth place in 2011 and alone in eighth place in 2010.
Casey Danielson of Osceola, Wis., who finished third in the 2011 Junior PGA Championship and is ranked eighth in the Polo Golf Rankings, is also scheduled to compete for the Patty Berg Trophy.
The boys' division will be headlined in 2012 by Beau Hossler of Rancho Santa Margarita, Calif., who has competed in the last two U.S. Open Championships, finishing in a tie for 29th in June.
Hossler, who entered the final round of the 2012 U.S. Open tied for eighth place overall, finished in a tie for seventh in the 2011 Junior PGA Championship. Joining Hossler at Sycamore Hills will be eight of the top-20 players in the Polo Golf Rankings, including Adam Wood of Zionsville, Ind.; Parker Derby of Columbus, Ga.; and Doug Ghim of Arlington Heights, Ill.; who are ranked eighth, ninth and 11th, respectively.
The field also includes the top-5 players in the Golfweek Junior Rankings, who are members of the 2013 high school graduating class.
Ghim recently competed in the 2012 Ryder Cup Junior Academy that is designed to provide aspiring young players an opportunity to experience an elite player development academy.
Participants were given expert instruction from past U.S. Ryder Cup Captains and award-winning PGA Professionals, July 1-8, at PGA Village in Port St. Lucie, Fla.
Also competing for the Jack Nicklaus Trophy in Fort Wayne is Jim Liu of Smithtown, N.Y., the only member of the 2012 Junior PGA Championship field to have competed on the winning 2010 U.S. Junior Ryder Cup Team. Liu will be making his first appearance in the Championship, after qualifying for the 2010 U.S. Junior Ryder Cup Team by winning the 2010 U.S. Junior Amateur.
In addition to playing for a Championship title, players will attempt to earn spots on the 2012 U.S. Junior Ryder Cup Team.
The United States Team, comprised of six boys and six girls who are U.S. citizens and graduating high school in 2013, or younger, will face a European squad of junior golfers, Sept. 24-25, at Olympia Fields (Ill.) Country Club.
The Champion and runner-up in both the boys' and girls' divisions in 2012 earn an automatic spot on the 2012 U.S. Junior Ryder Cup Team.
Golf Channel will present a one-hour highlight show of the 37th Junior PGA Championship, with the first airing on Monday, Sept. 17 at 8 p.m. ET. Begun in 1976, the Junior PGA Championship has traditionally produced unforgettable golf performances and brings together the best junior golfers from around the country to compete for the Jack Nicklaus Trophy in the boys' division and the Patty Berg Trophy in the girls' division.


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Bulungula Lodge
"Spectacular...something very special... should be on your must-do list."
Second Best Eco-lodge in the World
Ethical Travel Award: Worldwide runner-up
"One of the World's Top 25 Ultimate Ethical Travel Experiences"
One of the first lodges in the world to be Fair Trade accredited.
Contact us:
within South Africa: 047 577 8900
Click here
for the Bulungula map (driving directions)
Why you should come to Bulungula
The Bulungula Lodge is the realisation of a dream dreamt during years of travels through the most remote parts of Africa, China and South America: to create an eco-friendly backpackers lodge in the most beautiful place in South Africa, owned and managed by a vibrant, traditional community.
The lodge is situated in the most beautiful location of any lodge in South Africa - on the breathtaking Wild Coast. Have a look at the photo's. Beach, forest, lagoon, rolling hills, dolphins, whales, you name it. The sky is so clear, we guarantee shooting stars – look at the night's sky for half an hour without seeing one, and you stay that night free.
We run on solar power, our rocket showers are legendary and our 10 huts have been positioned for great sea and forest views. Sarah, our artist friend from London, spent 9 months creating a visual spectacle – each hut has been theme painted and our odourless compost toilets are the most colourful in Africa.The community of Nqileni village owns 100% of the lodge and is an integral part of daily life here. No fences, no crime, no beggars, no hassles, just friendly smiles. Take a walk around the village at any time of the day or night and you'll be invited into the mud huts for a drink and a chat.
During the day you can wander around the village – with or without a guide – or you can chill out in our hammocks or on the beach. Our music collection is superb and aims to introduce guests to new and old pan-African sounds as well as eclectic chillout vibes. Girls can head off with the village women for a crazy day of face painting, brick-making, maize stamping, traditional food preparation, beer brewing and firewood collecting. Local fishermen will show you how to catch fish with throw nets, catch crayfish and octopus by hand and to make your own fishing rod from wood and wire. Zameka will lead you on your journeys through the village and local culture. We have a lot of wise old people in the village who have seen it all and have amazing stories to tell. Go meet uTata Ntsundu, the elder who can tell you anything you want to know about the history of the area… despite having children who are now pensioners, he still remembers everything. Or maybe you want to wander through the beautiful indigenous forest with Mel'dinga, the traditional herbalist, and learn about the weird and wonderful natural remedies found here. Nolamete, the sangoma/igqirha, is always the first to laugh, and will beat the drum into oblivion after a few jugs of Umqombothi beer. Weekends are merry – it seems every second hut has brewed beer and you won't escape without trying some. And if you're here mid-month you will have crazy fun in the village at the traditional, two-day uHube party - where you'll definitely learn some new dance moves.
The community offer canoe trips up the beautiful Xhora River where kamikaze fish may jump into your boat and Malachite kingfishers hunt in the forested cliffs upstream. You will also see the ancient cycad trees, relics from the dinosaur era. All this with a cooler box of beers... If canoeing is not your thing, you can also explore the village and gallop along the beach on horseback.
But don't take our word for it, click here to see what other travellers
Why you shouldn't come to Bulungula
If you are on a whistle-stop tour ticking off locations on your list in a mad rush to "do" South Africa in ten days, then you're probably not going to be able to fit us in on your hectic mission. It is not worth coming here for just 1 night. We believe travelling is about immersing yourself in new experiences and being open to the possibility that you'll click with a place and stay for a week or more. If your time is very limited, rather spend more time at fewer places.
As we have become more well-known over the years, we have noticed that occasionally we have guests who choose to ignore all our descriptions of what Bulungula is and how we are a part of a traditional Xhosa community in a remote village. These guests choose Bulungula after merely looking at the price and the proximity to the beautiful beach and then are unhappy (which makes us unhappy) when they find that Bulungula is not a resort with a fence with the locals on the outside and the guests on the inside. Bulungula is an integrated space where you'll sometimes find yourself sharing common areas with members of our community who may not speak English but are friendly and interesting (there'll always be a manager around who can translate if necessary). So please take the time to read through this website and make sure that we are offering the vibe you're looking for. This is not an old-style, white South African beach resort.
Obviously racists, sexists and other negative people are not welcome at all.
Getting Here
As the Lonely Planet says, we "overlook one of the most spectacular and remote beaches on the Wild Coast [and the lodge is] something very special, and should be on your must-do list, but getting there is a mission".
Paradise is by definition hard to get to, but we reckon it's a fun mission. Which ever way you choose to travel, please call us the day before to let us know.
SELF-DRIVE (click here for map): it is possible to drive to the lodge with any car. Please note that the last 30km is bumpy gravel/dirt road, but normal two-wheel drive vehicles come to Bulungula on this road every day. This road is in poor condition but if you drive slowly, anyone can arrive and leave in a normal small car even if it's raining. We do however occasionally get guests who freak out about the condition of the road, while on the same day a mom and her young child have no complaints... so it is hard to know how to describe our road other than that it is driveable. (For those have been here before, it is the same as it's always been, except that now the road comes all the way into the village.) Please print our map and measure your kilometers carefully and make sure you get here well before dark otherwise it is easy to miss the landmarks given in our directions. (If you choose to use Google Maps navigation, please first navigate to Zithulele Hospital and then 15km BEFORE the hospital begin navigating to Bulungula Lodge.) The road ends at our parking area which is 5 min/500m walk away from the lodge. Parking costs R15 per car per night.
PLANE TO MTHATHA: SAA flies directly from Johannesburg to Mthatha daily and from Port Elizabeth to Mthatha once a week (book well in advance to get cheaper seats). There is a new low-cost airline flying between Johannesburg and Mthatha called Blue Crane. Click here for their website. You must catch a flight that gets to Mthatha before 3pm so you can catch our shuttle (Tue, Thur, Fri and Sunday) or alternatively you can hire a car at Mthatha Airport (Avis, First Car Rental and Europcar) and drive to our parking area.
PLANE TO EAST LONDON: SAA flies to East London from Cape Town and Joburg. FlySafAir is the best budget airline flying to East London from both Cape Town and Johannesburg. Kulula (budget airline) flies from Joburg to East London too. From East London Airport you can either hire a car (we recommend Around About Cars and Argus Car Hire which are cheap and have unlimited kilometres) or you can catch the Airport Shuttle (Tel: 082 569 3599) to the East London bus station where you can catch a Greyhound or Translux bus (these depart EL at 12pm) to Mthatha where our shuttle collects on Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Sundays from the Shell Ultra City at 3pm.
MTHATHA SHUTTLE: Our shuttle collects from the Mthatha Shell Ultra City (Baz Bus, Translux and Greyhound bus stop) at 3pm on Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Sundays. You MUST call us the day before to book your seat and thus ensure that the shuttle is sent to fetch you. The shuttle costs R80 per person. If you are coming from Coffee Bay please call us the day before for shuttle arrangements - we will collect you from the Bulungula/Coffee Bay turn-off (called Lutubeni) so you don't need to go all the way back to Mthatha.
HIKING: You can hike the stunning coastal route from Coffee Bay to Bulungula over two fairly easy days - overnighting in Lubanzi at the backpackers or the homestay). We will transfer your bags free of charge from Coffee Bay to Bulungula, so you only need to carry an overnight bag. Please email us for details and costs.
LOCAL TRANSPORT: We believe that most backpackers in South Africa are missing out by not travelling around the country on local transport. Not only are minibuses and non-tourist buses much cheaper and quicker but they are also often the best way to meet interesting people and to learn about local culture. We recommend a crowded bakkie taxi filled with people, chickens, groceries and laughs over luxury transport any day. Coming by local transport is definitely the best way to appreciate the unique location of the lodge (read a travel story about this journey here). In fact, anyone who arrives at the lodge by local transport from Mthatha gets the first night free.
Please take the following precautions when using minibus/bakkie taxis:
If you want the cheapest and quickest way to get to Mthatha from Cape Town, take the DMJ Transport bus from the main Cape Town bus station (the DMJ office is next to the Greyhound office). The bus is as luxurious as the Greyhound (toilet, video, drinks, etc), costs R350, takes only 13 hours (it uses a much shorter route than Greyhound/Translux) and on your return to Cape Town they drop you at the door of your lodge/house for free. (Tel: 021 419 4368). The only down side with coming to Bulungula on the DMJ bus is that it gets into Mthatha at around 9am while our shuttle only leaves Mthatha at 3pm... a long wait... (wait in the Wimpy in the shopping centre at the bus stop). Therefore, if you come by DMJ the best bet is to continue on local transport (minibuses) all the way to Bulungula (and get your first night free).
How much
For accommodation, we have 5 beautifully decorated huts with 4-6 beds and 5 beautiful huts with double beds (or 2 single beds). They all have bedding and beautiful views. We also have accommodation in lux safari tents which are on wooden platforms in the forest (most have sea views) and have a double bed or 2 single beds with bedding and an electric light... you can watch the dolphins from your bed!
We fully cater for 3 meals a day at very reasonable prices: we cook excellent meat and veggie options every day. Our menu:
BREAKFAST: Cereals/porridge (R30), cooked breakfasts (R55).
LUNCH: monster toasted sandwiches (R35) and Xhosa traditional lunch (R50).
DINNER/SUPPER: (all include side salad and cost R75): Malay Chicken Curry with Rotis, Lamb & Butternut Bredie, Cape Malay Bobotie with Yellow Rice, Swiss-style Alplermacaroni (a la Wood 'n' Spoon restaurant in Port St Johns), Sausage Stew with Umngqusho, Thai Green Chicken Curry, Fish & Veggie Frikkadels with Dhal... Delicious!!
DESSERT: we have some wonderful desserts baked fresh daily including Sticky Toffee Malva Pudding, Tipsy Tart, Chocolate Cake, Apple Crumble and Peach Cake all served with either cream, hot custard or ice cream (all R22).
BAR: our bar stocks beers, ciders, cold drinks, wine and some spirits. There is also munchie food: chips/crisps, chocolates, biscuits as well as cigarettes.
For self-caterers, there is only a very basic spaza shop nearby, so it's best to bring supplies with you but please leave as much packaging behind at the shop as possible. Also, there is limited fridge space, so please bring as few perishables as possible or bring a cooler box with ice.
What to bring
The only things you need to bring other than the obvious is a towel, a torch, a raincoat in the rainy season and a smile.
Community Action
We have helped the community start a number of 100% community-owned and run businesses including horseriding, canoeing, fishing, guiding, baking, sewing, cooking, wood-carving and environmental protection projects. We have helped some women in the village start the now legendary iLanga Fire Restaurant with the best sweet and savoury pancakes in Africa. Two women from the village have been professionally trained as masseuses and offer luxurious full body and Indian head massages for those needing some pampering. All these community-owned businesses have created jobs and income for 33 families over and above those employed directly at the lodge. Obviously many of these businesses are still in their infancy and are not always as professional as you would find in the big cities - no-one in our village had any experience of tourism prior to 2004. But everyone puts there heart and soul into their new venture and as a result there is a unique, fresh edge to these activities.
Over the years we have launched a large number of education, health and infrastructural projects to assist members of our community escape the poverty trap. In 2007 we decided to formalise these projects within a separate non-profit NGO called the Bulungula Incubator (BI). Since then the BI has rehabilitated our local primary school, built and run four world class pre-schools and two mini- clinics in our surrounding villages, embarked on a number of ambitious agricultural projects, implemented various clean drinking water initiatives and lots, lots more.
You can visit the Bulungula Incubator's website at www.bulungulaincubator.org
There is still much to do and, with this in mind, we encourage you to visit the BI website where volunteer needs are listed.
Contact us:
within South Africa: 047 577 8900
Click here
for the Bulungula map (driving directions)
Postal Address:

subset: commoncrawl


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Free Beginning English Class for Foreign-Born Adults, Friday mornings
9:30-11:00 am, at the Coralville Library downstairs meeting rooms.
Register at the first class, Friday, February 3, 9:30-10:30 am.
This is a beginning level class. Any student who needs higher levels
can visit our Monday/Wednesday classes at 9:45 -11:30 AM at the Good
News Bible Church, 845 Pepperwood Lane, Iowa City.
Sponsored by the Iowa City School District and the Friendship Community Project.
Questions? Email us! email@example.com.


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You certainly are one uniquely colored Cat Shira with your patches of gold around your dark coat.
And we Found Hotel Cats certainly do not think that you are any ways near a Senior Kittyzen , we think that your family is kidding you.
You are from the Netherlands as well one of Our Awesome Angel's favorite places to visit, especially in the spring and summer.
We are so impressed Shira that you have a bit of Houdini in you and can get out of the tightest areas.
We Found Hotel Cats all love you Shira and are all sending a Canadian Cat MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM MMMMMMMMEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW To Our New Friend Shira our Awesome Cat of the Day.


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Between the FoldsSubmitted by Adult Services on September 12, 2013 - 4:34pm
I'll be the first to admit that for a long time I didn't watch documentaries. After attending school for multiple years (that felt like eons) and enduring countless films selected by instructors for my "educational betterment," I had developed a resistance to the term "educational films". But it so happens that the library has an entire collection of Educational DVDs, of which I am embarrassed to say I rarely used. I checked out the occasional workout DVD, and nodded my head in affirmation when my colleagues would praise a film they had just viewed, but I never was convinced to check out a documentary myself. Documentaries sounded boring. And I really disliked watching boring films.
With this preconceived notion established, I was very surprised to find an Educational DVD title that actually sounded interesting to me. After searching for origami books to use during a teen art program, I found a DVD titled Between the folds: a film about finding inspiration in unexpected places. That sounded fairly catchy, even to a skeptic like me. I checked it out, brought it home, and set it by my television with the full intention of watching it. And then I let it sit, unwatched, until the night before it was due, always finding something "better" to do than watching the film.
Determined to watch Between the folds before returning it to the library, I forced myself to put it into the player and turn on the TV. Even my roommate (who coincidentally also recently finished her degree) said she wasn't interested in watching an educational film, but agreed to stay in the room while reading a book.
Can you guess what happened?
I sat entranced while it played, and my roommate--with book in hand--watched a good chunk of the film as well. It was fascinating! The film introduces several different scientists, mathematicians, and leading academics, as well as other creative artists, who show the beautiful utility of paper folding. Their designs are as intricate as beautiful, and carry far more scientific applications than I ever would have dreamed possible. I was captivated during the full 55 minutes of the film, and was almost sad when it was over.
With that being said, I highly suggest checking out Between the folds: a film about finding inspiration in unexpected places.
Now that I've seen what great films are in the Educational DVD collection, I have a feeling I'll be checking out more items very soon! Oh, the possibilities...


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Manual window management is awful. Windows 8 ditched windows in favor of fullscreen apps. Traditional desktop window paradigms are powerful but obsolete.
Windows 9 unifies previous contrasting paradigms, taking design cues from all platforms and recent innovations.
Just an unofficial design concept, but damn, this is sexy. This is exactly what Windows needs - a combination of the old and new, leading to something seemingly far more usable than the monstrosity that is Metro in Windows 8.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
What's the point of making the UI dumber or easier? Home PC market will be no more and PC will become some sort of professional-only tool, exclusively used by programmers and graphic designers and such.
If they want to put it on TV, just improve WP8 further. Is the windows team as clueless as GNOME team now?


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Parking garage a work in progress
Area residents traveling along Depot Street in recent months have been able to witness the beginning phases of construction of what will soon be a two-floor, 191-stall parking garage. Construction of the garage, which is expected to help alleviate parking issues in downtown St. Marys, began in September and the city's portion of the project is scheduled to be completed in July. According to city manager Dave Greene, so far there have not been any major construction delays due to the winter weather, and crews are currently working on the facility's lobby and stair masonry. Greene explained that the original plans for the garage were cut from 321 parking stalls to 191, due to costs being higher than anticipated. "We tried to generate some additional revenue to try to put the extra floor on, but we couldn't do it, so we felt we needed to go ahead and get something under construction," Greene said. He added that while the building will only have two floors, the foundation is built to be able to hold four floors, and so additional floors can be added if funding becomes available. Even though the project needed to be scaled back, Greene indicated that he believes 191 parking stalls will be enough to help combat the shortage of parking in that area of town."We had 180 originally [in the Depot Street parking lot] before we built [the Canadensis and Marienstadt buildings]. Our original plan was to [build a 321-stall parking garage] and eliminate those 45 stalls that are beside the Moose building, but those are going to stay now. They are not going away, so we'll have the 191 stalls there plus we'll have the 45 stalls beside the Moose," Greene said. While the 45 parking stalls located in the lot by the Moose building will remain, the parking meters in those locations will all be set at a two-hour maximum once the garage is completed. "It will primarily be for people shopping downtown or going to lunch and things," Greene said. Long-term parking will be located solely in the parking garage and permits will be issued for individuals utilizing the facility for that purpose.


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Manchester City are still to decide whether to appeal against forward Samir Nasri's sending-off at Norwich on Saturday.
Nasri faces the prospect of a three-match ban after being shown a straight red card for violent conduct for an alleged headbutt on Canaries defender Sebastien Bassong. The Barclays Premier League champions have until Monday afternoon to decide whether to appeal or accept an automatic three-match ban.
Due to the holiday season, an appeal would free Nasri up to play in the New Year's Day game against Stoke at the Etihad Stadium as a hearing would not be held until Wednesday. Manager Roberto Mancini said: "We will decide this morning. We talked yesterday and today we decide."
Copyright (c) PA Sport 2012, All Rights Reserved.
Do YOU want to write for GiveMeSport? Get started today by signing-up and submitting an article HERE: https://www.givemesport.com/writeforgms


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The Department of Defense has laid out its latest cost-cutting plan. On Monday, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel announced plans for widespread cuts to the military.
The biggest force reduction would come from the Army, but that doesn't mean the local Marine Corps community isn't feeling the pinch.
The cuts that really have people talking near Camp Lejeune are those that could impact the healthcare coverage of both active duty and retired military.
For Grant Beck, who retired from the Marine Corps back in the 1980's, the proposed cuts could impact Tricare deductibles and co-pay.
Sergeant Major Grant Beck said, "I think a lot of the retirees, especially those that aren't eligible for Medicare yet or Tricare for life, it's really going to hit them hard. I believe with the way costs for medical care is rising over the last few years, it isn't going to go anywhere but up from here."
On Monday, Department of Defense officials said the Marine Corps fighting force would go from about 190,000 to 182,000 people. If sequestration continues, that force could shrink to 175,000.
Nat Fahy with Camp Lejeune Public Affairs said, "Across Eastern Carolina we're going to see man power reductions to the tune of 10 to 12,000 in active duty personnel. Either through the units being discontinued or in natural attrition process. We'll see that. We have been seeing that since 2012 and we'll see that all the way to 2017."
Mayor Sammy Phillips said a reduction in marines is never a boost for the economy, but feels the city can weather a reduction.
Phillips said, "This is something that is being recognized nationwide. The fact that we saw today that the military strength is going to be cut down to pre-World War II numbers. So that's something we're going to have to adjust to."
Sergeant Major Beck hopes troop value isn't lost as well.
A one percent raise for military members is also in the budget. The proposed changes still require congressional approval.


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From Pedaso towards the Sibillini mountains you will be amazed at the number of family run business that continue to thrive on the valley floor.
Many of these small business have in recent years moved over to organic or low impact production and rekindled some of their disappearing cultivation technics.
There is the possibility to visit the farm shops and buy freshly picked fruit and vegetables, jams, fruit in syrup, vegetables under oil or pickled.
Peaches, cherries, apricots and plums exist in large quantity and variety but one fruit is internationally recognised as unic: the Mela Rosa dei Sibillini
The pink apple is a traditional variety of the whole range of the foothills of central Italy.
Typical, in pieces spread, even in orchards and gardens, was the traditional family orchard .
It is an ancient type, which are found historical information dating back to prehistoric times:
"As for flavor, the apples are inferior to those of Tivoli Piceno, but do more figure"
Horace (65 BC), Horatian satire, the 4th and 8th of the 2nd book.
The cultivation area coincides with the territory of the Mountain Community of Sibillini, then spread from the areas up to the high Apennine valleys and slopes close to the chain of the Sibillini Mountains.
Their cultivation had been almost completely abandoned and survived only some very old tree shed. Nowadays, this incredible fruit, is back in culture and thanks to the work of several years of the Mountain Community of Sibillini, we all can bite a "monument of taste and tradition".
More information on www.presidislowfood.it/


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June 6, 2013, 5:10 pm
Missy Franklin's dad among those to be honored at Denver's Father of the Year banquet
Dick Franklin, whose daughter, Missy, won four Olympic gold medals in swimming at the 2012 Summer Games in London, is one of four dads to be honored at the American Diabetes Association's Father of the Year banquet.
Former Denver Nugget Bill Hanzlik; Ed Haselden, chairman and chief executive officer of Haselden Construction; and Adam Sayers, co-founder and executive vice president of Axia Energy, also will be honored at the June 13 event. Festivities begin at 5:30 p.m.at the Hyatt Regency Tech Center. Read more…


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Next Episode of USA Volleyball is
USA Volleyball is the National Governing Body for the sport of beach volleyball in the United States. USAV runs and manages the U.S. National and Olympic Beach Volleyball Teams as well as the U.S. Youth and Junior Beach National Teams for each gender. The USAV Beach National Ranking System, Jose Cuervo Series, the USA Junior Beach Tour, and the USAV Beach High Performance Programs along with a number of tiered training programs, are managed by the USAV Beach Programs office.
USAV Beach works to advance beach volleyball talent and build a broader and stronger pipeline of athletes and coaches for our U.S. Olympic Teams. The beach programs at USA Volleyball build the "pipeline" for young beach volleyball athletes who aspire to reach the elite level of their sport and who dream of representing the United States on the Beach Volleyball National Team.
USAV Beach provides team and camp opportunities for beach athletes in several designated age groups. These age groups are determined by an athlete's year of birth (using international criteria) and begin when they are in middle school, continuing for 15 seasons, often into their collegiate years and transition to professional. (Source: USA Volleyball)
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- and it just happened to you.
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text: This news item expired on 4/23/2014, so the information below could be outdated or incorrect. Sew What? Swannanoa Sewing Circle Wednesday, April 23 at 10 am Swannanoa Library 101 West Charleston Street 250-6486 Sewers from beginners on up are invited to bring a project and join us for social sewing.


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RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) -- Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas says "the Palestinian people won't kneel" and won't drop demands to establish a capital in east Jerusalem.
Speaking to several hundred Palestinian activists from Jerusalem whom he had invited to his headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah, Abbas warned that "there will be no peace" without a Palestinian capital in east Jerusalem.
The crowd whistled, chanted and clapped on Saturday as the normally low-key Abbas struck a tough tone.
Secretary of State John Kerry is trying to forge an agreement between Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the outlines of a peace deal, which also would address the fate of Jerusalem.
The Palestinians want a capital in east Jerusalem, one of the areas Israel captured in 1967. Netanyahu has previously rejected a partition. Abbas and his aides fear that Kerry's proposal, expected in the coming weeks, only will contain a vague reference to Palestinian "aspirations" in the city.
JERUSALEM (AP) -- The hospital that had been treating Ariel Sharon says the former Israeli Prime Minister has died.
Hospital spokesman Dr. Shlomo Noy said Saturday: "The Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer announces with sorrow the death of Mr. Ariel Sharon who passed about an hour ago."
He said that during the years Sharon had been treated his condition was defined as "minimal consciousness" and he had had "ups and downs."
"Today his heart weakened and he peacefully departed from his family who were always at his side with love and support."
After a distinguished, and controversial, military career, Sharon went into politics and held a number of Cabinet posts.
He was elected prime minister in 2001, and despite his hardline views, led Israel's historic withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in 2005.
GENEVA (AP) -- Iran's nuclear envoy in Geneva says an initial agreement has been reached on implementing a nuclear deal with six world powers and that it's been sent to capitals for approval.
Abbas Araghchi made the comments to the official IRNA news agency. He said world powers and the Iranian government should respond within two days about whether they accept the terms.
An official from a member country of the United Nations nuclear agency who is closely following the talks said a preliminary agreement was reached Friday evening. He demanded anonymity because he was not authorized to comment on the closed negotiations.
While not a final deal, it maps out a first-step agreement for six months as diplomats negotiate a final deal. A November deal calls for capping Iran's uranium enrichment program in return for an easing of some international sanctions.
BAGHDAD (AP) -- An Iraqi official says fighting between security forces and al-Qaida-linked militants in Sunni-dominated Anbar province has killed at least 60 people over the past two weeks.
The head of Anbar Health Directorate, Khudeir Shalal said Saturday that 43 people were killed in the city of Ramadi and other 17 were killed in Fallujah since violence erupted in the western province after the Dec. 28 arrest of a Sunni lawmaker sought on terrorism charges and the dismantling of an anti-government Sunni protest camp in Ramadi.
Shalal said a total of 297 people were also wounded in both cities.
Iraqi security forces and allied Sunni tribesmen have been battling militants to recapture the cities, partially seized by fighters from an al-Qaida-linked group known as the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant.
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- Afghan Security officials say they're confident the country's own forces will be able to provide security for the vast majority of polling stations in upcoming presidential elections.
Interior Ministry spokesman Sediq Sediqqi said Saturday that a security assessment done for the election commission shows that 6,431 polling places out of 6,845 can already be guaranteed secure for the April 5 election.
The remaining 414 polling centers are in the process of being secured, Sediqqui said.
Officials say the April election will be the first for which Afghan security forces are responsible for security. Previous elections since 2004 have been secured by the U.S.-led international coalition.
TRIPOLI, Libya (AP) -- A health official in Libya says 15 people have been killed in clashes between two tribes in the country's south.
The fighting is pitting the al-Tabw tribe against the Awlad Soliman tribe in the city of Sabha. A local leader said Saturday that the fighting was sparked by the killing of a guard of the city's military leader, a member of the Awlad Soliman tribe.
The health official confirmed the casualty figure and spoke on condition of anonymity as he was not allowed to brief journalists.
For more than two years, Libya has been held hostage by increasingly powerful militias, initially formed from the rebel brigades that fought against dictator Moammar Gadhafi in the country's 2011 civil war.
CAIRO (AP) -- Egypt's military chief has urged Egyptians to vote in next week's constitutional referendum, describing its passage as a step on the way to progress.
Gen. Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi spoke at a military-organized function Saturday. State news agency MENA carried his comments.
More than 52 million Egyptians are to vote Tuesday and Wednesday on a heavily amended version of an Islamist-drafted charter enacted under toppled Islamist President Mohammed Morsi.
The 2012 charter was one of the main reasons fueling opposition to Morsi, prompting massive protests against him. The military, under el-Sissi's command, then removed Morsi from office.
A large turnout and a strong "yes" vote would give legitimacy and a boost to the political plan endorsed by el-Sissi calling for subsequent presidential and parliamentary elections.
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) -- Sub-Saharan Africa has seen a very violent start to 2014, with raging conflicts in South Sudan and Central African Republic, as well as continued violence in Congo, and attacks in Somalia and Kenya.
The death tolls are huge and the individual incidents gruesome. One estimate says nearly 10,000 people have been killed in South Sudan in a month of warfare, while in neighboring Central African Republic combatants in Muslim-vs.-Christian battles have beheaded children.
J. Peter Pham, director of the Washington-based think tank Africa Center at the Atlantic Council, says that compared to decades past, Africa and its people are suffering from fewer conflicts today, but several recent outbreaks of violence are cause for concern. He says the conflicts also lack strong international peacekeeping.
KIEV, Ukraine (AP) -- Ukraine's ex-interior minister turned opposition leader has been injured in a scuffle between police and anti-government activists in the nation's capital.
Yuri Lutsenko, a top organizer of the mass protests that have gripped Kiev for weeks, was injured in the early hours of Saturday when he tried to intervene in a confrontation between riot police and opposition activists. The clashes erupted outside a Kiev court had set long prison terms for three ultra-nationalist activists convicted of planning to blow up a statue in 2011.
Ukraine's top human rights official said 11 people were hospitalized after the clashes.
The incident is likely to further fuel anger against President Viktor Yanukovych, who has faced protests over his decision to freeze ties with the West and tilt toward Russia.
The protests on Kiev's main square, which were further fueled by a violent police crackdown on demonstrators, peaked at hundreds of thousands last month.
BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) -- Colombia's army says a private helicopter on a mission for the military has crashed in the country's northwest, killing all five people aboard.
Gen. Leonardo Pinto said Saturday that two soldiers, a police officer, a military priest and the aircraft's pilot died in the crash in the rural region of Anori, about 180 miles northwest of Bogota.
The craft owned by the Sociedad Aeronautica Santander SA had been missing since Thursday.


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So we've been wondering for awhile if this team is for real. I personally can't think of a better test than 10 straight games against elite competition. We start with probably the best team in baseball, the defending World Champs, the Chicago White Sox, who swept a similar Reds team out of contention in the not too distant past. Next, the New York Metropolitans, who are on an 8-game win streak and look to be poised to unseat the Atlanta Braves this year. Finally, we end with the Cleveland Indians, who are not at their best but always seem to rise to the occasion when they play their Ohio rivals.
What are your hopes for this 10-game stretch? 5-5? 6-4?
Personally, I think anything worse than 5-5 portends bad things for this team in the future. It's time to put up or shut up. And if there are close games, we might be singing the genius of Kriv's Juan Castro trade in a few days!


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The body of one of two Volusia County boaters missing on Lake Jesup since the weekend was found late Wednesday afternoon, state wildlife officials said.
The body of one of two Volusia County boaters missing on Lake Jesup since the weekend was found late Wednesday afternoon, state wildlife officials said.
The body of Jason Cobb, 30, of Osteen, was located about 5 p.m. floating in 6 feet of water near Bird Island, according to Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission spokeswoman Joy Hill.
There were no apparent signs of trauma to the body, she said.
Search efforts by boat and helicopter were scheduled to continue into Wednesday night and Thursday for Deltona resident Charles "Charlie" Jackson, 26.
Cobb and Jackson were last seen shortly after 1 a.m. Saturday leaving in a 15-foot bass boat from Black Hammock fish camp near Oviedo.
"We know how difficult this has been for the family and friends of Jason and Charles, and, while this is not the result we all had hoped for, it does at least bring some closure to Jason's family and friends," said wildlife commission Lt. Jeff Hudson, in charge of the search.
Hill said searchers located a boot earlier in the day that family members identified as belonging to one of the missing men in the same area as another boot found earlier in the search.
Family members reported the two best friends missing Saturday afternoon when they failed to return from the early morning trip.
Officers with the wildlife commission and the Seminole County Sheriff's Office immediately began a search, but as the hours turned into days, that effort went from a rescue to a recovery operation Monday afternoon.
The men's boat was found unoccupied among some cattails Saturday afternoon near Bird Island about three-quarters of a mile north of the launch site. It contained two life jackets and several unopened beers as well as the men's keys.
FWC officials suspect the men may have been thrown overboard in some type of boating accident. The boat's throttle was in the wide-open position when the boat was found but the engine was not running.
"The boat was at full-throttle; the key was in the ignition, but the "kill-switch" tab was on the floor with no lanyard attached," Hill said, leading investigators to suspect the switch had been activated, shutting off the engine.
Family members described Jackson and Cobb as experienced outdoorsmen who knew the lake well.
Lake Jesup is known as one of the largest and most shallow lakes in Central Florida – with a maximum depth of 6 feet. It also has a reputation as having the second most dense population of alligators -- 10,000 – in the region.
"We are not concerned about alligators," Hill said.
The lake, part of the St. Johns River system, is nine miles long and five miles wide.
Hill said law enforcement officials from Volusia, Orange and Seminole counties will join the state wildlife officers and be out at dawn Thursday to continue the search. Both Seminole and Orange County officers are using side-scan sonar units to aid in the effort, she said.
"We are working from sunup to sundown," Hill said.


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A water-lily painting by Claude Monet sold for $43.7 million while a key painting by Wassily Kandinsky brought in $23 million at a Christie's auction in New York on Wednesday. The sales were part of a larger auction of Impressionist and modern works.
Monet's "Nympheas," which dates from 1905, brought in approximately $43.7 million, according to Christie's. The painting is one of many that the artist created depicting water lilies floating on a pond.
The painting was being sold by the Hackley School in upstate New York, which received the work from Ethel Strong Allen, the wife of the late financier Herb Allen. The Hackley School is an elite private prep school in Tarrytown, N.Y.
Kandinsky's "Studie für Improvisation 8" sold for $23 million, according to the auction house. The amount is believed to be an auction record for the artist. Completed in 1909, the work was being sold by the Volkart Foundation, a charitable division of the Swiss trading firm Volkart Brothers, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.
Van Gogh painting identified in the Netherlands
Mark Rothko painting sells for $87 million at auction
Edvard Munch's "The Scream" goes for $119.9 million at Sotheby's
PHOTOS: Hollywood stars on stage CHEAT SHEET: Spring arts preview 2014 PHOTOS: Arts and culture in pictures
PHOTOS: Hollywood stars on stage
CHEAT SHEET: Spring arts preview 2014
PHOTOS: Arts and culture in pictures


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Seem particularly apropo given that it's "Hate Week"
Go Blue in the Outback!
Over 30 teams will compete in The Veolia World Solar Challenge, which begins on October 16th in Darwin. The teams will race 1800 miles through the Australian Outback. Throughout the race the teams will be entirely self-sufficient and will camp in the outback during the four days of the race.
If the University if Michigan Solar Car Team wins this race, they will be the first American Student Team to win the World Solar Challenge.
The time difference between Darwin, Northern Territories, Australia and the Eastern Time Zone (Michigan) is +13:30 hours (+14:30 hours for CT, +15:30 hours for MT and +16:30 hours for Pacific). That +30 minutes seemed a little odd to me, too.
I've been in contact with Max Ross, one of the drivers of the 2005 car, Momentum. He provided a little insight as to what the team will experience in the next few days:
Scrutineering will entail detailed checks of every section of the car. On the mechanical side, we present our computer simulations showing that each structural component (A-arms, bolts, the carbon fiber frame...) can withstand the required loading. The battery team must show that adequate safety functions are in place, etc. The next step is showing that the car can handle brake tests and other simple dynamic tests. The final step is a hot lap around a road course at the Hidden Valley Motorsports Complex. The pole position is determined by the best single lap. In 2005 we went for the win (pole) and ended up getting 3rd, but it doesnt really matter. The only advantage is that there will be fewer cars in front to pass. We passed the other two (cars) in the first 30 minutes of racing and were the first team to the check point. The race itself starts on Sunday morning (October 16), which is Saturday evening our time.
I highly encourage you to click through to the UMSolar web site (I've provided links). There are pictures and videos that are worth the look. Additionally, I would hope to be able to edit/update this diary with daily activity once the WSC kicks off. I've asked Brian for assistance since I've not been able to determine if edting a diary is possible. If I'm unable to do so, I may fire off some Board posts, daily. Being a motorsports nut, I'm as nervous about this race as I am about Saturday's game versus Sparta. The WSC happens every other year it's kind of like the Olympics and/or World Cup (at least it is to me). The best solar teams in the world are professionals, they do this for a living. It's akin to the 1980 US hockey team against the Soviets. We all know how that turned out....Go Blue.
Things that have been happening, to the team, recently:
October 5, 2011 - One feature of the World Solar Challenge that is different from the North American Solar Challenge is that racers are allowed to charge their vehicle's batteries beginning at sunrise every morning and ending when the sun sets every night, rather than having to pack up at a designated hour each evening.
The perk of this regulation is that the team is up and paying close attention to every glorious sunrise and sunset as they traverse the Outback. When camping in the middle of the continent, there is almost nothing to obstruct the horizon, so every view of the sky is picturesque.
October 6, 2011 - The team is currently on day two of our four day drive up to Darwin for the start of the 2011 Veolia World Solar Challenge. We decided to use the first two days of our drive for some additional on-road testing before we get into the Northern Territory, in which we aren't allowed to drive Quantum until the race. Day one was definitely a strain as clouds covered the sky. Quantum pushed through and overall the day was very important as it gave our strategists more experience with driving under cloud cover. We found a clearing to camp out on at the end of the day.
This morning presented much more sunlight than the previous day, though clouds have started to roll in. Today will be another good test for our strategists and will be able to provide them with a good amount of practice. Once we get to the Northern Territory border, we will trailer Quantum the rest of the way up to Darwin and make our final preparations for WSC.
October 7, 2011 - Today was a very successful day on the road. Despite some cloud cover, Quantum still managed to cover over 700 KM during the course of the day, with zero time on the side of the road. The team is becoming acquainted with the race environment, solving challenges that come up quickly and effectively. With the Northern Territory roughly 50 KM away, we will spend just a short amount of time driving tomorrow to wrap up our testing for the Veolia World Solar Challenge. Our strategists are feeling comfortable with the performance of the car, and will be looking forward to a thrilling race in the days to come. The Media Crew has been busy testing out its video/communications equipment to ensure a constant stream of updates. Our strategists did a great job of predicting the weather, and were able to secure a sunny evening charge. Another benefit to this is a wonderful star filled view. For many of us, the is the best night sky we have ever seen.
October 10, 2011 - The team made it into Darwin in the Northern Territory of Australia yesterday evening.
Darwin marks the start of the 3000 KM Veolia World Solar Challenge, which will begin on the morning of Sunday, October 16, 2011. In the mean time, the team will be at the Hidden Valley Raceway for Qualifying and final preparation of Quantum. We have already taken Quantum out for a spin on the track. The team is staying at the Youth Shack Hostel, which is well equipped with air conditioning and a pool. Since the temperatures are easily in the upper 90s to 100s with high humidity, it is a pleasant retreat.
October 11, 2011 - One of the major obstacles the teams will encounter during the Veolia World Solar Challenge will be cattle grids. There are over 100 grids in total spanning the 3000 km stretch of the Stuart Highway. All teams must be prepared to traverse them successfully. See below for a short video explaining their purpose, and to see footage from the Outback of Quantum taking them in stride.
Visit umsolar.com
Tweet @umsolarcarteam
Like facebook.com/umsolar
Watch youtube.com/umsolar
See flickr.com/umsolar
Win The World
I wonder how one of the Lil' Bros reacted when someone took his beer pong table to make a solar car.
I am excited to see how michigan can do in this thing! If they pull of a win that would truly be a testament to all the hardwork and dedication the students and everyone else involved have put into it.
There is another website that will be tracking the progress of the team in Australia: http://www.solarcontrols.engin.umich.edu/ They will be reposting all of the team's blogs and will be attempting to be a live update on the race.
There will also probably be a chat room set up at www.umsolar.com that many of us alumni will be on (continuously) where we can answer questions, share stories, and just chat about the car, the team or the race. It should be fun! Michigan has a legitimate chance to win this race, something we have never done before. Hope to see you on that chat room!
The CIL is on this web page:
You may need to scoll down to see the CIL, it's under the map of Australia.
The team successfully completed scrutineering, which is essentially an inspection process. All systems on the car are inspected to ensure they comply with regulations. This includes checking the size of the array, weight of the battery, electrical isolation switches, and other safety items. Overall, the process was very smooth. We are very satisfied to have reached this point, as qualifying is the only remaining milestone until the race!
The Team, The Team, The team


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Submission + - TALISE aquatic rover may explore a lake on Titan (gizmag.com)
cylonlover writes: Titan is Saturn's largest moon, and it's said to be one of the most Earth-like celestial bodies in the Solar System. It has a thick atmosphere, and is covered with a network of seas, lakes and rivers – albeit ones made up of liquid hydrocarbons instead of water. Now, a team of scientists are proposing sending a boat-like probe to Titan, that would travel across its largest lake. The probe, which is still in the concept stage, is known as TALISE – that stands for Titan Lake In-situ Sampling Propelled Explorer, although it's also an Iroquois word for "beautiful water." The plan calls for it to land in the middle of Ligeia Mare, which is near the moon's north pole. It would then set out on a six-month to one-year mission, taking scientific measurements and obtaining samples as it makes its way to the closest shore.


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2010-02-03 / Events & Calendar
Adult education events at Temple B'nai Torah
As part of the adult education events at Temple B'nai Torah, Rabbi Bellows will present Passover: It Ain't Just Matzo, Wed., March 3, 7:30 p.m. Make your Seder more than a meal. The community is invited to join the congregation at this event.
You must be an online subscriber to view this story.


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Marvel Super Hero Squad: The Infinity Gauntlet
The Ranking
|Overall Rank: n/a
3DS Rank: n/a
2011 Games Rank: n/a
2011 3DS Rank: n/a
Score based on 1 review
Marvel Super Hero Squad: The Infinity Gauntlet continues the excitement of the original Marvel Super Hero Squad with an all-new storyline that follows Season 2 of the hit animated TV series as shown on Cartoon Network. Players can "Hero Up" with friends in cooperative play master the unique Factor Power of each of the Marvel heroes in three game modes: Story Mode, Freeplay Mode and Challenge Mode. The game also boasts a brand new puzzle component, in which players will need to utilize the characters' unique abilities to move or destroy objects, traverse through certain environments, and summon specific strengths to overcome obstacles. With new adventures, tricky puzzles, an expanded selection of Marvel Super Hero Squad members to unlock and play as, Marvel Super Hero Squad: The Infinity Gauntlet is set to thrill gamers from here to Super Hero City.
Release Date: October 11, 2011


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The FLEXX is a brand of women's footwear that represents the ideal of today's modern woman who refuses to forego comfort for fashion. It is in fact the fusion of fashion and comfort with styling that caters to her every need.
The Flexx Bow Commotion Black Leather Women's Shoe
Features include:
Bow commotion
I did need to return first pair of shoes for a 1/2 size larger. I was very pleased they were able to order these shoes in my size. I just wore them all day today and they were very comfortable. I have a narrow heel and the elastic across the back held my foot in securely without slipping. I originally fell in love with the color and detail on toe. The shoe has soft cushion on the bed of the shoe which adds to the overall comfort. I will add the leather is very soft and not stiff and it also, has a sheen that adds to the uniqueness of shoe.
Cute shoe. Loved the color and style, but there is no arch support and the peep toe opening cut into my toe. Had to return them.
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When I was in the first grade, the nuns at school told me that God had no beginning; He just always existed. That made no sense to me. Everything has at least a beginning. I was fairly certain, in my self-assured 7-year old mind, that the nuns had just not looked hard enough. I was convinced, that if you just looked back far enough through space and time, you could see His beginning. And as far as I understood, looking back in time meant literally looking—with my eyes—to see the moment 'before' the beginning of God. My parents had just let me watch the Cosmos series, so I felt like I had a pretty good sense of where in the universe I should start looking: If I started at the Big Bang and worked backwards, I could see God getting bored and lonely enough to decide he wanted some friends, and darn it, he was going to make some, because he was God and could totally do that.WHAM! Big Bang! Thank you very much. Hi, I'm God, let's be friends. Once I could locate that moment, I could work further back until I saw the very birth of God. So, for years, I would sit in church and search for a lonely God—closing my eyes, and rolling them back in my head, farther, and farther, finally arching, arching backwards over the pew in search of the moment before the beginning of all existence. (Man, I was a weird kid.)
Since Hayley asked me to write about the differences between history and heritage, I have felt like that seven year old, once again, rolling my eyes into the back of my head in the search for the beginning. It is clear that there is an interplay between history and heritage –one cannot exist without the other. History becomes heritage. Heritage begets history. But, how do you disentangle history from heritage and heritage from history? Where does heritage end and history begin?
Perhaps because it is August and we are once again in that in-between season of wrapping-up-summer-hurry-before-the-bedtime-rules-apply-again, that I am ignoring the wall of books that could offer answers. Mostly, though, I'm not quite convinced there are satisfying answers in there, because the answer, if it were to hold true about a country, a community, or a neighborhood, would have to hold true for an individual. Yet, as someone who spends much of my working life trying to teach people the intellectual rules and requirements of history, I must admit that when it comes to my own life, I cannot find the moment before, so I might witness the Big Bang of my own history.
I still think of myself as a little blonde Polish kid from a three-decker neighborhood in Worcester. Who graduated from the same parish school where my parents met. Was baptized in the church where they were married. It is where I'm from. These are my seminal stories, my creation myths. However, I cannot think of a moment when the first conscious thought entered my head about Christmas. I just don't remember not knowing about it. But somewhere between conception and Kindergarten, there was a moment when I didn't. And I could twist and arch backwards over furniture all day and never find that moment. Everyone else simply filled in those spaces for me and told me what I needed to know. And it was enough.
So, the dividing line seems to be this: there are the stories that you are born into and the ones you make for yourself. My heritage is what I was given: my ethnic and religious identity, that neighborhood, those people and places. My history, to me, it seems, began when I began actively creating my own story. My history is the sum of my choices.
But even that is blurry line. Did my history begin, then, when I insisted on being a horse—the only girl to do so—rather than a bunny in the Kindergarten production of Chicken Little? Or when I earned my first bit of money delivering the Sunday paper? Or when I chose to leave that neighborhood and go to New York for college? Which of the thousands of choices I've made stand out as the beginning of my history? And if I can only choose that moment thirty-odd years later, is it really my history, or has it lapsed into the mythology of who I think I was, in that moment in time, so very long ago? Is my mother, ultimately, a reliable witness?
The point of all of this musing, I suppose, is to ask you to take a moment in these waning days of summer—one of the haziest, most nostalgia-inducing parts of the year—to consider how difficult it is to disentangle your history from your own heritage, before attempting it with, or expecting it of students or visitors.
It is so easy to get snarky about what we think other people should know about history and deride the soft boundaries of heritage. As experts in the field, we often forget that there was a time and a place when we did not know all the rules and regulations of history. We forget what it was like in the before: Before we understood "food ways", we knew our favorite foods; Before we built mental timelines through documentary analysis, we mostly figured what year it was by when we were in school; Before we knew to mistrust even our favorite historians, we trusted the stories told to us over dinner tables, during the holidays, in the chaos of summer vacations.
It is to say that before you knew what you know now, that once, there was a moment when you did not. And even if you cannot remember it, it existed. Absent the malice of willful ignorance, we need to respect that our students' and visitors' understanding of the past is tied up in those same utterly human ways of telling time and knowing what is true. And our work is to help them disentangle the evidence from the sentiment, knowing full well, that the easiest path from one to the other is not entirely clear.


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My Day Snapshot
Terri Holley, MS CPCC hasn't written a snapshot yet.
My Life To-Do List
Terri Holley, MS CPCC hasn't written a life to-do list yet.
Recent Activity
1 comment so far...
Hi, Terri,
I am the co-founder and CEO of Work It, Mom! and just wanted to say welcome. I look forward to getting to know more about you.
Flag as inappropriate Posted by Nataly on 27th September 2007


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FreeTTS 1.2.3 - A speech synthesizer written entirely in the JavaTM programming language
Talking clock (16k voice):
Talking machine (8k):
Talking machine (16k):
Susie (16k):
Cookie Cooks (16k):
Tricky Tokenizing (16k):
Thanks! (16k MBROLA):
A clock that uses FreeTTS to announce the time.
Project Page
Git Repository
Hosted by SourceForge.net
Welcome! Thank you for your interest in FreeTTS.
General Information
Frequently Asked Questions
FreeTTS is a speech synthesis system written entirely in the JavaTM programming language. It is based upon Flite: a small run-time speech synthesis engine developed at Carnegie Mellon University. Flite is derived from the Festival Speech Synthesis System from the University of Edinburgh and the FestVox project from Carnegie Mellon University.
This release of FreeTTS includes:
FreeTTS was built by the Speech Integration Group of Sun Microsystems Laboratories:
You can contact the Sun Microsystems Speech Integration Group through the FreeTTS Forums.
FreeTTS is based on CMU's Flite, written by:
Kevin and Alan generated the data used by FreeTTS. In addition, Kevin is the voice behind the diphone voices (kevin 8k, kevin 16k), and Alan is the voice behind the speaking clock.
Support for MBROLA voice output was contributed by Marc Schröder, text-to-speech Researcher in the Language Technology Lab at DFKI, Saarbrücken, Germany.
Support for importing FestVox voices into FreeTTS, and support for dynamically discovering and loading voices was developed by David Vos, a Sun Microsystems Laboratories student intern.
Here are a few possible uses of FreeTTS:
We welcome contributions to FreeTTS. If you have code or fixes you would like to submit, please contact the FreeTTS team at email@example.com. The terms for contributing code are generous and are as follows:
These terms are for your and our protection and help ensure FreeTTS continues to be a viable and successful open source project.
Refer to acknowledgments to see the list of people and organizations we would like to thank for making this project possible. Most of all, we thank our management for letting us do this, and Alan Black and Kevin Lenzo for doing Flite.
FreeTTS has been tested on the Solaris TM Operating Environment, Mac OS X, Linux and Win32 operating systems.
Running, building, and testing FreeTTS requires the JavaTM 2 SDK, Standard Edition, 1.4. You can download the developer kit from http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4/. Make sure you set your JAVA_HOME environment variable to point your installation (e.g., JAVA_HOME=/usr/java/j2sdk1.4.0).
FreeTTS has three packages available for download:
If you plan on just creating applications with FreeTTS, the bin package will be sufficient. If you plan on making modifications to FreeTTS itself, however, you should use the src package. The tst package will be useful if you wish to make sure any changes you made to FreeTTS did not introduce any bugs or regressions.
Download and unpack the package(s) appropriate for what you want to do. Depending upon what you download, you will end up with all or part of the following directory structure:
bin Binaries for the demos build.xml Ant file for building the sources com FreeTTS sources de Sources for MBROLA support demo Sources for the demos demo.xml Ant file for building the demos docs System documentation javadoc Javadoc for FreeTTS lib Jars for FreeTTS mbrola Support for MBROLA tests Sources and scripts for JUnit and regression tests tools Tools for importing CMU ARCTIC and FestVox voice data
FreeTTS makes liberal use of the "Class-Path" attribute of a jar Manifest. As such, you need to place very little in your classpath when you run applications. The only things you need to do are the following:
Note that the demonstration applications also use a jar Manifest that uses the "Class-Path" attribute. The build places the jar files for FreeTTS in the lib directory, and the jar files for the demos in the bin directory. The jar manifests for the demos depend on the lib and bin directories being in the same top level directory. If you change this, the demos may not work properly.
If you are not interested in building FreeTTS, then you only need to download the FreeTTS binary distribution from the FreeTTS Download Page. Once you've downloaded and unpacked the FreeTTS binary distribution, perform the following steps:
We have provided a number of demonstration applications that use FreeTTS. We highly suggest that you use these as examples for how to create your own applications. As noted above, FreeTTS makes liberal use of the "Class-Path" attribute of a jar Manifest. As such, you need to place very little in your classpath when you run applications. The only things you need to do are the following:
The prerequisites for building FreeTTS are as follows:
JAVA_HOME environment variable to point to
where you installed it.
to the
lib directory of your Apache Ant installation.
To build FreeTTS, merely type the following in a command prompt situated at the top level FreeTTS directory:
This executes the Apache Ant
command to build the FreeTTS classes, voices, demos, and jar files.
The output will be placed under the
bld directory.
We have also provided a number of ant targets for convenience:
ant clean: deletes all the output from the build
to give you a fresh start
ant javadoc: builds the javadoc documentation and
places the results in the
javadoc directory
ant junit: for testing only; runs the JUnit tests
(see Testing FreeTTS)
FreeTTS includes a number of unit and regression tests. The unit tests verify that critical routines are working properly. The regression tests verify that the output of FreeTTS matches what is expected.
Although we test FreeTTS regularly as part of our development process, testing FreeTTS is optional for you. The prerequisites for testing FreeTTS are as follows:
sed, awk, diff,and
For Windows users, these tools are available with the Cygwin
package. As part of the Cygwin install, make sure you select
the "make" package from the "Devel" category, the "findutils"
package from the "Base" category, and the "zip" package from
the "Archive" category. In addition, make sure you modify
your PATH environment variable to include the cygwin/bin
directory before any Windows directories.
To run the units tests for FreeTTS, merely type the following in a command prompt situated at the top level FreeTTS directory:
ant junit
The test output should be self explanatory.
To run the regression tests, merely type the following in a command
prompt situated at the FreeTTS
tests directory:
The test output should be self explanatory.
FreeTTS includes a number of demos. Each demo directory has Java source file(s) containing the demo source and a 'README.html' file with brief instructions as to how to run the demo.
NOTE: The binaries for the demos exist as jar files in the bin directory of the binary distribution. If you only wish to run the demos, follow only the "Running" instructions for each demo. If you want to compile the demos, you must get the sources from the FreeTTS source distribution available on the FreeTTS Download Page.
Note also that the demonstration applications also use a jar Manifest that uses the "Class-Path" attribute. The build places the jar files for FreeTTS in the lib directory, and the jar files for the demos in the bin directory. The jar manifests for the demos depend on the lib and bin directories being in the same top level directory. If you change this, the demos may not work properly.
The FreeTTS distribution includes a program that will allow you to test many of the features of FreeTTS. This program is started by running the following command:
java -jar lib/freetts.jar.
NAME freetts - exercise the FreeTTS synthesis sytem
DESCRIPTION The lib/freetts.jar contains a main entry point that allows a user to interactively control the FreeTTS synthesizer. When invoked with no arguments, freetts will read text from the command line and convert the text to speech. freetts can also be used to convert text from a file to speech. It includes options that allow you to redirect the audio to file, as well as a number of metrics and debugging options. OPTIONS There are a number of options that can be used to affect the operation of freetts as described here: -detailedMetrics: turn on detailed metrics -dumpAudio file : dump audio to file -dumpAudioTypes : dump the possible output types -dumpMultiAudio file : dump audio to file -dumpRelations : dump the relations -dumpUtterance : dump the final utterance -dumpASCII file : dump the final wave to file in ASCII form (for testing) -file file : speak text from given file -lines file : render lines from a file -help : shows usage information -metrics : turn on metrics -run name : sets the name of the run -silent : don't say anything -streaming : use streaming audio player -text say me : speak given text (should be last argument) -url path : speak text from given URL -verbose : verbose output -version : shows version number -voice VOICE : kevin, kevin16, mbrola_us1, mbrola_us2, or mbrola_us3 -voiceInfo : print detailed voice info EXAMPLES
Interactive mode: % java -jar lib/freetts.jar Enter text: Hello World. <text is spoken> Enter text: ^D %
Speaking text from a command line: % java -jar lib/freetts.jar -text hello world <text is spoken>
Speaking text from a file: % java -jar lib/freetts.jar -file my_email.txt <text is spoken>
Selecting an alternate voice: % java -jar lib/freetts.jar -voice kevin16 -text Hello World <text is spoken>
Redirecting audio to a file: % java -jar lib/freetts.jar -dumpAudio hello.wav -text Hello World
FreeTTS now has the ability to import voice data from FestVox (US English only). With this, you can record your own voice using the FestVox tools, and then turn the resulting data into a FreeTTS voice.
Visit our FestVoxToFreeTTS page to learn how to create your own voices for FreeTTS. It's not trivial, and it requires using Festival and FestVox.
FreeTTS now has the ability to import CMU ARCTIC voice data from FestVox (US English only). The CMU ARCTIC voices are quite large and require a little extra work, so we created tools just for these voices.
Visit our ArcticToFreeTTS page to learn how to import the CMU ARCTIC voices into FreeTTS.
Some of the many compelling reasons to use Java 2 SDK, Standard Edition, v1.4. are:
java.nio) package
that provides memory mapped file I/O. This package
drastically reduces the load times of the FreeTTS
java.util.regex). They are used in the
FreeTTS text normalization step.
assert keyword to ensure that
certain conditions are satisfied before continuing
execution. FreeTTS uses this keyword in all stages of speech
-server switch, byte codes are optimized
to eliminate bounds checking on array accesses whenever
We compared the performance of FreeTTS with that of Flite (original C version) on a machine with this configuration:
We rendered the first two chapters of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (about 20 minutes of text), and the entire text of Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth (about 8 hours of text) using both Flite and FreeTTS. The results are summarized below:
|Single CPU 296MHz SPARC v9
|Loading Time for 'Alice' text
|Processing Time for 'Alice' text
|Loading Time for 'Journey' text
|Processing Time for 'Journey' text
|Time to first Sample (10 word sentence)
On a 2-CPU system with the following configuration:
The results are summarized below:
|Dual CPU 360MHz SPARC v9
|Loading Time for 'Alice' text
|Processing Time for 'Alice' text
|Loading Time for 'Journey' text
|Processing Time for 'Journey' text
|Time to first Sample (10 word sentence)
Currently, the distribution comes with these 3 voices:
Each of the demos describes how to select which voice to use.
FreeTTS also interfaces with the MBROLA synthesizer and can use MBROLA voices. There are three US English MBROLA voices available:
See Installing MBROLA Voices for more details on installing support for MBROLA voices.
NOTE: FreeTTS does not support MBROLA on the Windows platform.
First of all, we're happy to say you can now create your own voices for FreeTTS, and you can also import CMU ARCTIC voices. It's not trivial, and it requires using Festival and FestVox.
However, the ability to create your own voices doesn't explain why the current voices sound so bad. FreeTTS uses the same algorithms and voice data from Flite. Here is what the Flite README says about voice quality:
"So you've eagerly downloaded flite, compiled it and run it, now you are disappointed that is doesn't sound wonderful, sure its fast and small but what you really hoped for was the dulcit tones of a deep baritone voice that would make you desperately hang on every phrase it sang. But instead you get an 8Khz diphone voice that sounds like it came from the last millenium.
Well, first, you are right, it is an 8KHz diphone voice from the last millenium, and that was actually deliberate. As we developed flite we wanted a voice that was stable and that we could directly compare with that very same voice in Festival. Flite is an *engine*. We want to be able take voices built with the FestVox process and compile them for flite, the result should be exactly the same quality (though of course trading the size for quality in flite is also an option). The included voice is just an sample voice that was used in the testing process. We have better voices in Festival and are working on the conversion process to make it both more automatic and more robust and tunable, but we haven't done that yet, so in this first beta release. This old poor sounding voice is all we have, sorry, we'll provide you with free, high-quality, scalable, configurable, natural sounding voices for flite, in all languages and dialects, with the tools to built new voices efficiently and robustly as soon as we can. Though in the mean time, a few higher quality voices will be released with the next version.''
As of FreeTTS 1.2, we provide a set of tools that allow you to import FestVox voice data directly. As such, you need to use Festival and FestVox to record your data. See our documentation for more detail on how to do this.
As of FreeTTS 1.2, we provide a set of tools that allow you to import FestVox voice data directly, and we also have tools that allows you to import CMU ARCTIC voices.
This is not a trivial task as it requires a lexicon for the language as well as various statistical data about the language. The document http://festvox.org/festvox/festvox_toc.html describes this is more detail.
the FreeTTS
test program, you can dump audio output
to a file using the
-dumpAudio option:
-dumpAudio filename
The audio file format can be .wav, .au, or .aif, depending on
the file name. For example, if
"filename" is
"foo.au" the file format will be .au.
-dumpMultiAudio option (same format as
-dumpAudio) dumps audio to multiple audio files,
one file per utterance. In this case, if
"filename" is "foo.wav", the files are named
foo0.wav, foo1.wav, foo2.wav, etc.. Again, the file format is
determined by the extension of the filename.
If you are writing your own application, you can set the audio player of the FreeTTS Voice to one of the file-based audio players. See the FreeTTS API documentation for:
desc = (SynthesizerModeDesc) synthesizer.getEngineModeDesc(); javax.speech.synthesis.Voice[] jsapiVoices = desc.getVoices(); javax.speech.synthesis.Voice jsapiVoice = voices[0]; /* Non-JSAPI modification of voice audio player */ if (jsapiVoice instanceof com.sun.speech.freetts.jsapi.FreeTTSVoice) { com.sun.speech.freetts.Voice freettsVoice = ((com.sun.speech.freetts.jsapi.FreeTTSVoice) jsapiVoice).getVoice(); freettsVoice.setAudioPlayer(new SingleFileAudioPlayer()); }
No. Since FreeTTS is a speech synthesis system, none of the JSAPI 1.0 Recognition interfaces are supported. In addition, FreeTTS supports only a subset of the JSAPI 1.0 javax.speech.synthesis specification. The FreeTTS support for JSAPI 1.0 has the following restrictions:
or the
MARKER_REACHED events.
Synthesizer.phoneme() method is not
PropertyVeto exceptions are not always properly
thrown when property change requests are rejected or
Note that the JSAPI specification is undergoing changes. The official work being done on JSAPI is now for JSAPI 2.0 via the Java Community Process (JCP) under JSR-113. Read more about the JCP and JSR-113 at http://www.jcp.org.
You probably need to install the JSAPI 1.0 specification implementation. See the JSAPI setup guide for more details.
You probably are trying to run with an older (jdk 1.4) version of the java runtime. To verify this type:
% java -version
You should see something like:
java version
"1.4.0" or
higher. If you see
something older that this, such as
java version "1.2.2"
then you are indeed running with an older version of
the java runtime. See Prerequisites
for building and running FreeTTS for more details on what
is needed to run FreeTTS.
There are approximately 45 phonemes in the English language. FreeTTS uses a technique called diphone synthesis which uses pairs of phonemes called diphones as an index into the unit database. Not all phoneme combinations occur in the English language. FreeTTS, in order to conserve space, does not include diphone information for diphones that do not naturally occur. This message indicates that FreeTTS encountered one of these omitted diphones. This generally occurs when FreeTTS tries to speak gibberish or non-English text.
If you run HelloWorld or another one of the FreeTTS demos and receive no messages, then FreeTTS thinks that everything is working fine, but obviously it's not if you are not hearing anything. Try running another java application that uses the javax.sound APIs. Try downloading the javasound demo from http://java.sun.com/products/java-media/sound/samples/JavaSoundDemo/ and make sure that it runs (and 'sounds') OK.
We do not recommend trying this. It's a quagmire of complexity
and the end user experience is not what you expect. The JSAPI
layer of FreeTTS will attempt to access to the
speech.properties file in the user's home
directory. The applet security mechanism will not allow such
access and will throw a SecurityException if such an attempt is
Instead of using FreeTTS in an applet, we highly recommend you consider using Java Web Start.
FreeTTS includes a WebStartClock demo application that demonstrates how to write a Web Start application that uses FreeTTS.
Central class looks for a file named
speech.properties. To bypass this, use a
different mechanism. A detailed discussion of this approach
in the FreeTTS Help forum:
Avoiding the need for speech.properties.
The WebStartClock demo also provides an example of how to do this:
public void createSynthesizer() { try { SynthesizerModeDesc desc = new SynthesizerModeDesc(null, "time", /* use "time" or "general" */ Locale.US, Boolean.FALSE, null); FreeTTSEngineCentral central = new FreeTTSEngineCentral(); EngineList list = central.createEngineList(desc); if (list.size() > 0) { EngineCreate creator = (EngineCreate) list.get(0); synthesizer = (Synthesizer) creator.createEngine(); } if (synthesizer == null) { System.err.println("Cannot create synthesizer"); System.exit(1); } synthesizer.allocate(); synthesizer.resume(); } catch (Exception e) { e.printStackTrace(); } }
This message is output when FreeTTS tries to allocate sound resources and the requested resources are unavailable. This can occur for a number of reasons:
This is an implementation of a speech synthesizer and does not include a speech recognizer. Please keep your eye on the 'cmusphinx' project on SourceForge for developments in this area.


text:
Hi all,
I am looking for climbing partner(s) for July 2014. The plan is to climb some classics at the cordillera blanca and perhaps around huayhuash, if time allows (I am open to plans but Alpamayo WILL happen
Partner(s) have to be experienced and decent in multipitch ice/mixed but more than anything a good positive attitude is essential. If you are interested, my email is vsoldevil at gmail dot com and we will meet/climb and talk about the trip. I live in the SF bay area.


text: Normally we all inclusive but we were starting to feel like we were missing out on so much more and we were right...this is the way to go! We stayed in room 12...very nice and clean. The staff is very friendly and helpful and this place is located on a great little stretch of beach and walking distance to everything... More


text:
its been a while since i left.. but im BACK ready to spam my mentors' brains again hahwhahahah... its very nice to see my home forum went like this :o KEEP it UP JPF!!!!
oh and btw.. well now i came back... lots of changes happened... i dont know if my suggestion will be good for the forum... but... what do you think guys.? would it be better if we add a section for some super basic game development?, some short 2D source codes or some basic animation?.. it will be cool i think for some viewers here


text:
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It is important to Haw River Junktion, also referred to as the gallery, that all bidders understand the terms and conditions under which its auctions are conducted. Please carefully read the Conditions of Sale set forth below and then acknowledge your understanding and acceptance, you must sign this to be able to bid in our sale.
The property offered for sale by Haw River Junktion is subject to the following terms and conditions:
1. The property is sold in "as is" condition and without recourse, and the Gallery makes no representations or warranties, express or implied, as to catalogue description, attribution, authenticity, provenance, origin, size, age or condition of any of the property offered for sale. It is the responsibility of the purchaser, prior to the auction, to examine the property and make a determination as to the value, condition, description, authenticity, provenance, origin, size and age of the property.
2. The highest bidder acknowledged by the auctioneer shall be the purchaser. The auctioneer is the sole individual who may deem the object, "sold." No floor or ring people have that authority. The gallery reserves the right to reject any bid. The auctioneer shall advance the bid at his/her sole discretion. The auctioneer in his/her sole discretion may determine to re-offer any lot in dispute. In the event of any dispute, the gallery record of the bids shall be accepted as conclusive.
3. Haw River Junktion features a "Buy it now" option of purchase, wherein the buyer has an option to purchase an item for full asking price prior to the beginning of any given auction. In this event, Haw River Junktion has full authority to remove the object from the auction listing for a "Buy it now" binding contract as soon as the funds for purchase are received. The "Buy it now" option for each sale it ends seven days prior to the date of the live auction.
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5. At the fall of the auctioneer's hammer, title will pass to the highest bidder, and the bidder thereupon assumes full risk and responsibility for the property, including the obligation to immediately pay the full price or such price as the gallery may require. All bidders may be requested to give their name, residence, business address, telephone number, driver's license and credit card. The gallery shall have the right to reject any bid from anyone who has not established credit with the Gallery prior to the auction.
6. The purchase price paid by in-house bidders, absentee bidders and telephone bidders shall be the amount of the final bid plus thirteen percent (13%). Online Bidders will pay the purchase price plus twenty-three (23%).
We accept cash, approved checks, all major credit cards, debit cards and PayPal. North Carolina sales tax of 6.75% will be added to the purchase price unless a tax- exempt form has been filed with our cashier.
7. Property purchased from Haw River Junktion by a successful bidder may not be removed from the auction sale premises until the full purchase price plus the buyer's premium and all applicable taxes have been paid. The purchaser must pay for and remove all property from the auction premises at completion of the sale or within 48 hours unless prior arrangements are made.
8. If the purchaser fails to fulfill these conditions, in addition to all legal remedies available to Haw River Junktion, the Gallery may: a) cancel the sale and retain any payments made as liquidated damages; b) resell the property for the account of the buyer, in which case the buyer shall be liable to the Gallery for all its costs and damages, including the commissions for both auctions; c) remove the property to a public warehouse for the account and at the risk and expense of the buyer.
Due to limited storage space for sold items, Haw River Junktion. requires that the arrangements for the pick-up or shipment of purchased items must be completed within 15 days of the auction unless other arrangements have been made. Please remember, once an item has sold, it is no longer covered by insurance and is stored at the owner's risk. A notice of 24 hours must be given before items are picked up. Haw River Junktion reserves the right to charge a fee of $5 per day, per item, if not removed within 30 days from date of sale. Items not removed after 60 days, may at the discretion of Haw River Junktion, be sold without notice to the original purchaser, to cover the cost of the merchandise and/or storage charges. Items are stored at the buyer's risk.
Ordered a piece and need to have it shipped to you?
PLEASE NOTE: Haw River Junktion, LLC will help assist with shipping company information, but Haw River Junktion does not offer crating or packaging. Crating and packaging will be the responsibility of the buyer and/or the shipper.
We recommend the following shippers:
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text:
ST. PETERSBURG — Qualifying for today's Honda Grand Prix of St. Petersburg featured a handful of surprises mixed with one inevitable result:
Will Power winning the pole.
Penske Racing's Australian ace won his fourth consecutive Grand Prix pole Saturday in 1 minute, 01.207 seconds (105.870 mph) to set a series track record for the third time in four seasons.
"We just have to be smart and keep heading towards what we've wanted for a long time, which is a championship," said Power, the three-time IndyCar runnerup.
Power's best lap around the 14-turn, 1.8-mile circuit topped the time of 1:01.3721 he clocked last March. It also placed him three-tenths of a second ahead of Takuma Sato (1:01.5776) for the series' season opener.
"Will is outrageously quick," Andretti Autosport's James Hinchcliffe said.
Just not as quick as some expected.
Power and others predicted earlier in the week that a new breed of Firestone tires would lead to 59-second laps. Instead, the lack of testing on the red tires and changing conditions led to unpredictable results.
Sato's No. 14 Honda will join Power in Row 1. The 36-year-old, making his debut with the A.J. Foyt Enterprises team, has only two podium finishes in three seasons in the series. KV Racing newcomer Simona de Silvestro made her first appearance in the Fast Six and qualified a career-best third in her No. 78 Chevy.
"I've never been in this position," de Silvestro said.
Neither has St. Petersburg resident Tristan Vautier.
The 23-year-old Frenchman qualified sixth for his IndyCar debut. Vautier has won his past two series debuts, taking the checkered flag in Star Mazda (now known as Pro Mazda) at Sebring in 2010 and winning the Indy Lights race here last spring to earn his ride with Schmidt Peterson Motorsports.
"This one is a little tougher," Vautier said.
A handful of the series' top veterans can attest to that.
While Hinchcliffe (fourth) and defending Grand Prix winner Helio Castronenves (fifth) lived up to expectations, a few big names from powerhouse programs failed to advance to the final qualifying segment.
Defending series champion Ryan Hunter-Reay of Andretti Autosport had one of the quickest cars Friday but finished more than half a second behind Power and will start eighth. Four-time series champ and 2010 race winner Dario Franchitti qualified 10th in his No. 10 Honda.
"It's frustrating not being up there where we want to be," Franchitti said.
His Chip Ganassi Racing teammate is even farther behind.
Three-time Grand Prix runnerup Scott Dixon was almost a full second slower than Power. The two-time series champ will start 20th after he couldn't advance from the first qualifying stage.
Neither could Graham Rahal, whose only IndyCar victory came on the streets of St. Petersburg five years ago. His No. 15 Honda will start 15th.
"It's always like that in IndyCar," Power said after winning the 30th pole of his career. "You can never predict what's gonna happen."
Except for who will win the pole in St. Petersburg.
Matt Baker can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @MattHomeTeam.


text:
Well, the best laid plans of mice and men. I meant to submit this noodle dish to last month's No Croutons Required, but tardy girl as I often am, missed the deadline. Jackie did a lovely job of rounding up the entries and you will find lots of delicious noodle dishes to satisfy your palate. This month, I am hosting NCR, and the theme is quinoa. Submit a soup or salad featuring this most wholesome food by the 20th of the month. I will be serving up a submission soon.
Japchae is a Korean noodle dish that can be served hot or cold. Made with cellophane noodles and typically served with finely chopped vegetables, and soya sauce, garnished with sesame seeds and chilies, this is surely a treat anytime of year.
Korean Glass Noodles (Japchae)On the top of the reading stack: The Best Quick Breads: 150 Recipes for Muffins, Scones, Shortcakes, Gingerbreads, Cornbreads, Coffeecakes, and Moreby Beth Hensperger
1/2 pound of Korean Noodles
3 teaspoons of sesame oil
1 medium onion, finely chopped
2 carrots, scrubbed and cut into strips
1 clove of garlic, crushed
2 - 3 green onions, chopped
1/2 pound of cremini mushrooms, sliced
1/2 ounce of dried mushrooms, soaked for 20 minutes and drained
2 fresh chilies, seeded and finely chopped
1/2 pound of spinach, washed and roughly chopped
2 tablespoons of tamari
1 tablespoon of toasted sesame seeds
Boil the noodles for 7 minutes. Drain and toss with 1 teaspoon of the sesame oil. Chop up the noodles with a knife and set aside.
Heat the remaining 2 teaspoons of oil in a wok over medium heat. When hot, add the onion, green onions, carrots and stir and fry for 10 minutes. Add the garlic and mushrooms, chillies, and cook for another few minutes. Toss in the spinach, tamari and noodles and simmer for another few minutes or until the veggies are cooked to your preference. Garnish with toasted sesame seeds.
Audio Accompaniment: Apollo Atmospheres And Soundtracksby Brian Eno.


text:
Industry representatives at first disputed Dr. Rowland's findings, and many skeptical colleagues in the field avoided him. But his findings, achieved in laboratory experiments, were supported 11 years later when British scientists discovered that the stratospheric ozone layer, which blocks harmful ultraviolet rays, had developed a hole over Antarctica....I have a little trouble understanding that sentence. If you say X causes Y and we discover that Y is true, it doesn't prove that X caused Y. I guess you can say that the theory that X causes Y is "supported" why Y occurs during the period when X is happening.
"The clarity and startling nature of what Molina and Rowland came up with — the notion that something you could hold in your hand could affect the entire global environment, not just the room in which you were standing — was extraordinary," Ralph Cicerone, the president of the National Academy of Sciences and a longtime colleague of Dr. Rowland, said in an interview.The startling thing is that people absorbed the theory and took it seriously enough to change what they were doing. Attempts to scare us into action over global warming have not worked so well, perhaps because we seem to be asked to change everything (and nothing) about the way we live. To deal with the ozone hole scare, we only needed to abandon one chemical — CFCs — so okay, get rid of the CFCs... whatever they were. People will do that.


text:
By Michael Aneiro
Once the bugbear of leveraged finance, the so-called "wall of debt" largely came and went without a problem, thanks to historically low rates and Fed-aided liquidity that allowed all but the junkiest of junk-rated companies to refinance their looming debt burdens by extending the maturities of their bonds and loans.
So there's not much to worry about for the time being, as Fitch Ratings points out this week:
What was once one of the greatest threats to the leveraged loan market just a few years back has all but been eliminated. The total amount of debt due through the end of 2015 has been reduced from a high of $1.4 trillion at the beginning of 2009 to a mere $346 billion at year-end 2013. Annual loan maturities amounts have now been reduced to more normal levels that can be easily absorbed by traditional market activity.
Instead, with the original refinancing cliff (which was supposed to occur roughly between 2010 and 2015) now extended, Fitch says the focus has begun to shift to the next maturity peak forming in 2017‒2018.
The market has clearly been focused on longer dated maturities, as 60% of total refinancing issuance in 2013 was applied to loan maturities in 2015 and beyond. As a result, the total amount of loans coming due in 2017 and 2018 has increased considerably over the last two years and totaled $890 billion at year-end 2013. This new 2017-2018 peak is estimated to be approximately 20% larger than the original refinancing cliff peak (2013 and 2014) estimated in early 2009.
The underlying point here is that the credit cycle is still a cycle, even if that cycle has been extended this time around by unprecedented central-bank intervention. Moving down in credit quality might boost yield for now, and defaults remain near all-time lows, but that always changes at some point, and you should make sure you're getting paid for that risk now. In the case of junk bonds right now, you're probably not.