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Thursday, March 22, 2007
Bipolar II
25 comments:
- Anonmopolus said...
Can you please stop killing yourself with these drugs? And then documenting it in this perverse manner? By taking these drugs, you basically are saying: "I could not live without Eli Lilly. He is my savior." Please stop. And uncross your damn fingers. Shit.
- 22/3/07 22:34
- lost clown said...
You can feel however you want about drugs. I used to feel the same way. Now all I want is to feel better. I won't tell you what to do with your body, you don't tell me what to do with mine.
- 22/3/07 22:51
- Anonymous said...
Oh please. Don't try to play some quasi-feminist angle.
Fine. Do whatever you want to your body. You're obviously begging for advice if you keep posting this stuff. I was just trying to help.
Actually, I thought I was in a different place. I thought this blog is about "...a place to vent frustrations about living in a effed up white male dominated, capitalistic society." I guess you have a point. Big Pharma is not run by white men. And the profits from those drugs have nothing to do with capitalism. I'm sorry. I am way off.
- 22/3/07 23:09
- deviousdiva said...
Anonymous? Who the hell are you to tell someone what they should or shouldn't do to feel better? For those of us that might need help just getting through, don't need self-righteous people telling us what kind of help we should accept Good grief I can't stand this kind of double standard type shit. Like you are not touched by white male dominated, capitalistic society? You don't shop or eat or work or vote or even live in the world we live in?
lost clown, do whatever you need to do to feel better. If that involves white men bla bla bla then so be it. Be better. You deserve it (and you don't deserve the judgemental bullshit from an anonymous (funny how they always are?) who knows nothing about what you or any of us go through.
Take care of yourself.
- 23/3/07 04:40
- spotted elephant said...
Hey anonymous, why aren't you trolling blogs of people with diabetes telling them to stop taking their insulin since it enriches white males? How about going after people with Parkinson's Disease?
Funny how only illnesses affecting the brain don't require treatment-treating any other body part is a-okay. Yes, Big Pharma is a nightmare and needs to be brought under control. That doesn't mean adding to the suffering of people with mental illnesses.
Welcome to the bipolar II club, lost clown. (((hug))) There is help out there, it just takes so long, sometimes. I'd be gone without my lithium. I hope this med works for you, as quickly as possible.
- 23/3/07 09:19
- Terry said...
I'm BP II, too, LC. Both the meds I take (Geodon and Lamictal) have come out in the last few years and they're so much better than the lithium I took myself off of back in the 70s. I hope you'll be both symptom and side effect free very soon.
- 23/3/07 14:09
- ms. jared said...
hey burrow. ignore that anonymous asshole. you know best what you need to do to feel better, so do it. and amen to what SE said. i'm sure anonahole wouldn't be telling someone who'd had a kidney transplant not to take their anti-rejection meds.
miss you. be well.
xoxo, jared
- 23/3/07 15:34
- ms. jared said...
p.s. mental health *is* a feminist issue so it's ridiculous for anonahole to act like you're off topic discussing it on your own effing blog.
xoxo, jared
- 23/3/07 15:36
- lost clown said...
Thanks for all the support. (Terry: I'm starting Lamictal, I hope I'm rash free and it works well.)
- 23/3/07 15:38
- Breena Ronan said...
What does bipolar II mean? How is that different than bipolar?
- 23/3/07 15:59
- Terry said...
Lamictal is my wonder drug, LC. When I'm on the right dose it almost completely kills my anxiety, as well as my hypomanic episodes and that out of control feeling. There's a wide range of dosage--I take 350 mg--so if the lower range that you start on doesn't do it, the doc can keep increasing it until it works, assuming you don't get the rash, of course. My daughter, who is also BPD II, got almost immediate relief from with it, within 2 weeks. I'm thinking powerful thoughts for you, kiddo, and I'm pulling for you. Hang in there.
- 24/3/07 10:43
- lost clown said...
Bipolar II means you are bipolar but you don't get full blown manic states like bipolar I.
Thanks terry, that means a lot.
- 24/3/07 12:31
- lost clown said...
Bipolar II means you are bipolar but you don't get full blown manic states like bipolar I.
Thanks terry, that means a lot.
- 24/3/07 12:31
- KansasSunflower said...
I'm bipolar too, but not 1 or 2...my doctor said I don't have enough symptoms to "diagnose" either.
I take Lamictal that gave me a rash in the beginning - is that what you WERE taking?
What are you taking NOW?
Good luck with your new medication! I definitely know what a rollercoaster that can be!
- 25/3/07 14:36
- KansasSunflower said...
I'm bipolar too, but not 1 or 2...my doctor said I don't have enough symptoms to "diagnose" either.
I take Lamictal that gave me a rash in the beginning - is that what you WERE taking?
What are you taking NOW?
Good luck with your new medication! I definitely know what a rollercoaster that can be!
- 25/3/07 14:36
- Anonomopmoose said...
Diagnosing bipolar, ADD, etc is your doctor making a behavior judgement based on what he/she feels is "normal." We get happy. We get sad. In this culture -- it's a normal response to an insane situation.
Think about when a kid is diagnosed with ADD or Bipolar? Is it for the kid's benefit? OR, is it so the parents, teachers, future employers can better deal with the kid?
You do what you want, of course, just don't force others to become addicted to mind altering substances. Trust your body. And fuck the pillmakers.
I would never discount the way you feel -- I just think there are better ways to deal with it. Find a good herbalist and you'll be in love.
- 25/3/07 16:52
- spleenal said...
I was down in a hole once, and drugs helped me out of that hole.
They put me on lustral. side effects include nausea, sweating, dizzyness, and delayed ejaculation!
Anyway with the help of drugs I climbed out of my hole and now don't need them.
keep taking the tablets.
until you don't need them.
- 26/3/07 14:00
- lost clown said...
I hope that once I get out of this depressive funk I've been in for the past few months I'll be able to change my life in a way that makes taking drugs something that I only need for a little while.
Unfortunately, anonmopmoose I've tried many different herbal, acupuncture, and other ways to try and fix this. None have worked so far (I go herbal before I go Western), and I'm taking pycnogenol (an herb) for my ADD symptoms since I don't want to take an amphetamine daily. I think it's working, but until I get out of this depressive fog we'll never know.
- 26/3/07 16:47
- lost clown said...
I just started taking Lamictal and am told that the rash can be deadly so to stop taking the drug immediately if I start to get a rash. Still have my fingers crossed I won't get one. This drug seems a shitload better then the dreaded lithium, etc.
- 26/3/07 16:50
- AradhanaD said...
LC - I wish you the very best, stay strong! Anonymous - that's just really, really horrible advice.
We all deal with the patriarchy - that's the whole problem - just living on this planet and eating the food that comes out of ANY soil means investing in patriarchy. I'm guessing you eat dont you?
*oooh ppl like you make me so angry!!!* Get a clue between structural and individual problems - there is no one-size fits all solution to health issues. ARGH!!! GRRRR!!!
- 26/3/07 21:31
- cheri21061 said...
Wow. I just stumbled onto this site while looking for info. on Bipolar II. I have it. LC, take care of yourself as you are doing. I'm glad you realize that anonymous is just another bitter babe longing to rule the world. No,really anonymous. I was just talking to a young woman last night who's brilliant friends advised her to stop taking her medication--she has Bipolar I. After a full psychotic break, she is only beginning to recover. Do you really want to be responsible for a person's horrible suffering or even death? You have no idea of the pain you can cause. Please get a grip. Your ego is hog wild. You teach us about things through this site, so now let us teach you about something you don't understand. It's okay not to understand everything. I sure as hell don't.
- 18/12/07 19:45
- lost clown said...
Thanks for the support. All I can say is that I have been doing really well on my Lamictal. I will continue to blog about mental health, as it is a big part of my life.
- 18/12/07 23:16
- Anonymous said...
hey, i just started on lamictal 5 days ago for my newly diagnosed Bipolar II. i also have a bpd axis II diagnosis, but its not the dominating factor in my illness ( so they say )
so, i'm right along with you.. on this lamictal train... let's see what happens! =]
- 22/3/09 14:29
- Anonymous said...
To Anonomopmoose, Mind altering substances? These medications balance out the chemicals in your brain for a better functioning on a whole. There is no doubt that certain medications will not work for certain people but it is all to help people become happier in themselves. And as for your "Is it for the Kids benefit" argument, Of course it is, Future employees are not going to hire a barely function person so yes it is for the Kid because without the medication they would not be considered as Normal and Unusual does not get you a job. (I am 16 with Bipolar 2.)
- 8/5/10 09:02
- Sacred Lotus said...
Its funny when you hear people say don't take the drugs...it does this, it does that....I was there once. I tried everything before taking meds. Let that corny ball dumb-nut say what he wants b/c he/she doesn't know what it feels like to be in our shoes. It is a tough disease and that's what it is...as DIS-EASE! It's like any other disease we encounter but people like him/her can't get past the label. I had a hard time with that too. It was really tough for me. I was one of those people that was so quick to judge what being "bipolar" is. It doesn't mean crazy and it's not just about mood swings. One key difference between bipolar 1 and 2 is that with 1 you'll have suicidal thoughts and even try to go through with it. One of my closest friends has it and was mis-diagnosed for many years! He went through so many meds and is finally on the right one and is doing great. Its amazing to me. I too was mis-diagnosed. I was told I was suffering from depression and I was on Sam-E and other herbs...but it wasn't working. Finally, I began to do my research and was told to try Zoloft and it would make me feel great for 2 week and then my doc would up my mg and then I would be ok for 2 weeks...and so on and so on. I was at the highest dosage and I just kept rapid cycling. I decided to take a closer look and really read about it and found out what symptoms I was really having. the anger, the anxiety, the moments of euphoria, the depression...etc. The hypomania state. I talked to my doctor about it and everything has started to make sense.
Does anyone feel like it's almost like a grieving process when you do figure out what is going on with you? B/c you go through all the different emotions and it's all so overwhelming. I too am on Lamictal and have been for a while and although it seems to be ok...I'm just starting to notice a rash...so if it doesn't get better within a week, I'll be switching. But so far, the toughest thing that I've been dealing with is guilt. When you are going through the motions in the beginning you don't see things as clear. Then when the fog clears everything makes sense and you realize all the things you have been doing all this time. For me it's the spending and OCD aspect of the disease. Now I see where it has gotten me. But it was only about temporary happiness. I was depressed...I'll buy another pair of shoes.
Ok, so I've babbled on and on. But this is my first time on a blog and I'm looking for such support. My husband supports me, but at the same time doesn't know how to exactly handle it yet. It's been tough for both of us.
We are all going to be ok and I thank you guys for letting me vent.
- 24/8/10 19:46


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Jakarta Struts: Seven Lessons from the Trenchesby Chuck Cavaness, author of Programming Jakarta Struts
Editor's note: After his Internet company decided to adopt the Struts framework, Chuck Cavaness spent months trying to figure out how to use it in order to build a company application. If you're a Java programmer charged with developing Web applications with servlets and JSPs, you'll find a lot of insight and valuable information in the lessons Chuck had to learn the hard way. He describes some of them here.
The Jakarta Struts framework has only been around for a short time, but the impact it has made for Web developers is significant. The framework is based on widely accepted design patterns and is very extensible. Although the learning curve for Struts is manageable, there are still best practices when using the framework. These lessons become apparent during development of any medium- to large-size development project. However, a much faster way to get up to speed is to leverage lessons learned by others in the Struts community. Several of those lessons are offered here and are designed to increase your productivity and efficiency when building applications using Struts.
1. Extend When You Must
There are several characteristics of a good framework. One is that it must meet the needs of its intended audience. The Struts framework does this by providing a general infrastructure for building Web applications. This allows developers to focus more on solving the business problem. Another characteristic is that a good framework must provide extension points in the appropriate places to allow applications to extend the framework to better suit their needs.
It would be great if the Struts framework worked for every application in every situation. Realistically, no framework can make that claim. Some applications have requirements that can't be foreseen by the developers of a framework, and therefore the next best thing is to provide enough extension points where developers can twist and mold the framework to better fit their specific requirements.
Related Reading
Programming Jakarta Struts
There are many places where the Struts framework can be stretched and customized to
allow for customized behavior. Almost every configuration class in the Struts framework
can be substituted for a customized version. This is accomplished by simple editing of the
Struts configuration file. Other components such as the
ActionServlet and
RequestProcessor can also be replaced with a specialized version. Even the new features
of Struts 1.1 are designed with extension in mind. The declarative Exception Handling
mechanism for example, allows for custom exception handlers to be used to better
respond to application failures.
The ability to pull and shape a framework to better suit your domain can have a dramatic impact on the outcome of a development project. First and foremost, since you are relying on an existing, mature, and stable framework like Struts, the number of defects found during testing should be reduced. You also can reduce the development time and number of required resources, since resources won't have to be spent on developing infrastructure code.
However, with this great power comes great responsibility. You must be careful not to overextend the application needlessly. There are many existing features spread throughout the framework classes, both in the core package and in the various utility packages that Struts relies on. Don't fall into the trap of extending the framework blindly without looking at other ways of doing the same thing with existing functionality. Make sure that when you decide to extend the framework that the functionality doesn't already exist somewhere else. Not doing so will result in redundant behavior and a bigger mess to clean up later.
2. Use Declarative Exception Handling
Specifying runtime behavior outside of the source code rather than hardcoding it within the application is almost always preferred; the world of J2EE is filled with examples of this. From the security and transactional behavior of Enterprise JavaBeans to the relationships between JMS messages and destinations, many of the runtime aspects can be declared outside of the application.
The Struts architects have taken this approach from the beginning by utilizing the Struts
configuration file to specify runtime aspects of an application. That approach continues
with the new 1.1 features, including the new exception-handling capabilities. In earlier
versions of the framework, developers were left to their own devices when handling error
situations that occurred in a Struts application. With the latest version, that's no longer
the case. The framework includes a class called
ExceptionHandler that by default is
responsible for processing any exceptions that occur during action execution. As the
previous tip on extending the framework mentioned, this is one of the many extension
points that is available within the framework.
The default Struts exception handler class creates an
ActionError object and stores it in the appropriate scope object. This allows the JSP pages to use the errors to inform the user of a problem. If this behavior does not fulfill your requirements, you are free to plug
in one of your own
ExceptionHandler classes.
Customizing the Exception Handling
To install your customized exception handler, the first step is to create a class that
org.apache.struts.action.ExceptionHandler. There are two methods that you can
execute() and
storeException(). In most cases, however, you will just need to override the
execute() method. The signature for the
execute() method in the
ExceptionHandler class is shown here:
public ActionForward execute( Exception ex,
ExceptionConfig exConfig,
ActionMapping mapping,
ActionForm formInstance,
HttpServletRequest request,
HttpServletResponse response
) throws ServletException;
The method takes in several arguments, including the original exception, and returns an
ActionForward object, which directs the controller as to where the request should be
forwarded after the exception is dealt with.
You can perform whatever behavior you like, but generally you should inspect the
exception that was thrown and do something based on the type of exception. Again, the
default behavior is to create an error message and forward to the resource specified in the
configuration file. An example of why you would want or need to customize this
functionality is to support nested exceptions. Suppose the exception contained nested
exceptions, and those exceptions also may contain other exceptions. You would need to
override the
execute() method to create error messages for each of these.
Once you have created your specialized
ExceptionHandler class, you will need to inform the Struts framework to use your version instead of the default Struts exception handler.
To do this, you will just need to declare your class in the Struts configuration file; this is
the declarative part.
You can configure your
ExceptionHandler to be used by certain Action mappings or by all Actions. For specific Action mappings, you include an
<exception> element inside of the
<action> element. To utilize the
ExceptionHandler for all Action mappings, you can specify it inside the
<global-sections> element. For example, suppose we want to use a customized exception handler called
CustomizedExceptionHandler for all Action
mappings. The
<global-exceptions> element might look like this:
There are various attributes that you can specify for the
<exception> element. The most important of these, for this discussion, is the handler attribute. This attribute is the fully-
qualified class name of the
ExceptionHandler subclass. If this attribute is not specified, the framework will default to the one provided by the Struts framework. The other
attributes are also important, but this one is of the utmost importance if you are trying to override
the default behavior.
One final thing should be pointed out. You can have different exception handlers for
different exceptions. In the example above, the
CustomizedExceptionHandler was
configured to process any exceptions that were children of
java.lang.Exception. However, you can create multiple exception handlers, each one worrying about different exception
trees. The following XML fragment shows how this can be configured:
In this case, when an exception is thrown, the framework will attempt to find an
ExceptionHandler configured for the exact match. If there's no exact match, the
framework will proceed up the superclass chain of the exception until a match is found.
With this approach, you can have a hierarchical relationship of handlers, and all of it

subset: commoncrawl


text:
kearly wrote:
I saw this posted earlier today (technically yesterday). It's a highlight video from his age 35 season. There had been other Winfield highlights out there but this is the only one that captures his most recent season. He's not quite as insanely explosive in this version, but he's still a hell of a football player, in my opinion.
legend38 wrote:Imagine that."an error occurred,please try again later".Whats wrong?
drdiags wrote:If Trufant's back and general health hadn't taken hits, his tackling is almost as good as Winfield's.
Winfield isn't invincible but if he stays healthy buys the Seahawks time to find a long-term 3rd corner (with long-term being 3-4 years since anything over that doesn't seem realistic).
volsunghawk wrote:So I noticed that Winfield has worn #26 his entire career, first with the Bills, and then with the Vikings.
If #26 in Seattle was held by a practice squad guy, I imagine he could get it here, too... but I don't see Mike Rob giving up his number.
What number does Winfield get? 27, since it's one better than 26? 23, since Winfield is essentially replacing Tru and was drafted #23 overall back in 1999?
What say you all?
Swedishhawkfan wrote:+ 21 just looks cool
SacHawk2.0 wrote:Swedishhawkfan wrote:+ 21 just looks cool
Right? Then we could pretend Jennings actually worked out for us.
Return to [ THE OFFICIAL NET NATION FAN FORUM ]


text:
Two firefighters were shot and killed and two others taken to a nearby hospital after a gunman opened fire on them as they responded to a house fire in Webster, N.Y., this morning, according to authorities and local media.
Officials at Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester, N.Y., told ABCNews.com that two men were taken there this morning and were in "guarded condition" after suffering gunshots.
There is "no active shooter, or shooters" at this time, Webster Police Chief Gerald L. Pickerin told reporters this morning, according to ABC affiliate WHAM-TV.
The fire spread to three homes on Lake Road, according to WHAM.


text:
For some time we have been beaten over the head with the message that bowl games make tons of money for their schools and help fund other sports. That is one of the reason given for having so many. The more schools you include the more schools that make money.
Sports economist Andrew Zimbalist said it is very typical for the lower-tier bowl games in college football to lose money.
"The payouts are low and its shared within the conference," he noted. "They can give all the hype to it that they want, but it's not a profit-making opportunity. It's mostly a big Christmas party."
Now it seems all we have left for reasoning for these pointless games is the 3rd grade mentality of letting as many people participate and win as possible.
If this is about money, have a play-off. The check teams like Rutgers will get, even if they aren't involved in the play-off will be a heck of a lot bigger than the check from the Papa Johns Bowl.


text:
A fisherman stranded in a marsh along the Petaluma River was rescued by a Coast Guard helicopter crew Saturday evening.
The man, whose identity was not released, was reported to be about 60 years old.
His boat, estimated at 18 feet in length, got mired in the mud and he tried to walk to shore, said Coast Guard Petty Officer Ron Skoda.
"He got stuck in the marsh and found himself fatigued," Skoda said, adding that the man had a hand-held radio he used to call for help.
The location of the 6 p.m. rescue was Donahue Slough, a couple miles up from the river mouth at San Pablo Bay.
A Coast Guard rescue swimmer helped secure the man in a rescue basket and into the helicopter.
He was taken to the Petaluma Airport to meet his daughter, and did not require medical attention, Skoda said.


text:
Did you read today's front page stories & breaking news?
From the Wires
EnterpriseDB Closes 2012 With Record 62% Sales Growth
Rising Recognition Among Global Brands of Postgres as Oracle Alternative Drives Demand for EnterpriseDB Products, Training and Support
By: Marketwired .
Feb. 4, 2013 12:04 PM
BEDFORD, MA -- (Marketwire) -- 02/04/13 -- EnterpriseDB, the leading worldwide provider of enterprise-class PostgreSQL products and Oracle database compatibility solutions, today announced 2012 closed with a record 62 percent increase in sales on a customer base that now numbers more than 2,000 companies. What's more, EnterpriseDB saw an 82 percent increase in recurring subscription-driven revenue, reflecting the long-term commitments that customers are making to Postgres and EnterpriseDB.
EnterpriseDB's success comes as global brands increase their recognition that Postgres reliably meets their database needs, and at a fraction of the cost of traditional databases. Highly scalable and packed with advanced, enterprise-class features and capabilities, Postgres is replacing Oracle or is being deployed in lieu of expanding Oracle at some of the world's largest companies. EnterpriseDB counts 32 of the Fortune 500 list of global companies and 47 of the Global 1000 among the 600 new customers added in 2012. These companies include one of the three largest brands in global hosting, security software and government contractors. Globally recognized brands in banking, insurance and telecom have also made significant investments in Postgres with EnterpriseDB.
"Demand for Postgres has been rising exponentially as more and more enterprises realize its business value and technical depth," said Ed Boyajian, CEO and President of EnterpriseDB. "We have also continued to expand the ecosystem of database features, support, training and tools that database administrators need to manage large deployments. 2012 was a remarkable year for our company and we look forward to continuing our promise of delivering exceptional Postgres products and services for our partners and customers."
Other key developments for the company from the past year include:
Key Product Highlights:
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text:
The lights are on
Confused about continuity? Want to start your own Marvel vs. DC superhero war? Head on in to pick apart storylines, books, artists, authors, and much more. The superhero registration line starts here.
@Cameron: Out of what you listed I've only read GL and Nightwing. GL has been better than Nightwing so that's my vote. There is a lot of buzz around JLA,though but I don't think that's out until next month.
My pull list
Vae Victis.
Vocatus atque non vocatus deus aderit.
I've only ever read three issues of GL, but I loved them and I read a preview of #16, it was really good. So I think I'm gonna do that one, maybe even that AND JLA if I can.
@Cameron: I think all of the 50 covers for the first issue of JLA is ridiculous but I suspect they'll sell well.
Yeah, they its kind of a stupid idea to do that.
Crap, I just accidentally spoiled something big for myself about GL >:(
Have you decided what to subscribe to? I just ended my subscription to Action Comics and Superman.
Yeah, Green Lantern and JLA, I'm going to have to do it over the phone tommorow.
Did anyone read the Green Lantern Corps or Batman & Robin annuals? They were both really good. B&R had both characters written very relateable, and I have to admit, the story was touching. GL Corps was just pretty epic, and featured an awesome giant space battle.
Also, reading Superman must have been H'el... Ha!
Now I'm thinking about GL Corps because I want to know the impact of RotTA on the GL Corps.
Ok well, nevermind guys sorry
If you're a fan of the Lantern-mythos and you haven't checked out Sinestro yet, GO GET IT. Cullen Bunn and Dale Eaglesham are absolutely delivering a Top Quality Story and DEAR GOD THE ART IS FANTASTIC. Happy Reading!
Percussus Resurgo
Sadly, I can't afford to add another series to my pull list, even if I'm interested, because I just can't keep up. But maybe when it's collected, I'll check it out.
@BrightestDays: Welcome and thanks for the recommendation. Does Sinestro have his own solo title now?
@Skulldugger: I'll join you in the "waiting for collected editions" line.
Sadly, it's a slow moving line, since DC takes forever to release trades.


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Elizabeth E. Chesbrough, 77
Elizabeth E. Chesbrough, 77, of Wapakoneta, died at 7:30 a.m. Wednesday, Jan. 4, 2012, at her grandson's home in Chattanooga, Tenn.
She was born March 1, 1934, in Benton, Penn., the daughter of Lois (Hess) Yost and Frank Yost.
She moved to Wapakoneta when she was 18. She married Millard Boyer and they had two children, Tom Boyer and Arlene Boyer.
Millard Boyer and Tom Boyer preceded her in death.
Survivors include three brothers, Donald (Sue) Yost, Doyle Yost and Frank Yost, and one sister, Laura (Rolland) Gierhart, all of Wapakoneta; one daughter, Arlene (Steven) Combs of Rossville, Ga.; two sons, John (Kris) Chesbrough, of North Port, Fla., and Don Chesbrough, of Wapakoneta; one grandson, Carson (Sharon) Combs; and two great-grandchildren, Clark and Carly Combs, of Chattanooga, Tenn.
She married Elwood Chesbrough on March 31, 1965. She was preceded in death by her husband Elwood Chesbrough, with whom she owned and operated Chesbrough's Market in Wapakoneta.
She also worked for Wright Patterson Air Force Base until retirement.
She enjoyed working with vitamins and herbs, gardening, playing the piano, and playing dominoes and card games with her family.
Her greatest joy was her grandson Carson and his children Clark and Carly.
There is no visitation set. Graveside services begin at 2 p.m. today at Mount Olivet Cemetery in Chattanooga, Tenn.


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7:30 a.m. - Tree Tops Park - Davie
The meeting was called to order by Jack Mathison, Chair at 7:30 a.m., after which all present recited the Pledge of Allegiance.
Approval of Minutes
Mr. Mathison asked for a motion to approve the minutes of the meeting of December 2, 2009. Terry Danger made the motion, which was seconded by Jack Talabisco and passed unanimously.
Employee of the Month for January 2010
Terry Juliano was congratulated as Employee of the Month (EOM) for January. She was applauded for her accomplishments and work ethics and was awarded a framed certificate of appreciation and a gift certificate to a local restaurant.
Park Manager's Report
Rich Laudia, Parks Manager III at Tree Tops Park, welcomed the Parks and Recreation Advisory Board (PAB). Mr. Laudia provided the board members with a fact sheet and gave a map and layout of the park. Sharon Kent stated that she enjoyed seeing the new fire pit and commented that Tree Tops Parks has a very active horse community. Mr. Laudia has been at Tree Tops since November and has started introducing himself to the riders and getting to know them. Bruce Edwards clarified the property called Pine Island Ridge is the passive greenspace adjacent to Tree Tops.
Parks and Recreation Division (Parks) Update
Dan West reported the 25th Annual Chili Cookoff, a very popular event, for is scheduled for January 24. The Toys for Tots Run was held December 6 and drew an attendance of approximately 35,000. The Holiday Fantasy of Lights (HFOL) ended on January 2 with the attendance numbers (30,000) showing about the same as last year. Another popular event, Ren-Fest will open February 13 and 15 and then every weekend through March 14. Mr. West advised that the first of the five unpaid employee furlough days, part of budget-related reductions for the County, is January 15 with the other days being February 13, May 28, July 2 and September 3. They are all scheduled to coincide with a holiday. A skeleton crew will operate at a few of our parks that have camping or other special event facilities such as Butterfly World and Ski Rixen; however the majority of our parks will be closed. There will definitely be an impact to Parks revenue as a result.
Mr. West provided a preview of the memorandum he plans to give to the Parks leadership team which outlines his practices and how he intends to operate within the park system.
Bond Construction Update
Jim Federici provided the PAB with a projects status report handout which is a summary of the bond projects being worked on. Mr. Federici said much of the prototype projects are in closeout phase. The Carpenter House project all the demolition has been completed and reconstruction has started. Quiet Waters project the Selection Committee selected a company as the most qualified and it has been awarded to MBR Construction. Bruce Edwards asked if any of the money was going to enhancement of the water. The scheduled work is for the entryway, maintenance building and water feature. Miramar Pinelands a Selection Committee selected the contractor and Purchasing will begin negotiations in January.
Sheila Rose asked how the skate park was doing. Howard Nelson said every time he goes by the skate park it is well attended. Terry Danger asked if it was generating any problems. Mike Harlan said there have not been any problems. Brian Piccolo is the largest skate park in Broward and knowing there is potential for problems, it is highly supervised and they abide by the rules or they are done. Bruce Edwards asked about liability issues. Mr. Harlan said there are injuries all the time; for the most part they are bumps and bruises and a broken arm or two. Very few lawsuits have been generated.
Mr. Federici finished with DB4 stating that the improvements are complete.
Old Business
Laura Frank told the PAB that staff was moving forward to post the survey questions; however was advised that the VIP program is not yet in place. Therefore, there would be no one to complete the surveys. Staff will hold off until the VIP committee advises they are ready and at which time they will review and approve the survey questions for posting. Ms. Frank will keep the PAB updated.
New Business
Jack Mathison announced there was an email from the Executive Director of the Florida Recreation and Parks Association, they have created a new award category to honor retired members and Bob Harbin will be the first to be honored.
The Sheila Rose motioned to move the public forum part of the next meeting up to 6:30 p.m., Howard Nelson seconded, all were in favor.
Meeting adjourned at 8:00 a.m.
Next Meeting
The next meeting is at T.Y. Park, February 3, 2010 at 6 p.m.


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Chelsea striker Fernando Torres credits boss Rafa Benitez as scoring streak continues
Chelsea striker Fernando Torres has credited new boss Rafa Benitez with his sudden upturn in form.
Last Updated: 09/12/12 6:03pm
Torres scored twice in Saturday's 3-1 win at Sunderland to end a drought of more than 12 hours without a Premier League goal, with that brace following another in the 6-1 Champions League mauling of Nordsjaelland in midweek.
Benitez has endured a frosty reception from fans angered by Roberto Di Matteo's sacking last month but Torres, who prospered under the Spaniard's guidance at Liverpool, believes the new man is drawing better value from the side's attacking wealth.
"We are playing a bit differently," Torres told Chelsea's official website.
"We don't pass the ball as much as we did before in the final third of the pitch and we try to play more direct and explode the players forward with Victor Moses or me or Eden Hazard on the left.
"We are using the quality of Oscar or (Juan) Mata in the middle and we are attacking more and making more chances.
"Normally it takes some time when a new manager arrives and changes things like this, but the results last Wednesday and on Saturday are going to give us more confidence, the only thing we need now."


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Sound Off for Nov. 30, 2012
Published 12:00 am, Thursday, November 29, 2012
I read a column in The Register Citizen recently by Michelle Malkin. I didn't care for the rest of the column and I didn't even read all of it. But I did pick out one piece out where she referred to union members as union thugs. I want to say they have no union thugs in China. They make low wages in China, so therefore they aren't union thugs. And union thugs are not thugs. They are working people that are getting a better deal in this country then the people in China. You should keep it straight and keep your facts straight. If anyone are thugs it's the members of the republican party, business communities that are trying to push the 98 percent around.
The bank of Dannel has run dry. And all Connecticut residents will pay the tab for his out of control spending. All of you who re elected Democrats to the state legislature, thank you. Thank you for sending the same donkeys back to Hartford who are to blame for the states current fiscal mess. Your donkeys voted for the Malloy budget plan, for items such as the busway to nowhere. Your donkeys voted in favor of the "earned income credit" and on and on and on.
I hope each and every one of you who voted for the donkeys is doubly affected by Malloy's "fix." That would be fitting justice for your loyalty.
The holidays are here again. Time for traveling, spending time for family, dining on good food, and shopping. This sounds wonderful. The point of this is it is not about the needy and the homeless, though they should be our number one concern. My point is there are those of us that can't experience all of those joys that the holidays offer because we have to work to serve you to ensure your happy holidays. Many of us serve your lunches, wait on your tables and stand on our feet six to eight hours while cashing you out with your holiday treasures. This is not joyful for many of us. And there was a time when business owners had held family values as a priority. This has me thinking that many of you that have non-service worker jobs should be asking yourself how long will it be before I have to work on Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Day? Chances are your company sells products or services that can be offered on any day. Closing this I would like to just add that even Ebenezer Scrooge allowed his employee Christmas Day off. Is Christmas next?
Whole heartedly and the rest of the crew. STOP being them (Democrats) and you (Republicans). It should be the party of us (Americans). That's it. No sides. For the people by the people. The G people (government) need to learn how to manage money. Get 20, spend 20.
Now we have to teach them that you get 20 and only can spend 10 because we have to pay the credit card. Household economics. Everyday American life.
So, Obama and the Democrats say pass the tax cut extension for the 98% now, and we will figure out the rest later. Their worry is that if taxes go up on the middle class we will be plunged into another recession.
I say, pass the tax cut extension for everyone now, and we will figure the rest out later. My worry is that if taxes go up on anyone, especially the top 2% we will be plunged into another recession. Obama wants the republicans to trust him to do what he promised if they pass a portion of the tax cut extension now, but his track record doesn't justify that trust. It's deja vu all over again. As expected, Obama won and nothing has changed.


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CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Big plays, steady gains, it didn't matter.
Whatever the Panthers tried Sunday seemed to work.
Carolina boasted 10 plays — seven passes, three runs — that covered 16 yards or more against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in a 27-6 triumph that never seemed in doubt after halftime.
Quarterback Cam Newton did most of the damage again, throwing two touchdown passes and running for another score to match his output against the Bucs in a 31-13 triumph in Tampa five weeks ago.
The key gain was an early 56-yard scramble by Newton, who caught the Bucs in a blitz and darted to the 15-yard line, setting up his scoring pass to Brandon LaFell.
"They've got a running quarterback who sure can throw, and Cam showed that again today,'' said Bucs middle linebacker Mason Foster, who returned after missing last week's game at Detroit with a concussion.
"He's a playmaker, that's what he does, and they've got a lot of weapons around him. On that long run, we tried to get him down, but he's a great athlete. He makes one or two plays like that every week. ... That's why he was the No. 1 pick in the (2011) draft.''
LaFell capitalized on a breakdown in the secondary to score from 16 yards out. When he caught Newton's pass in the back of the end zone to give the Panthers a lead they would not relinquish, the closest person to LaFell was the official.
Newton added a 36-yard scoring strike to Ted Ginn Jr., who beat Darrelle Revis on a stop-and-go down the left sideline in the third quarter to open up a 24-6 advantage.
"You had Cam's long run, which he's done to a lot of people, but make it a 20-yard run, get him on the ground,'' Bucs coach Greg Schiano said. "Then we had the bust down in the red zone for the touchdown and we got beat on a double move.''
Rookie cornerback Johnthan Banks said the Panthers were well prepared for Sunday's divisional rematch en route to the season sweep.
"Hat's off to Carolina,'' Banks said. "They had a great game plan, they ran the ball well and we didn't tackle. On Ginn's touchdown, he was basically setting that play up the whole game by running a lot of curls. When he ran a double move, Cam hit him in stride. After a game like this, we've got to get back to our style of play on defense.''
Newton was intercepted twice, including an ill-advised floater in LaFell's direction that was picked off by linebacker Lavonte David, but he averaged better than 9 yards per attempt.
"People want to keep pointing at me, but the truth of the matter is our defense is playing lights out, giving us opportunities,'' Newton said. "When we're playing with a short field, it's hard not to be good. I'm just doing what's expected of me, nothing more, nothing less.''
Newton credited a key block by diminutive wide receiver Steve Smith with clearing the way for his 56-yard run. Late in the first half, Newton jumped over the top of the pile for a 1-yard score on fourth down.
"We didn't close the pocket down like we should have and Cam found a hole on that long run,'' Bucs defensive end Adrian Clayborn said. "That's not supposed to happen against this defense.''
Newton wasn't sacked while completing 18 of 29 pass attempts for 263 yards and the Panthers added 163 yards on the ground in improving to 9-3.
"We all thought we were going to come in here and take care of business,'' Bucs cornerback Danny Gorrer said. "Instead, we kind of beat ourselves. They came out, they executed well and we didn't.''
(813) 259-7833
Twitter: @IKaufmanTBO


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I've had enough of winter. Instead of letting it get me down, though, I'm going to look on the bright side and extol its virtues.
• Winter gives us something to talk about with strangers and acquaintances you haven't seen in a long time. It gives us something to complain about other than spouses, politics or the Bears.
• Shoveling snow and scraping ice are a great way to get exercise, and cost a lot less than going to a gym.
• Winter is great for tracking your pets. A neighbor's dog got out of the house and wouldn't come back. His owner found him by following the paw prints in the snow.
• This winter in particular, you don't have to worry too much about locking your doors at night. It's just too darn miserable to be outside breaking into houses or cars. It's just as cold for the sinners as it is for the saints, and all of us in between.
• Kids are racking up snow days from school. I'm not going to be the one to remind them they'll have to make them up in June, when it's hot and humid.
• Winter is a great chance for parents to spend time with children who are stuck at home because they can't go anywhere. Hopefully, that's a good thing.
• Think of all the money we're saving by not going to restaurants or movies or other fun places that require leaving the house. That's good, because we're probably going to need that money to pay our heating bills.
• For those who love the great outdoors, this winter has been a golden opportunity for snowball fights, building snowmen, or skiing and sledding. I've been told this is the best winter in several years for ice fishing and even, as I did recently, for walking over frozen lakes and ponds, if you are so inclined.
• Winter is a good chance to catch up on your reading. Since the first of the year, I'm averaging three books a week. Thank God – and Benjamin Franklin – for library cards.
• Those who make their living plowing snow no longer have to worry about where their kids will go to college. They can also finally go on that vacation to Hawaii and maybe even retire early.
• Women have been able to give their wardrobes a workout. Rather than just wearing one blouse or sweater, they can wear three at a time without anyone thinking anything of it. If that isn't enough, think of all the compliments they'll get this spring from unsuspecting men on how much slimmer they look when they go back to just one layer.
• Speaking of spring, can you imagine the party there's going to be when it finally comes? It's going to make the 1999 New Year's Eve bash look like a Tuesday night in a monastery.
There's nothing you can do about the bad weather, so you might as well make fun of it.
It's the Great American Way. I think that's in the Bill of Rights, which I plan to read right after I'm done with "They Used to Call me Snow White, but I Drifted" by Gina Barreca, "What to Say When You Talk to Yourself" by Shad Helmstetter and "A Confederacy of Dunces" by John Kennedy Toole (possibly the funniest novel I've ever read). Since it's Black History Month, I may also reread "I was Right on Time" by Buck O'Neil and "A Knock at Midnight, the collected speeches of Martin Luther King Jr."


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Sterling silver beautifully handmade and hand-enameled in Italy by master craftsmen. Exclusively at Scully & Scully.
Measures 2 ?" x 1 ¾" x 1" h.
From England, handmade and hand-enameled with 24k goldplated fittings - the same techniques used by the original 18th century artisans.
Measures ½" wide. Small 2 ½" diameter, medium 2 ¾" diameter.
For help determining your size, please refer to our gallery image on the left.
Elegantly handcrafted of burr elm with applied molding. Three drawers with brass handles. Tapered legs. Handmade in England exclusively for Scully & Scully.
Measures 43 ½" w x 22 ½" d x 29 ½" h.
The Eye vase in Baccarat crystal boasts a stunning interplay of light: horizontal cuts on the outside and vertical cuts on the inside paired with the elegant colour make for an extraordinary visual effect. A stunning piece in a beautiful contemporary design for original flower arrangements. Made in France of fine crystal.
Measures 7 ½" l x 5 ½" w x 12" h.
Dignified candlesticks reproduce a Victorian style in the finest quality sterling silver with goldplated tops and felt bottoms to protect your furniture. Removable tops. Particulary effective as a pair. Handmade in England exclusively for Scully & Scully. Sold individually.
Handmade in England. Leather is specially treated to be particularly lasting.


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Local election filings closed
Hearts ... to all the candidates - incumbents and newcomers - for filing to run for public office. Beaufort County Council should see some new blood as some incumbents are running for state offices. And the new district will give our area more representation in Columbia.
Filing closed Friday and the primaries are June 12.
Waste of time and money
Darts ... the the local elections commission in Hardeeville for wasting precious time and money in the case of Scott Ready.
Ready filed an appeal of his disqualification and will get his day in court Tuesday in Beaufort. It's too bad taxpayers will foot the bill for an unnecessary hearing and the cost of court.
Hardeeville made national news, but not in the way it wanted to.
Giving back to the community
Hearts ... to Bluffton Mayor Lisa Sulka on being recognized by the Boys & Girls Club of Bluffton at its first Hope & Opportunity dinner.
Sulka was honored for her commitment to the organization. She is actively involved with this nonprofit, as well as others in the community.
Mother sentenced in children's deaths
Darts ... to the 30-year-old mother convicted of killing her two young sons and then staging a crash into a river.
The mother was sentenced to 35 years in prison. She pleaded guilty last month to two counts of murder in the deaths of her sons, 2-year-old Devean and 18-month-old Ja'van in August 2010.
The case brought back reminders of Susan Smith, who rolled her car into a lake in Union County with her 3-year-old and 14-month-old sons in the back seat in Union in 1994.
Affordable housing in Bluffton
Hearts ... to the town of Bluffton on the completion of the Wharf Street redevelopment project. The affordable housing project will enable six homeowners to live in new cottages that are well built and reasonably priced.
About 65 applications were received for the houses.
The project is a $1.2 million, grant-funded project that has constructed six cottage-style homes in Old Town close to the May River, the Oyster Factory park, DuBose Park, schools and employers.
It takes an outcry
Darts ... to the S.C. Department of Transportation for requiring a crowd of people and a lot of complaining to agree to reconsider a traffic project that taxpayers ultimately paid for already.
A deceleration lane at Hampton Parkway and U.S. 278 is back on the table for consideration by the state.
They agreed to do a traffic study. We wonder just how long that will take.


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The murder rate in New Orleans has consistently been well above the national average. But Mayor Mitch Landrieu is searching for answers to change that. He speaks with host Michel Martin about his five-step plan to lower the murder rate, his plans to reform the police department, and being mayor of a city in recovery.
Understanding New Orleans' Murder Epidemic
By editor • May 29, 2012


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"Search Document Records - Leroy Henderson Results "
Viewing 1 to 1 of 1
Charley Jordan Vol 3 1935 - 1937
Charley Jordan: vocal, guitar.
With contributions by; Peetie Wheatstraw, piano; Verdi Lee, vocal; Charlie Manson, guitar; Leroy Henderson, vocal; Casey Bill Weldon, slide guitar.
Genres: Country Blues, St Louis Blues, Country Blues Guitar. Blues Piano.
Informative notes by Chris Smith.
Detailed discography.
Charley Jordan was not the strongest of blues singers but his voice is not off-putting, in fact it has quite an unusual characteristic which one easily brings to mind when one returns to any of his records. The strengths of his recordings are in his guitar playing and his song writing. Steffan Grossman wrote; "The often whimsical songs recorded belie the violent world that he apparently lived". He was shot in 1928 during his bootlegging activities leaving him with a bullet lodged in his spine and having to use crutches.
There's a wry, gentle humour in Jordan's songs, a child-like delight in playing with words and imagery. His melodies, too, often evince a naive charm. Jordan's guitar picking masterfully combines an airy delicacy with punchy dynamics he may have gathered from such Mississippians as Big Joe Williams. Paul Oliver has praised Jordan's "uncorrupted country style of blues guitar with an effortless, light technique". Chris Smith observes in Jordan "an extraordinary sense of rhythm. The steady pulse that underlies his playing and singing is often a long way removed from the accenting of the guitar part."
More Info on our New Store >>


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Aside from Texas and UCLA being super ovverranked, and TAMU being a little too highly ranked, this is probably the most accurate blog poll you have posted ever. Congratulations.
Blogpoll Ballot Week 11
MGoBlog Ballot - Week 11
|Oregon Ducks
|Notre Dame Fighting Irish
|Kansas St. Wildcats
|Texas A&M Aggies
|Alabama Crimson Tide
|Florida Gators
|Florida St. Seminoles
|LSU Tigers
|Ohio St. Buckeyes
|Clemson Tigers
|Oklahoma Sooners
|South Carolina Gamecocks
|Georgia Bulldogs
|Texas Longhorns
|Nebraska Cornhuskers
|Stanford Cardinal
|Oregon St. Beavers
|UCLA Bruins
|USC Trojans
|Wisconsin Badgers
|Arizona St. Sun Devils
|Michigan Wolverines
|Louisville Cardinals
|Northwestern Wildcats
|Oklahoma St. Cowboys
|Dropouts: Rutgers Scarlet Knights, Kent St. Golden Flashes, Ohio Bobcats
SB Nation BlogPoll College Football Top 25 Rankings »
I may have gotten a little too excited about Johnny Football.
"The Blogpoll" BCS forecast:
BCS: 1 Oregon vs. 2 ND
Fiesta: 3 K-State vs. 4 Texas A&M
Sugar: 5 'Bama vs. 10 Clemson
Orange: 7 FSU vs. 23 Louisville
Rose: 11 Oklahoma vs. 15 Nebraska
Capital One: 6 Florida vs. 20 Wisconsin
Cotton: 8 LSU vs. 14 Texas
Outback: 13 UGA vs. 22 Michigan
Gator: 24 N'Western vs. SEC (Miss. State)
Is part of Brian's irrational RR love. Now he can rank UA when they beat ASU.
BOOM - Tin foil hat-ed
This stuck out to me the most too. USC, who hasn't beaten anyone of note, beats up on ASU at home, and that's enough to put ASU on the ballot. That's fucking weird.
...Arizona Wildcats, and got the two mixed. There's no other explanation.
Yeah, he has to be confusing the two. ASU is 5-5 and on a 4 game losing streak. They have no quality wins. But either way, how does 6-4 Arizona jump Michigan after beating Colorado when Michigan is 7-3 and just beat a ranked opponent?
I'd like to see Florida lower, after their punt block Hail Mary win over Louisiana-Lafayette, but the damn head to heads with A&M and LSU weigh against that, though not sure why A&M gets to jump Florida. (Additionally, how weird is it that Florida's conference schedule was done by the first weekend in November. Their last 3 games: LA-La, Jax St., FSU. Is there any further proof required that the SEC needs to go to a 9 game conference schedule?)
The head-to-head issue seems to indicate Georgia might deserve a bit of a bump given the win over Florida but the rest of their resume is so bad. Crossover wins against tire fires from Ole Miss and Auburn, an absolute woodshedding by South Carolina when they still had Lattimore, uncomfortably close wins against Tennessee and Kentucky. Their next best non-Florida win is ... Missouri? At least with Florida, you can point to a series of really good wins, even if they play every game close. Georgia's played literally two tough games and they got blown out in one of them.
Georgia is another team whose conference season is now done, playing Georgia Southern and Georgia Tech before the SEC Championship game. For those who complain about the lack of compelling Big 10 games in late September, conference seasons that end early and games against tomato cans in November are the counterarguments.
EDIT: After looking at the schedule, I can understand the case for downplaying the A&M-Florida head to head. I forgot that game was A&M's first of the season, after having their first postponed because of a hurricane.
Besides not making the Rose Bowl, I would not mind Michigan playing Georgia one bit in the Outback Bowl.
Ha! You have more Big Ten teams in there than B12 teams. I was trying to figure out how you had ND above KSU and that seems to explain it. There isn't really a case for KSU being behind Notre Dame except they aren't sexy. That's if we call the common opponent (OU) a wash. KSU was really only in danger once against ISU and even then, they were in control of the game. I would assume, though, a win over Texas would make them jump ND correct?
1. so, i can see lots of ways to make the argument that ND should be #2 (even #1 for that matter...all depends on what your criteria are), but i'm hard pressed to see how ND should be aheads of KSU this week, but behind them last week. hard to imagine that we got meaningful new data from ND beating (more soundly than the score suggests) a very bad team while KSU beat a pretty decent one. does this mean that you changed your mind or is there some hidden data that persuaded you?
2. is KSU (theoretically) beating Texas more impressive than ND (theoretically) beating USC? it seems to me that if you have ND ahead of KSU now and they both win out that its pretty hard to make the case that KSU should jump ND. I think that'd be true more or less regardless of margins of victory (see: Oklahoma woodsheding of Texas and both ND and KSU beating Oklahoma)
There is no argument for ND at #1 IMO. They have struggled to beat some mediocre to bad teams while Oregon has played in one game that was competitive much past halftime. If Oregon ran out their starters and actually tried for full games like ND has had to, they probably would have put up a 100 twice and like would be winning by 40 per.
I feel that the perception of Notre Dame and KSU are flip flopped. I think people think KSU just gets by on grit and defense when that is most certainly not the case. Switch KSU with Oklahoma and Oklahoma is likely #1 and is certainly #2 because of name. Let's just say BYU, Pitt and Purdue are the equivilent of Iowa State (which they aren't). ND has had all three of those games come down to the wire. KSU vs. ISU was a one possession game but outside of that single game, KSU has won games comfortably.
KSU has simply played better teams than ND has throughout the year and beaten them more decisively. Bill Snyder is a wizard. If a Big 12 team goes undefeated this year, they need to be in the National Championship over an undefeated ND. That should not be a question but it will be because, well, they're ND. If that's BYU with the same schedule, they're third. Of course, I'm strictly talking about this particular poll. The BCS has it right.
nd, has played by most measures, the toughest schedule of any of the unbeatens. ksu and oregon have beaten teams by bigger margins. that's what i meant by "depending on your criteria" nd could be ranked #1. if you prioritize who you beat over how much you beat them by, then nd would be #1. oregon's schedule has been very weak thus far, although that's going to change a bit the next couple weeks.
perhaps the reason that nd has struggled to beat some mediocre teams is because the floor of nd's schedule is much higher than the floor of the other unbeatens. if your defense takes two quarters off against pitt, you'll end up in a close game...if your defense takes two quarters off against arkansas st, you'll win by 4 tds instead of 6.
i honestly don't have a clue which of the three teams is best. and i hate hate hate these arguments because there is very little useful evidence to inform them.
here's one good measure of schedule strength: http://www.footballoutsiders.com/stats/fei
KSU wins 23-10 on the road against a decent 6-4 TCU team, and ND wins on the road 21-6 against an awful 2-8 BC team....and that was any incentive at all for ND to jump KSU??
totally agree...ksu has to be ranked ahead of nd to this point. oregon is probably a fair #1 to this point, but even they have some serious warts on d. k-state is the most complete team so far, but yeah, they are not a sexy pick. i'd rank them #1 on my ballot, but can't quibble with oregon being #1 either.
The Catamounts are really bad too, but Bama is going to be in rage annihilation mode all game.
Is it time to re-think Alabama's vaulted rankings?
Texas at #14? Seriously? I'm guessing this was a tribute vote to the late Darrell Royal.
You have hereby lost your right to be critical of any sportswriter who voted Nebraska #1 back in 1997.
The only beef I have is with Florida, who is ranked way too high....and probably setting the passing game in football back 100 years. Knocking Georgia for having a bad schedule and getting waxed by South Carolina is ok, but you need to knock Florida's turnover luck this year. There's way too much "turnovers are random, don't buy into it" on this blog to have Florida ranked #6. I'm not even sure Florida is a top 10 team, let alone #6


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Lee Orman, veterans service officer at the VA Medical Center in Murfreesboro, was the featured speaker at the recent meeting of the Vietnam Era Veterans in Shelbyville.
Orman spoke to a large number that attended at the American Legion post in Shelbyville. Orman stated that a veteran is a person who served in the United States Armed Forces on active duty for a period of time. Orman said that National Guard members are state employees paid by the federal government and that they are federal employees one weekend a month and at least two weeks a year.
Orman, knowing the group that he was speaking to, jokingly asked, "Are there any veterans here?" Tom Taylor, veteran in attendance, said, "All of us here tonight are veterans, even our wives, because they have to put up with their husbands for such a long time."
Orman continued by saying, that as a veteran, if you were ever treated in a clinic or hospital during your time in service, you can receive treatment at a VA hospital and for the most part, treatment is free to the veteran. Orman stated that, you as a veteran, may also be eligible for a service connected disability, and that veterans who qualify may be compensated once a month for their service connected disability and that their wives and family may be eligible for assistance.
He informed the veterans in attendance that if they were in Vietnam "In Country", that they are eligible for Agent Orange Benefits. Orman told veterans that were in attendance that if they served in the United States military during the Persian Gulf War, that there is a list of medical conditions that they would qualify for assistance. He urged all veterans to see him for help on these matters and when they do to bring their DD-214 military discharge papers and other medical information. Orman also informed the veterans in attendance that they should see him if they are currently service connected, and their condition has increased, that they could be eligible for increased benefits.
Orman said this Vietnam Era Veterans is a great group for veterans. He strongly urged all veterans that they should support this and other veterans organizations, American Legion, Veterans of Foreign Wars, AmVets and Purple Heart, which are a few of them. Veterans from Fayetteville, Shelbyville, Tullahoma and Winchester attended this meeting.
Vietnam Era Veterans is open to all veterans meeting thee first Thursday of every month. Vietnam Era Veterans meets at the American Legion Post 23, Shelbyville. The next meeting of the Vietnam Era Veterans is scheduled for Dec. 6 with Army veteran Ralph Dietz, one of ours, being the featured speaker. If veterans desire more information, they can call Tom Taylor at (931) 684-2557.


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Princeton Dance for Parkinson
KINGSTON, N.J., November 2011 -- DanceVision and The Parkinson Alliance are thrilled to announce new 6- week series of special dance classes: Princeton Dance for Parkinson's. People with Parkinson's disease, their caregivers, partners and friends will get a chance to participate in a specialized Princeton Dance for Parkinson's for 6 Wednesdays starting November 16- December 21, 2011 @ 1-2:15 pm at PDT Studio @ Forrestal Village, Princeton, NJ.
Classes for walk-ins are $10 per person. If caregiver or spouse or partner participates it is only an additional $5. Special discounts for 6-class package @ $55 and for caregiver @ $25 for 6-class series. No dance experience necessary, all levels and can start anytime in the series!!
Manola, a participant shared: " It works for all levels of the disease and for caregivers as well. Each of us can participate in our own way, and be comfortable with each other." Dr. Sydney & Roslyn Helfen, who have come together each time, shared: " It is the first activity we have found that is as much fun as it is vital for living with Parkinson's Disease. We look forward to it each week. Marie, Deborah and Linda are wonderful instructors who are lighthearted and sensitive to our needs and capabilities even as they prompt us to move as much as possible and in ways we have not done before". Elisa, who also brought her mother, shared: " I think many of us are surprising ourselves with what we can do. Without this opportunity, we couldn't know we have it in us"
Marie Alonzo Snyder, Linda Mannheim and Debra Keller, all three experienced dance instructors who were trained by the Mark Morris Dance Group teachers of Dance for PD®, will take turns co-leading the 75-minute class. Participants will explore elements of modern dance, ballet, social dancing and repertory from each of the choreographer in an enjoyable, non-pressured environment that features live musical accompaniment.
Princeton Dance for Parkinson's classes are based on the dance classes for PD started at the Mark Morris Dance Center in Brooklyn in 2001 and have since been replicated in more than 40 other communities around the world. Classes are appropriate for anyone with PD, no matter how advanced. No prior dance experience is necessary.
The Parkinson Alliance has offered to match grants received by DanceVision Inc earmarked for Princeton Dance for Parkinson's for the express purpose of continuing this program.
To register, interested participants should call (609) 514-1600 Pre-registration is required due to limited space. DanceVision is at PDT Studio @ Forrestal Village 116 Rockingham Row, Princeton NJ 08540


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County to Host Sen. Lautenberg's Mobile Constituent Services Staff
SOMERVILLE - Somerset County will host members of Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg's constituent services staff Thursday, June 24, from 2 to 4 p.m. in the lobby of the county administration building at 20 Grove St .
Members of Sen. Lautenberg's staff will be on hand to help local residents with a wide variety of federal issues and concerns. The Senator's staff will be traveling across the state to help constituents with their concerns over the next several weeks and months.
The Somerset County mobile office will be staffed by experienced constituent services representatives from Sen. Lautenberg's office who can assist residents with questions or concerns with federal issues and agencies such as Social Security, the Internal Revenue Service, Immigration, Veterans Affairs and Medicare.
Also, informational brochures will be available on a wide variety of topics, including identity theft, consumer information, purchasing life insurance, Social Security, fighting fraud and food safety.
For information about the constituent services mobile office, contact Sen. Lautenberg's press office at (202) 224-3224.


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Kosher Nation, by Fishkoff, Sue
- Cover: Hardcover
- Copyright: 10/12/2010
|p. ix
|It's a Kosher, Kosher World
|Kosher Food Conquers the U.S. Market
|p. 3
|Eating Their Way into Heaven
|The Who, What, and Why of Keeping Kosher
|p. 24
|Big Brother is Watching
|The Kosher Certification Agencies
|p. 46
|On Fire for Kashrus
|The Life and Times of a Mashgiach
|p. 72
|Pastrami on Rye
|The Jewish Deli
|p. 91
|Beyond Manischewitz
|Kosher Wine Aims High
|p. 109
|Good-bye, Moisha's
|Supermarkets Replace the Corner Store
|p. 131
|Killing It Softly
|Kosher Meat-Who Makes It, Who Eats It
|p. 150
|Please Don't Eat the Broccoli
|Bug Infestation Takes Salad Off the Table
|p. 166
|Made in China
|Kosher Food Production Goes Global
|p. 186
|A Wedding in New Jersey
|Cholov Yisroel to Sushi, the New Kosher Diet
|p. 209
|Got Shrimp?
|Liberal Jews Take Another Look at Kashrut
|p. 231
|Kosher Law and Its Discontents
|Who Decides What's Kosher?
|p. 253
|The Scandal at Agriprocessors Changes the Kosher Conversation
|p. 278
|Eating Their Way into Heaven, Part II
|The New Jewish Food Movement
|p. 296
|p. 325
|p. 329
|p. 339
|Select Bibliography
|p. 345
|p. 347
|Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.
Eating Their Way into Heaven, Part II
The New Jewish Food Movement
On a cold, foggy morning in September 2007, two dozen young Jews gathered in a Connecticut field to witness nine goats be shechted, or slaughtered according to Jewish law.
These young people, most in their early twenties, are spending three months studying the connections between Jewish values and sustainable agriculture as part of the Adamah program, an environmental leadership-training course at the Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center. Adamah is one of a handful of Jewish farming projects that have sprung up this past decade, training a cadre of young Jews to grow and harvest their own food.
At nine a truck pulls up, and thirty-one-year-old Aitan Mizrahi, who raises goats for meat and dairy at the center, gently coaxes nine young male animals from the back of the vehicle into a waiting pen. Goats, like cattle, have gender-driven destinies: The females are kept for milking, while the males, except for those lucky few chosen as breeders, are slaughtered for meat.
Four of these goats have been purchased by food activists Naf Hanau and Ian Hertzmark, and two of them by Andy Kastner, a rabbinical student at Yeshivat Chovevei Torah. The three drove up from New York to prepare the kosher forequarters, about twenty pounds per animal. They will give the hindquarters, traditionally not sold as kosher because of forbidden fats and sinews, to non-Jewish friends. The other three goats will go to the Adamah fellows, who will cook them as an educational exercise. Never mind that few of these students actually eat meat—they're committed to the do-it-yourself ethic the project represents.
"I've been a vegetarian for seven years, but I'm not against people eating meat," says Ashley Greenspoon, twenty-four, of Toronto, as she casts nervous, sidelong glances at the goats happily munching on grass in their holding pen. "It's a part of our reality, and I think it's very important for us to face it. So long as there is going to be meat eating in the world, we need to take responsibility and do it in a respectful way that honors life."
The shochet, thirty-two-year-old Rabbi Shalom Kantor, is standing off to the side, removing his prayer shawl and phylacteries. He has finished his morning devotions and is quietly sharpening his halaf, the knife used for Jewish slaughter. Kantor works as the Hillel rabbi at Binghamton University in upstate New York, and is the country's only Conservative shochet. Although he trained under an Orthodox rabbi in Israel, his Conservative ordination means the animals he slaughters cannot be certified as kosher by any supervising agencies. He does this work freelance, he says, because he wants to help Jews take responsibility for the meat they eat.
"There's a piece of me that thinks a Jew who can't participate at least to some degree in the processing of an animal shouldn't necessarily eat that animal," says Kantor, who grew up hunting and fishing in Sun Valley, Idaho. Buying meat already cut up and neatly wrapped in cellophane can lead people to forget that meat was once an animal whose treatment, in life and death, is carefully outlined by Jewish law. "Maybe God and our tradition call upon us to be more involved in our food. When you have to transform an animal from fur and feathers to a piece of meat on your plate, you tend to have much greater respect for what you're eating."
A rough wooden bench has been placed about thirty feet in front of the waiting group. One student sprinkles hay and straw under the bench to soak up the blood as the animals are killed. When everything is ready, Mizrahi gathers the students in a circle. They stand quietly, holding hands, while he talks about how the goats were birthed, nursed by their mothers, and then raised by him. "These animals are giving us their breath and their meat," he reminds the group. "This is a link in the chain between what our ancestors have done, what we do now, and what our children will do after us."
The circle breaks apart, and Mizrahi and Hanau lead the first blackand-white goat to the bench and flip it on its back. Mizrahi leans forward, pressing into the goat's flank, talking quietly into its ear to keep it calm while Hanau bends its head backward over the end of the bench, stretching the neck gently but firmly. A third young man holds its back legs. Kantor steps in quickly, says the bracha in Hebrew—Blessed are you, O God, Lord of the Universe, Who has commanded us regarding the mitzvah of ritual slaughter—and makes a quick back-and-forth cut across the goat's neck. Bright red blood spurts out, drenching Hertzmark's shirt and pants. The animal jerks for about ten seconds, and several of the Adamah fellows gasp and hug their neighbors. A few cry softly.
When the animal stops struggling, Hanau and Hertzmark pick it up and lay it down gently in the hay beside the bench. When it is completely still, they carry it to a nearby lean-to, tie ropes around its hind legs, and hang it from hooks they've driven into the wooden beams along the roof. Kantor trades in his halaf for a kitchen knife to demonstrate evisceration. He makes a small horizontal cut above the goat's urethra, then a vertical slice down the middle of the belly all the way to its throat. He cuts very carefully to avoid puncturing any internal organs. When the vertical slice is completed, he reaches inside the carcass and pulls out the first kidney, encased in a milky white membrane. He pulls the membrane off with a small knife, cuts away the chelev, or forbidden fat, and passes the kidney to one of the students, who puts it in a plastic bucket labeled "kosher." Another bucket will hold the non-kosher innards: the four-chambered stomach, the intestines, the spleen. Kantor pulls out the lungs and puts his mouth to the windpipe leading to each one, blowing softly to inflate them and make sure there are no holes. His hands are scarred with dozens of tiny cuts from constantly testing his knife for sharpness.
Kantor became more observant in college, abandoning his original plan of going into game conservation for a career in the rabbinate. That's when he learned that the hunting he'd done as a boy was against Jewish law, as animals can be eaten only if they are slaughtered by a shochet. "That was difficult for me to take in," he says. "Hunting was how I related to my dad and my brothers; it's what we did together as a family." When he started to keep kosher, he decided to learn to shecht, so he could preserve the connection to his meat that he knew from hunting. Finding a teacher was a problem—no Orthodox shochet would train a Conservative rabbinical student. The only teacher he could find was an elderly Yemenite shochet in Israel, whom he studied with for a year while he was in Jerusalem as part of his rabbinical training. "He took me to all kinds of wild and crazy places, parking lots, the top of mountains," Kantor recalls.
In spring 2005, Kantor received his certification as a shochet. Reform and Conservative rabbinical students contact him periodically to ask for mentoring, but so far, none has followed through. It's a frustrating business, as no one in the Orthodox community will eat his meat. "I've come to accept it," he says. "That's the reality."
It takes about six hours to kill, skin, eviscerate, and butcher all nine goats. Kantor teaches the students how to do the skinning, but he, Hanau, and Kastner do the evisceration. Kastner is also a shochet, although he is certified only for poultry, and Hanau is learning the same skill. Kastner has never skinned an animal before, and he is working slowly on a small white goat with one of the female students. She is attacking the job with more enthusiasm than he displays, chattering about how she is learning to tan leather and plans to make a wall hanging from this skin. Kastner labors in silence, smiling quietly when asked how he felt holding down a goat as it was slaughtered.
"I was just focused on the moment, to make sure that all members of the team had the same intentionality," he says. "It felt clean, healthy, and peaceful."
Kastner decided to learn shechting after reading "This Steer's Life," a 2002 New York Times Magazine article by Michael Pollan that described the life and economics of cattle raised on industrial feedlots. "I thought, what a great way to combine my love for food and my passion for Jewish learning," says Kastner, who was already considering rabbinical school.
He got his first hands-on experience in Israel, tagging along with Shalom Kantor for some of his shechting lessons. In 2008, in his third year at Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, he organized a summer-long shechita course. There were six students, including Kastner. For more than a month, they studied Jewish texts about shechita, acquired and sharpened their halafim, and practiced making quick, straight slices across index cards.
Finally the teacher said they were ready. He brought in three chickens and asked Kastner to go first. Kastner, who had set this whole thing in motion, didn't know whether he could actually kill a living creature. But he steeled himself and took up one bird, cradling it firmly under his left arm as he reached in and made a deep incision across its throat.
"I felt this animal, this life leaving in my hands, and I broke down in tears, because I was holding this animal as it dies," he recalls. "The weight of the experience really shook me. For the first time, I was responsible for procuring meat and for taking a life out of this world to sustain mine. And the rabbi said, 'You're the type of person who should be a shochet, because you have such a reverence for life.' "
Kastner took the chicken home and kashered it, and he and his wife cooked it for their Shabbat meal with fresh vegetables from their Community Supported Agriculture farm. "We were not so eager to eat this bird," he admits. "For the first time, the veil of anonymity was lifted. I had a relationship with this bird. But the meal felt so whole, a complete experience."
Now a certified Orthodox shochet, Kastner could work in any slaughterhouse. But he says he will never work in the industrial system. He would like to provide enough meat for his own family, teach what he's learned to the wider Jewish community, and perhaps work for a small-scale, grass-fed, pastured kosher meat business. "I believe that food is a means to help us cultivate a consciousness of the moment," he says. "As a rabbi and a shochet, I'd like to bring people closer to what they eat."
Mizrahi stands off to the side for much of the day, watching the others skin and butcher his goats. A former Adamah fellow, Mizrahi has taught in Jewish schools and lived in Israel as a teenager with observant relatives. Like most of his friends in the new Jewish food movement, he is intrigued by traditional Jewish rituals but observes only those he finds personally meaningful. He wears a full beard and payot, or side curls, both of which are mentioned in the Torah, but not a kippah, the head covering dictated by later rabbis.
"I very much identify as a biblical Jew," he says. "The beard is symbolic of my Judaism; it reminds me of who my ancestors were and how they would walk the hills of Judea with their goats and their sheep. They had a deeper relationship to the land, and how that land connected them to the holy spirit of God. I very much feel that my work connects me to HaShem. I know how I want to raise my animals, and I believe that how the animal is raised transfers to its meat and milk. If the animal is nervous or stressed, her milk will taste poorly. But when my goats are out in a pasture and are getting good hay and clean water, you can taste that the milk is a lot fresher, a lot cleaner. And I think that translates to the meat as well, on a spiritual level."
By 4:30, Kantor, Hanau, Hertzmark, and Kastner have brought all the goat meat back to Mizrahi's yard and have begun the tedious work of kashering. Kantor is busy cutting the forbidden fats off the skirt steaks, which are usually not koshered in this country because it takes so long to prepare them. The other young men have plunged the forequarters of the nine goats into buckets of water to soak for half an hour, and are butchering and wrapping up the non-kosher hindquarters to take back to their friends in New York.
As he works, Kantor praises his wife for putting up with his passion for shechting, which sometimes has him rushing into the house on Friday evening in bloodied clothes minutes before Shabbat begins. "She just points at the shower and doesn't say anything," he says. "But I am concerned about not permanently scarring my daughter. She's sixteen months old and carries around a soft, furry blanket with a lamb's head sewn on top. At some point she's going to find out her daddy kills lambs."
When he was learning how to shecht in Israel, he was his teacher's only American student. The other young men in the group were always testing him to see if he was tough enough for the job. One of the requirements of a shochet, according to Jewish tradition, is that he not be prone to fainting. The first day Kantor met his teacher, the man took him to the back of a shop where the store owner had a live lamb, and told Kantor to hold the lamb's head. Without warning, the Yemenite took out a knife and slit the animal's throat to see what Kantor's reaction would be.
"Because of my background in hunting, I didn't flinch," Kantor says. "But with hunting you're far away, not looking into the animal's eyes when you slaughter it. So when I got home, I was a little shaken. My wife said, 'Let's go out for barbecue,' and I said, 'Honey, can we not do this today?' She looked straight at me and said, 'Either you get over this, or you quit shechting.' That was my trial by fire."
By six, all the meat is finished soaking and is now laid out on plastic grates, covered in kosher salt to draw out the blood. While this is going on behind Mizrahi's house, the Adamah fellows are sitting in a circle in front of the house processing their reaction to the day. Many speak about being "grateful" or feeling "humbled" by the experience of watching an animal be killed for their food. Most of them grew up in nonobservant homes; this three-month study program is their first real encounter with Jewish dietary practice. Witnessing shechita gave them, they say, an appreciation for kashrut they could not have gotten from books.
"When the rabbi said the bracha right before killing the animal, that raised it to a higher level, the same way that you say a blessing before you eat to acknowledge that the source of this life is not you but something greater, and you are just a part of this great cycle," says twentyfive-year-old Josh Lucknus of Boston. "I gained a deeper appreciation for kashrut. I appreciate the way it tries to sanctify this process, which is part of the cycle of life and death."
Twenty-year-old Abby Weiss of New Rochelle, New York, is one of the few in the group who has kept kosher her entire life. As a committed Orthodox Jew and a meat eater, she thinks it's important for her to witness a shechting. "It brings a mindfulness to the act of eating meat," she says. To illustrate what she means, Weiss tells a story about the Baal Shem Tov, the eighteenth-century founder of hassidism. The Baal Shem Tov once worked as a shochet in a village. When he moved on, another man took his place. As the new slaughterer was sharpening his knife for the kill, an elderly Jewish woman watching him shook her head in disapproval. "You're not doing it right," she said. Annoyed, the man asked why, and she replied, "Our last shochet, the Baal Shem Tov, used to sharpen the knife with his tears."
Another young woman in the group talked about holding one of the goats as it was being slaughtered. "All of a sudden, I felt this shift as the life went out of it. I thought about the distinction Judaism makes between the blood, the life of the animal, and the flesh, the meat. As the blood was flowing out of this animal, it went limp suddenly. And I thought, of course. The blood is its life. It was as if all the animal's weight, all its liveliness was contained in the blood, and when the blood flowed out of it, it became something else. It was a very powerful experience."
The goat shechting in this Connecticut field is part of the small but fast-growing new Jewish food movement. The movement harks back to eco-kosher initiatives of the 1970s, combining back-to-the-land ideas of sustainable agriculture, organics, and local, seasonal farming with Jewish teachings about mindful consumption. Its leaders and activists look to baal tashchit, the commandment to avoid wastefulness, expressed in verses such as Deuteronomy 20:19, which commanded the Israelites not to cut down fruit-bearing trees even if they were needed for military purposes. The Talmud extended the principle to prohibit other wasteful activities, such as killing animals for convenience (Chullin 7b), wasting fuel (Shabbat 67b), and engaging in wantonly destructive activities such as breaking vessels, tearing down a building, or clogging a well (Kiddushin 32a). Eco-kashrut applies these examples to the modern world, teaching that drinking from a non-recyclable Styrofoam cup or eating food packaged in layers of plastic might be considered non-kosher, as they involve wasting the earth's resources.
Similarly, shmirat haguf, the Jewish commandment to preserve one's body, might suggest avoiding agricultural pesticides and keeping growth hormones out of animal feed, so those poisons do not end up in one's own body. Baal tashchit and shmirat haguf have always been Jewish values, along with treating workers and domestic animals with justice and kindness; what is new is attaching these values to the laws of kashrut to create a particularly Jewish ethos of food production and consumption.
"We are recognizing the fact that we have a tradition thousands of years old of thinking about what it means to eat in a 'fit and proper' way," says food writer Leah Koenig, who created The Jew and the Carrot, the new Jewish food movement's foremost blog. "We don't want Jews to abandon kashrut; we want them to reframe the question of what it means to keep kosher in the twenty-first century. Is it kosher to eat food sprayed with chemicals? Is it kosher to eat eggs from chickens crammed into tiny cages?"
The eco-kosher movement of the 1970s was heavily vegetarian, but that generation's children are now applying the same values to meat, demanding that the animals they eat be raised and slaughtered hu manely. "Mixing milk and meat doesn't mean anything to me," says food activist Alix Wall. "Especially after Agriprocessors, kosher meat no longer means clean meat. I only allow organic, humanely treated, grass-fed meat into my home. That to me is the new kashrut."
It's not that hard to remain committed to sustainable agriculture when talking about fruit and vegetables—all one needs is a farmers market or a backyard garden. But obtaining kosher meat outside the industrialized slaughterhouse system is much more difficult. Few American Jews are willing to raise and kill their own animals.
In the last three or four years, however, a handful of young Jewish food activists have been doing just that. Inspired by similar initiatives in the non-kosher world, they have begun organizing their own kosher meat and poultry businesses using ethically raised, humanely killed animals, preselling the meat by phone and e-mail. It feels right, they say, from the perspective of both food ethics and Jewish values. Like the Adamah fellows in that Connecticut field, none of the young people running these new kosher meat operations has a background as a butcher, farmer, or shochet. They are white-collar professionals living in New York, Berkeley, and the suburbs of D.C., and they are learning the business from the ground up.
In June 2006, Brooklyn resident Simon Feil, a professional actor, organized Kosher Conscience, an organic kosher turkey co-op. "The catalyst was the Rubashkin mess," he says, referring to the first Forward article. "I kept kosher, and it was surprising to read that this kosher meat was not humanely produced. If I'm going to eat meat, I have to do everything possible to make sure the process is as humane as possible. Even more so with kosher meat, because of the religious aspect."
Feil put all the pieces together himself, from finding a shochet willing to work with him to locating a farm to sell him turkeys and lining up buyers for the birds. The organic aspect wasn't as important to him as making sure the birds were free-range, transported a minimal distance to the place of slaughter, and killed by a shochet who respected the sanctity of the act. The young Lubavitch shochet he found to help him is a vegetarian but eats poultry on Shabbat (as did Rabbi Abraham Kook, the first Ashkenazic chief rabbi of pre-state Israel), and was very interested in what Feil was trying to do.
For Thanksgiving 2007, Feil slaughtered twenty-four pasture-raised turkeys at a farm in upstate New York and drove them back to Manhattan for pickup at an Orthodox synagogue on the Upper West Side. Feil's turkeys were twice as expensive as kosher turkeys from the supermarket, but that didn't stop New York chef and nutritionist Linda Lantos from buying two. "In the last few years, it's become important to me to find organic food that is also kosher," says Lantos, who has kept kosher since childhood. "My grandfather was a butcher, so I was always comfortable with where meat comes from. But I've been uncomfortable not knowing how the animals were treated, so I've been eating less meat lately."
Feil repeated the project in 2008. That November, he and his shochet labored for twenty-two straight hours after their feather-plucking machine malfunctioned and they had to pluck sixty-five birds by hand. In August 2009, he added grass-fed, free-range beef to his offerings. Feil makes no money from this work; it's a mitzvah, one that he, as an observant Jew, cannot ignore. Once he found out how birds and animals are treated in industrial slaughterhouses, how could he not do everything in his power to make sure the meat he eats fulfills all the laws concerning humane treatment of workers and animals, not just the ritual minutiae of kosher slaughter?
"Rather than asking whether it is required by the halacha of kashrut, what on earth is our excuse not to do it?" he asks.
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+1! Also, be prepared to have a nice big slice of humble pie. It will happen if you are serious. Between the pro's, and the high end home user, these guys know what works, and will quickly tell you what doesn't.
I think I can speak for all makers on this forum, when I say, if it wasn't for the members, and taking their advice to heart, we would still be trying to make a knife that performs.
"It's all been done before!" The Japanese, Germans, Frence, have been making task specific knives for hundreds of years? The profiles and geometry, are practical, and functional. By all means, try to improve, but there are no "Tactical Nakiris", although a butterfly parer could be cool!
Have fun, read, ask questions, and if corrected, or advised to consider a potential fault in your design, these guys are likely right, and you are not! It isn't personal, they know what will work, and what will annoy the crap out of them after a 12 hour prep shift.


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FERRISBURGH — Denecker Chevrolet co-owners Tom Denecker and Mike Capra have emerged as potential buyers of land owned by the town of Ferrisburgh at the junction of Routes 7 and 22A.
Denecker and Capra, whose dealership has a Ferrisburgh showroom at the intersection of Route 7 and Monkton Road and a Vergennes service center on North Main Street, met behind closed doors with the Ferrisburgh selectboard on Sept. 3 to discuss the 34.9-acre parcel. Ferrisburgh has been marketing it since September 2010 for $375,000.


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Tom Hanks praises 'wonderful' Bullock
Tom Hanks had a ''wonderful'' time working with Sandra Bullock.
The pair star together in 'Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close' and forged an instant bond as soon as they met up to discuss the script.
He said: ''Sandra Bullock, I'd met her at award shows and things like that before briefly, but the very first thing we did in rehearsals was that Sandra, Thomas [Horn, who plays their son] and I made lunch, we got together and just made lunch, for the three of us. We made some spaghetti, salad, garlic bread and what not.
''And I could not discern any true effort between that day of rehearsal, months before we started making the movie, and the moments where we were actually working with a camera rolling. It's so fluid with her. She is wonderful.''
Tom was also full of praise for his young co-star, saying Thomas, 13, was very impressive at tackling such a complex film.
He told website FlicksandBits: ''He's the star of 'Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close,' he had to show up for rehearsals, for coaching, for research, or for actually shooting the movie - at what could be described as a back breaking schedule.
''But he had such unbridled enthusiasm for every moment of that, and that's a testament to a certain degree of character. He was pretty spectacular.''


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Radio DJs Get Festive with Missoula Festival of Trees
The 2012 Missoula Festival of Trees Celebration is underway! Four fun holiday events await Missoula during this annual tradition, so fun that even our radio stations decided to join the excitement.
Our fearless leader Shawna had asked all of the DJs and staff of our station to be at the Holiday Inn downtown last Wednesday for a little "team-building exercise," a term I never heard of before, and frankly was a little freaked out by. It sounded to me like one of those super long and boring seminars with power point presentations and that uncomfortable moment where we had to fall back with our arms folded in hopes that a co-worker would be trusting enough to catch up before we fell. Not quite.
Instead, we were greeted at the Holiday Inn by the locally famous Bill Caras, owner of Caras Nursery in Missoula, a name that I was familiar with, but had not met yet until that moment. This super nice, and clearly seasoned tree expert, asked us all to dive in on a Christmas tree and decorate together! In fact, many area businesses shared the same space as their employees also pitched in on their own trees. Now this is MY kind of team-building, especially when we had enough interesting and one-of-a-kind decorations to make this Christmas tree uniquely ours...
Behold! A tree built with love by radio professionals!
The best part? This tree will be auctioned off to benefit Mountain Home Montana and Community Medical Center Foundation and help these organizations provide quality services and support for Missoula Moms and Babies.
The 2012 Missoula Festival of Trees is scheduled to take place November 29 through December 1 and will feature the Tour of Trees, Boogie Wonderland (formerly Jingle Bell Jam), Gala Dinner and Auction and the Teddy Bear Tea Party.
Learn more at the official website.


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What prompts some deeply religious people to turn on their own?
What prompts some deeply religious people to turn on their own?
The Founding Fathers were keenly aware of the perils of religious prejudice and the persecution that often accompanied it. That's why they enshrined religious freedom in the First Amendment: Government, at least, would be banned from espousing a particular faith or making life miserable for those who did not follow it.
Still, religious intolerance persists, even in this enlightened and modern nation. Consider just two recent examples of intrafaith hostility. In 2011, a small group of Amish in Ohio physically attacked their brethren, using scissors and battery-powered clippers to forcibly cut or shave the beard hair of male victims and the head hair of women. The court deemed the actions a hate crime since Amish use the way they wear their hair and beards as an outward demonstration of their faith and marital status. The offenders have been convicted and sentenced.
In a nonviolent but equally bewildering case, the president of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod censured Christ the King Lutheran Church pastor the Rev. Rob Morris of Newtown, Conn., because Morris took part in an interfaith memorial service following the mass shooting of young children and teachers there in December. Morris publicly apologized for offending the synod, which prohibits members from worshipping with people from other faiths. Amid the ensuing outcry, synod President Matthew Harrison himself apologized for mishandling the reprimand, saying he could have "done things differently." But the episode's message remains: The synod speaks the word of God, and no other religion is worthy. The death of innocent young children and the community's shared grief don't alter the ban.
These instances don't begin to reach the level of the culture-changing Taliban, who emerged decades ago in Pakistan and Afghanistan and began by ordering women to cover themselves, then beating those who did not. Their Islamic fundamentalism included blowing up ancient statues, as if they could obliterate a people's entire heritage and impose their own. Their zealotry led them to host al-Qaida, facilitating the 9/11 attacks and others outside their own community that have taken thousands of innocent lives.
All these people have elements in common, from an obsessive faith to an overweening conviction of being in the right.
Peace among nations likely will prove perpetually elusive unless cooler heads can find a suitable response.
Until then, we can only ask: Assuming God does exist, how can anyone presume to know what God really wants?