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(The Little Encounter)
Print size 12x15cm, paper size 30x24cm
A dreamy little encounter between a baby penguin and curious seal has been masterfully captured by Berlin based printmaker Jutta Votteler in her exquisite etching, 'Kleine Begegnung'. The pair look furtively at one another as a gorgeous golden moon hangs quietly above their ocean. Part of a limited edition of only 120 prints, this unique, hand crafted piece is sure to enchant.


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Security chiefs blast UK visit of anti-Israel professor Finkelstein
Ahead of his planned appearance, the CST hit out at the academic for turning Zionism 'into a term of absolute hatred '
Stephen is the Jewish News' Foreign Editor
Jewish security chiefs in Britain have blasted American Jewish professor Norman Finkelstein ahead of his speaking appearance in London next week, saying he "perverts the word Zionist".
Finkelstein, who is known for his strident anti-Israel views, is speaking about "the new anti-Semitism and the Holocaust industry" during the Community University's annual summer school on Monday. On Tuesday, he is speaking about "the future of Palestine" and on philosopher John Stuart Mill.
In addition, UK-based Jewish communists Moshé Machover and Tony Greenstein, who was suspended by the Labour Party, will be speaking on anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism on Saturday.
Community Security Trust director Mark Gardner said: "Norman Finkelstein and the other speakers on anti-Semitism speak volumes for the Communist Party's derisive attitude towards the mainstream of the Jewish community."
He added: "They treat us like some kind of class enemy and pervert the meaning of the word Zionist into a term of absolute hatred and abuse. Stalin would have been proud of them, but his brief ally Adolf Hitler might well have questioned using Jews to deliver the message."

subset: commoncrawl


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Media Center
Mary Armstrong
Emily Japlon
+1 212 715 4038
Sanfer receives USD $500 million from CDPQ to fund strategic growth across Latin America
Sanfer, one of Mexico's leading independent pharmaceutical companies, today announced it has obtained a USD $500 million minority investment from Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ), a long-term institutional investor. The investment, one of the largest minority private equity transactions in Mexico, will enable Sanfer to execute on its continued expansion plans across Mexico and the broader Latin American region.
General Atlantic Opens Mexico City Office and Expands Local Presence in Latin America
General Atlantic, a leading global growth equity firm, announced today that it has opened an office in Mexico City, its second office in Latin America. Under the leadership of General Atlantic's dedicated Mexican-born investment team, the Mexico City office will work closely with the firm's larger Latin American team, its Brazil office, and the entire General Atlantic global network.
Mary Armstrong
Emily Japlon
+1 212 715 4038


text: 07Apr2012Crazy Cooking Challenge: Cake Mix Blueberry Muffins6.1K13 It's time once again for the Crazy Cooking Challenge! This month's challenge was blueberry muffins. While I LOVE baked goods of any kind, I'm not a big fan of blueberries. Neither is Paul. I figured if we really didn't like them, I could always give them to my dad. He'll eat pretty much anything in muffin form! While I was mixing the batter, Silas came up to me and squealed, "Mommy, can I PUHLEEEASE have a grape-berry??" (He was constantly calling grapes 'cranberries' and so far we've at least got him saying a morph of the two words lol) So I gave him one and to my surprise, he loved it. So of course I had to pop one in my mouth. DELICIOUS! They were the best blueberries I'd ever had! And this easy-peasy recipe was perfect for them. A perfect semi-homemade recipe as well. 🙂 Cake Mix Blueberry Muffins from Six Sister's Stuff 1 box yellow cake mix (ignore the ingredients & directions on the box) 1-2 cups blueberries 1 teaspoon baking powder 2 tablespoons flour 2/3 cup milk 1/3 cup vegetable oil 3 large eggs, slightly beaten In a medium bowl, mix together cake mix, baking powder, and flour. Stir in milk, oil, and eggs until well incorporated. Carefully mix in blueberries (reserve a small handful for the tops of the muffins). Fill greased or lined muffin cups 2/3 full with batter. These rise significantly, so you could get away with 1/2 full to stretch the recipe further. Sprinkle the tops with 2 or 3 additional blueberries. Bake at 375 for 15 minutes. I was able to get 16 muffins from this recipe. Linking up to: Check Me Out Saturday, Strut Your Stuff, Saturday Spotlight, Show and Tell Saturday, Sweet Saturday, Weekend Show Off, Sweets for a Saturday, Whatcha Got, Mop it up Monday, Mix it Up Monday, Muffin Monday, Melt in Your Mouth Monday, Southern Fairytale, Makin' You Crave Monday, Recipe Sharing Monday, Meatless Monday, Cure for the Common Monday, The Gunny Sack. Be sure to visit the other Crazy Cooking participants and vote for your favorite blueberry muffin recipe. 6.1K13


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After quite a wet start to the day, by 9:00 am the sun was shining. By 10:00 am, Rusty had been walked (or run) in the park, we'd had our breakfast, and were ready to roll. We had a couple of quick duties to perform at the sanny nearby, and then we were on our way, heading to Whittlesey.
The water appears quite low in some areas, yet in other areas the water is crystal clear, making it very easy to see the fish swimming.
There's another boat, moored in front of us, will be going through Stanground Lock at 10:00 am, our time is 10:30; which means we'll be setting off tomorrow, about half an hour after the other boat has left.
John read an article last week about insurance. The article explained that insurance premiums are down this year by 11% on 2017 figures. Coincidentally we received a reminder that our boat insurance is up for renewal in a couple of weeks, and of course, the renewal cost has gone up. John wrote to the insurance company asking for an explanation why the renewal premium had gone up, when insurance premiums have gone down. John received an answer today, the insurance company underwriters had agreed to reduced the premium by about 11% – it really does pay to complain.
We moored alongside a park, one of Rusty's favourite places.


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Some of you are probably warming up for an interview and you know you can't afford to miss the chance, so you are doing all you can, to prepare yourself and fix every loophole. To help you get better prepared, INFORMATION NIGERIA has 4 vital tips to help you nail the question,'why they should hire'???…
– Firstly, read the job description twice. This will tell you whether or not you have the required skills/experience for the job. Most times many candidates have no idea about the skills required. Show that you have the required experience/skill-set to do the job. Use evidence to back-up your claim. Say you're applying for a position as a civil engineer give an example of why you think the Lekki building collapse that claimed 35 lives could have been avoided.
– Secondly, No one wants to hire someone who doesn't understand their space, product/team. So take time to co-relate things you've done in the past with the things the company is trying to achieve. Also relate on a personal level, after-all interviewers are human beings too.
– Thirdly, the ability to get things done, no matter the obstacles is something every employer cherishes, so give some examples from the past of how you have solved a problem.
– Lastly, you should always answer with what you will do to improve the company. What ideas do you have that will make life better for your interviewer not merely talking about your experience or education, or adding descriptions like 'hard-working, loyal, team-leader, etc.
Hope these tips help!!!


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Design method for a reconfigurable mechanism for finger rehabilitation
Document typeConference report
Date issued2010
Rights accessOpen Access
This paper presents a design method for a reconfigurable single degree-of-freedom mechanism for robotic assisted finger therapy following a stroke. The mechanism is a four-bar linkage that in combination with variable link lengths is capable of reproducing a power grasp finger motion for a wide variety of finger sizes. This is accomplished through an optimization procedure that determines the parameters of the four-bar linkage needed to fit the sampled range of finger trajectories. The linkage is located behind the hand and attaches to the medial phalanx of the finger just above the distal interphalangeal joint. In addition, the mechanism is designed so that it does not interfere with finger motion and so that the subject's fingertips and palm are free to touch real objects and experience tactile feedback. In future implementations, the mechanism could be used for a single finger or in parallel with other similar mechanisms to exercise multiple fingers simultaneously. Although the specific application presented here is the four-bar mechanism and finger power grasp motion, the developed design methods may be applied to a much broader range of mechanisms and applications where scalability for human-machine interface is required.
CitationSands, D. [et al.]. Design method for a reconfigurable mechanism for finger rehabilitation. A: IASTED International Conference on Robotics and Applications. "15th IASTED International Conference on Robotics and Applications". Cambridge: 2010, p. 1-8.
Publisher versionhttp://www.actapress.com/PaperInfo.aspx?PaperID=41519&reason=500
Except where otherwise noted, content on this work is licensed under a Creative Commons license: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Spain


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Love is such a subjective thing so trying to figure out when you're in love is complicated especially for women. It is by far the biggest and strongest emotion. Many have written on this subject before so it's not something that is new or unfamiliar to us but seeing it from a different lens is hopefully helpful to you.
Can you remember the excitement of meeting a new person, clicking with them and spending time with them and then, the idea of love somehow becomes fitting? I think it is safe to say that when we start labeling relationships as somewhat beyond infatuation is when we can start stepping into this notion of love. Well how do we know then that it's love and not really something else?
Psychology Today recently published a 20 question guide to tell us if it's love or infatuation.
Rate yourself from 1= strongly disagree to 7= strongly agree and respond according to your current love interest or romantic partner
1. I stare into the distance when I think of ________.
2. I feel that I can count on __________.
3. I get shaky knees when I am near ____________.
4. I am prepared to share my possessions with ____________.
5. I would feel lonely without ______________.
6. My feelings for ____________ reduce my appetite.
7. My thoughts about ____________ make it difficult for me to concentrate on something else.
8. ____________ is the one for me.
9. I am afraid that I will say something wrong when I talk to ___________.
10. ____________ knows everything about me.
11. I hope my feelings for __________ will never end.
12. I get clammy hands when I am near __________.
13. I feel emotionally connected to ____________.
14. I become tense when I am close to ____________.
15. ___________ can reassure me when I am upset.
16. I have a hard time sleeping because I am thinking of ___________.
17. I search for alternate meanings of ____________'s words.
18. ____________ is the person who can make me happiest.
19. ____________ is a part of my plans for the future.
20. I am shy in the presence of _____________.
Now add up your scores on each set of items:
Set 1: Items 1, 3, 6, 7, 9, 12, 14, 16, 17, 20
Set 2: Items 2, 4, 5, 8, 10, 11, 13, 15, 18, 19
Have you figured out which set reflects which component of romantic love? If your psych radar is turned on, you've concluded that Set 1 measures infatuation and Set 2 measures attachment. Now that you've totaled your scores, see how you compare with the study's samples, which consisted of nearly 560 adults ranging from the late teens through the mid-50s, and about 2/3 female.
If your infatuation score was between about 40 and 45, and was approximately equal to your attachment score, then you're most like people who were not yet in a romantic relationship with the object of their desire. The highest infatuation scores were, in fact, highest among the U.S. sample (45 on average). Partners who had either gotten married, were living together, or who were dating had infatuation scores between 20 and 30 among the Dutch and slightly higher among the Americans. People either cohabiting or married had the highest attachment scores, in the 60s and above.
So now, looking back at your scores, it's likely the longer you've been involved with your partner, the more likely your infatuation score would dip beyond the midpoint of the 1-7 scale, but your attachment score would be at or near 7. We might conclude that the lower your infatuation score and the higher your attachment, the more likely it is that yours is a love that will endure, a finding that fleshes out the results of other studies showing howstress, dissatisfaction, and even educational level can contribute to marital unhappiness.
Other results from the study support the idea that it's important to distinguish between attachment and infatuation. People in relationships for longer periods of time were lower on infatuation and higher on attachment. Part of the reason for this might have to do with another fascinating result: In both U.S. and Dutch samples, high scores on infatuation were positively related to unhappy feelings. Conversely, people with high attachment scores reported lower levels of unhappy feelings.
If you want your relationship to be a happy and enduring one, it's the attachment component of love that will make this happen. By knowing how the numbers add up, you can see how both you, and your loved one, can enrich and enhance yours.
If you are looking for love, look no further than Michigan Elite Connection (MEC). MEC is a signature match making service that qualifies and introduces matches who have been screened, and exclusively selected by our team of certified matchmakers. Our quality screening technique has been tested and used by many successful matchmakers and we are confident that our clients will experience success through our service.


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The Bloody Benders: 140-year-old crime scene still fascinates today
This is the place where the ghost hunters wanted to set up their equipment: the scene of serial murders that happened 140 years ago.
The homesteaders' house where it unfolded "used to sit somewhere in here," Larry March said, pointing forward as he stood under the midday sun Wednesday on a secluded gravel road. The spot is about a two-hour drive southeast of Wichita along U.S. 400 in Labette County.
It was getting hot, and the bugs were swarming as March squinted at the field. The wiry 71-year-old, sporting whitish sideburns and with a can of chewing tobacco parked in his shirt pocket, was asked to recall everything he knew about the place. It's now just a weedy, sun-drenched field that March farms.
"I don't think anyone lived up here after the Benders, as far as I know," March said in a gravelly drawl.
He was speaking of the mysterious group of four who came to be known as the Bloody Benders, whose horrendous crimes shocked the nation and stoked tales about the Old West.
The story is again bringing filmmakers to Kansas. It's the kind of story that rivets people, that sparks the imagination. There's been an ongoing fascination with Kate Bender, the dynamic personality of the four.
It's also the kind of situation that intrigues a Wichita State University anthropology professor who is an expert in analyzing human remains. He says it's possible that some victims' bones remain under the cropland, 7 feet down, according to old accounts.
No ghosts sighted
The field looks unremarkable now.
But in the spring of 1873, on the frontier prairie where the field is now, the Benders lived in a little wood-sided house that doubled as a general store near the Osage Trail. When travelers arrived, someone in the house smashed their skulls from behind, slit their throats and took their money and possessions.
The consensus was that the killer or killers used a canvas partition to hide behind and a trapdoor to help remove the bodies until they could be buried in what was supposed to be a vegetable plot and apple orchard.
The investigators found eight or so bodies in the garden area, including that of a 7- or 8-year-old girl. By some accounts, three or so bodies were found on the surrounding prairie. Some bodies couldn't be identified. Most accounts put the number of victims at around a dozen, although some suspected the Benders of killing up to 21.
Who knows whether all the bodies were found. The horrified and grief-stricken grave excavators who descended on the scene back then on horseback and in buggies weren't professional crime scene investigators using scientific methods and sophisticated tools.
A couple of years ago, ghost hunters from Oklahoma asked March – who says his great-grandfather was part of the posse that went after the Benders – whether they could set up equipment in the field to catch ghostly images at night.
"I laughed," March recalled.
"Well, good luck," he told them. He doesn't know what came of it.
He takes a practical view.
"It's good cropland" for wheat and soybeans, he said.
Because he can't see well after dark, his wife, Jean, runs the combine on harvest nights. And she's thought about the bodies that were buried in the same ground she now works.
But she hasn't seen any ghosts, she said, laughing.
Larry March has joked with his grandson about watching out for skeletons while he drives a tractor over the spot.
Subject of movies
Jokes aside, the crimes are again the subject of upcoming movies.
Earlier this summer, independent filmmakers working on "The Bender Claim" shot scenes at Old Cowtown Museum in Wichita. Other scenes were planned near Junction City and on a ranch near El Dorado. A second movie based on the Bender legend is reportedly in the works.
Only a few things that are said to be from the Bender home remain. A set of three hammers is part of a Bender exhibit at the Cherryvale Museum, about eight miles from the Bender site. And a stained knife has been in the state's possession for 90 years.
Whether they were among the murder weapons will probably never be known. Still, at the least, they have become symbolic. They fit into the narrative.
Although so little remains of the murder scene, standing on the gravel road, staring at the field, you can peel back layers of change to see the past. Where the weedy field is now, there used to be a hay meadow and, before that, prairie ground the Benders built on. Over the years, farming has smoothed nature's prairie contours.
Some time in the 1950s, March rode horses over the ground past an old cistern. His brother found an iron bar, scratched "Kate Bender" onto it and dropped it into the cistern, of which there is no trace now.
The land has been sold, resold and handed down, and the current owners don't live in the area, March said.
The ground has changed since 1873. But looking south, you can still see distinctly notched hills that rise from the plains, the same hills that can be seen in the distance in some of the grainy black and white photographs of the murder scene.
The hills didn't appear then to have trees, as they do now. It was barren prairie, with just the whistle of the wind – no droning engines and swishing tires like you hear now from the highway cutting south of the field.
The hills came to be known as the Bender Mounds. Some speculated that the killers could have used the mounds as lookouts to watch for approaching prey.
Brutal killings
State archives in Topeka contain accounts of the killings.
A Labette County history published in 1901, about 28 years after the crimes, has a section titled "The Bender Slaughter-Pen."
It says that around late 1870, about nine years after Kansas became a state, a family of four "Hollanders or Germans" – a man, his wife and two adult children – moved to Osage Township. The men built a 16-by-24-foot wood-frame house, divided into two interior sections by an "old wagon sheet" used as a partition.
A crude sign outside said "Groceries." In the front room of the house, the family sold tobacco, crackers, sardines, candy, powder and shot.
"They also pretended to furnish lunch and entertainment for travelers," according to the archives.
In the back room, a hole had been cut into the floor close to the partition, "just large enough to let a man down" into a cellar, which was 6 to 7 feet wide and deep. A trapdoor, raised by a leather strap, covered the cut-out. Supposedly, a victim killed during the day would be dropped into the hole and taken out and buried at night.
Not much was known about the family or even whether they really were a family, but they seemed unfriendly to neighbors. Still, Kate Bender reached out with "spiritualistic lectures and like entertainments," the history said.
The Bender house sat near the road from Osage Mission to Independence. By 1871 and 1872, several people were traveling the road and searching for people who had gone missing after leaving Fort Scott or Independence.
A father and his young daughter were among the missing; they had vanished after leaving Independence the previous winter on their way to Iowa.
Around March 1, 1873, William York, a doctor, left his home in Montgomery County. After York disappeared, his brother went searching for him with about 50 citizens from Montgomery County.
"On their return they visited the Bender place and tried to induce Kate, who professed to be clairvoyant, to make an effort to help discover the Doctor," the account said. She managed to "successfully elude their efforts without throwing any suspicion on herself."
That night, the Benders left, abandoning their house. Around early May, a man passing the Bender place noticed stock wandering, starving. The man notified the township trustee, who with others broke into the house and found "nearly everything in usual order." Only the clothing and bedding appeared to be missing.
But they also noticed a "sickening stench" that "almost drove them from the house." When they raised the trapdoor, they discovered the source of the smell – clotted blood in the cellar.
Outside, someone saw a depression in the garden area, dug down and found the doctor's body, his feet barely covered, his head face down.
"His skull was smashed in, and his throat cut from ear to ear," the history said.
According to the 1901 account, they found several more bodies, including that of the man and his young daughter. Father and child had been buried in the same hole.
"It is altogether probable that other parties were murdered, whose bodies were never found," the history said.
The search for more bodies involved probing the garden plot with iron rods.
It appeared that all but the girl had been killed in the same way: "first stunned by a blow on the back of the head, and the murderous work finished with the knife," the archives said. According to a series about the crimes published in the Parsons Sun in 1952, the girl didn't have an obvious injury, and it fed speculation that she had been strangled or buried alive.
It was calculated that the Benders stole $2,600 from one of the victims, $1,900 from another, $37 from another, 40 cents from one man, $38 and a "good team and wagon" from one man and, from the doctor, $10, a pony and a saddle.
A search party determined that the Benders took a train from Thayer to Chanute, that Kate and the man known as her brother, John Jr., got off in Chanute and traveled by train south to Red River in Indian Territory. There they joined the elder two, who apparently had gone through St. Louis. Detectives thought they had traced the Benders through Texas and New Mexico.
The Kansas governor offered a $2,000 reward for their capture, but they got away.
People suspected of being the Benders were brought back to the area for identification but "proved to have little if any resemblance to this butcher gang," the history said. In 1890, two women thought to be the fugitives were arrested in Michigan, brought to Kansas and released by a court after it concluded that they were not the Bender women. Others persisted in their belief that the two women were the Benders.
Much of the fascination with the crimes focused on the most colorful Bender, Kate.
An article in the June 7, 1873, issue of Harper's Weekly, a national publication, said: "She claimed to have power over evil spirits, and to cure diseases of every kind. She is described as a repulsive-looking creature, with a vicious and cruel eye, and is supposed to have been the ruling spirit of the family."
Other accounts described her as strikingly attractive.
The national publication said she had posted notices in hotels in neighboring towns advertising that she could heal "blindness, fits, deafness, and drunkenness."
Modern sleuthing
From the Bender house, authorities recovered hammers whose shapes appeared to match indentations in some of the skulls. Almost 100 years after the killings, the family of Leroy Dick – the official in charge when the Bender house was found deserted – gave three hammers to the Cherryvale Museum.
They remain there in a display case mounted on a wall. A notarized note with the tools – a shoe hammer, claw hammer and sledgehammer – says that Dick "took the hammers to avoid possible loss of valuable evidence."
Crystal Harper, the museum board president, said, "When I show people the museum, at least half the time, that's why they are there – they want to see the Bender stuff."
In theory, the hammers could be used today to see whether they are consistent with injuries to the skulls of the victims who were reburied, said Peer Moore-Jansen, a professor and chairman of the Department of Anthropology at Wichita State University. He has helped analyze modern-day crime scenes as well as historic and prehistoric materials.
Hammers, especially old ones, could have distinctive characteristics that could be matched to injuries. But such work would depend on having the cooperation of relatives, the local community and authorities, and it would have to be dealt with sensitively because it would involve disturbing graves to recover the remains, Moore-Jansen said.
As for the extensive crime scene at the farm – what came to be known as "Hell's Acre" or "Hell's Half-Acre" – it's very likely that the 1873 excavation missed some of the graves dug by the killers, Moore-Jansen said. If reports that the most of the graves were dug 7 feet deep is correct, that would increase the likelihood that remains would not be disturbed and that some bones could remain, he said.
Tools that could be used now would include non-intrusive subsurface testing that can reveal disturbances in the soil that could suggest a grave. Also, test pits could be dug.
"It would be a very interesting project to pursue" for its scientific, educational and historical value, Moore-Jansen said.
Besides the hammers, there's another interesting item reportedly from the Bender house that has been in the state's possession since 1923. It's a knife reportedly found by a brother of the doctor who was killed. The brother's wife donated it.
The knife supposedly had been hidden in a mantel clock in the Bender house, said Nikaela Zimmerman, registrar with the Kansas Museum of History. "Now, how true that is," she said, trailing off.
This past week, Zimmerman showed the knife to an Eagle reporter researching the Bender case. The tapered blade, about 4 inches long and with a bent tip, bears reddish-brown stains.
"Is that blood?" she said. "I have my doubts."
She wonders whether the knife would have been big enough to cut throats.
Still, the knife is a rare surviving item reportedly from the Bender house. The knife is not on exhibit but can be seen upon request at the state museum in Topeka.
Benders' fate unknown
In late 1970, the Kansas City Star's magazine published an article about new national interest in the Bender murders, partly as a result of a new novel based on the killings and partly because Hollywood was interested in possibly casting Raquel Welch, Jane Fonda or Jacqueline Bisset as Kate Bender.
Writer Robert Adelman had visited Cherryvale to get background on his novel "The Bloody Benders," and Samuel Goldwyn Jr. had bought the movie rights. Goldwyn reportedly visited the Cherryvale area and took photos of the countryside, but it's not clear whether a movie ever came of it.
Just as an Eagle reporter did this past week, the reporter of the 1970 magazine story went to the Bender site and wrote that it no longer bore marks of the Bender home. Soon after the crimes were discovered, souvenir hunters took boards from the house, even rocks from a well where a body was found.
Apparently, the house was gone long before the 1970 story. An article in the Kansas City Journal between 1929 and 1932 was titled "A Visit to the Bender Farm," and the subhead said, "This Famous Place Now a Mass of Cockle Burs and Grass."
The story said that the only sign of the home was a hole where the cellar had been. A small band of corn stood where the bodies had been unearthed.
Over the years, some people claimed that the Benders had been lynched and that their bodies had been weighted and tossed into the Verdigris River.
Nowadays, travelers who stop at a rest area at the junction of U.S. 400 and U.S. 169, north of Cherryvale, can read a historical marker about the Benders' crimes.
Steve Towns, a 66-year-old from Derby, stood in front of the marker last week and read the story.
"Well, I'll be darned," he said after he finished. "I didn't know any of this."
The case "remains one of the great unsolved mysteries of the old West," the marker concludes.
Back in 1970, another historical marker put it this way: "The end of the Benders is not known. The earth seemed to swallow them, as it had their victims."


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Tonight on the eve of what would have been my grandma's 88th birthday I sit reflecting on time gone by. In the last decade I've lots many loved ones. It seems like she's been gone so long but when I do the math it's only been 4.5 years. My grandpa has been gone for eight. My dad, nearly eight years as well. Time is so tricky like that. I miss them. But today I miss my Grum a lot. I wish all of my lost loved ones could be here to know their (great) grandkids. Enjoy the technology that gives us the option to seem so much closer even though we're miles apart. To share more time.
I reflect tonight on many things, mostly happy. To dwell on sadness of the absence would be to drowned the memories of happiness and so I press on to reflect on those happy times - and there were many. My mom reminded me the other day of Grandma's game with my brother and I of 'Hide the Slipper' Grum would sit in her chair and then we would go hide one (or both!) of her house slippers (think 80-riffic slip on plastic sole, terry cloth slippers, which she'd wear through and buy several more pairs throughout my entire life) upon us returning to her chair in the living room she would begin to guess where we hid it. :) Eventually she'd get it right and we'd go hide it again! All the while she didn't have to move at all. Genius!
|Grandma, rocking "selfie" pics before they were cool!
Swinging and singing were two of my favorite things to do at Grum's. Also eating those Gerber 'hot dogs' that were baby food ones - I know I ate those way beyond being a baby. I also usually had gum and apple juice whenever I was there. Grum always had the same bread - it was brown (at least that was all my take away was when I was a kid.) At my house we always ate the white bread, but I would eat the brown bread at Grum's, because that's what she had. She'd make Swedish Pancakes every time I stayed over - and I used to crawl out of the room, sneaking to surprise them, to no one's surprise - ever. ;)
Grum knew how to laugh at herself and her laugh was infectious. I can still hear it. Somehow we got this bow tradition to be a regular thing for the last several Christmases of her life. Silly, but fun. :) Why not? ;)
Grum was so happy when she learned that she was going to be a great grandma. It was the last Christmas I spent with her was when we announced we were pregnant with Ace. I still recall when we found out he was a boy the first thing out of her mouth was "That's ok, the next one will be a girl." She was right! Mae has her spunk for sure, mixed with my facial expressions and BOTH of our stubbornness... oh boy watch out. Perhaps you do share more than Grum's middle name sweet girl!
So much happiness and life that we shared. I was at her house several days a week, swinging, laughing, playing, doing puzzles, playing games, singing to Jesus, and occasionally making cookies or learning how to cook something as I grew older. Grum's was my first sleepover, the first place I had gum, the first place I had coffee, many lessons were instilled to me there, many memories were made, laughs were had. While I wish she were here to celebrate being 88! I know that her time didn't run out here, she had just finally waited long enough to go home. Happy Birthday, Grum! I miss you.


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My healing work takes place on traditional xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and Tsleil-Waututh territories.
I request that clients arrive fragrance-free, in order to support accessibility for practitioners and other clients who live with Multiple Chemical Sensitivity. Please use fragrance-free laundry, hair, and body products when coming to see me.
I offer a free 20 minute initial phone consultation. This is your opportunity to ask me questions, assess whether somatic therapy is the right fit for you, and for me to assess if I can help you with what you're working on.
My rates are:
Individual somatic therapy: $140 per one hour session
Couples somatic therapy session: $150 per one hour session
I hold several sliding scale spaces for clients who are Indigenous, Black, and/or people of colour, and also queer and/or trans. Please connect with me regarding availability and to discuss further if you would like to request a sliding scale space. Clients who pay full fee are supporting widened accessibility of this healing work. *My sliding scale caseload is currently full.
Social Work Services are eligible to be claimed as Medical Expense Tax Credits in most provinces in Canada, including BC. See here for more information.
I am registered with the Crime Victim Assistance Program, which covers a portion of my fee ($95 per session). See here for information on eligibility.
I am a registered with the First Nations Health Authority (FNHA) Short Term Crisis Intervention Mental Health Counselling program and the Indian Residential School - Resolution Health Support Program. See here for information on eligibility.
I work in my office in Vancouver and over video.
Near Stadium-Chinatown Station:
Entrance is street-level and wheelchair accessible.
Office is on the 3rd floor; there are two elevators with 34" doors.
Gender neutral, wheelchair-accessible bathroom with grab bar accessible from lobby with fob; keyed gendered bathrooms with 4" step on third floor.
Lobby is fragranced, as there is a shared window with a hair salon. My office is fragrance-free, and all clients are asked to arrive fragrance-free.
You are welcome to contact me if you have any questions or to discuss access needs before your session.


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Semenax Review
Enjoy Mind-blowing Ejaculations with the Power of Semenax Supplements
If you've ever dreamed of sexual performance that rivals that of the hottest male adult film stars, you should know that the secret of incredible semen volume and mind-blowing ejaculations is literally at your fingertips.
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This "A+" dietary supplement is loaded with all-natural active ingredients that are proven to increase semen volume dramatically, without causing any adverse side effects or symptoms. In addition, Semenax works very fast to offer you the impressive ejaculations that you really want.
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Suffice to say that very few men request their money back after buying this product. Instead, they re-order the supplement, because they just don't want to lose the massive semen volume that they enjoy while using the formula. Since getting results from Semenax is as easy as swallowing a couple of capsules daily, it's like a special vitamin that is tailor-made to give you awesome sexual performance!
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ABS construction industry survey receiving good response, Oct 1997
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ABS construction industry survey receiving good response
The Australian Bureau of Statistics' first detailed examination of the construction industry in nearly a decade is receiving good cooperation from respondents according to the Bureau.
Early responses to the Economic Activity Survey, which was despatched recently, have been very encouraging with many businesses already returning their completed forms. Further survey forms will be despatched to more businesses and self-employed construction and trade services workers early in 1998.
Through their participation in the survey, builders and the construction trade services industry workers are being asked to contribute to better national information about:
The results from this national survey, which involves about 20,000 businesses and individuals in the industry, will assist future business decisions by providing key planning information. The survey results will enable individual businesses to assess their performance against both industry averages and best practice statistics.
ABS said the businesses in the construction sector, industry and trade associations, governments and other interest groups would be the main users of the data. Preliminary results from the survey are expected to be published around the middle of next year.
A toll free help line (1800 802 910) is available for businesses who are asked to participate in the survey.
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Happiness is a Warm TV
What to Watch on Saturday: Will Ferrell 'Takes the Field' for HBO
Ferrell Takes the Field (10 p.m., HBO) – In this new documentary, actor Will Ferrell goes to five spring-training ballparks, where he plays 10 different positions on major league baseball teams in one day.
Also on tonight . . .
Doctor Who: The Time of the Doctor (8 p.m., BBC America) –In this week's "Doctor's Finest" offering, the Doctor makes sacrifices to save a town called Christmas.
Johnny Cash: American Rebel (9 p.m., CMT) – This new two-hour documentary about the life of Johnny Cash covers the artist's life and music, from his first hit in 1957 to his recording of "Hurt" in 2002 and his death in 2003. Cash's family cooperated with the documentary, which features his daughter Roseanne Cash and son John Carter Cash, as well as musicians Sheryl Crow, Merle Haggard, Kris Kristofferson, Willie Nelson and Rodney Crowell.


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HAMPDEN-SYDNEY, VA – Hampden-Sydney Head Basketball Coach Dee Vick has named Mario Huffman Assistant Basketball Coach, effective Monday, December 3.
Huffman graduated from Averett University in May 2009 with a degree in Business Finance and is on pace to receive his Master's degree in Sport Management and Administration from Liberty University in December.
Coach Huffman comes to Hampden-Sydney from Tunstall High School in Dry Fork, VA, where he has served as an Assistant Varsity Basketball Coach for one season in 2007 and has been on the staff since 2009. At Tunstall, he was instrumental in preparing game plans and practice plans, developing position players, scouting opponents, and assisting with summer camps and conditioning.
Huffman was a member of the Cougars football and basketball teams at Averett after transferring to the Danville, VA, school from Virginia Tech. As a member of the basketball team, he helped guide the Cougars to the USA South Tournament Championship in 2009 as Averett advanced to the second round of the NCAA Tournament after receiving an automatic bid. He was a decorated player on the football field, earning First-Team All-USA South at linebacker for three years while being named the USA South Defensive Rookie of the Year in 2008. Additionally, he was named the Averett University Male Athlete of the Year in 2010.
"Mario Huffman will be a strong addition to the Hampden- Sydney community. He brings a high level of professionalism and a passion for making a difference in the lives of young men," said Head Coach Dee Vick. "Mario comes highly recommended from respected peers in the profession and undoubtedly will be an asset for us on the recruiting trail. We are excited about this hire and will work hard with him to help this and future teams reach their potential."
Coach Huffman is a native of Danville, VA, and currently resides in Hampden-Sydney, VA.


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Pabkin's One Liner: Murder most foul! An excellent short for murder mystery fans!
Sam Kovac and Nikki Liska return to investigate the death of a Jane Doe in New York Times bestseller Tami Hoag's short story The 1st Victim.
New Year's Day is a time for new beginnings, but Minneapolis homicide detectives Sam Kovac and Nikki Liska are focused on endings: specifically, the tragic end of their latest murder victim, an unidentified young woman discovered on the side of the freeway. Believed to be the victim of a serial killer, Kovac and Liska are determined to do the girl the small justice of returning her body to her family as they investigate her case, but it is no simple task matching the broken corpse to any of the scores of missing persons reports, especially when no one seems to be looking for her.
Meanwhile, recent widow Jeannie Reiser is frantic when she is unable to get in touch with her daughter, Rose, who, as an eighteen-year-old, is a legal adult rather than a missing child in the eyes of the law. Jeannie's desperate attempts to get the police to believe her child is in trouble lead her closer and closer to the New Year's Doe and to an evil even Sam Kovac and Nikki Liska may be unable to stop.
The 1st Victim was an extremely engaging and well written short story. I didn't realize this until after I read it but there are several books already released featuring these two homicide detectives and this particular short was written as a precursor to Tami Hoag's latest book in their series The 9th Girl. The 1st Victim is where we are introduced to the serial killer that they have nick named Doc Holiday who brutally kills young women and dumps them along roads.
Now I went though a phase of reading murder mysteries but I haven't picked one up in many years. This particular story really wet my appetite for more. The detectives Kovak and Liska are an excellent team. They have strong believable character voices that fit right in with how I'd imagine detectives would be. I liked how emotionally involved I felt with all of the characters and the fact that I saw how sympathetic and driven these detectives were and it was believable. They seemed jaded in some respects of course but still determined to do their jobs.
The 1st Victim was the perfect quick fix that I needed and it delivered everything I thought it would and more. I'm already aching to see how things unfold with Kovak, Liska and the Doc Holiday killer.
The 1st Victim
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Tabitha (Pabkins)
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Here's another plus for breastfeeding your babies – you may be helping them avoid behavioral problems as they grow up.
The study, shared last week at the American Public Health Association's annual meeting in San Diego, showed that parents of children who were breastfed were 15% less likely to be concerned about their child's behavior, when compared to formula-fed infants. Additionally, the breastfed children were nearly 40% less likely to have a medically diagnosed behavioral problem.
The chances of developing mental health concerns decreased in proportion to the length of time a child was breastfed. This suggests a child who had been breastfed for 12 months is less likely to experience behavior problems than a child who had been breastfed for two months.
Knutson indicated the "nutritional composition of breast milk might have an effect on the way a baby's brain develops, and that better nutrition could explain the behavioral differences."
Previous research has already shown that breastfeeding provides numerous benefits for both the mother and child. The American Academy of Pediatrics states that babies who receive breastmilk are less likely to suffer ear infections, diarrhea, asthma, and bacterial or viral infections. Breastfeeding also helps lower the risk of diabetes, certain cancers, obesity, and Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), while the benefits for a breastfeeding mother include helping the post-partum uterus quickly return to its pre-pregnancy shape, lowering the risk for breast cancer, and helping support a healthy bond between mom and baby.


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Geek Trivia
Which Hollywood Action Hero Is A Lifelong Dungeons & Dragons Geek?
Answer: Vin Diesel
While Dungeons & Dragons has plenty of high profile fans within the geek community–like Wil Wheaton–love for the table top role-playing game is kept rather hushed outside of geekier circles. Unless, of course, you're talking to Hollywood action hero and director Vin Diesel.
Diesel is lifelong Dungeons & Dragons fan who began playing in his early teens and continues to this day. He's talked about the hobby on The Conan O'Brien Show, the Jimmy Kimmel Show, and in interviews with Dragon Magazine. In 2004, he even penned the introduction to a Dungeons & Dragons retrospective book appropriately titled Thirty Years of Adventure: A Celebration of Dungeons & Dragons.
In the 2002 action-movie xXx, Diesel had the makeup crew give a nod to his favorite character, Melcor, by putting a fake tatoo with the half-orc's name on his stomach for the film. In various interviews, Diesel has suggested he's been informally shopping around looking to start a video game franchise based on the character.
Other notable Dungeons & Dragons fans include comedians Robin Williams and Stephen Colbert, musician Moby, actor Mike Myers, and cartoonist Matt Groening.


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The Moon, the Sun, and Cosmic Coincidence
The Sun is 400 times larger than the Moon, but it is also 400 times further away. What this means is that, when viewed from the Earth, the Moon is *exactly* the correct size to perfectly obscure the Sun when they are aligned during a total eclipse. As you can see in the picture to the right, the Moon covers the sun perfectly, leaving only the corona visible around the edges.
I have a compulsion, for lack of a better term, to understand things. How they work. Why they happen. What they mean. It took a few years for Marie to get used to me going into EngineerBoy-mode when she did something I didn't understand, and so would begin quizzing her about it. For example, if she drove a different route to a familiar destination I would ask her why she chose that route. In the beginning, she interepreted it as me questioning her route choice – in the sense of doubting that it was the most correct/efficient route.
But what I was doing was actually paying her the compliment of knowing that she wouldn't just absent-mindedly pick some unexpected route, and that there must be a logical reason for it, and I wanted to know her reasoning. In retrospect it's easy to see why it was annoying, because I did a poor job of couching the questions in any sort of way other than, "Why did you turn left there? Aren't we going to Place X? We usually go *that* way, why would you choose to go *this* way??". That sounds like skepticism and doubt, and what it really is is the quest for information and knowledge, and the answer of "I just felt like taking a different route today" makes perfect sense, I just hungered to know "why?".
Eventually she realized that I do that about anything and everything that I don't understand. If we pass by an interesting door and I can't figure out how the hinges work, I'll stop and assess it (within reason, given other pressing matters). It's not that I think the door is "wrong", it's that I don't understand it, but it obviously works, and I want to *get* it. I know that me understanding how a particular door works doesn't really do anything other than satisfy my curiosity, and as long as it works that should be good enough for a random door.
And it's not every door that I have to figure out, just those that seem to me to not fit what i already know about doors. I'm the same way with people – when they behave in ways that I don't understand, I have to try and figure them out. For the most part it's not about agreeing or disagreeing with the way a person behaves, it's about being able to understand a person's motivations to act in a way that doesn't make sense to me, when it obviously makes sense to them, because they're doing it.
So a lot of my curiousity comes from the fact that I freely acknowledge that I don't know everything. In fact, given the totality of human knowledge, and the unfathomable scope of all possible knowledge, I really don't know anything much at all.
But if I can observe something, and understand all of its facets, and it still doesn't make sense, that bothers me. A lot. And it doesn't happen much – not that I am somehow able to figure everything out, it's more that I'm usually able to see the line that separates things that I personally can't explain and things which cannot be explained, period.
One of the things-which-cannot-be-explained-period is the relative visual size of the Sun and Moon. There are two possible explanations for their perfect ratios.
1) Coincidence
2) Design
Both of those explanations leave me skeptical, frustrated, and continuing to search for answers. As for it being a coincidence, the odds of all the factors occuring randomly are so astronomically high that I can't blithely accept that as the answer. If the Moon were slightly farther away from the Earth, or slightly closer, it wouldn't happen. If the Moon were slightly larger or smaller than it is, it wouldn't happen. If the orbit of the Moon didn't have it line up perfectly with the Sun regularly, it wouldn't happen. If the Sun were slightly larger or smaller, it wouldn't happen. If the Earth's orbit it kept is slightly closer to or further from the Sun, it wouldn't happen.
But *all* of those things happen. The odds of it being a coincidence are staggering.
But if it's not a coincidence, that leaves purposeful design. Well, whose design? God(s)? Aliens? Ancestors? Some combination of those? I mean, it's hard to argue with evidence – there's the Moon, there's the Sun, and a couple of times a year, there's the demonstration during an eclipse. We can all see it, we can all understand it from the purely physical aspect. There's nothing to interpret, because it happens, an event that all humanity can observe and which cannot be denied. It's not a fake, it's not a stunt, it's not a legend, it's not a myth, it's not Photoshopped. It's just there for all of us to see.
But if we are assessing the "design" explanation, then the phenomenon is clearly a message. It has meaning. It says something. But what?
If we start with just the facts, the message is obviously directed at inhabitants of Earth, because it is only from the perspective of the surface of the Earth that it can be seen. But what is the message? The actual obscuring of the sun by the moon doesn't seem to convey much in and of itself. What seems to be the important part is the exact fit during a total eclipse.
The closest explanation that I can conjure up is similar to a plot point from the film "2001: A Space Odyssey". In the film, there is a rectangular black monolith that is not a random object, it was obviously created by something intelligent. The monolith is buried on the far side of the moon, such that man will not discover it until he has made enough technological advancement to actually go to the dark side of the moon and find it.
And once men uncover the monolith, it responds by beaming a signal elsewhere in the solar system, indicating that man had sort of stumbled across a tripwire that indicated that we had advanced enough to travel to the moon. One element of the Moon/Sun eclipse phenomena could be that humans couldn't understand until such time as we grasped the nature of the stars and planets, and even further, until we realized that the chances that the perfect fit is a random coincidence is nearly 0%.
So, okay, we did it. We've figured out the stars and planets, at least at a basic conceptual level. We understand the effects of gravity and the nature of orbital mechanics. We've been to the Moon and back. We've even sent man-made objects out of our solar system and into deep space.
But…now what? The Moon perfectly obscures the Sun during a total eclipse, it's improbable that it's pure coincidence, we *get* it. But, now what? What does it mean that we understand it? What should it be telling us? What should we be learning from that?
There are some whose philosophy will allow them to attribute this phenomenon to a higher power, and thus endeth the inquiry. However, to me, no matter who set it up or why, there has to be more to it than a simple display of god-like powers – that would seem so…conceited of him/her/it/them.
My take is that the purpose of this astronomical alignment is for us to understand two things:
Thing Number One
The first thing that this is trying to tell us that we are not alone. There is someone or something else out there, and they are far more advanced than we are. They were able to set the size and shapes of planets to the precise ratios such that, once our puny-but-ravenous human brains advanced enough to understand it, we would *get* it.
Thing Number Two
The second thing that this is trying to tell us is that, compared to the vastness of available knowledge, we know nothing. Right now, humans know enough to see the phenomenon, to understand the mechanics of it, and to begin to question the meaning of it, but that's it. So, in this sense, it's like a trail of breadcrumbs, designed to lead us to the desired destination (both physically and intellectually). It's saying, come on, take a few more steps, make a few more theoretical leaps, come out of our shell of earthboundedness and step into the wider universe.
In closing, I freely state that all of the above is pure conjecture and deduction and has a high probability of being completely wrong in every facet. However, it represents my best interpretation of the undeniable facts. The fact that there isn't more discussion of and amazement about this phenomenon serves to both frighten and confuse me. There are many who say, show me proof of a higher power and/or of other intelligent life in the universe. Well, there it is. There are many who say, I already knew about the higher power, I know that he/she/it is omnipotent, and so the phenomenon is nothing more than confirmation of what I already knew and no further introspection is needed. Uh, really?
I will also freely state that there is a very small, but non-zero, chance that this phenomenon is purely a coincidence.
But I doubt it.


text: "To me, when we say mobile first, it's not the mobility of the device, it's actually the mobility of the individual experience," Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said in November 2014 at a UK event. When remoting into Windows desktops and applications is part of your enterprise mobility strategy, acceptable end user experience is an important success factor. Unfortunately, traditional benchmarking parameters, such as frame rates and system performance counters, do not entirely represent the perceived end user experience (EUX) on a remote client. But what are the parameters and metrics that allow you to judge remote EUX and manage customer expectations?


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Interview with James Hamlett for DPF NewsNotes
In 1966, James Hamlett graduated from Wichita High School North in Kansas. He served his last day as the President of the Pension Fund of the Christian Church on August 31, 2016, after serving for nearly 46 years in various ministries within the Christian Church including the United Christian Missionary Society, Board of Church Extension and the Pension Fund. Here we share the story of how that journey of service began.
DPF: For those who didn't experience it personally, can you explain what it was like to be a young man in the United States when there was an active draft?
JH: The draft was reinstituted in 1970 with a lottery in February of that year based upon year, month and date of birth. I was included in that first lottery. There was great turmoil on college campuses about the Viet Nam War in general and especially about the lottery. Those selected, if not otherwise deferred, were confronted with a series of potentially life-changing questions. Would one be willing to serve if called? Would one enlist in a preferred service so as to have some input in how one served? Would one go underground or flee, perhaps to Canada? What about resistance to serving and risk being sent to prison? Would one oppose on religious grounds as a conscientious objector? And if granted CO status, in what form of alternative service would one fulfill one's two-year obligation, if called? Those selected in the lottery had to face these questions. Those not selected were off the hook. The difference in treatment only enhanced the divisiveness around the war.
DPF: How did you come to the decision to register as a Conscientious Objector? Who influenced your choice? Were there particular people or communities who helped you make this decision?
JH: As a young person I was active my church youth group, in summer church camp, district and regional youth activities. I had seriously considered the possibility of attending a church related college and preparing for ministry. The Chi Rho and CYF groups in my church were encouraged to engage in serious discussions around faith formation and social issues and how they might inform action. I had been taught by my parents to think for myself, to determine for myself what I believe to be right and to be prepared to stand against peer pressure if need be. That nurturing continued as I entered college. As the Viet Nam War expanded, I came to the belief that our country's involvement was wrong. And as I questioned myself about why, I came to understand that I believed all killing of human life to be wrong and therefore could not condone nor participate. Of course, none of that would really have mattered if my lottery number were high enough. After all, each person in the lottery had about a 50% chance of not being called. As it turned out, my birth date was the 17th date called. I had a decision to make. My decision, against the advice of family and some friends, was to declare as a CO and then work at having some influence in where and how I might serve my two-year commitment in Alternative Service.
DPF: What happened once you made the decision? What were you required to do, and how did the Christian Church become involved?
JH: Once I made my decision I contacted the pastors at my church. They gave me their support and put me in touch with a community ministry specializing in Conscientious Objectors who advised as to process and requirements. The community ministry, lead by a Disciples pastor, also counseled on subsequent steps for appeal in the event that the CO status was denied. My particular draft board had a reputation for denying such requests. I prepared the required forms, offered character advocates and prepared my personal statement regarding what I believed and why I was conscientiously opposed to serving as a military combatant. The community ministry opened a network of resources and support for those who sought CO status. After filing the declaration, I waited expecting to be denied and preparing to take further steps on appeal. But for whatever reason, my request was approved. My pastors and the community minister then assisted in providing information about where one might serve. This was a broad list of hospitals, social service organizations, and one United Christian Missionary Society. I contacted a number of these organizations. I subsequently received a letter from the UCMS saying that they had no real opening, but if I would come and be willing to start by serving in their mailroom, they would see what they might have for me that would fit with my education and skills. So as a leap of faith, I moved to Indianapolis to start Alternative Service in the UCMS mail room, intending to return to my childhood home after two years.
DPF: How do you think the decisions you made at that point in your life affected the trajectory of the rest of your life? Would you do it again?
JH: Had I taken another path, I would not have had the opportunity to serve at UCMS, to become acquainted and be nurtured by some of the great saints of this church. I likely might have become an attorney and served a career in a secular environment. Certainly service at Board of Church Extension (now Disciples Church Extension) and at Pension Fund would not have developed. At each point along my career, I have had decision points, which have opened doors that have blessed me and my family beyond measure. Would I do it again? I would like to think so. Being clear about one's faith positions and being willing to stand for those positions, even if standing alone was the real issue. The draft was simply the facilitator for crystallization and action.
DPF: In these days when an active draft is a distant memory, but politicians are discussing requiring women to register alongside men, what is your advice for youth who are facing their 18th birthdays and the requirement to register for Selective Service, and for their parents, youth leaders or pastors?
JH: Of course registration was also required when I turned 18. As a proud citizen of this great country I chose not to resist the requirement of registration. I also was prepared to fulfill a service requirement. But, I chose to resist the role of combatant and sought to find a way to serve in a manner that might be beneficial to my country and humankind. Some might take a similar position. Others, of course, may follow a different path. As I think back, I have great admiration for those persons who made a decision and stood by it, whether it was military service, or alternative service. However, I think was unfortunate that those persons who had high lottery numbers, never were required to confront serving this great country. So I actually could support universal registration and a universal two-year commitment to serving the country either through military service or well created alternative service opportunities supporting health, education, social justice, etc. It might cause more people to truly come to grips with their faith positions. So if I were to give advice, it would be this. Seek opportunities that will test and provide clarity to your faith and what you believe you are called to do. Be firm in your faith, willing to stand against the tide of opinion or peer pressure. Be open to God's leading as God opens doors for service consistent with your faith. And be confident that you will find blessing in your decisions. It can be life changing.
DPF: Thanks so much for sharing your story with us! Blessings in your retirement, Jim!
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Aurora Farms
Aurora Farms LLC is a 31 acre polyculture farm outside Friday Harbor, WA, on spectacular San Juan Island, in the Pacific Northwest. The farm focus is education and restorative agriculture, including a mixture of activities and operations to include, but not limited to/in rotations: mixed vegetable production, flowers, orchards, sheep, poultry, cattle, horses, goats and pigs. Agroforestry examples, as well as developing greenhouse cultures, value-added products, agricultural business plan development and farm-stays add to the farm as well. Lori Ann David, owner and operator of Aurora Farm, has over 4 decades of agricultural experience in all operations (starting farming on Lopez Island in the 70's) currently produces, inspires, and educates (travels thru the year) in other parts of the US, as well as lives on the land and oversees activities. She is a well-known artist, designer, farmer, and educator, and is an integral part of the daily routine and education. With the help of her partner Brian Sesby- owner and operator of Sesby Ranch- Lori Ann lives and works the land of Aurora Farms.
Mission statement: Aurora Farms is committed to providing outstanding, organic, sustainable food for local families and individuals who concern themselves with the quality of their energy and their concern for the environment and their body!
Visit OUr Farm
Play with our Boer goats
Stroll with our Katahdin sheep
Scratch a Berkshire pig belly
Cluck with the chickens and Gather eggs
Walk our gardens and greenhouses
Visit our self-service farm store
Check out our art or yoga studio
Join us for a farm stay


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These days mornings are too early for us, as it is completely dark outside, and when I put the kitchen light on, it feels like lighting up a "diya" in complete darkness, first thing that I search out the dip-dip tea –bags in kitchen cupboards to make ginger tea for us. Morning rush-hour becomes hectic there after. But still it has a rhythm of it's own, cooking and packing lunch-boxes, getting ready to drop dear daughter off to school and we do walk to school everyday, while we get to see many beautiful autumn trees these days and what marvellous views they have.
While we are struggling with patches of rain here, I thought let me add little bit of color to our mundane cooking, so made these raspberry jam- red , vibrant and of course very sweet. And this has been finished up already with in 3-4 days. Actually this is a wish on my daughter's part to make raspberry jam after I made Red Currant jam last time. And we have been putting up this home-made jam over rotis, paratha and as toppings over biscuits as well, and then of course there is way to use them up over our morning breakfast toast as well.
Sometimes, there is such simplicity of a recipe that there is no need to write instructions for that, but for those who are starting to make home-made jams, this is for you.
Raspberry Jam
Recipe requirements
250 Gms of fresh raspberry
7-10 blackberry
250 Gms of sugar
¼ tsp of lemon juice
Wash and clean raspberry. Pluck out the sad ones.I have used black-berry as well but in very few quantity.
Now put those in saucepan put the heat to medium flame. Sprinkle about a pinch of salt and let it cook well. After about 7-10 mints they will tend to release lots of water.Press them with the help of cooking spatula so that they gets mushy or crushed well.
Now collect them and sieve through well to discard the seeds( since I was working with less quantity , I relied on the tea-strainer, but if you are working with huge quantities, I would suggest to use a good quality strainer ) and collecting all the pulp that is formed. However, if seeds don't bother you much then proceed to adding sugar now.
Now add in sugar and let it to cook at med-low flame about 15-20 mints. Meanwhile discard any white froth forming from time to time on the top. (Ok, sometimes I tend to make sugar syrup before hand and then add the pureed raspberries, then wait till they gets thickened and mixed up.)
Once it starts to become thick, stop the flame, and then add lemon juice to it, do not cook any further now as lemon juice have been added.Take the saucepan off from the stove-top.Put a thoroughly clean glass jar in pre-heated oven; keep it for 1-2 mints so that the water in that glass jar gets dried up well. This is our quick way of doing sterilization process.
Now pour in the cooked raspberry puree in to the sterilized glass jar. Once it gets cooled,keep in fridge and it stays fresh for 8-10 days if it lasts till then.
I haven't used pectin as gelling agent for this recipe.
Similarly strawberry jam, apple jam can also be made.
Happy Cooking Friends


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Bill Berkson poetry reading
Poet/author/art critic Bill Berkson will give a poetry reading on Monday, October 19, 4 PM at Gulf of of Maine Books. He will be in Maine reading from his new collection:Portrait and Dream - new and selected poems (Coffee House Press), appearing at Bates, Colby and UMO.Other Bill Berkson titles in stock here include: Hymns of St. Bridget & other writings - a collaborative poetry collection by Bill Berkson and Frank O'Hara, with a cover by Alex Katz,What's your idea of a good time? = a book of interviews questions and answers between Bill Berkson and Bernadette Mayer,The Sweet Singer of Modernism and other art writings 1985-2003, and Sudden Address - selected lectures 1981-2006 (with a philip guston cover) which includes a lecture given at the Skowhegan School of Art and Sculpture. Here is a poem by Bill Berkson from that talk:
A Lady At Her Writing Table
I chose love and friendship over
work, then
work and friendship over
suspended disbelief
- won't love conquer all?
I'll never work again.
Don't call me.


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What is this page?
This is a collection guide. It is a description of archival material held in the Special Collections Division,
J.Y. Joyner Library, East Carolina University. The materials described here are physically available in our
reading room. None of the original documents in this collection are digitally available online at this time.
In Tales of the Tobacco Country, Williams explores tobacco and its effect on the American way of life, specifically how it shaped the people and culture in tobacco growing areas. For his publication, he compiled his stories from three different sources. These include stories recorded in the field by staff of the East Carolina University Folklore Archive, accounts collected by the author himself and information obtained from early books documenting the tobacco culture. Williams also consulted with Doug McMillan and Paul Dowell, both curators at the ECU Folklore Archive. This archive is now known as the Karen Baldwin Folklore Archive, in memory of the late ECU Folklore professor, and is housed in the Special Collections Department, Joyner Library, East Carolina University, Greenville, North Carolina.
Topics covered in Williams' publication include description of ghost stories set in rural, tobacco country of North Carolina, an overview of the history of tobacco's use for medicinal purposes, spanning the early 16th century through World War I era, a synopsis of Charles Dickens' American Notes (1842), which recounts Dickens' visit to the United States in 1842 and his experiences with Americans, and in particular, Dickens' surprise at the practice of tobacco chewing by Americans of all socio-economic statuses. Also featured are 16th through early 20th century perspectives of tobacco as portrayed in poetry, a summary of a young Patrick Henry (1736-1799), quotations by David Lloyd George, Moncure Daniel Conway and Isaac Winton. Another chapter discusses raccoons, including descriptions by John Lawson of hunting them and recipes for cooking them. Also found in the publications is an analysis of Ebenezer Cooke's book Sot-Weed Factor, or, A Voyage to Maryland. A Satyr in which is described the Laws, Government, Courts and Constitution of the Country; and also the Buildings, Feasts, Frolics, Entertainments and Drunken Humours of the Inhabitants of the part of America (1708), a book in which Cooke recounts his experiences in the English colonies during the late 17th century.
Before becoming a writer, Thomas A. Williams taught literature in the University of North Carolina System. During his teaching career, he published in scholarly journals, but soon decided he was more interested in simply writing. With the decision to "branch out", he started sending his articles out to publishers, and sold his first article, "How to Teach about Poetry" to Teacher's Scholastic magazine. Williams also soon had his first book, Mallarmé and the Language of Mysticism, published by the University of Georgia Press. After this, he continued to send out his material to publishers, and soon managed to sell an article to Esquire magazine that was also highlighted on the front cover, giving Williams increased public exposure.
Williams also had a desire to try editing and publishing his own books and periodicals. In 1979, he purchased a weekly newspaper and subsequently increased circulation by 400%. Williams then sold this newspaper, and founded and published numerous North Carolina-related magazines, including Tar Heel: The Magazine of North Carolina, The New East magazine, NC East Magazine and Washington Magazine. He also published Welcome to Wilmington, a newcomer guide, and the North Carolina Travel and Tourism Guide.
Williams next started Venture Press, a home-based book publishing company, designed to publish his own books. This endeavor proved successful for him. This success included his publications How to Make $100,000 a Year in Desktop Publishing and How to Publish Your Poetry, which both became Writers Digest Book Club selections. Williams later expanded Venture Press into Williams & Company, Publishers, and began to publish books by other writers as well. From his career experiences, Williams was able to learn all perspectives of the publishing business, and currently is still in active in this profession.
The final version of
Tales of the Tobacco Country can be found at the following location: GR110.N6 W55 1979 1 BOOK Joyner NC Stacks
August 27, 2004, 1 item, 0.04 cubic feet; One draft copy (with edits by the author) of
Tales of the Tobacco Country by Thomas A. Williams.. Donor: Anonymous
Anonymous gift
No restrictions
Literary rights to specific documents are retained by the authors or their descendants in accordance with U.S. copyright law.
Thomas A. Williams Papers (#1009), East Carolina Manuscript Collection, J. Y. Joyner Library, East Carolina University, Greenville, North Carolina, USA.
Processed by James Gordon Parker, May 2007; Encoded by Lindsay Flood, March 28, 2008; Processed by Dale Sauter, 2011
This page is only for requesting materials that you wish to view in person in the Reading Room at Joyner Library.
It does not permit you to view the materials online or to request their photoduplication. If you would like to request
materials for photoduplication, please visit our Copying and Permissions page.
Manuscript collections and archival records may contain materials with sensitive or confidential information that is protected under federal or state right to privacy laws and regulations, the North Carolina Public Records Act (N.C.G.S. § 132 1 et seq.), and Article 7 of the North Carolina State Personnel Act (Privacy of State Employee Personnel Records, N.C.G.S. § 126-22 et seq.). Researchers are advised that the disclosure of certain information pertaining to identifiable living individuals represented in this collection, without the consent of those individuals, may have legal ramifications (e.g., a cause of action under common law for invasion of privacy may arise if facts concerning an individual's private life are published that would be deemed highly offensive to a reasonable person) for which East Carolina University assumes no responsibility.


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|Hi everyone! here are some photos from our 80's themed CHristmas Party for our workers for our internet cafe.
|I came in as Robin Sparkles from How I Met your Mother
|I love my look..
|with my hubby
|with Vanessa
|with our manager for Digos branch
|with Lhot
|with sissy
|havin a little bit of fun
|with the Mario brothers


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...the Christmas Card Party, that is! I am notorious for making tons of cards and never actually giving them to anyone. Well, that's all going to change this year! I'm challenging myself to make and GIVE AWAY at least 20 Christmas cards this year! So, I wanted to come up with a fun and simple card that would be easy to replicate many times over.
Here's what I came up with using the Simple Stories Handmade Holiday Collection from A Walk Down Memory Lane!
Thanks so much for stopping by today! I hope you like the cards and are inspired to make some of your own!
Gift Card Gift Bags!
6 days ago