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MacLEAN, ALEXANDER, mariner and sealer; b. 15 May 1858 in East Bay, Cape Breton County, N.S., youngest child of Ailean (Allan) MacLean and Caitriona MacCormick; m. 25 Nov. 1884 Lucy Dauphin (d. 1926) in Victoria, and they had one daughter; d. 26 Aug. 1914 in Vancouver.
Alex MacLean came from a seafaring family, and after some local sailing he left Cape Breton at the age of 16 for the Eastern Seaboard, where he acquired additional coastal and deep-sea experience. In 1879 he worked his passage to San Francisco on the Santa Clara. His brother Dan went out around the same time. By 1881 Alex was in Victoria as mate on the Sir James Douglas. He travelled the coast between San Francisco and Alaska, dabbled in prospecting, and frequently crossed the path of Dan. Victoria became Alex's main base in the 1880s. He and Dan were among the first to engage in pelagic sealing in the Bering Sea, and Victoria would be the home port for the Canadian sealing fleet in the Pacific.
In 1883 the City of San Diego, out of San Francisco, with Dan and Alex on board, made the first substantial catch of seals in the Bering Sea. The MacLeans duplicated their success with separate vessels in 1884. The next year they attempted to settle a debate about the most profitable method of sealing. They set out in similar schooners, Dan carrying white hunters, boats, and guns, and Alex a native crew with canoes and spears. They returned to Victoria with 2,309 and 2,073 skins respectively. The result was, however, a draw; Alex's slightly smaller harvest was offset by the lower costs of the native methods.
In 1886 Alex had the second largest harvest, 3,325 skins, while Dan sailed into the record books with 4,268 skins. But also in that year the American government, concerned about the activities of pelagic sealers, declared the eastern part of the Bering Sea a mare clausum, seized some vessels, and ordered others out. Still, such was the sailing prowess and success in sealing of the two Cape Bretoners that the 1887 season proved almost as lucrative and their reputation was enhanced. Public interest increased in 1888 when the brothers brought in skins with an estimated value of $58,000. Alex had the highest catch in the Victoria fleet that year, Dan the third highest. The following year catches were down and seizures by the Americans were up. For both MacLeans the 1890s would be a period of confrontations, difficulties, and exploits. Their home port for most of the decade was San Francisco.
In 1891 the British and American governments agreed to prohibit sealing in the eastern Bering Sea for a year, and like other Canadian and American sealers Alex turned to the Russian side of the sea and to the coast of Japan. That summer, while raiding the rookeries of the Komandorskiye Islands, Russia, Alex was caught after some desperate manœuvres. He and his crew spent the next few months in Russia, primarily in Vladivostok. Years later, after arbitration at The Hague, Netherlands, the Russian government paid the damages assessed for the seizure. In 1893 the youthful Jack London spent seven months on a sealing schooner, heard many stories of the MacLeans, and frequently crossed the paths of their vessels. The voyage would form the basis for one of his most successful novels, The Sea-Wolf. Alex would have been especially hard to miss in the Alexander, a 294-ton steam-powered barque, the largest sealer on the Pacific coast. In The Sea-Wolf it became the Macedonia, captained by Death Larsen.
The Sea-Wolf was a decade away but the public was already fascinated with the MacLean brothers. In 1894, after receiving unfavourable reports from Yokohama, Japan, one San Francisco paper noted: "The McLean family seems determined to get itself into trouble no matter what part of the world it takes itself to." In 1895 "the two most daring seal-hunters in the United States" ran into a problem in San Francisco. A case of mistaken identity – they were "strikingly similar in appearance" – found Dan instead of Alex at City Hall: Dan was reported as saying that "he would stand responsible for his brother, and that when they had one of the McLeans he was just as good as the other." The difficulty, caused not for the first time by the complaints of creditors, was soon resolved. The years 1894–95 were not successful sealing seasons and signalled the end of the MacLeans' participation in the regular sealing fleet. Their departure coincided with the decline of the industry.
In September 1896 Alex returned to Victoria as an expert witness for the American government at the hearings of the Bering Sea Claims Commission. His appearance there was followed by an unsuccessful mining expedition in the Solomon Islands, which ended with Alex sailing the Sophia Sutherland hundreds of miles, possibly single-handed, because most of the crew had yellow fever. Eventually he reached Apia (Western Samoa). Alex was then attracted to the Klondike and Alaskan gold-rushes. Stories from Bennett, B.C., the gateway to the Klondike, and Nome, Alaska, augmented his reputation as an individual not to be antagonized. By 1902 he was back in San Francisco and for a while he was master of the steamer City of Sydney.
One of his most publicized escapades occurred in 1904 when he resurrected and outfitted the Jennie Thelin, renamed it the Carmencita, acquired Mexican registration, and proceeded to raid the rookeries in the Bering Sea. The venture was not a success. After wintering in Victoria the vessel acquired another name, Acapulco, and new provisional registration, and Alex attempted a second raid. It became front page news in June 1905 and Alex was immediately linked to London's immensely popular Sea-Wolf, published the previous autumn. The proliferation of charges made against him (poaching, theft, trespassing, and conspiracy to defraud the American Treasury Department), his flouting of a host of regulations for two years, and the inability of the authorities to track him down increased the ire of the bureaucrats and fascinated the newspapers. In mid September 1905 Alex brought the Acapulco into Victoria, and he was eventually fined under three sections of the Customs Act. A Victoria paper acknowledged that "as a navigator and sealer it is admitted that he has no equal," but his sealing days were now over; so too were his sojourns in the United States. The following year, after a report circulated that Alex had been lost while fishing, he returned and commented that his demise was "much exaggerated." Later he ran explosives up the Skeena River and operated a small tug out of Vancouver. He drowned accidentally in False Creek, Vancouver, on 26 Aug. 1914.
A number of accounts suggest that the MacLeans acted with cruelty and heartlessness towards their crews, but many individuals acquainted with them attested to their civility, fairness, and generally pleasant natures. Their sealing successes, independent attitudes, exceptional, exacting, and demanding seamanship, and of course pugilistic abilities (they had "cleaned up quite a few Barbary Coast saloons in San Francisco") ensured a solid link and a confusion, which have lasted to the present, between the fictional Wolf and Death Larsen and Cape Bretoners Alex and Dan MacLean in the minds of those who follow the sea.
BCARS, E/E/M221T. City of Vancouver Arch., Add. mss 782 (H. L. Cadieux coll.), vol.46, files 241–42; vol.47, files 243–45. NA, RG 23, files 2691, 3136 (mfm. at Univ. of B.C. Library, Arch. and Special Coll. Div., Vancouver). St Andrew's Cathedral (Victoria), RBMB, 25 Nov. 1884. Bering Sea Claims Commission, Record of evidence taken at Victoria, British Columbia, by the commissioners, under the convention of February 8, 1896, between Great Britain and the United States (5v., [Washington, 1897?]). [A copy of the American edition is available on CIHM microfiche and is listed in its Reg.; a British edition with identical content was also published, probably at London in 1897.] Bering Sea Tribunal of Arbitration, Fur seal arbitration; proceedings of the tribunal of arbitration, convened at Paris under the treaty between the United States of America and Great Britain, concluded at Washington, February 29, 1892 . . . (16v. in 12, Washington, 1895). B. C. Busch, The war against the seals: a history of the North American seal fishery (Kingston, Ont., and Montreal, 1985). D. E. Hensley, "Jack London's use of maritime history in The Sea-Wolf," Pacific Historian (Stockton, Calif.), 23 (summer 1979): 1–8. Lewis & Dryden's marine history of the Pacific northwest; an illustrated review of the growth and development of' the maritime industry . . . , ed. E. W. Wright (Portland, Oreg., 1895; repr. Seattle, Wash., 1967). Tom MacInnes, Chinook days (Vancouver, 1926), 149–58. Neil MacNeil, The Highland heart in Nova Scotia (New York, 1948; repr. Antigonish, N.S., 1980). Peter Murray, The vagabond fleet: a chronicle of the North Pacific sealing schooner trade (Victoria, 1988). D. G. Paterson, "The North Pacific seal hunt, 1886–1910: rights and regulations," in British Columbia: historical readings, ed. W. P. Ward and R. A. J. McDonald (Vancouver, 1981), 343–66. D. G. Paterson and J[ames] Wilen, "Depletion and diplomacy: the North Pacific seal hunt, 1886–1910," in Research in economic history . . . , ed. Paul Uselding et al. (12v. to date, Greenwich, Conn., and London, 1976– ), 2: 81–139. Noel Robinson, "The real Sea Wolf," Cape Breton Mirror (Glace Bay, N.S.), 2 (1952–53), no.2/3: 12–13, 20–22. A. W. Roy, "Life and death of the Sea Wolf," Atlantic Advocate (Fredericton), 48 (1957–58), no.6: 77–84. U.S., Dept. of State, Papers relating to the foreign relations of the United States . . . (Washington), 1902, app.1 (Whaling and sealing claims against Russia . . .).
© 1998–2024 University of Toronto/Université Laval
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Cite This Article
Don MacGillivray, "MacLEAN, ALEXANDER," in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 14, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–, accessed March 2, 2024, http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/maclean_alexander_14E.html.
The citation above shows the format for footnotes and endnotes according to the Chicago manual of style (16th edition). Information to be used in other citation formats:
Permalink: | http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/maclean_alexander_14E.html |
Author of Article: | Don MacGillivray |
Title of Article: | MacLEAN, ALEXANDER |
Publication Name: | Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 14 |
Publisher: | University of Toronto/Université Laval |
Year of publication: | 1998 |
Year of revision: | 1998 |
Access Date: | March 2, 2024 |


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Show All Answers
Yes. See City of Pismo Beach Master Fee Schedule
Contact the Pismo Beach State Vehicular Recreation Office Area liaison, at Ph: 805-773-7182:
PBSVR Permit Application.
A film permit is required to film on public property. If filming on private property, we ask that you provide the City with a copy of your agreement with the private property owner.
Generally, filming is allowed between the hours of 7:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. Night filming between the hours of 10:00 p.m. and 7:00 a.m. must be approved in writing in advance by the Film Development Office.
It depends on your flight path. Applications are reviewed and considered on an individual basis.

subset: commoncrawl


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Olloclip three-in-one lens for iPhone 4 review
The age of lugging around a pricey DSLR kit just to capture casual fisheye, wide-angle and macro photos may be nearing its end -- for some of us, at least. Designed by a startup duo in California, the Olloclip was the first project featured in our Insert Coin series, and we were thrilled to learn not only that it was successfully funded, but that the device is ready to ship to both early supporters and new customers just two months later. The accessory brings the functionality of all three lenses to the iPhone 4, and it does so well enough to warrant leaving your pro kit at home on occasion -- assuming, of course, that your photographs aren't responsible for putting food on the table.
While a bargain compared to its professional equivalents, $70 is a lot to spend on any iPhone accessory, so the lens's price tag may not sit well with some users. Also, design limitations mean you won't be able to use the lens with other devices, and there's no way to guarantee compatibility with future iPhones as well. Nonetheless, we had a blast shooting with the Olloclip, and we think you will too. Head past the break to find out why.%Gallery-128329%
Design and appearance
At first glance, the Olloclip only appears to include two lenses, but unscrewing the wide-angle reveals the cleverly hidden macro. To use any of the built-in lenses, simply slide the clip onto your iPhone. The fit is quite snug, so you can rotate the phone, walk around, and even slip your phone into a bag without worrying about the lens slipping off. It's also easy to reposition -- to swap the wide-angle for the fisheye, for example, just flip the entire clip around so that the lens you want to use is facing forward. As with all sub-$100 optics, it doesn't have the sturdy, metal construction of, say, a $2,000 professional-class Canon L-series lens, but for a pocketable accessory with a potentially limited shelf life, we're more concerned with the device's performance than we are with how it feels in our hands. The plastic lens mount is also less likely to damage the glass body of your iPhone 4, so we don't mind that the clip itself isn't made of metal.
Though it's small enough to fit inside your front pants pocket, the lens still protrudes from the iPhone in a big way. The rather obnoxious product branding also makes it conspicuous, but that, at least, is removable (we chose to detach it for our product photos, and new Olloclips ship without the logo sticker). Even without the branding, it's an eye-catching device, prompting several locals to approach us with questions during our testing in New York City. One woman even asked us to demo the lens for her. As it happens, she tried out the fisheye lens, and was very impressed with the results.
The Olloclip ships with lens caps for both primary lenses, and a small carrying pouch that also doubles as a microfiber cleaning cloth. Because of its size, we found ourselves constantly touching and smudging up the lens accidentally, so that microfiber cloth will certainly come in handy. The device is available with either black or red barrels -- both constructed from anodized aircraft-grade aluminum. A ridged simulated filter mount surrounds the fisheye lens's front element, complimenting the lens aesthetically, though clearly not serving any functional purpose, as you won't be adding any filters to the Olloclip. The multi-element lenses are constructed of precision-ground glass, and that's clearly reflected in the image quality we were able to achieve here.
Ease of use
The Olloclip is incredibly easy to use. You don't need to install any software, though it's compatible with any and all iPhone apps. And mounting or swapping lenses just takes a second, as you can see in our hands-on video. We did have some trouble using one hand to remove the wide-angle lens to expose the macro, as we were using the other hand to hold the iPhone, though unscrewing the lens while it's mounted on the phone is less of a challenge. It's also important to note that because of the iPhone's higher multiplication factor in video mode, the wide-angle and fisheye lenses will present a completely different perspective when shooting video than they do when capturing stills. Don't be discouraged, however -- the video crop factor actually eliminates much of the distortion we experienced with the wide-angle lens (more on that below).
Image quality
Since the optic functions simply as an extension of the iPhone's existing lens, the quality of the images it captures are limited by the sensor itself. Fortunately, the iPhone 4's camera offers a huge improvement over its predecessor, enabling the Olloclip to capture some pretty fantastic photos. Pics we shot with all three lenses were sharp and vibrant, and were clearly distinctive from those captured with the iPhone's native lens. Most wide-angle lenses suffer from minor barrel distortion, but unfortunately we found distortion with the Olloclip's wide-angle lens to be far more noticeable than what we've experienced with a wide-angle lens on a DSLR. These distortion issues are clearly visible in our gallery of sample images. As with any fisheye lens, you'll notice some significant barrel distortion here, too, but that's to be expected -- after all, that stretching is kind of the whole point of fisheye photography.
We were perhaps most impressed with the macro lens, which essentially functions as a very powerful magnifying glass for your iPhone. We were able to capture incredible detail with this lens. In a photo we shot of our high-density notebook display, we could clearly make out individual red, green, and blue pixels. This capability alone is enough to justify the expense of adding the Olloclip, especially for anyone who enjoys macro photography but doesn't have the luxury of having a pro kit nearby at all times.%Gallery-128347%
Apart from the barrel distortion we mentioned earlier, we were exceptionally pleased with the photos we took with the Olloclip. Sure, the compact, dual-sided, three-in-one lens won't match the image quality of a pro rig, but considering its size and versatility, it may just become the next must-have accessory for Apple's iPhone 4. You may also argue that a handful of the thousands of available photo-enhancing iPhone apps can duplicate some of the lens's functionality, but none will ever be able to match the caliber of images you can capture with the help of some high-quality hardware components. Aside from the distortion, our primary concern with the Olloclip has to do with the product's shelf life, considering it's tied to a device that's unequivocally nearing the end of a cycle. We imagine the company will be able to adapt future versions to accommodate new iPhone models (and perhaps even smartphones from other manufacturers), but the current version will likely be replaced whenever the next iPhone is released. Keeping that in mind, we love the Olloclip, and plan on shooting with it as long as our hardware allows.


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Tag Archives: #missionalliving
Church leaders of all ministry types and sizes will likely agree that the task of numerically measuring progress, although sometimes tedious, can be one important means of gaining insight to a ministry's health. We measure congregational attendance and engagement to help gauge existing ministry connection and determine future programming, staffing and resource needs. We measure congregational giving both in the monetary sense and by way of volunteer hours, to help with our strategic planning and ongoing ministry mission. Many churches have broadened their mission field to include the online world. This includes utilizing Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and more to connect and network with people who may otherwise never engage with any aspect of the church. According to Church Works, "Social media can be a brilliant way to reach users who may be entirely outside of your community…effective, generous engagement on social media can attract new followers who appreciate your message and identify with your mission." How then can we best measure our social media and digital reach?


text: Dart Arrow Set Karella KT-1 18 g, Softdarts. The bestseller among the 80% N / T versions are the Karella-Tungsten models. This top product from Karella impresses with the enormous selection of a total of 15 different designs. Here every tournament player will find their optimal competition darts at a unique price-performance ratio. Weight: 18 g. Thread: small thread 2BA = 6 mm. Actual appearance may differ slightly from the picture.


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"Fusion" Print (DP364)
$19.00 - $29.00
Print is 8.3"x11.7" / 11.7" X 16.5" with small white border on premium quality matte art paper of 250g.
Item will be shipped from Seoul, Korea by priority mail with tracking number.
*Be sure to include your contact number in shipping address.
Please allow 7-10 business days for item to be delivered.
Shipping charge not included in item price.


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Maximizing Human Capital in a Rapidly Evolving Economic Landscape (Transatlantic Council Statement)
This report is a Council Statement of the ninth plenary meeting of the Transatlantic Council on Migration, which was co-convened by the Spanish Ministry of Employment and Social Security in Madrid, and focused on how public and private-sector actors can make smart investments in underutilized workers, including immigrants. The goal of the meeting was to discuss how to maximize the potential of those with skills of all types—including the often-overlooked middle skills. The meeting produced numerous papers covering both global and country-specific issues of skills training and workforce development. This Council Statement serves as the capstone paper of this effort.
The Council identified four guiding principles for reform:
1. Governments should create incentives for employers and social partners to invest in training.
2. Services of all types must be available to all vulnerable populations, and then targeted based on specific issues (language, skills, gender) rather than ethnicity, nationality, or immigration status.
3. Constant evaluation is necessary because solving skills mismatches is not a one-time project, but an ongoing and institutional exercise in which societies must engage.
4. Governments must build partnerships across society to expand access to services and reduce costs.
Driven by these principles, this report details the Council's specific and practical recommendations for ensuring that immigrants have access to job-relevant training and can put their skills to use. The recommendations fall under two main categories: strategies for growing skills within the labor force, and strategies for utilizing skills more effectively, for example through streamlined crediential-recognition systems.
I. Recommendations for Growing Skills: Overcoming Barriers to Workforce Development
II. Recommendations for Using Skills: More Effective Qualifications and Credential-Recognition Systems
III. Conclusions


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Trek Dirt Series Women's Mountain Bike Camp
July 1, 2017 - July 2, 2017
$385Women's mountain bike camp for beginner to advanced levels, focusing on skill development and trail riding, for cross country and downhill riders. Skill instruction ranges from basic front wheel lifts and switchback turns to technical climbs, descents, drops, jumps, and more.


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My question is: is there a simple and truly general equation for the resistance between two electrical equipotential surfaces?. Obviously, if so, what is it, and if not, why? It would be very difficult to solve, granted, but I just want to see a calculus equation that is fully descriptive. I have two frameworks under which this could be entertained, I'll write those out and then explain the motivation.
To start with, we need propose that the volume separating the two surfaces has a volumetric resistivity, $\rho$ in units of $(\Omega m)$.
Single Volume Framework
We can limit the discussion to a defined volume, then the surfaces reside in that volume or on the surface of it. This volume may have a constant resistivity $\rho$ while everywhere outside the volume is completely electrically insulating.
Infinite Volume Framework
An alternative to the above approach that might make the task more or less difficult would be to replace a constant resistivity with a spatial dependence $\rho(\vec{r})$ and no longer require a boundary condition. In that case we only have 3 mathematical inputs to the problem, which is the resistivity defined for all $\vec{r}$ and a definition of the two surfaces, $S_1$ and $S_2$.
Known Algebraic Analogs
The basic algebraic formulation that I find insufficient is:
$$R = \rho \frac{\ell}{A}$$
Where $l$ is the length of the restive material that is any shape which has translation symmetry over that length, and $A$ is the cross-sectional area. Obviously, this is a rather simple equation that won't apply to more complicated geometry. Even more sophisticated academic sources seem to give equations that fall short of what I'm asking. For example:
$$R = \rho \int_0^l \frac{1}{A(x)} dx$$
I think it's obvious that an equation such as this is built upon a myriad of assumptions. For a thought experiment, imagine that the area starts out as very small and then pans out to very large quickly. Well, accounting for the larger area in the above sense underestimates the resistance, because the charge has to diffuse out perpendicular to the average direction of flow as well as parallel to it.
I have some reasons to suspect this might actually be rather difficult. A big reason is that all the approaches I'm familiar with require the flow paths to be established beforehand, which can't be done for what I'm asking. So maybe this will result in two interconnected calculus equations.
I had an interest in Squishy Circuits, and it occurred to me that I can't quickly and simply write down the equation for resistance between two points. The unique thing about Squishy Circuits is that it calls for two types of dough, one that conducts and one that is mostly insulating. However, the recipes aren't perfect and because of that, the young children who play with these circuits regularly encounter the limits of conductor and insulator definitions. If you make your conductor dough too long and/or too thin, you will encounter dimming of the light you connect with it. Similarly, a thin insulator layer will lead to a lot of leakage current which also dims the light.


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WMC-UM has worked closely with other higher education institutions in providing this program.� The ECE classes generally meet at the local college or university.� General education courses offered by the local institution assist students in completing the AAS in ECE.�
DATE:����������� November 3, 2000
MEMO TO:��� Montana Board of Regents
FROM:���������� Stephen T. Hulbert, Chancellor
����������������������� Western Montana College of The University of Montana
SUBJECT:�� Campus Report for the November, 2000, Board of Regents� Meeting
WMC-UM has been offering early childhood coursework at off-campus sites for over 14 years.� The recent interest in early childhood education and the federal mandate that 50% of teachers in Head Start classrooms have a minimum of an associate degree in Early Childhood has created an increased demand for the program.� Students are typically place-bound women who have spent many years working in the field of early childhood.� Many are first generation college students and for many this is their first experience with college coursework.�
Students can obtain the WMC-UM 24-credit early childhood core in Missoula, Bozeman, Billings, Great Falls, Havre, Butte, Helena, and Dillon.� This core of early childhood coursework can be used to meet the training requirement for a CDA (Child Development Associate), a national credential awarded by the Council for Early Childhood Professional Recognition.� These credits also form the professional core of courses required for an AAS in Early Childhood Education (ECE).� If the student has a degree in Elementary Education, this core can be applied toward a minor in ECE resulting in an endorsement on their teaching certificate. This semester there are 160
students taking the early childhood core off-campus.
A recent grant from DPHHS has allowed the ECE program to develop a new model (EC Rural) for students who do not have access to higher education.� This model combines intensives and self-study.� Research on the outcomes for student in this model versus the one-night-a-week model employed at the other sites is being conducted.�� Due to the seamless nature of the program, coordination with other higher education institutions, and the unique delivery model, the WMC-UM ECE program is one of six programs in the nation being highlighted in a book published by the Council for Early
Childhood Professional Recognition.


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An Air Force major is ordered to approach a brilliant #UFO in his Phantom jet over Tehran. He repeatedly attempts to engage and fire on unusual objects heading right toward his aircraft, but his missile control is locked and disabled. Witnessed from the ground, this dogfight becomes the subject of a secret report by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency.
In Belgium, an Air Force colonel investigates a series of widespread sightings of unidentified triangular objects, and he sends F-16s to attempt a closer look. Many hundreds of eyewitnesses, including on-duty police officers, file reports, and a spectacular photograph of an unidentifiable craft is retrieved and analyzed.
Here at home, a retired chief of the FAA's Accidents and Investigations Division reveals the agency's response to a thirty-minute encounter between an aircraft and a gigantic UFO over Alaska, which occurred during his watch and is documented on radar.
Now all three of these distinguished men have written breathtaking, firsthand accounts about these extraordinary incidents. They are joined by Air Force generals and a host of high-level sources—including Fife Symington III, former governor of Arizona, and Nick Pope, former head of the British Defence Ministry's UFO Investigative Unit—who have agreed to write their own detailed, personal stories about UFO encounters and investigations for the first time.
They are coming forward now because of Leslie Kean, an investigative reporter who has spent the last ten years studying the still unexplained UFO phenomenon. Kean reviewed hundreds of government documents, aviation reports, radar data, and case studies with corroborating physical evidence. She carefully examined scientifically analyzed photographs and interviewed dozens of high-level officials and aviation witnesses from around the world. With the support of former White House chief of staff John Podesta, Kean draws on her research to separate fact from fiction and to lift the veil on decades of U.S. government misinformation. Throughout, she presents irrefutable evidence that unknown flying objects—metallic, luminous, and seemingly able to maneuver in ways that defy the laws of physics—actually exist.
No one yet knows what these objects are, even though they affect aviation safety and possibly national security. The phenomenon has been officially acknowledged by numerous foreign governments. For these reasons and many others, Kean concludes that the UFO problem must be more widely recognized and ultimately solved through an unbiased scientific investigation. The material presented throughout this landmark book is sobering, unflinching, and undeniably awe-inspiring, and moves us toward a goal of properly addressing this worldwide mystery.
From the Hardcover edition.


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How to Export Zendesk Guide Data as CSV
Here is a script that exports Zendesk Guide Article information as a CSV:
This tool uses the Zendesk Help Center API(https://developer.zendesk.com/rest_api/docs/help_center/introduction) to pull Guide Information and populate it in a csv file. This will output values such as Article Id, Article Title, and Vote Count.
The output looks like:
Here is a nifty video overview and instructional:
Let me know if you have any questions!
40 Kommentare
Scott! This is awesome. And your video is super helpful.
I'm going to try out your script. Thanks for much for sharing this!
This is great and super useful!
I ran pip3 install requests. That seemed to work ok.
Also, I wanted to check my subdomain name. How can I do that?
When I run the script I get this error message:
File "Zendesk_Guide_Article_Export.py", line 1
SyntaxError: Non-ASCII character '\xff' in file Zendesk_Guide_Article_Export.py on line 2, but no encoding declared; see http://python.org/dev/peps/pep-0263/ for details
We need a way to do the following:
- extract all article links owned by a particular author or
- extract all Draft articles owned by a particular author
As I am not a programmer, do you have ideas on how I can do this?
I just downloaded Python and am going thru the documentation.
Thank you
Hey Mary!
Thank you for the kind words.
I am glad to hear that you were able to successfully get the requests library using pip. This suggests that python is installed correctly, and requests is now installed on your machine.
I want to give you a big thanks for providing feedback so quickly, I imagine your issue is one that will arise on many occasions.
To address your questions:
- Zendesk has a good article on locating your subdomain here: https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/221682747-Where-can-I-find-my-Zendesk-subdomain-
- My main suspicion with your error is that the file was saved incorrectly. Sometimes adding the ".py" at the end of the file isn't enough to save it correctly. What program did you use to copy and paste the script? I have had this issue with Microsoft Word before. One solution is to download the full repository from GitHub (as described in the video I posted above), and move Zendesk_Guide_Article_Export.py to where you want to run it from (i.e. your Desktop). Let me know if this works
- You asked about extracting all article links owned by a particular author. Once you get my script working, I strongly suggest you do this from a spreadsheet (such as in Google Sheets or Excel). If you "Sort By" to organize the data, sort the sheet by author id. It will list all articles, article URLs, etc. by author id. This will work similarly in most spreadsheet software, but here is some information if using Google Sheets (which is free): https://support.google.com/docs/answer/3540681?co=GENIE.Platform%3DDesktop&hl=en
- I am not certain how to connect the author id to an authors name, however (our team is small, so I just dive back into Guide and can link author id with a name). We can brainstorm on this one if you have a giant team.
- Lastly, you asked about extracting all Draft articles owned by a particular author. Draft can be exported as TRUE/FALSE as written in the API documentation (true means the article is currently a draft).
- If that value is exported, I would suggest doing the organization from a spreadsheet (such as in Google Sheets or Excel). If this sounds reasonable, then I can add the code to export this value and update you when it is done.
Hi We figured it out. RUN SUCCESSFULLY!!!! When a file is downloaded to Mac, it is changed to a different format. So, we had to install "The Unarchiver" from the Mac App Store to open the zip file (rar). I had to also use IDLE to open/edit the script.
I added in the draft field to the output
I have a list of the agent ids (we have over 100+) and their names so I can map within the spreadsheet. Once I extract the Agent Ids and name mapping, I can create an Excel formula to add a new column with the Agent name to each row. Then, I can filter by that agent to get their individual report.
Thank you so much, Scott. This is very, very helpful.
This is great Mary!
I am so happy to see that you got it to work, and also thank you for sharing information about the "The Unarchiver".
Did your code work? (Nice work on adding stuff!)
One comment is that you may want to change int(draft) to bool(draft). If it runs either way, then it is probably fine either way.
I updated the code in the repository to add a "draft" row as well.
Yes. The code ran fine and produced the draft column. Then I added a new column to represent the Author Name. In Agent UI, I exported the list of Agent ids and names. Then, pasted into the spreadsheet (as a table). I used the Vlookup function in Excel to add the correct Author name next to the article they authored. Then, when done I added the ss to Google sheets so Agents can run their own reports at the end of month (I will update once per month)
Hi Scott,
great work on the script and the video. Super helpful! I was just curious how I can add the timestamp (updated_at) to the script and kept getting one error after another. I would appreciate some pointers on how to achieve this as adding this
didn't work for me.
It also looks like somebody else had the same question on the YT video.
Thanks for any input on this.
Hey Kurt!
I just added the "updated_at" code in the GitHub repository.
In short I added the "updated_at" as a string type. Hopefully that will do it for you! I had trouble storing it as a different data type.
It looks like the YouTube commenter was able to do it! It might be worth asking how Apathia did it in case you need a different data type.
Keep me posted!
Thanks, Scott!
Thanks, Scott! It worked like a charm. Really appreciate your assistance.
Hi Scott,
Is it also possible to extract the body of an written article? We need a .CSV file so our translation agency can make the translations into foreign languages.
Please let me know if you (or any of you) have any tips on this!
Thanks in advance,
Hi Ron!
Sorry for the delay on a response. It looks like it is possible to get the body of the article outputted as a CSV. See the 'body' key of this page https://developer.zendesk.com/rest_api/docs/help_center/articles/.
Do you want just the body of the information? Or all of the information in addition (i.e. article id, title, etc.)?
Either way, I think it is possible. If you are familiar with Python, it should be pretty straight forward to edit this script: https://github.com/scotthavard92/Zendesk-Help-Center-Export-Scripts/blob/master/Article_Information_Export/Zendesk_Guide_Article_Export.py.
You will essentially want to do what Mary (above in the comments) did for 'draft', but do it for 'body' instead. something like:
for article in data['articles']: body = article['body'] decode_10 = unicodedata.normalize('NFKD', body) output_10.append(decode_10) You will also need to add the info to the write rows section at the bottom and the header appending at the top.
I am happy to help you figure it out! let me know.
Hi Scott great work here.. I was wondering if there is a possibility to tweak the script so that it returns Category ID or title of Category for an article as well? (like you did with Section Id)
Thank you
Hi Scott!
Thanks for your reply. I have a meeting with our Lead Developer next week to see what works for us.
I will let you know the outcome of that meeting.
Hello Scott, how are you? I'm trying to run the script anyway, but it returns the same error reported by Mary Paez, "Enter your Zendesk Subdomain (not full URL, but something such as your company name): topisuporte
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "Zendesk_Guide_Article_Export.py", line 8, in <module>
subdomain = input("Enter your Zendesk Subdomain (not full URL, but something such as your company name): ")
File "<string>", line 1, in <module>
NameError: name 'topisuporte' is not defined" Could it be my language? en I tried to change the line but without success, If I get the line of code: url = 'https: //' + subdomain + '. Zendesk.com/api/v2/help_center/en/articles.json?sort_by=title&sort_order=asc' To change to my subdomain and use in the browser, the data is returned successfully. Would you have any tips to give? Thank you very much, -
Hello Scott, I made the settings using python 3.7 and managed to go from the step I mentioned in the previous comment, but at the end of the export, I returned the error: Number of articles: 333 Traceback (most recent call last): File "Zendesk_Guide_Article_Export.py", line 93, in <module> writer.writerows ([output_2]) File "C: \ Python 3.7.2 \ lib \ encodings \ cp1252.py", line 19, in encode return codecs.charmap_encode (input, self.errors, encoding_table) [0] UnicodeEncodeError: 'charmap' codec can not encode character '\ u0327' in position 31: character maps to <undefined> Do you know what it can be and how to solve it?
Hi Diogenez!
Thanks for reaching out. So I looked up the error and it looks like a cedilla(ç) is breaking it. Out of curiosity, what language is your data in?
Maybe try replacing the 'NFKC' in lines 47, 51 and 75 with either 'NFD' or 'NFC' and see if that solves the problem? This upcoming week I can dive in more and try to fix it. This is my first guess though, so I would give the above a shot if you are in a hurry.
Here is documentation explaining the character decoding that my script does:
You can see that there is some commentary on how it tries to interpret characters, including the cedilla.
Let me know if this works!!! Good luck, and keep me up to date!
Unfortunately Section ID doesn't easily export from the Zendesk API endpoint that I use :(.
I can do a little digging to see if I can't find another solution.
Good luck!
Thank you for your reply.. I tried tweaking your code but the Zendesk Api does not provide this key for articles. So right now i'm just using two different python scripts to get me that. It's basically your script but for sections. It would be great to somehow run both commands in one script and get one file with all the informations.
Thank you for your reply!
Scott, I have no words to thank for your help, The export went smoothly, As for your question, my language is en Sorry for my ignorance, I do not understand programming, Can you tell me the API of the creation date field? I saw that in the export it returns me the update, we have some goals for the agents based on article creation. Another question I have is about the order that is set up in excel, In order to be able to measure and adjust the metrics, I'm having to use a transpose in excel to invert the rows by columns, could I already handle this in the script?
I also need to export the article body, but when I added the code to do so, I ran into the same problem that Diogenez experienced (my help center articles are in English):
File "Zendesk_Guide_Article_Export.py", line 109, in <module>
File "C:\Users\karen.d.snyder\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python37\lib\encodings\cp1252.py", line 19, in encode
return codecs.charmap_encode(input,self.errors,encoding_table)[0]
UnicodeEncodeError: 'charmap' codec can't encode character '\u200b' in position 37400: character maps to <undefined>I tried replacing 'NFKD' with 'NFKC', 'NFD', and 'NFC', but the same error occurred. I am not a Python programmer, so I am not familiar with Unicode conversion. The article at https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/360004174147-Exporting-help-center-data-to-CSV provides a manual method of exporting articles to CSV by using the API, saving the result as a JSON file, and then using the website https://json-csv.com to convert the JSON to CSV. I did perform this procedure successfully, but it is manual. There was no mention of any Unicode conversion, but perhaps it is handled by the website?
Hi, Karen, how are you? I used Scott's tip and it worked perfectly, If you want to test your script: "Maybe try replacing the 'NFKC' in lines 47, 51 and 75 with either 'NFD' or 'NFC' and see if that solves the problem"
Hi Diogenes, I tried with 'NFKC', 'NFD', 'NFC', and 'NFKD', and each time got the same error. I guess I have some articles with the '\u200b' character, and maybe none of your articles have it. Then I had the idea of just stripping that character out. It is a zero-width space, so it is not needed in the final output (https://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/200B/index.htm). I modified the code that gets the article body to replace the character with an empty string:
for article in data['articles']:
body = article['body']
decode_10 = unicodedata.normalize('NFKD', body)
decode_10_nozwsp = decode_10.replace(u'\u200b', '')
output_10.append(decode_10_nozwsp)After modifying the code to remove the '\u200b', the script worked and I was able to export the data with the article body!
I did notice that my exported CSV file has an empty row after each row, and the numbers such as article IDs appear as 3.60023E+11 instead of 360022658132. I wonder if this is because I'm working on a PC, and in the video he is working on a Mac? These are of course minor issues that can be fixed manually.
Would it be possible to use these scripts to output Community posts?
Karen D Snyder, that great that worked, in my file is also unconfigured, are you using Excel? just format the column to number without decimal places that will keep the correct code
@Jeff Callahan, getting posts would be a different API endpoint, and posts don't have all the same properties that articles do. I think it would not be a difficult modification of the script, to change the API endpoint and change some of the properties being exported. Information on the post API and properties is at https://developer.zendesk.com/rest_api/docs/help_center/posts/. I guess you would need to change this:
url = 'https://' + subdomain +'.zendesk.com/api/v2/help_center/en-us/articles.json?sort_by=title&sort_order=asc'
to something like this:
url = 'https://' + subdomain +'.zendesk.com/api/v2/help_center/community/posts.json'
(adding sorting if you didn't want the default order of sorted by created_at)
And you would need to remove the code that gets article properties that don't exist in posts (section_id, draft), then if you want the post details, add code to get the details property, and you'd probably want to change some of the column names.
@Diogenez, yes, I'm using Excel, so I formatted the columns to numbers with no decimal places. I just thought it was interesting that in the YouTube video that showed this export being done, his resulting CSV file didn't need to have the formatting changed, and didn't have empty rows.
Hi Scott...Thanks for publishing this. I was able to successfully run the python script and pull articles from our instance. However, it only found 106 articles and I have 372 published articles. I am an admin within the ZD environment and I verified that it was pulling articles that I wasn't an author of, but not sure what I am missing to pull the other articles. I appreciate your assistance!
Hello @...,
Hopefully, @... will be able to come back and respond to your request. In the meantime, this article on Creating and Editing Articles might have some helpful information.
Best regards.
Hi Devan,
The only solution for a list of IDs is Scott's script. I had to send this post and Scott's links to someone else in my org, because I don't have API access. But I had to get all the Section IDs (which actually would work, with a "Remove Duplicates" in the output file, which is now on Google Sheets) to integrate Pendo with Zendesk on our product.
Pendo is becoming really big. To allow for easier integration, Zendesk really should offer an export of article and section data, natively. For your Feature Request list.
Hi @...,
Sorry for the delayed response.
I am assuming aren't successfully exporting your "internal" articles, or those not viewable to everyone, when you run the script. Is that true?
If you haven't tried already, give the Oauth script a shot:
https://github.com/scotthavard92/Zendesk-Help-Center-Export-Scripts/tree/master/Article_Information_Export#exporting-internal-articles-using-oauthWhen I run the script not using Oauth it doesn't return any of our "internal" articles.
When I do use the Oauth script it dumps everything other than archived articles.
Let us know if that helps solve it!
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text:
SALISBURY — A non-compliance hearing on the planned demolition of a known trouble spot in Salisbury set for this week was postponed again at the last minute after the property changed hands again.
Salisbury officials and residents have long considered the Thrift Travel Inn on North Salisbury Blvd. to be a public nuisance. Over the past several years, numerous city agencies, including police, fire department and code compliance, have responded to calls for service at the property nearly 1,600 times, including alleged prostitution.
The Thrift Travel Inn property was condemned and ultimately ordered to be demolished, but the owner failed to raze the derelict property and was eventually fined for non-compliance. Another hearing was scheduled for this past Monday, Dec. 5, but was postponed at the last minute when ownership of the property changed again from Pramukah Inc. in Salisbury to a company represented by Mclean, Va.-based attorney Joseph Jackson.
The latest ownership change means the city can still prosecute the citation for failure to demolish the condemned structure, but the condemnation process must start all over again. A new condemnation order must be issued to the new owner, who must then be afforded the opportunity to bring the property into compliance.
"The timing of the transfer of the property, just before the court hearing regarding demolition, is an event of great interest to the city," said Salisbury Mayor Jim Ireton. "The property transfer to a new owner delays any movement on demolition or improvement of the property."
WACS Center Relocated
OCEAN CITY — The Worcester County Health Department's WACS Center is being relocated to the department's facility in Ocean City for the next month or so while renovations take place at the Route 50 facility.
The county health department is relocating the services it provides at the WACS Center on Route 50 in West Ocean City to the Ocean City Youth Health Center on Caroline Street. The WACS Center is undergoing renovations and is expected to re-open in January.
All groups and treatment services will be provided at the Ocean City Youth Health Center until further notice. Additional parking is available one half-block away in the Ocean City Baptist Church on North Division Street and WACS visitors are asked not to park on the sidewalk on Caroline Street.
The Atlantic Club is planning to remain open for self-help services during the renovations.
2012 Assateague Passes Available
ASSATEAGUE — Assateague National Seashore officials announced this week 2012 Annual Passes to the barrier island are now available for purchase, just in time for the holiday season.
The year-long pass to the Assateague National Seashore areas in the Maryland and Virginia portions of the national park are now available for purchase for $30. The passes will be valid for the entire year, from January 1, 2012 to December 31, 2012. This year's annual pass features a beautiful photograph of a bald eagle flying over the beach on Assateague Island taken earlier this year by local resident, park volunteer and avid surf fisherman Allen Sklar.
The 2012 passes can be purchased at the park entrance and ranger station in the Maryland district, and at the Toms Cove Visitor Center in the Virginia District.
Armed Robbery Thwarted
SALISBURY — A pair of armed robbers were nabbed last weekend in Salisbury when fast-acting employees were able to catch and detain the suspects.
Shortly after 7 p.m. last Friday, Salisbury Police responded to the Center City Exxon for a reported armed robbery. Upon arrival, police found the store employees had detained the two suspects, later identified as Juan Marquis Williams, 18, and Davel Purnell Thomas, Jr., 16, both of Salisbury. According to police reports, Thomas and Williams entered the store around 7 p.m. with Williams wearing a ski mask and Thomas acting as a lookout.
Williams allegedly approached the counter and demanded the employee hand over all of the "Black and Mild" cigars. According to the clerk, Williams motioned in his pocket toward the employee as if he was carrying a gun. Williams and Thomas then fled the store.
At that point, the store employees called Salisbury Police to report the armed robbery. In the meantime, Williams entered the store a second time after several minutes had gone by. After Williams re-entered the store, an alert employee retrieved a golf club and locked the front door of the business, keeping Williams inside until police arrived. When Thomas returned to the area a short time later, store employees identified him as the second suspect and he was also arrested.
Both Williams and Thomas were charged with attempted robbery, attempted armed robbery, conspiracy to commit armed robbery, first- and second-degree assault, conspiracy to commit assault, theft and possession of marijuana and paraphernalia.


text:
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The Battle of Junk Mountain
Twelve-year-old Shayne Whittaker has always spent summers on the Maine coast, visiting her grandmother Bea and playing with her BFF Poppy. Both Shayne and Bea are collectors, in their own ways: Shayne revels in golden memories of searching for sea glass and weaving friendship bracelets with Poppy, while Bea scours flea markets for valuable finds, much of which she adds to a growing pile in her house that Shayne jokingly calls Junk Mountain.
This summer, though, everything has changed. Poppy would rather talk about boys than bracelets, and Bea's collecting mania has morphed into hoarding. Only Linc, the weird Civil War-obsessed kid next door, pays attention to her. Turns out Linc's collected a secret of his own, one that could enrage the meanest lobsterman on the planet, his grandpa. What begins as the worst summer of Shayne's life becomes the most meaningful, as she wages an all-out battle to save her friendships, rescue her grandmother, and protect the memories she loves the most.
What's Inside
Chapter 1
This Is My Happy Place
I didn't expect my summer sister to ditch me the first minute of vacation. She could've at least waited until I emptied my suitcase.
"But . . . but . . ." I sputter like the last seconds of microwave popcorn. "What about going to Lolli's?"
Poppy sighs. "I'm sorry. I wish I could, but the last time I didn't show up for a shift, my dad totally freaked out."
I sink onto what will be my bed for the next month. "But we always go to Lolli's for milkshakes first thing. It's tradition."
"It sucks, I know, but . . ." She shrugs. "Our tradition will have to change."
Change? What's she talking about? The best thing about Thomas Cove is that nothing ever changes.
I stare at the stack of neatly folded T-shirts on my lap. "Couldn't your dad wait for you to start working at the store until you're older? Nobody I know back home works full-time when they're twelve."
She sits next to me cross-legged and examines the bottoms of her bare feet. "It's different here. Kids start hauling lobster traps by the time they're eight years old. Consider me lucky."
Poppy's parents own Quayle's Market, the only grocery store on Cedar Island. Her two older sisters have worked there for years. I guess it was only a matter of time before she got roped in. But why did it have to be this summer, the first one without my parents?
Sunlight streams through the window, making Poppy's auburn hair glow like a maple tree in fall. "You could come with me. I have to stock the shelves and stuff, and it's kind of boring, but at least it's not the fish counter."
"Thanks, but I guess I should stay here. I'm ready to get this project going, if you know what I mean." I tug on the top drawer of the pine dresser in an attempt to put my clothes away, but it's stuck shut. The one under it opens easily, but it's full of miniature glass ducks, piles of old comic books, and several cat calendars. Looks like my grandmother's been trolling the yard sales . . . again.
My cheeks puff out. This is going to be a bigger job than I thought.
I catch my reflection in the cracked floor-length mirror. The damp Maine air has wreaked havoc on my curly hair already. I pat down the puffed-out ponytail at the base of my neck. Ugh, I look like a beaver.
Poppy rolls onto her stomach, smooshing the ruffled blue throw pillows beneath her. Together we peer out the window. The view outside is postcard pretty, the kind parents pay top dollar for at a hotel. A lobster boat cuts through the water; its motor drones steadily as it passes anchored skiffs that rock gently back and forth in its wake. Next door to us, a hulk of a man wearing a camouflage baseball cap chops firewood. Sweat darkens the back of his dingy gray tank.
"Is that the new neighbor?" I ask.
"Yup, that's Cranky."
"His real name is Mr. Holbrook, but I call him Cranky, because that's what he is. Every time I see him, he has this look on his face like he just bit into a vomit burger. He's so mean, Shayne. He'll yell at you if you cut through his yard. You can't use his dock—"
I gasp. "No dock jumping?"
"Nope. All his property is off-limits."
Drat. The old neighbors, the Krafts, used to let us have full run of their place like it was our own private playground.
"When he moved in, my mom made me bring over a plate of cookies. As soon as I stepped into his yard, he appeared from behind a tree, clutching a great big ax, his eyes wild and crazy. I screamed and took off, dropped the cookies and everything. He started yelling at me, and his voice was so gravelly, like he ate pebbles for breakfast."
"Hold on. Important question. What kind of cookies were they?"
"White chocolate chunk."
I press my hand over my heart. "Tragic waste."
"You know what else?" Poppy lowers her voice. "Mona said that when he moved in, there was no moving truck, nothing. He has no furniture and he sleeps alone on the bare wood floor with nothing but a hunting knife beside him."
Goose bumps cover my arms, even though I'm not sure if I should believe her. Poppy always says that her sister is a big fat liar.
I reach for the tin box where I keep all my supplies for making friendship bracelets. Last year, Poppy and I cranked them out like crazy, and I'm happy to see she still has the blue-and-green one I made her wrapped around her wrist.
"I brought a whole bunch of colors," I say, showing her my new pack of embroidery thread.
"Oooh, I like the neon green," she says before twitching her nose. "No offense, but you need to air out this room. It smells like old people."
I open the window, and the scents of salt, fish, and pine needles blow in at once. "Don't worry. When I'm through with this place, you won't even recognize it."
"I can't believe your mom's making you clean up your grandmother's house," she says.
"She didn't make me. I offered to come. Anyhow, it's not so much about cleaning up as getting her ready to sell her stuff at the Cedar Island Flea Market."
I place my bracelet tin on top of a tower of National Geographic magazines so old and worn they've practically molded into a small table.
Poppy glances at her watch, then hops off the bed. "I better go. Don't want the boss to ground me." She rolls her eyes.
I walk her down the stairs to the front door. Wooden signs of various shapes and sizes decorate the walls, some with beach themes (life is better in flip-flops), some spouting puns (gardeners know all the dirt), and others offering warm fuzzies (this is my happy place).
Poppy shouts over the sound of a blaring TV. "Bye, Bea!"
Everyone calls my grandmother by her first name. Even me.
"Bye, Poppy!" Bea yells from the family room.
Poppy squeezes my shoulders and gives me a friendly shake before she leaves. "Don't worry. We still can have the Best. Summer. Ever. You'll see."
Doubt prickles my skin. The best summer ever means morning swims in the cove, searching for sea glass, riding bikes to Lolli's, gorging on lobster rolls—stuff we've been doing for years. Now she's sort of available. What am I supposed to do when she's sort of not?
After Poppy leaves, I join Bea in the family room. She sits at what I like to call Junk Mountain, the epicenter of all her worldly possessions. When it comes to stuff, my grandmother's a keeper. She keeps everything.
Some kind of table supports Junk Mountain, but I have no idea what it looks like because it has always been buried under an avalanche of old books, cracked dishes, stuffed Beanie Babies, and a gazillion other things. A mothball smell hovers like a rain cloud over the pile.
Whenever we visit, my parents note that Junk Mountain has expanded in height and width, and my mother practically breaks out in hives at the sight of it. You would never guess she and Bea were related. Mom calls my grandmother names behind her back like "pack rat," "Dumpster diver," and "eBay explosion." But Bea sees it differently. She calls herself a "collector of everything."
Chapter 2
My House Was Clean Last Week… Sorry You Missed It
"Sit with me. I need to talk to you." Bea writes a number on a piece of masking tape and sticks it to the bottom of a pumpkin candle.
I turn down the volume on the TV and pull up a folding chair beside her. A furry key chain dyed grapey purple catches my eye. "Is this a real rabbit's foot?" When I touch the bottom, I feel pointy toenails.
Bea examines it. "I'm not sure, although, they say if it's real, then it's good luck." She passes me a shoebox with the words good luck written in her shaky scrawl. "Here, add it to the rest of my charms."
I sift through a jumble of dream catchers, four-leaf clover pins, and tiny Buddha figurines. "So, how long do we have to get ready for the flea market?"
"One week," she says.
My eyes grow wide. I hadn't realized it was so soon. "And all this needs to be sorted and priced, right?"
She waves her hands over the merchandise. "So many memories, my treasures. Not only do I remember where I found each item, but I could tell you how much I paid for it and who I was with."
Please, don't.
I inch my chair closer and pull a yellowed teacup from the mound. "This looks ancient. How much should we sell it for?"
"Ah, ah, gentle." She removes it from my hand and inspects it through the wire-rimmed glasses perched on the end of her nose. "Mark that as twenty-five cents."
I frown. "What, only a quarter? I thought it was special."
She hands me a Sharpie. "It is special. This teacup may not look like much, but it represents history, memories. It's—" Her brown eyes enlarge. "Now, what's this doing here?" She reaches for a beak poking out from under a cowboy hat and pulls out a silver bird statue.
"Nice chicken," I say.
Her forehead creases. "It's a pheasant. Look at this workmanship, the detail in the feathers."
I stifle a yawn. "Mmm-hmm."
"Your grandpa gave it to me years ago when I was in my bird phase. I remember he paid a couple hundred dollars for it. I could have killed him. We didn't have that kind of money to spare. But I did some research and found out it was made by a famous Russian artist. I believe it's worth a lot. Do me a favor, dear, put this on the mantel. It's not for sale. Not yet, anyway."
I set it down over the fireplace, next to my favorite picture of Grandpa. He squints at the camera from the helm of his lobster boat. His face is sunbaked and lined like an alligator's skin. I really miss him.
I dust off my hands on the back of my white shorts. "So . . . is that what you wanted to talk to me about?"
Her face falls. "Well, not exactly. I have some news." She stands and I notice a black apron stamped with a fish print tied around her waist. "Surprise," she says, sounding as excited as if it were Meatloaf Monday. "I went back to work."
"What? I thought you retired years ago."
Bea retrieves a tube of lipstick out of her apron pocket and paints her thin lips bright pink. "The truth is when Grandpa died, he didn't leave me with much. You would be surprised how much everything costs—the house, utilities, you know, other stuff."
I eye the buried table, the couch strewn with magazines and newspapers, the kitchen counter littered with boxes and cans. Yeah, I know "stuff."
Bea coughs into her fist and catches a glimpse of her watch. "Darn it, I'm late."
I follow her to the kitchen. "You're leaving now?"
She grabs her enormous sack of a purse off the counter. "I'm sorry, horrible timing, but it's just the lunch shift. I'll be back in a jiffy."
First Poppy's news and now this. Are you kidding me? I cross my arms in a huff. "Aren't you too old to be a waitress?"
"I beg your pardon." Bea tries to swat me with a dish towel, and I jump out of the way. "I've waitressed for more than thirty years. Of course, I was nervous at first, going back and all, but then I had forgotten how much I missed the Cod Café."
Aside from a few roadside takeout shacks, the Cod Café is the only full-service restaurant on the island, known for its enormous lobster platters and famous potato salad tossed in Secret Sauce. The servers are usually college kids from the mainland. I want to remind Bea of this, but from the insulted look on her face, I know I have said enough.
Bea finds a leftover tuna sandwich in the fridge and takes two nibbles before putting it back. "Do me a favor, don't tell your mother." She grabs an industrial-sized can of hairspray from her purse and fumigates her frosted mass of curls along with the entire room.
I cough. "How come?"
Bea sighs like she's already answered this question a thousand times. "Let's just say she gets . . . funny about money."
Her pace quickens, and I follow her to her beat-up Subaru wagon.
"Wait, what about our project?" I motion behind me. "I can't tackle that all by myself."
She reaches for the door handle but pauses before turning to me. "You don't need to touch a thing. We'll sort through my treasures later this afternoon, okay?"
The slam of the door makes quick tears sting the back of my eyeballs. Why is everyone leaving me?
She drives away. A hush falls over the cove except for the occasional tinkling of a distant wind chime. The windswept grass tickles my calves as I cut across Bea's yard. A thick rock wall separates her lawn from the sea, and the still water has a copper color to it, like an old penny. Maybe I'll jump in and swim five hundred miles home to Maryland. I'll say to my mom, "I couldn't do it. I failed."
Ha! Never.


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Back in the 80s, one of the most-used products by guitarists of a certain style was the A/DA MP-1, a 128-patch, programmable 19-inch rack preamp that was the first to combine value with what was, at the time, a mind-boggling level of MIDI-driven versatility.
It offered a modest number of voicings, plus an onboard chorus that caused players of the time, still reeling at the demise of the original Van Halen line-up, to scrabble for their piggy banks. What's more, in those halcyon pre-Nevermind days, it sounded fantastic.
Shredders Jason Becker, White Lion's Vito Bratta and Paul Gilbert based their tone around the MP-1, and arguably its most famous application was by Extreme's Nuno Bettencourt on the band's massive second album, Pornograffitti. Steve Vai used one on his Passion And Warfare opus, too, but the unit's appeal wasn't limited to the back-combed, fleet-fingered brigade.
Players as diverse as Metallica's James Hetfield and Kirk Hammett, Sepultura's Andreas Kisser and, more recently, Feeder's Grant Nicholas have all indulged. This reviewer worked in retail during the MP-1's heyday, and it sold like hot cakes; stores couldn't get enough of them. We asked A/DA about those early days.
"It took a few months for industry and players to warm up the to the MP-1's concept of 128 amps in a single product," says A/DA's David Tarnowski, the designer of both the original preamp and this brand new version. "Interestingly the UK understood it first and I wasn't surprised about the popularity because it really solved a lot of problems and sounded great."
Spooling forward to 2012, the new APP-1 has been designed by Tarnowski but isn't intended to be simply a reissue of the MP-1. "The APP-1 tone is closer to an older Fender in terms of the tone stack, and the classic A/DA tone is very different. We'll be making an A/DA MP-1 version in the future."
The APP-1 is an all-solid-state analogue affair, and is a genuine preamp, not an overdrive pedal. There's no on/off switch and the best way to use it would be with a separate power amp and speakers. It offers two independent channels, each with a dedicated three-way EQ plus drive and master pots, and the character of the tones you dial in are based upon three voicings selected by a three-way slider on each channel; clean, OD and Dist.
Also included is A/DA's D-Torsion Core technology, which adds a Dynamic pot into each channel's equation to add squeeze or bloom. "D-Torsion Core is a new way of giving guitarists another degree of expression so that the way they play the strings allows for timbre changes, not only to their tone but also to the dynamics of the sound," explains Tarnowski.
Other features include a switchable master boost, which adds up to 16dB of level hike, a mono effects loop plus return level mini-pot, and a dedicated tuner out. There's a variety of modes of operation that can be chosen via a number of slider switches, such as using just the boost, or the preamp plus the boost and so on. These all have to be set manually as none are switchable remotely.
As mentioned, the APP-1 is designed to operate at its best when used in conjunction with a power amp and speakers. For many these days, that would be considered an unusual backline arrangement, so one method of hooking it up to your existing rig would be to utilise your amp's effects loop.
The return jack is a direct input to the power amp section, so go ahead and plug your guitar into the input of the APP-1, run the output to the return and away you go - you're effectively bypassing your amp's preamp stage so you don't need to plug anything into your amp's input. The amplifier's master volume will still operate as normal. Of course, a dedicated power amp input is ideal.
If your amp has no loop, "plug into your cleanest channel with very little [amp] drive," says Tarnowski, "so the distortion is generated [solely] in the APP-1. It has a lot of dynamic range and can easily overload a preamp or a stompbox if it's not set properly."
The three voicings for each channel aren't pre-set levels of gain but actually different EQ contours that can be used to shape the tone before it hits the D-Torsion's overdrive circuits. In fact, the EQ sections of each channel are very sensitive, which does enable you to get down to the nitty gritty of your tone - we find sticking with the clean voicing for the most part gives the fullest tonal base.
As ever, though, it's horses for courses and comes down to your personal preference - the OD and Dist settings are perfectly usable, too.
Rock styles are well served with the fierce high-end easily corralled by the efficient EQ and, with lower gain settings, we find the Fender-y character Tarnowski refers to. Bristling with bark and width, it sounds great with single-coils, not quite as fat as classic SRV tone, but certainly more than strident enough for Gary Moore-style licks. Clean tones are warm and rich, especially with a humbucker-loaded guitar, and each time we twiddle a knob or change a voicing, we find new sounds to enjoy.
We could have experimented with the D-Torsion way beyond our sound-test period. The fattest, most valve-like sounds are found with the control set around three quarters towards Bloom, while for hard metal styles with a higher gain, more Squeeze is the order of the day.
The boost function is among the most efficient we've come across, offering a clean and dramatic increase in output without any additional colouring of your sound. Allowing your guitar solos to be heard above the racket of a rock band - not to mention the other guitarist! - is an issue for many; here, it doesn't even represent a bump in the road.
Aside from what is a disappointingly noticeable signal dropout when switching between channels, we're impressed and we can certainly see that it will have many uses outside of the rock sphere.
Let's be clear: this is neither an MP-1 for the new millennium, nor an overdrive pedal. It's a genuine guitar preamp, and what's more, it's one that offers a high level of user interaction that can result in a huge choice of tones. Setting it up can be a little daunting, but trust in your instincts and, as long as your existing amp has an effects loop, you should be able to incorporate the APP-1 as described without any issues.
A pedal-sized mono preamp may be unusual, but it's a more than valid one, and the APP-1 offers many an option to those in a tonal rut, whether you enjoy the powerhouse blues of SRV's Pride And Joy, the high- octane shred-ready tones of Racer X, or just about anything in between.


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TUSAYAN, Ariz. — Robert and Jayne Miller are on a three-week road trip across America, hoping to take in the sights along Route 66 as they head from California to Washington. But they hit a wall — literally — when they got to Grand Canyon National Park.
The Australian tourists are now just hoping the iconic landscape is accessible before they have to move on, optimistic that it could come as soon as this weekend after the Obama administration said it would allow states to use their own money to reopen some shuttered national parks
Governors in at least four states have asked for authority to reopen the parks within their borders because of the economic impacts caused by the closures. All 401 national park units — including such icons as the Grand Canyon, Yosemite and Zion — have been closed since Oct. 1 because of the partial government shutdown. More than 20,000 National Park Service employees have been furloughed, and lawmakers from both parties have complained that park closures have wreaked havoc on nearby communities that depend on tourism.
"It's like someone just turned around the closed sign here in America," said Jayne Miller, standing alongside her husband as they checked into a hotel on the south rim of the Grand Canyon Thursday.
Utah's Republican governor, Gary Herbert, said late Thursday he had wired money from state taxpayers that will open Utah's five national national parks. He said he was inking a deal with Interior Secretary Sally Jewell that provides $166,000 a day in funding for the five red rock parks and other units of the national park system, starting Saturday. He said that will keep them open for 10 days, and the state can buy extra days as needed.
Jewell said the federal government will consider offers to use state money to resume park operations, but will not surrender control of national parks or monuments to the states. Jewell called on Congress to act swiftly to end the government shutdown so all parks can reopen.
Republican Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer said she'd consider paying for a partial reopening of Grand Canyon National Park but is rejecting the Interior Department's insistence that state money pay for the whole operation — a daily cost of $112,000 — adding yet another element of uncertainty.
"It gets too complicated when you're trying to do sections of park and you still have areas barricaded off," said National Park Service spokesman Mike Litterst.
The Grand Canyon draws about 18,000 people each day this time of year who pump an estimated $1 million daily into the local economy.
The town of Tusayan, just outside the park's South Rim entrance, and area businesses have pledged $400,000 to help reopen the canyon, but Brewer spokesman Andrew Wilder said it's unclear if the Interior Department could even accept private funds.
He said there's now no time frame for a reopening on the state's dime.
That's not good news for people like Julie Aldaz, general manager at Tusayan's Red Feather Lodge.
"This is our last big weekend," Aldaz said, explaining the hotel has already lost about $135,000 since the park closed. "I'm skeptical, but still hopeful. What more can we do?"
Interior Department spokesman Blake Androff said the government does not plan to reimburse states that pay to reopen parks. Costs could run into the millions of dollars.
Governors in South Dakota and Colorado have made similar requests to reopen some or all of their parks.
In South Dakota, Gov. Dennis Daugaard, a Republican, is considering the government's offer, but wants to see how much it would cost.
"When we get the numbers, he'll consider it more fully," said Daugaard Chief of Staff Dusty Johnson.
Herbert, also a Republican, said in a letter this week to President Barack Obama that the shutdown of national parks has been "devastating" to individuals and businesses that rely on park operations for their livelihood. Utah is home to five popular national parks, including Zion, Bryce and Arches.
Herbert estimated the economic impact of the federal government shutdown on Utah at about $100 million.
Figures compiled by a coalition of retired park service workers indicate that some 700,000 people a day would have been visiting the 401 national park units and that the surrounding areas are losing $76 million in visitor spending daily.
The park service said it is losing $450,000 per day in revenue from entrance fees and other in-park expenditures, such as campground fees and boat rentals.
In Wyoming, Gov. Matt Mead's office said the state would not pay to reopen two heavily visited national parks or the Devil's Tower national monument.
"Wyoming cannot bail out the federal government and we cannot use state money to do the work of the federal government," Mead spokesman Renny MacKay said.
Meanwhile, the park service said it is reopening to tourists a highway pull-off area that can be used to view and photograph Mount Rushmore from a distance.
Hundreds of tourists had complained that park rangers blocked drivers from pulling over to take photos of the South Dakota monument, which features the stone-carved faces of presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln.


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