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Travis Jones got out of prison in 2007, but he talks about his time there like it ended yesterday. It surprised him, he says, the stuff he missed. He knew he'd long for his family, and his girlfriend, but it was the absence of everyday things that kept him from feeling human. "When you open your refrigerator and that cool air hits you? I missed it like crazy," he says. "They cut the lights on you, and they flip the switch. Little things like that."
But when he was released, returning to a compact corner of the unfinished basement of his girl's mom's house in West Baltimore, he turned it into a cell: bed, TV, weight bench, stacks and rows of books, DVDs, and video games, accumulating dust and teenage-boy-bedroom smell. He rarely left. When he did, he was jumpy. He was no fun at parties. "It seemed like when he came home, he was still locked up," says his childhood friend Kendall Wilson. "It seemed like he was still in jail for a long time, just in the basement."
Travis is 32. He's short, at five feet six, but broad and muscular. He keeps his hair shaved close to his head and maintains a slim goatee. He has a way of sitting with his legs splayed and his head hanging slightly forward but his eyes looking up and his mouth unsmiling—half-relaxed and half-tensed. Around new people, he's shy and suspicious that they're talking about him behind his back, but he can be funny, too, and draw a crowd around him. In the basement, Travis spent a lot of time reading, as he had in prison (Black Boy, Native Son, books about Malcolm X and Nelson Mandela). He binge-watched premium cable. The Wire. ("It was sad how Dukie ended up being a fiend.") The new show that the guy who played Omar, Michael K. Williams, is in. ("I like him better on Boardwalk Empire.") Game of Thrones. ("Khaleesi, she shaped herself up toward the end. She turned out to be a real force. When she freeing slaves you know I always get behind that. I ain't like her at first; I fucks with her now.") He played a lot of video games with his girl, Joyce Fisher, and a few other friends who'd stop by. Travis especially liked Call of Duty. He'd always wanted to be a Marine, but when he'd finally caught the charge that sent him to prison in Hagerstown, Maryland—police found vials of cocaine in his house—he'd given up on that. Just like he had on everything else.
When his stepdad left after two years of marriage to his mom, Travis was 14. They'd done father-and-son things like go fishing together on weekends and been close in a way he never was with his own dad, who was in the Navy and had never lived with him. His stepdad's absence fed Travis's teenage rebelliousness. He dropped out of school his junior year. His mom blames his attention deficit disorder, which was diagnosed when Travis was 12. ("Did she talk about the ADD?" he asked me one day and shook his head. "She always brings up that ADD.") But Travis says he just acted out. He'd been a Boy Scout and his mom was a teacher, and he wanted to fit in. "Nobody likes a church boy," he says.
Travis grew up in the same West Baltimore neighborhood where he now lives with Joyce, who is ten years his senior. It's the kind of place where a walk to the 7-Eleven could get him robbed and where everyone is hustling all the time. People talk about the 1980s as the good days, when guys in the neighborhood could do well for themselves, when crack and heroin pumped money through the streets and gave neighborhoods an economy of their own; now, there is just violence, little money, and a lot of prison.
As a teenager, Travis came into frequent contact with police, but his first arrest didn't happen until he'd just turned 19 and was charged with firearm possession and resisting arrest. The judge gave him probation and said she would dismiss the charges if he made it through without a violation. ("I violated that shit like 6 times," he says.) A year later, he was picked up because he and a friend had beaten a man so badly the victim required stomach staples and had a contusion on his kidney. ("I didn't think he was beaten that bad at the time, but it caught up with us.") Travis says the guy had hit on a 13-year-old girl in the neighborhood, asking if she'd gotten her menstrual cycle yet. The charges were dropped when the victim failed to show up and testify. ("I guess somebody told him what's what.")
When Travis was 21, about a year before he landed in prison, his best friend was killed right in front of his face. "His homeboy died—he did go a little bit harder after that," Kendall Wilson says. "We all hustled. We all did everything. But a couple people were wilder. Travis was one of the wild, wild ones." I asked Travis once how many deaths he'd witnessed. He said, "It's like saying how many red cars did you see this week."
The year after he came out of prison, Travis worked a few jobs. The last one, cleaning cooking equipment in restaurants at night, paid $40 a store, which was better than anything else he could find. He was caught stealing brisket from Boston Market and was fired. He put in a few more applications but never got a call back. That's typical. Nationwide, black men with prison records only get callbacks 5 percent of the time; for black men without prison records, the rate is 17 percent (the same as for white men with criminal backgrounds).
Travis didn't want to deal anymore. Guys he knew were working jobs, had become husbands and fathers. "I wanted to be one of the people who get up and go to work every day without breaking the law and have a quality of life," he says. "I wanted to be one of those people, and I felt like I couldn't." He remained unemployed after 2009, and it bothered him, not chipping in. "Your family will be supportive, saying, 'Oh, yeah, take your time,'" he says. "But after a couple months with no money coming in, you just a bum." So he started dealing again. Only pot, no hard drugs, out of his house to trusted clients—straight-up people, he says, working people, older people. He limited himself to selling $100 worth a day and figured he was making between $30,000 and $40,000 a year just by being there to pick up his cell phone. Travis was an almost-daily pot smoker himself and didn't see the harm, but he still wasn't happy about it.
In the spring of 2013, Travis met a guy who'd gone to college in Canada, come back to the old neighborhood, and landed a construction job through his aunt, Catherine Pitchford, who worked at the Center for Urban Families. The center was just a mile down the road, and it provided job training and fatherhood classes for men in Baltimore's poor neighborhoods. Travis needed certification for a construction gig, so he went to the center. Normally, every client must go through the center's four-week job-training course, called Strive, before being placed in a job. But Pitchford, who's completing a degree in social work, had a soft spot for Travis from the start. He wanted a job so badly, plus he seemed sharp and ready. She decided to let him take the certification test without the Strive class. He failed to qualify by two points.
He was leaving the center, upset, when he passed Wayne Cooper, an amiable 67-year-old counselor who works with ex-offenders. "I said to him, 'You look like you're angry,'" Cooper recalls. "It was a simple statement." But not to Travis. "I kind of lost it," he says. "After being in that depressed state like I was, being down like that, and realizing that your dream could come true, making that kind of wage, a respectable living, and then missing it by two points." He took off his coat and lunged at Cooper. Another center employee came between them. Cooper, though, laughed and turned to Travis, saying, "I hope I'm not going to have to get your ass locked up in here today!" Travis got even more upset. "I was going to strike that man," he says. "I wasn't thinking about it." Cooper had seen a lot of guys blow up, but not like this. "I don't know if Travis is on medication or not," Cooper says, "but he acted like he was." When Travis finally stalked out of the center, he figured he'd never go back.
The Center for Urban Families, finished in sparkling pink cinder block in 2009, is one of the newest buildings in its neighborhood. It's surrounded by a church, a vacant former child-care center, a thrift store, and a freshly repaved, block-long parking lot with no business attached. Just down the road is the Mondawmin shopping center, which locals call the "hood mall." Amid the boarded-up row houses, the occasional neatly kept home often bears a simple plaint on the front door—"No loitering, please!"—in an attempt to prohibit the stooping practiced by the neighborhood's hoodie-wearing men. Corners have no garbage bins, and crosswalks dissect few intersections, so trash and pedestrians make their own way across streets. Every few blocks there's a blue flashing dome above the stoplight just to remind people that the cops are never far off, but it does nothing to deter the knife-wielding bar fighters from spilling out into the street, or to reduce the lines for the neighborhood library bathroom, where people shoot up, or to slow the quick-step vibrancy of a streetscape where everyone has to watch his back.
What sets the center apart from the rest of the block isn't just its still-new gleam but the dozens of men (and a handful of women) filing in every day around 8:30 A.M., or out after 5 P.M., wearing suits and pressed dress shirts, hair pulled back or cropped close. Clients must adhere to a strict dress code; for most, the clothes are provided by donors like Men's Wearhouse. The center, which started operating in 1999, provides a range of services in addition to workforce training: It collaborates with employers to place people in jobs; it provides fatherhood classes; it helps men navigate family-court problems; it counsels ex-prisoners as they transition back into life; and it offers a class for couples that operates a bit like a group therapy session.
The nonprofit center was among the first in the country designed to help low-income men with such a wide range of issues. Its founder and CEO, Joe Jones, calls himself a "recovering knucklehead," who dealt and abused drugs when he was young. He grew up in Baltimore and had gone through an intense two-year recovery program in which Wayne Cooper was one of his counselors. Jones wanted to help men like himself, and West Baltimore has no shortage of them. More than half the prison population released in Maryland returns every year to the neighborhoods around the center. They come out burdened not only by their records but by family estrangement and debt. Child-support arrearages are allowed to accumulate in prison, and about 3,000 men who live near the center owe more than $50 million in back child support.
The center has a tough-love ethos that's based on the kinds of therapeutic programs that were instrumental in changing Jones's life. Women are also welcome in the job-training courses, but in a city where "family" is code for "mothers and children," the focus on men is unusual. In the years since the Great Recession, more people with high-school diplomas and college degrees have come looking for help finding jobs, but the core population the center serves is the least educated, those with a high-school diploma or less.
One of the center's most important functions is also its simplest: It gives men a safe spot to hang out in West Baltimore. Most of the workforce-training graduates who still visit the center—watching the classes, meeting with counselors, using the computers—told me they come because being there keeps them out of trouble. "There aren't too many places in Baltimore where men can be positive together," says one Strive graduate.
The men are what policymakers euphemistically call a challenging population: Lacking high-school education or formal work experience, they're the most likely of any group in America to die young and to die from violence. Most of their life experience, the skills that have helped them survive the streets or prison, works against them in the legal world. The biggest problem the center has spent 15 years trying to solve isn't how to get these guys jobs, or how to encourage them to be more involved in their children's lives, or how make the streets safer, though those are tough enough. The problem is more profound: How do you give these survivors of the drug wars, men who are criminalized and discarded by society, who are at the bottom of every statistic, hope?
After his confrontation with Cooper, Travis stayed in touch with Pitchford, his friend's aunt. He still wanted a construction job, and it seemed like she could help. They'd have long conversations about his temper, and his goals. "Travis," she'd say, "I see your potential—you just got to work on your anger." Finally, she convinced him to try Strive, an intensive four-week program that was developed by two ex-offenders in Harlem in the 1980s.
Every new class is assigned a number. Travis showed up for Cycle 179, which began last August. Wearing the new suit he'd been given, he filed into the biggest room at the center, full of white folding tables and green rolling chairs, for orientation. The instructors were Baltimore natives Sean Robinson and Tiffany Davis. Robinson, who's 40, spent seven years in the military before studying sociology. Davis, who's 31, is earning a degree in community service. Strive instructors in West Baltimore are always a male-female pair, in part so that the men can get used to taking orders from women. They instruct the class from 9 A.M. until 3 P.M.; the last two hours shift to remedial math instruction, which gets some ready for their GEDs and helps others prepare for construction jobs like plumbing and pipe-fitting, where they'll need to add and subtract and understand fractions.
Strive is boot camp—one that turns soldiers back into civilians rather than the other way around. Robinson calls it "attitudinal training." Students learn how to give a job interview, how to write a résumé, how to communicate in the workplace, how to save money, how to follow a budget, how to deal with depression and low self-esteem. A major goal is to help them develop a professional attitude toward a job—being on time, wearing business attire, speaking appropriately for an office environment—the kinds of skills that middle-class people pick up throughout their lives like oxygen from air.
When Robinson and Davis take over at orientation, they bark at the new recruits to stand up, then issue their first command: "Smile." Students will learn a lot of things in Strive, but the first lesson is how to smile. The first few days are devoted to it. The new class members are always confused, and then they start to smile—except for about 20 percent of the room, who stand stone-faced. Robinson calls out those who don't smile, pulls them up to the front of the room, and says, "This is my smile crew." He tells the rest of the room to cheer until they can get these men and women, mostly men, to finally crack a smile.
The claps and hoots and whistles rise in a crescendo heard throughout the building. Meanwhile, Davis and Robinson walk up and down the line, yelling, "Smile," and pantomiming it, using their fingers to pull the corners of their own mouths back. The reluctant recruits roll their eyes. Some get tense, their faces get stuck in passive displays of aggression, as Robinson goes up and down the line and mocks: "Is it painful? Is there a medical condition? Smile!" He and Davis continue their full-on assault of well-wishing and joking and silliness until one by one, the students fold. A smile is the Strive game face, they explain. "I'm not asking you to smile on North Monroe Street at two in the morning," Davis says. "I'm asking you to smile in here."
It's usually the youngest men who bow out at this stage—the 19- and 20-year-olds who are too cool to tolerate the corniness, the guys who've been strongly encouraged to try Strive by some parole officer or social worker attempting to keep them from spending their twenties in prison. It's the older guys who are eager to cooperate. They're hungry.
Travis wasn't called out as part of the smile crew, but he could feel himself winding up. He didn't like these mind games. After the first break, he went out to smoke a cigarette and returned chewing gum. Davis came toward him, yelling at him to spit the gum out. Instead, he cursed at her and demanded to know why he had to do something she didn't have to, since she was chewing gum, too. "If you don't like it, you can get out!" Davis hollered. Travis turned to Robinson, the other trainer: "Why I gotta leave? She's chewing gum, too!" Robinson said, "You're not submitting to the process." So Travis said, "Fuck you and this process," and stomped out of the center for a second time.
"He fussed about that for weeks," Joyce says. "He couldn't get over it, and he couldn't let it go." A week or so later, Travis applied for a stockroom job. He wore the suit he'd gotten from the center, and on the way to the interview he could hear Davis's voice in his head, telling him to smile. "This woman I couldn't stand at the time was the first person I thought of," he says. "I took the advice she gave." He landed the job, and it paid $9.50 an hour, but he quit at the end of the first day for reasons even he didn't entirely understand. The tape gun he was supposed to use to put boxes together didn't work properly, and it annoyed him. Mostly, though, he worried he wasn't ready. But he did feel ready for Strive. "In an hour and a half, with the information I got here, got me further than I got since 2007 when I came out," he says. "That's what it took for me to realize that I can get where I want to be. I can. This is the avenue that I've been hoping and praying for, the opportunity and chance for something to go right." He called his old friend Kendall Wilson, who, after six years of working at KFC, had become a manager. She hired Travis as a part-time cook at the suburban restaurant she managed. That allowed him to quit dealing weed. He worked nights so he could keep the job while he went back to the center.
On the first Friday morning of October, Travis wore his suit—plain black and a little too long, so that it hung past his wrists, waist, and ankles—and took a seat in the back for the beginning of Cycle 181. (Outside the center, he still wore jeans and T-shirts and a canvas jacket with a brass-knuckle knife in the pocket, because you could never be too careful.) Eighty-seven people came to orientation. Only 68 returned on Monday for the first class. Robinson and Davis passed out workbooks and assigned homework, introducing them to the course's strict rules and etiquette. Students had to stand and say their full names before they spoke in class. No slang words were allowed—"yeah" and "nah" counted as slang. Every morning, the students would be inspected to see that they were following the dress code. Homework would be checked first thing, every day.
Whenever they broke a rule, the students had to pay fines. The price schedule was listed in the workbook: A hand in a pocket cost $1, while a ringing cell phone cost $5. "In what part of life do mistakes not cost you?" Robinson said by way of explanation. Payment was due immediately; loose change and dollar bills began to fill a giant empty water-cooler bottle that became almost too heavy to lift by the end of the four weeks. If students didn't have money, they couldn't wait until the lunch break or dart out of class. They had to turn to the room and ask for a loan. "Does anybody in the community have a dollar I can borrow?" they would regularly ask, before picking quarters and dimes out of outstretched hands. There was a lesson in this, too: "Stop looking for someone outside of your community to come rescue you," Robinson said. "Your help is here in this community." Some students paid as much as $10 in the first few days. At the end of the first week, one woman was charged $1 and broke down crying before leaving the class for good. Travis got caught with his hands in his pockets a few times, and had to pay $3. But he was smiling on cue, working hard at cooperating.
Travis watched as the instructors called out others for refusing to crack even a grin, or for sighing, or sucking their teeth, or not wearing the right clothes, down to the socks. He watched as Robinson and Davis focused in on a group of three men—two were brothers—barely out of their teens, who still hadn't smiled in the first three days and wouldn't say their names loud enough for the class to hear. One by one they were called up, heads held back. "You have permission here to be square," Robinson said. None of those guys would make it through the first week. Only 50 students did.
The class was purposefully antagonistic. Sometimes, Wayne Cooper, the ex-offender counselor, would come in to poke fun at people, make them a little more uncomfortable. "They petty," students would grumble outside the classroom. There was a good reason for that: The students' jobs, after the training, would be petty, too. "It always seems like more is expected of you for the least amount of money," Cooper says.
During the second week, it dawned on Travis that this was the most time he'd spent around other people since prison. He was starting to make friends, becoming part of a group of guys who were all slowly, gingerly, beginning to thrive in the class. They'd hang out during lunch and after class. The social leader of the group was a 27-year-old father of two named Donte Harrison. Donte wrote poetry and performed hip-hop, and he liked to party. His path to the center had been different from Travis's. Donte had graduated high school and spent half a semester in community college before dropping out. He occasionally dealt drugs and had gotten into a bit of trouble but had a stable home life with his mom and sisters that kept him from falling all the way down.
At 19, Donte was working at a Shoe City in the mall in Towson, a suburb, when Malikah Robertson, who went by the nickname Shawna, came in to buy shoes for her two kids. At the time, she was pregnant with her third. (Donte had just gotten out of a relationship with a woman who was a few weeks pregnant with his first son.) Donte struck up a conversation and invited her to come back the next day, when he could give her a friends and family discount. "I went back up there, that was pretty much what it is," Shawna says. "We were together for six years. He was nice, polite. He was a very—well actually, I kind of taught him, I kind of groomed him into being a man." Donte moved in, became the kids' stepdad, and he and Shawna had a son together named Ja'len. They worked as security guards at an office building in Towson. Three years in, they were engaged. Donte's life seemed set.
In the summer of 2011, Donte's 12-year-old cousin was playing on his front porch when he was caught in the crossfire of a gang hit and killed. Another cousin died a week later. Donte had seen a lot of violence, but there was something different about his cousin's death, an innocent kid shot for no reason. "Life never hit me too hard until that," he says. Donte took time off to be with his family and grieve. "He shut down," Shawna says. "Our boss was like, 'I can't hold your spot, because I don't know how long it's going to take to get yourself back together.'" Donte was fired.
"I think he hit rock bottom then," Shawna says. "He just felt like it was the end of the world. I was scared to ask him to do anything, I felt I would be ignorant if I asked. But it's like there's nothing you can do about it, you still have to live afterwards." Donte and Shawna were barely talking anymore—they hadn't been communicating well for a while, but the family problems forced them to see it—and they broke up last summer. Donte moved in with his grandfather, back in his old neighborhood, and started popping pills. Shawna applied for child-care vouchers to help with the $300 a week it would cost to put her kids in day care after school. To get the vouchers, she had to provide the state with Donte's information, and the state came after him for child support. He already owed child support on his first son.
When Donte emerged from his depression, he tried to find a new job but couldn't. His child-support arrearages for Shawna reached $4,000. "I don't really know what's hindering me," he told me. "I ain't got no violent crimes." One day, he was pulled over while driving, and the cop said he smelled marijuana. Donte found out that his license was suspended because of the child-support debt. When he went to court, he asked the judge, "How am I supposed to get a job if I can't drive?" The judge said, "You'll figure something out." Whenever he needed money, Donte would sell drugs like pot, Xanax, and Percocet, which could go for $300 a bottle. But he had never wanted to just deal—it was one of the things Shawna had liked about him—and he also needed a legal way to pay the child support, because the judge would ask. He had heard about the center because someone told him its fatherhood classes could help him settle his arrearages. He told the judge he was going to Strive.
For people with criminal backgrounds, a job interview is the best chance to overcome everything working against them: the stereotypes, the lack of education, the prison record, the spotty work history. For the final three weeks of Cycle 181, almost every morning was devoted to mastering the interview.
Robinson and Davis began by tossing out questions to the class. They focused on five common ones. The first: "Tell me about yourself." This became an exercise in what not to say. The first responses were the kind Robinson and Davis expected: "I'm a survivor!" "I'm a mother!" Davis asked the room, "Is anyone else in here a mother?" When most of the women raised their hands, she turned to the offender: "Does that make you unique? No? Then sit down." When students yelled out lame answers, Robinson would moan, "Clichés are terrible!" Sometimes he'd be softer and say, "I appreciate your heart, jumping up to volunteer, but no."
Travis emerged early as someone who could answer the questions well. He was smart and genuine, casual and earnest. When asked who he was, he'd say he was a go-getter and give an example of a time he took extra initiative at KFC to help out a co-worker even though it wasn't his job. Where did he see himself in five years? He would be a college graduate and an asset to any company he worked for. How did he handle workplace conflict? He told the story of the time he disagreed with a supervisor and asked if they could talk it over during his next break.
Travis had begun to vary his outfit, sporting a black-and-white silk paisley tie and a matching pocket square to complement the black suit. He wore it on his 45-minute walks to the center every morning, when he'd plan his day, visualizing how he wanted it to go. "It's changed my life," he said about Strive. "I wish I did this when I was 16, 15. I love this place."
The class had been divided into teams of roughly seven students, with each team electing a manager to lead their interview preparation. Travis wasn't a manager, but when the class had a contest to see who had the best interview skills, his team nominated him. The competitors went up front, Robinson and Davis fired questions at them, and those who stumbled or made a mistake were sent back to their seats. When someone aced all five questions, Robinson would say, "Give him a black card!" The black-card holders were deputized to help others perfect their interviews. Travis was one of five. Robinson pointed at him and told the class, "Y'all don't know who Travis was—he was the meltdown king. Now he's a black-card holder."
Travis talked about the black card as if it were real. "Now that I have that black card," he'd say, "I feel like I can do anything." He spent class time helping others improve. He'd pose the questions, and when they'd answer, he'd pace back and forth, head low, listening closely, furrowing his brow, shaking his head, giving tips. "When I started looking at him as a leader, he showed me a little bit," Robinson says. "I started saying publicly, 'Travis is one of the brightest guys here,' and he started feeding off of that."
Travis, though, was darting out some days at 3 P.M., after Robinson and Davis turned the class over to the math instructor, so that he could get to the KFC in time. Robinson found out, and the Friday of the second week he called out Travis in front of the class. Travis was upset, but he didn't explode the way he might have in the past. "I think he started to doubt whether he could give the level of commitment we were looking for," Robinson says. Travis remembers it differently. "They said something about, 'What's more important: the little petty job or what you get in here?' That made me kind of mad, because I left a lucrative hustle behind to get that petty job to try to do this. The money is crap. But it's my job. I went and got that. I do good there. What I want to be is a working man, a normal American taxpaying citizen. So that kind of cut me the wrong way." He felt disrespected. But when he weighed working at KFC against the promise of something better, he decided to stick with Strive. He asked his bosses to schedule him on weekend nights so he could concentrate on the class, even though working just two shifts a week at minimum wage left him broke. At the class's midpoint, he was one of about 40 students still hanging in.
The students left in Cycle 181 began to find that the center was full of affirmation. Everyone in the building would ask, "How are you?" and refuse to let you go until the answer was "Good!" Donte wrote a poem about Strive that Robinson asked him to share in the beginning of the third week. "Walking pass this mirror, is it really who I see? Is it that same haunted past that held me back from so many dreams? Is it that same fuckup who learned from nothing?" he wrote. "Used to be so dark and cold with intentions to harm, but now, now I see light, a crack of hope and change has split this mirror."
Every day at lunch, Donte walked to Mondawmin to Burger King, and other students would come along. (He'd often pay for them because he was the only one with cash.) Travis would sometimes go, too, though he preferred the cheaper corner store on the other side of the empty parking lot. The Strive students made the four-block trip looking sharp, the women in their heels and the men in their suits, and along the way people on the street would clap and yell, "Get them jobs!" Travis was also receiving those kinds of cheers on his morning and afternoon walks—"That is just a perk," he says. The guys had decided they enjoyed wearing a suit. These men had always wanted to work construction—the best-paying jobs they knew about—but now they saw the benefits of a job that required office attire. They liked looking good.
Students were still being kicked out or giving up every day. Increasingly, Robinson and Davis required Cycle 181 to act as a unit, making decisions together and holding slackers accountable. The instructors would pull someone up to the front of the class for an infraction and ask the students to vote on whether he or she should be allowed to stay. One man was kicked out because his cell phone rang and he lied about it to avoid paying the $5 fine. One quiet guy with a bit of an attitude who kept falling asleep on the table was asked to come up front; the class had no trouble voting him out. Others were booted for being late after every break, or for not doing their homework, or for not writing the essays that were doled out as punishment.
Those were the easy cases. As the class moved on, and the students grew closer, these decisions got tougher. Everyone held their breath when, on the Thursday of the third week, Robinson brought up Melvina Banks's absences. Melvina had been one of the students to jump up and answer questions in the first few days. She'd been voted a team manager and was one of the people in the class others came to for advice. Melvina, who is 33, was awaiting drug charges. ("I was involved with a friend," she told me. "I wasn't aware of the other things he was involved in.") Her pretrial officer, who was monitoring her house arrest before her case went to a judge, had told Melvina about Strive. She had known about the center but assumed, because of its focus on fatherhood, that it was only for men. Now she was just a week from graduating, but she had missed three days—one to go on a job interview arranged by the center and two to take her GED exam.
Once Melvina stood up front, faced the classroom, and smiled, Robinson referred the students to the rulebook and told them to discuss her fate. At first, everyone was supportive of Melvina. She had missed class for good reasons, they chimed in. Then Robinson asked, "So, it's OK for Melvina to break the rules because you like her?" Travis stood up to say something, but Robinson asked him to read the rule about absences first. "Three absences will require you to repeat the workshop, no matter what the reason," Travis read from the workbook, which had the words in bold. Robinson repeated: "No matter the reason." Travis said, "But she was bettering herself. Isn't that why we came here?" Robinson pointed out that she could have taken the GED another time. In a business, he said, Melvina's absences would have hurt the bottom line, no matter how noble her reason for missing.
Melvina kept standing in front of the room smiling, but the tide was starting to turn. Robinson reminded them of another rule: People who stick their necks out for rule-breakers become responsible for them. "If you save her, it's going to be on you," he said. The people who spoke up after that, always with a qualifying "I like Melvina," started to make the case to vote her out. Rules were rules. The vote was close. Melvina left the room, quietly, with her books and bag. A classmate grew furious and stomped out of the room; he was voted out, too, after he returned.
Melvina stayed in the building and cried to anyone who would listen: "They said there would be consequences, and so everyone changed their minds!" One of the center's newest employees, who had graduated from Strive in May, grabbed Melvina and took her back into the classroom. It was lunchtime, and Davis and Robinson were gone. He called the class back and gave them a lecture about solidarity. "Y'all supposed to stick together!" he said. Another employee called Robinson and Davis and convinced them to let Melvina try again. But when she showed up late the following day, no one stood up for her, and she was voted out again.
After the Melvina episode, Robinson told the students it was OK if Melvina and others needed to come back for a second try. Failure is part of the process of growing, he said, and most Strive cycles had a repeater. After all, here was Travis, a black-card holder who hadn't made it through the first hour of Cycle 179.
Of the 87 who came to orientation, 33 made it to graduation on November 1. The day before, a Thursday, was devoted to fun. A few students stumbled in late, but rather than kick them out, Robinson and Davis asked them to devise and perform a lesson for the rest of the class on the importance of punctuality. The students came up with a skit in which they pretended to work in a business, missed an important assignment because they were late, and were fired. At the end of the skit, Davis asked them to repeat a call-and-response chant they'd heard throughout the class: "To be early is to be on time, to be on time is to be late, to be late is to be fired." But they stumbled over it, and when Davis prompted, "To be late …," they said, in unison, "... is to be on time!" Davis stopped: "What! No!" Everyone started laughing, and Davis started singing, "To be late is to be on time! To be laaaaate is to be on time! Be on time, be on time, be on time!" They all joined in, clapping and pounding the tables to the rhythm.
That afternoon, the students had a chance to win back the money that had piled up in the giant water-cooler bottle. It totaled more than $400 and was split among the winners of four contests. For one, Robinson and Davis threw out questions in a round-robin to see who could give the best interview of the cycle. Only the black-card winners were asked to come up. Two were eliminated quickly, and it came down to Travis and his team manager, a woman named Erika White, who had a degree in business from the University of Baltimore but had been unemployed since March. They were tied when Robinson asked, "How do you handle conflict in the workplace?" Erika stayed back on purpose and let Travis go forward. He answered, as he often had, with the story about asking his supervisor at KFC to sit down with him over break and talk through their problems. He won an envelope containing $100.
While everyone tried on their blue graduation robes for the ceremony the next day, the class revived its new anthem "To be late is to be on time!" Some students grabbed Bic pens to use as microphones. A few who were already wearing their robes started deacon stomping, taking it to church. The giddiness continued as they filed out. Travis, though, hung his head low and walked slowly out of the building in his too-long suit. When he looked up for a brief moment, his eyes were red and his face was wet. "It's kind of a big deal," he said.
Travis's mother and the friend who'd recommended the center came to his graduation. He sat near the front, nodding intently as the others gave thanks and shared what they'd learned from the class. Davis called him up last, and when he got his certificate, he turned to Robinson and Davis and said, "Thanks for never giving an inch." The center employees had come to love Travis, but they couldn't help being a little scared for him. He was still holding on too tightly to his emotions, even if they were good ones. His self-esteem might be too fragile to withstand the setbacks that would inevitably come. While the center says that 85 percent of Strive graduates have a job after a year, for instance, some spend weeks trying to get that first job. There were many stories about guys who just stopped coming by, ceased to answer their phones, changed numbers, fell away. It was crucial, Robinson and Davis said, for Strive graduates to stay around, both to get a jump on new job opportunities and to get a regular dose of positivity. "You see when their confidence plays tricks on them," Catherine Pitchford, the person who had convinced Travis to try Strive, told me after graduation. "You see when the streets take them back."
Donte kept showing up. He took a fatherhood class. He applied for jobs and trained for extra certifications: forklift-driving, learning how to wax and buff floors. He brought the mothers of both his children to the graduation for the fatherhood course and everyone was impressed to see the three of them together, getting along. But while Donte had interviews, he had no offers by December 17, the deadline by which he had to pay $400 toward his child support or risk a year in jail. He came up with the money, and when I asked him how, he laughed and said, "I had to make some moves." When the judge asked, Donte said it had come from his family. Shawna kicked $200 back to Donte so that they could each give Ja'len and the other kids a Christmas.
Because Donte was always around the center, he was chosen for a temporary construction cleanup job in January. The company went contract by contract and couldn't promise Donte work for long, but it paid a minimum of $11 an hour. It was exhausting, satisfying work, and Donte was proud of it. He posted pictures of himself wearing hard hats and vests, Shop-Vac in hand, on Instagram, the social network of choice for most of Cycle 181. He had also interviewed for a job as a floor technician at Towson University, and he posted, a little prematurely, a happy emoticon with a caption proclaiming that he now had two jobs. (He didn't get the job but was later offered another one at Towson, buffing the floors on weekends.) He spent the first part of the new year thinking about how he would juggle daytime construction with nighttime floor-cleaning. "I'm fixing to be really tired," he told me. He bragged on Instagram: "I ain't going to lie, I'm proud of myself!"
Travis would have liked those jobs, but he had stopped hanging around the center. He'd shown up for a week or so after graduation, wearing his suit, hoping to take a forklift-driving course, but it kept being delayed. Career counselors meet with graduates on weekday mornings, and Travis applied for jobs with their help, but no interviews resulted. Honestly, Travis was a little scared about what would happen if he was offered an interview; Donte had arranged a party after graduation, and Travis knew his urine was tainted from smoking weed as he celebrated. He didn't want to embarrass the center if a job came up and he couldn't pass a piss test.
As the holidays came and went, Travis took on more hours at KFC, five or six days a week. "I got a phony raise at my phony job," he said. He now made $7.50 an hour. Kendall Wilson, his manager and childhood friend, had noticed a new work ethic. "He really started doing his thing," she said. "I've seen times when somebody here will say something and the old Travis would probably put them in the hot grease, but he has matured. He's still a mean individual, though." I asked Kendall if she thought Travis would stick with KFC. "Until he finds something better," she said, "I know he's going to stick with this, and I'm going to make sure he stick with this, because I don't want to fire him. Coming from where we came from, something better than nothing right now. Everybody we know either dead or in jail, and that's all I'm saying."
Travis started to hang out in his basement again. Some mornings he would call Donte to see if he was going to the center, but those calls came more rarely as time passed. Travis applied for jobs on his own, online, rather than walk to the center. He knew that Kendall had worked for six years before she started making a decent salary at KFC, and he didn't think he could take that wait. He was thinking about hustling again. "You take all your crappy $30, $40, $50, $60 days: It's still more than what you make at your best week working at KFC," he said. But even the weed business was changing, he feared; Travis had heard about legalization in other states, and he figured weed would soon be legal everywhere—meaning guys like him wouldn't even have that to fall back on. "It pisses me off. I want to run, but I'm forced to crawl," he told me. "Everybody says, 'Just be patient. It will all turn around for you.'"
In early February, Travis found a new job, on his own, with a company that cleans restaurants at night, paying $80 a day. It was the same type of job he'd had in 2008, the one he'd gotten fired from. It was a good job, and he told the center about it, but he was still dissatisfied. He had wanted to start GED classes, hoping that might be the first step to a real career. He registered, but his new job interfered with the class schedule. He never showed.


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By now, you've spent a few days or weeks writing in your stress journal or blog and observing the way you react to various forms of stress. Next, you'll start to replace unhealthy or unproductive coping strategies with ones that can actually make a difference and improve your situation.
Look back over your recent writings and pick out the patterns: When you felt stressed, did you go home and sulk? Did you ignore family, friends, and your own personal needs? Did you turn to junk food or caffeine, or did you blow off work?
Now, for the next few weeks, whenever you feel tempted to resort to these old habits, take a page from your Stress-Relief Road Map and try out a new coping strategy. In the following slides, you'll find simple strategies for dealing with the situations that threaten to derail you.
Sometimes it's just one tiny thing that sets you off on the wrong foot -- you wake up late, find yourself stuck in traffic, or your computer crashes before an important meeting. These incidents can set off a chain reaction, triggering more bad news as you wander through the day distracted, unproductive, and asking for trouble.
Instead of letting these rough patches get the better of you, save the day with a quick coping strategy you can lean on any time, anywhere. We can't promise it will stop time or recover a lost document, but it will help you be prepared for what comes next.
Read More About Stress-Free Solutions for Everyday Disasters
Whether you sit at a desk from 9 to 5 or you spend your workday doing rounds or waiting tables, chances are (unless you're a professional athlete) you're not giving your body a balanced workout while you're on the clock. The result? Chronic aches and low energy. Your body craves variety and attention paid to those tense, strained, and often-ignored muscles.
You can work out those kinks, though, with a little time and effort. Done three times a week, a rejuvenating stretching routine can pave the way to a calmer, less stressed, more energized you.
When you need an escape from the pressures all around you, meditation may help you block out negative energy and regain your focus. And you don't have to be cross-legged and chanting "om" to achieve a meditative state of mind; you can practice mindfulness in many forms -- through breathing exercises at your desk; during yoga, Tai Chi, or walking; or while sitting on a crowded subway, to name a few.
Healthy stress relief is something that takes your mind off your troubles -- even just temporarily -- while also benefiting your mind and body.
Evidence suggests that cardiovascular exercise can be a strong stress reliever, as can doing something you're passionate about: reading, listening to music, or finding a creative outlet like writing or painting. Experiment with these activities to find what best helps you relieve tension, relax, and blow off steam.
This may be the hardest part of your Stress-Relief journey so far: asking for help.
Now that you're aware of your stress triggers and have a strong desire to change them, you will likely need to involve other people -- whether that's your boss, your family, overbearing friends, or a hard-to-work-with coworker. Fill these people in on your stress-relief plan and your goals, and how you plan to accomplish them.
Figure out where you can ask for help or modify your current habits to better achieve those goals. It's important to hammer out the details now about how and when you'll delegate, draw boundaries, and deal with stress together.
Even if five hours feels like a full night's sleep, the lack of Zs might spell trouble for your health. In a study of about 6,500 adults, researchers discovered that women who slept five hours or less nightly were twice as likely to have high blood pressure as women who snoozed for seven hours or more.
To set yourself up for healthier sleep, designate regular sleep and wake times for yourself, exercise daily (preferably in the late afternoon), and avoid caffeine after noon, says Donna Arand, Ph.D., clinical director of the Sleep Disorders Center at Kettering Medical Center in Dayton, Ohio. If insomnia is a problem, try relaxation techniques, guided imagery, and deep breathing.
After you've faced your stress triggers, tried out these coping strategies, and discussed your goals with others, take our quiz to see how you're doing. If you're feeling good and ready for more long-term solutions, move on to Step 4.

subset: commoncrawl


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Honey Beer Bread
Learn how to make homemade beer bread with this delicious recipe that's naturally sweetened with honey! All you need are 6 easy ingredients to make it.
I will be the first to admit that I've never been much of a bread baker.
My desire to be one comes in waves, like last winter when I got into the habit of baking this crusty artisan bread in my Dutch oven when having people over, or two years ago when I probably baked a dozen batches of these yeasty rolls around the holidays, or the zillion or so times I've promised myself that this would be the week to try making homemade challah (but still never quite followed through).
I don't know, I think I've just always loved the idea of being a fabulous bread baker, casually pulling freshly-risen loaves out of the oven with a flourish each day, more than I've actually liked the reality of messing around with yeast. There just seem to be a few too many steps involved, and I'm that forgetful cook who will totally forget to check the dough while it's rising. Not to mention, it's hard getting through an entire loaf living on your own! (<– And I don't care what anyone says, thawing leftover bread that has been frozen just never tastes the same! ?)
Still, that doesn't change the fact that I absolutely LOVE BREAD. And oh my goodness, I think there are few better things in life than freshly-baked, warm bread pulled straight from the oven. So the simple little compromise that I turn to more often than not when those bread cravings hit is this one simple recipe that I decided to dig up out of the blog archives today and share with you once again.
My all-time-favorite, 6-ingredient, ready-to-go-in-1-hour-from-start-to-finish, warm-and-buttery, naturally-sweetened, always-always-always-a-crowd-favorite recipe.
Honey Beer Bread.
Honey Beer Bread Recipe | 1-Minute Video
I first shared this recipe here back in 2009, when this new blog was fresh outta the oven itself. ;) And since then, I've made this recipe dozens and dozens and dozens of times. Because you guys, it literally could not be easier.
Simply whisk together some flour, baking powder, and salt. Then pour in a bottle of beer and some honey.
Stir it all together, then pour it in a bread pan that has been greased with a few tablespoons of butter (yes, that's right). Brush a little extra butter on top.
Then bake it up to golden perfection.
And in less than an hour from start-to-finish, this gorgeous loaf of warm bread will be yours to enjoy.
And trust me, it is so beer-y delicious. ;)
Granted, over the years, I have tinkered with the ingredients a bit. My original recipe called for 2 tablespoons of honey and 2 tablespoons of granulated sugar, which I have since updated to just 4 tablespoons (1/4 cup) of all honey. And occasionally I'll sub in white whole wheat flour in place of the all-purpose, which works well. But guys, I've gotta be honest and say that I really recommend you make this one with all of the butter. I mean, you're welcome to leave it out and just butter your bread afterwards if you'd like. But I'm convinced that those buttery crusts are the best part of this recipe. So I highly recommend sticking with the recipe there.
The other brilliant thing about this easy recipe is that it's virtually foolproof, so you never have to worry about having fresh yeast on hand, or keeping an eye on various rise times. It's just a quick, easy, and always delicious bread made with everyday ingredients (including your favorite flavor of beer!) that you can whip up at the last minute. I especially love making it this time of year to go with soup season, but it'll be good any day you're craving some carbs.
So for those of you who missed this recipe the first time around, I hope that you enjoy it!
Happy baking!
Honey Beer Bread
You will love this sweet, delicious (and easy!) beer bread! Detailed recipe and photographs included.
- 3 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 tablespoon baking powder
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1/4 cup honey*
- 1 bottle (12 ounces) beer
- 4 tablespoons (half stick) butter, melted
- Preheat the oven to 350°F. Grease a 9 x 5 x 3-inch bread pan.
- In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder and salt until combined. Slowly pour the beer and honey into the flour mixture, and stir until combined. (I recommend popping your honey in the microwave for a few seconds beforehand to make it easier to stir in!)
- Pour half of the melted butter into the bottom of the loaf pan, and spread it around evenly. Then add the batter to the pan in an even layer, and brush the rest of the butter around evenly on top of the batter.
- Bake for 40 to 50 minutes, until the top of the bread is golden brown and a toothpick or knife inserted in the middle comes out clean. Serve immediately.
*My original recipe called for 2 tablespoons granulated sugar and 2 tablespoons honey, which still works! I just prefer going with 100% honey nowadays.
**If you'd like a cheesier bread, feel free to stir in 1 cup grated sharp cheddar after you've mixed in the beer.
Recipe slightly adapted from Ezra Pound Cake.All images and text ©
If you make this recipe, be sure to snap a photo and hashtag it #gimmesomeoven. I'd love to see what you cook!
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430 comments on "Honey Beer Bread"
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I made this recipe because I needed a quick bread to go with a homemade soup. It's really easy and good! Makes amazing french toast with the leftovers too. Just don't let it soak in the egg too long.
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I am wondering if you could alter this recipe for a cornbread recipe and how one would go about doing that.
Maybe 1/2 of the flour and the other 1/2 corn meal? I am no bread baker but love the taste of fresh bread. I am going to try this recipe, it sound scrumtious.
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So good. Made with New Castle beer. Very easy.
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I want to make this for a crockpot dinner, but do not have time to bake the bread right before dinner. Wondered if I baked ahead (day before or morning of) and rewarmed if it would still taste delicious. I've made this before so I know what it tastes like fresh baked.
Beer bread keeps for a few days. I make it all the time just to have around and then reheat a slice or two in the microwave as needed. It holds up well.
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My friend gave me a sample beer that is chai tea infused. I am definitely trying this recipe with that beer! Very excited to see how it turns out!
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I tried substituting almond flour. It doesn't want to come out of the pan.
just wondering if I could use brown sugar, instead of white, to mix with the honey ?
Can you use this bread for spinach dip or other dips?
I was wondering if this could be put into a bread machine?


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The Chequers, Stevenage - Vintage Inns
Bragbury End, Stevenage, , Hertfordshire, SG2 8TH
- Booking
- 01438 817 814
You must mention your Gourmet Society card when booking
- Cuisine
- Modern British
- Website
- Click here to visit restaurant website
Discount applies to food and drinks ordered when dining. Excludes fixed price, set menus and Saturday steak night offer. Excludes bank holidays, special occasion dates and the month of December. Due to licensing laws in Scotland, discount may not be applied to alcoholic drinks in Scottish restaurants.
The Chequers in Stevenage is a country pub & restaurant oozing rural charm and rustic character. The picturesque surroundings provide the perfect backdrop for savouring the hearty, seasonal pub-food on the menu, and the carefully nurtured cask ales and fine wines gracing the bar.
Dating back to 1774, The Chequers was originally used as a farmhouse on a 40 acre farm which included a slaughterhouse. Taken over by the St. Albans brewer in 1820, by 1871 the grounds also included a lodge, a thatch barn and a cattle barn. Granted its full license in 1919, The Chequers is now also a grade two listed building.
Enjoy a spot by the roaring log-fire or make the best of the British summertime by eating alfresco in the pretty beer garden.
Offer and Availability
25% OFF the total bill
Get 25% off your entire bill, including your drinks. Offer applies to the à la carte menu only. Limited to 1 Gourmet Society card per party. Groups cannot be split to use additional Gourmet Society memberships.
- Fridays
- Saturdays
- Sundays
- December
Number of people:
- Up to 6
- Please mention the Gourmet Society
Please Note
Please ALWAYS check availability
You MUST book in advance unless otherwise stated.
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Looking for a new read? Then go for a new author! Owen has 21 titles to pick from smarturl.it/owen?IQid=ELIT… rt @owen_author #ASMSG #IAN1 #BYNR
Looking for a new read? Then go for a new author!…Published by Owen on March 4th, 2015 03:55 AM | General
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Stars give away Sundance swag bags to charity
Throughout the 10-day event in Park City, Utah clothing firms and technology companies set up free gifting suites on Main Street in order to get celebrities to use their products.
Afterwards, actors and musicians end up with hoards of free goods but now, socialite Paris Hilton and the kind-hearted trio have decided to give back by handing over their share of cold weather items from Sean Jean to New York Cares.
In addition, social fundraising organisation Rally.org pitched in by erecting a reverse gifting suite, where actor Jason Isaacs surrendered a pair of True Religion jeans to the Jon Bon Jovi Soul Foundation to benefit those affected by last year's (12) Superstorm Sandy.
And the Harry Potter star thinks the film festival's charitable new twist is a great idea, telling CNN.com, "You come to a festival like this and people give you stuff, which is very lovely. (But) I always feel very guilty."


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This storybook life is no fairy tale. The offspring of Disney's most notorious villains come together once again to save Auradon after a sleeping spell is cast over their magical land in Descendants 3. Join the fight to save their happy ending in a new trailer, added by lilyZ! Descendants 3 premieres August 2 on the Disney Channel.
Descendants 3 premieres August 2 on the Disney Channel.
You can't get eaten by something in the Upside Down if you've already eaten the Upside Down Whopper. Check out a commercial for Burger King's new Stranger Things campaign, added by Bibi69! (If unavailable at your location, you can take matters into your own hands by simply turning over a regular Whopper. Enjoy!)
You can't get eaten by something in the upside down if you've already eaten the upside down whopper.
Marvel is taking it back to the First Avenger. No, that one. Not that one, either. It's the 90s one! Get to know the real story of Captain Marvel in the Honest Trailer by Screen Junkies, shared by aprildawn73!
@Screen Junkies
Who says death can't be beautiful? Meet Robert Ball, the artist behind the Game of Thrones: Beautiful Death portrait series, and learn about his creative process in a featurette added by lilyZ!
Go behind the scenes with Robert Ball, creator of the Beautiful Death series.
It takes an act of courage to expose secrets. One woman risks it all by leaking the government's lies in Official Secrets, a political thriller based on a true story. Here's the trailer, added by Makeupdiva! Official Secrets stars Keira Knightley, Matt Smith, Matthew Goode and Ralph Fiennes, and premieres August 23.
Official Secrets stars Keira Knightley, Matt Smith, Matthew Goode, Rhys Ifans and Ralph Fiennes, and premieres August 23.
A young woman who has become invisible to everyone but a disgraced fighter must find a way to save them both in supernatural romance film Above the Shadows. Here's the trailer, added by jlhfan624! Above the Shadows stars Olivia Thirlby, Alan Ritchson, Jim Gaffigan and Megan Fox, and premieres July 19.
A young woman who has faded to the point of becoming invisible must find her way back with the help of the one man who can see her.
They have to stick together. It's the only reason they've gotten this far. Here's a sneak peek at what's coming up in the weeks ahead on Big Little Lies, added by Makeupdiva! Big Little Lies continues tonight on HBO, followed by the series premire of Euphoria.
Here's a sneak peek at what's coming up in the weeks ahead on Big Little Lies!
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In early 1990s Boston, an assistant district attorney and a corrupt yet venerated FBI veteran take on a case that ultimately changes the city's entire criminal justice system. City on a Hill premieres Sunday, June 16 at 9/8c.
Alfred Pennyworth wants to be his own man. Meet a young security expert fresh out of the special forces in the trailer for Pennyworth, an origin story centered on Batman's beloved butler, added by Makeupdiva! Pennyworth stars Jack Bannon, Ben Aldridge and Emma Corrin, and will be at your service on July 28 on Epix.
Pennyworth stars Jack Bannon, Ben Aldridge, Emma Corrin, Paloma Faith, Hainsley Lloyd Bennett and Jason Flemyng, and will be at your service on July 28 on Epix.
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Escape Plan: The Extractors arrives on Blu-ray and VOD on July 2.
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Tom Hanks has a reputation for being the most wonderful guy ever, so Jimmy dared him to steal a cardboard cutout of himself from a souvenir shop next door to us on Hollywood Blvd. Tom is the best so of course he did not disappoint.
It's not easy to to come of age, especially at the end of the universe. Venture into an alien wilderness with four young astronauts on a rescue mission in the trailer for Assassinaut, added by Makeudpiva! Assassinaut stars Shannon Hutchinson, Jasmina Parent, Yael Haskal and Vito Trigo, and arrives on July 30.
Assassinaut stars Shannon Hutchinson, Jasmina Parent, Yael Haskal, Jonathan Newport and Vito Trigo, and arrives on Blu-ray and VOD on July 30.
She spent her first 19 years trying to escape her hometown. It wasn't until she made it out and spent a decade away that she realized Neptune needed her, and she needed it. Go home with Veronica Mars in a new season 4 trailer, added by DarkSarcasm! New episodes of Veronica Mars will arrive on Hulu on July 26.
Neptune always calls you back. #VeronicaMars premieres July 26th, only on @hulu.
You have to uncover the truth in order to bury the lies. Celebrate the release of Jessica Jones season 3 with a villainous new trailer, added by Makeupdiva! The third and final season of Marvel's Jessica Jones is now streaming on Netflix.
The third and final season of Marvel's Jessica Jones is now streaming on Netflix.
Let's go save the world, Spider-Man. Learn the true identity of Peter's new ally in a new Spider-Man: Far From Home TV spot, added by rakshasa! Spider-Man: Far From Home premieres July 2.
The enemy has never been closer to home. Gear up with Mike Banning and join the fight to prove his innocence in a new trailer for Angel Has Fallen, added by Makeupdiva! Angel Has Fallen stars Gerard Butler, Morgan Freeman, Jada Pinkett Smith, Piper Perabo, Nick Nolte and Danny Huston, and premieres August 23.
Angel Has Fallen stars Gerard Butler, Morgan Freeman, Jada Pinkett Smith, Piper Perabo, Nick Nolte and Danny Huston, and premieres August 23.
A grown-up Danny Torrance meets a young girl with powers like his in Doctor Sleep, a sequel to The Shining. Check out the first trailer, added by rakshasa! Doctor Sleep stars Ewan McGregor, Rebecca Ferguson, Kyliegh Curran, Bruce Greenwood, Zahn McClarnon and Emily Alyn Lind, and premieres November 8.
@Movie Trailers Source
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@Jimmy Kimmel Live -Jimmy makes his Marvel Universe debut with Tom Holland in this exclusive deleted scene from Spider-Man: Far From Home
Please be a five-star ride. An unsuspecting Uber driver named Stu is dragged into a dangerous night when he picks up a detective on the job in Stuber, an action-comedy starring Kumail Nanjiani and Dave Bautista. Here's a new red band trailer, added by jlhfan624! Stuber arrives on July 12.
A detective recruits his Uber driver into an unexpected night of adventure.
It's time for these soldiers to face their toughest enemy yet – their own brothers-in-arms. Prepare to head into battle with a new look at Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Breakpoint, featuring Jon Bernthal as Major Walker, added by DarkSarcasm! The game will be released for PS4, Xbox One and PC on October 4.
It's time to face your toughest enemy yet - your own brothers-in-arms. Ghost Recon Breakpoint launches October 4.
Some say they were set up. Others call them murderers. See what went down on A-Day and jump into action with your favorite heroes in the trailer for Square Enix and Marvel's upcoming Avengers game, added by rakshasa! Marvel's Avengers will be released for PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC on May 15, 2020.
@Marvel Entertainment -May 15, 2020
It's time to stop treating these tweens like kids. They know how things work. (Well, maybe not child-proof pill bottles.) Learn something new with a trio of adventurous sixth graders in the latest Good Boys trailer, added by rakshasa! Good Boys stars Jacob Tremblay, Keith L. Williams and Brady Noon, and premieres August 16.
@Movieclips Trailers -Synopsis: Three sixth grade boys ditch school and embark on an epic journey while carrying accidentally stolen drugs, being hunted by teenage girls, and trying to make their way home in time for their first kissing party.
A professor becomes so obsessed with a paranormal mystery that it threatens her job, her marriage, and her sanity in horror-thriller The Nightmare Gallery. Check out the trailer, added by Makeupdiva! The Nightmare Gallery stars Amber Benson, Mieko Hillman, Kevin Chamberlin and Mat Devine, and arrives on VOD on June 18.
The Nightmare Gallery stars Amber Benson, Mieko Hillman, Kevin Chamberlin and Mat Devine, and arrives on VOD on June 18.
They have known Scotland clutched in the grip of a mighty hand. Now, they'll set her free. Join the fight for freedom in a trailer for Robert the Bruce, added by DarkSarcasm! Robert the Bruce stars Angus Macfadyen, Anna Hutchison, Zach McGowan, Gabriel Bateman and Jared Harris, and premieres June 28.
The story of nobleman-turned-outlaw hero who was was crowned king of Scots in the 14th century.
They always feared that Elsa's powers were too much for this world. Now they must hope that her powers are enough. Join Anna and Elsa and their most loyal friends on an incredible quest across the Enchanted Lands in the official Frozen 2 trailer, added by PrincessFairy! Frozen 2 premieres November 22.
"Frozen 2" opens in theaters on Nov. 22, 2019
Wake up, Samurai. You have a city to burn. Get a look at Cyberpunk 2077, the open-world, action-adventure game from CD PROJEKT RED, in a trailer added by lilyZ! Cyberpunk 2077 comes to Xbox One, PS4 and PC on April 16, 2020.
A brand new story trailer for Cyberpunk 2077, featuring Keanu Reeves, from the Xbox Breifing at E3 2019.
The predators have become the prey. A weathered detective, the police force, and a vigilante converge on a troubled man who's linked to multiple murders in Nomis, or Night Hunter. Here's the trailer, added by DarkSarcasm! Nomis stars Alexandra Daddario, Henry Cavill and Ben Kingsley, and will arrive soon.
A weathered Lieutenant, his police force, and a local vigilante are all caught up in a dangerous scheme involving a recently arrested, troubled man who's linked to years of female abductions and murders.
They chose life, and they chose it together. Reconnect with your favorite Pose characters and get inspired in a season 2 trailer, added by Makeupdiva! Pose's second season premieres tonight on FX.
Season 2 premieres June 11 on FX.
3 from Hell's teaser trailer has been officially unleashed. Here's your first look at Rob Zombie's follow-up to House of 1000 Corpses and The Devil's Rejects, added by jlhfan624! 3 from Hell stars Sheri Moon Zombie, Sid Haig and Bill Moseley, and will arrive later this year.
3 from Hell stars Sheri Moon Zombie, Sid Haig and Bill Moseley, and will arrive later this year.
Ed and Lorraine Warren's daughter discusses the world's scariest doll in an Annabelle Comes Home featurette!
Don't give it recognition. Don't look it in the eyes. Don't even think about it unless the film crew makes you. Go behind the scenes of Annabelle Comes Home with Judy Spera, the daughter of Ed and Lorraine Warren, in a featurette added by jlhfan624! Annabelle Comes Home premieres June 26.
Annabelle Comes Home premieres June 26.
The daughter of a snake-handling preacher holds a secret that could tear her Appalachian community apart in upcoming drama Them That Follow. Here's the trailer, added by DarkSarcasm! Them That Follow stars Alice Englert, Thomas Mann, Walton Goggins, Olivia Colman and Kaitlyn Dever, and premieres August 2.
Set deep in the wilds of Appalachia, where believers handle death-dealing snakes to prove themselves before God, Them That Follow tells the story of a pastor's daughter who holds a secret that threatens to tear her community apart.
No one cares more about Jessica Jones than Krysten Ritter. Go behind the scenes of the new season with the star to find out more about her relationship with the superhero, the cast, and pulling double duty as a director in a featurette, added by nermai! The third and final season of Jessica Jones hits Netflix on June 14.
Krysten Ritter takes on double-duty as she steps into the Director's chair in the final season of Marvel's Jessica Jones.
Celia Facilier didn't get into the fortune-telling business to NOT make a fortune. Meet the ambitious daughter of The Princess and the Frog's Shadow Man in a new trailer for Disney's Descendants 3, added by Makeupdiva! Descendants 3 premieres August 2 on the Disney Channel.
Descendants 3 premieres August 2 on the Disney Channel.
Have you ever dreamed of becoming best friends with your favorite pop star? Here's your chance! Learn more about an incredibly intelligent companion named Ashley Too in a commercial from Black Mirror, added by Makeupdiva! Black Mirror: Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too is now streaming on Netflix.
Black Mirror: Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too is now streaming on Netflix.
The lie is going to get them. It's going to get them all. Prepare to return to the scene of the crime with another look at the Big Little Lies season 2 trailer, added by Makeupdiva! The second season of the award-winning drama premieres tonight on HBO.
Big Little Lies stars Reese Witherspoon, Nicole Kidman, Shailene Woodley, Laura Dern, Zoe Kravitz and Meryl Streep, and returns to HBO on June 9.
The parents of a model student try to understand the psychological war their son and his teacher are waging against each other in Luce, a drama starring Kelvin Harrison Jr., Octavia Spencer, Naomi Watts and Tim Roth. Here's the trailer, added by rakshasa! Luce arrives on August 2.
@Movieclips Trailers
Something seems a little strange about Woody and Forky's new friends. Take a stroll with Gabby Gabby (voiced by Christina Hendricks) and her very good friend Vincent in a new clip from Toy Story 4, added by Winxclubgirl202! Toy Story 4 hits theaters on June 21.
hristina Hendricks is Gabby Gabby in Toy Story 4. See the film in theaters June 21.
You can't rush progress. See a woman take control of her life – one block at a time – in the trailer for new comedy Brittany Runs a Marathon, added by Makeupdiva! Brittany Runs a Marathon stars Jillian Bell, Michaela Watkins, Utkarsh Ambudkar and Lil Rel Howery, and premieres August 23.
After the Wedding: Michelle Williams and Julianne Moore's worlds collide in the drama's first trailer!
The manager of an orphanage in Kolkata travels to New York to meet a potential benefactor and discovers a shocking personal connection in After the Wedding, a drama starring Michelle Williams, Julianne Moore and Billy Crudup. Here's the trailer, added by Makeupdiva! After the Wedding premieres August 9.
After the Wedding, a drama starring Michelle Williams, Julianne Moore and Billy Crudup, premieres August 9.
How's it hanging, Spider-Man? Check out some new Spider-Man: Far From Home footage in the latest TV spot, added by rakshasa! Spider-Man: Far From Home premieres July 2.


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Lancaster County Chamber of Commerce
The second edition of the Lancaster County Chamber of Commerce's newest event, Speed Networking, is set for 8 a.m. Tuesday, June 5, at Zaxby's Restaurant, 1210 S.C. 9 Bypass, Lancaster. Speed Networking is a fast-paced meeting format designed to accelerate business contacts to exchange information in a series of brief exchanges. Attendees share their professional backgrounds and business goals, seeking exposure to new markets and/or to expand their pool of vendors.
If you currently subscribe or have subscribed in the past to the The Lancaster News, then simply find your account number on your mailing label and enter it below.
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Welcome to the Web Pages for St Michael's, Aston Clinton
Whether you are looking for specific information about our church and parish or are simply browsing, we hope you will find something of interest about our about our worship and activities. Our historic Parish Church of St Michael and All Angels is one of three churches in the benefice of Aston Clinton with Buckland and Drayton Beauchamp in the Oxford Diocese, part of the Church of England.
Our website aims to give you a snap shot of the life of our congregation. On this site you can you can find out more about our worship, ministry and outreach, explore the history of our beautiful 13th century building, discover something about our music and bell ringing, catch up with our news and future events and you can find out how to contact us.
We hope you enjoy doing some of those things, but of course, the internet provides no substitute for taking part in the life of the Church, so we hope that you will want to get to know us better by visiting St Michael's, joining us one Sunday for worship or by becoming involved in the life of our parish. This growing church is open every day and we would love to get to know you.
Rector: The Rev'd Sally Bottomer email: email@example.com or 01296 632488
Curate: Rev Alison Roberts 01296 630256


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In OTAs (Offseason Talk & Analysis) all through June and July, the Sports on Earth NFL team will break down each team's offseason transactions, boldest moves and burning questions as they prepare for training camp. Click here for links to every entry in the series.
The Philadelphia Eagles didn't stand pat after they won the division last season. They did what teams hungry for playoff wins do: they made changes. It was a smart move given that you could chalk up some of their success to the fact that the rest of the NFC East was horrible, so getting better was a necessity to stay on top. Of course, the danger in making changes after a successful season is that you could ruin a good thing, and the Eagles made a few moves which could have negative repercussions down the road.
Still, based on last year, they are the class of the division. To anyone who tries to come at the king, best not miss.
Biggest Offseason Move: Adding Malcolm Jenkins to the secondary
There's another big move you were probably thinking of, but we'll get to it momentarily. For now, let's talk about the secondary and adding some help for a unit which ranked dead last against the pass last season in terms of yards allowed.
Of course, they've been through this before, when they signed Nnamdi Asomugha to work with Asante Samuel and Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie and we all know how that worked out. This year they have more of a foundation than that 32nd-ranked stat would lead you to believe, as they were tied with the ninth most interceptions in the league and were in the middle of the pack in passing touchdowns allowed with 25.
The corners held their own considering they were both new at the job, and strong safety was serviceable, but Patrick Chung was awful at free. Jenkins has underperformed the expectations he had as a first-round selection, but brings versatility and -- much more importantly -- some savagery to a safety position which has lacked it since Brian Dawkins bailed in 2008. T.J. Ward and Jairus Byrd were names a lot of Eagles fans wanted more, but they came with far heftier price tags.
As we said earlier, we've been down the "throw money at everything" path before, and it's no guarantee of success. Jenkins will fill several roles aside from enforcer, including stepping in as a slot corner. If they need him at strong safety for some reason, he can do that as well. He didn't work out for the Saints, but his addition to the Eagles secondary -- one which was not as bad as they appeared to be statistically in 2013 -- will help the overall defense and give them an edge in the race to retain the NFC East divisional crown.
Biggest Gamble: Cutting DeSean Jackson
In some ways, this divorce was easy to see coming. It seemed as if Jackson had been complaining about his contract for most of his six-year Eagles career and that certainly must have worn on the front office. More importantly, rumors surfaced after the move that he wasn't fitting in with what head coach Chip Kelly wanted in his locker room and offense, and although they claimed the move was for "football reasons" and not his alleged gang ties, the timing was difficult to ignore.
So in order to save some money and preserve chemistry, the Eagles tried to trade Jackson and then, finding no takers, released him, watching him land in Washington. While this was more than likely a net-gain for chemistry, it leaves the Eagles with the question of who will replace Jackson -- if they need anyone to at all?
Jackson was their vertical threat, a player who could stretch the field on deep routes due to his great speed. There's nobody on the roster who fits that role now. Jeremy Maclin will line up at the "Z" position where Jackson sometimes used to play and be the featured receiver for the offense. But even before his knee injury Maclin wasn't a burner and he won't have the speed to stretch the field the way Jackson did.
Coming off a career year, Riley Cooper will fill the "X" role, usually the receiver furthest from the offensive line, but it remains to be seen if he can reproduce last year's numbers without Jackson drawing coverage. Maclin will help in that regard, but Cooper is definitely going to see more attention and he sometimes struggles to separate. Rookie Jordan Matthews will be largely relegated to the slot, where Jackson lined up about 30 percent of his snaps. Matthews doesn't always separate from coverage cleanly either, but he has the potential to be deadly in the red zone and across the middle where his aggressiveness will win him a lot of possession battles.
Matthews was lauded by Philly.com's Jimmy Kempski during OTAs and I liked what we saw at Mobile during the Senior Bowl practices -- he certainly has upside.
In limited media access to OTAs so far, Jordan Matthews has looked like the best WR on the team, in my opinion, and it hasn't been close.
- Jimmy Kempski (@JimmyKempski) June 10, 2014
Maybe the impact of Jackson's absence is minimal. Maybe they adjust smoothly and never miss him. But if they don't -- if Cooper can't replicate last season, if Ertz and Matthews fail in the slot, if Maclin gets hurt again or just isn't the same -- the net result could be losing the division.
Biggest Question: Is Nick Foles Legit?
Last season saw Nick Foles take over the starting quarterback role in Week 5, not throw an interception until Week 14 and throw just two for the whole season. Compare that to 27 touchdowns and total 2,891 yards on the season, and you can see why he was such a revelation. But is it crazy to think we're still not sold? Not really. Just two years into his career and entering his second year (first full) as a starter, we still haven't seen quite enough of Foles to know for sure.
Here is what we do know: Foles isn't afraid to throw the ball deep. The perception in some places is he won't, that he was prone to short passes which, in turn, allowed him to avoid interceptions. But that's not quite accurate. Philly.com's Kempski presented a stat in a piece recently which contained the following chart:
The Eagles led the league in pass plays of 20 or more yards. Sure, some came in the first few games when Vick was under center and a few more came in clean-up time with Matt Barkley. The large portion of these are throws by Foles. In support of that is Pro Football Reference's ranking of Foles as tops in adjusted yards per pass attempt and yards per pass attempt. So he definitely took chances, went long and his lack of interceptions seem to stem from the fact that he just also executed his passes well.
We also know, given his effectiveness in passing last season (Pro Football Reference has him completing 64 percent ) that he reads the field well and isn't prone to making mistakes when doing so. Whereas his new teammate (and backup) Mark Sanchez never saw a defense that didn't confuse him, Foles does a good job reading things both pre and post-snap.
What we don't know is how much losing Jackson will hurt Foles' effectiveness, if the offensive line will improve (it allowed the 25th most sacks in the NFL with 46 as well as 79 quarterback hits per NFL.com ) despite Lane Johnson likely being suspended or if tinkering with the backfield (dumping Bryce Brown for an aging Darren Sproles) will pay off.
And we don't know if Foles can keep up last year's pace. A lot is riding on Foles this season and if he falters, this could be a long year for the Eagles because neither Sanchez nor Matt Barkley seem ready to step up in his stead.
Bold Prediction: The offense stumbles….but the Eagles still win
Unfortunately, this year Foles takes a step back. It's going to be tough to replace Jackson and I don't believe Cooper will live up to his paycheck.
The amazing thing will be watching the team do enough to get into the playoffs, carried by a defense which has needed to prove itself for some time.


text: Close to the most southerly point in Scotland there is a small beach which is home to, what seems to be some sort of gas tank. This was washed ashore sometime around 96-97. Rumour has it that 3 of these were washed off a ship's deck during a storm. You can see that the tank has had quite a hard time of it over the years, yet the conditions have never been right to for the sea to take it back. I think it must be quite happy here as it's even built itself a nest by smashing away at the rocks!


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American Museum Of Natural History Biologist And Colleagues Decode Longest Dna Sequence Ever Of Woolly Mammoth main content.
American Museum Of Natural History Biologist And Colleagues Decode Longest Dna Sequence Ever Of Woolly Mammoth
by AMNH on
by AMNH on
An American Museum of Natural History biologist and his colleagues have completed a painstaking project that allowed them to decode the largest piece by far of the genome of the woolly mammoth, the shaggy, extinct elephant relative that ranged far and wide on Earth until the end of the last Ice Age about 10,000 years ago. This success demonstrates beyond a doubt that the entire genome of the woolly mammoth could, in principle, be sequenced quite soon. The procedure involved separating mammoth DNA from that of other specimens found in a fossilized sample and identifying approximately 13 million base-pairs, elements of DNA that match that of living elephants. This small but significant percentage of the entire woolly mammoth genetic code is nearly 500 times longer than any woolly mammoth sequence previously identified, including results announced early this week with a less functionally important type of DNA.
Arriving at the full genome of even living animals is remarkable, given that the human genome was sequenced only six years ago. As of last week, scientists had published the complete genomes of 332 organisms, mostly single-celled organisms and none extinct.
The new study by Ross D. E. MacPhee, Curator in the Museum's Department of Mammalogy, along with Hendrik N. Poinar and Carsten Schwarz of McMaster University, Ji Qi of Penn State University, Beth Shapiro of Oxford University, and others, is published in the latest issue of the journal Science.
The team analyzed DNA obtained from the cell nuclei (nuclear DNA) of a 27,000-year-old fossilized female mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius) jawbone, an exceptionally well-preserved specimen recovered in Siberia near Lake Taimyr, a freshwater lake north of the Arctic Circle. The scientists found that the specimen DNA nearly perfectly matched the known genetic code of today's African elephants (Loxodonta africana), one of mammoths' closest living relatives. Analysis of the specimen involved extracting its DNA, determining whether the DNA remained intact, amplifying it to obtain sufficient quantities for analysis, and distinguishing the mammoth DNA from that of other organisms in the sample, such as other mammals, fungi, plants, and bacteria.
"This new genomic sequence of the woolly mammoth is orders of magnitude better than any previous result," said Dr. MacPhee, "and it raises the possibility that scientists could sequence the whole mammoth genome in the near future, possibly within the next year."
The finding bears on the cultural fascination with re-creating extinct animals through cloning, but it hardly demonstrates its feasibility. "While we may now be able to retrieve the entire genome of the woolly mammoth, that does not mean we can put it together into organized chromosomes in a nuclear membrane with all the functional apparatuses needed for life. We can't even do that with modern DNA," Dr. MacPhee said. Most biologists will instead be more interested in comparing the new findings with the genetic sequences of living mammals and other animals to try and determine what led to the extinction of large mammals and other so-called megafauna. Complete genome sequences also allow biologists to study the molecular workings that lead to the genesis of new species and how genes evolve over time.
Dr. MacPhee's ongoing research involves looking for evidence of viruses that are widespread among mammals and for pathogens that might have affected mammoths and other megafauna and caused their extinction. If a virulent hyperdisease killed off all the mammoths, it is possible that scientists will find evidence of these pathogens in ancient DNA.
For this new study of mammoths, Dr. MacPhee and his colleagues devised a novel approach to the commonly used DNA amplification technique called polymerase chain reaction (PCR) to attain the genomic results. PCR allows multiple rounds of amplification of a minimal amount of DNA material to obtain enough to arrive at longer and longer sequences of genetic code. DNA in the cell nucleus in every multicellular organism comes from both the subject's mother and father, and provides the organism's primary genetic material and blueprint for every body tissue and form. Once the mammoth DNA was extracted and amplified, the sequencing was completed in record time within hours by the latest in genomic research technologya new high-throughput machine, only two of which currently are in operation.
Media Inquiries: Department of Communications, 212-769-5800


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Kimball (1-2) at Sierra (2-1), 7 p.m.: The Timberwolves, who scored an average of close to 43 points per game last year, have scored an even 100 in their last two games after opening the season with a 32-21 loss to Tracy.
Kimball (1-2) at Sierra (2-1), 7 p.m.: The Timberwolves, who scored an average of close to 43 points per game last year, have scored an even 100 in their last two games after opening the season with a 32-21 loss to Tracy.
Lodi (1-2) at Tokay (4-0), 7:15 p.m., Grape Bowl: Lodi had an early lead in last year's game before Tokay scored 28 unanswered points in a 35-13 victory that ended the Flames' five-year winning streak in the rivalry.
Fairfield (2-1) at Stagg (2-1), 7:15 p.m.: After some early season rough patches, the Delta Kings impressed last week with a 49-3 win over Lodi. Lester Williams caught two touchdown passes, returned a kickoff for a score and had an interception.
West (1-3) at Tracy (2-1), 7:15 p.m.: West picked up a win this week when Brentwood-Liberty forfeited two games, including a 48-7 win over the Wolf Pack - for using an academically ineligible player. Still, West would like to get first-year coach Chris Myers his first real victory against the Bulldogs, who've won three of the last four meeting.
Edison (3-0) at Frankin (3-1), 7:15 p.m.: What's always been a heated rivalry has more at stake for the first time in a while; with both teams sitting on three wins and six victories likely enough for a playoff berth, tonight's winner should be in good shape with league play approaching.
McNair (0-4) at Merced-Golden Valley (1-3), 7:15 p.m.: The Eagles are struggling with just 31 players on their roster. In four games, the Eagles have scored 37 points, and they've allowed 36 points or more in all four.
Weston Ranch (1-2) at Lathrop (0-3), 7:15 p.m.: The Cougars got rookie coach Seth Davis his first victory last week, 26-18 over Bear Creek. The Spartans will look to do the same tonight for their first-year coach Steve Wichman.
Sonora (0-3) at Manteca (2-1), 7:15 p.m.: The Buffaloes kick off the Valley Oak League season as, arguably, the conference favorite, while the once-proud Wildcats head into their final season in the VOL winless.
Oakdale (1-2) at East Union (1-2), 7:15 p.m.: The Mustangs lost a lot of players off last year's Division II state bowl finalist team, but the 1-2 mark is deceptive. Oakdale lost one-point games to Turlock and Redding-Enterprise - who are a combined 7-0 - before beating Lancaster-Paraclete last week, 40-9.
Escalon (2-2) at Ripon (4-0), 7:30 p.m.: There's an excellent chance tonight's winner will win the Trans Valley League. Michael Ysit, a senior who leads the Indians with 572 yards rushing and seven touchdowns, had 68 yards rushing, 89 receiving and two TDs in last year's 34-28 victory.
Dixon (1-2) at Linden (2-2), 7:30 p.m.: Bailey Wright ran for 101 yards and two TDs last week for the Lions, who rebounded from two one-sided losses to beat Riverbank 42-10. Dixon won last year's meeting 44-7.
Amador (4-0) at Capital Christian (4-0), 7:30 p.m.: Donald White ran for 128 yards and four TDs in last week's 49-0 win over Natomas. The Thundering Herd, which is off to its best start under fifth-year coach Bill Baker, beat Capital Christian 31-12 last year.
Bret Harte (1-3) at Brookside Christian (0-3), 1 p.m., Lincoln High: The Knights have been tough to figure out. Despite a deep roster of players returning from last year's section title-winning team, Brookside has been outscored 168-80 over three winless games.
Calaveras (2-1) at Sacramento-Rio Americano (1-3), 1 p.m.: The Redskins are coming off a huge 13-7 win over Sonora, which will leave the VOL to join Calaveras in the Mother Lode League next year. Calaveras won last year's meeting with the Raiders, 25-20.
Argonaut (1-2) at Ferndale (1-2), 2 p.m.: Caleb Patrick, who leads the Mustangs with 347 yards and three touchdowns through three games, ran for 128 yards on 12 carries last year in a 27-7 home win over Ferndale.
Tahoe City-North Tahoe (2-1) at Elliot Christian, 7 p.m., Lincoln High: The Eagles are still winless with two double-digit defeats. They've been outscored 119-39 after going 7-4 and reaching the playoffs last year.
Livermore Valley Prep (1-3) at Millennium (2-0), 7 p.m., Kimball High: This is the program's first season for Livermore Valley Prep, which was shut out in its first two games before beating Turlock Christian 66-40 two weeks ago.
Byes: Bear Creek, Chavez


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safeTALK is a half-day alertness training that prepares attendees, regardless of prior experience or training, to become a suicide-alert helper. Most people with thoughts of suicide don't truly want to die, but are struggling with the pain in their lives. Through their words and actions, they invite help to stay alive. safeTALK-trained helpers can recognize these invitations and take action by connecting them with life-saving intervention resources. safeTALK-trained helpers are an important part of suicide-safer communities, working alongside intervention resources to identify and avert suicide risks.
safeTALK trainings are provided by registered LivingWorks trainers. These trainers will have attended safeTALK training for trainers. They will have participated in a rigorous quality control process and maintain their skills by presenting safeTALK trainings on a regular basis. The provision of safeTALK training in the Republic of Ireland, is funded by the HSE.
safeTALK offers valuable skills to attendees and requires no formal training or prior experience in suicide prevention. Because it only takes half a day to learn, safeTALK is an excellent tool for people who want to become alert to the dangers of suicide in a convenient timeframe. Although formal caregivers such as social workers and counsellors employ safeTALK skills, the program is also used by students, teachers, community volunteers, first responders, Gardaí, public and private employees, and professional athletes—among many others. By providing a universal model with adaptable components, safeTALK offers useful skills to every audience.
safeTALK is a powerful experience. You can expect to feel challenged, empowered, and hopeful. Your safeTALK trainer will demonstrate the importance of suicide alertness and help you identify ways people invite help when they're having thoughts of suicide. safeTALK's steps provide a simple yet effective method to engage with people who are having thoughts of suicide and connect them with resources that can carry out a full-scale intervention. At the end of the training, you'll have a chance to practice these skills firsthand. All in all, you can expect to leave safeTALK with practical knowledge of how to identify someone having thoughts of suicide and link them to life-saving resources.
Over the course of their training, safeTALK participants will learn to:
Thursday 29th August 2019 - Thursday 29th August 2019
1.45pm to 5.15pm