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A GQ exclusive: The first 20 pages of The Ask
Sam Lipsyte's breakout novel, Home Land, was the story of a loser named Teabag, a grown man who spent his evenings writing letters to the high school alumni bulletin, updating his fellow graduates on just how wrong life went since graduation. It was laugh-out-loud funny, and marked the arrival of a major new talent.
Lipsyte is back on familiar ground with The Ask (out March 2nd from FSG), a great comic novel about another loser (and new father) Milo Burke, who recently lost his job at a middling university, where he hit up wealthy graduates for financial donations.
A GQ exclusive: The first 20 pages of The Ask.
America, said Horace, the office temp, was a run-down and demented pimp. Our republic's whoremaster days were through. Whither that frost-nerved, diamond-fanged hustler who'd stormed Normandy, dick-smacked the Soviets, turned out such firm emerging market flesh? Now our nation slumped in the corner of the pool hall, some gummy coot with a pint of Mad Dog and soggy yellow eyes, just another mark for the juvenile wolves.
"We're the bitches of the First World," said Horace, his own eyes braziers of delight.
We all loved Horace, his clownish pronouncements. He was a white kid from Armonk who had learned to speak and feel from a half-dozen VHS tapes in his father's garage. Besides, here at our desks with our turkey wraps, I did not disagree.
But I let him have it. It was my duty. We were in what they call a university setting. A bastion of, et cetera. Little did I know this was my last normal day at said bastion, that my old friend Purdy was about to butt back into my world, mangle it. I just figured this was what my worst teachers used to call a teachable moment.
"Horace," I said. "That's a pretty sexist way to frame a discussion of America's decline, don't you think? Not to mention racist."
"I didn't mention anybody's race," said Horace.
"You didn't have to."
"P.C. robot."
"Fascist dupe."
"Did you get avocado on yours?"
"Fattening," I said.
"Don't worry, baby," said Horace. "I like big women."
"What about hairy ones?" I said, parted my shirt to air my nipple fuzz. Horace let me be a cretin with him. You could call him my infantilism provider, though you'd sound like an idiot. Otherwise, I was ostensibly upstanding, a bald husband, a slab-bellied father.
"Gentlemen," said our supervisor, Vargina, coming out from her command nook. "Did you send off those emails about the Belgian art exchange?"
Horace swiveled back to his monitor with the mock panic of a sitcom serf. Vargina took scant notice of our talk, tolerated foul banter for purposes of morale. But the fact remained, we had forgotten the afternoon's assignment. The gods of task flow did not easily forgive.
Where we worked was in the development office of a mediocre university in New York City. It was an expensive and strangely obscure institution, named for its syphilitic Whig founder, but we often called it, with what we considered a certain panache, the Mediocre University at New York City. By we, I mean Horace and I. By often, I mean once.
Our group raised funds and materials for the university's arts programs. People paid vast sums so their spawn could take hard drugs in suitable company, draw from life on their laptops, do radical things with video cameras and caulk. Still, the sums didn't quite do the trick. Not in the cutthroat world of arts education. Our job was to grovel for more money. We could always use more video cameras, more caulk, or a dance studio, or a gala for more groveling. The asks liked galas, openings, recitals, shows. They liked dinner with a famous filmmaker for them to fawn over or else dismiss as frivolous.
An ask could be a person, or what we wanted from that person. If they gave it to us, that was a give. The asks knew little about the student work they funded. Who could blame them? Some of the art these brats produced wouldn't stand up to the dreck my three-year-old demanded we tack to the kitchen wall. But I was biased, and not just because I often loved my son. Thing was, I'd been just like these wretches once. Now they stared through me, as though I were merely some drone in their sight line, a pathetic object momentarily obstructing their fabulous horizon.
They were right. That's exactly what I was. A solitudinous roil, my bitterness. Horace, after all, was their age. He had no health insurance, just hope. Our rainmaker, Llewellyn, seemed born to this job, keen for any chance to tickle the rectal bristles of the rich with his Tidewater tongue. He was almost never in the office, instead sealing the deal on a Gulfstream IV to Bucharest, or lying topside on a Corfu yacht, slathered in bronzer.
Llewellyn delivered endowed chairs, editing suites, sculpture gardens. My record was not so impressive. My last big ask, for example, had failed to yield a few plasma TVs from the father of a recent film graduate.
Mr. Ramadathan had mortgaged his electronics store so his son could craft affecting screenplays about an emotionally distant, workaholic immigrant's quest for the American dream. But the father's giddiness had begun to wear off. The boy was unemployable. Now Mr. Ramadathan was maybe not so eager to relinquish his showroom models.
I'd made the hot, khaki-moistening hike past all the car dealerships and muffler shops on Northern Boulevard in Queens, stood in the sleek, dingy cool of the store. Mr. Ramadathan sat near the register in a wicker chair. The plasmas were not on display. Sold or hidden, I had no idea. Mr. Ramadathan stared at me, at the sweat patches on my crotch. He pointed toward some old video game consoles, a used floor fan, dregs of the dream.
"Please," he said, "take those. So that others may learn."
Unlike the time Llewellyn secured a Foley stage for the film department, there was no celebration on the Mediocre patio. No sour chardonnay got guzzled in my honor, nor did any lithe director of communications flick her tongue in my ear, vow to put me on the splash page of Excellence, the university's public relations blog.
If not so ecstatic in her position as Llewellyn, Vargina seemed happy enough, or at least adopted a mode of wise, unruffled decency in the office. She'd been a crack baby, apparently due to her mother being a crackhead, one of the early ones, the baking soda vanguard. Vargina was a miracle, and that's maybe the only time I have used the word sincerely. Her mother had named her the word her name resembled. A sympathetic nurse added the "r."
"Milo," she said now. "How is the Teitelbaum ask going?"
Vargina had enormous breasts I liked to picture flopping out of a sheer burgundy bra. Sometimes they just burst out in slow motion. Sometimes she scooped them out with her slender hands, asked me to join her reading group.
"Making progress," I said. "Chipping away."
"Maybe you need a larger tool," said Vargina, appeared to shudder slightly, perhaps worried her innocent metaphor would be misconstrued as sexual. Her words, however, were not misconstrued at all. I had already begun to picture my cock in high quiver, sliding up the lubed swell of her chest. We were in a library of lacquered wood. Viola tones rose from a carved alcove. Baby oil beaded on rare folios.
"Well," said Vargina, tapped the plastic parapet of my cube wall. "Just stick with it."
"Will do."
Truth was, the Teitelbaum ask was going nowhere. I was barely hanging on here in development. I wasn't developing. I'd done some good work at a non-profit a few years ago, but the South Bronx Restoration Comedy Project never really took off. The university snapped me up at a bargain rate. I'd become one of those mistakes you sometimes find in an office, a not unpleasant but mostly unproductive presence bobbing along on the energy tides of others, a walking reminder of somebody's error in judgment.
But today some karmic adjustment seemed due. Just as Vargina slipped back behind the particleboard walls of her command nook, a painting major we knew a bit too well around here charged up to my desk, planted her bony fist on my Vorticist mouse pad. McKenzie was one of those girls who didn't eat enough, so that all one really noticed about her were the mole-specked rods of her arms, the lurid jut of her skull. Students had no reason to visit our office, but her father had paid for our crappy observatory upstate. She was in here a lot, to preen, complain. I guess it beat making her putrid art.
"Hello, McKenzie," I said.
"Hi, yeah, sorry, I can't remember your name."
"Sure, okay. Milo. Listen, Milo, we talked last week and you promised I'd be able to take the Impressionism to Regressionism seminar even though it was full."
"Excuse me?"
"Yeah, you know, you promised you'd talk to the painting department and sort it all out. I mean, if I told my father—"
"Hold on."
"Hold on?"
"I made no such promise. We have nothing to do with academic decisions, with curriculum or enrollment."
"Okay, maybe it was that guy," said McKenzie, pointing.
"Horace?" I said.
"Yeah, Whore-Ass," said McKenzie. Horace wore a pained grin at his terminal.
"Horace hasn't been well," I told McKenzie. "Now, as I mentioned, we have no jurisdiction over any of these issues, but maybe we can all get together with painting and figure this out."
"Meaning what?" "Meaning we can figure this out."
McKenzie stared. How could she know I myself had once been a fraud, chockablock with self-regard, at an overpriced institution just like this one, still had the debt to prove it? How could she know she stared down at the wispy pate of a man who once believed he was painting's savior, back in a decade that truly needed one?
She spoke quietly now: "Listen, I don't mean to be rude, but you really are here to serve my needs. My father taught me that the consumer is always right. I am the consumer. You are actually the bitch of this particular exchange. But don't think I don't respect that you are just a guy, like, doing your shitty job."
"Thank you," I said.
"But maybe you aren't cut out to work with artists."
I guess what set me off was her effort to be polite. I should have just leaned on the painting department to make room on the roster for her, ruin the semester for some pimple-seared hump who shared his name with no stargazing facility. Nobody cared. I would be doing my shitty job. It was a good shitty job. I'd done it for a few years and it paid pretty well, enough to let Maura go part-time since the baby. There was a quality family plan, plus a quality theft plan, the paints and brushes I smuggled home for those weekends I tried to put something on canvas again, until the old agony would whelm me and I'd stop and briefly weep and then begin to drink and watch Maura cruise up and down the cable dial all night, never alighting on anything for more than a moment, her thumb poised like a hairless and tiny yet impressively predatory animal above the arrow button, Maura herself bent on peeking into every corner of the national hallucination before bedtime.
She liked reality shows the best, and then the shows that purported to be about reality. So, yes, I should have just surrendered, cinched the entitled scion her little pouch of entitlements, put in my calls to the name shufflers, done my duty.
I thought about that moment later on. Maybe I got extra tuned to the concept of bitchhood once I became Purdy's, though I must confess I've always found such usage of the term for female dogs distasteful. My mother was a second-wave feminist. I wasn't comfortable saying "cunt" until I was twenty-three, at which point, admittedly, I couldn't hold back for a time.
Or maybe it's just that I've always despised phrases like "that fateful day," but as time went on I found it hard to deny that the afternoon Horace launched his E Pluribus Pimpus oratory and McKenzie tried to reify my servility and I pictured titboning Vargina in a rare books room was pretty damn fateful. Or was it, in fact, just another random day, and it was I who did the fool thing, forced my hand?
What I said to McKenzie, there is no point repeating. It's enough to report my words contained nothing an arrogant, talentless, daddy-damaged waif wants to hear about herself. When I was finished she did not speak. A thickish vein in her pale head fluttered. The blue thing seemed to veer and switch direction. Then she took a few steps back and, still staring at me, phoned her damager. What was done to me was done in hours. My outburst was deemed hate speech, which called for immediate dismissal. I could hardly argue with them. I think it probably was hate speech. I really fucking hated that girl.
You could say I had experienced some technical difficulties. There had been bad times, years trickled off at jobs that purported to yield what superiors called, with true sadism, opportunities. These yielded nothing, unless you considered bong slavery, a few bogus spiritual awakenings, and the unswerving belief I could run a small business from my home, opportune. Still, before my outburst at the bastion, I had made great strides. No more did I pine aloud for that time in the past when I had a future. Yes, I still painted on occasion, or at least stood at the easel and watched my brush hand twitch. It made for an odd, jerky style I hoped would get noticed someday.
I never confessed this last part to Maura. Our intimacy was largely civic. We spoke at length about our shared revulsion for the almost briny-scented, poop-flecked plunger under the bathroom sink, and also of a mutual desire to cut down on paper towels, but we never broached topics like hopes, or dreams. Hopes were stupid. Dreams required quarantine.
Still, Maura was a devoted mother, which, even if that often amounted to being helplessly present for the ongoing thwarting of a child's heart, meant something. Bernie was a beautiful boy. Good thing, too, as he'd become an expensive hobby. Preschool, preclothing for the preschool. Then there were the hidden costs, like food. Funny, isn't it, how much you can detest the very being you'd die for in an instant? I guess that's just families. Or human nature. Or capitalism, or something.
But the price of Bernie wasn't Bernie's fault. It wasn't Maura's, either. I was the fool who let the starveling have it, who couldn't find another job, though I came close at a few places. The interviewers could maybe tell I had the old brain. Jobs weren't about experience anymore, just wiring. Also, my salary demands might have been high. I lost out to kids who lived on hummus and a misapprehension of history, the bright newbies bosses exploit without compunction because these youngsters are, in fact, undercover aristocrats mingling with the peasantry, each stint entered on their résumés another line in the long poem of their riskless youth.
Not that I resented them.
Besides, there really wasn't work for anyone. The whole work thing was over. I'd even called up my last employers, but there were no further plans for powdered wigs and brass-buckle shoes in the Bronx. I'd grown morose, detached, faintly palsied. I stopped reading the job listings, just rode the trains each day, simmering, until dinnertime.
Back in high school, I remembered, a soothing way to fall asleep after picturing tremendous breasts in burgundy bras (yes, the image pre-dated Vargina) had been to conjure the crimson blossom of bullet-ripped concert tees, the hot suck and pour of flamethrower flame over pep rally bleachers. Typical teen shooter fluff, though I worried I'd inherited my grandmother's nutcake gene. I was fairly popular. Why did I slaver for slaughter? The visions had stopped in college. Some huge and dainty hand peeled them off my skull walls.
I became a painter, at least at parties. I was happy for a time.
But now, riding the trains, or else home sitting with the bills, the old terrible feeling returned. Whenever I checked my bank balance the terrible feeling welled up in me. The goddamn asks, I'd sweep them with a Maxim gun or some other wipeout device whose history I learned of late at night on the war channels, a glass of Old Overholt rye on my knee. I was not bad off com- pared to most of the world. Why didn't anybody do anything? We could get a few billion of us together, rush the bastards. Sure, a good many of us would die, but unless the asks popped off some nukes, eventually they'd get overrun.
What was the holdup? The terrible feeling tended to hover for a day or so, fade. Then
I'd fantasize about winning the lottery, or inheriting vast fortunes. Sometimes I was a flamboyant libertine with plush orgy rooms, personal zoos. Sometimes I jetted around the world building hospitals, or making documentaries about the poor.
It all depended on my mood.
Days I didn't ride the trains, I'd take long walks in the neighborhood. We lived in Astoria, Queens, as close to our jobs in Manhattan as we could afford. One afternoon I made a mission for myself: stamps for the latest bills (I'd ask for American flags, stick them on upside down in protest against our nation's foreign and domestic policies), paper towels, and—as a special treat to celebrate the acceleration of my fatal spiral—a small sack of overpriced cashews from the Greek market.
I'd cure my solipsistic hysteria with a noonday jaunt. Sights and smells. Schoolkids in parochial plaids. Grizzled men grilling meat. The deaf woman handing out flyers for the nail salon, or the other deaf woman with swollen hands and a headscarf who hawked medical thrillers in front of the drugstore.
This was a kind and bountiful neighborhood: the Korean grocery, the Mexican taqueria, the Italian butcher shop, the Albanian café, the Arab newsstand, the Czech beer garden, everybody living in provisional harmony, keeping their hateful thoughts to themselves, except maybe a few of the Czechs.
A man who looked a bit like me, same eyeware, same order of sneaker, charged past. They were infiltrating, the freaking me's. The me's were going to wreck everything, hike rents, demand better salads. The me's were going to drive me away.
The Greeks were out of cashews. I bought pistachios, ate them in line at the post office. Or on line at the post office. I could no longer recall which phrase came naturally. Either way, there was always a line at the post office, people with enormous packages bound, I assumed, for family in distant, historically fucked lands. What were they sending? TVs? TiVos? Hamburgers? Hamburger Helper? The exporting of American culture, did it continue at this level, too? It couldn't for much longer. Not according to Horace's calculations. The line hardly moved. People couldn't fill out the forms. Others did not comprehend the notion of money orders. Come on, people, I thought-beamed. I'm on your side and I'm annoyed. Doesn't that concern you? Don't you worry your behavior will reduce me to generalizations about why your lands are historically fucked? Or does my nation's decline make my myopia moot? They should produce a reality show about how much this line sucks, I thought. Call it On the Line. Or In the Line. A half hour later I reached the teller. I was about to ask for stamps when I realized I already had a book of them in my wallet. I did not need stamps. I needed a job. I needed to cool it with those pills from Maura's root canal.
Home beckoned, but so did a coconut flake. I was due back an hour ago, felt the admonishing telephonic pulses in my jeans, but instead crossed the avenue to the doughnut shop. There was a high school boy behind the counter, maybe saving up for the video game where you gut and flay everybody in the doughnut shop and gain doughnut life points. He wielded his tongs with affecting delicacy.
I thought again of my brutal visions of yore. My mother had always said I reminded her of her mother, Hilda. Since therapy, my mother had maintained that her issues, which prior to treatment had been known as her demons, stemmed from the fact that Hilda "withheld." I never knew my grandmother well. She had badly dyed hair and a persecution complex exacerbated toward the end of her life when she was fi red from the culture beat at her synagogue's newsletter.
"That pig rabbi should have died in the camps," she said.
Most of Hilda's utterances weren't so venomous. Most of her evil she must have withheld.
Now I took a booth near the window, watched the after- noon bridge traffic. Trucks piled up at the off-ramp, trailer sides browned with exhaust.
Not long ago Bernie said "beep-beep" every time he heard a car horn. Later his favorite word was "mine." Now he was fluent in the cant of his tiny world. His leaps in speech had seemed otherworldly. What else was he mastering behind our backs? Little Judas. Maura and I had worked so hard to dig the family ditch for the three of us to rot in and now here came the rope of language to haul the boy out. "Beep-beep" begets "Mine," which begets "I hate you, Dad." Then, if you're lucky, there's a quick "I love you, Dad," followed by "Let go, Dad," these last words whispered under the thrum of ventilators, EKG machines.
My father had been that lucky.
Some natty loon sat alone at the next table. He wore a pilled herringbone blazer, crusty at the cuffs, guarded a shopping bag packed with neatly folded shopping bags. A notebook lay open on his table. It looked full of sketches, apothegms. His pen still had the wire on it from where he'd maybe snipped it at the bank. The loon muttered, picked white scabs on his head.
I could picture my colleagues back at the Mediocre development suite, Horace at his desk, unwrapping the outer, non-edible wrapping of his turkey wrap, Vargina holed up in her command nook, poring over ask dossiers and budget spreads, Llewellyn patched in from Zanzibar with the skinny on a give.
But I was at my new office now, my Formica workstation smeared with jelly and Bavarian cream. This scab-picker was my potential partner. We could make an ace development combo. And the ask? Maybe the ask was that boy over there at the far booth, the one with fluorescent earbuds, a forehead full of leaky cysts. There was a horrible glitter in his eyes that looked like murder, or maybe just higher math.
The loon caught me staring at the boy, winked.
"What was that for?" I said.
The loon winked again. Teen brooder stood. I felt the glare of the leaky child, decided to meet the boy's gaze, try my best to transmit this thought: I'm not the enemy, just an earlier iteration of our kind.
"Goddamn fucking faggots!" the boy shouted, careened out the door.
Poor kid was a wild child, a homophobe. He might as well have been illiterate, guessing at supermarket signage. For all my adolescent rage, I had never included the marginalized or oppressed in my dream carnage. I never said gypped, or Indian giver, or paddy wagon, or accused anyone of welshing on a bet. If there ever evolved a tradition of locutions such as "She tried to tranny me on that real estate deal," you would not hear them out of my mouth. I never even called myself a yid with that tribal swagger I envied in others, though I had a right, or half a right, from my mother's side. I nearly spoke this truth aloud when the loon cackled.
"Don't mind the boy," he said. "I've known him since he was a child. A marvelous little specimen."
The man's voice had odd nasal authority. He sounded like some mandarin of vintage radio, and hearing him I suddenly recalled certain items from my childhood, a particular carton of laundry detergent, the mouthfeel of a discontinued cola.
The man dove back into his notebooks, his boy doodles and prurient runes. Even from here his sketches looked quite accomplished and insane.
Maybe someday he'd be heralded, a folk museum folk hero.
Maybe someday Bernie, still getting over his father's untimely but somehow not surprising death, would take his new girlfriend to see the disturbed but brilliant drawings by the kiddie-diddler who spent most of his adult life guarding a shopping bag full of shopping bags in a doughnut shop not far from where he, Bernie, grew up, but who also, unbeknownst to the world, inhabited a fabulous and secret universe of the mind.
My phone pulsed again. There were two messages, one from a number I recognized: the Mediocre development suite. The other was a text from Maura: How's the donut, Fat Heart? Find a job yet? Buy milk for Bern. Also p. towels.
The bile was a good sign.
It's when they stop trying to destroy you, my mother once said, that you should really start to worry.
Home, hidden by the refrigerator, I hovered over the garbage bin, gulped down a bottle of Vitamin Drink. We still dreaded the day that little Bernie, asquat now on the kitchen floor spooning oatmeal into the body cavity of a decapitated superhero, might spot this iridescent liquid, demand a sip. Vitamin Drink may or may not have contained vitamins, but it was too polluted for the tykes. They needed wholesome nectars humped back from the wholesome food empires in Manhattan. This sugary shit was for the dying. I was dying, surely, sugary-ly.
I made to speak before I did.
"A call. A message. From work."
"What?" said Maura. "Work? What work?"
Maura sat on a stool, fresh from the shower and still unclothed, pecked at her laptop. She had been raised in one of those happy, naked families from Vermont. I looked at her body now, remembered Bernie's weaning, that era of inconsolable sobs and farewell fondles. Maura's breasts, large and milk white when they'd been full of milk, had darkened, pancaked a bit, but they were still beautiful, and I was not just saying that, or thinking of saying that, to be kind.
"Wait," said Maura, "what?"
It was her I'm-downloading-a-crucial-fi le-from-the-office tone.
"A call from work on my voice mail," I said. "From old work. Vargina and Llewellyn. They want me to come in."
"Why would they want that?"
"I don't know."
"Wasn't firing you enough? Is this a legal thing? Do you need a lawyer?"
"I said I don't know."
I leaned out from my trash niche. Bernie pointed at the bottle in my hand.
"Daddy, what are you drinking?"
"Coffee, Bern. Why, do you think I need a lawyer?"
"Do lawyers have foreskins?" said Bernie.
"I'm talking to Mommy," I said.
"I have a foreskin."
"I know, Bernie."
"You don't." "True," I said, opened the refrigerator door, sneaked the bottle back into the door rack.
"How come I have a foreskin, Daddy?"
"We've talked about this, don't you remember? Your mother and I decided that—"
"Hey, that's juice. I want some, Daddy! I want some juice!"
"Shit," I said. "Sorry. Bernie, it's not juice. It's for grown-ups. It's like coffee."
"You said it was coffee."
"That's right."
"But it's pink!"
"It's pink coffee, Bernie. It's what I drink. It's what grown-ups drink."
"Do superheroes have foreskins? Like my guy?"
He held up his headless hero.
"Yes. No. I don't know. Probably. So, who would I call, Maura? They want me tomorrow."
"Do they, Daddy?"
"I don't know, Bernie. It's possible."
"Do foreskins help you fly?"
"Maybe," I said.
"All I'm saying," said Maura, "is you don't have to play it their way. That's all you've ever done."
"Excuse me?" I said.
"Give me some juice!" Bernie called again. "I want it!"
"Ask nicely."
"But it's not for kids, Bernie."
"Don't confuse him like that," said Maura. "Daddy's going to give Bernie some pink coffee juice that's not really coffee. Would Bernie like Daddy to give Bernie some pink coffee juice that's not really coffee? Daddy, would you please give Bernie some pink coffee juice that's not really coffee?"
"Fine!" I said.
"Fine!" said Bernie.
He flicked his guy and a cold gob of oatmeal slapped my cheek. I could see this was the beginning of something. Like sudden sympathy for Goliath. What was the phrase? Tell it not in Gath? How about we start telling it?
"What?" said Maura.
"Was I mumbling again?"
"Who's Goliath?" said Bernie. "A superhero? Is he a bad guy? A masher?"
"He's a masher, for sure," I said. "Whether he's a bad guy depends on your politics."
"What's politics?"
"Well, let me see. It's—"
"Does Goliath have a foreskin?"
"Not for long. Not when David's done with him."
"Who's David?"
"A foreskin collector."
"What are you telling him!" said Maura.
"Nothing," I said. "He should know about the Bible. He lives in a fucking theocracy."
"Jesus, language, Milo."
"Daddy! Juice!"
"Okay, Bern, but first, how about some water?" I filled a cup from the tap. Bernie batted it away, lunged toward the refrigerator.
"Give me pink coffee juice, Daddy!"
"Okay," I said. "Okay."
I dumped out the tap water, took the Vitamin Drink from the refrigerator. Back turned, I mimed a long pour, added a drop for color, refilled the cup from the tap.
Bernie stared up at me.
"Let go, Dad," the boy seemed to be saying, but his beautiful mouth wasn't moving.
Later, in bed, Maura and I cuddled in the way of a couple about to not have sex. It never appeared to bother us much, unless we watched one of those cable dramas about a sexless marriage. Then we'd curse the inanity of the show, its implausibility, switch over to something where the human wreckage was too crass and tan to touch us.
"I still don't understand why they want to meet with you," said Maura.
"I don't, either. Maybe they realized they forgot to take the shirt off my back."
"It's not funny. That girl's father. I don't know."
"What more can they do to me?"
"Oh, I'm sure there are all sorts of things we'd never even think of."
"That's very calming. Thank you."
"I'm just saying. You never learned to protect yourself. You always rail against the evil and exploitation in the world but you still act as though everybody has your best interests at heart. I never got it. You're like an idiot savant without the savant part."
"I still have faith in the basic goodness of humanity. Shoot me."
"Don't be so sure that's not the plan."
Excerpted from The Ask: A Novel by Sam Lipsyte, to be published in March by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC. Copyright (c) 2010 by Sam Lipsyte. All rights reserved.


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Another North West Coach in the spotlight today. Past University of Washington State Cougars head basketball coach Dick Bennett. Insider Steve one of our Washington St. Cougars bloggers points out his Cougs career started in 2003, and he was there until 2006. The first order of business for Bennett and his WSU coaching staff was changing the culture and identity of Cougars basketball.
February 21, 2012 By Insider Steve
Filed Under: WSU Basketball Blog Tagged With: Badgers, Basketball, Coach, Coach Bennett, Cougars, Cougars basketball, Cougs, Dick Bennett, NCAA, North West Coaching Profiles, Northwest Coach Profile, Washington, Washington Cougars, Washington Cougars Basketball, Washington Cougars Coaches, Washington St., Washington St. Cougars, Washington State Blog, Wisconsin, WSU, WSU Basketball, WSU Cougars basketball

subset: commoncrawl


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The "U-Fit" kits from Flowmaster feature mandrel-bent exhaust tubing in a variety of shapes, which allow you to create your very own custom exhaust system. Kits are available in 2-1/4", 2-1/2" and 3" diameters and all tubing is aluminized for durability and good looks. Sold in a complete kit—mufflers sold separately.


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Two weeks ago, as fires burned to the north and south of my hometown of Boulder, Colorado, I attended a couple of talks at the Aspen Environment Forum about wildfires. On the drive home, my husband and I passed a new fire burning near Leadville, Colo. — and about two minutes after seeing a helicopter dump water on the mountainside, I watched some dude throw his lit cigarette butt out the window of his car. The next day, back in Boulder, as I sat eating gelato with a friend, she suddenly pointed at the mountains behind me.
I turned to see brown smoke filling the sky from a mountain on the west side of town. It seemed as though all of Colorado was going up in flames, including Boulder. Thankfully, firefighters were able to control the Flagstaff fire well before it got out of hand. That wasn't the case in Colorado Springs or north of Fort Collins, where hundreds of people lost their homes and thousands of acres burned to the ground.
I called my friend Michael Kodas, an award-winning journalist and photographer who's writing a book called Megafire (to be published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in 2014). At least now, I thought, he wouldn't have to go very far to do the reporting. With the Front Range fires fully contained (though likely to burn through the summer), but with our skies still smoky from new fires in Wyoming and Montana, I plied Michael with some strong IPA and got him to tell me everything I needed to know about our blazing forests.
HR: You're writing this book on wildfires. Presumably you weren't surprised by all the recent fires—but perhaps you weren't expecting them to hit so close to home? What was your reaction when the fires started across Colorado?
MK: I thought it would happen here [on the Front Range] because everything was lined up. I've had a number of interviews with fire managers and people who work with wildfire who have said that what they're afraid of is a bunch of small to medium fires simultaneously across Colorado, and particularly across the Front Range.
So people had actually predicted that this would happen?
People had expressed fear that this would happen.
To help me think about all these fires, I divide the problem into three basic causes. The first is forest management, which would include everything from excess fire suppression, to logging that leaves a lot of slash on the ground, to planting trees. Ways we utilize the forest that make it more flammable.
The second is development, the fact that we have such a huge boom of population into the forest. You have a lot more human-influenced fires. And you also have a lot of resource that has to be protected. With the Healthy Forests Initiative, the Bush plan that was supposed to make the forests more resilient to fire and also help communities protect themselves, they created all these grants for community wildfire protection plans. And communities across Colorado took advantage of these grants to put together these plans. But the implementation has not been nearly as good because the money ran out—it paid for the plans, but it didn't pay for the actual work.
One of the points made by Headwaters Economics, a think-tank in Montana, and others is that the primary funder of a lot of these initiatives is usually the homebuilders association, and what they want is to be able to justify developing farther into the "wooey."
Sorry, what's the wooey?
The wildland-urban interface.
Ah. The WUI. I've never heard it said like that.
Oh yes, it's the best part of writing a book like this, you get to say "wooey" all the time.
Anyway, part of a story I just did dealt with how we've had more than 100,000 people move into Colorado's red zone, which is the most flammable forests, since the Hayman fire in 2002. By the way, the day of the big blowup in the High Park fire outside of Fort Collins was 10 years to the day from the big blowup of the Hayman fire.
You have this development issue. With more people moving into the forest, having fireproof homes doesn't lower the cost. You still have to fight the fires. You've still got power lines and reservoirs and all kinds of other kinds of resources you have to protect.
You still don't want the fire in your neighborhood.
Right. You're still going to be putting it out. Which speaks to the first problem, management. You're still going to be suppressing fires that need to burn, so you're still going to end up with a fuel problem, with a lot of fuel around these communities.
Then the final cause is climate. That's the wild card, and that's the one that came down this year. By June we had 2 percent of normal snowpack in the high country. Streams dry up earlier, forests dry up earlier, the forest is flammable earlier. There are areas of the West and Colorado where it's been documented that the fire season actually starts about two months earlier. Hence the Lower North Fork fire, which was the first or second day of spring and was incredibly volatile.
So those are the three categories of causes. [To recap: management, development, climate change.]
I was in Estes Park climbing when the fire there broke out. I'd taken a day off, had a buddy who wanted to go climbing. It was hot, so we thought we'd go up there.
I feel like I should stay away from you because a fire is going to break out.
I get that from people. I was with two rangers who showed up–one of them knew a friend of mine who's a hotshot–so we're chatting, and then their radio squawks that there's a fire and it's crowning and there are homes nearby. So these guys packed up their stuff to run out.
How far from the fire were you?
Probably five miles as the crow flies, but a two-hour walk.
The point I want to make is that those three categories all came together this year, and that's what wildfire people are afraid of. The Estes Park fire was a wire that rubbed raw against a tree in the really high winds. It's in the high country, which dried out months before it should have, so it's just bone dry up there when they normally would've had snow on the ground. And you had this series of 100 degree days, really hot. So it all came together in these fires.
I was involved with reporting on four of these Front Range fires in a single day. And it's illustrative to me of this is what they're afraid of. You throw all your resources at Estes Park, only you're a long way away from Colorado Springs, or Boulder. So you have four fires that are really volatile, and all of them are threatening property.
How much did that stress our resources?
The feds are claiming they've got enough resources. But the various incident commanders are worried. They've complained a little, not a lot, and they've all said that they got what they needed when they needed it. But we were already at one quarter the amount of contracted air power to fight wildfires that we had 10 years ago. If you're an incident commander looking at these huge megafires and seeing that our air power is a fraction of what it was a decade ago, you would be worried. I would be worried.
There's also argument that we rely too much on air power. Air tankers can't put the fire out. They can try to guide it. But it's still firefighters that have to go in there and stomp this thing out. They seem to have enough bodies to throw at these fires. But it's a military operation. It's like fighting a war on multiple fronts.
And now we're just at the start of what would normally be the fire season?
We're finally getting the monsoon rains. But we have not had anywhere near the amount of rain we normally have. Instead we get these dry thunderstorms. A storm that comes through may be a storm that is going to dump a ton of rain—which is great if you have a fire that just got started, but bad if you have a fire that just got put out because then you're going to have flash floods. In the Waldo Canyon fire, they simultaneously had red flag fire alerts and flash flood alerts.
The real concern is this super-thin snowpack. Because the high country forests are so dry, they can get these huge fires in the lodgepole pine forests up there where you've got a lot of beetle-kill and a lot of fuel. Those fuel moisture levels are much lower than normal. And that can be a problem right through the fire season. These monsoon rains aren't going to correct the moisture deficit. It might help put out a fire but won't help make the fuel moister.
To what extent do you think the beetle-kill trees are involved in the fires? If you've got a bone-dry forest that has no moisture in it, it doesn't seem like it would make a difference whether it's beetle-kill or not.
The relationship is really complicated. In a lodgepole forest that's been affected by beetles, you've got green trees, red trees that still have needles on but are dead, and then you've got grey trees. The common feeling has been if we can just get through the red phase, you're away from the immediate threat because those fires don't crown [spread through the treetops] if they don't have needles.
Some people I talked to said they saw that in the High Park fire, but there hasn't been an investigation of it. It's just from firefighters and incident commanders I spoke to. They said when it got to the grey forest it slowed down, and when it was in a red forest it ripped.
But a lodgepole pine forest has evolved to go down in these huge stand-reducing events, and when they're dry like they are now I don't think it'll make that much difference if it's a beetle-kill or a live tree.
I think what people are really afraid of is 10 years from now. Those trees die, they haven't burned, they fall on the ground, and now the new trees have grown up. So you've got this potential for a really intense ground fire with a crown fire burning above it.
One of the problems is it's so hard to do the treatments that were planned. It's so hard to get prescribed burning done. It's become so restrictive, there's so much resistance from the public. So lots of times you have a plan that requires cutting the trees down and then burning them. And they just don't.
The treatments themselves can have unintended consequence. It's a catch-22 for these managers, because they have got to reduce the fuel load somehow. The prescribed burn that really went out of control was the one that threatened Los Alamos in 2000, the Cerro Grande fire. It was a National Park Service prescribed burn that went out of control, burned a bunch of homes [over 400] in the community of Los Alamos and threatened a nuclear laboratory.
Fuels from treatments were also implicated in the Fourmile Canyon fire. I think the figure was like 83 percent of the homes that burned there were burned by ground fires. A lot of that ground fuel was from people that had thinned their property and had these slash piles, but there's no efficient way to get it out of there.
I wonder about that all the time when I see these big slash piles on people's property. I always wonder, what exactly are they going to do with those?
You have to do something. There's a researcher at Colorado State University who has said, When these fuels are on the ground, are we just moving the fuel around? Have we just turned one hazard into another hazard?
Let's talk about the climate component. To what degree is climate change playing a role? The media coverage seems to have either portrayed it as the primary cause or ignored it.
Yeah, isn't that the way it is? You're either a crusader for climate or you try to ignore it? Or you're like I was for a long time, a journalist that doesn't understand it well enough to write it, so you're scared of the topic?
I think climate change is seen as playing a huge role. The really thin snowpack, all these dry lightning storms that came through when we'd normally be getting afternoon rain, the high temperatures. When the Waldo Canyon fire really blew up, it was the fifth straight day of over-100 degree temperatures for Denver. The heat played a huge role.
Steve Running [a climate scientist at the University of Montana] points out that the heat has two other impacts. It increases evaporation so the fuel is that much dryer. And the temperatures stay warm at night. When the temperature drops below 70, and certainly below 60, it really slows a fire down. Wildfires tend to lay down at night. But the fires have stayed super active through the night. Many of the houses that burned in Colorado Springs burned at night. Fires can draw a huge amount of energy when temperatures stay above 70 at night.
So high temperatures at night, drought, a weak snow year, very volatile weather—the winds have been crazy this year—all those things can be attributed to the volatility you get from climate change.
Does all of this keep you up at night? I know when the Flagstaff Fire hit, I was like, am I going have to evacuate my house? How does it affect you?
I saw that fire as a nuisance. Boulder is not going to let that happen. It's far more fire-wise, has more defensible space than a lot of communities. No, the thing that keeps me up at night is the same thing that keeps a lot of journalists up at night: Did I spell that person's name right? Did I get that quote right? [laughs]
Yeah, but are you worried about the long-term impacts of this, as someone who lives here?
Yeah. What concerns me long term is it's a wicked problem, and our policymakers are really bad at dealing with wicked problems. Fires are this irregular disaster, you have a really bad year and it goes away, and people have really short memories. We never seem to respond to this problem and it's worse every time it comes back.
One thing to keep in mind is we've yet to have a fire that's of the size of the Hayman, but we've had two now that radically exceeded the property damage. So it strikes me that we're a lot more vulnerable than we were ten years ago.
And a lot of that is because, as you said, people are moving into the WUI.
Right. The WUI.
Is there anything else you want to mention that we didn't cover?
No. I don't even need to write the book now. You can just publish your blog.
Photo credits
Waldo Canyon fire: Don Savage Photography, via Flickr
Michael Kodas: Michael Kodas
Follow Michael on Twitter


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Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Tombstone Tuesday: Mary Amanda Crosson Miller
Mary Amanda Miller
Born June 28, 1882
Died Oct. 15, 1968
"Gone to Rest"
Location: New Hope Methodist Church Cemetery, New Hope, Washington County, Florida
Unfortunately, I have no memories of my great grandmother except during the viewing prior to her funeral. I was 9 at the time. If any family members remember, please leave a comment about your memories.
7 comments:
- ClaudiaNovember 30, 2011
I will have to dig around for some pictures of her.ReplyDelete
All the children called her "Mama". Children, Grand-children, great-grandchildren...didn't matter, she was "Mama".
Like you, I was quite young but I remember when she was living "in the country" (Harris County, GA) with Aunt Nita and Aunt Vee. I remember when we would go to visit, which was quite often, Mama always reaching out to me and my sisters to come closer to her. Once we were close enough for her to put her arm around us and talk.....all the adult family members in the room would smile and say how sweet, etc etc etc. At the time, I could never could figure out why it made them so happy. LOL
Then they moved to Florida to the old homestead after it was moved next door to Uncle RC and Aunt Madeline. I don't remember much from there because by then, we were left outside to play in the HUGE yard a lot of the time so there was peace and quiet in the house.
Thanks for stirring all these old memories, Tanya!
- ClaudiaNovember 30, 2011
Oops.......One thing I forgot to mention. My daughter, Amanda, is named after "Mama".ReplyDelete
I remember my grandmother (Zelma Weadon) being overjoyed when I told her her great-granddaughter was named after her mother.
- linda mitchellDecember 01, 2011
I remember her as Big Mama, can't remember how that came about, but always went to visit her with Granddaddy (Warren) and Granny Miller. I remember one trip to GA to visit with all the family there. I loved the country "way up there", it was the fall of the year and just beautiful. Aunt Zelma, Aunt Vera, Aunt Hazel, Aunt Vida, all had such fun when they were together.ReplyDelete
- ClaudiaDecember 01, 2011
What fond memories!ReplyDelete
The house in the country WAS really beautiful. Aunt Vida and Uncle Buck lived just above Mama, Aunt Vee and Aunt Nita. And there were three lakes for fishing.
Yep, those Miller women did have a lot of fun when they got together.
- AnonymousDecember 03, 2011
Wonderful! Another Florida blogger! Welcome to the neighborhood. I hope you'll stop by the Creek or Facebook any time and say hello.ReplyDelete
Welcome to the GeneaBloggers family. Hope you find the association fruitful; I sure do. I have found it most stimulating, especially some of the Daily Themes.ReplyDelete
May you keep sharing your ancestor stories!
Dr. Bill ;-)
Author of "13 Ways to Tell Your Ancestor Stories" and family saga novels:
"Back to the Homeplace" and "The Homeplace Revisited"
I remember going to Columbus one time when Grandma was up there with Aunt Vera and Aunt Juanita. I remember a lake. I remember going to the funeral at New Hope.ReplyDelete


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The CW Network has released an app for the Xbox 360, which enables consumers to check out favourite shows, including full episodes, previews and interviews. Next-day episodes are also available for free with an Xbox Live Gold subscription, ignoring any cable or membership subscription costs. If you're a fan of the US network, you'll want to have this app pinned to the dashboard.
What's more is the CW app takes full advantage of Xbox SmartGlass (hello there, Windows Phone) to create a rich, interactive and integrated experience. Viewers can use their Windows tablets or Windows Phones to receive additional content not available to consumers on other platforms. This is a unique feature that should offer an incentive to at least consider the Windows ecosystem should the CW app be frequently accessed.
Major Nelson reports the following as available in the SmartGlass experience for the show The Vampire Diaries:
- A map that follows the characters through town, revealing events throughout the town's history
- Biographies of each character
- Legends and lore of New Orleans and the world of The Vampire Diaries
That's not a bad list, especially if we're to see SmartGlass support expanded to multiple shows offered by the network. If all this wasn't enough, Major Nelson states there will be an Xbox 360 console giveaway on Facebook. Lucky winners will be able to walk away with a custom The Vampire Diaries and Supernatural consoles.
Source / image: Major Nelson


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Toolkit for Mainstreaming HIV and AIDS in the Education Sector: Guidelines for Development Cooperation Agencies
Author/Publisher: UNESCO
Language: English (forthcoming in French and Spanish)
Download: PDF
About the IATT on Education
The UNAIDS IATT on Education was created in 2002 to support accelerated and improved education sector responses to HIV and AIDS. It is convened by UNESCO and includes as members UNAIDS Cosponsors, bilateral agencies, private donors, and civil society partners. It has as specific objectives to promote and support good practices in the education sector in relation to HIV and AIDS and to encourage alignment and harmonisation within and across agencies to support global and country-level actions.
For more information on the IATT on Education, visit: http://www.unesco.org/aids/iatt


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Note: I'm aware another thread similar to this has been posted, however that one only describes mainly about configuring windows firewall. This guide gives more of a breif overview and a list of other things you can do to IMPROVE your protection with windows firewall.
With the release of SP2 for Windows XP, it came with a rather primitive firewall that the majority of the public classifies as horrible. However, it is still being used today by several people due to a few basic reasons:
-Extremely simplistic/easy to use.
-Very low memory usage.
-Comes with SP2 (on Windows XP) for free.
-Better than no protection at all.
Well if you really hate having those complex firewalls that consume a lot of resources and boggle your mind with configurations, here is a guide for you! I've done a bit of researching on a few relatively affective methods of "strengthening Windows XP's firewall", which basically involves the combination of a few simple programs and configurations. This guide is basically designed to give people a frew simple steps to setting things up to improve their defenses with Windows XP's Firewall. (Note: sorry if it seems like an advertisement [because it's not!! ] the links provided are used as resources.)
1.) Configuring Windows Firewall:
Seeing as how Windows Firewall was made to be simplistic, not a lot can be done with it. If you are planning to tightly secure your system with Windows Firewall, an easy thing to do is to simply turn it on and also check the "Don't allow exclusions" box (via Control Panel ->Windows Firewall). However, using that feature is quite blunt since you are very limited to what programs you can use. Another thing you can do is to basically manage your exceptions using rather a more of an advanced approach. Doing this can give you access to open specific ports, secure certain programs for access, ICMP access, etc. but since explaining this is relatively repetitive, been previously posted and quite in depth, you can find the entire ariticle here:
(A few good links are provided there as well. If you really want to go more in depth for Windows Firewall configuration only, then that is a good thread to look at)
The last possible thing you should do is turn on logging for windows firewall (it's defaultly turned off). Doing this is relatively simple and requires just a little browsing in the Windows Firewall configuration menu subheadings (Control Panel->Windows Firewall->Advanced->Security Logging Settings). Once you are there, check the box under "Log Dropped Packets" and the other if you want to closely monitor your network activities. Viewing these logs can be done by default with Windows' own seperate method, but it's rather primitive and inefficient. A better way to view the logs is by finding a third party log viewer. Many free ones can be found on the internet simply by using Google Search or browsing around this forum. Below I have provided a link if you'd rather not search:
2.) Getting the Advanced Features from other Firewalls:
If you want the advanced features that heavy firewalls tend to provide, there are combinations of relatively small programs you can use to substitute with Windows Firewall. They have been divided up into two sections below for easier browsing.
(A.)Outbound Protection:
One of the major issues Windows Firewall has is that it does not offer any outbound control. This makes your computer vulnerable once your defenses have been broken, since threats such as Trojans can freely transmit information back to a hacker. A few good programs out there that can substitute outbound protection are listed below (they also tend to not use a lot of memory):
-Prevx1 "R" (Beta version from Prevx, which is good, but still uses quite a bit of memory)
-AppDefend/GSS Beta (Made by Ghost Security and is low memory using and an effective solution.)
-ProcessGuard (Created by Diamond CS and is not really considered outbound protection. However, it still has several similar features that can aide you.)
Having programs such as these behind your Windows Firewall (or any other inbound only firewall) ensures a relatively strong outbound protection on your computer. All three programs listed have an easy-to-use interface, so setting it up isn't hard. Most of what you need to configure is given to you in the form of alerts as the programs ask for outbound access.
(B.) Other Features:
Almost all firewalls out there today that are paid offer several, rather random advanced features, such as cookie protection, script blocking, etc. Of course, Windows Firewall lacks such luxuries, so you must substitue by using a few good programs. Below I've listed a few programs that can help give you some idea of what you can use for the advanced firewall features you want.
-CCleaner (A very thorough, good cachecleaner. Used to remove all junk files, temporary files, and other old & unwanted files hanging around in your computer.)
-This is a very flexible program for removing 'residue/junk' files due to its several options and areas that are available for your use. Your scans can also be customized each time before running.
-SpywareBlaster (By far one of the best free substitutes. It offers cookie protection for Firefox and IE, a restricted sites list, and ActiveX protection for IE. Best of all it consumes basically no resources!)
-This is a very simplistic form of protection which I find great. All you basically do is install it, update and enable all protection and its done! You can selectively remove or add new threats to be blocked in the main menu's subheadings.
-MS Antispyware (This antispyware [along with any other ones that provide thorough real-time protection] provides features such as script blocking. Not only that, but they add a defensive layer against spyware/malware/adware too! Tools like these are great for performing several security tasks.)
-Well it's basically one of your big antispyware products out there that doesn't require as much configuring. Script-blocking is already enabled, but I would reccomend you allow it to block all scripts (Located at: Options->Settings->Real-Time Protection and check the box "Block all scripts"). You will still recieve some alerts asking your confirmation to block/allow programs/scripts after doing this, but just not as many without this option enabled. Also, there are a few handy extra tools added in, such as a browser restorer, a mini-cache cleaner, and a system explorer with decent flexibility. These can be accessed through the "Advanced Tools" button/section.
-HijackThis(Allows you to MANUALLY remove threats and has several convenient tools, such as the process manager, secure uninstall tool, etc.)
-This product's purpose is relatively used for scanning, detailed log creation, and malware removal. However, this requires advanced knowledge in order for malware removal and it is best that you post in a forum for help. Despite all this, HijackThis still remains very flexible and has several tools that a unknowledgeable person can use with ease. The other tools you seek can easily be found in the Misc. Tools Section (Accessed by the button "Misc. Tools" or through the "Config" button).
3.) The Remaining Basics:
Well, as I said previously Windows Firewall isn't that great, and even with all these combinations & configurations added onto it, you are never 100% safe. So remember, there are some things you should be careful of! Windows Firewall is a relatively easy in being overwhelmed, but still provides the basic protection you need (tested on GRC with perfect results).
There are a few things to keep in mind which really apply to computer security common sense, such as:
-Use a secure web browser, such as FireFox (FF) or Opera instead of Internet Explorer (IE).
-Be cautious on where you browse and try to avoid being a target for hackers (e.g your computer is found to contain valuable information).
-Get the basic defenses, such as antispyware, or antiviruses which are available free to the public from some companies.
-Keep Windows updated, as well as all other security software you have on your computer currently.
-Watch your network closely (especially if its wireless) as they are also targetted for attacks.
Conclusion: Well I hope this helps for the people who still want the extra "oomph" in their basic Windows Firewall protection. However, I myself have stopped using it quite a long time ago and moved on towards other firewalls. This is because they are better in a lot of ways UNLESS you still prefer lower memory usage and the Windows-simple style to protection. But as said before and by several others who agree, Windows Firewall is certainly better than nothing!
P.S Feel free to post any comments or additions into my guide. I will probably edit it if I find anything I've missed. (And sorry if I've missed anything relatively big.)


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It's All Good
Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: Parts Unknown
Casino cash: $10233
Return to Glory
Great to see the Draft Forum where it always should be. Can't wait for the annual CP Mock to continue my ownage of the aforementioned.
That being said, I've been afflicted with an NFL Draft obsession since the 80's and it started on Mondays. I used to get the annual NFL Draft flu to miss school and watch ESPN's coverage. Yes, once upon a time ESPN was watchable.
Since that time I remember only one draft where the first pick was so underwhelming(Hello, Russell Maryland). A fine player to be sure but he never moved the needles in terms of buzz and hype.
Of course, this perfect storm of the Chiefs having the first pick, new coach and GM coincides with this uncommon NFL Draft. With this new regime in KC the one thing I can rest assured in is that they will stay true to the board.
Staying true to the board can just be another term of rhetoric but since Dorsey learned at the foot of Ron Wolf I'm at least comfortable that there won't be another Tyson Jacksonesque pick.
The next few months will be very interesting. In my best Bane voice,"Let the games begin!"
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Youth Ministries
Concentration in Youth Ministries
School of Theology and Church Ministries
The concentration in Youth Ministries is designed to equip and prepare students for comprehensive ministry focused on youth.
Upon satisfactory completion of the concentration in Youth Ministries, the student should be able to:
- Demonstrate an understanding of the Biblical mandates for a balanced foundation for ministering to young people.
- Utilize foundational knowledge to develop a holistic, and intentional strategy for effective ministry to young people.
- Implement determined core knowledge regarding the Biblical mandates and strategies specific to the needs of young people.
- Determine the extent to which young people have progressed on their spiritual journey.
Program Plan (pdf)
|Want to see exactly what classes you will take? The Program Plan (sometimes called a degree sheet) includes all specific requirements - including University proficiencies, Frameworks courses and degree requirements.
Each of Evangel's academic programs is made up of a set of core curriculum, program requirements and electives. The courses listed below are just a small sample of courses that might be taken as a part of this specific program.
|Strategic Youth Ministry
|Provides a comprehensive philosophy of youth ministry. The call of a youth pastor, goal setting, and developing a personal philosophy of youth ministry are covered. Students learn to develop a youth ministry consistent with their philosophy of youth ministry.
|Youth in Ministry
|Places emphasis on involving youth in ministry within the context of the local church. It considers aspects of equipping youth for personally participating in various ministries of the church, including the discovery and implementation of spiritual gifts and natural abilities, the engagement of active contributions towards the mission of the larger community of faith.
|Youth Discipleship
|Emphasis is on discipling and the mentoring of youth advisors and students. Other emphases include developing a discipleship program that will lead students in developing a sustainable devotional life that extends beyond the youth ministry years.
|Youth Evangelism
|Looks at personal evangelization of youth and ministry on the senior high school campus. Students study the legal and practical aspects of access and acceptable activities.
|Adolescent Ethnography
|The focus of this course is on developing a greater understanding of how and why culture shapes the identity of adolescents with the purpose of looking for ways to communicate an unchanging Word to a changing world as pastor-ethnographers. Attention is given to various cultural factors that impact youth culture including the influence of music and media and the effect of postmodernism on morality.
Evangel University's world-class faculty is made up of caring, Christian professionals who are distinguished in their fields and dedicated to the development of tomorrow's Christian leaders.
Dr. Michael Jaffe: Church Ministries Department chair
Dr. Michael Jaffe provides leadership for Evangel's School of Theology and Church Ministries as chair of the Church Ministries Department. Along with teaching Preaching and Church Leadership courses, Jaffe is a faculty representative on Evangel's Board of Administration. Jaffe graduated from Central Bible College in 1976 with a degree in Biblical Studies. He pastored for 22 […] read more
Dr. Leo Theriot: Professor of Children's Ministries
Dr. Leo Theriot grew up in the bayous of southern Louisiana. It was while he was working in the oil and gas industry there that he felt the call to full-time ministry. Dr. Theriot graduated from Central Bible College (CBC) in 1987 with a degree in Christian Education. He went on to earn his Master […] read more
- Youth Pastor
- Chi Alpha Campus Ministries
- University Residence Life & Student Development
- Young Adult Ministries
- Pastor
- Teen Challenge
- Para-church youth ministries
General Undergraduate Requirements
The following are general requirements for all students beginning an undergraduate program at Evangel. For more information visit Undergraduate Admissions Requirements.
|Graduation from high school, or having the equivalent of a high school diploma such as the General Education Development (GED) examination.
|Core Subjects
|A minimum of a 2.0 GPA in core college prep classes (English, math, social sciences and science with a lab) or high school final GPA if no college credits have been earned.
|Standardized Tests
|>Entering freshmen should take the ACT or SAT test. The codes for Evangel are as follows: SAT: 6198. ACT: 2296.
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Phifer Part# 3004175
Phifer SunTex 90 is ideal for use as a shading fabric on windows and Doors. A heavy-duty shading fabric, SunTex is also pet resistant. SunTex exterior shading fabric is made of strong vinyl-coated polyester. Phifer Suntex 90 is ideal as a patio cover or any application where strength and Superior Sun Black is required.


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Punxsy Sports Hall of Fame welcomes Bruce Chambers
PUNXSUTAWNEY — Bruce Chambers is a posthumous inductee into the Punxsutawney Sports Hall of Fame.
Chambers, a 1969 graduate of PAHS, was an All-State football player, playing linebacker and fullback. He lettered his sophomore, junior and senior years. He also lettered in track, throwing the discus and shot put. He also played basketball and other sports.
He was a Zeedick Cup award winner and obtained a scholarship to Virginia Military Institute. He earned a degree in civil engineering.
The 11th induction banquet will be held at 6 p.m. Saturday in the Punxsutawney Area High School cafeteria. Other inductees are Gary Astorino, Dominic "Mickey" Barilar, Roger Raybuck, Bill Vassallo and George Work.
The keynote speaker for the evening will be Les Shoop.


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Simple, yet entertaining pet bird playstand keeps your floors cleaner. High lip on stand helps contain your bird's messes so you have to clean less. Sturdy stand features full-support ring to enhance the stability of the playpen. Easy-roll casters means the stand can be effortlessly moved from room to room or from inside to outside. 3/4" hardwood perch and three toy/treat hooks capture your bird's attention and help to encourage stimulation. Two stainless steel cups give your bird convenient access to food, water, and treats while playing. Easy-to-clean playpen - simply wipe down with a cloth. Brown hammertone finish. Assembly required. Sorry, not available for air shipment.
Includes: Three toy/treat hooks, two stainless steel food/water cups, 3/4" wooden perch, and four casters.
Total stand measurements: 28" dia x 66-1/2" high
Perch to toy hook: 13"


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Tesla Motors open sources their technology
"Tesla will not initiate patent lawsuits against anyone who, in good faith, wants to use our technology.
At Tesla, however, we felt compelled to create patents out of concern that the big car companies would copy our technology and then use their massive manufacturing, sales and marketing power to overwhelm Tesla. We couldn't have been more wrong. The unfortunate reality is the opposite: electric car programs (or programs for any vehicle that doesn't burn hydrocarbons) at the major manufacturers are small to non-existent, constituting an average of far less than 1% of their total vehicle sales."
(Via All Our Patent Are Belong To You | Blog | Tesla Motors.)


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Next: Line/Delimited, Previous: Closing, Up: Input and Output
Sets the current position of fd/port to the integer offset, which is interpreted according to the value of whence.
One of the following variables should be supplied for whence:
lseek. port may be a string port.
The value returned is the new position in the file. This means that the current position of a port can be obtained using:(seek port 0 SEEK_CUR)
Return an integer representing the current position of fd/port, measured from the beginning. Equivalent to:(seek port 0 SEEK_CUR)
Truncate file to length bytes. file can be a filename string, a port object, or an integer file descriptor. The return value is unspecified.
For a port or file descriptor length can be omitted, in which case the file is truncated at the current position (per
On most systems a file can be extended by giving a length greater than the current size, but this is not mandatory in the POSIX standard.


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Well my first race back is now swinging into action. I just finished the prologue somewhere midfield and am happy to be back in the swing. I am short of time so will have to forget about punctuation, grammar etc etc yada yada.
-Exchange rate. Oh yes you Aussie dollar you have purchasing power over here and for that I love you so.
-Absolutely stonkily ridiculously tasty street food. Green papaya salad, grilled chicken, grilled fish, rice (of course), smashingly tasty curries, heinously spicy tom yum soup. My flavour senses have been hit for six. It's fantastic. I am in heaven. A hot, sweaty, spicy heaven. But be warned, take the chilli easy. I learnt my lesson after an enforced mid ride middle of nowhere emergency paddock discharge. That's one cycling cap I will NOT be taking home ;-)
-New Bike-Oh yes. new stuff is the best stuff. Museeuw frames are shiney, light, fast and generally all round awesome. You should all buy one. Seriously.
-Thai massage. You get poked, proded and stretched in all forms of legal and possibly illegal positions. (All people who have cracked a 'happy ending joke' please send me $5. I am going to be rich.)
-Caffeine. Been weening off lately, 2 No Doz pre prologue today= Jono READY TO GO! Let's hope I sleep tonight. She'll be right.
Bad Shit
-Nothing. Thailand is the land of all things good.
Au revoir pour ce moment.
Thursday, April 1, 2010
Posted by JONATHAN LOVELOCK at 7:41 PM
4 comments:
Jono, I loved my trip to Thailand last year. Can definitely see your points about the cuisine and lifestyle. Enjoy the roads, as I always suspected that they weren't great for racing, but perhaps those potholes everywhere were only on the islands! Enjoy those massages too - having small ladies standing on your back must be scientifically sound!ReplyDelete
hope you smashed some street corn, and caught a random dude's moped to a local cafe serving genuine ethiopian coffee (complete with ginger)ReplyDelete
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Classes and Events
Classes and Events are hosted next door to ICFOM in our Center for Life Enrichment. General information on currently available classes is included below also. If you have any questions just contact us.
Thank you.
Richard and Iva Peck
Tai Chi Registration Form
Click here to download Tai Chi Registration Form
- This event has passed.
Hsing-Yi Chuan
April 28, 2018 @ 9:00 am - 10:00 am
An event every week that begins at 9:00am on Saturday, repeating until December 27, 2018
(Ongoing class Saturday 9:00am-10:00am)
Hsing-Yi Chuan is one of the three internal martial arts of China. Known for its linear applications where its offense is its defense. It follows the theory of Five Elements. There are five basic movements that can be expanded to handle many martial arts situations .
This is an ongoing class with group and individual instruction. Cost is $120 for eight lessons.
There is a one time $15.00 registration fee.


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For the sake of this post, I am going to define beauty as the following:
- Physical Beauty [While it's superficial, I know, it is a real, tangible, and undeniable part of beauty].
- What's Said About You By Others; and
- Your Actions [They really do speak louder than words.]
Physical Beauty
Whenever I look at this photograph, I am so captivated by the subject's beauty. This is Pearley May "Pearl" [Williams] Pointer, the wife of Harvey Lewis "Harve" Pointer. She is my husband's great-grandmother on his father's side. Wasn't she beautiful? Her skin is so perfect looking and her face is so expressive that I think, sometimes, she looks like she is going to "pop" out of the photograph and into my life. [I wish she would because I have some questions for her...] It is easily one of my favorite old photographs. Pearl was born 21 May 1887 in Fairfield Township, Carroll Co., Missouri, and her family moved back and forth from Missouri to Iowa. She died in Collins, Story County, Iowa 29 Sep 1970. Her maternal line, the Odell family, and her paternal line, the Williams family, can both be traced back to England.
What Others Say About You Can Be Very Revealing About Your Character...
This photograph is of a 125-year old autograph book that belonged to my husband's great-great grandmother Lovina Emaline "Vina" [Richmond] Haley. She was the wife of Daniel Haley [one of 10 children of Irish immigrants, Patrick & Bridget (Foley) Haley], and she was the daughter of James Richmond, Jr. of Indiana and Luvisa Logsdon/Logston of Kentucky. This family heirloom is easily one of my favorites. All of the entries are four line rhymes. The first chronological entry was made 22 Feb 1884 by Della B. Stier, her niece, and it indicates that Della is the one who has given this album to her. Many of the entries are by her nieces, nephews, and sisters right before they left Iowa to live out west. What a precious gift they gave their aunt as well as their aunt's many descendants. By the entries alone, you can tell that she was a beloved aunt. However, these aren't the only entries. There are some by her friends as well as other family members. In fact, 14 Mar 1885 Daniel Haley [my husband's great-great grandfather], her husband, wrote the following:
On this page
The first in this book
I will write my name
In your Autograph Book.
Yours Very Truly,
Daniel Haley
Daniel and Lovina's son, Wilbert Raymond Haley [my husband's great-grandfather] wrote the following to his mother 3 Jan 1896:
Dear Mamma,
I thought I would write on this sheet of paper to let you see it when
you are old and see how good
I could write when I was nine years old. I will write my name.
Your Baby,
Ray Haley
And here is one that when I read it to my children, we all got goosebumps:
9 May 1889
Mrs. Haley,
One hundred years from now
Where will this album be
Who will look these pages o'er
And think of you and me
Sallie Pontz
[Well, 125 yrs later, I can tell you, it's me!]
Actions Speak Louder Than Words
Here is a photograph of Frank Edward Haley, the first son of Daniel and Lovina Haley. He was their adopted son [their biological son was Wilbert Raymond Haley who I mentioned above]. I have determined through a lot of research that Edward was not a blood relation of theirs. Many times, if there was an adoption, it was usually a blood family member of sorts. Well, from the best I can tell, Edward was not a blood relation. Edward was adopted as an infant, and Wilbert came 9 years after that. What love Daniel and Lovina must have had in their hearts to adopt Edward and raise him as their own.
Though I don't have a photograph of Lovina [not yet, anyway], I can tell that she was just as beautiful as Pearl was!


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Message Board
Liz Young Message Board
Talk about the novels, new and used books that Young has written!
Author Young's Book Reviews
Fair Game
The story starts with Harriet learning from her old friend Rosie that Nina, her old school rival and person she has always envied, suspects that her boyfriend is seeing someone else. Harriet has to confess that she thinks she is the someone else. The first time Harriet saw John, she thought he was the most gorgeous bloke she had ever seen. But she saw he was with Nina. But after John gives her money for a taxi, Nina has to repay him by taking him f...
Making Mischief
Abby, Rachel, Lindsay and Fleur are cousins. When Abby was 16 she saw Guy, a close friend of Rachel and Lindsay, in a suggestive situation with Cara, dubbed by Abby as the topless piranha. Fifteen years later, Fleur is dating Guy. But when Cara shows up and starts hinting that Guy still wants her, Fleur enlists the aid of Abby to keep an eye on Guy and keep Cara away. Trouble is, Abby realizes she fancies Guy also. At Abby's brother's wedding, thi...


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UNITAR 'UNITAR' is an abbreviation. It stands for 'United Nations Institute for Training and Research'.
Author: Mark McCracken is a corporate trainer and author living in Higashi Osaka, Japan. He is the author of thousands of online articles as well as the Business English textbook, "25 Business Skills in English".


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11:00 am
America's Test Kitchen from Cook's Illustrated "Simple & Satisfying Vegetable Mains" Man on the Street John "Doc" Willoughby ventures to New York City to learn about vegetarian cooking from Amanda Cohen at Dirt Candy. Back in the test kitchen, test cook Becky Hays shows host Christopher Kimball how to make a great Mushroom and Leek Galette with Gorgonzola at home. Next, equipment expert Adam Ried reviews his favorite vegetable cleavers in the Equipment Corner. D
11:30 am
Scrapbook Soup "Mini Albums - Small In Size - Big On Ideas." We continue with the overriding theme of journaling and words, but the platform is albums in all shapes and sizes. We begin with a teeny micro album. Then, it's a keepsake album with lots of pockets. D
12:00 pm
Paint This With Jerry Yarnell "Pheasant in the Rough, Part 5" In this final episode Jerry shows how to paint in all of the final details and highlights like snow on fence post and rail plus final drifts up against weeds. The grand finale of detailing the pheasant with the smaller sable brushes. Then finishes with the script brush putting in final close-up tall weeds to seat the fence post and pheasant. D
12:30 pm
Aviators Aircraft engines: Kurtis learns about aircraft power plants from Penn Yan Aero's Bill Middlebrook, whose family has a long and rich history in American aviation. Lockheed Electra: Made famous by Amelia Earhart, Jeff takes us flying in this classic bird. Most female friendly airport: George celebrates women in aviation at the most female friendly airport in the world. D
1:00 pm
This Old House "Essex 2012/13, Design for Everyone" Richard and son Ross Trethewey recap the geothermal system's installation with Norm. Tile installers Mark and Erik Ferrante lay reclaimed marble tile in the foyer and designer Keith Musinski's custom-ordered hand-painted border tile in the kitchen. Kevin learns about universal design touring the Seattle home of architect Emory Baldwin. D
1:30 pm
Ask This Old House "Making Custom Concrete Countertops/Cordless Landscape Tools" Host Kevin O'Connor works with an expert to make and install custom concrete countertops. Then, plumbing and heating expert Richard Trethewey shows how to make watertight connections without soldering. Afterward, landscape contractor Roger demonstrates several new cordless landscape tools. D
2:00 pm
American Woodshop "Post and Beam Joinery" This garden gate is the perfect focal point. D
2:30 pm
Rough Cut - Woodworking with Tommy Mac "Standing Mirror" The Standing Mirror in this episode of Rough Cut is one of Tommy's favorite projects, due to its simple design augmented by Paul Schurch's magnificent marquetry. On this episode's Road Trip, Tommy visits Schurch's studios in Santa Barbara, California, where Paul demonstrates basic marquetry. D
3:00 pm
MotorWeek 2014 Road Tests: Chevrolet Corvette Stingray, Toyota Tundra. D
3:30 pm
America's Heartland Saddle up for a close encounter with wild mustangs in California. Meet a Kentucky man with a retirement home for racehorses. Join a veterinarian making house calls for horses. D
4:00 pm
NOVA "Why Ships Sink" NOVA investigates the safety of cruise ships, which carry 20 million passengers annually on vacation aboard these deluxe "floating cities," which have doubled in size during the last decade. Some engineers fear these towering behemoths are dangerosly unstable. NOVA brings together marine engineering and safety experts to reconstruct famous cruise disasters, including the recent Costa Concordia to consider the questions about cruise safety.G
5:00 pm
Moyers & Company "Inequality for All" This week marks both the fifth anniversary of the fiscal meltdown that almost tanked the world economy and the second anniversary of Occupy Wall Street, the movement that sparked heightened public awareness of income inequality. Yet the crisis is worse than ever - in the first three years of the recovery, 95 percent of the economic gains have gone only to the top one percent of Americans. And the share of working people in the US who define themselves as lower class is at its highest level in four decades. D
6:00 pm
PBS NewsHour Weekend This coming Saturday we report on an unintended consequence of the popularity of fuel-efficient cars - less gas being sold - and therefore less federal gas tax being collected, which depletes the funds available to repair the nation's roads and bridges. Oregon has a controversial solution to the problem - by instituting a tax based on the miles you drive. That, and the weekend's news, online and on-air. D
6:30 pm
Rick Steves' Europe "Paris: Embracing Life and Art" Rick rides a unicorn into the Middle Ages at the Cluny Museum, takes a midnight Paris joyride in a classic car, and gets an extreme close-up look at heavenly stained glass in Sainte-Chapelle. He goes on a Tombstone pilgrimage at P?re Lachaise Cemetery, and then savors the Parisian caf? scene.G
7:00 pm
The Lawrence Welk Show "Salute to the Big Bands" "Heartaches," "Minnie the Moocher," "When My Baby Smiles at Me," and "Who Wouldn't Love You" are a few of the theme songs played to represent the 22 band leaders saluted in this classic show from 1960.G
8:00 pm
Are You Being Served? "Top Hat and Tails" Mr. Grace decides that a team from Ladies' and Gentlemen's Wear will be entered in an inter-store ballroom dancing competition.G
8:30 pm
Keeping Up Appearances - The Memoirs of Hyacinth Bucket "The Fancy Dressball" Hyacinth is concerned that she has not yet received an invitation to the mayor's fancy dress ball. Richard is more concerned about what he might have to wear.G
9:00 pm
As Time Goes By "You Must Remember This" Lionel and Jean meet by accident after not seeing each other for 38 years. Each has been married but is now alone. Much has changed in 38 years, including them.G
9:31 pm
The Cafe "Diminishing Returns" At Cyril's Cafe, Mary has evolved from knitting to tweeting. Stan has a ring for Carol and is looking for the right moment to pop the question. Sarah is still single, Kieran's depressed, and Chloe is seeing a married estate agent. They are all in for a surprise when Brenda books a photographer for her new tourist brochure.G
10:00 pm
The Red Green Show "Van Go" The Possum Van is stolen. On Handyman Corner, Red burglar-proofs a car.G
10:30 pm
My Family "Let's Not Be Heisty" Ben's attempt to pay money into his bank account is thwarted when someone else tries to take some out - with the aid of sawed-off shotguns. Ben and Susan, along with others, are held as hostages. Ben decides to act as a negotiator.G
11:00 pm
Doctor Who Series "The Rings of Akhaten" Clara asks to see something awesome. The Doctor whisks her to the inhabited rings of the planet Akhaten where a festival is in full swing. There is a queen and pilgrims and natives - but something is stirring in the pyramid that can upset everything.G


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Kate Moss's sushi box
This is not a euphemism for anything. It's actually exactly as it reads:
Kate Moss's sushi box.
She designed one. For some sushi chain that's opening in London. Apparently there are 40 pieces and it's covered in sequins with her name all over it. So basically, you can go there, to the Sushi Shop and eat Kate Moss's sushi box...while she reads from Fifty Shades Of Grey.
I do love her voice. It's really lovely to listen to, non?


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Nuts usually grow on trees and are characterized by a hard, removable outer shell. Some commonly used nuts include the following:
- Almonds were common ingredients in the cuisines of ancient China, Greece, Turkey, and the Middle East. Today much of the world's supply of almonds is grown in California. Almonds are sweet with a delicate butterlike flavor.
- Brazil nuts are the firm but tender fruit of a South American tree. They have a clean, slightly oily taste. They are high in calories.
- Cashews form on the bottom of a pear-shaped fruit. Because of the process needed to remove the shell, they are not readily available in the shell.
- Macadamia nuts are grown in Hawaii, Australia, and Central America. They are high in cost and very high in fat (store in the refrigerator).
- Peanuts probably originated in Brazil and are grown in the southern United States, among other places. Three types of peanuts are most commonly grown: Virginias and runners, which have red skins, and Spanish, which are smaller and have a skin that is more tan.
- Pecans grow on huge trees native to the Mississippi River Valley. Georgia is the main source of pecans, which are wonderful all-purpose nuts. Kernels are best stored in the refrigerator.
- Pine nuts, also known as pignoli, are popular in Italian cuisine, where they are used in rice, sauces, and cakes. They are also used in Turkish, Middle Eastern, and Mexican cooking. There are two varieties: the Mediterranean or Italian pine nut, with a light flavor, and the Chinese pine nut, with a stronger flavor.
- Pistachios, originally from the Middle East and Asia, are now grown in California. The pistachio shell splits naturally as part of the ripening process. Pistachios were originally dyed red by importers to cover stains in imported nuts. Most California pistachios are sold with their natural ivory shell.
- Walnuts were introduced to California by the Franciscan fathers in the 1700s. The mellow flavor of the walnut works well with a variety of foods. Most walnuts marketed in the United States are the English variety. The black walnut is sweet and has a deeper flavor. Walnuts are a good source of omega-3 fatty acids.
Nuts in the shell can be stored at room temperature in a cool, dry location. Once shelled, most nuts need to be refrigerated.
Nuts are used in all their forms and styles (whole, sliced, pieces, ground, butters, oils) in baked goods, in stews and ragouts, and as toppings for salads, cooked vegetables, and entrées. Nuts often add eye appeal and an unexpected change in texture. In part due to their high calorie and fat content, nuts are often used in small amounts. By toasting or roasting nuts, you can bring out a more intense flavor and use less. Small amounts of flavorful nuts and seeds can often replace fats such as butter or margarine. Other foods, such as pumpkin seeds or roasted chickpeas, can also be used to replace part or all of the nuts in a dish and still provide a crunchy texture.
Seeds are versatile as well.
- Pumpkin seeds are common in the cuisines of Austria and parts of Mexico, where people like their zesty flavor. Pumpkin seeds can be coated with olive oil and roasted to bring out their nutty flavor, then tossed on salads. Pumpkin seeds can also be pulverized into a thick powder or paste and used as a thickener, or toasted and used as a crust. In Austria, pumpkin seed oil, which has a very strong flavor, is used in small amounts in salad dressings. It is used in the United States now as well by some chefs.
- Sunflower seeds are large compared to seeds such as sesame and caraway. They can be used in casseroles, stews, vegetables, stuffings, or salads.
- Sesame seeds and caraway seeds are often used in baking. Toasted sesame seeds can be sprinkled on soups, fish, and cooked vegetables for flavor and texture.
Seeds should be stored in a tightly covered container in a cool, dry, dark area.


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At the beginning of Believing is Seeing, an eye-opening book about how images come to have meaning, MacArthur-winning filmmaker Errol Morris reveals that he's got a strabismus, a condition that misaligns his sight. Two eye-images that normally resolve into one unified field of vision are always, for him, slightly separate. For Morris, who literally sees "both ways," sight is never simple. He uses his condition as a jumping-off point for a nuanced exploration of how photographs – especially those we most entrust with showing us truths – simultaneously reveal and conceal. Commenting on now-iconic photographs of soldiers and torture victims at Abu Ghraib, The New Yorker's Seymour Hersh wrote, "the photographs tell it all." But what, asks Morris, are the "it" and the "all"? How is the telling done?
Those who have had the luck to fall under the spell of Errol Morris's films already know what sidelong worlds he documents. Gates of Heaven, a classic from the late 1970s, takes on the subject of pet cemeteries, exploring the odd business of interring our beloved furry dead through the experience of a family who not only runs a pet cemetery but also buries its deceased pets there. The Thin Blue Line, a study in the fragility of human justice, re-enacts a Texas murder case that led to the wrong man spending 12 years in jail. And in the recent The Fog of War, Morris talks to Robert McNamara about the decisions he made as Secretary of Defense during the Vietnam War. The film won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 2003.
In each film, Morris displays his genius for allowing people to reveal themselves in haunting and muddy complexity. Something as seemingly kooky as watching a family-run pet-burial business turns into a profound meditation on the human search for meaning. Morris manages to take people's banalities, pedantries, and prejudices, and turn them into art. And he does so with a master's touch: Just at the very moment I think I might be bored I find, to my surprise, that I'm actually utterly fascinated.
In this way, Morris can get away with projects that most of us would simply censor ourselves from undertaking. Who else can go to a dusty road in the Ukraine to retrace an impossible-to-solve mystery about the placement of cannonballs during a harrowing but largely forgotten episode of the Crimean War, and then write a 66-page essay about it? I admit to having forgotten that there even was a Crimean War, but soon I was at the edge of my seat, wondering whether or not the photographer Roger Fenton, one of the world's first correspondents to document war with a camera, moved cannonballs onto the dusty road, or removed them from it. Would Morris, 160-odd years later, figure it out? In this book, Morris the filmmaker transforms himself into Morris the self-documenting-essayist par excellence. He turns the cameras (and the pen) on his own exploits with the same precise scrutiny and baffled wonder he's brought to his other subjects. Morris doesn't find his pursuit of possibly-moved cannonballs any more or less strange than someone else's pursuit of canine cremation, and this open ability simply to look hard is a huge part of his charm.
True to form, Morris is pedantic-but-fascinating in the Ukraine. The chapter, like those that follow, is shot through with images, graphs, and painstakingly transcribed conversations. The essay about the Ukraine goes as far as mapping and graphing the sun's arc on the day of the battle in question. Yet all this cannonball sleuthing is a clever way of elaborating his central question: What is a document? Who makes it? What message does it contain? What politics does it imply? How is it read? What truth does it transmit?
Morris asks us to ask ourselves: Does it matter if Roger Fenton staged the cannonballs? If so, how and why? Roger Fenton and the far-off Crimean War may seem amusingly arcane, but just before we settle into the abstracted comforts of academic study, Morris charges forward to another set of misunderstood pictures, this time from Abu Ghraib, a place where torture was happening, and photographs documented it. This time our questions of truth in imagery feel pressingly moral. What does it mean that the iconic picture of the hooded man we see as our image of that torture is not really the man The New York Times claimed he was? What does it mean that Sabrina Harman was caught giving a "thumbs-up" and grinning in front of a corpse? Those awful images have become icons – ways that we both remember and then allow ourselves to forget something intensely painful. But Morris opens up the image, showing us that the commonplaces we think we understand from the photographs of those terrible events are also often off-target.
Again and again, this remarkable book by a maker of images is actually an invective against believing too easily in images as proof, a plea instead to think of images as manufactured. "Vision is privileged in our society and our sensorium," Morris writes. "Photography allows us to uncritically think. We imagine that photographs provide a magic path to the truth." And yet, as Morris, shows us with magic of his own, that path and that truth can always be seen a different way, though another lens, or story, or eye.
Tess Taylor is a book critic for The Barnes & Noble Review.


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At Least 1 in 4 Teen Girls Has An STD [Blacks Are 20 Percent More Infected Than Whites]
CBS Reports more than 3 million teens has a std&IP=188.8.131.52
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