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Review No sooner does DAB establish itself as the radio format of the future, than internet radio begins tapping it on the shoulder and trying to muscle its way past.
Once upon a time, DAB was a genuine mainstream proposition as long as internet radio remained tied to PCs and Macs. Those days are over - products like the Noxon look, feel and act like a real radio while setting free the real potential of internet content.
TerraTec's Noxon 2: just like a real radio
This is an important step in the development of the format. Radio fans are a finicky lot. They do embrace new technology, but only when it's wrapped up in a traditional package.
The Noxon isn't perfect, but it does deliver a real generational leap in radio listening, in an easy-to-use package. It has a regular FM tuner on board, and the performance is OK. It doesn't have the best reception we've ever heard from a table-top radio, but the sound is made richer by the unit's down-facing sub-woofer.
This is a really welcome addition to the product as it delivers a big boost to the sound across all the Noxon's sources, particularly when it's dealing with digital signals.
If you need to boost the volume a bit, say for a party, the unit splits into two pieces with the head piece able to connect to a hi-fi.
Overall, the unit produces a surprisingly rich and big sound. The machine also copes well with more complex jazz or classical feeds as well as the more common pop or talk stations.
FM set-up is very fast. The machine's search wizard stored 20 stations in a couple of seconds and switching between them is very fast. The unit also comes with the now obligatory iPod dock - fridges will soon be supplied with these, we're sure. Operation is straightforward: plug Steve Jobs' best friend into the top and the machine's own remote control takes over as the navigation tool. The iPod is charged even while the Noxon is switched off.
Non-iPod users - yes they do exist, just ask Sony - are not forgotten. There's a recessed USB port for an external drive on the side.
Controlling the Noxon takes a bit of getting used to. Instead of a central button to select different features, there's a four-way directional button, and functions are selected by pressing the right-pointing button when you've navigated to the correct menu option, iPod-fashion. Once we got used to this it actually felt quite logical and intuitive, but Terratec could have put the control in front of the display, rather than on top of the box.
The Noxon comes with a remote, which is a good size and possessed of useful shortcut buttons to the unit's main functions.


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- Boardwalk Empire - This is probably a case of high expectations working against a good but not quite stellar show. Boardwalk Empire is HBO's latest prestigious, no expense spared production. Plus, it's a period piece about an important time and place in American history (Atlantic City in 1920, the eve of Prohibition, when the city becomes a gateway for bootlegged Canadian alcohol). Plus, it's a crime drama. How can one help but expect a cross between Deadwood and The Sopranos? Perhaps inevitably, Boardwalk Empire fails to live up to such a fantastical hope, but even taken on its own merits, it falls a little short of what it might be. The historical recreation feels a little honky-tonk. This might have something to do with the period--the 20s are a weird decade to get a handle on, a period in which the 20th century finally shook off the last vestiges of the 19th but still hadn't arrived at the stylistic and cultural conventions that would define it--and the setting--a resort town naturally gravitates towards the gaudy and kitsch. But what's missing from Boardwalk Empire is the magic that Deadwood achieved seemingly without trying, of making the visual tropes of a by-then hoary and cliché-ridden genre not only fresh, but lived-in and immediate. Boardwalk Empire feels historical, and thus remote from present-day concerns, in a way that Deadwood never did.
This is particularly strange when one considers how relevant the series's topic should be. The main character is Enoch "Nucky" Thompson (Steve Buscemi), a local politician and, as one of his lieutenants describes him, half a gangster, thoroughly comfortable with graft, election-rigging, and vice, but still a kind, warm-hearted man. As the person in control of the Atlantic City waterfront, he initially sees Prohibition as an opportunity to become rich, as he ups the price of now-illegal liquor and creates supply lines to New York and Chicago. His new partners, however, are not your friendly neighborhood crooks, enablers of the sins of the flesh who are kind to women and small children, but serious bad guys, with whom Nucky may be too soft to deal. This should be a familiar story, in an era in which the lessons of Prohibition have been so thoroughly ignored, but instead it feels familiar in all the wrong ways--we know where Nucky and the rest of America are going, how this ill-conceived and high-handed attempt at social engineering will instead create and help to cement the power of multiple organized crime empires that will adversely affect the lives of millions of people. At least in its pilot, Boardwalk Empire feels as if it's just taking us through that familiar story one beat after another, rather than using a historical backdrop to tell a new, or perhaps timeless, one. It could be that that's what the show is interested in doing, but so far it seems to be indulging in some of historical fiction's worst excesses--an infatuation with period detail and a sentimental treatment of the past. When Nucky's reckless protege steals a shipment of whiskey--with the help of a young Al Capone--and kills its couriers, it feels less like a horrible murder than a historical reenactment, too cute and dressed up to be truly affecting. For all that it's well done--and despite Buscemi's strong presence at its center--so far that's my reaction to Boardwalk Empire as a whole.
- Lone Star - Another case of a show undermined by high expectations, though this time I'm having trouble seeing where those expectations were coming from. EW's Michael Aussiello and The AV Club's Todd VanDerWerff have both called Lone Star the best pilot of the fall, and NPR's Linda Holmes has called its abysmal ratings--which have resulted in the first cancellation of the fall--a sign of the American public's ingratitude and lack of appreciation for cable-style quality shows, and a sure guarantee that networks will stop trying to make them. But a network attempt to ape cable dramas is exactly what Lone Star is, with all the flaws and compromises that implies. The main character, Bob, is a con man who has been working an oil scam in two Texas towns: Midland, where he has taken in his sweet, working-class girlfriend's parents and all their friends, and Huston, where he's wormed his way into the confidence of an oil tycoon, in part by marrying his daughter. Raised into grifting by his father, Bob is still partnered up with him, but growing more guilty and more determined to stop the people he's come to love from being destroyed by his actions, and he ends the pilot by breaking with his father and deciding to turn his lies into truth--while concealing his double life and remaining married to, and deeply in love with, two women.
Lone Star is well made, but at almost every turn it's possible to see that where a cable series would be willing to challenge its audience, this show has been made less threatening, and its rough edges filed off. So Bob is sweet and tormented (and James Wolk does a good line in staring soulfully at the camera), still under his father's thumb but really an idealistic and loving person determined to do right. There's no examination in the pilot of his complicity in his actions, of the inherent dishonesty that would have to lie at the very heart of his character in order for him to have so thoroughly deceived everyone who loves and trusts him, and at no point are we invited to feel anything but sympathy and pity for him. Similarly, his two love interests are both adorable to the point of flawlessness, his father is not just manipulative but emotionally abusive, repeatedly telling Bob that no one will ever really know him or love him, and his Huston wife's rich family are slimy and distrustful. So no, Lone Star was probably never going to be challenging, quality drama, but it might have been a good high-concept soap, focusing on familial and business intrigue as Bob and his father try to outsmart one another and Bob's two lives come close to colliding. Instead, the pilot and second episode spend more time and energy on melodrama than they do on con stories, and it's therefore a little hard to see what we missed with the show's lightning-quick cancellation.
- Detroit 1-8-7 and Hawaii Five-0 - There probably aren't two more different shows starting out on TV this fall, but Detroit 1-8-7 and Hawaii Five-0 have two things in common (three, if you count having numbers in their names): they're both cop shows, and they both take place outside the New York/Los Angeles/Chicago trifecta that dominates the form. In both cases, the glimpse the shows grant of a new, different location, helps somewhat to elevate them above, respectively, a flawed pilot and a moronic premise. Detroit 1-8-7 is aiming at the thoughtful grittiness of respected cop shows like Homicide: Life on the Streets and, more recently, Southland. A strong, and refreshingly diverse, cast helps to bring it part of the way there, but the pilot is undone by its reliance on gimmicks. The show is filmed like a mockumentary, but instead of stressing the show's realism and immediacy, the style calls attention to Detroit 1-8-7's falseness by being entirely unbelievable--at certain points that camera follows the policemen from outside of a moving car, or dodges bullets being shot at them, and there's never a sense that the characters are aware that they're being filmed and editing their behavior accordingly. The writers also use the mocumentary format to catch up particularly slow viewers, inserting titles that differentiate the two cases being investigated, and even helpfully informing us that we are in the middle of a hostage situation. This seems out of step with the kind of challenging, thought-provoking TV the show seems to be aiming at. Another flaw is the show's unfortunate tendency to lapse into over-the-top humor, as when a rookie detective who has just chased down a suspect stops to take a call from his pregnant wife and begins questioning her about her contractions as his suspect gets away, or when the enigmatic Detective Fitch (Michael Imperioli) interrogates a suspect by staring him down until the street-tough hoodlum starts crying about his poor life choices and calling for his mother. In general, in fact, I wonder whether Detroit 1-8-7 isn't putting too many eggs in Imperioli's basket, setting him up as the House of detectives--brilliant at his job, but a completely non-functional human being--which would, again, clash with the show's supposed realism. All told, then, I'm not sure what show Detroit 1-8-7 is trying to be, and I'm not sure the show itself knows, so it's a good thing that it has the setting of Detroit, and its much-publicized troubles, to fall back on as it settles into itself.
Hawaii Five-0, meanwhile, is about as far from gritty as it is possible to get. The pilot is the best made, most enjoyable, and most ludicrous I've seen this season, sharply paced but moronically plotted. It starts with Naval officer Steve McGarrett (Alex O'Loughlin, demonstrating significantly more charisma and screen presence here than he did in Moonlight and Three Rivers put together) being recruited by the governor of Hawaii, who gives him carte blanche to rid the island of an arms dealer who has recently killed McGarrett's father, and I think that's probably enough plot description to express just how ridiculous this show's premise is. What's important is that McGarrett teams up with a disgraced former cop (Daniel Dae Kim), a New Jersey policeman who moved to Hawaii to be closer to his daughter (Scott Caan), and a green but tough rookie (Grace Park, already paraded around in her underwear twice), and together they fight crime, but in a new and totally awesome way that will probably involve lots of explosions and shoot-outs, even if it's not always the guy who directed the first two Underworld movies behind the camera. It's a bit difficult to try to sum up my reaction to Hawaii Five-0, because on the one hand, this is a very impressive pilot that gets a lot done--introducing the characters and their sad backstories, putting them together, building the fractious but increasingly respectful partnership between McGarrett and Caan's character, tracking down the arms dealer, and shooting and blowing a lot of shit up--without ever feeling rushed or overstuffed. On the other hand, this is such a stupid show. Only two things keep Hawaii Five-0 from sinking under the weight of its stupidity--the sheer fun of the pilot, and the fact that it manages to establish Hawaii as a foreign place where the rules, and the people, are different (this also goes a tiny way towards explaining the show's reactionary slant, with McGarrett forming his team with the express purpose of hunting bad guys without having to deal with the pesky impediments of due process and civil rights, though the scene in the show's second episode in which he dangles a suspect off the roof of a hotel is hard to take). Neither of these are enough to keep me watching the show, but successful popcorn entertainment is not easy to pull off (as so many other, less engaging pilots this fall have demonstrated), so I can't help but respect Hawaii Five-0 for achieving its goals.
- My Generation - From the best pilot of the season to the worst (silly me for thinking that there was nowhere to sink from Outlaw). My Generation is another mockumentary, alleging to reunite with nine twenty-eight year olds who in 2000 were interviewed by a documentary crew on the eve of their high school graduation. In theory, the concept has some potential, though perhaps not as an open-ended series. But the execution is flawed on just about every level. The characters are a bunch of stereotypes who project their issues onto the screen with neon signs. The queen bee clearly doesn't love her rich kid husband, which we know because she can't remember how long they've been married and, in full sight of the camera, all but propositions a former classmate. Her husband, meanwhile, is still hung up on his high school sweetheart, which we know because he wistfully watches their old videos and squirms uncomfortably whenever she's mentioned. The former nerd is now a creep who lusts after his married, pregnant best friend (which we know because he ogles her in the nude), whom he has invited to live in his house while her suspicious husband is away in Iraq, and who longs for children of his own only to discover that he is infertile. None of them seem to be aware of how much they're exposing to the camera, nor to possess the basic self-editing facilities that you'd expect from a normal, 21st century adult trained by and accustomed to reality TV--which means that the writers don't have to work hard, or at all, to expose their characters' secrets and hidden desires. What's most unbelievable, and most damning, about My Generation, is that all the characters are still hung up on what happened to them in high school, that their high school friends, girlfriends, boyfriends, and crushes still loom gigantically in their minds, even at the tail end of their twenties. We all know that American TV has an unhealthy obsession with high school, but it usually expresses this by setting an unreasonable number of shows in high school as it's happening, not by pretending that high school is something you never get over--a proposition that I believe most adults would find both terrifying and pathetic.
- The Event - Last week, after watching the pilot for The Event, I decided to hold off from writing about it until I'd seen the second episode, because clearly the show wasn't done setting up its story, which involves the kidnapping of a young woman on vacation so that her father, an airline pilot, can be forced to fly a plane into a house in which the president is staying, and a decades-old conspiracy to conceal the existence of nearly a hundred aliens (more or less--the exact nature of these beings is clearly one of those mysteries that the show is going to draw out for a while) who have been held prisoner by the US government since crash-landing in Alaska in 1944. The second hour, however, does more of the same, frenetically shifting between past and present as it establishes both the series's backstory and its ongoing storyline, in which a previously hidden faction of the aliens begins to take violent action against humanity. This is clearly the format that the show is going to take--enormous amounts of backstory combined with a fast-paced but opaque present day storyline focused on characters, such as the boyfriend of the kidnapped girl (Jason Ritter, who is usually quite good but falls curiously flat here), who have no idea what is going on and are just reacting to one crisis after another. Which means that the comparisons to Lost--to which The Event is yet another wannabe successor--are entirely off-base. Lost didn't have an elaborate backstory. Its early episodes set up cryptic mysteries but were in no hurry to resolve them--mainly, as we now know, because the writers had no particular solution in mind. The show that The Event actually recalls is Heroes, which like it was fast-paced and threw huge chunks of information at the audience on a weekly basis. This would be a red flag even if The Event were half as good as Heroes was in its first season, but the show lacks the superhero series's irresistible hook and emotional punch. Hereos was never great TV--even at its best it was indifferently written and acted--but it knew how to grab an audience, an ability that The Event seems to lack. It moves as fast as Heroes did, but is nowhere near as compelling, neither in its story nor in its characters. Without that ineffable secret ingredient, there doesn't seem to be much here to watch for.
- Undercovers - J.J. Abrams goes back to the spy game, this time with a Mr. and Mrs. Smith-inspired series about a pair of married spies (Boris Kodjoe and Gugu Mbatha-Raw) brought back in after five years' retirement. The series jettisons both Alias's convoluted (and eventually nonsensical) mythology and its angsty tone, and both of these choices seem like good things until one realizes that, one, Undercovers is a comedy, and, two, the closest thing to a joke in the pilot is a (male) junior spy who fawns over Kodjoe to an almost romantic degree and considers Mbatha-Raw a distraction. There are other quips and witticisms, and the two leads have a good patter, but there aren't nearly enough proper gags, or any laugh-out-loud moments, to justify just how frothy this show is. That frothiness is also expressed in the almost perfunctory way in which the leads get back on the horse. There's never a sense that they are bored or unhappy in their lives as humble caterers (who live in a palatial and luxuriously decorated home that is extreme even by the standards of TV lifestyle inflation), or that becoming spies again reintroduces a spark that was missing from their lives. Though the characters tell us that they found it difficult to work as spies after they fell in love, we get no real sense of why they quit espionage, and why they want to go back. And that's really what's missing from Undercovers--the thrill of living on the edge, and the exhilaration of falling in love. It's a surface show, and that surface is nowhere near slick and exciting enough to justify watching. If you want Alias without the angst or mythology, I suggest USA's Covert Affairs--which, incidentally, gives its female lead a lot more to do, and makes her a lot more kickass, than Undercovers does.
- No Ordinary Family - This is a series that starts out with the deck stacked decidedly against it. Superheroes, and particularly the superhero origin story, have been hot for a while, which means both that there's a wealth of material that any new iteration is inevitably compared to, and that the audience is a little fatigued by the subject. Even worse, the show, which sees a typical family gaining superpowers after taking an impromptu swim in a South American river, calls to mind two very specific points of comparison: on the one hand, Heroes, the last television version of the superhero story whose protracted devolution into a shadow of its early success was only mercifully cut short last spring, and on the other hand, The Incredibles, easily the best superhero story of the last decade and a work to which few television series of any stripe could hope to be favorably compared with. No Ordinary Family doesn't overcome these hurdles in its pilot episode. In fact, it proceeds with the kind of easygoing glibness that suggests that its creators are, in fact, unaware of just what a tough task they've set themselves, and think they can just walk themselves to an easy victory because, hey, everyone loves superheroes, right? It's a slow, indulgent hour that hits so many familiar, if not hoary, beats that one almost suspects the writers of deliberate, self-aware irony when they begin it with patriarch Michael Chiklis explaining, to an unseen interviewer (a device used, of course, by The Incredibles), that his story is unusual and doesn't start the way his listener might expect.
As the hour draws on it becomes harder and harder to gauge whether No Ordinary Family's creators are unaware of how well-trodden the path they're going down is, or whether they think it truly doesn't matter that they're bringing nothing new to such a frequently-told story. Either way, the result is thoroughly unexciting, mainly because it differs from The Incredibles in one crucial way. The Parrs were superheroes who had been forced to assume the guise of an ordinary family, and who, though they accepted their new roles with varying degrees of grace, were always wistful for that extraordinary life they'd left behind. The fact that they were not ordinary, and were in fact somewhat disdainful of ordinariness, was the point of the film (and the source of its uncomfortable subtext). No Ordinary Family's Powells, meanwhile, are ordinary people who have not yet become superheroes (only Chiklis's character fights crime in the pilot, and is still ambivalent about doing so). Which means that the pilot is mostly concerned with the family's mundane problems--the Powells' strained marriage, their kids' issues with boyfriends and learning disabilities. In good hands even this tired material could have been made interesting, but again, this is an incredibly lazy pilot, and neither the writing nor the actors seem to be working very hard to sell their familiar plotlines. It's almost insulting how clearly No Ordinary Family expects to win its audience over with a concept, not with execution, and I for one have no interest in rewarding that belief.
Friday, October 01, 2010
Thoughts on the New TV Season, 2010 Edition, Part 2
11 comments:
- Nancy said...
I work in Detroit, and there's been a lot of conversation about Detroit 1-8-7 locally. Some of it can help explain the mess of a pilot. The pilot was largely shot in Atlanta, Georgia (!!!) in the Spring. Originally, the show was planned as a mockumentary, with characters being interviewed as a part of the show. However, in May, there was a disaster in the city. The police were involved in a shooting as part an attempt to apprehend a fugitive (who wound up not being there . . .). Shots were fired into a house, killing a ten-year-old girl named Aiyanna. It is believed that the police acted with too much force because they wanted to impress the film crew for The First 48, a cable reality show, that was embedded with them. After the shooting, Mayor Bing announced that no television crews would be embedded with the police in Detroit.
The people behind Detroit 1-8-7 decided to respect Bing's decision, and they refilmed sections of the first few episodes to eliminate the most obvious mockumentary footage. They left some of the shaky camerawork and the titles intact. I'm not sure if the camerawork improves in later episodes.
The second episode was shot in Detroit, and it is far, far better than the pilot.
- October 02, 2010 12:08 AM
"the show, which sees a typical family gaining superpowers after taking an impromptu swim in a South American river, calls to mind two very specific points of comparison: [...] and on the other hand, The Incredibles"
I think you meant to say "The Fantastic Four."
- October 02, 2010 2:07 AM
- Abigail Nussbaum said...
I'm less bothered by the camerawork in Detroit 1-8-7 (which anyway has started cropping up even in series that aren't allegedly being filmed by documentary crews) and more by the titles, which have persisted into the second episode, still differentiating between cases and helpfully telling us that the cops are interviewing a suspect or informing a family member of a death. They consistently bring down the tone of what is otherwise a well done show.
I think you meant to say "The Fantastic Four."
Not really. The superhero craze of the last decade is a film and TV thing (mostly film, actually) - in comics, after all, superheroes have been hot stuff continuously for six or seven decades. And though in comics The Fantastic Four are an important landmark, and clearly influenced The Incredibles, the FF films were awful and, it is generally agreed, best left to oblivion. So I think that when talking about a television series about a superpowered family, The Incrdibles is the important point of comparison.
- October 02, 2010 1:35 PM
- Alexander said...
Of these I've only seen The Event and No Ordinary Family. I found the former intriguing to watch at first, but fatally undermined by there just not being much there. One thing that really does follow from Lost is the refusal of characters to explain things, and pointless cutting to the same scene from different sides.
And No Ordinary Family was simply atrocious, one of the worst episodes of television I've seen. It's not even bad in a remotely entertaining way, and everything about the shallow character constructed, self-aware tone and clunky dialog was alienating. The most revealing moment may have been when Daphne (in a bratty manner, of course) announced what her parents' problems were. And of course it was something that could summed up in about three lines, because they are written as that emotionally simplistic.
And Julie Benz moved from Dexter to this? Criminal misuse of talent here, Chiklis as well, to a lesser extent.
- October 02, 2010 5:58 PM
"Not really."
You say that, but then you also said "As the hour draws on it becomes harder and harder to gauge whether No Ordinary Family's creators are unaware of how well-trodden the path they're going down is". Which strikes me as being a being a bit double-standard. You criticise them for (apparently) not being aware of their history, yet you yourself make no mention of the Fantastic Four at all? Can you not see the contradiction there?
As it happens, I disagree (to an extent) on your assessment of the Fantastic Four. Yes, the movies weren't great - the first wasn't *completely* bad, though. But people are aware of the Fantastic Four, and there are actually more connections between the Fantastic Four and No Ordinary Family than you give it credit for. Starting with the obvious, Michael Chiklis is in both No Ordinary Family and in the Fantastic Four films, but there's also the 'origin story' of both, so to speak.
That is to say, when No Ordinary Family has "a typical family gaining superpowers after taking an impromptu swim in a South American river", this to me is pretty clearly a nod to the origin story of the Fantastic Four, where "a typical extended family gains superpowers after taking, in a manner of speaking, a swim in the currents of space."
Perhaps you can see now why I feel that the Fantastic Four is an important comparison here. The execution may be completely awful, but I don't believe that the makers of the show are as completely unaware of the history of the genre as you make them out to be. Indeed, I'm afraid it appears to me that they've got you beat slightly there, given your lack of reference to the Fantastic Four.
- October 02, 2010 9:59 PM
- Abigail Nussbaum said...
Julie Benz moved from Dexter to this?
Strictly speaking, Julie Benz moved from Dexter to Desperate Housewives, then from there to this. And it's not as if the move was her choice anyway.
You criticise them for (apparently) not being aware of their history, yet you yourself make no mention of the Fantastic Four at all? Can you not see the contradiction there?
No, because my point about history had nothing to do with the creators. It was to do with the comparisons that the audience - the overwhelming majority of which knows superheroes from film and TV, not comics - would make.
Also, if you're going to continue this conversation, and particularly if you're going to continue to strike this particular tone, may I ask that you have the courtesy to sign your comments?
- October 02, 2010 10:22 PM
Perhaps she should have referenced Troll? Wait, no that has nothing to do with the subject either. At least not the subject of No Ordinary Family.
The Fantastic Four, while a good example of the origin story having been walked all over by anyone with a pen, isn't about a family in the domestic sense. But there are lots of other origin stories for Superheroes, as Abigail pointed out.
The Incredibles actually applies to the conversation because it's about domestic Superheroes, something that The Fantastic Four (either the movie or the comics) has never been about. They weren't ordinary before becoming superheroes. Except maybe in the sense that everyone in the Marvel universe is an astronaut or world-renowned scientist.
Now don't get me wrong, I don't think Abigail needs to have someone rescue her from a poster that lives under the anonymous bridge. But I'd suggest watching almost any other superhero movie before suggesting that swimming in a river is a nod to The Fantastic Four specifically and not a headbashing ball to comic book origins in general.
- October 03, 2010 4:31 PM
Just to put things in perspective, guys, the man-transformed-by-swimming-in-a-river concept dates back at least to the Greek and Egyptian myths and probably even further.
Freud suggests it's a metaphor for [re]birth.
- October 04, 2010 12:05 AM
- Chuk said...
I definitely got a Heroes meets The Incredibles vibe from No Ordinary Family, too. I'll give it a few more episodes, but I am biased in favour of supers in general and "normal people with powers" in specific...if it doesn't get any worse than the pilot, I'll watch and enjoy it. (I would like to, just once, see a show in this genre where the people have some interesting powers, instead of almost always the same dozen or so.)
And I didn't watch My Generation, but I really do get the impression that there are plenty of people out there still that hung up on high school.
- October 06, 2010 8:09 PM
Thank you; this is very useful. Have you happened to watch or hear anything about Running Wilde? I have hopes for it given the Arrested Development pedigree and the odd POV, but no one I know has actually watched it or heard anything.
- October 12, 2010 4:25 PM
- Abigail Nussbaum said...
Running Wilde is one of the lamentable comedies I mention in the opening paragraph. The pilot has some nice moments, mostly due to the actors, but it's just not very funny or clever.
- October 14, 2010 10:39 AM

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Fast Brilliant BBC
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Christ Is Risen!
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I read somewhere on a forum that the prayers used with the rosary beads about Mary literally came from the Theotokos herself can someone confirm this.
I think the popular Roman Catholic belief is that the Theotokos gave the Rosary devotion to St. Dominic in the early 1200's.
And the oft cited "one is required to use their imagination with the Mysteries" is a bunch of bull. One is instructed to meditate on the Mysteries much as one is instucted to meditate with Icons. Never has the teaching of the Church on this prayer been to "fantasize" about being at the Nativity, Crucifixion, etc. That is not to say some ignorant people have taught this, but their bad example should not invalidate the form.
I thought I was very clear in my post that some do teach wrong methods of meditation.
I was just wondering not to sound a bit protestant but do you think there is to much emphasis on mary in Catholic view of prayer life?
Sorry but what is a Chotki?
The Coptic term for prayer rope is Mequetaria.
In contrast to the EO, however, the primary use of the prayer rope is to recite the standard 41 Kyrie Eleisons (a significantly shortened "version", you could say, of the Jesus Prayer--which nevertheless remains part of Coptic worship, though no less powerful, as various traditions within our Church demonstrate)
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NBA Capsules
MIAMI (AP) Chris Bosh scored 24 points on 9-for-10 shooting, LeBron James added 18 points and the Miami Heat rolled past the San Antonio Spurs 113-101 on Sunday in an NBA Finals rematch from last season.
Mario Chalmers scored 16 points for Miami, which used Dwyane Wade as a reserve for the first time since Jan. 6, 2008. Wade – an All-Star starter again this season – had not played in any of two-time defending champion Miami's most recent four games while dealing with ongoing knee rehabilitation. He had eight points and five assists in 24 minutes.
Michael Beasley scored 12 points, Norris Cole had 11 and Ray Allen added 10 for Miami. Bosh has made 17 of his last 18 shots from the floor.
Tim Duncan led San Antonio with 23 points. Boris Diaw added 15.
OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) – Stephen Curry had 38 points, eight assists and seven rebounds, and Golden State used a smothering defense to beat Portland.
The newly elected All-Star starting point guard, wearing shiny gold shoes, shot 13 of 23 from the floor to carry the offensive load. The Warriors did it all on defense, too, building a 22-point lead midway through the fourth quarter to put the game out of reach.
Golden State outshot Portland 41.8 percent to 33.7 percent and forced 15 turnovers while committing nine.
Damian Lillard had 16 points and four assists, and Wesley Matthews scored 21 for the Blazers, who had a quick turnaround after beating Minnesota in Portland on Saturday night. It was a season low in points and shooting percentage and it tied the largest margin of defeat for Portland, which entered averaging an NBA-best 109.5 points.
BOSTON (AP) – Andray Blatche scored 17 points to lead Brooklyn to victory in the first visit by Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett to Boston since they were traded last July.
The cornerstones of the Celtics' 2008 championship team received video tributes early in the game with career highlights shown on the scoreboard. They didn't have any highlights on the court until Garnett stole the ball from Rajon Rondo and dribbled ahead of the field for a layup that ended Boston's last threat.
That put the Nets ahead 82-77 with 20 seconds left and secured their 10th win in 11 games.
The Celtics, losing for the 17th time in 20 games, were led by Brandon Bass with 17 points and Rondo with 13 points, eight rebounds and eight assists.
Pierce and Garnett scored just six points each.
NEW YORK (AP) – Carmelo Anthony followed his 62-point game with 35 more, and New York beat Los Angeles.
Anthony finished with two points fewer than he had at halftime of his record-setting night Friday, but he scored six straight New York points down the stretch after the Lakers had cut the Knicks' lead to two with just over 5 minutes left.
And he had plenty of help as the Knicks won their second straight following a five-game losing streak.
Raymond Felton scored 20 points, Tim Hardaway Jr. had 18 and J.R. Smith 16 for the Knicks. Tyson Chandler had 13 points and 14 rebounds.
Jodie Meeks scored 24 points for the Lakers. Pau Gasol had 20 points and 13 rebounds as the Lakers dropped their fourth straight to finish 2-5 on their Grammy Awards trip.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. – Ty Lawson scored 27 points, Wilson Chandler had 20 and Denver defeated short-handed Sacramento for its second straight victory.
The Nuggets went ahead late in the third quarter and never trailed again. Denver was coming off a 109-96 home win Saturday night over Indiana, which has the best record in the NBA.
Isaiah Thomas scored 22 points for the Kings, who have dropped three straight and five of six. They played their second straight game without leading scorers DeMarcus Cousins (ankle sprain) and Rudy Gay (Achilles strain). The two combine for nearly 43 points per game.
NEW ORLEANS (AP) – Anthony Davis had 22 points, a career-high 19 rebounds and seven blocked shots, and New Orleans beat Orlando to win its second straight game.
Davis' statistical line marked the first time since the franchise was founded as the Hornets in Charlotte in 1988 that a player on the club had that many points, rebounds and blocks in the same game.
Tyreke Evans scored 13 of his 23 points in the fourth quarter to keep struggling Orlando at bay.
Led by Arron Afflalo's 25 points, the Magic twice got as close as three points late in the fourth quarter.
Brian Roberts had 15 points and Eric Gordon 14 for the Pelicans.
Victor Oladipo 18 points and five steals for Orlando, while Tobias Harris added 17 points and nine rebounds.
CLEVELAND (AP) – Markieff Morris scored 27 points and Phoenix rallied from an 18-point halftime deficit to defeat Cleveland.
The Suns turned in a dominant second half, outscoring the Cavaliers 56-29. Channing Frye finished with 16 points, including four 3-pointers after halftime, and Goran Dragic scored 15 to help Phoenix pull off the comeback on the first stop of a four-game road trip.
The Cavaliers, who led by 20 late in the second quarter, fell to 1-3 on a five-game homestand considered crucial to their chances of staying in the Eastern Conference playoff race.
Kyrie Irving scored 24 points and Luol Deng added 18 for Cleveland.
DALLAS (AP) – Dirk Nowitzki scored 28 points and Devin Harris had a season-high 14 for the second straight game to carry Dallas past Detroit.
Nowitzki was 10 of 16 from the field in his second straight game wearing a sleeve on his sore left knee after sitting out a loss in Toronto. It's not the knee that required surgery and sidelined him the first 27 games last season.
Harris scored five straight points in the final minute of the third quarter to break a 79-all tie. His 3-pointer early in the fourth capped a 15-2 run for a 94-81 Dallas lead.
Brandon Jennings had 26 points and seven assists to lead the Pistons, who lost their fourth straight. Josh Smith had 25 points and eight rebounds.


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Explore and learn English (ESOL) or the language of your choice in an open lab environment. Learn and practice using one of the available programs. #ellis#esol #esl
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LYNX Bus Link 107 South US 441 (South Orange Blossom Trail) / Kissimmee
LYNX Bus Link 8 W. Oak Ridge Rd. / International Dr.
LYNX Bus Link 40 Americana Blvd. / Universal Orlando
Located in the Orange Blossom Center, the South Trail Branch is an open, bright branch with lots of sunshine. The branch is located in a commercial center, adjacent to numerous multi-family housing units and is a popular spot for children and families.
The history of South Trail branch spans almost four decades. It began as the Ft. Gatlin branch at 105 Gatlin Avenue in 1965. The branch moved to the corner of Holden Avenue and South Orange Blossom Trail in 1981. The move across the street to the current site in the Orange Blossom Center took place in 1996.


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3 Ideas for Good Yield
You can still safely add these high-yielding investments to your portfolio.
Investors' relentless search for better yield is the number-one takeaway from my recent sojourn to Chicago for the annual Morningstar investment conference, a gathering of 1,900 investors, advisers, fund managers and journalists. The meeting featured hours of scary warnings about the economy, the markets and our dysfunctional political system. On the subject of U.S. stocks, I sensed widespread unease and lack of interest throughout the exhibit hall.
One notable exception was Brian Rogers, the manager of T. Rowe Price Equity Income (symbol PRFDX), who also serves as chairman of the Baltimore-based fund giant. Rogers said today's pervasive pessimism about stocks reminds him of 1982, which followed a mostly lost decade for stocks but marked the unexpected start of a powerful 18-year-long bull market.
But behind the fear -- or because of it -- I found a clear preference among this gang for investment income, whatever the source. The higher the yield, the more enthusiasm any category seemed to generate: high-yield and emerging-markets bonds; short-term bond funds as an alternative to cash; real estate and income-oriented energy investments; and exotic go-anywhere funds. A flock of me-too investments are chasing the same few names in such popular areas as foreign bonds and master limited partnerships. That worries me, but I couldn't find any pros who shared my concerns because, I'm guessing, these categories are performing so well.
Maybe the obsession with high income will eventually burn investors, as the dot-com and housing bubbles did in the late '90s and mid '00s, respectively. But with the U.S. growing a little and many developing nations still expanding rapidly, the world is unlikely to blow up the way it did in 2008. And that suggests to me that you still have a window of at least one more year to add high-yielding investments to your portfolio safely.
Here are three income sectors I favor. It's not too late to get into them or to add money to existing investments.
Ultra-Short Bond Funds
The mission here is to earn one-half to one percentage point more (after fees) than you can get with a money-market fund with minimal risk. These funds own assorted bonds, mostly corporates, that mature in no more than two or three years. The median yield of ultra-short funds is about 0.8% today, and a few yield more than 2% (it's best to avoid those because they're almost certainly concentrated in lower-quality debt). Over the course of a year, their net asset value per share should swing by no more than 1%. If you have $50,000 in a money-market fund earning zero, switching to an ultra-short fund promises to be worth $400 or so in additional pretax income per year. A move of this sort won't change your life, but it will provide enough income to fix your car or cover a fun getaway weekend. So think of ultra-short bonds as a kind of rewards category rather than a serious income investment.
The category has a checkered past. In 2007 and 2008, several ultra-short funds lost more than 10% by mishandling derivatives or holding subprime mortgage debt when the credit markets froze. One offender was Fidelity Ultra-Short Bond (FUSFX), which saw its NAV drop from about $10 a share to $8. Chastened by this breach of trust, Fidelity last year launched Fidelity Conservative Income Bond Fund (FCONX), which, as its name suggests, is designed to guard against another implosion (funds in boldface are those I recommend). The fund has an average maturity of seven months, yields 0.67% and over the past 12 months has traded in a narrow range, between $9.97 and $10.01 per share. Fidelity's highest bond honcho, Bob Brown, says the fund will never have "structured products" (a term that includes some of the stuff that ruined Fidelity Ultra-Short Bond) or low-grade foreign debt. He put enormous emphasis on those points. Good, because Fido can't afford another catastrophe.
There are dozens of other ultra-short bond funds. Don't pay a sales charge or high expenses, and scan the holdings to see if you recognize all or most of what's inside. Check shareholder reports and Morningstar.com to make sure a fund hasn't sustained any serious quarterly losses since 2008 and, preferably, none during the financial crisis.
High-Yield Bonds
Moving from the low-income area toward funds paying 5% and up, everyone's favorite idea appears to be corporate junk bond funds. (One speaker said he'd rather have 100% of his money in high-yield bonds than 100% of it in Treasuries, and on that point I agree).
I spoke to several junk bond fund managers about my concern that any segment that is so popular with the public and in which pessimism is absent often tends to fall apart before long. But I was persuaded by the pros I spoke with that junk is worth riding until at least 2013. Matt Freund, who co-manages USAA High Income Fund (USHYX), says that prior to previous junk corrections and bear markets, borrowers would pitch new issues with all kinds of "sloppy features" and "silly structures" designed to benefit the borrower. (I'll skip the details.) Freund says that's not happening now. He and other junk-bond pros praise issuers of junk bonds for refinancing debt to save on credit costs, building cash and generally tightening their operations.
Moreover, several managers say, junk provides an excellent defense against rising rates. In fact, studies show that junk bonds perform better in rising-rate environments than in falling-rate environments. You can find plenty of good no-load junk funds, including USAA High Income, yielding 6.6% and up.
Emerging-Markets Bonds
While many speakers mentioned Europe's troubles, creative guys such as Michael Hasenstab, global bond chief for Franklin Templeton, pointed out that economies are improving dramatically in places such as Malaysia, Indonesia and Mexico. His main argument is that Asia's high-growth countries have much lower ratios of government and personal debt relative to the size of their economies than even the U.S. and Germany, never mind Italy and Spain. Over time, government bonds and corporate bonds issued in those emerging countries, whether priced in dollars or in local currency, should gain in value or at least hold their value as rating agencies raise their assessments of those emerging nations. Meanwhile, emerging-markets bond funds pay 5% and better.
Templeton Global Bond Fund (TPINX), co-managed by Hasenstab, is a fine choice, though it does not invest exclusively in emerging markets. It also charges a commission (it's a great pick if you can get it without a load, as we at Kiplinger can through our 401(k) plan). Be aware, too, that the fund uses derivatives. "There are ways to maneuver with instruments so we can invest [in some countries] without ever touching an underlying bond," says Hasenstab. In other words, he can use options, futures, swaps and who-knows-what to create synthetic Indonesian bonds or bet on what's going to happen to the Argentine peso. I trust Templeton to employ these things judiciously.
A purer play on emerging-markets bonds is Fidelity New Markets Income (FNMIX), a member of the Kiplinger 25, the list of our favorite no-load mutual funds. DoubleLine, TCW and T. Rowe Price also offer good choices.
Kiplinger's Investing for Income will help you maximize your cash yield under any economic conditions. Download the premier issue for free.


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Sunwin Stevia pours cash into production
The company previously revealed plans to boost activity in the country particularly in the bakery sector and tabletop sweetener markets after developing six new stevia formulations in conjunction with Wild Flavours.
Now it has announced the completion of its stevioside expansion project, bringing annual bulk stevia production to 1,300 tonnes, including 500 tonnes of high grade stevioside products. These include Rebaudioside 60, 80, 95, 98 and 99.
Stevioside is billed as a natural sweetener approximately 300 times sweeter than sugar. Sunwin, which is located in Qufu, China with US operations in Dallas, Texas, sells stevioside through wholesale channels in China, Japan and South Korea.
Rising demand
Its expansion project was launched in April this year in an effort to keep pace with rising demand. Sunwin has begun trial production of its new lines and anticipates its additional production capabilities will be fully operational in the third quarter of 2013.
In addition, the firm has taken production of steviosin, a stevioside extract used in the pharmaceutical industry, to 500 tonnes.
Sunwin's new stevioside extraction line uses a crystallisation process that the company claims will substantially cut production time and costs while increasing yield.
In addition, Sunwin's facilities are capable of producing 500 tonnes of stevioside in granular and tablet forms. The business said demand for stevia in these forms has been increasing and believes it is poised to capitalise on this trend.
Expand product offerings
"We are excited to have completed this important expansion for our company," said Sunwin chief executive Dongdong Lin. "Through this upgrade we not only increase our bulk stevia capabilities we also are able to expand our product offerings to the stevia marketplace.
"We believe our use of technology will help us to significantly drive down production costs and enhance our bottom line while providing our customers across the globe with the highest quality stevia products."
Sunwin is engaged in the manufacture and sale not just of stevia formulations, but also a range of nutraceuticals.


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My son asked me if I was planning anything special for Valentine's Day … ! Not for the reasons you or I might expect: I was definitely relieved after he explained, had been searching background information on Iran, and saw that they outlawed this day as one of many decadent Western traditions to be avoided at all costs. I told him about Mousavi and Karoubi, their wives and families, and the stifled attempt to call for a protest on 25 Bahman, which was Valentine's Day last year. And I shared my resigned expectation that the only crowds on Iran's streets this February 14, will be crowds of security forces.
I told him that I wondered if some of them might be strategically positioned to obscure opposition graffiti – now in the form of symbolic flowers – from the public gaze, lest any citizen be confronted by such impassioned artistic expression and shaken out of the regime's enforced Islamic Revolutionary reverie. (Thanks for the graffiti bouquet, guys!)
He said,
"Never mind, Mum, even if the entire population of Iran came out onto the street, overthrew the regime, and installed a communist state, it would still be completely ignored and overshadowed by Whitney Houston's death!"
He's learned, as I have, that there are two constants in the freedom equation: the relentless perfidy with which repressive regimes seek to crush even the tiniest bud of hope, of joy, of creativity, of resistance: "X"; and the transitory nature of the media's lens: "Y" (or more aptly, "why?").
The same is true in its different and yet achingly similar ways for Syria, where everything must be painted black and white, either or, despite a rainbow of alternative arguments and positions. For Bahrain, and I would also say for Saudi Arabia, where protests, police brutality, and a host of violations are blanketed in ignorant silence more suffocating than the clouds of tear gas in Bahrain, so large I always imagine they can be seen from space. For Tibet, so tired of being either ignored or patronised, I assume because major political powers are clearly terrified of getting on the wrong side of China, the world's major creditor. For Yemen, for Mali, for Western Sahara, and for Mauritania, where it's simply not in the Western powers' interests to be paying attention to opposition movements, not when there are fascinating stories about terrorism or a food crisis to report, even if the opposition is real and the terrorists are fabricated. Frankly, the food crisis in Africa is so over-hyped, it's making me feel queasy. And don't even get me started on the tens of thousands of freshly-minted refugees. For Kashmir, Senegal, West Papua, and for all of you everywhere*, struggling to make your voices heard, I send you my love and respect, for Valentine's Day and always.*I realise I left a LOT of names out of this list but it would be like reading a world atlas if I mentioned every country by name. Apologies; you're still in my heart.
Related articles
- D'oh! Simpsons join Barbie on Iran's blacklist (rt.com)
- Iran's 10-year Barbie Ban Anniversary
- Battlefield 3 Video Game Banned in Iran (shoppingblog.com)
- Iran blocking access to Google's encrypted search, YouTube, and webmail (endgadget)


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The college encourages applications from transfer students. The
Registrar will evaluate student's transcripts from other
institutions so that these students may be considered for advanced
standing. Transfer students are admitted in any term: fall, spring,
and summer.
Students transferring to Mount Saint Mary College with an
Associate of Arts (AA) degree or an Associate of Science (AS)
degree in a major taught at the college are awarded full junior
status and guaranteed 60 credits in transfer. Students with an
Associate of Applied Science (AAS) in business, who enter the
business program, are also awarded full junior status and
guaranteed 60 credits.
The college policy is to accept only grades of C or better for
transfer. However, grades of C-, D+ and D may be used to bring the
transfer credits to the guaranteed level of 60 credits as described
above, or in the first part of sequential subjects in which a grade
of C or better is achieved in the second part (e.g. BIO I: D; BIO
The maximum credits that may be awarded to a transfer student
with an A.A. or A.S. are 66; assuming no grades below a C have been
transferred. The maximum credits that may be awarded to a student
transferring from a four-year institution are 90. Credits are only
accepted from institutions that have regional accreditation.
The Registrar's Office will send a separate letter indicating
what coursework has been accepted for transfer once a student has
been admitted to MSMC.
845-569-3316 | firstname.lastname@example.com


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September 22, 2005
G152: Devil Rays 7, Red Sox 4
Tim Wakefield held a 4-2 lead in the bottom of the eighth. He allowed a single, threw a wild pitch, and hit a batter (his 3rd of the night). He got Carl Crawford to hit a 3-1 pitch for a 4-6-3 double play, but then Jose Cantu singled to left. 4-3.
I really didn't have any problem with Timlin coming in. Wakefield was at 93 pitches and the next batter, Travis Lee, had tagged him for a long home run back in the second inning. ... It fell apart pretty quickly. Lee singled, Johnny Gomes tripled, Eric Munson doubled, and Alex Gonzalez singled.
In retrospect, perhaps Craig Hansen for the out and Timlin in the ninth would have been a better course of action. ... The Sox went quickly in the ninth, slipping into second place for the first time since mid-July, thanks to the Yankees' 2-1 win over Baltimore.
Bill Mueller led off for the first time in his career and collected three singles and a walk. Manny hit #39, Doug Mirabelli had two hits, and while Edgar Renteria went 1-for-5, he also hit three wicked line drives right at Tampa infielders. Adam Hyzdu walked twice, though I did not like seeing him whiff with the bases loaded in the seventh.
Boston gets its long-awaited day off today. The Yankees finish their series with the Orioles tonight. The Red Sox will be either in an exact tie for first or one game out. ... Then it's a 10-game sprint to the finish.
11 comments:
Tito is an idiot. You've got a fresh, new arm in the bullpen who is an out machine and an old guy who's a decent closer but who faints in the presence of inherited runners.
Who do you put in to get one lousy, freaking out?
- September 22, 2005 at 6:52 AM
- sarah said...
as frustrating as last night was, i refuse to give up. if this ship goes down then i'm going down with it.
r.e. edgar - i've noticed that past two or three nights that he has been hitting the ball very hard but it's just been going directly toward fielders. a sure sign that he's about to break out of his slump. my husband thinks i'm crazy but i'm telling you: edgar is gonna come up big.
- September 22, 2005 at 6:56 AM
- grunherz said...
"i'm crazy but i'm telling you: edgar is gonna come up big."
Edgar will be this year's post-season Mark Bellhorn.
I mean that in a good way.
just get to the post-season
- September 22, 2005 at 7:27 AM
Last night was an evening of ironic juxtapositions, courtesy of that little miracle we call the satellite dish.
On CNN, you had live coverage of the Jet Blue flight circling LAX with its damaged landing gear, as millions across America hoped and prayed that the captain could call upon his accumulated knowledge and experience to bring everyone on his ship home safely.
On the other end of the dial at FOXSFL millions across American hoped and prayed that Captain Tito could also call upon his own knowledge and experience to bring everyone on Flight G152 safely.
Fortunately for those at LAX, they ended up on the flight that landed safely, a far better fate than those of us who watched Tito auger G152 into the ground at the Trop.
I agree with the author that Tito's decision to send Wake back out for the 8th was solid, even as he dodged a bullet to get out of the 7th. However, I expected that the bullpen would be a beehive of activity from the beginning of the inning (Hey Tito - This just in..YOU'RE FIGHTING FOR A GODDAMN PLAYOFF SPOT!!), and that Wake would be given the rest of the night off if even a single Devil Ray got on base.
It took a leadoff single and a HBP to even get him off his ass to get Timlin up, and by then the situation had begun to spin out of his control. Putting aside for a moment that he was sitting on the bench with his jacket on and not warming up, why not go with Myers to get the left match-up vs. Travis Lee? Even if Lou pinch-hits for Lee to get a righty against the lefty, Lee was having a big night and it would have been wise to force Pinella to pull him. Why roll over on the match-up and not force Pinella to make a counter-move?
Then, as Timlin threw extended BP to a succession of D-Ray hitters, it wasn't until the 4th consecutive hit put the game out of reach that Tito called back down to the bullpen. In an effort to perform the Minute Waltz in 30 seconds, Myers was warming up so furiously that he looked like a Roaring '20s flapper in baseball drag. Alas, when Timlin finally coaxed the last out on a fly to left, it was all over but the shouting.
What happened to the recently christened Papelbon 8th Inning Bridge? How about giving Hansen (He of The Unhittable Cheese) the chance to be to Tito what K-Rod became to Scoscia when he gave him both his confidence and the ball down the stretch in 2002? Tito manages this team in a manner that seems so by the book that he's trying not to lose, rather than trying to win.
Timlin is a gutty, veteran gamer who would answer the call until his arm fell off, and then would probably try to wing it from the portside. However, given that the percentage of his inherited runners who score is .562 (presumable a factoid that Bill James could have placed been on Tito's crib sheet that he kept studying last night while he diddled away the game), why not give the rock to Papelbon or Hansen in the 8th and give Timlin a clean set of bases with which to work in the 9th?
The final juxtaposition of the evening could be found when one jumped over to YES. In stark contrast to Manny jaking it down the line in the 5th on his comebacker to the mound, where Rice pointed out in the post-game ("hey man, this is a pennant race, you gotta' hustle"), you had the gritty Sheffield very nearly legging out a DP grounder in the 8th at Yankee Stadium.
Could it have made a difference? In the case of the Yankees, you can bet Sheff's hustle inspires those around him to play at a higher level of intensity. In the case of Manny, you wonder when Tek is going to take him behind the wood shed and kick the living shit out of him for his prima donna act.
If one ascribes to the notion that adversity doesn't build character, it reveals it, the next 10 games will determine which of these two teams - Sox or Yankees - has enough to come out on top on or before October 3.
- September 22, 2005 at 8:22 AM
Sorry, I still have faith, but edgar sucks, and he's never going to get any better. If he can't continually rake against lefties, then he literally is no good to us in any capacity.
If there is a postseason, he's going to suck there as well.
- September 22, 2005 at 11:20 AM
- allan said...
In stark contrast to Manny jaking it down the line in the 5th on his comebacker to the mound
I think you mean the 1st inning -- Manny homered in the 5th.
Bear in mind also that Ramirez hustled like hell from first to third on Millar's single in the seventh, drawing a throw from center that allowed Millar to advance to second. With one out and Boston hoping to extend its 4-2 lead, having runners at 2nd and 3rd is a lot better than 1st and 2nd.
It became fairly moot when Tito stayed with Stern, but you must include that play in any assessment of Mr. Ramirez's night.
And as I mentioned in the SoSH Game Thread when someone noted Remy's ripping of Manny, Remy had better do that to every single player every single time it happens.
Or he's going to give people the impression that he has an agenda against a certain player while letting similar bahavior from others slide.
- September 22, 2005 at 11:20 AM
Thanks, redsock, for correctly pointing out that The Manny Shuffle occured in the 1st inning, and that he launched the bomb in the 5th.
Manny's first-to-third dash in the 7th was, indeed, a nice bit of hustle (a very close play at third), perhaps in atonement for the waltz down the first-base line in the 1st as Jim Ed himself opined in last night's Extra Innings.
I'm not in the anti-Manny faction, but at this point the margin for success or failure is so small that you hate to see a season decided by a guy who decides he's not of a mind to run one out.
- September 22, 2005 at 11:31 AM
I would not have lifted Wake, who handles lefties better than Timlin, had only thrown 93 pitches, and was not going to give up another homer (on a non-knuckler) to Lee. There were two outs and a man on third. I'll bet Wake's record of getting out of that situation is 2-3 times better than Timlin's. But If I did bring in someone, it would have been Myers, Hanson...anyone but Timlin, really.
This game was more bad luck than anything (certainly not Manny's fault). But the three starting pitcher blow-outs of the last ten days made the team vulnerable...plus the Yankees are in one of their incredibly lucky stretches. (If Aaron Small isn't proof that God is a Yankee fan, I don't know what is. 9-0! they were hoping for a .500 pitcher, and they get a Don Sutton/Doyle Alexander savior.)
That being said, don't worry. The Sox will prevail.
- September 22, 2005 at 12:52 PM
- From the Vined Smithy said...
Hey Jack,
I wanted to apologize for being snitty with you earlier this year. You were a big man in saying Redsock had the Manny thing called right (though that not-legging-out did bother me, even if the run to third made up for it a bit), and I wanted to apologize for being a jerk (which I sometimes really was). Anyway, hope the end of the season goes well for you and I. Can't afford in-fighting when there are some asshole Yankee fans (one particularly in my office) who demand my passive-aggressive attention. GO SOX!!
- September 22, 2005 at 1:33 PM
- kenfromnh said...
This team reflects the manager as all teams do. If the manager is a hustler-the team hustles. If you watched last night and saw the expression on the red sox players faces in the duggout from the beginning of the Timlin thing to the end of the game you could see anger, not frustration. I believe most of the players except for a few of his (Francona) favorites do not like him. Without calling people profranity I briefly state we can only hope Theo gets someone to manager the team next year who understands the task in front of him.
- September 22, 2005 at 2:44 PM
Devine: Thanks. You have duly earned my revelation of the Great Red Sox Secret: the "Red Sox Principle." I have formulated it over 40+ years of Sox watching, and it is truth.
The RSP says this: If the Sox are going to win, it is only after everything points to certain failure. Conversely, they are most likely to lose when victory seems assured. Last year I kept telling people that I couldn't see how the Sox could defeat the principle, until they were down 0-3 and no team had ever recovered from that deficit. I called my parents and mourning Sox friends and said: "This is perfect. The Sox are going to win." This is absolutely true; they made me put it in writing, in fact.
Once Dan Shaunessey declared the Sox were in, the fool, I knew this stretch was coming. The Sox must fall before they can rise, but like the two must wins against the Twins in '67, the one strike to go homer by Henderson in '86, Carbo's 6th game homer in the '75 Series, and the 8 straight wins to force the olay-off in '78, no team is better when defeat is looming. It's when they're ahead that you should worry.
This is perfect.
- September 22, 2005 at 6:55 PM


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Fern Michaels Makes Surprise Return To Bestselling "Sisterhood" Series With GOTCHA!
Description: A publishing legend and the author of more than 53 consecutive New York Times and USA Today bestsellers, Fern Michaels has long been cherished by readers for her poignant tales of love and family. Among the most beloved and enduring characters created by Fern Michaels are those of the Sisterhood, a group of seven very unique women bonded by unforgettable adventures and indelible friendship. The series was first introduced with WEEKEND WARRIORS, which debuted on the New York Times, USA Today and Publishers Weekly bestsellers lists. Another 19 New York Times and USA Today bestselling adventures followed until 2011, when HOME FREE was announced as the twentieth and final book in the Sisterhood. Fern Michaels fans thought they had to bid farewell to her most popular series. However, in July 2013 Fern Michaels reignites the Sisterhood with GOTCHA!, a surprise 21st installment featuring the return of the series' beloved characters, a thrilling storyline and original recipes. Once again, the Sisterhood proves that payback is worth waiting for, especially when it's delivered by expert hands.
Price: $7.99


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My first college experience was at a large university in Salt Lake City, Utah. I knew I wanted to major in Biology, but soon found out that most people in my classes were pre-med. This meant that all of my classes had an emphasis on human biology, and sort of skimmed past the animals. My classes had hundreds of people in them, and we were encouraged not to ask questions in class, but to write them down and they would be addressed in lab on Thursdays. This atmosphere led to my only going to class on test days, and you can guess how my grades were.
I had always dreamed of moving to Alaska, and was going to make the move after I graduated from college. It was looking like that might not happen. I decided to find a school in Alaska, and kill two birds with one stone. I found UAS. My first class was Biology 105. There were just over fifty people, and it was considered huge. All of my upper division courses had twenty people or fewer. I was encouraged to ask questions. I was given opportunities to be involved with outdoor research projects. I learned about animals, not just humans.
I am now working on getting my Masters of Arts in Secondary Education. Since moving to Alaska I have been a deckhand on a fishing boat, been a kayak guide, hiked on the glacier, took a float plane to go fly fishing, but most importantly I got a quality education in a subject that is relevant to the world around me. UAS provided the environment that was necessary for me to succeed as a student.
Renee Moseng


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By Richard Bränström
Although there has been much progress in many European countries regarding social acceptance of LGBT individuals in recent decades, much discrimination, social injustice, and intolerance still exists with adverse consequences for both physical and mental health in these populations.
Awareness of health disparities in specific populations, in particular based on ethnical background, gender, age, socioeconomic status, geography, and disability has increased during the past decades. And lately, public health policy and research have begun to address the issues of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) populations, and many official public health agencies call for programs addressing the specific needs of LGBT individuals.
An increasing number of studies, although still limited, points to a higher prevalence of certain conditions among LGBT people that call for the attention of public health researchers and professionals. The most significant area of concern is the increased prevalence of mental health disorders. Recent studies show that LGBT youth are at greater risk for suicide attempts than non-LGBT youths and have higher prevalence of depression and anxiety diagnoses. Studies also show that transgender individuals are regularly stigmatized and discriminated against both in the health care sector and in the society as a whole.
Traditionally LGBT public health research has almost exclusively focused on sexually transmitted diseases. In particular, the start of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the 1980s brought visibility to the LGBT population as a group with specific health needs. However, the public health consequences of discrimination of LGBT individuals have only recently been focus of greater attention.
The level of acceptance for minority sexual orientations differs greatly between countries. In the European Social Survey 2010, a question was used to assess level of acceptance of gay men and lesbians. The proportion of respondents that agreed to a statement that 'Gay men and lesbians should be free to live their own life as they wish' varied greatly between countries, from around 90% in the Netherlands, Sweden, and Norway to about one third of the respondents in Russia and Ukraine.
These results indicate that in many countries LGBT people still live in communities where a majority of the population supports discrimination and inequality for sexual minorities. In many countries, LGBT people are also subject to legal discrimination concerning basic civil rights, e.g. regarding recognition of same-sex unions.
But are these large differences in acceptance and legal discrimination influencing the health of LGBT individuals, and what needs to be done to overcome inequality in Europe's health based on sexual orientation and gender identities? These questions are difficult to answer in the absence of sufficient data.
In a recent commentary in the European Journal of Public Health, we argue for greater awareness of these issues, and the need for more knowledge about the public health situation of LGBT populations through improved data quality and well-designed studies. Systematic data collection regarding sexual orientation and gender identity is required to better understand factors that can help us reduce and better understand disparities, as well as increase quality of health care provision for LGBT individuals. In addition to working towards greater acceptance to end discrimination and social injustice, greater efforts from public health researchers and policy makers are needed to reduce health disparities among LGBT populations.
Richard Bränström is a health psychologist and researcher. He is currently associate professor at the Karolinska Institute, Sweden, and he works with public health analyses at the Swedish National Institute of Public Health. His main research interest concern health inequalities, predictors of physical and mental health, and health related behaviors. He is the author of the commentary 'All inclusive Public Health—what about LGBT populations?', which is published in the European Journal of Public Health.
The European Journal of Public Health is a multidisciplinary journal in the field of public health, publishing contributions from social medicine, epidemiology, health services research, management, ethics and law, health economics, social sciences and environmental health.
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Image credit: Gay Pride. By chatursnil, via iStockphoto.


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Týn Church - Old Town Square, Old Town
Old Town Square, Old Town
Týn church, also known as the church of Madonna before Týn or sometimes also called by a wrong name church of Our Lady before Týn, is the main church of the Old Town and one of the most important churches in Prague; at present time it is used by the Catholic church. Its name ' Týn' refers to the closed courtyard Týn or Ungelt found in between the streets Týnská, Štupartská and Malá Štupartská where from the 12th century the latest foreign merchants came with their precious goods; after paying a fee (called ungeld) they were under the protection of the king himself. There used to stock rooms, stables, comfortable accommodation facilities and also a hospital with a Romanesque church of Our Lady. On the site of this small Týn church the construction of a spectacular peak Gothic triple-naved basilica was started in the third quarter of the 14th century. The influence of the royal stonemason works of Matthias of Arras and Petr Parléř is apparent there. At the beginning of the 15th century the church was only missing its steeples, gable and roof frame, in 1457 it was roofed, the gable of the main nave and the north steeple were completed during the reign of Jiří of Poděbrady and in 1511 the slightly leaner south steeple was built too. Both steeples, directing the west side of the church, are finished off by late Gothic hexagonal casques with an ambulatory and a decorative turret. After a fire in 1679 the main nave and presbytery were lowered a little bit and vaulted with a Baroque brick vault. The dimensions of the Týn church are impressive: it occupies a space of 52x28m, the height of the middle nave is 44m and 24m of the side naves, the steeples reach up to 80m.
The church can be accessed through three Gothic portals: the main (west) one goes through the building of the Týn school to the Old Town Square, south one leads to the Týn Presbytery in Celetná Street and the northern one to the Týnská Street.
The north portal has rich sculptural decorations including a relief of the Suffering of Christ, it is currently permanently closed and is one of the most precious Gothic monuments in the whole Bohemia (the original of the tympanum is stored in the collections of the National Gallery). The façade window with Gothic decorations is also exceptional as well as the traceries of windows in the main nave.
The church interior is mostly Baroque. There are some remainders from the Gothic equipment such as the tin font from 1414 (the oldest in Prague), a stone pulpit, two sedilia with consoles in the shape of crowned heads and most importantly, the late Gothic baldachine by Matěj Rejsek from 1493, originally located above the tomb of bishop of Augustine Lucian of Mirandola. Gothic sculptures of Madonna with baby Jesus from around 1420 and the Calvary from the beginning of the 15th century (probably by the same author) are also outstanding masterpieces. In the church there are 19 altars who whose authors include F. M. Kaňka, K. Škréta, J. J. Bendl, J. Hellich, F. M. Brokof and J. J. Heinsch among others. Church organ from 1673 is the oldest one in Prague. The author of the paintings of the Calvary from 1854 is F. Čermák. Inside the church there is a valuable set of Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque tombs with the most famous one belonging to Danish astronomer Tycho de Brahe. Many tombs have been significantly damaged from being walked over – walking over tombs was not considered as inappropriate in the old times, it was even meant to prevent a toothache!
Predecessors of John Hus such as Conrad Waldhauser or Jan Milíč of Kroměříž used to deliver sermons in this church, during the Hussite Wars the church was taken over by followers of Hus and the church became the main Old Town church and also the parish church. From 1427 the elected Hussite archbishop Jan Rokycana used to preach there, he was also buried inside. The Hussites used the church until 1623 when it was taken over by the Jesuits. The statue of Jiří of Poděbrady portrayed as the Hussite king and a large gold chalice which used to adorn the gable of the church were taken down and replaced in 1626 by a statue of Madonna by K. Bechteler; her halo was made from the gold chalice. – From 1973 a gradual reconstruction of the Týn church has been taking place. In 1992 the belfry of the north steeple was given a bronze bell weighing 960 kg, replacing a historical bell that was taken away during the German occupation in the 2nd World War. In 2000 an exceptionally well preserved fresco of St. Hieronymus with a lion from the end of the 14th century was found in the north side nave. - Týn church has been named a national cultural monument since 1962.
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I saw a small woman or maybe a large girl riding a small purple motor scooter and she was hunched over and it looked bizarre and yet menacing. Later in my ride, I saw a superbiker with a purple wheelset. These things are fitting because purple is the color of Caesar, the Augustus, not the salad and I would encourage you to avoid all salad dressing that is purple, for it would be as equally likely as Brutus to stab you tens of times in the gut.
I rode through real Capitol Hill today, the part of the ever-expanding neighborhood ("from the Capitol to the River and from H Street to the River" would be the expansive definition matching the claims of real estate ads. By river, I mean Anacostia, not the Danube, a barrier that even the Romans didn't cross) from roughly Eastern Market metro to roughly New Jersey Avenue and I very much enjoyed looking at the nice houses and riding on the quiet roads and passing the underprogrammed parks and listening the very faint hum of the car traffic on the elevated highway that sits a few blocks to the south. From E Street SE, I turned left on New Jersey Avenue and then turned right into I Street SE and took that street until that street would take me no longer and were I to continue this whole Roman thing, I'd reference Aeneas or maybe Dido, but I won't (go/I won't sleep). Different Dido.
I arrived nearish to the Washington Channel and its boats and its all-you-can-eat seafood buffets (I, Seafood and I, Eat It is the gluttonous fish-themed sea-quel to I, Claudius) and I think that in an effort for the area thereabouts to gain in publicity and notoriety, the neighborhood should henceforth refer to the body of water as CSPAN, as that is a more recognizable Washington channel. In fact, if I had a yacht harbored in the Washington Channel, I would christen it Sea Span. The new development along the channel is going to be named The Wharf, but I don't know what the guy from Star Trek has to do with anything. It would be fitting to remind ourselves that Cap'n Kirk's middle name was Tiberius, the same as that of the stepson of Augustus. Were there video games in ancient Rome, one of the more popular one would have been Fiddle Nero, modeled after Guitar Hero.
Beach volleyball. Commence Olympic Fever. Be sure to get an Olympic tetanus shot if you do.
Four lanes of car traffic through a park and we should be happy to ride on a crappy six foot wide path? Ok, just checking.
Rome was built on seven hills and I feel like I climbed the equivalent of seven hills stacked atop each other as I slowly made my way from the park trail up to Calvert Street (Cecilius Calvert, Lord Baltimore was a Roman Catholic) and I caught my breath as I waited for the red light to change before making another left and then climbing another hill, even slower this time, on a street named after Grover Cleveland or perhaps Grover Cleveland Alexander. The whole ride up the hill I kept repeating to myself "just keep going forward" and that seemed apt because I very much desired to just keep moving forward. I found one last bit of effort near the intersection of Garfield and Massachusetts, where I pedaled with extra verve in order to not too terribly inconvenience and slow some drivers that waited behind me. All in all, this trip sort of kicked my ass, like the Goths did Valens at Adrianople. You could read about that in Ammianus Marcellinus, and you can read about that flash of red, not purple, hair in Ammianus in Auerbach or you could just take my word for it, which is something those kids on Reading Rainbow (ROYGBIV, where the purple is violet) were never content to allow you to do. But I suppose that's a reference to an entirely different Star Trek character.


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Chicago's winter of record-breaking snow and cold has delayed the opening of river boat tour and taxi season.
Wendella Cruises were expected to start operations on Friday, but the fleet is stuck in ice along the Calumet River. Company president Michael Borgstrom said the boats are surrounded by ice that is up to 20 inches thick.
"In addition, Lake Michigan is iced over, making our annual trip from the shipyard an impossibility," he said.
The company set April 4 as the new start date. It's the first time in the company's 80-year history that the season has been delayed.
Wendella operates the popular Combined Lake and River Tour, Chicago River Architecture Tour, Chicago at Sunset Cruise and the Chicago River Experience Tour. The company also operates the Chicago WaterTaxi that provides scheduled water transportation service seven days a week from the Union Station and the Ogilvie Transporation Center to Michigan Avenue, Chinatown and North Avenue at Goose Island.
The federal government's Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory in Ann Arbor reported that ice spread across 93.29 percent of the lake's surface area on Saturday.
Winter Delays Wendella River Tour & Taxi Boats
Company sets April 4 as the new start date
Chicago's winter of record-breaking snow and cold has delayed the opening of river boat tour and taxi season.


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01 December 2011 - Stamford, CT and Lucca, Italy
Tagetik Names Industry Veteran Dave Kasabian to Management Team
Former AMR research analyst joins Tagetik as Vice President Product Marketing
Tagetik, a global provider of enterprise software solutions for Performance Management, Governance, Risk & Compliance and Business Intelligence announced today that Dave Kasabian will join the company as Vice President Product Marketing reporting to Chief Operating Officer, Manuel Vellutini. Mr. Kasabian brings deep knowledge of the performance management software market developed over the course of 20 years at Pervasive Performance Group, AMR Research (now Gartner), Alvarez & Marsal Business Consulting, Cartesis (now SAP), and Hyperion Solutions (now Oracle).
"We are thrilled to have someone with Dave's experience, knowledge, and reputation join the Tagetik team," said Manuel Vellutini, Chief Operating Officer of Tagetik. "The combination of his deep knowledge of this market and his hands-on experience developing positioning and product marketing strategies make him a perfect match to help drive Tagetik's continued expansion and growth."
"The breadth of functionality that Tagetik is able to deliver in a single, unified solution is truly unique in the market. Tagetik has an innovative product, a loyal customer base, and is growing rapidly across 20 global markets," said Mr. Kasabian. "Over my years as a software industry analyst I've become fairly astute at recognizing when a vendor is poised to break away from the pack. I firmly believe that Tagetik has reached that point and am excited to add my contribution to making that happen."
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Public Comment
Post Office Problems Afflict Berkeley Too
Ah, the dear old USPS! As a public entity they are certainly beleaguered and beset on all sides, but the drift towards privatization is not the answer.
Post offices all over the country are being closed, sold, and 'relocated;' their customers left with inadequate service and confusing contradictions about what will happen, in many cases, to irreplaceable New Deal/WPA art work. Here in Berkeley, we were supposed to receive a date yesterday from the USPS for the public hearing about the possible sale of our main and historic P.O on Allston St. Did we receive a date? Of course not. The USPS will, however, hold us to their legal right to announce a date merely 15 days before any public hearing. They don't know if what they are doing is viable, and don't wish to give the public any time to find out.
Our letter carriers and postal clerks do a fine job, every single day, and they are caught in the cleft as well: their jobs are on the line, and those who survive the chopping block will be moved to locations they have no desire to work in or out of. They know those locations will not serve the public, and will be a financial burden to themselves and the USPS; we, the public, will pay for that, as the USPS employees well know.
This issue is receiving a lot of national press, and none too soon: The Washington Post and New York Times both have excellent recent articles, easily found by using search word USPS. Mr. Joe Davidson and Ms. Catherine Ho at the Washington Post, and Mr. David Dunlap at the NY Times have all written pieces well worth reading.
Join us, in our efforts to preserve the postal service as we know and love it!


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Naseem Rakha
Naseem Rakha is an award-winning broadcast journalist whose stories have been heard on NPR. Her debut novel The Crying Tree reaches into the heart of a family nearly torn apart when a mother decides to forgive the man who murdered her son.
Acclaimed as dramatic, wrenching, and ultimately uplifting, The Crying Tree has also won praise from Sister Helen Prejean, author of Dead Man Walking, who says: "For anyone who has ever wondered how forgiveness is possible, even when the pain is overwhelming, wonder no more. The Crying Tree takes you on a journey you won't soon forget."
I "met" Naseem through the online community of writers at Backspace where I have joined in the general excitement as her debut novel begins to make its appearance on the Best Seller charts. I'm so pleased that she has agreed to share some of the steps along her road to success with readers of Birth of a Novel.
SHAREN FORD: What inspired you to write The Crying Tree?
NASEEM RAKHA: In 1996, I was assigned to cover Oregon's first execution in more than thirty years. Condemned killer, Douglas Write, had forgone his appeals saying he wanted to die for his crimes, which included killing three homeless men and a child. The night of the execution I was at the prison, standing outside as the "procedure" began. On the other side of the fence, I could hear a rowdy group of partiers celebrating the event, and I knew whatever story I wrote for the following day's news, would never cover the depth of the issues at hand: justice, pain, loss, grief, and the unspecific and unrecognized emotions of all those touched by the man's crimes, and his subsequent punishment. That night, as I listened to the people outside the gate break into a cheer as the execution began, I promised myself that I would learn more about this thing we call justice, and that one day I would tell that larger story.
That promise led to years of research and interviews. I spoke with inmates, crime victims, prosecutors, and defense attorneys. I spoke with Sister Helen Prejean, author of Dead Man Walking, and three exonerated death row inmates. Then one day I had the good fortune to meet Aba Gayle, a sixty-something woman who had just returned from visiting a "friend" of hers on San Quentin's death row. That friend, she said, was the man who brutally stabbed her daughter to death twenty years before.
I was stunned by her story of forgiveness, and by the time I left her small home I knew I had found a way to tell the story I had been seeking since the night of Douglas Write's execution.
In June, 2004 I began writing The Crying Tree, a work of fiction that examines two premises – what if the mother of a condemned killer forgives the man for killing her child? And what if the man who must conduct the execution of the killer, does not want to do his job? I completed The Crying Tree in November, 2007, and found an agent (Laney Katz Becker, Folio Literary Management) in December of that year. Five months later, she sold the novel at auction to Broadway Books of Random House.
FORD: When you decided to write a novel, did you find your background in journalism helpful, or was the transition to fiction difficult?
RAKHA: First off, I was not a print journalist – I was in broadcast, and more specifically, I was a broadcast journalist for public radio. There is a big difference between writing for the radio, and writing for a newspaper, and much of that lies in the word story. The majority of newspaper articles tend to convey a straightforward plot – who, what, where, when and why – in a clinical fashion, devoid of emotional content. This isn't always true, and a good investigative piece can read like a good piece of fiction, but for the most part journalists tend to train themselves to focus on just the most overt setting details and character traits, and thus miss the nuance that brings life and heart to a story.
While radio can also be quite elemental and dry, it is by its auditory nature more of a "story-telling" medium. That is why I was drawn to it, and why programs like NPR's All Things Considered, or This American Life, have so many listeners. People love to be drawn into a story, and radio gives journalists potent tools for doing just that.
As a broadcast journalist, I learned how to convey setting, character, conflict and emotion through sound and narrator voice. I learned the importance of the subtle detail, the nuance in move and expression that told more than words conveyed. I learned to listen for the pattern in speech, the subtle gestures that flavor dialogue, the rhythm of words. I learned how to interview people, to research, to focus my questions, and thereby focus my plot line. And best of all, I learned to write in any setting, at anytime no matter what was going on around me. All of these skills served me well as I switched from writing fact to writing fiction.
FORD: You obviously researched the execution process and the Death Row experience extensively. Was this hard to do?
RAKHA: I would not describe the process as hard. Fascinating, yes. Gut wrenching, sometimes. Confusing, mind-boggling, emotionally charged, and even aggravating, of course, but not hard. For me hard comes when I have to do something I'm neither motivated or interested in.
That was not the case while researching the issues central to The Crying Tree. After covering the execution in 1996, I was drawn to the topic of crime and punishment, and felt inspired to know the deeper stories that lay on both sides of our prison walls. For me, the research experience might have been somewhat akin to what an explorer feels when delving into uncharted territory. I was curious, enthusiastic, and more than anything, filled with an enormous desire to accurately portray what I was learning.
FORD: You address two particularly thought-provoking issues in The Crying Tree: the death penalty and forgiveness. The death penalty is, of course, extremely controversial, and some might find it almost incomprehensible that a parent could forgive a child's murderer. What has been the reaction from your readers?
RAKHA: The reactions to The Crying Tree have been staggering. Almost every day I receive letters from people who tell me how much the book meant to them. Some of these people have gone through terrible tragedy, or have friends who are struggling with significant loss. They see hope in The Crying Tree, and want to talk about it with others. Other readers are drawn into the book for different reasons, and come out finding themselves moved to reconsider their beliefs about crime and punishment. These people express their thanks for writing a book that touches their heart and compels them to talk about their experience with others.
This reaction is all any author could hope for. My goals in writing The Crying Tree were that it not be a polemic, and that no matter what an individual's beliefs, they could have empathy for the characters' decisions. I also wanted to write a book that would appeal to men and women of all ages and backgrounds. Based on the feedback I've received, I think I have accomplished those goals.
FORD: A writer's work is inevitably informed by her own experiences. You are the mother of a son. How did that affect your ability to write about the murder of a child? And what helps you to persevere, even when writing becomes emotionally challenging?
RAKHA: I am the mother of a child who is gifted with wit, perception, honesty and a great deal of love. I am the mother of a child who has taught me about myself and my own capacity to love more deeply than I knew I could. And I am the author of a book about a mother who looses her gifted, loving son. Why would I write that? Why would I even let my mind go there? There is no greater terror to a parent then the mere suggestion that we could lose a child. Yet, it happens all the time, and when it happens, isolation, pain, hate, and even shame are common consequences.
When I met my friend Aba Gayle, the woman who forgave the killer of her eighteen-year-old daughter, my son was three years old. I did not understand how Aba Gayle survived her loss, let alone came to befriend the man who deliberately caused it. It was unfathomable to me, and I was compelled to learn how such a thing can happen.
Yes, writing the book was emotionally challenging, but not as much as you might think. I was not putting my mind in dark places without reason. I had purpose, and that was to discover how people not only survive great loss, but come out more whole.
Some think writing about difficult subjects must be a drain. I find it expansive and life giving. It sets me free to fly into dimensions that I had not seen before and it teaches me to be more than I was before I put my mind and hands to work.
FORD: You have cited music, especially Aaron Copland's "Appalachian Spring", as an inspiration for The Crying Tree. How do you go about using music to spur your creativity? Do you listen to a particular piece before you begin to write, or have it playing as background while you work?
RAKHA: Most of the time while writing, I have music playing in the background. It both soothes, and helps me better visualize scenes and character. Aaron Copland's Appalachian Spring is a good example. Long before I knew many specifics about The Crying Tree, I knew its end. Or, at least I knew what feeling I wanted to leave my readers with which was the same feeling I would have whenever I listened to the closing moments of Appalachian Spring. Invariably, those last few minutes would give me a sense of both melancholy – a day was ending, things were closing down, getting dark – and hope as one by one stars would begin to flicker in a limitless night sky.
Many other scenes relied on different music. I created a playlist of some of that music and it is available on my web site www.naseemrakha.com
FORD: You're currently involved in all the promotional activities surrounding the launch of a debut novel. How much of your time does that take and is there any left over for writing? If so, have you begun work on another book?
RAKHA: My book came out in July. Prior to that I was promoting the book. Since then, I have been promoting the book. Some of the work is fun, some, not so much. All of it takes time. Loads of it. I am on the road right now. I am on the road in a beautiful part of the country (the Washington Coast) and have been on the road in beautiful parts of the country since July. I have met wonderful people, have heard incredible stories, and developed new networks with authors and booksellers. I have been asked to blog and write articles for newsletters, journals, magazines and papers. I have been interviewed, and asked to give presentations, and sit at tables signing books.
I am happy to do these things because I believe in The Crying Tree, and its power to reach people.
As far as writing another book. I am doing that – although much more slowly than the first.