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Remembering Carson: New fields keep memory of Woodbrook student alive
The shock from the year-ago death of third-grader Carson Raymond moved many in the community, particularly with his parents' ability–- just days after their son's death from swine flu complications atop a pre-existing heart condition–- to comfort others by urging calm and assuring that other children were not at risk.
Today, that combination of outreach and generosity remain evident as the parents keep their son's memory alive through the Carson Raymond Foundation, which has introduced dozens of students to t-ball through clinics and equipment scholarships and built a t-ball field at Woodbrook Elementary, which the 9-year-old attended at the time of his October 10, 2009 death.
"The Foundation is accomplishing what I was hoping it would do–- getting kids out to play," says John Raymond, citing a four-week t-ball clinic the Foundation sponsored last school year for Woodbrook kindergartners.
"The interaction with the kids, their big smiles, bright eyes when they got their certificate of accomplishment. They were jumping on us," he recalls. "That was nice."
Less enjoyable was the pre-construction dispute with some residents of the Woodbrook neighborhood, who expressed concern in meetings and on the Woodbrook neighborhood's blog that the new field's dugouts could shelter criminal activity. Raymond says he was surprised by how contentious the dispute became, as the Foundation board and residents met separately and in front of the School Board to hammer out a compromise. But while the process slowed down completion of the field, he believes the end result is a better design.
"We just changed the dimensions of it from 24 feet in length down to 18 feet in length, changed from block concrete to split face concrete– opened it up totally so the backsides are windows with chain-link fence," he says.
The Foundation has raised "in the $60,000 range," says Raymond, voicing hope that donations will continue to fund future projects–- such as a planned field at the city's Johnson Elementary School.
"We're definitely going to have clinics at Woodbrook and Johnson," he says, "and anybody who needs equipment, we'll provide it for them."
Raymond says that focusing on positives has helped the family, including Carson's two younger brothers, now ages 7 and 5. But family milestones–- such as Carson's September 25 birthday–- remain particularly difficult. Meanwhile, Carson's mother, Jennifer Raymond, has gone back to school to study nursing, a direct result of the death of her oldest child.
"Another positive comes out of a huge negative," says Raymond, who believes Carson's death changed him as well.
"This whole tragedy has changed my priorities, my focus," he says. "I'd always volunteered and done coaching, but when this happened, I thought, 'I have more to give.'"
On October 9, the Rock for a Cure fundraiser takes place at Fairview Swim Club with a portion of the proceeds going to the Foundation. For information on donating, volunteering, or suggesting a future project for the Foundation, visit www.carsonraymondfoundation.com.
3 comments
What is t-ball?
Any why doesn't the writer know enough to use abbreviations only AFTER spelling it out in first usage, like professional writers do?
"Any why"? Did you mean to write, "Anyway, why doesn't the writer know enough to use blah, blah, blah..."?
Why don't you check your OWN text, John N. Garner, like professional writers--or merely competent writers do?
T-ball or Tee Ball IS the name of the activity: that IS "spelling it out."
Why don't you Google it, Grumpy?
It is a beautiful ballfield. Quite honestly, I have never seen an ugly ball field.


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"Teaching the theory of interior design is incredibly interesting because there are no widely accepted key texts and concepts in this field. One needs to identify, discover, and develop them," says Ioanna Theocharopoulou, assistant professor of interior design in Parsons' School of Constructed Environments. "My challenge in creating a theory class in interiors has been deciding what materials to use and how to frame and construct a legitimate theory specific to interior design."
Theocharopoulou's professional
background has provided her with the tools to meet that challenge. She received
her diploma in architecture from the Architectural Association in London and subsequently founded an architectural firm in Greece. She went on to
earn a master of science degree in advanced architectural design and a PhD in
architecture history and theory from Columbia University. Before coming to Parsons,
she taught in the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at
defines design as "an argument that reflects how one sees the world. It has a
formal component but also social, cultural, and political dimensions. To make
these dimensions more explicit, you could consider what constitutes 'good'
design—is the iPad as 'good' a design as the LifeStraw portable water filter?
This is an example of the exciting questions our field is challenged to think about."
She and the students enrolled in the MFA ID program, as well as those in the MA
Design Studies program, just launched by Parsons' School of Art and Design
History and Theory, will work together to frame answers to questions like these.
Theocharopoulou says, "I run my classes as discussions based on texts that
students read and respond to critically in writing before each class. In my
best classes, there is a feeling of collective discovery of the material."
When Theocharopoulou is not teaching,
she is working on two new books and developing a conference series called ECOGRAM:
The Sustainability Question, which she founded with a colleague from Columbia
University in 2008. For Theocharopoulou, sustainability is the crucial issue
that will most profoundly affect constructed environments in the future. "Design
education will change dramatically as sustainability becomes more of a
mainstream concern rather than an idea disputed in certain academic circles.
This is already happening, of course. It means that more historical and
theoretical research will be needed, and I find that very exciting. I believe
that Parsons is taking sustainability and the broader issues it raises for the
design professions very seriously and that the university will potentially
become a leader in this area within the decade." With a faculty of forward-thinking
designers and scholars like Ioanna Theocharopoulou, Parsons is already becoming
a pioneering force in design for the 21st century.

subset: commoncrawl


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Oman: Oman women get equal rights to own land
In a significant move towards ensuring gender equality for women, Oman has amended its land law to give women equal rights as men to own residential plots.
Shaikh Saif bin Mohammed Al Shabibi, country's housing minister, said the recent royal decree amending the government land entitlement system was part of measures to revise the land law to cope with the housing development services being provided to the citizens.
"The recent amendment to the Land Law assures the Omani woman the right to own residential plot as in the case of man without any discrimination. This has been a clear indication to the role played by the woman as partner in the development process and her effective contribution to the construction sector," Shaikh Saif was quoted as saying by the Oman News Agency.
"As per the amendment to the government Land Entitlement Law, priority will be given to those who have not got a government plot or who do not own land at the time of submitting the application, whether by purchase, inheritance or grants," he said.
The ministry is coordinating with the authorities concerned to launch an electronic residential land application system using website and is also studying the possibility of receiving applications for land from citizens in various parts of the Sultanate.
24 November 2008
Source: rediff
Submitted on mar, 12/09/2008 - 01:00


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C.D.S. Newsletter December 2010
In this issue...
- Accurately Determine ASHRAE 90.1 Fan Full-Load Energy Rates in TRACE 700
- ASHRAE Standard 90.1-2010 Resources Now Available
- New Courses Available for LEED Credential Maintenance
- Meet the C.D.S. Support Staff...Scott Delo
Accurately Determine ASHRAE 90.1 Fan Full-Load Energy Rates in TRACE
TRACE 700 can automatically determine the fan full-load energy rates
based upon the type of analysis being performed: ASHRAE 90.1-2004
Energy Cost Budget (ECB), ASHRAE 90.1-2004 Performance Rating Method
(PRM) or the ASHRAE 90.1-2007 Performance Rating Method (PRM). Note
that the Energy Cost Budget method for ASHRAE 90.1-2007 is not
available, and the existing ASHRAE 90.1-2004 ECB calculations do not
account for Addenda AC (released March 2007).
These fan power calculations are enabled in two separate sections of TRACE:
Change Energy Parameters screen.
From the Actions menu, select Change Energy Parameters. Select the Apply ECB/PRM rules to fan sizing? check box, and then select the appropriate method. Currently, there are two options: ASHRAE Standard 90.1-2004 and ASHRAE Standard 90.1-2007 (PRM Only).
Calculate and View Results screen.
On the Calculate and View Results screen, under Base Alternative For, identify the baseline alternative for the method being used. Do not use the same alternative for both the Energy Cost Budget and Performance Rating Method calculations.
Special considerations for PRM calculations
When using the 2004 methodology, the appropriate fan type must be defined to ensure accurate calculations. If the system is constant volume, a constant-volume fan must be selected. If a variable-volume fan is selected in this scenario, the variable-volume fan power calculations will be used, and the calculated full-load energy rates will be wrong.
When using the 2007 fan power calculations, TRACE will look at the baseline system that is chosen to determine which set of calculations are required (see p. 25 of the Trane HVAC Resource Guide for Green Building Design). Choosing the correct type of fan is still important to account for proper unloading; however, the fan type will not impact the actual full-load calculation procedure. There is an additional option that is available when using the 2007 calculations that allows for fan pressure credits to be entered. The 90.1 Primary Fan Power Adjustment input on the Fans tab of Create Systems can be used to enter a summation of applicable pressure credits (in units of inches water gauge) for the system. This value is defined, within the Standard, as A.
Output reports
Two output reports show the calculated values from the procedure. The Equipment Energy Consumption report shows each applicable fan and the original user-entered full-load rate (designated as Orig. FL Rate =) along with the value that TRACE computed based upon the selected calculation procedure.
When the 2004 or 2007 PRM rules are used, an additional report is available. The PRM Fan Power Details report shows the values that are used for each calculation on a system-by-system basis. The PRM procedure determines the system fan power not individual fan power. The calculation procedure may be difficult and a multiple-fan procedure is not defined within the standard; therefore, TRACE uses a Fan Ratio Override to distribute the calculated system power among the applicable fans.
This PDF includes examples to illustrate how the fan power is calculated for several different types of systems using both the 2004 and 2007 rules. Note that some values are intentionally low to help illustrate and differentiate the procedure.
ASHRAE 90.1-2010 Resources Now Available
ANSI/ASHRAE/IESNA Standard 90.1-2010, Energy Standard for
Buildings Except Low-Rise Residential Buildings, was published
this fall. The standard set an aggressive goal of 30 percent energy
cost savings over the 2004 version. Trane resources are now available
that provide an overview of the major changes including updates to the
modeling section.
Trane has been actively involved in this development cycle of 90.1 and hosted the Engineers Newsletter Live program, "ASHRAE Standard 90.1-2010." The program now available on-demand, features Trane experts Mick Schwedler, immediate past Chair of the 90.1 committee, and Susanna Hanson, member of the 90.1 mechanical sub-committee, who discuss major changes to the envelope, mechanical, lighting, and addenda that were incorporated. Presenters also include Matthew Bye, product engineer, who discusses control requirements and Mike Patterson, sales training manager, who provides an overview of energy modeling changes. The on-demand course qualifies as 1.5 C.E. LEED-specific credits for LEED professional credential maintenance.
The latest Engineers Newsletter, available as a supplement to the broadcast, covers the mechanical system mandatory and prescriptive requirements. Contact your local Trane office or C.D.S. Support for more information.
New Courses Available for LEED Credential Maintenance
New on-demand courses have recently been added to the Trane.com
Continuing Education offering. Each course qualifies for 1.5
LEED-specific continuing education (CE) hours from the U.S. Green
Building Council (USGBC). As part of USGBC's credential maintenance
program, LEED APs are required to earn 30 CE hours biennially, 6 of
which must be LEED-specific.
- LEED 2009 Modeling and Energy Savings Details
- Energy-Saving Strategies for Rooftop VAV Systems Details
- ASHRAE Standard 90.1-2010 Details
The courses listed are offered at no charge. Visit www.trane.com/continuingeducation to view all online courses.
Meet the C.D.S. Support Staff... Scott Delo
Scott joined Trane in 2010 as a marketing engineer with C.D.S. He is a graduate of the Virginia Military Institute with a bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering. Scott is a native of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and a 2nd Lieutenant in the Wisconsin National Guard.
C.D.S. Newsletter March 2011
C.D.S. Newsletter October 2010


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I see what you did there.MarkBarrett wrote:The FJ clue put me in the right city and then I was left to guess as the names provided were not going to help me. Holmes & Watson seemed like an elementary guess and I went for them.
Oh, I don't know. I'd much rather have 3 wonderfully detailed, excellent episodes than 15 mediocre, filler episodes. I just wish we didn't have to wait so long between seasons!econgator wrote:They really need to have "seasons" longer than 3 episodes.


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RED CEO Jim Jannard, who generally manages to construct all sentences using only intensifiers and superlatives, is getting really excited on the RedUser forums again:
New announcement on Dec. 3rd. Everything has changed... just as we promised. :-)
:-)? :-)? What do your cryptic smilies mean, Jim?He goes on to say that the new announcement will make November 13th seem 'insignificant', which is, let's be honest here, quite a claim to accompany such a vague pre-announcement. [RedUser —Thanks, Øyvind]


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West Allen Street, Baxley
Appling County, Georgia
Appling County Tax Parcel ID No. C003 043
The right to redeem this property will expire and be forever barred on or after the 21st day of August, 2014.
The tax deed to which this notice relates is dated June 4, 2013, and is recorded in the Office of the Clerk of Superior Court, Appling County, Georgia, in Deed Book 500 page 740.
The property may be redeemed at any time before the 21st day of August, 2014, by payment of the redemption price as fixed and provided by law to the undersigned at the following address:
William K. Eason
155 Azalea Dr.
Baxley, GA 31513
Please be governed accordingly.
7-30, 8-6, 8-13 & 8-20ch
gpn20 NOTICE OF RIGHT OF REDEMPTION RE: Sarah Cora Lee Salem Martin
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Gene Kelly would be 100 years old today.
Singing in the Rain by Freed and Brown has been incorporated in animation and even the dark movie A Clockwork Orange. But, the screen version with Gene Kelly should put a smile on your face and get your toes tapping and deserves a place in any library media collection. Enjoy ~
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The Publib Archives
The Publib archives from the Webjunction listserve are available here: Archives (Wait – they really aren't anymore).
Archives compiled after Dec. 7, 2011 are available here: Archives
Filed under: Media selection | Tagged: Gene Kelly, media collection, Singing in the Rain | Leave a comment »


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Given the current climate, many authorities are placing restrictions on restaurant openings. We are continuously updating the availability of our partners to reflect these measures. Learn how to support your local restaurants.
Dishes cost around: $23
This restaurant offers:
Opening times and services may vary due to COVID-19. For specific information, please contact the restaurant directly.
Table Restaurant and Bar
41 Seah Street
Singapore 188396
Opening Times
Browse menus from restaurants like Table Restaurant and Bar. We try to update our menus as often as possible to provide you with the most accurate results. Get excited for your meal by checking the prices and food offering before heading to Table Restaurant and Bar. Quandoo does not guarantee prices or the availability of the displayed menu items on Table Restaurant and Bar.
Food sounds delicious?
Get a table before they're gone


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Book Nook
Good reads for educators
Words as Gateways
In this opening chapter of Vocabulary at the Center, veteran teachers Amy Benjamin and John T. Crow explain how words can function as "gateways" to student knowledge and academic achievement.
There is a lot that we don't know about the inner workings of the brain, but one thing is certain: vocabulary is central to its conscious operation.
Our brains are phenomenal machines — complex, interactive, and powerful, capable of feats that computer scientists can only dream of at the moment. Our brains are constantly bombarded by input from our senses, and from this information we form memories. Some are soon forgotten; others are stored in long-term memory, a process that, incidentally, occurs while we are asleep. However, memories are not stored as self-contained packets. Instead, as Sousa (2001, p. 50) notes, "Different parts of a memory are stored in various sites which reassemble when the memory is recalled." While recall can certainly be triggered by a smell, an image, a taste, etc., the primary key to recalling stored data is vocabulary. Hearing or reading a word or phrase allows you to access an incredible amount of information that you have stored about the targeted phenomenon.
To illustrate, think for a minute about kitchen. Just from seeing this word, you are able to easily recount the following:
- What a typical one contains.
- What yours looks like: the location of the appliances, the placement and color of the cabinets, the floor covering, etc.
- The last thing that was prepared in it.
- Where cups, dishes, silverware, etc. are stored in it.
- What your kitchen smells like when your favorite dish is being prepared.
- The dangers inherent in a kitchen.
- What your parents' kitchen looked like.
- Good or bad things that have happened to you in a kitchen.
This list could go on and on. Again, what serves as a gateway, as an entry point to this amazingly large body of knowledge? The single word kitchen. And, of course, this is just one of tens of thousands of concepts that you have stored, each of which interconnects into a vast collection of information that is scattered throughout your brain.
Robert Marzano, author of Building Background Knowledge for Academic Achievement (2004), defines a word as "...the label associated with a packet of knowledge stored in permanent memory" (p. 32). These packets of knowledge are what he refers to as background knowledge. Richard Anderson called each collection of knowledge a schema (plural schemata). Every English-speaking person has a kitchen schema, for example. Every person's kitchen schema certainly will not contain the same details: there will be cultural differences, experiential differences, socioeconomic differences, and so forth. But the mere mention of the word kitchen allows each person to access his or her kitchen schema instantly. Words trigger schemata, opening doors to all kinds of stored knowledge.
Now imagine what it would be like if we humans had not developed language. We could still have the same brains, brains that were capable of learning from experience. So we could still store all of the same information about kitchen, but we would have no easy way to access this information. Without the organizing principle of vocabulary, all of the facts and experiences that we accumulated across time concerning kitchen would be randomly scattered across our brains as they occurred and, as a result, be rendered almost inaccessible. Obviously, the ability to communicate is certainly a very powerful advantage that language provides us humans. However, the ability to organize and access stored information is, perhaps, equally as important as the ability to communicate this information. And, again, central to this organization and access is vocabulary.
All of your students know what a kitchen is. They know the word kitchen not only because they've heard it countless times, but also because of their experiences. And they've had reason to use the word kitchen. Now think about a word that might appear on one of your vocabulary lists, or in a poem, or a novel, or a historical document, or a newspaper editorial — a word that your students would not know. When they hear or read such a word, nothing is triggered: no images, no familiar experiences, no cavalcade of other words associated with it. Without the ability to access the background knowledge that might be associated with this word, your students' ability to interact with the content and to interrelate it with existing information — without this gateway to previous experiences, comprehension begins to grind to a halt. If too many gateways are blocked, comprehension stops completely.
For example, what if someone came up to you and asked, "How are transposons remethylated during epigenetic reprogramming?" If you share a background similar to ours, namely, a very limited exposure to microbiology, this question would not provide a gateway to a single schema, to the slightest bit of background knowledge. Vocabulary is at the center of our ability to communicate or to absorb new knowledge.
Vocabulary and Education
Research shows over and over that vocabulary skills correlate very highly with academic ability:
- Intelligence: Anderson and Freebody note that "the strong relationship between vocabulary and general intelligence is one of the most robust findings in the history of intelligence testing" (quoted in Marzano, 2004, p. 32). Vocabulary scores correlate more highly with intelligence levels than any other individual measure. That's why standardized tests such as the SAT, ACT, and GRE have a vocabulary component.
- Reading: Farley and Elmore studied college students enrolled in remedial reading. They found that vocabulary was the only statistically significant predictor of various reading skills. According to Fisher and Frey (2008), research confirms that "...students with smaller vocabularies and lower comprehension levels read with more trepidation, question the text less, and fail to notice when they don't understand something" (p. 4).
- Predictor of Academic Success: Reading comprehension has been repeatedly shown to be a good predictor of academic success at the high school and college levels. So the chain is complete: vocabulary is an excellent predictor of reading ability, and reading ability is an excellent predictor of academic success. Vocabulary truly is at the center — not only of the ELA classroom, but in all of the content areas.
Definitions Are Not Enough
Research has consistently shown that definitional information alone does not make a significant contribution to reading comprehension. In a foundational article that synthesizes vocabulary instruction research, Baumann and Kameenui cite several studies that support the following statement: Having students learn nothing more than words and their definitions does not significantly improve reading comprehension of texts that contain the targeted words. So preparing students for a reading passage by having them memorize words + definitions that the passage contains is of very limited value. Words are not directly linked to their definitions in one's brain. They are, instead, gateways to richly interconnected information that a word holds. If that's the way that words are stored in one's brain, doesn't it make sense that that's the way we should be teaching them?
It's not that we shouldn't be teaching definitions. Of course, a definition illuminates a word's meaning. What we're saying is that teaching the definition alone — matching a word to a corresponding synonym or phrase that crystallizes its meaning — is not sufficient information. In the next chapter, you'll discover more about what it actually means to know a word.
Vocabulary at the Center
Catherine Snow, Harvard professor and researcher on adolescent literacy and author of Preparing Our Teachers: Opportunities for Better Reading Instruction, is a strong advocate for vocabulary development as a key means for strengthening academic success. She stresses the importance of ongoing, persistent efforts at vocabulary development at all grade levels. Snow, whose research team made detailed observations about the achievement gap in Boston schools in the early 2000s, exposes the differences in vocabulary knowledge between "middle-class kids with well-educated parents" and "kids of undereducated parents who don't talk to them very much" (Vaishnav, 2009). The disadvantaged children's vocabulary was estimated at around 4,000 words in the third grade. The more advantaged children had a vocabulary of 12,000 words. Snow concludes that organized efforts to increase children's vocabulary in school as early as possible is the best way to shrink the achievement gap.
The outlook for students having a vocabulary deficit in the early grades is dismal because as they progress up the grades, two things happen to work against them:
- They encounter an increasing number of unknown words in content area text. Lacking vocabulary to begin with, they cannot use context clues.
- Decreasingly explicit vocabulary instruction is provided.
Vocabulary, then, is to academic learning what cardiovascular strength is to fitness. And just as most people have to go out of their way to achieve cardiovascular fitness by working out (rather than relying on their ordinary activities to build sufficient strength), educators have to be deliberate and conscious about improving students' vocabulary. Vocabulary development has to take its place at the center of the curriculum because it is foundational to all academic achievement.
Not Just for English Class
Vocabulary instruction is everybody's business. In all subject areas, students need to learn a specialized language: the language of mathematics, the language of science, the language of music, and so on. In addition to the specialized terminology that might be found in the glossary of a subject area textbook, we have a general level of language for academic conversation. Here's a sampling of the kinds of language students hear and read in high school on a typical day:
A square root of a nonnegative number N is one of two equal numbers whose product is N.
Our sales forecast for the next quarter will form the basis for our financial plans for the remainder of the current fiscal year. From the sales forecast we will develop production plans.
Videodisks, also called optical disks, make possible all kinds of new applications because of their storage capacity.
Molten rock, called magma, solidifies deep within the Earth. The final rock type is determined by the chemical composition of the magma and the rate at which it cooled.
The actors in this dreadful tragedy were a party of soldiers commanded by Captain Preston of the 29th regiment. This party, including the captain, consisted of eight, who are all committed to jail.
Verbs tell what a subject does, has, or is. The verb resides in the predicate, along with the modifiers of the verb, if there are any.
How many of the words in these sentences would stump your students? How helpful is the context? How many words have subject-specific meanings? How many words represent abstract qualities for which your students may have no concrete association? If words unlock known information, how much of that information remains locked when the students read these sentences in academic text? Yet, while all of this unfamiliar vocabulary is paraded across the students' eyes, it's very likely that no coordination of vocabulary is going on from class to class. Opportunities to have students make connections are missed.
In Active Literacy Across the Curriculum: Strategies for Reading, Writing, Speaking and Listening (2006), Heidi Hayes Jacobs says:
We should be pumping our students full of words. Although teachers engage in the well-established practice of giving out vocabulary lists of words developed by English teachers for students to look up and define and use in a sentence, these words are often de-contextualized or simply lifted from ongoing literature studies. What is rare is for the words to actually be used especially in a natural context, outside of a discussion about a particular work of literature. Providing a list of enriched words that make sense for application in any given unit, posting them with the highest visibility, and then requiring their usage in assignments are key to improving student success across the curriculum. (p. 34)
To get there, we need to make academic words readily available, that is, visible. A good way to do this is to provide word walls and word banks. A word wall is simply a classroom display of key words. Here are some ways to use word walls:
- Permanent word walls are lists of words that are staples in academic life, but that students don't ordinarily use or hear in their social conversations: analysis, determine, represent, outcome, identify, contrast, model, analogy, metaphor, etc. (See Appendix A: Generic Academic Vocabulary)
- Unit word walls are the kinds of words and phrases that would be in a glossary for a particular unit. Because such words are related, unit word walls should illustrate categories, hierarchies, taxonomies. The term semantic map is used to refer to displays like this.
- One-day word walls are simply a list of words on the board that will be used heavily over the course of the coming lesson or two. They focus students on key ideas.
A good word wall can consist of just a handful of words, and should not be too labor-intensive for you. Suggestion: Write your words on separate index cards, using a bold marker. That way, you will have a reusable set of words that you can rotate throughout the year.
When you have an in-class essay, consider giving students a word bank so that they can enrich their language. For example, if you wanted students to write a character sketch, your word bank might look like this:
Personality traits
Note that these words may not be unfamiliar to students, but they may be words that students are unlikely to use unless prompted. Notice also that these kinds of words will generate elevated thinking, not because they are fancy, but because they name abstract concepts.
Giving Vocabulary the Time It Deserves
I (Amy) once gave a reading comprehension workshop that had vocabulary instruction on the agenda. An English teacher's face lit up, and she said, "Oh, good. We really need that. I'm really looking for a way to get kids to remember the words. And use them. All they do is learn the words for the test." So I thought this would be a great workshop for this teacher. "Oh," I said, delightedly. "You've come to the right place."
So there I went, explaining the value of morphology charts, displaying semantic maps, talking about cross-disciplinary connections, touting the importance of etymology, sharing "word reports" that my students had written, explaining why we need to teach shades of meaning and multiple meanings of words in various contexts.
To my chagrin, the teacher who declared the need to "get kids to remember and use their vocabulary words" looked grim. "But that would take too long," she said. "I need to get through my vocabulary so I can teach writing and literature."
What we want to emphasize is that teaching vocabulary well — so that new words are understood, remembered, and used — is foundational. But we aren't being given any more time to do it. So, we have to make simultaneous use of instructional time. We need to teach words that fit right in to whatever else we are teaching so that vocabulary instruction is seen not as an "add on" but as a resource that feeds thinking. That is what we mean when we say that vocabulary is in the center.
From Vocabulary at the Center. Copyright 2009 by Eye On Education. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission of Eye On Education.


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There's an interesting new post over at Civil War Memory in which Kevin Levin distinguishes between two different types of Civil War unit histories. The first deals mainly with the engagements in which the unit participated, while the second deals with the social/political/economic backgrounds of the men who fought, and how these factors influenced their service.
Levin's discussion of the role of context in unit histories has a context of its own—the "new military history." It's one of the most inappropriately-named disciplines out there, since this "new military history" has been around for several decades. It's also a field that's difficult to define. It's easier to say what it's not; it doesn't deal with leaders, campaigns or battles. Its focus is on the wider social context within which battles take place. Levin's second group of unit history is thus a fine example of the new military history.
Being the Rev War nut that I am, when I read Levin's post I started thinking about how these issues relate to America's armed struggle for independence.
I've long maintained that the historiography of the Revolutionary War is quite distinct from that of the Civil War, partly because the latter is so much more extensive. The scholarly literature on the war—the actual fighting, I mean, as opposed to the Revolution in its broader sense as a political, economic, social, and military event—is not nearly so extensive as many people would probably believe.
If Rev War scholarship isn't that extensive, though, in the sense of the questions being asked it's very vibrant. Scholars of the struggle between Britain and America have actively engaged social and other contextual questions. Take, for example, Charles Neimeyer's America Goes to War: A Social History of the Continental Army, which contrasts the myth of the citizen soldier with the backgrounds of the men who filled the ranks. Or take Wayne E. Lee's excellent Crowds and Soldiers in Revolutionary North Carolina: The Culture of Violence in Riot and War, which explores the factors that both restrained and exacerbated armed violence during the Revolutionary era. I might also mention a classic of the "new military history" which deals with an earlier conflict, Fred Anderson's A People's Army: Massachusetts Soldiers and Society in the Seven Years' War, which uses the techniques of the new social history to draw a portrait of eighteenth-century New England militiamen.
Interestingly enough, though, I'm having a hard time coming up with Rev War unit histories. There are plenty of regional studies of the war in specific areas, and of course there is a classic book by Hugh Rankin on North Carolina troops in the war. But monographs on particular regiments or other specific units of organization are harder to come by. I think the reason is simply that the Rev War hasn't been investigated as extensively as other wars.
In fact, as I've said before, there is a dearth of "traditional," meat-and-potatoes military historiography when it comes to the Rev War. Major battles and campaigns haven't been investigated thoroughly, and significant figures lack modern biographies.
The good news is that those modern historians who have tackled battles and campaigns have brought the insights of the new military history to bear on them. Lawrence Babits and Joshua Howard have incorporated quantitative methodology and a sensitivity to social history into their investigations of Cowpens and Guilford. David Hackett Fischer's book on Trenton and Princeton employs the insights of cultural history to distinguish between American, British, and Hessian conduct in the field.
The Rev War historiography that's out there is of a high order, partly because scholars are using it to answer old questions about what happens in line of battle. All the books mentioned above are stellar examples of the possibilities the new military history offers. Today's best Rev War scholars are like the householder described in the first gospel, "which bringeth forth out of his treasure things new and old."


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Many companies rely on Oracle and SAP for their business-critical enterprise applications. Whether automating manufacturing processes, uncovering volatility in supply or demand, or running the latest financial analyses, the ability to access and analyze the right data quickly is essential. As business needs continue to evolve, adding new capabilities, increasing performance levels, and meeting service-level agreements (SLAs) with flat or declining budgets are pushing IT organizations to the breaking point. Oracle delivers all the pieces needed to accelerate SAP deployment and reduce costs throughout the SAP lifecycle. From operating environments, virtualization, and management tools, to innovative computing systems, storage, and networking solutions, Oracle integrates, optimizes, and tests it all. Now companies can take advantage of the unique capabilities of the Oracle Optimized Solution for SAP EDVHG RQ 2UDFOH�V SPARC SuperCluster, to simplify the data center, reduce total cost of ownership (TCO), improve workforce productivity and performance, and reduce risk.
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BEIJING - Doctors in China kept a man's severed hand alive for a month by attaching it to his leg, before restoring it to its usual position, a report said Tuesday.
The 25-year-old, identified by his nickname Xiao Wei, had his right hand sawn off by a drilling machine at work last month in Changde, in the central province of Hunan, the Xiaoxiang Morning Herald said.
The damage was too severe to re-attach the hand immediately, so surgeons in the provincial capital Changsha grafted it onto his lower leg, just above his Achilles tendon, to keep it alive while the healing process began.
Severed limbs can be saved if their blood supply is restored within several hours of their amputation, depending on the circumstances.
Earlier this month, doctors removed the hand and successfully reattached it to Xiao Wei's arm in a nine-hour operation, said the newspaper.
He will have to go through several further operations and rehabilitation therapy to restore the limb's function, it added.
"It's just like building a house," the paper quoted Tang Juyu, Xiao Wei's primary doctor, as saying. "Currently the main body is established. There will have to be interior decorations in the future."


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This tactic works well for a variety of reasons. It pokes fun at a part of the ceremony that audiences dread, making it part inside joke, part game--and it challenges the speakers to give crisper, tighter remarks. How might you use this as a speaker or organizer?
- Copy this idea for your next award ceremony. Ask winners for a headline, a 10-word acceptance for your 10th anniversary, a tweet-length remark, five words that capture why they got into the profession or the question they still wish they could answer. (Do specify a word limit, though, and announce it to the audience.)
- Use it for a panel discussion. Why put the audience through a panel that keeps answering questions with, "As Bill just said...." or "If I can just add to that...."? Tell the panelists they need to confine answers to five words and make a game out of the Q&A portion.
- Use it to introduce speakers. Ask moderators or introducers (at a ceremony, panel or conference) to intro the speakers with five keywords everyone should know about them...or ask speakers to submit five word or 140-character bios.
- Make the audience play. Ask for questions that are five words, 10 words or 140 characters long. It's a great way to engage audience members already on Twitter, which will count characters for them.
Share your ideas for keeping speaking roles short in the comments!


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Views of religious freemasons while performing prayer in the Little Hagia Sophia Mosque
Excerpt from Mr. Adnan Oktar's live program at Samsun AKS TV and TV Kayseri, October 24th, 2010
ADNAN OKTAR: Look, here you see almost everyone you have seen here before. These are The Templars, 33rd degree Freemasons. You see that they are all together performing prayers at the mosque.
PRESENTER: Masha'Allah.
OKTAR BABUNA:Masha'Allah.
ADNAN OKTAR:They have performed prayers along with the community. They have performed their ablution according to the customs. Masha'Allah this is a great miracle. This is a very splendid thing masha'Allah.
OKTAR BABUNA:Masha'Allah. They have performed prayers in their previous visit as well Master. You do know better insha'Allah.
ADNAN OKTAR:Masha'Allah. They have a profound admiration towards Islam, they have great affection. They just do not want bigotry. And that is okay, Masha'Allah.
OKTAR BABUNA: Masha'Allah. But they have all said that you became instrumental in them attaining this masha'Allah.
ADNAN OKTAR: Masha'Allah. Alhamdulillah. Which mosque is this?
OKTAR BABUNA:The Little Hagia Sophia.
ADNAN OKTAR: The Little Hagia Sophia. Masha'Allah. Masha'Allah. Okay that is enough for now.
ADNAN OKTAR: Masha'Allah they have been saying "Master, why are you meeting with Freemasons?" My brother, you become the means to that as well. See that I have become instrumental in their performing prayers alhamdulillah. They have all obtained copies of the Qur'an. They are looking into it. And what's more they have started to memorize the verses. Masha'Allah.
OKTAR BABUNA:Masha'Allah.
ADNAN OKTAR:Many of them have memorized Qur'anic verses.
OKTAR BABUNA:Masha'Allah. May Allah be pleased with you Master, yes.
ADNAN OKTAR: Last night they have been talking about the Qur'an up until 4 o'clock in the morning. See that, the eyes of the Evangelical one was filled with tears when he heard the verses of the Qur'an.
OKTAR BABUNA:Yes. Yes, Master.
ADNAN OKTAR:Masha'Allah. How nice.
OKTAR BABUNA:He said when he saw your books his eyes were filled with tears. And he said that he had kneeled down and thanked Allah when he saw the titles of your books, he said.
ADNAN OKTAR:Masha'Allah. Where did he see them?
OKTAR BABUNA:In the gift boxes, they were given to them in the hotel. He said "I opened them and only looked through the titles and my eyes were filled with tears so I dropped down to my knees and thanked Allah."
ADNAN OKTAR:Who gave them the gifts?
OKTAR BABUNA: Our friends.
ADNAN OKTAR: Alright masha'Allah. Alhamdulillah.
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Remarks by Angel Gurría, OECD Secretary-General, delivered at the International Forum of Americas
Montreal, 7 June 2010
Ladies and gentlemen,
It is an honour and a pleasure to be here and address this distinguished audience.
I would like to share with you today the OECD vision of the global economic outlook and our assessment of the challenges lying ahead.
Our recent Economic Outlook, published during our Ministerial Meeting two weeks ago, identified fiscal consolidation as the number-one longer-term challenge facing many OECD countries… Indeed, many of our Member countries are facing very unfavourable government debt dynamics. Rising indebtedness raises risk premia, which adds in turn to the debt burden while holding back growth, and this has further adverse consequences on debt sustainability. How to get out of this dangerous spiral? How can we address this challenge while at the same time keeping an eye to the need to support a still fragile recovery?
The world is emerging from the deepest recession since the 1930s. Yes, the recovery is under way. But it is fragile and is proceeding at a different pace in the different regions of the OECD. Moreover, the crisis has left most OECD countries with an unenviable legacy of high unemployment, lower potential growth, as well as large government deficits and rapidly accumulating government indebtedness.
We estimate that potential output has fallen by some 3% or 4% in the OECD area as a whole as a result of the crisis. This reflects the severity of the crisis and is in part due to the increase in unemployment. The OECD-wide unemployment rate rose to a high of 8.8% in December 2009, from a 25-year low of 5.6% in late 2007. In the Economic Outlook we project the unemployment rate in the OECD to decline, but only slowly, remaining above 8% through 2011.
The crisis has wreaked havoc in the public finances. Almost everywhere in the OECD area discretionary fiscal measures, coupled with cyclical revenue losses and expenditure increases (in part related to high unemployment), have resulted in sharp increases in budget deficits and a corresponding build-up of government indebtedness. As a result, budget deficit in the OECD area as a whole soared in 2009 and will remain close to 8% of GDP in 2010. More worryingly, government debt will equal annual GDP by 2011.
This combination poses tremendous challenges going forward.
This was illustrated by the severe distress in sovereign debt markets recently seen in Europe. Here we saw starkly the consequences of high deficits, growing indebtedness and the perception of weak growth prospects. Indeed, this episode has been a wake-up call to many countries, and not just those in the euro area. They are now stepping up plans for fiscal consolidation, as well as accelerating much-needed fundamental structural reforms.
An increasing number of countries have already begun to remove stimulus, and articulate plans for fiscal consolidation. But the pace and magnitude of fiscal consolidation needs to depend on individual country conditions and the state of the public finances and they need to be internationally consistent
Source: Economic Outlook database
In this regard, our advice is that fiscal consolidation should be as growth-friendly as possible. This means that, on the spending side, growth-enhancing programmes, such as on human capital accumulation, R&D and infrastructure investment should be preserved to the extent possible. So should programmes aimed at ameliorating any long-term negative impacts of the downturn – particularly in the labour market. At the same time, the scope for making government spending more cost-effective should not be underestimated, for example in the areas of health care and education. Where revenue hikes are needed, emphasis should be placed on the least distortive taxes, such as those on property rather than on labour and income.
Beyond the short-term, structural reform will be needed to unlock opportunities for investment, to boost labour productivity and to ensure that labour resources are fully utilised. This is essential for restoring potential growth.
Coordination of fiscal and monetary policies is also an important consideration. This is particularly the case as interest rates in most regions are effectively at zero and a long way below any estimates of a neutral rate. Monetary normalisation will take some time, especially unwinding the unconventional measures taken in many countries.
Last but not least, the international dimension of consolidation needs to be taken into account. Indeed, if adjustment takes place at more or less the same time in many countries, there is a risk of a downward spiral bringing the world economy back to recession.
Let me now discuss in more details the Canadian situation. Like in most other OECD countries, Canada's fiscal position slipped dramatically through the recession, from a modest surplus in 2008 to a deficit of over 5% of GDP last year. Now that the recession has ended and with a moderate recovery projected, we foresee a healthy improvement in the fiscal position over the next two years. Nevertheless, achieving a positive fiscal balance is expected to take several more years.
It is our assessment that fiscal consolidation could be accelerated. The fiscal tightening should be done at both the federal level and in nearly all provinces and territories. Indeed, the two largest provinces, Ontario and Quebec, face especially challenging fiscal situations.
Moreover, as recently pointed out by David Dodge, Canada's relatively sound position masks
important structural issues that loom on the horizon and need immediate attention. Not the
least of these are demographic pressures which are set to intensify. These pressures will hit hardest at the provincial level, which bears responsibility for health care.
Consolidation strategies should thus focus on curbing public expenditures, particularly in health care. Transparency and credibility are important ingredients of a sustained fiscal effort, and Canada has a strong and credible record to build upon.
But fiscal discipline can still be made stronger. Fiscal rules – whether on deficits, debt or spending – have proved effective as consolidation enforcement mechanisms in the experience of many OECD countries. They should be considered in Canada. An additional advantage of fiscal rules is that they might also help a number of jurisdictions implement more prudent approaches to saving and reduce the pro cyclicality of their fiscal policies.
These and other issues will be discussed in more depth in our upcoming Economic Survey of Canada, which is expected to be published later in the year.
To sum up, we may be emerging from the crisis, but the recovery is still fragile and might well be bumpy. We are now entering a long phase of harsh fiscal consolidation. We should walk this painful road firmly but smartly, not forgetting structural reforms focusing on preparing the economy to top new sources of growth, such as innovation and green growth. We are working on these at the OECD and just delivered a new Innovation Strategy, while our new Green Growth Strategy will be finalised next year. These are the avenues out of the crisis.
Thank you for your attention. I look forward to a lively debate.
Related Documents


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Preschool Class Craft: Part 4
Preschool Class Craft: Part 3
Preschool Class Craft: Part 2
Preschool Class Craft: Part 1
Yesterday I got to drag in two children and a hand truck loaded with the planter bench and all the supplies I would need to get 14 kids and 2 teachers hand printing these benches. I had help from two other moms (THANK YOU SO MUCH!) which helped immensely. I mixed up the paint and called kids over two at a time.
Here is Maben and myself doing the hand print flowers. Colton watching us in the background.
Of course my child would be the ONLY one who smudged his hand print. Oh well, it adds character. It definitely says, "I'm three years old!"
The bench turned out AMAZING! I wish I would have taken photos of it outside, but I started carting it inside after putting a clear coat on it. Since I was pushing a stroller and pulling a hand truck with a bench on it and it didn't don on me until I was inside, I said to myself, "Yeah, inside photos will do!"
Maben's hand print is the smudged one on the right. There is also a yellow thumbprint in the center of each flower.
The teacher's hand prints are on the left end. We had to turn their hands a little since their hands are much larger than 3 and 4 year olds.
I am so unbelievably happy with how this all turned out. I think everyone will be more than pleased with how it turned out and I will update you on how it does in the Preschool Auction!
I am definitely showing this off at the links below.


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WARNING: Full Cosmopolis spoilers follow…IGN: Many people left Cosmopolis with questions, how do you feel that features like "Citizens of Cosmopolis" are going to illuminate things, or further the conversation?
David Cronenberg: I think the "making of" is actually longer than the movie, so it should do something along those lines. Obviously anyone who bought the DVD is interested enough in the movie to pursue it. I think one of the reasons that I like doing a really good "making of" is that we try very hard when we do that to not just make it a sort of fluff piece where everybody says, "it was great working with everybody," but to really show what the process of making the movie was. As a result, for example, it's great for film students and film enthusiasts because it's as close as some people get to really being on a film set. And in this case it's an unusual film set, obviously, because of the limo and so on. So we really took a lot of care to make sure that it was accurate, honest, straightforward and illuminating.
IGN: One of the things that the film is dealing with, thematically, is what the marketing materials refer to as "contemporary obsessions." In other words: Money, power and technology. In my mind our obsessions are the same as they've ever been, they just kind of have a different coat of paint. We've been obsessed with money, power and technology through the millennium, starting with fire, it's just that it looks slightly different now. I'm wondering what your perception is, though. Do you think a technological obsession is specifically a contemporary concern? Or are these just human obsessions?
Cronenberg: I think that's accurate, yeah. I mean it's well known I think, if you're an artist, that you have to be very particular in order to be universal. You have to be very specific, and Don Delillo chose the world of finance and this particular character and his sort of bubble/hermetically sealed existence in that world to really talk about the human condition in general. I think that's the way it works. So, although you could see the movie and the book as being about finance on Wall Street, I think that's just a jumping off spot to talk about more universal aspects of what it is to be a human being.
IGN: One of the things that feels universal in the movie is the idea of razing, or destroying things. There's kind of a revolution going on as Robert Pattinson's character, Eric Packer, is razing (intentionally or not) his company, and in effect his life – his marriage, his relationships, and so on. For you, is that about doing what's necessary for change? Kind of like burning the earth.
Cronenberg: Well it's kind of a cliché that capitalism is creative destruction, but there's some truth to that. I mean capitalism doesn't exist outside of human society. There's no natural equivalent to capitalism, really. Although people like to think of it as survival of the fittest, or this or that, in fact it's a uniquely human invention. It's kind of strange isn't it? Because we invented money, but we can't control it. You know you'd think that the world could also say: "Look, we've invented this, and things are going wrong, and we're all suffering, so let's just fix it, because we can." It's not the same thing as a natural disaster like a tsunami or an earthquake where we can't control it. But it seems to take on a life of its own so that a financial disaster is like a tsunami. It's really intriguing, and I think that the movie discusses that on a metaphorical level.
IGN: This particular character, Eric Packer, is forced into a confrontation with this other side to himself in the Paul Giamatti character, Benno Levin. They're like two sides of a coin and Packer's confrontation with Benno amounts to the final destruction of his ego and the life he had created for himself, and buried himself in. It feels like in order for him to have that confrontation that there has to be a level of violence between them. I'm wondering if that's part of your overall interest in violence, the idea that the violent destruction of the ego is in some ways necessary for each of us as individuals.
Cronenberg: It's so interesting that you say that because in the movie I made before this, A Dangerous Method, the character played by Keira Knightley, Sabina Spielrein, one of her revelations was the destruction of the ego in sexuality and the sexual act, and the fear and the anxiety that that alone can cause. So, the protection of the ego can be quite a desperate undertaking. I think if you look at it, you'll see that every day in your social life. With Eric, he comes to a point where he wants to disappear, he wants to dissolve. He wants to destroy the ego that he has created. And that means also destroying the life that he's created for himself. That's what he's seeking. People were very shocked when he shoots Torval, his bodyguard in the film, and I think perhaps wondered why he would do such a thing. Torval, though he's hired to protect him, is not just a bodyguard, he's also a he represents the life that Eric has created for himself. He represents and embodies that, so the first thing he has to get rid of is Torval, if he's going to get rid of his life. Because Torval nags him to be careful and protect himself, he's really protective of the life that Eric has created. So you get this strange paradox where he has to destroy a person that he's hired to keep himself safe.
Continue on to read about Cronenberg's The Dark Knight Rises comments, big budget movies and more Cosmopolis...


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Next time you're considering international standbys for Chinese or Japanese, try branching out to Korean fare. With some subtle similarities to those other Asian cuisines, Korean food has its own flavor profiles. Go as a group, so everyone can pick an appetizer or entrée to share.
For an appetizer, start with haemul pajeon, a savory seafood pancake served with a tangy and spicy soy dipping sauce. Packed with scallions and an array of seafood — octopus, squid, shrimp, oysters and clams — folded into the batter, the slightly spongy haemul pajeon is lighter than an omelet but denser than a traditional American pancake. Savory, slightly sweet and salty combine for one flavorful dish.
Korean cuisine centers around the trifecta of rice, vegetables and meat. However, the rice and a wide range of vegetables take center stage. Veggies are often uncooked, in salads or pickled, or incorporated into soups, stews and stir-fried dishes.
Meals are served with a slew of side dishes called banchan, which arrive in small bowls intended for sharing and can be refilled upon request. Ingredients vary depending on the availability and seasonality of produce: pickled vegetables, cubed radishes, green onion salad, mung bean sprouts and mung bean jelly. Items may be raw, boiled, fried, sautéed, fermented, dried or steamed. The number of side dishes presented is based on the number of table guests and the importance of the occasion. For a casual table of four, roughly six items are served.
The traditional side dish kimchi — fermented cabbage mixed with Korean radish, and sometimes cucumber, along with ginger, scallions, garlic and chili pepper — mixes spicy, sweet, salty and sour sensations.
Originating almost 4,000 years ago in ancient Korea, kimchi is served in both Korea and Japan. Recipes vary by region and by seasonality of ingredients.
Originally, making kimchi was a community event, drawing families together for several days to prepare several hundred heads of cabbage. In the 1700s, red chili peppers were introduced into the mix as a standard ingredient, adding a noticeable spice.
Popular throughout Asia, Gogigui (Korean barbecue) is served on a communal platter with a number of side dishes and sauces. The meat, typically beef, pork or chicken, is thinly sliced and may be seasoned before it's roasted.
The most popular Korean barbecue, Bulgogi (which can be spelled a number of ways — Korean words do not translate perfectly into English), is often prepared tableside on a sizzling hot skillet. After being thinly sliced or shredded, the meat is marinated in a mix of soy sauce, sesame oil, garlic, sugar, scallions and pepper. Tablemates take turns turning the meat as it cooks and then distribute among everyone's plates (or you can request the chef cook it for you in the kitchen). Galbi (sometimes spelled kalbi) is thin slices of pork or beef short ribs cooked on a metal plate over charcoal in the center of the table. It's worth noting that Korean chopsticks are metal, not wooden.
The signature bibimbap, or "mixed rice," is cooked in a stone pot called a dolsot; the dish arrives at the table piping hot. Inside the pot, you'll find a colorful assortment of vegetables (typical offerings include julienned cucumber, zucchini, daikon, mushrooms, spinach and soybean spouts) arranged in rows for visual appeal along with a generous heap of warm white rice, sliced meat and a spicy chili pepper paste. On top sits a raw egg — before you eat bibimbap, you break the yolk and mix everything together, helping to cook the egg. Since the hot stone pot is coated with sesame oil, the rice at the bottom transforms into a crispy, crunchy layer.
To try these items locally, head to Hon Korean (5161 Beach Blvd., Ste. 5, Southside, 396-4008) or Sam Won Garden (4345 University Blvd. S., 737-3650). Sam Won's seafood pancake tops Hon's, but I preferred the bibimbap at Hon. Koji Sushi (The Jacksonville Landing, 2 Independent Drive, Ste. 222, Downtown, 350-9911) offers a few Korean choices: galbi, bibimbap and two dolsot pots — vegetable and marinated beef — along with a kimchi soup.


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We Invest In Lifetime Moments
With the sluggish economy and the cost of extra school activities on the rise, one would think that prom might suffer with a lack of participation and ticket sales. Exactly why would teens (and more importantly, their parents) still be willing to accept the purportedly high price tag of this one-night event? A survey of customers from Stumps Party, a national prom supplies and event supplies company, suggests that schools value prom traditions.
Introduction to the Romanticism of Prom Begins at a Young Age
In today's society, individuals become acclimated to the custom and tradition of prom and grand dances while still young. From the moment a little girl sees Cinderella for the first time, she starts planning for the big ball. Who doesn't want to be a Disney princess for a day? Pop culture has kept that feeling alive for generations with films like Grease, Footloose, Pretty in Pink, Never Been Kissed and Twilight that remind us that prom was, and still is, a big deal. By the time the real dance comes along, the anticipation of the event is at a crescendo-who can say no to that?
Planning for the Event Prompts a Sense of School Unity
Today's proms aren't thrown together at the last minute. In many cases, planning begins as early as the beginning of the school year. Faculty advisers organize student prom committees. These committees spearhead tasks such as selecting prom themes, setting budgets and coming up with fundraising ideas. Between planning the fundraisers, soliciting donations, and arranging groups of volunteers to pitch in with the activities, participating students learn skills such as effective communication and leadership, organization and delegation skills, and money management. For the student body at large, those who lend a hand to these moneymaking efforts learn about teamwork and responsibility.
Kate Henderson, a prom adviser at Wendover High School, in Wendover, Utah says, "If our prom did not exist there would be a huge hole in our junior program. They work concessions all year and clean the gym after all home games to raise enough money to afford a nice prom. We also have an absentee and tardy policy that hinges on all extracurricular activities, which prom is part of. If students have unexcused absences or tardies, they cannot attend prom. The students work very hard to be eligible to go." All in all, the planning and preparation of prom helps to promote a sense of accomplishment for all those involved. These lessons alone may be well worth the time and money a school invests in prom.
Traditions are passed from one class to another. In fact, the tradition of giving prom memory booklets to couples dates back to 1926, when Stumps first introduced these keepsake favors. Trends may change (today swag bags are hot), but taking pictures at parents' homes, crowning the king and queen, and decorating the dance remain.
Prom is Unlike Any Other School Dance Event
What sets prom apart from other dances and school events? Prom's role in American culture dates back to the debutante balls of the wealthy. By 1894 middle-class parents wanted institutionalized settings to instill etiquette, so proms spread to elite colleges. By the early 1900's, proms were in high schools. Since then, tens of millions of students have taken part in the prom tradition. Today, most high schools only allow juniors and seniors to purchase tickets to the prom. Students see prom as a privilege, a rite of passage, of having paid their dues. It's like a special induction into an exclusive club where they have now earned the right to attend this big night. Dances take place in fully decorated, school gymnasiums, cafeterias, and banquet halls. For many students, especially seniors, it is the last big occasion before graduation activities commence and so it represents a sort of end to adolescence. Prom offers one last night to be together as a group, to sing and dance and celebrate collectively.
After Prom Activities Offer Safe Alternatives For Students
Many schools now offer an after-prom tradition that allows students the options of an all night, alcohol free event full of music, games and activities. Students decorate these events in popular themes, just like they do with prom. Today's favorites include Paris, Mardi Gras, Under the Sea, Candy, Casino, or City prom themes. Parents and teachers chaperone during the night. Kayleigh Overmyer, a prom committee member and junior at Maumee High School says "After-prom is as popular, if not more so, than prom. It's so much fun that we will sell as many tickets to that as we will to the actual prom, maybe a bit more!" Deejays often play popular music at after-prom, too.
According to Mark Charvat, a prom deejay with over 31 years of experience at J & M Productions, this year's popular musical artists include Usher and LMFAO. Charvat explains, "Top slow songs are requested according to the prom's theme. For example, Aerosmith's I Don't Want to Miss a Thing is often requested at Hollywood theme proms because it was the leading song from the movie, Armageddon." This year, Celine Dion's My Heart Will Go On, the theme song from the movie, Titanic is a popular, prom song.
After prom events maintain a lock-in atmosphere in which students must remain inside the venue until the conclusion of the event and thus putting the fears of many parents to rest in regards to their safety after prom is over.
Prom Is A Finale Most Will Not Skip
When kids look to their years in high school, there are many milestones they will mark: their sweet 16, getting their driver's license, graduation, and yes, prom. Because the reality is, there isn't any other event quite like prom, and there may not ever be. It is steeped in nostalgia in a way that nothing else is. It is the culmination of years of anticipation and whether it lives up to expectations or not, it will always be the apex of all high school dances, that by which all others are measured. It marks the closing of a school year and often a school career, and it caps off an era of memories and experiences that can't be replaced. It still remains an event not to be missed. Jacquie Downey, Director of Sales and Marketing for Stumps Party, adds, "Prom is a rite of passage and a memory that will last a life time. Today's teens will be telling their children about the fun they had at prom and so on. Some experiences are just worth the investment. Prom is one of those events."


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--and we chilled at a great big mansion:
We were there for the wedding of Ashwin, Matt's high school best friend, to his lady Reva. Because I am a big nerd, I was so way super-stoked about the wedding, which was to be a traditional Gandharva vivaah ceremony (done according to the Dnyanaprabodhini prodecure, with some of the bride's Nepali traditions added in, as well), and because I am a really, really, REALLY big nerd, I am going to tell you all about it:
So first is the simaantapujan, which used to be the welcoming of the groom's party to the bride's hometown for the wedding, but for our purposes now it's this awesome groom's party parade, with drumming and dancing. That leads to the madhuparka, in which the bride and groom have a little honey and yogurt snack to calm them down.
Then comes the vivaah sankalpa, in which the bride and groom and their families pray for a happy marriage, and then they worship the statue of Lord Ganesh that's there, and then a prayer to the family deity, and then the bride and groom pray for a happy day--that's the Punyahavaachan.
Then Reva's brothers gave her away, which is the Kanyaadaan.
Then comes the Swayamwar. The bride and groom garland each other, then stand with a curtain in between them and their families behind them while some poetry is recited, and at the end of each verse in the poem, the guests throw rose petals at them.
Then the bride and groom take their oaths, which is the Niyama-bandha.
Then Reva got a necklace that shows she's married, and Ashwin put some vermillion on her forehead, and the couple put on Mangalsutra, necklaces to protect them from the ugly thoughts of other people.
Then Ashwin and Reva put some popped rice in a little fire, which is the Laajaahoma, and Reva stood with her right foot on a rock for a minute. And then Reva's brother symbolically twisted Ashwin's ear to remind him to be nice to his sister, and Ashwin gave him a present so he wouldn't get his ear twisted again.
The most beautiful part of the ceremony is the Saptapadi, in which the bride and groom take seven steps and make seven resolutions together, and then we get to clap for them.
Then is the Dhruvadarshan, in which the priest has the couple look north, to the pole star, and then is the Uttarang Homa, in which the couple prays for leniency in case they messed something up in the ceremony.
Then we get to go up and offer congratulations, which is the Aashirwaad, and that concludes the formal portion of the day.
And yes, including the parade, I'd say the whole thing took a good two hours, but it was outside, and if you were near the back of the tent you were quite free to carry on your own conversations or pop out to the refreshments table or let your kids run around on the grass for a while. Sydney played quietly with her toys for the entire ceremony, but Will had to go with mom and chill out climbing trees out of earshot for a while, after driving herself hysterical in shame and grief due to mistakenly leaning against a pillar and knocking it and a big basket of flowers over. Nobody cared but her, but she does tend to be her own harshest critic.
After the ceremony we wandered the estate for a while and had ourselves some cocktails and samosas and vegetable kabobs (this was possibly my favorite wedding ever), and then re-stuffed ourselves with even more delicious Indian food at the reception:
I'll tell you, I like anyplace that has a buffet, and if you have a buffet of delicious, authentic Indian food? Well, you've just won my heart.
Will crashed out before dinner, even-- but Syd held out----for a while:
With our two little girls fast asleep on the sidelines, and ourselves full of Indian food and booze (well, I was full of booze at least--I was owed it, after the ridiculous wedding that took place last time we were in Cali), we then got to dance for an hour or so. Another awesome thing about this wedding? Contemporary Indian pop music. Waaaaay better than YMCA. Except for the parts where the DJ would turn the music down so that everybody else but us could scream the popular lyrics, it was perfect. Absolutely perfect.
And then both girls simultaneously wet their party dresses in their sleep, and Matt's suit jacket that Willow was sleeping on, and we got to carry them, urine-soaked and whimpering yet still asleep and thus dead weight, the quarter-mile down the path to the entrance of the park and then further on to the car. So yeah, my back kills today, but it was so worth it.
Tomorrow, we talk beaches.


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So there's this 6-thingy meme going about, and I was tagged in Meme of the Sixes by Imraith!.
Me! Me!
Of course I wasn't going to respond, because I set the rules and there was nothing in them about posting twice…
Then it occurred to me that nearly everyone else changed the rules as they went along, and…
It will drive Navimie crazy if she has to go full circle to me in her flow chart, and…
It will take Martha down an additional level of her tree, and …
I am generally a pain in the arse and I hate to disappoint.
Before I go any further, while Navimie has given up on the flow chart (at the 60 hour mark), Martha is giving you one more day to make your Sixth post before she stops updating it… go… go… go…
as of this morning, Martha says…
I haven't done today's update yet, but here are the stats from yesterday:
289 tags were made
203 blogs were tagged
14 people posted, but didn't tag anyone
47 people posted and tagged others
7 people posted and tagged all of their readers
The tree is currently 9 tags deep
…So there are 135 blogs that have yet to post and Good Gravy what was I thinking! O_o;; (I think I'm going to give up around Wednesday and declare it Too Big To Continue™.)
But on the good side, now I have lots of new blogs to read!
So where did I go?
Without making too many promises about being here for the long term, or being consistent, or even being remotely humorous, I have to hang around long enough for Bear to forgive me for making him work for me.
Anyway, over the last twelve months I have been silly busy at work, 8 days a week, 25 hours a day. I've had to keep a bottle under my desk for… well, let's not go there…
For a while there I was playing a fair bit of WoW, but that was because I was chained to my desk monitoring things for 24-48 hour stretches, but I could squeeze out BGs (and check back in on work while waiting for mates to gear, queues to pop, and of course, for the Spirit Healer to Rez.)
I was also repeatedly wiping on a real world raid boss, in my backyard, all of my backyard. Let me assure you, the trash is worse than the main boss, it's name being cooch grass (or satan's grass as I call it). After 2 years of trying to compost it, I finally admit defeat. Five foot high, still growing, pulling my fence down… it's a nightmare.
Most importantly I have been constantly entertained and educated by the little fella, or the not-so-little-fella, as he is now.
We went to the beach for New Years and fun was had from the moment of arrival, until we walked back through the door to home.
He's started at "big" school, just a few weeks back and I think he's liking it. This 1st month he only does four days a week, but he is now complaining about the extra day with Dad, he wants to be at school full time.
So it's been interesting times in the home of the Gnome, but its good to be back, back with the old names, meeting the new names.
I even got to do a few WSG's with Pugnacious Priest last night (see, one of my meme dreams came true!).
Oh.. btw… I got a clean sweep this meme around… 6 for 6!
So before I lay this meme to rest for another 3 years, go check on Martha's tree, make sure you are on there, if not, get on there… You have 24 hours!
Gnomer and Out!
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