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If you're looking for an absolutely top-notch dining experience, you should really check out the Chef's Table at The Mill House Maui. Hands down, this is the best dinner on the island. The restaurant is nestled up against the West Maui mountains in the heart of the Maui Tropical Plantation. Chef Jeff Scheer and his team do an incredible job creating a 7-course dinner, made with the freshest local ingredients and modernist preparations which will surprise and delight your taste buds.
Make reservations early, seats fill up fast.
Posted in Maui, Photography |
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Iris and Ernest were such a fun couple to work with. Their excitement and love bubbled and burst through every photograph.
Ernest looked absolutely charming in his three-piece gray suite and light pink bow-tie that perfectly matched his bride's bouquet. Iris was the epitome of bridal beauty in her simple and elegant strapless gown and her matching dainty jewelry. The two were full of so much joy–not even the windy weather could put a damper on their day.
After the ceremony on the beach-front lawn of the Andaz Maui Resort, our newlyweds took to the sand for their first photoshoot as husband and wife. Something I absolutely love about living and working on Maui is the unexpected and magical moments that the island offers. Although we expected the photoshoot to be just the bride and groom, we were blessed with the opportunity to incorporate the first sea turtle the couple had ever seen into some of their photos.
It is moments like these that remind me how unique Maui is and how special it is to take some of life's most monumental steps surrounded by so much natural beauty.
Wedding Ceremony + Reception: Andaz Maui at Wailea Resort
Wedding Coordinator: Melissa of Andaz Maui
Florals: Mandy Grace Designs
Officiant: Keli'i Brown
Calligraphy: Miss B Calligraphy
Entertainment: Manutea Nui E
Musician: David Wolf
Writer: Nicole Brooke Rosen
Tags: andaz, Andaz Maui Resort, classy beach wedding, classy wedding, Hawaii, island wedding, Maui, maui photographer, maui wedding, maui wedding photographer, Maui Wedding Venue, Photographer, Photography, Wedding, weddingphotography Posted in Beach Wedding, Maui, Maui Wedding, outdoor wedding, Photographer, Photography, Wedding Photography, Weddings |
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Breanne was the epitome of beach-elegance as she stood in her lace barefoot sandals on the sandy shores of Maluaka Beach with Marc at their intimate beach wedding. As with life and love, the beauty of the event was within the delicate details.
Flowers of lace decorated the straps of our bride's gown, perfectly framing the long strand of pearls and crystals draped along her spine. The soft vanilla color palette worn by the wedding party gave a dreamlike quality to the day, complimenting the creamy rose orchid florals by Asa Flowers and Na Pua Anuhea Leis.
We were so blessed to be a part of this beautiful day. Thank you, Breanne and Marc, for choosing Anna Kim Photography to help document your Maui wedding day.
Wedding Venue: Maluaka Beach
Wedding Coordinator: Patty Flax-Event Specialist and Kendall Higashino- On site planner from White Orchid Wedding
Photographer: Jessica of Anna Kim Photography
Hair + Makeup: Meili Autumn Beauty
Florals: Asa Flowers + Na Pua Anuhea Leis
Music: Alika Nakooka
Officiant: Reverend Alapaki
Writer: Nicole Rosen
Tags: beach wedding, Hawaii, Maui, maui wedding, maui wedding photographer, maui wedding photography, wedding photography Posted in Associate Photographer Jessica, Beach Wedding, Maui, Maui Wedding, Photographer, Photography, Wedding Photography, Weddings |
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I think what I love most about the photographs of Mai and her parents are the lessons that are carried within each image. Mai's curiosity reminds me to look at every angle of life with interest and openness. She seems to have that innate belief that every tiny detail of life is magical and enchanting. Mai embodies that childlike wonder many seem to lose as they grow up and shows us that not only is it important to celebrate the little things, but also, that it's the little things that often matter the most.
After photographing Faith and Phuc a few years ago on their wedding day, it was so amazing to work with them again now that they have brought little Mai into the world. They are such a loving, warm, and happy family. It was an amazing experience getting to watch Mai study the sand and squeal as the ebb and flow of the waves danced on her tiny toes. Thank you for sharing your little life lessons with me, Mai, and thank you Faith and Phuc for giving me another glimpse into your beautiful family.
Written by: Nicole Brooke Rosen
Tags: Baby, baby photo shoot, Family, family photo shoot, family portrait, Hawaii, Maui, maui photographer, Photography Posted in Baby Photo Shoot, Family Portrait, Family Time, Maui, Photographer, Photography |
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After having the privilege of photographing Danielle and Ronald for their engagement, it was such a thrill to be asked to photograph them again for their maternity photo shoot when they returned to Maui.
The backdrop at Makena Cove was spectacular. Rich, navy waters met the powder blue sky, fading into a brilliant turquoise as it reached the toasted sand. Maui could not have created a more perfect day for this shoot—painting a vibrant background with its island colors and illuminating the couple with the warm and natural brilliance of the sun.
It was a joy to be able to photograph this wonderfully down to earth couple. Wishing Danielle, Ronald, and baby Makena Sunshine a lifetime of love and happiness.
Written by: Nicole Brooke Rosen
Tags: couple photo shoot, Hawaii, love birds, maternity, maternity photoshoot, Maui, maui photographer, maui photography Posted in Family Portrait, Family Time, Maternity Photo Shoot, Maui, Photographer, Photography |
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Sara and Basqui had a classy, island-infused wedding at Sugar Beach this March and we were blessed to be a part of the beautiful occasion. The bride looked absolutely elegant in her strapless, fitted, lace gown and delicately beaded barefoot sandals. Her bridesmaids kept it classy in their silky, black dresses while also embracing the beach and grassy shoreline in similar beaded and bare footwear.
The ladies were not the only ones to bring fashion to the event. The groomsmen showed off their sophistication too, standing beside the groom in matching suits and ties and incorporating a piece of Hawaii with their traditional Kukui leis.
Our associate, Jessica, documented many wonderfully sincere and romantic moments throughout the day. The couple's friendship and devotion unassumingly shines through the photographs with the natural grace and ease that comes from years of mutual honesty and acceptance. There was also a hint of whimsical fun within the wedding. Playfulness and personalities of the couple and their wedding party color the photographs and make this wedding a particularly joyful and sweet day to reminisce about.
Wedding Ceremony + Reception: Sugar Beach Events
Wedding Coordinator: Stephanie of C. Perfection
Caterer + Bar: Chef Lee and Carl of Sugar Beach Events
Hair + Makeup: Maui Mira
Wedding DJ: DJ Dan
Flowers: Dellables
Officiant: Reverend Tino Rosete
Photographer: Jessica and Olivia of Anna Kim Photography
Written by: Nicole Brooke Rosen
Tags: beach wedding, classy beach wedding, classy wedding, Hawaii, hawaii wedding, Maui, maui wedding, maui wedding photographer, weddingphotography Posted in Associate Photographer Jessica, Beach Wedding, Maui, Maui Wedding, Photographer, Photography, Wedding Photography, Weddings |
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Some loves are like wildflowers–they are beautiful, unique, and grow with fire-like vivacity. Dena and Mark seemed to share that subtle yet brilliant type of love.
It was such a joy to be a part of Dena and Mark's exquisite wedding day on the southern shores of Maui. Their gentle care, tenderness, and love for one another was undeniable and made every photograph blossom with sweetness and sincerity.
The couple said their "I Dos" with swaying palm trees and the Pacific behind them and friends and family in front of them. They stood on the grassy, ocean-front lawn of White Orchid Wedding's Beach House under a bamboo chuppah dripping with dreamy pearl-white, pastel, and blushing florals.
They looked absolutely elegant and charming. Bride Dena exuded all of the understated, chic grace of her high-necked, sleeveless gown. She wore a chestnut colored, jeweled sash at her waste–adding detail to her creamy, pleated wedding dress. Her groom, Mark, mirrored his bride's soft style in his three-piece, stone-gray suit.
After the wedding, we snuck off to a nearby field full of bright wildflowers for a photoshoot. Their poise and tender affection was inspiring. It was such a privilege to photograph them. Congratulations, Dena and Mark!
Wedding Venue: White Orchid Wedding Beach House
Wedding Coordinator: Kendall of White Orchid Wedding
Second Photographer: Jessica of Anna Kim Photography
Hair + Makeup: Dusty James
Wedding Florals: Dellables
Officiant: Keli'i Brown
Writer: Nicole Brooke Rosen
Tags: Hawaii, Maui, maui photographer, maui wedding, outdoor wedding, outside wedding, Photographer, Photography, wedding photoshoot Posted in Beach Wedding, Maui, Maui Wedding, outdoor wedding, Photographer, Photography, Wedding Photography, Weddings |
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Wedding Ceremony: Plumeria Point, Four Seasons Wailea, Maui
Wedding Coordinators: Laura and Karen of the Four Seasons Wailea, Maui
Officiant: Ron Winckler
Harpist: Kristine Snyder of Maui Harpist
Florals: Asa Florals
Hair + Makeup: Lauren of Salon 253
Second Photographer: Jessica of Anna Kim Photography
Wedding Reception: Duo, Four Seasons Wailea, Maui
Written by: Nicole Brooke Rosen
Dreamy blush and cream florals lead this stunning California bride toward her groom and framed the intimate wedding as the soft sounds of a harp gently played in the background. It was heaven on earth.
Lauren was breathtaking. Her lace-trimmed veil cascaded down, meeting a waterfall of tulle and lace that began at her sweetheart, strapless neckline, and ended in a gorgeous, frothy wave behind her. Her groom, Chris, was debonair in his beige suit accented by a single white rose boutonniere.
The two looked incredible, immeasurably in love and blissfully ecstatic. Their delight shines through their photographs with such sweet sincerity. It was such a joy to be around so much happiness and tenderness. Thank you so much Lauren and Chris, for letting Anna Kim Photography be a part of your amazing wedding day.
Tags: four seasons resort, Maui, maui wedding, maui wedding photographer, mermaid style wedding dress, outdoor wedding, Photography, sweetheart wedding dress, wailea, Wedding, wedding blog, wedding photographer, wedding photography Posted in Beach Wedding, Maui, Maui Wedding, outdoor wedding, Photographer, Photography, Wedding Photography, Weddings |
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Hair + Makeup Artist + Shoe Designer: Ry-n of Ry-n Shimabuku-Makeup Artist
Wedding Gown: Koa of Kojo Couture
Model: Moana
Photographers: Anna and Jessica of Anna Kim Photography
Florals: Darren and Shane of Bliss Flower Design
Videography: Yukio, Ryota of Driftwood Films and Chelsie Machado
Cake: Danae of www.cakecupmaui.com
Written by: Nicole Brooke Rosen
The word opulence barely scratches the surface when reminiscing about the stylized wedding photo shoot at the gorgeous Lona Ridge Estate. The beautiful estate sits regally among the lush mountains above Wailuku Heights. With its pristine grounds and astonishing bi-coastal view of Maui, Lona Ridge is a unique and stunning wedding venue and a gift to the Maui wedding community.
Lona Ridge inspired the insanely talented designer, Koa of Kojo Couture, so much so that he flew to New York City to bring back equally majestic material for his couture creation. Ry-n Shimabuku not only matched Koa's excellence with his killer hair and makeup expertise, but he also was the mastermind behind the intricately detailed shoes as well.
Working with so much creative talent is such an inspiring process-the energy is both dazzling and infectious. Everyone involved in this day put their heart, soul, and passion for innovation and beauty into the event. The Bliss Boys were no exception. Darren and Shane of Bliss Flower Design (and Bliss Wedding Design) brought their floral prowess to the photo shoot. The bouquet showcased both spectrums of female energy–natural wildness and delicate gentleness. The Bliss Boys coaxed cream and blush peonies, orchids, and roses up the antique sign post along with rich greenery and curly willow. The chandelier (courtesy of Pacific Aisle Rentals) and chaise lounge they brought added another element of luxuriousness to an already impressive compilation of glamor and grace.
During the photo shoot, Koa played a song the lyrics to which the camera had no trouble adhering to— "better recognize opulence." Opulence, and so much more, was recognized, documented, and is here for visual enjoyment.
Tags: Hawaii, Maui, maui photographer, maui wedding, Maui Wedding Venue, Photographer, Photography, wedding photographer, wedding photography, wedding venue Posted in Associate Photographer Jessica, fashion, Maui, Maui Wedding, outdoor wedding, Photographer, Photography, Stylized Wedding Photo Shoot, Wedding Photography, Weddings |
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Wedding Ceremony + Brunch: White Orchid Beach House
Wedding Coordinator: Kendall Higashino of White Orchid Wedding
Florals: Dellables
Officiant: Reverend Valentino Rosete
Wedding Caterer: Catering From Soup to Nuts
Written by: Nicole Brooke Rosen
Looking back on the photographs of Susan and Jordie's Maui wedding, I am struck with a deeper understanding about the heart of a long-lasting love. After all, this couple has spent the last twelve years developing their relationship and yet still manage to have that new-love sparkle in their eyes when they look at one another. A love like that is worth exploring.
Island inspiration blended with an organic, rustic flair at the talented and creative hands of Kendall Higashino of White Orchid Wedding. The wedding was beautiful and intimate, with the bride and groom as the only two there. Susan wore a long-sleeved, lace, A-line wedding dress that gently flowed just past her knees. She walked arm in arm with her stylish groom who donned a sleek, gray, three-piece suit. A cluster of King Protea served as a simple and stunning bouquet, echoing the majesty of the protea table decor and succulent surrounded cake topper situated regally on the naked wedding cake.
There was no fluff, no excess, just two people embodying the pure and steady heartbeat of a lasting love. Susan and Jordie showed me that what keeps a relationship's heart pulsating is simple and pure. Treasure that romantic spark. Foster that new-love adoration. Allow that long-time friendship to course through and serve as the heartbeat's metronome. Live simply and simply love.
Tags: beach wedding, Hawaii, intimate wedding, island wedding, Maui, maui photographer, maui wedding, maui wedding photographer, outdoor wedding, Wedding, wedding photographer, wedding photography Posted in Beach Wedding, Maui, Maui Wedding, outdoor wedding, Photographer, Photography, Wedding Photography, Weddings |
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BTW, am I the only one having to scroll across to see the whole thread now that the menu is on the side of the page?
Ann H, you can fix this by changing the default text size and/or changing your monitor resolution size. See this thread for help:http://www.verlakay.com/boards/index.php?topic=64617.msg760233#new
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|Story of a prison farm that gave a convict a gun...and gave him a pardon if he used it!
|Directed by:
|Ted Tetzlaff
|Richard Conte, Audrey Totter, Sam Jaffe, John McIntire, Shepperd Strudwick, Gregg Martell, Phillip Pine, Donald Randolph, Royal Dano, Richard Taber


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How to Make a 7-Layer Candy Bar Dip and Become a Halloween Hero
Sometimes, if you hang around the Serious Eats office late enough, weird things start to happen. Like the time Max and I, clocking overtime to meet a tight deadline, decided that making a 7-layer candy bar dip was a reasonable undertaking.
Why not? Given that the unofficial motto amongst editors here is "eat through the pain," the prospect of piling seven candies on top of each other, melting them down, then scooping up the goo with pretzels seemed more or less par for the course.
Like any proper recipe developers, we strategized. We needed candies that would not only melt well, but also taste good when melted together. In the interest of keeping a coherent flavor profile, we ruled out gummy candies in exchange for chocolate-based bars that exhibited various complimentary additions: nuts, caramel, nougat, and crunchy things (i.e., brittle and puffed rice). Decorative color would be reserved for the top layer only, as we feared it would otherwise get lost beneath the many layers of brown.
After a pit stop at legendary Lower East Side candy emporium Economy Candy to load up on bars, it was time to get cooking. And by "get cooking" I mean...pile a whole bunch of candy bars on top of each other, line the oven with foil in the event of overflow, and see what happens when you turn it up to 200°F.
In short, nothing disastrous! The oven did not explode, the pan did not runneth over, and the candies melted into each other with only a few tamps from the back of a fork. Plus, our whole kitchen smelled like warm, waxy chocolate, which I understand is a technique real estate agents use to sell houses. Overall: great success.
To see how we put this candy monstrosity together every step of the way, click through the slideshow!
All products linked here have been independently selected by our editors. We may earn a commission on purchases, as described in our affiliate policy.


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Hello, I'm currently studying in a 2-year college and I thought I'd major in Computer science and when I transfer, I'd have the option of basically picking any of the sub-categories of Computer Science. But, I was really for no-reason looking around the college website and I noticed another Computer major called Computer & Information Systems that can also transfer.
Now, the question is,
I want to study things that have to do with Security like for example work in a company that makes software to protect home users from being hacked, build firewalls, that kind of things. Also for my surprise, I found that CIS requires me to learn way more programming languages but much less mathematics unlike CS which is totally the opposite at least in my college. So, If I want to work in keeping computer secure or basically become what's called "Ethical hacker" which degree of those 2 should I pick? I'm currently in Computer Science, is the CIS basically what I should major in according to what I want to be after I graduate? Or am I already studying the right major for me?
Another thing if I may, I do understand that I need to learn how to program but the thing is, in the CIS degree course catalogs, the CIS degree actually has more programming courses than CS while CS basically has like a whole lot of maths. So, with my limited knowledge but, I can see that CS is basically more maths than computer courses while CIS is basically computer courses without that much maths.
To get the CS degree, these are basically the Computer courses:
1) Intro to Computer Science using JAVA.
2) Object Oriented Programming using JAVA.
3) Data structures in JAVA.
4) Computer Architecture 1 and 2.
5) Computer Architecture and Assembly Lang 1 and 2.
**With like 8 Maths courses.**
To get the CIS degree, those are the computer courses:
1) Intro to Computer Science using JAVA.
2) Microcomputers Sys & Arch.
3) Object Oriented programming using JAVA.
4) Visual BASIC programming.
5) Data structures in JAVA.
6) Networking Technologies.
7) UNIX and Shell programming
Any help from you guys especially professionals is truly appreciated.


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Munich boasts the world's largest science and technology museum, which features a wide range of technological marvels, experiments and much more besides.
With more than 50 themed areas, the German Museum provides inquisitive minds of every age with countless opportunities to explore the fascinating world of science and technology. It's got everything – artificial lightning measuring one million volts, aeroplane exhibits, a planetarium and an old mining tunnel, to name but a few examples.
Opening times:
daily 9am-5pm
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February 7, 2013
Frank Ocean did not want to ride in my rented Ford Fusion; that much was clear. After I parked the car, he met me outside his modernist apartment building in Los Angeles and led me to the garage where he rents three parking spots for three different BMWs. He was dressed casually — gray hoodie, jeans, high-top Vans with red laces, baseball cap — and he jumped lightly from the curb to the parking blocks as we walked toward his late-model blue BMW M3. Ocean no longer had driving privileges as a result of some recent violations, on top of which he was cited for marijuana possession a few weeks earlier. "You can drive," he said, though I could tell that it was killing him.
At our first official interview earlier in the day, Ocean spent the first five minutes staring down at his phone. He didn't so much as look up at me, as I made small talk with his managers and awaited his attention. Eventually he said, "Here's what I think about music and journalism: The most important thing is to just press play." He followed that with, "All in all, I just don't trust journalists — and I don't think it's a good practice for me to trust journalists." But he did promise to let me do my job, so there we were. I managed to get the car in gear and out of the garage, but as we pulled onto Vine, I took a dip too quickly. There was an ominous crunch as the front end scraped on the roadway, and Ocean winced. In my mind I booked the next red-eye home. But the formality and distance that characterized our lunch that day had given way to a softer, more relaxed mood. "Don't worry about it, bro," Ocean said with a smile, and we were off.
Maybe he didn't mind because we were headed somewhere that he was actually excited to go, a garage in North Hollywood, where a vintage 1990 BMW E30 sedan is being rebuilt to his exact specifications. He likes to show up unannounced, just to see if they're working on his car, and as soon as we got there, Ocean jumped out and headed to the back of the shop. The car was indeed up on a lift, and as he circled it, he began to tick off things that he didn't like. He's 25, but he speaks like somebody who expects to be listened to. His managers, Christian and Kelly Clancy, told me the night before — by way of explaining that anything could happen, or not, interview-wise — that Frank Ocean makes the decisions where Frank Ocean is concerned. They help him steer, but he goes only if he wants to.
He pointed to the shiny metallic exhaust tips that were about to be welded at the back of the car and said: "No. Black. I don't want it shiny." Perfectly courteous, but firm. A technician removed the tips. When he made it around to the front of the car, he noticed a piece of black metalwork with an insignia on it. "What's up with the language?" he asked. "Do we need the language on it?" The owner of the garage said he could get Ocean a plain black one, but he didn't think it was necessary because once the engine was complete you'd never see it. "It doesn't matter if you can see it," Ocean said.
This was clearly the same man who produced "Channel Orange," one of the most meticulously constructed records of 2012. "I have no delusions about my likability, in every scenario," he told me earlier. "I know that in order to get things done the way you want them, oftentimes your position will be unpopular." The BMW that he is rebuilding will have the steering wheel on the right-hand side, because he wants it that way, and the engine and body of the car will be as quiet and as light as possible. "You won't even hear me," he said, looking into the glow of the garage. "I want it to be a sleeper. I'll pull up next to you, and you won't even know I'm there" — a smile came on his face — "and then as soon as the light turns, I'm gone."
Before "Channel Orange" was released in July, Ocean was something of a sleeper in the hip-hop and R.&B. worlds. Some people had heard the free mixtape, "Nostalgia, Ultra," that he released online in 2011, or they knew of him through his affiliation with Odd Future, a loosely connected and somewhat anarchic group of rappers in Los Angeles that Ocean joined in 2010. Others had heard of him because he contributed vocal hooks to two tracks on "Watch the Throne," the much-anticipated collaboration between Jay-Z and Kanye West that was one of the biggest-selling records of 2011. Ocean's is the first voice you hear on "Watch the Throne" — a platinum vote of confidence, given the artists whose names are on the cover.
In the wee hours of July 4 last year, several days before the release of "Channel Orange,"Ocean took to his Tumblr site — his main point of contact with his fans — and released a document that appeared to be the acknowledgments section of the liner notes for the forthcoming record. "4 summers ago, I met somebody," he wrote. "I was 19 years old. He was too." The two-paragraph message was a product of a sensitive mind and a still-broken heart. "By the time I realized I was in love, it was malignant. It was hopeless. There was no escaping, no negotiating with the feeling, no choice. It was my first love. It changed my life," he wrote. "Imagine being thrown from a plane."
The media took the message to be an outright profession of homosexuality, though Ocean has been reluctant to label himself. In an interview with GQ magazine last December, he said, "In black music, we've got so many leaps and bounds to make with acceptance and tolerance." Many of the biggest figures in hip-hop, like Russell Simmons (the founder of Def Jam) and Jay-Z, voiced their support. Others, like the rapper 50 Cent, were supportive but suspected that there was more to the admission than the unburdening of a secret. "You can call it brave or you can call it marketing," he told MTV, "because it was intentional. It wasn't an accident."
Whether Ocean intended the post in part as marketing or not, the media's fascination with his sexuality drove an enormous amount of interest in him and his record. On "Late Night With Jimmy Fallon" on July 9, Ocean performed a near-flawless rendition of "Bad Religion," one of the most finely wrought songs on "Channel Orange" and one of the few that openly refers to love for another man. As the performance was shown on the East Coast, Def Jam released the album digitally through iTunes, a week in advance of the physical CD release. It sold 131,000 copies in its first week, enough to land at No. 2 on the Billboard charts.
But as those 131,000 copies of "Channel Orange" (mine among them) made their way onto iPods and car stereos, as Ocean's music got a chance to speak for itself, the questions about his sexuality turned sideshow. Some records, rare records, become a part of your life. They arrive at just the right moment and take over for a while, mapping familiar terrain in unexpected ways. For a lot of people, people with very different backgrounds and preferences, "Channel Orange" was this kind of record. Music magazines like SPIN and Paste named "Channel Orange" the album of the year, while Rolling Stone put it at No. 2. "Saturday Night Live" invited Ocean to be the musical guest for its season opener in September. He has been compared to Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, Prince, J. D. Salinger and Joan Didion, among many others. And this weekend, at the 55th Annual Grammy Awards, Ocean is up for six different prizes, including Best New Artist, Record of the Year and Album of the Year.
Like Ocean in person, the album is challenging. It demands to be taken on its own terms, and in places it puts you to work. For a first-time listener, things don't fall into a "put this on at your party" rhythm until the fifth track, "Sweet Life," and even then Ocean makes you stop immediately afterward for one of the album's many nonmusical interludes. But once you've taken the entire album in, its internal logic — the interludes, the snippets of found audio, the song order, the sudden toggles between bravado and vulnerability in Ocean's lyric style — begins to reveal itself. "The best song wasn't the single," Ocean intones at the outset of "Sweet Life," and by the second or third time around you find yourself singing along, convinced.
Artists don't usually give satisfying answers to the question of how or why they do what they do, and maybe that's for the best. Sometimes songs mean more to us when we don't totally grasp the lyrics. Ocean is acutely aware of this. He knows that, as much as anything, he is selling an idea. "That's why image is so important," he said. "That's why you've got to practice brevity when you do interviews like this. I could try to make myself likable to you so you could write a piece that keeps my image in good standing, because I'm still selling this, or I could just say, 'My art speaks for itself.' " He practices brevity in most things. He curates and updates his image on Twitter, Instagram and Tumblr deftly and consistently, but he never overshares. "As a writer, as a creator, I'm giving you my experiences," he said in the GQ interview. "But just take what I give you. You ain't got to pry beyond that." To me, he said, "I don't know if it's a shield or whatever, but I want to deflect as much as I can onto my work."
He has had what he calls "a creeping sense of mortality" since he was little. His father split without explanation when he was 6, and Ocean would say nothing about that to me other than that his dad was a failed musician who "went crazy" and made questionable hairstyle choices. In "There Will Be Tears," one of the most autobiographical tracks from "Nostalgia, Ultra," Ocean sings about having to hide his face because he doesn't want his friends to see him crying over his father. A few weeks before my visit, Ocean tweeted, then rapidly deleted, a message about his father's suing him for $1 million. When I brought it up, he said only, "Yeah, we can move past that."
He moved with his mother from Long Beach, Calif., to New Orleans, where he lived until he was almost 18. His mother's father, Lionel, became his de facto father for a while, and also the reason that the young Christopher Breaux — Ocean's name before he changed it in 2010 — was known as Lonny. (His managers and friends still call him that.) Most of the pleasures that he recalls from his childhood were solitary: climbing onto neighboring rooftops, listening to music with his headphones on, reading. He didn't stick with team sports because, as he put it, "I didn't enjoy things I couldn't envision myself being the best at."
But there was also a deeper kind of solitude, and a deeper kind of doubt. He told me a long story about realizing suddenly, one day, that he and his mother and everybody they knew were going to die. "I said: 'I'm going to die. You're going to die, Mom.' And she said, 'I'm not going anywhere anytime soon.' That's what you say, I guess. I guess. But I just remember sitting there, trying to imagine nothing. Nothingness and forgetting and all of those things I feared. And that can't not affect you and your belief system a little bit."
His grandmother was Pentecostal Evangelical, and his mother and her siblings were teased as kids for being "holy rollers." "I never sang or played in church," Ocean wrote in one of his first Tumblr posts. "I remember being kind of intimidated by the idea of it actually. Church was the 'hood Juilliard to me. All the coldest musicians came out of there." Eventually he left his mother's church and struck out on his own, attending Catholic Mass for a while and then a small Lutheran school, though that was less about religion than discipline. "I got kicked out of every school I went to," Ocean said. "The last school that kicked me out had a folder of [expletive] that I had done. They sent the folder in a manila envelope to my house."
He was drawn toward music at first not because of any burning urge toward art or self-expression; it was about having a different set of opportunities. "It was about the freedom and the mobility that having money would allow me," he said. Ocean stuck with academics long enough to graduate from John Ehret High School, then enrolled at the University of New Orleans to study English in the fall of 2005. But against his mother's wishes, he went deeper into making music, writing rudimentary songs on an old Triton keyboard. When Katrina hit in August 2005, Ocean transferred briefly to the University of Louisiana in Lafayette but then quickly decided to leave. When a friend in Los Angeles promised to give him a deal on some studio time, Ocean packed up his car and set out.
"This is our life," Chris Clancy said, with a mixture of pride and resignation. We were sitting in the dining room of the Clancy house in Miracle Mile, in Los Angeles, where two members of Odd Future had just shown up within minutes of each other. Each made obscene gestures at us from the front yard, then bounced into the house asking what was for dinner. Chris is an earnest, thoughtful guy, a 10-year veteran of Interscope records who worked with Eminem; Kelly, who co-manages Ocean with her husband, worked at Interscope for seven years and also serves as a kind of den mother. (Taco, one of the O.F. members who had shown up, was demanding that she cook him Japanese fried chicken.)
"Boys would come in and out, just like you're seeing," Kelly told me. In 2010, Ocean befriended Tyler Okonma, the outspoken ringleader of Odd Future known as Tyler, the Creator, and eventually Ocean started showing up at the Clancys along with the rest of the crew. The family vibe clearly appealed to him. "Frank would come in," Kelly said, "but he wouldn't say much. He was the quiet one. He wouldn't ever say he was coming by. He would just pop up randomly and then kind of just sit there."
When Ocean first came out to L.A. in 2006, his money ran out before he ever came close to getting his record done. To support himself, he worked as a "sandwich artist" at Subway, at Fatburger, Kinko's, AT&T, and as a claims processor at Allstate, among other jobs. Eventually he discovered that it was possible to make money writing songs for other people; he knew he could sing, so he connected with producers and musicians who submitted tracks for major-label artists. The producers made the sonic beds and Ocean helped write lyrics and melodies, contributing to songs that would eventually be recorded by artists like Justin Bieber ("Bigger"), Brandy ("1st and Love") and John Legend ("Quickly").
Even then, he bristled at interference. "I had a problem listening to anybody," he said. "I had a problem listening to A.-and-R.'s telling me how a song was supposed to sound, or what this artist's vibe was." As his profile grew, he began to work with producers and beat makers who liked his writing style and would let him use their studios free. Toward the end of 2008, he was making enough money to devote himself to music full time. He moved out of his apartment at 28th and Crenshaw and into a nicer place in Beverly Hills. In time he caught the attention of Christopher (Tricky) Stewart, the producer behind such hits as Rihanna's "Umbrella" and Beyoncé's "Single Ladies." Stewart helped Ocean make a go of it as a solo artist and get signed to Def Jam at the end of 2009.
The deal didn't work out the way Ocean hoped. "I don't know where to begin," he said when I asked him what went wrong. "I think ultimately the problem with it was that nobody was ready to act on anything, any of the language [of the contract], except the language to keep me in it." Def Jam never gave him a recording budget and basically left him on the shelf. After twisting for several months, Ocean decided to write and produce a record on his own. He solicited beats and backing tracks from friends, and he trolled the Internet for instrumentals to popular songs that he could repurpose with his own melodies and lyrics. (His piano skills at the time were pretty basic — today he takes piano and music-theory lessons every morning except Sundays — so he wasn't going to write a record by sitting down at the keyboard.)
As Lonny Breaux, Ocean often relied on easy rhymes and formulaic song structures. Those are the kinds of songs that sell. There is a "Lonny Breaux Collection" available online, featuring some of the songs he wrote with and for others before "Nostalgia." He was upset when these were leaked and claims that he didn't even write several of them, but as a group they provide a clear indication of the kind of work he was doing before he struck out on his own. On "Nostalgia, Ultra," as Frank Ocean, he could write for himself. The second song on the mixtape — a track called "Novacane" — was his announcement that he was going to be a different kind of songwriter. The song begins with a loose and sinister-sounding syncopated drum loop, and then Ocean's voice enters with a condemnation of most popular music that doubles as a metaphor for how little he finds himself able to feel about the world around him: "I think I started something/I got what I wanted/Didn't I?/Can't feel nothin', superhuman/Even when I'm [having sex], Viagra popping/Every single record auto-tuning/Zero emotion, muted emotion/Pitch-corrected, computed emotion. . . ."
(Much of what you hear on the radio today is auto-tuned, meaning "pitch-corrected," because many of the stars can't sing. Auto-tuning in limited doses can slip by unnoticed, but the more you use it, the less human the vocal sounds.)
The rest of the track outlines a relationship that Ocean — or the character he has assumed for narrative purposes — has with a woman he meets at the rock festival Coachella. They smoke grass together, have sex and then part. After, Ocean drifts through a series of other sexual couplings but can't recreate the feeling he had with this one woman. The disinhibition he experiences initially allows him to escape his life for a while, but later he finds himself numb in a way that he can't convert into anything other than listlessness and apathy. He wants her back so he can feel the kind of nothing that he felt with her. The concept of numbness shifts within the song, and throughout you sense an intelligence operating, a complex story unfolding in deceptively simple terms. Unpredictable internal rhyme, metaphor, double meaning, regret for love lost or never possessed in the first place: these are the hallmarks of what has since become Ocean's writing style.
Two weeks after releasing "Nostalgia," as buzz around the record was building — with people like Sean Puff Daddy/P. Diddy Combs calling the Clancys and asking, "Who is this guy?" — Ocean took to Twitter to get a few things off his chest: "I woke up today feeling like all my followers should know that . . . my record label slept on me . . . i. did. this. not ISLAND DEF JAM. that's why you see no label logo on the artwork that I DID. guess its my fault for trusting my dumbass lawyer and signing my career over to a failing company. [expletive] Def Jam & any company that goes the length of signing a kid with dreams & talent w/no intention of following through . . . now back to my day. I want some oatmeal and toast."
Ten days later, Ocean would be in the studio with Beyoncé, at her invitation, to collaborate on a track for her album "4."
Barry Weiss, who had just taken over as the chairman and chief executive of Island/Def Jam, invited Ocean to a meeting at his office in New York in April 2011 in an effort to get to know him. (Some at Ocean's own label hadn't even realized, at first, that Frank Ocean and Lonny Breaux were one and the same.) "He felt sort of unappreciated," Weiss told me, putting it mildly.
As "Nostalgia" continued to gain attention, Ocean's team would call Weiss to demand more money for Ocean's follow-up record, "Channel Orange." "Frank was so bullish and so optimistic and so confident about the album that he was creating that he had his representatives call us up and say that he deserves a lot more money," Weiss says. "I don't believe that I had actually heard anything at that point. But we did something atypical, that most labels I don't think would do. We stepped up. We wrote the check. Virtually album-unheard, sight-unseen, we believed so much in this guy that we actually wrote the check." Ocean has claimed in the past that he demanded $1 million. When I asked about that, Weiss said only, "I plead the fifth."
A couple of weeks before "Channel Orange" was released, Ocean wrote a post on his Tumblr: "Orange reminds me of the summer I first fell in love. Awww. . . . " Less than a week later, in the post that revealed how important that first love had been for him, he wrote: "I wanted to create worlds that were rosier than mine. I tried to channel overwhelming emotions." Channel. Orange.
To write the songs for "Channel Orange," Ocean turned to James Ryan Ho, a producer who goes by the name Malay. He would become Ocean's most creative partner in the making of the record. As Ocean remembers it, on their first day together, with Malay at the console and Ocean in the vocal booth, they came up with "Super Rich Kids," one of the fan favorites from the record. Over the next two days, they wrote the 10-minute track "Pyramids."
There was very little talking in the studio. This is a common refrain for people who work with Ocean. (Da'Jon, a young cousin from New Orleans who was living with Ocean when I visited, said that they sometimes go days without speaking to each other, and that he would occasionally ask Ocean if everything was O.K., just to be sure.) While Malay created the musical beds, Ocean would type on his laptop, humming melodies and trying out combinations. For mood they sometimes had an old movie playing in the background with no sound, and in later stages Ocean put up posters of Pink Floyd and Bruce Lee for inspiration. Ocean's tastes are eclectic, drawing on everything from Wes Anderson movies to Radiohead and Celine Dion. "The next thing you know, Frank's like, 'Let me go in the booth,' " Malay told me, "and then he just lays it down. He's kind of like an M.C.," he went on, "like a rapper. Rappers come in, and they just write lyrics and drop it down, and he's that same way, but obviously his lyrical concepts and melody concepts are ridiculous."
After a couple of months of on-and-off work with Malay, Ocean had skeleton versions of every song that would appear on "Channel Orange," including the nonsong interludes that create so much of the record's ambient appeal. On a dry-erase board in his apartment, he wrote the names of the songs and the interludes with a red Sharpie and began playing around with their placement. "Even though they were all sketches," Ocean says, "there was so much comfort, because I heard in my head how it was going to sound. Now all I've got to do is finish it." Once he arrived at the final album order, with nine months of recording still ahead of him, the sequence never changed.
In June 2011, Ocean tapped Om'Mas Keith, another producer in Los Angeles, to help him turn his sketches into major-label-release-ready album cuts. They decided to focus first on vocals — leads, harmonies — and then they went back into the studio to perfect the music. "Crack Rock" and "Monks" got live drum sounds. "Sweet Life" went from being a digital track created by Pharrell Williams to a live, full-throated jam. They made use of every technique they could think of: for the ominous strings on "Bad Religion," they had only a few string players to work with. So the engineer, Jeff Ellis, arranged seating for a large string section in Studio 1 of EastWest Studios, the same room where Frank Sinatra recorded "My Way," and then used a pair of old stereo ribbon microphones to capture the sound. The players sat in different seats each time they played along with the track, so that when they mixed all of the takes together at the end, it would sound as if they had filled the room with musicians.
"This is the Michael Jackson way of making records," Om'Mas told me. He called Ocean "the shepherd" of the whole process. "I just credit Frank with being an extreme visionary, even in how he put the process together. It's a blueprint that people are going to try to follow. But if you don't have a vision, you can't follow it, because you won't get anywhere."
After the recording was complete, Ocean played "Channel Orange" for Rick Rubin, the legendary producer and founder of Def Jam. Rubin was impressed by the rawness and power of Ocean's vocals, and he urged him not to mess around with the recordings too much. He was also struck by Ocean's process for a song like "Pilot Jones," for which Ocean wrote the melody to one backing track and then, with Malay's help, created a completely different backing track once the melody was complete. "It's really interesting that he uses seed ideas or tools to write that really don't have anything to do with the song," Rubin told me. "It's just a way for him to access himself, and then the song comes out, and then the track is built around what he writes." (Ocean said to me, of writing "Pilot Jones," "I was like, 'I gotta get this song out.' I always knew the track would have to change.")
The first time Jeff Ellis heard the full finished record was at a listening party that Def Jam held just before "Channel Orange" was released. "In the studio, sometimes it seems like a really great album, but you can be deluding yourself," Ellis says. "I didn't want to be that guy: 'It's a hit! It's a hit!' " But as he sat in the room with Ocean, Ocean's mom and a bunch of reporters, radio people and label people, watching everybody slowly freaking out, he finally understood what Ocean had achieved. "From the first day," Ellis says, "Frank never talked about what his vision was. He just executed on it."
Ocean is probably right, as far as the music goes: you're better off just pressing play. That's the only way to experience the seediness and desperation that he is able to load onto a minute detail, like a floor-model television; it's also the only way to find yourself inexplicably screaming: "Crack Rock! Crack Rock!" along with Ocean, marveling at how slyly he has converted you by making the catchiest song on the record about the drug that hits fastest and is the hardest to shake. Vocally, he can do whatever he wants with his falsetto — woodwind, siren, everything in between — but mostly he just wants you to hear the songs, to locate without diversion the moments that refract the emotional content of the stories. "Crack Rock" is about drugs, to be sure, but when you hear that the addict's family won't let him hold an infant, you suddenly find yourself inside of the story, empathizing in ways you might never have expected to.
Drugs are the record's dominant (and tragic) motif, but the true concern of "Channel Orange" is the inextricable mingling of love and loneliness, the attachment and disillusionment and euphoria and addiction and pain that result from losing yourself in something or someone else. As Ocean put it to me, "We're talking about substances, but we forget how intoxicating things that aren't tangible, things that aren't chemical substances, are. You forget about it. I'm saying, you know, love. Power. Money, which is power. Freedom. Honesty. Because that explicit truth I was talking about" — a reference to his open letter on Tumblr — "probably had the same effect [on me] as heroin does on some people."
The church-organ, deconstructed gospel confessional "Bad Religion" is the one undeniable masterpiece on the album. It is pure. In the song, Ocean is in a cab, talking to a driver who barely understands him. He wants to tell this man his secrets, to pour out his heart, in part because he knows the cabby won't understand. It's a metaphor for the record itself, for the act of making art, for how hard it is to tell anybody anything, for Ocean's life in all of those years when he was hiding. The second verse, to the end:
Taxi driver
I swear I've got three lives
Balanced on my head like steak knives
I can't tell you the truth about my disguise
I can't trust no one. . . .
If it brings me to my knees
It's a bad religion
Unrequited love
To me it's nothing but a
one-man cult
And cyanide in my
Styrofoam cup
I could never make him love me.
It's a bad religion
To be in love with someone
Who could never love you
Only bad religion
Could have me feeling the way I do.
Forget about the pronouns. Who can hear those lines the way Ocean sings them and not see themselves, at some point in their lives? And who, after the rare scream that Ocean allows himself on this track, knowing all that we know about him, can fail to know that it is real?
It's a different world in the music business these days. Ocean has built so much power on his own, through his music and through his direct connection with his fans, that now he can afford to dig his heels in. When I asked Barry Weiss, the chairman of Def Jam, if they basically followed Ocean's lead at this point, he said: "It's all case by case. We have our differences of opinion. It's like a marriage. You have ups, you have downs, but we give him a lot of autonomy because the guy's brilliant." In other words, he did not say "no." When I asked Ocean if Def Jam asked him for another record, he said, "Oh, they learned a long time ago they can't really tell me what to do," and then he laughed. At another point he said he wouldn't go into acting because studio heads can blackball you in Hollywood. "I don't like the idea of there being somebody who could break me," he said. "There's no head of a label right now who could break me."
"Everyone knows the record industry is falling apart," Chris Clancy told me. "Frank says: 'Let's be progressive. What can we do?' The record business is what you can't do. The metrics of success: Soundscan, BDS. . . . " — BDS is a measure of radio plays and still something of a bible for record labels — "If you're playing that game, you're in a world that's shrinking." Ocean thought enough of radio to release a 9-minute-53-second song as a single. And it's not just radio, or his label: he will be performing at the Grammys this weekend, but he was willing to do so only if they let him play the song he wanted to play. Otherwise, he would have been happy to sit in the audience.
Ocean's way hasn't been entirely smooth. When he played the first weekend at Coachella in April, his first live show with a band, the sound was abysmal. At the biggest show of his life up to that point, he had to cut a song off halfway through. He said he fired the entire band and played the second weekend with a different lineup, to much better effect — but his live performance is still evolving. He's also had a couple of uncomfortable brushes with the law, and with another artist. A feud with the notoriously violent and thin-skinned singer Chris Brown began on Twitter in June 2011 and included a couple of Brown's associates following Ocean's car after he left a studio. They posted footage of their interaction — the cars side by side, threats being hollered through open windows — to Worldstar Hip-Hop, a Web site that does many things but mostly hosts videos of fights. Ocean made an oblique mention of that situation when we were together, but I thought it was over. Then last month, the feud boiled over again, with conflicting reports that agreed on one thing: There had been an altercation between Ocean and Brown and a few other people on the street in Santa Monica.
These are the kinds of traps that lie in wait for Ocean, now that he has achieved this level of success. He springs from the hypermasculine world of hip-hop and R.&B., and yet even as his music defies those genre characterizations, he seems unable or unwilling to escape them. Maybe he feels he has to overcompensate in the bravado department, given what he has revealed of himself. I found Ocean to be at his most relaxed and natural when he was being humble, talking about cars and joking around about his piano skills.
So what's next? Ocean told me he was headed to Shanghai after the Grammys with his equipment in tow, some new recordings already in hand, and plans to write "in remote locations for the next two years." In previous interviews he mentioned also wanting to write a book. "I've started writing the book," he told me. "You can say that. It's fiction, and it's about brothers. That's all I'm going to say."
Whatever the book ends up being about, Ocean's music is full of suffering, and there are any number of artists who define themselves that way. "I hope not to define myself by suffering," he told me. He repeated a few times that his Tumblr post had "cured" his depression, that he was finally over the relationship and that he was happy now.
"I don't worry about where [the inspiration] will come from," he said. "I think even with that cured, there's still so much to pull from." He didn't think of the pain that he went through as a gift, he said. "I know people like to say that. You know, 'It's a gift and a curse.' It's not a gift. I don't believe that. I believe it's just pain. The gift would be the gift whether I went through it or not. We'd just be having a different conversation."
In "There Will Be Tears," Ocean sings, "You can't miss what you ain't had/Well I can, and I'm sad." His music longs for things past and possible happiness lost, the kind of thing we all do when we look back and simultaneously romanticize the past and wish it had been different. Even the interludes on his records — the whirring cassette players and analog alarm clocks and recondite movie audio — are of an era that Ocean was mostly too young to have experienced directly, as are the old BMWs he rebuilds with such care. But he longs for these things just the same, and his creative triumph is that he has found his own musical and lyrical language to express that longing. Nostalgia, ultra.
"Art's everything we hope life would be, a lot of times," Ocean said to me as we sat outside the BMW repair shop in North Hollywood, speaking to each other in the dark. "That's what I get from it. And that's what I've tried to do. In the storytelling and the sonics and everything. That's what I've tried to do, because I just think that's the purpose of art. Push, you know?"
I told him I thought that he had succeeded in that.
"Thank you," he said.
from: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/10/magazine/frank-ocean-can-fly.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
using the number/letter grid:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Frank Ocean
69152 63515 43
his path of destiny = 43 = Congratulations. Celebrating. Fun times.
Frank Ocean was born on October 28th, 1987 according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Ocean
October 28th, 1987
October 28th
10 + 28 +2+0+1+2 = 43 = his personal year (from October 28th, 2012 to October 27th, 2013) = Congratulations. Celebrating. Fun times.
[When his number (43 (his path of destiny)) comes up, that's when he gets to live/experience what he is here to live/experience. So this is HIS year!!!]
predictions for the year 2013 are at:
discover some of your own numerology for FREE at:
learn numerology from numerologist to the world, Ed Peterson:


text:
So the first SAT of the 2011 – 2012 academic year has come and gone and as usual it was full of words ranging from the commonplace (longevity) to the esoteric (recondite). We sent in our teachers to check it out and here are some of the words we remember. We've taken words from the reading passages as well as the Sentence Completions. Keep in mind that the SAT doesn't simply tests random words, it tests words that are used in "well-written college level texts." If you are taking the SAT in the next year, if you are planning to go to college, if you plan to read well-written adult texts, you should know these words! So get out your flashcards and hang on to your hats because here we go:
Take this list of words and get started studying today! Also since you're already online you should head over to either FreeRice or our new favorite vocab site Word Dynamo for great interactive vocab learning tools.
And of course when you are ready for SAT preparation come check us out at a free sample class!


text:
Portland starts homeless census
Searchers also looking for people not in shelters
The city of Portland is counting the number of its homeless residents in both shelters and outdoors.
The Wednesday evening search will determine how many men, women and children are homeless. Teams will conduct the surveys at one of the seven shelters within the city and search a number of outdoor locations to try and locate individuals living on the streets.
News 8's Aly Myles has accompanied searchers to spots in Portland including Deering Oaks, behind the Cumberland County Jail and underneath the Casco Bay Bridge.
The effort began at 5:30 p.m. and will continue until midnight. So far, 10 people have been found to be unsheltered, or living outside.
Homeless numbers have grown in recent years, according to city figures.
In 2009, Portland had 276 homeless with three unsheltered.
In 2010, Portland had 325 homeless with nine unsheltered.
In 2011, Portland had 340 homeless with two unsheltered.
In 2012, Portland has 390 homeless with five unsheltered.
Point-in-Time surveys of those people will help identify who is homeless, what factors led to them becoming homeless, and what can the city and state do to prevent homelessness. U.S. Housing and Urban Development Maine Field Officer Director William Burney and Portland Mayor Michael Brennan are scheduled to participate in the count, a release from HUD said.
The Point in Time Survey is a federal Housing and Urban Development requirement for certain funding.
Portland receives $3.1 million from HUD for employment assistance, job training, supportive housing development and emergency shelters.
Tune into News 8 at 11 for more details.


text:
The down side to this schedule is that it means I get up and get dressed to run errands, clean the house and take care of appointments before lunch. By the time nap time rolls around, my make up is usually on, I'm dressed in non-paint clothes and I can think of a dozen reasons why I don't want to head out and get dirty.
I fight with this every single day. To go out to the garage, or not to go out to the garage…. Too often the later wins because I put it off and put it off and then it's dinner time. Oh darn, it'll have to wait until tomorrow.


text:
Hailerui Phthalocyanine Blue P.B.15:2
Dongguan Hailerui Chemical Co., Ltd.目前只在以下作出标识的区域展示其产品资料:
Hailerui Phthalocyanine Blue P.B.15:2 is an organic pigment that appears as a blue powder. This product has an oil absorption of 32-70 g/100g and a pH value of 6.5-8. It can be used in printing inks and paints.
Dongguan Hailerui Chemical Co., Ltd. is a producer that supplies pigments used in the Paint and Coatings and the Graphic Arts and Inks industries. This company provides an extensive range of products that include organic pigments, inorganic pigments, oil-soluble dyes, and florescent pigments. These products can be used in powder coatings, coil coatings, printing inks, and various paints.
Dongguan Hailerui Chemical Co., Ltd.
希望在赛百库经销商/贸易商板块进行展示推广?请立即联络我们 !


text:
As you're preparing for your upcoming holiday celebrations, you want to make sure you have picture-perfect makeup. The key is to use a heavier hand when applying your look without going overboard. Here is how to have the perfect makeup for all your holiday party looks:
Bold lip
Choose a bold lip color to stand out in your holiday pictures. Red is a classic choice, so opt for a creme luxe lipstick in moody merlot or red truffle. Or you can choose another option that still packs a powerful statement. Lip colors with a purple undertone, like berry bite, are also great to wear to any of your holiday parties.
Dynamic eyes
Use eyeshadow, liner and mascara to make your eyes look bigger and more dynamic for pictures. Pick up the 120 color eyeshadow palette to have a variety of shadows to mix and match. If you select a metallic hue, the glitter may be picked up in the photo, which is a great look for the holidays. Apply the eyeshadow as your base, line your top lid with black eyeliner and finish with a generous coating of mascara.
Contoured face
Be sure to highlight your cheekbones with blush and bronzer. Use the BH floral duos to get the right tone of blush for your skin. Make a big smile and apply it to your cheeks. Next, follow up with a bronzing powder. Dust it on the top of your forehead and on along your jawline.


text:
If you were going to create a TV network that catered to the modern TV fan, it would be a network that aired lots of heavily serialized shows that were addictive and engrossing once you got into them. It would be a network that cared less about immediate Nielsen ratings and more about DVR plays and (even better) digital streaming. It would be a network that wouldn't cancel long-running shows out of nowhere and would, instead, announce that a show was ending, but only after a shortened final season designed to wrap up its plotlines. Such a network would also feature a frequent focus on genre fare, because the modern TV fan likes that sort of thing. Maybe it would air longtime Internet favorite Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog in its television debut, coming up on October 9th.
Here's the thing: That network exists. It's called The CW. It does all of the things above, right down to Dr. Horrible (coming on October 9th). And nobody watches it.
Now, let's be fair. The CW has done a lot of this to itself. It's a network that has never had any idea of how to sell itself to people, and it spent so long chasing an ultra-specific demographic (18-34-year-old women) that it may have run itself into an inescapable death spiral. If you were to make an argument that the network will almost certainly be the first of the "big five" to die—and sooner, rather than later—no one would argue with you. The CW regularly loses to Univision and several cable channels. It's not on the same level as the four major networks, and if you've ever spent time jeering about how far NBC has fallen, well, most of its shows look like ratings kings compared to even The CW's hits. Parks & Recreation, for instance, would be the highest-rated show on The CW by a fair margin. The CW is starting from a very weak position, both in terms of ratings and in terms of "buzz," whatever that means.
But The CW has plenty of good, addictive shows! The Vampire Diaries is one of TV's most ruthlessly plotted shows, tossing out more plot twists per act than many shows dole out in full seasons. The L.A. Complex is a smart soap, with a great sense of humor—in its universe, Paul F. Tompkins is a late-night talk show host. Nikita boasts a sizable cult of fans who say it's got some of the best action storytelling on TV. (I wouldn't know, having not seen it since early in season one.) Supernatural hasn't been at its best in the past couple of seasons, but it was strong, genre TV before that. And even in terms of pleasantly vapid stuff, something like Hart Of Dixie is a fair step up over the dross on a lot of other networks. The CW seems to be judged entirely on the basis of Gossip Girl by a lot of TV fans, and it probably always will be. But it's been trying to take steps beyond that image in the last couple of years, thanks to the success of Vampire Diaries, and it's doing as good a job of rebranding itself as could be expected, given the constraints placed upon it.
Plus, network head Mark Pedowitz, during his executive session at the Television Critics Association summer press tour, said that the network doesn't rely on the Nielsens for renewals. He referred to the network as "an aggregation," its numbers for renewal determined by some formula combining the various digital platforms the network's shows stream on with what Pedowitz kept referring to as a presence in the "social media space." In other words, Ringer wasn't just canceled because its ratings were bad; it was canceled because you didn't tweet about it enough. (Seriously, Pedowitz cited its underperformance in the aforementioned "social media space" as a reason for the heavily-hyped Sarah Michelle Gellar series disappearing with barely a peep.)
That commitment to changing various things about how TV does business even extends to how the show handles long-time "hits" that are leaving the air. Gossip Girl was once the lynchpin of The CW's schedule, even if its ratings never reflected the level of importance the network placed upon it. Now, however, its ratings have crumbled and left it in dire straits. Instead of outright canceling the series, however, the network is bringing it back for 10 final episodes in the fall, designed to close off the storylines and bring closure for fans. It's difficult to imagine The CW's sister network, CBS, doing such a thing for a long-running hit. (It let CSI: Miami go without so much as a "see you later!") It's hard to imagine any network doing so, outside of rare circumstances where an outside production studio cuts the network such a great deal to get the show in question to 100 episodes that the network can't refuse. (See also: Chuck and Fringe.) But The CW has done this twice in two seasons, first with One Tree Hill (which had arguably already had a worthy series finale), now with Gossip Girl. And Pedowitz said he would continue to do such a thing. The perpetually on-the-bubble Supernatural? It would likely get a stretch of episodes to wrap up its stories, if Pedowitz had his way.
Yet it's hard not to keep coming back to the fact that very, very few people watch The CW. For as much as the network tries to get its series on various digital streaming platforms, it's as reluctant to release numbers for how many people watch its series there as the sites themselves are for their own original programming, perhaps because it knows there is not yet a viable business model based on such a platform and it is unlikely one will pop up in the next couple of years. That would be fine if The CW could hang on for a decade or so, but it is not immediately apparent that will be the case.
In the 2008 presidential election, a perception took hold among many in the left-leaning blogosphere that the John McCain campaign was running to win the weekly news cycle, to do well with Mark Halperin and Matt Drudge, while the Barack Obama campaign was playing a long game, designed to build toward something longer term than simply trying to keep the endlessly refreshing news cycle fed with a stream of new content. Now, it's difficult to say that McCain's campaign really was doomed by this and not, say, his bizarre handling of the 2008 economic crisis, but the campaign certainly did seem to be chasing after headlines more than substantive political gains, especially before the financial crisis took hold.
In its own way, The CW reminds me of that theory of the McCain campaign. The network has always seemed more addicted to buzz and "presence" than it has to building a substantive business model that can exist going forward. It would rather have an Entertainment Weekly cover than it would have a top 10 series in the Nielsens. That continues to be true under Pedowitz, who actually has the right idea for how to build a network in the digital age—lots and lots of online presence, with a strong eye toward making a show available in as many places as it can be—but is simply several years ahead of his time. If ABC is stuck in 1999, then The CW seems to be trapped in 2022, when everything you could ever want is instantly streamable, if you're willing to pay the right price for it. The problem with this is that The CW only exists as a corporate entity by the skin of its teeth, and its shows continue to hack and slash at budget. (The vast majority of them are shot in Canada, and the look of its new pilots—even the solid Arrow—is very, very cheap.)
At times, The CW seems to be trying to become the televised equivalent of Buzzfeed. It gives the TV fans of the world—or, more precisely, the predominantly young, predominantly white TV fans of the Internet—exactly what they say they want, yet it continues to be ignored by traditional measures. Which leads to the network talking about how great its shows do on Twitter because, hey, what else is there to measure with that will make The CW look like it's going business that's going gangbusters? Backed into a corner of its own making, The CW seems to have forgotten that the business it's in, for a little while at least, is controlled by very traditional models that won't crumble for a while and even then will only crumble slowly. For The CW, 2022 may as well be 100 years away, rather than just a decade.


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Got a restoration question that's been puzzling you? Send it to:
[ m ] Super Chevy, Resto Tech, 9036 Brittany Way, Tampa, FL 33619.
[ e ] firstname.lastname@example.com [ f ] 813-675-3557
Tip of the Month
It's cold out baby! At least it was when this Resto Tip was penned. It's all the more reason to think about the health of your car battery. We have covered this subject before, but it's worth mentioning again: Cold and your battery aren't exactly friends. Increasing the demand on a marginal battery usually results in a frustrated motorist, or a spouse standing next to their ride calling AAA. It's always a good idea to throw on a trickle charger to guarantee a fresh battery. The tender you see in the picture was purchased at an auto swap meet some six years ago for two dollars. As you can see, it is from a major auto parts chain and is one of the few on the market that has mounting tabs. The '68 Camaro it is mounted in uses a trunk-mounted battery and a high energy MSD E-Curve distributor requiring at least 9.5 volts during cranking to fire the engine. With a rear-mount battery and a 10-foot battery cable, the battery voltage has to be strong enough to do the job. So, next time you are cruising around your local swap meet keep your eye out for an inexpensive battery tender. Even new ones are pretty cheap, so get one. It's low-buck insurance.
Shifty Business
I have a 1970 Nova with a Powerglide trans with a column shifter. I am going to install a Muncie M21 with a Hurst Competition Plus shifter. The car is a factory bench vehicle and has no console. What I am looking for is a drawing with the measurements for the shifter floor cutout. I want it be factory correct. Hope you can help.
Bruce Moss
via email
Nice conversion, Bruce. I really don't know of any templates available for the 1970 Nova floor shift hole for a non-console car. In fact, I don't even know of any aftermarket complete floor pans that are stamped for the four-speed Nova. In my experience, the factory just drew a chalk line on the floor pan on the assembly line and cut out the hole to fit the non-console floor shifter. Unfortunately, even the factory assembly manual doesn't supply the dimensions. Without a donor factory floorpan with the cut out to copy, careful measuring on your part will be required. Supposedly the factory carpet under padding did include dotted lines around the trans hump indicating where the four-speed non-console cutout was, but at this point it might just be a rumor. Another option is a website called Stevesnovasite.com. I understand these guys might have some info that will help you with your conversion. You will have to set up a user name and password to get on their site, but the process and information is free. Good luck with your project. We love those four speed Novas!
Department of Additions
Mark, regarding your Resto Tech letter entitled "Vibration without Representation," I believe Scott's problem is a classic one that comes when installing a manual trans into a crankshaft that was drilled and counter bored for an automatic transmission. Some cranks were counter bored deeper to allow for the automatic's larger snout, which only left about 1/4-inch depth for the stickshift pilot bushing to press into. The bushing comes out of its seat, which allows the clutch disc to swing out of concentricity. I had this problem and it was cured when I obtained an adapter pilot bushing machined for that very purpose, from the Wilcap Company (www.wilcap.com/index.html). This adapter was stepped and not only pressed into the smaller bore, but also the larger counter bore.
There are other incompatibility problems regarding the pilot bushing that could be causing his vibration depending on the year and model of his crankshaft. Close attention must be given to pilot bushing/crankshaft compatibility whenever changing from auto manual trans and vice versa in a small-block Chevy
Mike Miller
Via email
Thanks for your letter, Mike. Although we included some test procedures in the past column, your information and parts lead is spot on. We don't profess to know all things Chevy but do our best based on our experience. Your contribution proves we have some of the most knowledgeable readers on the planet. Thanks for your information!


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A's lineup cooled down by McHugh, Astros
Oakland hitters manage just two hits in series finale in Houston
HOUSTON -- The few voices heard in a quiet A's clubhouse on Sunday afternoon sounded mostly underwhelmed by Astros right-hander Collin McHugh.
All he did was limit them to two hits in a career-high 8 2/3 innings.
"Stuff-wise, I thought he was OK," said Josh Donaldson, who went 0-for-3 with a walk. "I don't think it was anything special. But he changed speeds well and pitched to his game plan."
He also recorded a 5-1 victory against an A's club that had won five in a row against the Astros before dropping each of the last two in Houston this weekend.
McHugh was brilliant, even if he wasn't dominant.
"Throwing the offspeed stuff for strikes, that was basically it," said catcher John Jaso. "That and getting ahead.
"I thought he was pretty good. He kept people honest with his offspeed stuff, a lot like Tommy [Milone] did. Tommy was throwing his curveball for a strike and his changeup for a strike, too. When you don't have 96 [MPH] in the tank, that's really important to do."
Milone was just as effective with his offspeed pitches, minus a changeup he left up to Jonathan Villar, who hit it for a two-run triple in a four-run seventh inning. The Astros hadn't scored since the third.
The lefty scattered just four other hits with two strikeouts and two walks through a season-high 6 2/3 innings. By day's end, he had four earned runs to his name, as Dan Otero offered up the first home run of his career to Jose Altuve following Villar's triple.
Otero had gone 63 2/3 innings without allowing one, the most innings pitched among active players without surrendering a homer.
"I still shouldn't have thrown that pitch. I just left it in a little bit," Otero said. "Just unfortunate, especially allowing one of Tommy's runs."
"Tommy pitched great," manager Bob Melvin said. "Very few balls were hit hard. He pitched as well as we've seen him in a while."
Oakland collected a combined 39 hits in its first three games in Houston, but reached base just six times in McHugh's second start of the season for the Astros.
After Jed Lowrie's one-out single in the first, the A's drew three walks through the first three innings, before McHugh proceeded to retire 19 in a row. With two outs in the ninth, he hit Brandon Moss in the foot -- a play which was corrected after a replay review -- and Moss stole second before scoring and breaking up the shutout on a single by Alberto Callaspo.
Lefty Raul Valdes got pinch-hitter Craig Gentry to fly out to center for the final out of the game -- the first this season in which the A's lost by more than three runs.
"That was an outstanding performance," Astros manager Bo Porter said. "When we sent him out there in the ninth, it was with the complete hope that he was going to be able to finish what he started. That was tremendous, attacking the strike zone with all three of his pitches. To pitch that well against a really good-hitting Oakland lineup speaks volumes to Collin and the way him and [catcher Carlos] Corporan worked today."
With the loss, the A's fell to 9-7 during this stretch of 19 consecutive games against American League West competition, with a three-game set against the host Rangers next on the schedule.
"It's frustrating," Donaldson said. "Tommy pitched a pretty good game today, too, and you always want to get your starter a win.
"You have to flush it going into the next series, and we have a big series coming up. We want to beat those guys."


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Geography 597.99 Integrated Earth Systems
Earth Systems Science
Course Size:
Introduction to numerous global change issues through the exploration of the integrated Earth system; problem-solving strategies within an interdisciplinary team environment.
Course Context:
This course, offered Winter 2004 at The Ohio State University, is a lecture course offered in the Department of Geography. The class has 2 hour-and-a-half lectures per week (Monday and Wednesday) and 2 2-hour recitation sessions per week (students attend either Tuesday or Thursday).
Course Content:
This class addresses topics such as key environmental issues facing the 21 century, Earth's ecosystems, deforestation and loss of biodiversity, and human population and dynamics.
Teaching Materials:
There is one required text for this course:
- Miller, Jr., G.T. (2004). Sustaining the Earth (6th Edition), Wadsworth Publishers
Other Print Resources:
- For the lectures and recitation on the Earth's radiation balance, Chapter 2: "Solar and Terrestrial Radiation" from
Lutgens, F. and Tarbuck,E. (2000) The Atmosphere: An Introduction to Meteorology, Prentice Hall. 512 pages.
- For better illustrated, color images for most of the figures in your textbook:
Miller, G. T., Jr. (2003). Living in the Environment With Infotrac: Principles Connections and Solutions. Brooks Cole. 848 pages.
Additional Resources:
- Sustaining the Earth - Companion Site
This web site offers tutorials, quizzes, etc. for the textbook.
- Info Trac - this is a free online library available for 4 months after the student activates it with the information provided with the textbook. Info Trac links to many scientific articles related to the topics that you will cover in the textbook. To activate an account log into Info Trac and enter the passcode included in the textbook.
The website also contains the lecture syllabus and the recitation syllabus. There are also links to Lecture notes, quiz answers and study guides.
- Mid-term exam: 25%
- Recitation exercises: 25%
- Final exam: 25%
- Final Project: 15%
- Quizzes: 5%
- Participation: 5%
References and Notes:
NOAA's National Climate Data Center (more info)
U.S. Global Change Research Program (more info)
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (more info)


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Bink & Gollie: Two for One by Kate DiCamillo and Alison McGhee, illustrated by Tony Fucile
Oh how I adore these two characters! I was thrilled to see Bink and Gollie returning for a second book. This time the friends head to the state fair. Bink wants to play Whack a Duck but her aim is not as good as she might think. She manages to hit the man running the booth with hysterically funny results. The two girls then head to what Gollie wants to do, which is to enter the talent show. She assures everyone that she has several talents and Bink continues to tell people that, but it doesn't quite work out like Gollie had expected. Finally, the friends head to the fortune teller's tent where they are told just what they both want to hear most. The entire book is a laugh-out-loud funny, warm and cozy work that is simply glorious.
I really enjoyed that the different chapters in the book have very different feelings. The first is so wildly funny that I was chortling out loud to myself and had to share it with others in my family. The writing throughout the book is smart, clever and funny. Readers will be able to see the jokes coming, but the writing takes it to a different level. Above all, these two are friends who stand together and celebrate their differences.
Fucile's art is a huge part of both the humor and the warmth of the book. Throughout the vaudeville humor of the first chapter, I was amazed at how much physical humor could be portrayed on a page. He has his own sense of comic timing that adds so much.
Highly recommended, if you haven't read Bink & Gollie yet, make sure to try both books. Fans will adore this second in the series and long for the next one immediately. This is a modern children's classic. Appropriate for ages 4-7.
Reviewed from library copy.


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In the shadow of the Canigou mountain in France, the olive grove is set out along the Via Domitia, spanning over 74 acres of land bathed in the beautiful Mediterranean heat. Papillon extra virgin olive oil was born from this sun drenched land, obtained by a knowing blend of two olive varieties (Arbequina, a Catalan variety and Koroneiki, a Greek variety) chosen for both their aroma and flavor. The Papillon grove holds over 45,000 trees with a rustic Provencal villa and olive mill at the heart of the property. In 2008 Papillon erected a brand new mill to extract the olive oil: the Combusta Mill. This mechanical mill ensures the olive oil is extracted even faster than before, ensuring a smooth, delicious oil.
Gold medal winner at the Concours General Agricole in Paris in 2013


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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart wrote a letter to the audience for the opening of The Magic Flute at the Harris Theatre on Saturday night. It was read by Chicago Opera Theatre General Director Andreas Mitisek. Mozart realized that Chicago would not be founded until many years after his death, but he hoped we would be spiritually awakened by his opera and, importantly, financially supportive of the Chicago Opera Theatre.
Above Mr.Mitisek's head and slightly into the audience was a large sphere giving the hint that we were about to enter another universe, an interesting concept by set designer James Macnamara. As the overture began, more spheres appeared above the stage, and finally a kind of distant cosmic dust stretched out across the stage. This set remained throughout the evening, with heavenly bodies shifting position now and then for dramatic effect. Various characters appeared during the overture, adding interest to the music.
The staging, set, and props are sparse, suggesting dramatic events and various locales. Our hero, Tamino, crawls out of a trap door at the onset, wrestling a "monster," represented by a long rope wound with tiny lights. This prompted my companion for the evening to whisper, "I have the same problem with my Christmas lights." The unconvincing monster and Tamino and Papageno's inability to extricate the magic flute and bells from a dangling wire that descended from above the stage, detracted from the magic of The Magic Flute.
The cast, however, was nicely chosen to be believable, with their appropriate looks and beautiful voices, and they helped us to "believe." Sean Panikkar gave a youthful energy to Tamino. His Sri Lankan background gave the character a romantic mysterious flair, and his easy tenor sound was a pleasure for the appreciative audience.
Elizabeth Reiter as Pamina was equally convincing as the young ingénue, and her strong soprano voice brought power and pathos to the part. Notably, her lament in the second act during Tamino's trial of silence was one of the nicest moments of the evening.
Papageno, always an audience favorite, was ably sung by Marcus Beam. He bounded about the stage with the skill of a dancer, adding levity to an opera which sometime gets mired in preaching the necessity about living a pure and truthful life. Papageno's "suicide scene" at the end of the opera was somewhat diminished by the absence of a tree and rope. Instead, he planned to jump through an open trap door. Hmmm.
Grigory Soloviov as Sarastro has a commanding physical presence and a rich bass voice. Stronger low notes would have completed the image. Bruce Hall as the Speaker gave a likewise strong and welcoming presence to the "brotherhood."
The three Ladies, Leila Bowie, Julia Hardin, and Katherine McGookey, were fun and sang with beautifully blended voices. With their flowing, fantastic fairy land costumes, they flitted about the stage, providing movement during musical interludes. Costuming the three in identical costumes diminished their different personalities. They are not one unit; each has her own opinion about the situation at hand, usually involving the handsome Tamino.
Alex Mansoori sang well, but was not particularly menacing as the evil Monostatos. Although interestingly costumed as a South American banana republic dictator, Mansoori just wasn't as threatening as his character usually is. Pamina was only minimally repulsed. Monostatos's platoon of soldiers were also dressed in the banana republic look, and this chorus of men performed beautifully.
Gregory Gale's costume designs were eclectic. Each group of characters seemed to be in a different world, from near-realistic to extreme fantasy. The three boys, Henry Lunn, Andrew Peck, and Duncan Johnson, appeared like angelic English schoolboys with white short pants and a golden aura attached to their backs. Their voices blended well, and they ran lightly about the stage or sometimes appeared in the clouds above.
Lighting designer Julian Pike designed many quite beautiful lighting effects, often creating an interesting mood. However, the general look of the opera was dark. It was too long a wait for the dark back curtain to open and reveal a brightly lit cyclorama at the very end of the performance.
The best voice of the evening belonged to Emily Hindrich (a last minute substitute for Claudia Boyle, who had last minute visa problems) as Queen of the Night. She overcame the obstacles of an awkward costume that included a cane to sing her three arias with great finesse and clarity. Her second act aria was a highlight. Director Michael Gieleta had her hobble around Pamina's bed during her famous aria. In other scenes, Gieleta motivated singers and moved choruses around well, creating interesting stage pictures.
It is amazing that Mozart (1756-1791) created so many fine operas in his short life, with The Clemency of Titus in the same year as The Magic Flute. Chicago Opera Theatre does a fine job with Flute, certainly one of Mozart's best. COT's fine Young Artist Program serves to bring up new performers. Third Lady Katherine McGookey is part of that program.
Photos: Liz Lauren
The Magic Flute
2 hours and 45 minutes with one 20-minute intermission
In English with English supertitles
The Harris Theater for Music and Dance
205 E Randolph Dr, Chicago, IL 60601
Wednesday, September 19, 7:30 p.m.
Friday, September 21, 7:30 p.m.
Sunday, September 23, 3:00 p.m.
Chicago Opera Theater
Box Office
312.704.8414 Monday-Friday 9am-5pm


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This spring, the city's 1,400 principals got a choice: Do you want to stay with your current boss? Or do you think you could run your school better on your own, without supervision?
In a far-reaching experiment that represents the second radical reorganization of the school system since Mayor Michael Bloomberg took office in 2002, nearly one-fifth of the city's principals have been invited to have their school leave their current districts and become what are called "empowerment schools." Starting this fall, if all goes as planned, these 331 schools will be able to decide everything from the starting time of the school day to the vendors from whom they will buy books -- as long as they follow state laws and existing union contracts.
More Money, More Accountability
What this means for parents, teachers and students is still unclear. In theory, the principal will have more discretionary money -- roughly $150,000 per year -- to spend on projects that the school community deems important, such as a new music teacher or extra library books. Principals will no longer be required to attend meetings at their district or regional office, potentially freeing up time to work directly with students and teachers. In exchange for the new freedom, schools must prove that their students are making progress. Empowerment schools will be required to conduct "interim assessments" of all students every six to eight weeks. They will undergo annual "quality reviews" and receive grades of A to F from inspectors who spend two or three days evaluating them. (For more on the new assessment program, see "Grading Students, Grading Schools.")
"We believe schools are most effective when decisions are made by people closest to the children," principals and teachers, rather than regional administrators, said Eric Nadelstern, a seasoned and respected school leader who has been named chief executive officer of the empowerment schools. "Principals will no longer be able to say 'my hands are tied,''' he said.
The Department of Education hopes the number of empowerment schools will grow each year, Nadelstern said. And, according to its plan, by the 2007-2008 school – whether or not they become empowerment schools -- will be required to conduct interim assessments every six to eight weeks and undergo quality reviews.
The Response
The initiative has created lots of controversy. The leadership of the principals' union, which has been without a contract for three years, is livid. The union, the Council of Supervisors and Administrators, plans to sue the city for violating state law that governs school districts, its president Jill Levy said in a telephone interview. In a memo sent to principals, she said the initiative is "an attempt to break the back of this union."
Recently, three well-respected senior administrators -- Carmen Farina, deputy chancellor for instruction, Lori Mei, chief accountability officer, and Michelle Fratti, superintendent of Region 7 in Brooklyn and Staten Island -- have announced their retirements. While they have not publicly criticized the initiative, some colleagues speculate that the three did not want to stay on to carry it out.
Teachers are divided, particularly on the issue of interim assessments. While one Manhattan kindergarten teacher told Inside Schools that interim assessments, or frequent testing, will help her gauge how her students are doing, a fifth grade teacher said "It will drive me bonkers." The teachers' union seems cautiously supportive. "For many schools, the greater flexibility may be a good deal since it will allow educators to get away from some of the micromanaging that has been the bane of teachers for the last few years," according to New York Teacher, the newspaper of the United Federation of Teachers.
Some parents are opposed, while some are taking a wait-and-see attitude. "People believe it's just going to result in even more testing," Sam Greenberg, a Queens parent, told The New York Post. But Tim Johnson, chair of the Chancellor's Parent Advisory Council, a panel of parent leaders, said the new assessments are "potentially a good thing" that may prove to be as benign as a weekly spelling quiz and be a useful way to learn how a child is doing before the end of the semester or year. "I want to know how my daughter is doing and I don't want to wait for three months," he said.
A 180-Degree Turn
But for better or worse, the initiative does represent a dramatic shift in the way the Department of Education has done business since Bloomberg took office in 2002. Some are calling this latest change a mid-course correction.
After Bloomberg persuaded the state legislature to give him control of the schools in 2002, he dismantled the discredited Board of Education and consolidated 32 districts into 10 regions. In Bloomberg's highly centralized system, most decisions about curriculum were made at the top. Some principals and teachers complained that every detail of school life -- from the placement of a rocking chair in a kindergarten class to displays on bulletin boards -- was dictated from on high.
But now he empowerment schools seem to represent a move from radical centralization to radical decentralization. "It's a complete 180, a correction of the top-down stuff," said Johnson of the Chancellor's Parent Advisory Council,. "But you won't get them to admit that centralization didn't work."
Nadelstern, who opened several dozen small high schools in the Bronx, said the empowerment schools merely expand on the "autonomy zone," a network of schools that have operated outside the control of the regional offices for several years. He said centralization was necessary in the early days of the Bloomberg administration to bring order to a chaotic and unequal system, but that greater autonomy will liberate principals and teachers to do their best work.
Principals are divided. Some agree with Nadelstern, while others fear the new system will leave them worse off than before.
Why It Might Work
Carol Stock, an experienced principal of the successful PS 199 on Manhattan's Upper West Side, said she decided 199 should become an empowerment school in part because she believed the "staff development" or training she was able to offer her teachers in-house was superior to that offered by her region. She said the fewer meetings she had to attend outside the school, the better. And Stock said she believes the interim assessments and the quality review (the annual report card in which schools are graded from A to F) will be useful for teachers, parents and administrators.
Empowerment schools will be able to design their own interim assessments she said, as long as they can show students are making progress. The assessments may take the form of computerized bubble tests. But they could also include a one-on-one interview of the child by the teacher, or a test, similar to a pop quiz, devised by teachers. With the help of such assessments, Stock says, teachers will be able to how their students are doing as the year progresses and will be able to adjust their techniques before it's too late,
PS 199 was one of a small group of schools selected this past year for a pilot quality review. Inspectors contracted by the education department spent two and a half days in the school, talking to everyone from cafeteria workers to parents. Their report included descriptions of the school's tone and climate that went far beyond a recitation of test scores, citing, for example, the school's dance program for children in wheelchairs. "I think it is a good faith effort to measure how schools are doing," Stock said. "How it will actually play out, I don't know."
And What the Risks Are
For principals who have chosen to stay within their regions, however, the risks outweigh the possible benefits. For them, their current supervisors, called "local instructional superintendents," are not oppressive bureaucrats but trusted colleagues; their regional offices are a source of support and good advice.
Sharon Hill, principal of the well-regarded Manhattan New School, who chose not to become an empowerment school, said her local instructional superintendent, Anna Marie Carillo, is "fabulous….She used to be a principal. She understands instruction, and she understands the rules and regulations. I take care of the school, and she takes care of me. She is a shoulder to lean on. I have a great support system at the regional office. Why would I give that up?"
Hill also suggested that the amount of money offered, which varies according to the size of the school, might not be enough to compensate for the services the empowerment schools would have to take on, such as staff development.
Levy, of the principals' union, said the new initiative is part of a "corporate model" of education. She predicted that principals of empowerment schools would spend an excessive amount of time "concentrating on the management and business [aspects] of schools" and would have less time to focus on instruction. She said details are now handled by the regional offices, such as negotiating with vendors, would now be handled by principals.
The 10 regional education department offices still have some authority over empowerment schools. They will continue to determine student placement for special education, gifted and talented programs, and services for English language learners, Nadelstern said. But Nadelstern's office -- not the regional office – will have the power to hire principals.
-- Clara Hemphill, is project director of InsideSchools.org project director and author of "New York City's Best Public Elementary Schools: a Parents' Guide," "Public Middle Schools: New York City's Best, " and "New York City's Best Public High Schools." This topic page has been adapted from an article that originally appeared on the pages of our partner, Insideschools.org, an independent guide to New York City public schools sponsored by Advocates for Children.