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in the news
Carpenters Workshop Gallery And Swiss Bank Lombard Odier Partner For The Venice Biennale
Article published in Forbes.com, 13 May 2019
Last week as the Venice Biennale opened its doors for previews, a glamorous cocktail took place at Galleria Giorgio Franchetti Alla Ca' D'Oro, a late Gothic palazzo located along the Grand Canal that holds an important collection of Medieval art owned by the baron Giorgio Franchetti. There, Carpenters Workshop Gallery, an international art and design gallery with locations in London, Paris, New York, and San Francisco, had commissioned several of the names on its roster, who include Nacho Carbonell, Random International, Maarten Baas, The Verhoeven Twins, Wendell Castle, Michele Lamy, Virgil, Abloh, Rick Owens, and more to add their contemporary touch to the palazzo by adding their own creations to construct a dialogue between them, the Medieval works, and the palazzo's ornate architecture. The exhibition, which is on view through November 24 and titled Dysfunctional, was made possible in part by Lombard Odier, a family-owned private Swiss bank founded in 1796.
Now why would a Swiss bank partner with a premier art and design gallery? On the surface, a partnership between a Swiss bank and a design and art gallery may raise eyebrows, but for both Lombard Odier and Carpenters Workshop Gallery, it makes perfect sense. It was a partnership that began with discussions about three years ago, around the time of the 2017 Venice Biennale. "When Loïc [Le Gaillard, the co-founder of Carpenters Workshop Gallery] proposed the idea, the dream, just clicked and just wanted to be part of it. It was very easy to rationalize, because they are true rethinkers, and our bank stands for rethinking everything, the very interest of the art design collectibles," said Fabio Mancone, the chief branding officer at Lombard Odier, as we sat on a chaise lounge by Owens.
When Loïc Le Gaillard proposed the idea, the dream, we just clicked and just wanted to be part of it…They are true rethinkers, and our bank stands for rethinking everything, the very interest of the art design collectibles," said Fabio Mancone.
Just make not to label the partnership a sponsorship. That's exactly what Mancone insists it's not. For a sponsorship, "you take your brand name, you pass it on something, and then you invite clients," he said. "What we wanted to do here was really to commune our vision and values, which exist, and then bring it to the clients in a way that makes sense. We share the same clients, especially, you know, wealthy clients that love art, and they love to collect, and wealthy clients who love to invest—the same kind of ground. So we wanted to create something that was relevant for them."
What we wanted to do here was really to commune our vision and values, which exist, and then bring it to the clients in a way that makes sense, explained Fabio Mancone.
Carpenters Workshop Gallery had the opportunity to work with other partners, but they decided that Lombard Odier was the best fit. "Like any good projects, and like any good partners, we need more than money, we needed smart money, people would not only will be able to help us financially, but really be able to sit down at the table, roll their sleeves, come up with new ideas, to challenge us, in order to make sure that whatever we start doing together is going to get better," said Le Gaillard.
{We needed} people {who} would not only will be able to help us financially, but really be able to sit down at the table, roll their sleeves, come up with new ideas, to challenge us, in order to make sure that whatever we start doing together is going to get better," said Le Gaillard.
Fabio Mancone, Chief Branding Officer, Lombard Odier
Le Gaillard said that Carpenters Workshop Gallery titled the exhibition Dysfunctional because it wanted to ponder over the following questions: "What is function? What is not function? What is Dysfunctional, anyway brings us to what is art? What is not art? Where does it start? And where does it finish?" The dealer approached his artists and designers with one request when organizing Dysfunctional: "Blow my mind away." And that's exactly what they did. Upon entering the palazzo, guests see a chandelier by Carbonell titled "Inside a Forest Cloud," an illuminated amalgam of clouds and trees that is framed by the building's Corinthian columns and its magnificent tiled floor.
On the next level, hundreds of tiny automated mirrors on the floor surround the gallery's medieval sculptures, following the exhibition visitors around. "It was born out of trying to mimic human behavior in the most minimalist fashion, having little mechanical heads which can do only what human heads can do," said Hannes Koch, one of the members of design collective Random International, which created the installation.
Many of the exhibits look at the environmental and social issues of today.
Many of the exhibits look at the environmental and social issues of today. At a balcony close by, multi hyphenate Virgil Abloh contemplated on Venice's future and its rising waters through a series of chairs, benches and lamps called "Acqua Alta" that look as if they're sinking. In another room Stuart Haygarth's "Tide Colour," a sphere-shaped chandelier composed of colorful plastic objects the designer found on the coastline of his native England. The Campana Brothers formed an installation made from sustainable materials like raffia and dried palm leaves from the forests of their native Brazil. Lamy hung a set of punching bags designed by various artists that asks viewers to think about life in a boxing installation called "What Are We Fighting For?"
At the balcony on the second level, a series of iridescent glass bubbles is installed by the Verhoeven Twins, who took over seven years to perfect the process to make the perfect clusters of glass spheres that evoke the childhood joy of playing with bubbles. "So behind this smile is a lot of science, this moment of joy," said Jeroen Verhoeven. On the ground floor, Studio Drift created an illuminated frame of lights that surround the 1506 painting "San Sebastian" by Andrea Mantegna.
"We are pushing the boundary because I think we are rethinking the way we're approaching art today," said Le Gaillard, who with Mancone, hinted that Dysfunctional may be the first among many future collaborations between Carpenters Workshop Gallery and Lombard Odier.


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The connection between exercise and inflammation has captivated the imagination of researchers ever since an early 20th-century study showed a spike of white cells in the blood of Boston marathon runners following the race.
Now, a new Harvard Medical School study published Nov. 3 in Science Immunology may offer a molecular explanation behind this century-old observation.
The study, done in mice, suggests that the beneficial effects of exercise may be driven, at least partly, by the immune system. It shows that muscle inflammation caused by exertion mobilizes inflammation-countering T cells, or Tregs, which enhance the muscles' ability to use energy as fuel and improve overall exercise endurance.
Long known for their role in countering the aberrant inflammation linked to autoimmune diseases, Tregs now also emerge as key players in the body's immune responses during exercise, the research team said.
"The immune system, and the T cell arm in particular, has a broad impact on tissue health that goes beyond protection against pathogens and controlling cancer. Our study demonstrates that the immune system exerts powerful effects inside the muscle during exercise," said study senior investigator Diane Mathis, Morton Grove-Rasmussen Professor of Immunology in the Blavatnik Institute at HMS.
Mice are not people, and the findings remain to be replicated in further studies, the researchers cautioned. However, the study is an important step toward detailing the cellular and molecular changes that occur during exercise and confer health benefits.
Understanding the molecular underpinnings of exercise
Protecting from cardiovascular disease, reducing the risk of diabetes, shielding against dementia. The salutary effects of exercise are well established. But exactly how does exercise make us healthy? The question has intrigued researchers for a long time.
The new findings come amid intensifying efforts to understand the molecular underpinnings of exercises. Untangling the immune system's involvement in this process is but one aspect of these research efforts.
"We've known for a long time that physical exertion causes inflammation, but we don't fully understand the immune processes involved," said study first author Kent Langston, a postdoctoral researcher in the Mathis lab. "Our study shows, at very high resolution, what T cells do at the site where exercise occurs, in the muscle."
Most previous research on exercise physiology has focused on the role of various hormones released during exercise and their effects on different organs such as the heart and the lungs. The new study unravels the immunological cascade that unfolds inside the actual site of exertion — the muscle.
T cell heroes and inflammation-fueling villains
Exercise is known to cause temporary damage to the muscles, unleashing a cascade of inflammatory responses. It boosts the expression of genes that regulate muscle structure, metabolism, and the activity of mitochondria, the tiny powerhouses that fuel cell function. Mitochondria play a key role in exercise adaptation by helping cells meet the greater energy demand of exercise.
In the new study, the team analyzed what happens in cells taken from the hind-leg muscles of mice that ran on a treadmill once and animals that ran regularly. Then, the researchers compared them with muscle cells obtained from sedentary mice.
The muscle cells of the mice that ran on treadmills, whether once or regularly, showed classic signs of inflammation — greater activity in genes that regulate various metabolic processes and higher levels of chemicals that promote inflammation, including interferon.
Both groups had elevated levels of Treg cells in their muscles. Further analyses showed that in both groups, Tregs lowered exercise-induced inflammation. None of those changes were seen in the muscle cells of sedentary mice.
However, the metabolic and performance benefits of exercise were apparent only in the regular exercisers — the mice that had repeated bouts of running. In that group, Tregs not only subdued exertion-induced inflammation and muscle damage, but also altered muscle metabolism and muscle performance, the experiments showed. This finding aligns with well-established observations in humans that a single bout of exercise does not lead to significant improvements in performance and that regular activity over time is needed to yield benefits.
Further analyses confirmed that Tregs were, indeed, responsible for the broader benefits seen in regular exercisers. Animals that lacked Tregs had unrestrained muscle inflammation, marked by the rapid accumulation of inflammation-promoting cells in their hindleg muscles. Their muscle cells also had strikingly swollen mitochondria, a sign of metabolic abnormality.
More importantly, animals lacking Tregs did not adapt to increasing demands of exercise over time the way mice with intact Tregs did. They did not derive the same whole-body benefits from exercise and had diminished aerobic fitness.
These animals' muscles also had excessive amounts of interferon, a known driver of inflammation. Further analyses revealed that interferon acts directly on muscle fibers to alter mitochondrial function and limit energy production. Blocking interferon prevented metabolic abnormalities and improved aerobic fitness in mice lacking Tregs.
"The villain here is interferon," Langston said. "In the absence of guardian Tregs to counter it, interferon went on to cause uncontrolled damage."
Interferon is known to promote chronic inflammation, a process that underlies many chronic diseases and age-related conditions and has become a tantalizing target for therapies aimed at reducing inflammation. Tregs have also captured the attention of scientists and industry as treatments for a range of immunologic conditions marked by abnormal inflammation.
The study findings provide a glimpse into the cellular innerworkings behind exercise's anti-inflammatory effects and underscore its importance in harnessing the body's own immune defenses, the researchers said.
There are efforts afoot to design interventions targeting Tregs in the context of specific immune-mediated diseases. And while immunologic conditions driven by aberrant inflammation require carefully calibrated therapies, exercise is yet another way to counter inflammation, the researchers said.
"Our research suggests that with exercise, we have a natural way to boost the body's immune responses to reduce inflammation," Mathis said. "We've only looked in the muscle, but it's possible that exercise is boosting Treg activity elsewhere in the body as well."
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We all want to be satisfied, even though we know some people who will never be that way, and others who see satisfaction as a foreign emotion that they can't hope to ever feel.
Peace and happiness can be difficult to catch. Finding the right balance that lets us get to all of the different goals that we have in place is not always as easy as we would like.

subset: commoncrawl


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From paper and pens, to staples and office furniture, MASSCO is your partner for office supplies.
We offer trusted, top-quality brands at affordable prices, and our network of fully-stocked distribution centers means you get what you need when you need it. Trust MASSCO to take the worry and guesswork out of keeping your office ready for business.


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Our next Committee Meeting is 0n January 8th, 2013
The Boston Pride committee is always looking for Help on the committee level. If you are interested in Becoming a member of the committee, please come to one of out bi monthly meeting, which are 2nd and 4th Tuesday of every Month at 6:30pm.
All Pride meetings are held at the Pride Office in the Harriet Tubman House, 566 Columbus Avenue, Boston.


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Today we still build and supply threading machines, chasers and tooling. We also specialise in thread rolling on two roll machines or by using thread rolling heads. A refurbishment service is available for older machines at our works and we are always looking to buy redundant Kendall & Gent, Landis, Kenco, Peewee and Joshua Heap machines.
Click on the images for larger sizes…
|1950's Mark 1 Kendall & Gent 3" refurbished at our works in 2005
|Landis 4" Longbed refurbished at our works in 2007
|30 Ton Peewee Thread Roller Refurbished in 2002
|Landis Landmaco 2 ½" Refurbished in 2004
Kendall & Gent build new threading machinery and tooling to order and export all over the world.
Our site contains photos, workshop manuals and short movies of the machinery and tooling we offer.
Please contact us for quotes, information on our products and advice for any problems you may experience.
|New Kendall & Gent 2" Threading Machine
|Kendall & Gent Chasers (Dies) Will fit all makes of threading machines including Landis, Kenco & Joshua Heap. See Tooling Page


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Kinderkraft Comfort Up Car Seat
The COMFORT UP 9-36 kg car seat has been designed to ensure safety and comfort for children during car trips. It's very versatile, and suitable for all types of cars. It enables smooth and convenient backrest adjustment, and is equipped with a soft insert for young children (from 9 kg). It stands out not only thanks to its modern look, but also the additional improvements that increase the safety of your child. The product has the European Union ECE R44/04 approval label.
- A five-point safety harness with soft pads that protect the child against chaffing.
- Additional side protection that safeguard the child's head and shoulders.
- Adjustable headrest (seven positions), meaning you can adapt the seat to your child's height.
- Lightweight yet extremely durable design, reinforced padding in the lumbar region.
- Adjustable seat, with the angle of the backrest able to be adapted to the angle of the car's bench seat.
- The safety of the car seat has been approved through crash testing performed at the TASS institute.
- The product has been tested and approved according to European Safety Regulation ECE R 44/04.
- The material is pleasant to the touch, which means your child can remain comfortable for hours.
- Soft padding.
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- Soft insert for young children – reversible, in two colours. This means that the car seat can be adapted to young children.
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Have you got a commitment that is recurring you're just not dedicated to?
How to Separation along with Your Commitments
Stop ghosting the plain things you don't want to do.
Maybe it's a volunteer activity that just does not resonate with you anymore, a expert development group that was previously satisfying however now isn't, or even a committee in which the work does not feel high priority at this point. It would likely sound easier to just stop showing up, but you'll feel freer and less guilty in the event that you precisely produce a clean break. Here's how 1) Communicate directly regarding the motives to leaders through email, by phone, or ( if possible) face-to-face; 2) Finish any outstanding tasks or inform others where you are in the process, so that it may be handed off; 3) Delete calendar invites, to-do list, and email messages — anything that is associated with this commitment; and 4) Enjoy the relief and closing.
Stop ghosting the things you don't might like to do.
It was one particular types of relationships. I'd the event that is recurring my calendar to attend this group's conferences. For my first couple of years of involvement, I became passionate about it. Then my interest waned, and I also was showing up because we felt like I should. Then, s ner or later, I recently stopped rendering it a priority … because I ended up being exhausted after traveling, because I wanted to meet having a buddy, because i truly just had anything else to accomplish.
One element of me personally kept thinking I would personally appear eventually. But after months with this behavior, it absolutely was pretty clear that I would personallyn't. And so I resigned myself to "ghosting" the group — not arriving anymore, not actually admitting that I'd kept.
We thought I became OK with this specific behavior. But then a prompting from a friend inspired me become decisive and direct. I happened to be surprised that when I broke up properly with this specific commitment, We immediately felt lighter and freer as the clouds of avoidance and indecision lifted. And I also now had zero guilt.
Can you relate with my quandary?
With all of the upheaval this springtime and summer, you've most likely missed some activities and teams greatly. I know I discovered it exceptionally painful to be far from some of the combined groups I hold near and dear. But you might also have found others that you were just fine without.
Perhaps it's a volunteer activity that just does not resonate with you any longer, a professional development team that was once fulfilling nevertheless now isn't, or a committee in which the work does not feel high priority at this point. For a few tasks, like a required weekly business conference, you need to show up even if you don't feel just like it. But for those optional activities where you've got a choice and where it's likely you have currently drifted away, it could be time and energy to make a clean break.
Are you able to think about anything that falls into this bucket? In that case, perhaps you have communicated your intent? Or even, I recommend you take care to split up precisely with one of these commitments. Here you will find the four steps to undoubtedly be free
1. Communicate directly.
Instead of skirting the matter rather than arriving, keep in touch with the leaders that are appropriate where you've got duties. Here's the email you a sense of how your communication could sound that I sent in my situation to give
I am hoping you're well. I wanted to communicate a few things.
I see myself continuing to invest time as I was evaluating my priorities, I've realized that [group name] isn't an area where.
I had thought I would manage to go to more frequently last autumn I don't foresee myself being able to come more this winter than I have been able to, and. I desired to communicate that straight, so on me to accomplish club goals that you weren't counting.
Thank you for the chance to were area of the club. It in fact was a learning that is g d for me personally. I'm so proud of everyone for several of the progress. And I also will be back in the future, if so when it aligns with where I feel I'm called to spend my time.
Have a wonderful day!
Email can make the sense that is most for communicating your intentions. Or if you're stepping down from a larger duty or it is a closer relationship, you may think about a phone call, video talk, or an in-person conference for the conversation. Determine the mode of communication that best fits the relationship you have got utilizing the people included. Then make sure you contemplate what you need to state to make certain that you're clear and kind.
2. Complete your commitments.
With this team, I had made a commitment to publish their conferences on MeetUp , a site with all types of team occasions, and I also hadn't done that yet. Knowing I happened to be interacting straight gave me the push we needed to prioritize completing that task. This way when I told them I had taken care of all outstanding commitments that I was no longer going to be part of the group. This gave me a clean break and freed me from a feeling of obligation.
Think through all of the outstanding duties you have in this specific situation. Decide them, and if so, when if you will complete. Or if you will simply let them know that you're no more taking duty for a particular item, note it when you communicate your exit. For example, I had devoted to mentor a participant regarding the team but hadn't gotten far in that process. We inform them where we were into the mentoring process and that they need to ch se a new mentor for him.


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New large prehistoric shark described
Megalolamna paradoxodon is the name of a new extinct shark described by an international research team who based their discovery on fossilized teeth up to 4.5 centimeters (1.8 inches) tall found from the eastern and western United States (California and North Carolina), Peru and Japan.
The newly identified fossil shark lived during the early Miocene epoch about 20 million years ago and belongs to a shark group called Lamniformes, which includes the modern-day great white and mako sharks.
More specifically, it belongs to Otodontidae, which contains the iconic extinct superpredator 'megalodon' or the 'megatoothed' shark, and as an otodontid, Megalolamna paradoxodon represents a close cousin of the megatoothed lineage, said Kenshu Shimada, a paleobiologist at DePaul University and research associate at the Sternberg Museum in Kansas.
Certain dental features suggest its otodontid affinity, but in many other aspects, teeth of the new fossil shark look superficially like over-sized teeth of the modern-day salmon shark that belongs to the genus Lamna—hence the new genus Megalolamna, the researchers noted. The new species name 'paradoxodon,' or paradoxical teeth, comes from the fact that the shark appears to emerge suddenly in the geologic record with a yet unresolved nearly 45-million-year gap from when Megalolamna possibly split from its closest relative Otodus.
Although smaller than members of the megatoothed lineage containing 'megalodon' that reached well over 10 meters (33 feet), Megalolamna paradoxodon is still an impressive shark estimated to be minimally equivalent to the size of a typical modern-day great white, roughly 4 meters (13 feet) in length. Living in the same ancient oceans megatoothed sharks inhabited, Megalolamna paradoxodon had grasping-type front teeth and cutting-type rear teeth likely used to seize and slice medium-sized fish.
"It's quite remarkable that such a large lamniform shark with such a global distribution had evaded recognition until now, especially because there are numerous Miocene localities where fossil shark teeth are well sampled," said Shimada, lead author of the study.
In classifying the new fossil shark, the research team also came to a conclusion that members of the megatoothed lineage, including 'megalodon,' ought to be classified into the genus Otodus, and not to its traditional genus Carcharocles.
"The idea that megalodon and its close allies should be placed in Otodus is not new, but our study is the first of its kind that logically demonstrates the taxonomic proposition," Shimada noted. Because the megatoothed shark lineage simply represents a subset of Otodus, excluding megatoothed sharks would not reflect a full lineage for Otodus—an uncomfortable taxonomic condition referred to as 'non-monophyletic.' The inclusion of megatoothed sharks into Otodus would make the genus a much preferred complete lineage referred to as a 'monophyletic group' that is considered to be a next of kin to the new genus Megalolamna.
The new study, "A new elusive otodontid shark (Lamniformes: Otodontidae) from the lower Miocene, and comments on the taxonomy of otodontid genera, including the 'megatoothed' clade," will appear in the forthcoming issue of the international scientific journal Historical Biology and online on Oct. 3. In addition to Shimada, other authors include Richard Chandler, North Carolina State University; Otto Lok Tao Lam, The University of Hong Kong; Takeshi Tanaka, Japan; and David Ward, The Natural History Museum, London.
More information: Kenshu Shimada et al, A new elusive otodontid shark (Lamniformes: Otodontidae) from the lower Miocene, and comments on the taxonomy of otodontid genera, including the 'megatoothed' clade, Historical Biology (2016). DOI: 10.1080/08912963.2016.1236795
Provided by DePaul University


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Brit Bennett's first novel, The Mothers (Riverhead, 2017), offered everything a reader could hope for in a debut: a focused, clear plot, strong character development, and prose that introduced the author as a distinct new voice in the larger literary landscape. A critical and commercial success, The Mothers was a New York Times bestseller and a finalist for a slew of awards. Perhaps the reception of Bennett's debut adds to the high expectations for the author's follow-up, The Vanishing Half (Riverhead, 2020). Even so, Bennett's second novel not only shirks the sophomore slump, but also reinforces her as one of the most important and skilled American writers working today.
The Vanishing Half is an intergenerational story spanning from the 1950s to the 1990s. The Vignes twins, Stella and Desiree, grow up in Mallard, Louisiana—a fictional small town established in 1848 by a former slave named Alphonse Decuir who dreams of "each generation lighter than the one before." But the twins run away to New Orleans as sixteen-year-olds. The novel opens in 1968, fourteen years later. Desiree has returned home with her daughter, Jude. The people of Mallard describe Jude as "blueblack," disrupting the community's ideology of colorism. We learn Stella has left Desiree behind long ago and absconded to Boston with her white boss, Blake. Passing as white, Stella marries Blake and has a daughter, Kennedy. Their family moves to Los Angeles, where a chance encounter eventually brings Jude and Kennedy together and slowly unravels the family's secrets and history.
There are several reasons this brief summary does not do the novel justice. For one, Bennett's deft blend of intricate and seismic plotting makes it difficult to adequately cover much ground without messing up the story or slipping in a spoiler. Furthermore, The Vanishing Half is remarkably ambitious in both its achronological structure and its expansive breadth of time and space. Bennett's ability to jump around freely through several eras in American history, as well as from coast to coast and to the Deep South, is nothing short of exceptional. There is never a moment where the narration feels rushed or scattered; the shifts between characters are organic and seamless.
The novel's vast scope is a reward for the reader and a testament to Bennett's craft. From the first line, the author prepares readers for the novel's rapid time and perspective shifts: "The morning one of the lost twins returned to Mallard, Lou LeBon ran to the diner to break the news, and even now, many years later, everyone remembers the shock of sweaty Lou pushing through the glass doors, chest heaving, neckline darkened with his own effort." Some might call this a riff on the Marquez approach, that famous first line of One Hundred Years of Solitude: "Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice." But it is effective and grounding. The narration is already settled in a reflexive future and echoes back to the garrulous communal voice Bennett deftly implemented in The Mothers.
Visible and invisible aspects of identity are central to Bennett's character development. Certainly the Vignes twins serve as a central example, because though they are identical, they approach race with polarized perspectives. Desiree embraces her Black identity by first marrying and later forming a lifelong partnership with men who don't fit Mallard's many generations' worth of effort to fully assimilate to whiteness. By contrast, Stella hides her family ancestry at all costs, going so far as to fight to keep her wealthy Los Angeles suburb segregated in fear of being exposed. Having left home as a teenager, Stella spends most of her life in white society. Bennett writes:
"She'd always been a great liar. The only difference between lying and acting was whether your audience was in on it, but it was all a performance just the same. Stella never wanted to switch places. She was always certain that they would get caught, but lying—or acting—was only possible if you committed fully."
Later, Kennedy ironically—and unknowingly—inherits her mother's interest in acting. She drops out of college to pursue theatre and eventually finds some success in a three-season arc on a soap opera called Pacific Cove. Jude, by this time aware they are cousins, helps during a stage performance early in Kennedy's career in hopes of meeting and confronting Stella. If Stella and Desiree are identical in appearance but opposite in personality, Jude and Kennedy inherit dramatically different worldviews based on the way their mothers raised them. Over time, Jude and Kennedy both age and change, but they hold onto a clandestine familial connection that takes years to come full circle.
The snapshots across eras are particularly well designed to follow along as the characters change with time and experience. Stella, for example, pushes away from her role as an attentive housewife, despite her husband's protestations, and returns to school. She is hired as an adjunct professor in statistics, and her mentor encourages her to pursue a Ph.D. Each character is constantly finding and reassessing their place in the world, as well as their thoughts, emotions, and desires. When the narration is furthest from the characters, Bennett takes the opportunity to expand on the fluid nature of how the characters define themselves:
"Time was collapsing and expanding; the twins were different and the same all at once. There could have been fifty pairs of twins sitting at that dinner table, a seat for each person they had been since they'd spoken last: a battered wife and a bored one, a waitress and a professor, each woman seated next to a stranger."
Bennett's sound architecture shapes the novel, but it is—as with The Mothers—her complex characters that bring this monumental, sweeping story to life. The Vanishing Half reveals how people change and how they remain the same, but it is more than that: a breaking down of binaries, a reflection on the daily performances one makes to get by, and proof that the lifetime accumulation of our decisions can reify or erase our former selves. It's a reminder that there's so much at stake in the ways we treat one another: family, friends, lovers, neighbors, and strangers. There's little opportunity to go back.


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Ladera Vineyards
- Address:
Ladera Vineyards
150 White Cottage Road South
Angwin, CA
- Phone:
- (707) 965-2445
- E-mail:
- firstname.lastname@example.com
- http://www.laderavineyards....
- $0 Tasting Fee
- Wine Tours Available
- Visit this winery
Wine Tours - Visiting Ladera Vineyards
Howell Mountain Wine Tour
Howell Mountain was designated as an American Viticultural Area in 1983. Located in the Vaca Mountains, it comprises the northeast side of Napa Valley. This area makes for a perfect climate in which to grow grapes.
Howell Mountain Appellation Wine Tour
A visit to Napa County is full of adventure and great wine. Take a different view of the valley by touring some of the wineries of Howell Mountain, which lies to the northeast of Napa Valley, in the Vaca Mountains.
Ladera Vineyards produces its wine in gravity flow winery that was built in 1886. The winery makes two different Cabs: the Lone Canyon Vineyard (Mount Veeder) Cabernet Sauvignon, and the Howell Mountain Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon.
Lone Canyon Vineyard is situated on a very steep hillside in the Mount Veeder AVA. Located in the southwestern hills, this property is on the opposite end of the Napa Valley from the winery and Howell Mountain Vineyard.
Lone Canyon has very austere soils and produces quintessentially extracted mountain fruit at an elevation of 1,100 feet above sea level. Charles Hopper originally planted this property in 1877.
In contrast, the Howell Mountain Vineyard has a higher altitude, (1,600-1,800 feet), but a much less severe slope that Lone Canyon. This land also has a rich history and was first developed by Jean Brun and W.J. Chaix in the late 19th century. They were among the first to plant Bordeaux grapes in the Napa Valley, and also built the winery that is still in use by Ladera today.
Karen Culler is the winemaker fro Ladera Vineyards. She previously made wine with her grandfather in Ohio and for Columbia Winery in Washington. In 1984, Culler graduated with a Master's Degree in Viticulture and Enology from UC Davis. She made wines for Vichon for several years before starting her own label, Culler Wines, as well as going to work for Ladera.


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Brian's Fantasy Breakdown: Week 1
More stories from Brian Brener
- Chris Hogan
Despite his background being in Lacrosse, Chris Hogan is bound for a big year as he enters his third year with Bill Bellichek and the New England Patriots. With Brandin Cooks in Los Angeles and Julian Edelman suspended the first four games, Hogan is bound to be Tom Brady's number one target outside of Rob Gronkowski for the early part of the season. Although Gronk is known to be the primary red zone target for the Patriots, in the first 8 weeks of the season (when Hogan was healthy), he had more red zone targets than Gronk. Hogan had 11 red zone targets in that span, which was fourth in the NFL while Gronk only had 9 red zone targets. Clearly, the volume will be there for Chris Hogan all year long, but especially in the early part of the season without Julian Edelman.
- Royce Freeman
The past two years, at least two rookie running backs have finished the year as top ten running backs. This included Ezekiel Elliot and Jordan Howard in 2016, and Alvin Kamara, Kareem Hunt, and Leonard Fournette in 2017. This year I believe this will happen again with Saquon Barkley and Royce Freeman. Freeman has seemingly already beaten out Devontae Booker as the Denver Broncos workhorse back, which Freeman is built to be as he is six feet and two hundred and thirty pounds. During Freeman's time at the University of Oregon, he led the country during his four years in touchdowns and was second in yards. The Broncos were eighth in the NFL in rushing attempts last year, which means a lot of volume for the rookie from Oregon.
- Will Fuller V
During the four-game span last year, in which Deshaun Watson and Will Fuller were both healthy, Fuller was the second-best wide receiver in fantasy and scored on average 20.95 points per game. With Watson back under center and Deandre Hopkins on the other side of the field receiving a lot of attention, Fuller should be able to make plays down the field at a high rate this year. The only worry about Fuller is he can be big play reliant at times, and he has missed eight games over a span of two years.
- Kenyan Drake
Kenyan Drake is not made to be a workhorse back as he averaged less than 10 rushes per game last year. Drake's volume will now be even more limited than last year as he is in a crowded backfield with Frank Gore and Kalen Ballage. Not only is Drake's volume limited, but when he has the ball he has a tendency of losing yardage. Last year, Drake lost yards on 15 percent of his rushes, which was the fifth highest percentage out of all qualified rushers last year.
- Tyreek Hill
Although Tyreek Hill was a top ten wide receiver last year, his numbers are unsustainable. Hill is the first wide receiver since 2000 to finish fantasy as a top 12 receiver despite being targeted on less than 20 percent of a teams targets and less than 10 percent of red zone targets. Hill's volume does not look like it will rise this year too with the addition of Sammy Watkins and Spencer Ware returning from injury.
- Brandin Cooks
Brandin Cooks is very similar to Tyreek Hill in terms of me not seeing the volume for him this year. The Rams are stacked with playmakers such as Robert Woods, Cooper Kupp, and of course Todd Gurley. Cooks is being drafted as a top twenty wide receiver in ESPN leagues this year, but I him being extremely inconsistent. He will most likely have three or four great games this year, but they will be hard to predict. I would much rather pick a player such as Jarvis Landry or Chris Hogan instead of Cooks.
Hello! I'm Maya Chadda. I have been a Staff Writer for four years focusing mainly on The Bunion, Opinion pieces, comedy videos, and graphics. In the...


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A vintage blessing, dames! These sweet shorts from Unique Vintage are crafted in a fabulous dark blue chambray to keep you cool as you sizzle. The Joyce Shorts boast a delightful button up side and darling pin tucks for charming vintage style. Complete with a cute coin pocket for function as you frolic
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Shame is the driver of many of the issues we face in our lives. Even experienced therapists do not always see the impact that shame based thinking can have on the Self, relationships and our view of the world. It remains hidden until we bring it into the light and deal with it. Many people live with shame based thinking without ever realizing that this is the driving force behind their dysfunction. However, once it is revealed, reframed and reapportioned, we can deal with it effectively. I have been writing a lot about shame recently because it is a major issue with the clients I work with and always has been.
If you enjoy reading the varied articles on my blog The Online Therapist, you will be excited to know that it is now available as a free app for both Android and iOS.
It reminds me of a case I dealt with many years ago which is a perfect example of how shame affects people's decision-making in certain situations, how the consequences of such decisions are far-reaching and how things could be very different given different circumstances. The client concerned is a classic example of shame being dealt with irrationally through shame screens. He used withdrawal, anger and compensation in a process of dealing with deep shame for his actions.
I started working with F in 2008 and therapy lasted three years. I have sought permission to use his story but in the following case-study, names and places have been changed. This is his story ( in his words though some is from memory):
" I have always been someone who has felt copious amounts of shame, though I have only just realised it recently as shame and where it came from. I always thought that there was something fundamentally wrong with me. I have had a number of relationships over the years and all of them were dogged by my shame and not feeling good enough. It is much better these days but I still feel the effects daily. It is a question of management and staying aware of triggers and effects. However, the story that is told here rocked me to the core and meant that I might lose a person that I care deeply about. I still don't fully understand why I did what I did and how it developed from a little "devilish" thought to a major ruse that needed almost military style planning to keep it going.
I had just been separated from a lady I had been with for 10 years. It was a terrible split for me and I struggled badly, initially mentally but also had physical symptoms including headaches, nausea and general pain. I drank increasing amounts of alcohol, I slept badly and my diet consisted of TV dinners and junk food. I was living in a small apartment in a small town and the split coincided with the advent of winter. I was miserable and didn't see a way forward. At times, I thought about ending it all and even researched and thought about the easiest way to do it without excessive pain. As the split became more acrimonious, I felt very low and recognize now that shame played a major factor in this. I truly felt that she had left me because I was a bad person and she couldn't stand who I was. This thought developed in my mind and I was constantly triggered back to issues from my childhood and difficulties understanding why my parents said the things they did about me. I believed them and that became my mantra about myself. It affected every relationship I had had to that point and was happening again before my very eyes. My reaction to this was to let myself completely go, engrossed in thoughts of self- hatred. I became unkempt and drank more. I went out once every few week to shop but had junk food delivered. I was at my lowest possible point. I took two weeks off work and laid in bed for one of them.
Then one day, I decided to make out I was seriously ill (I wasn't) and built a whole story around hospital visits and imaginary diagnoses. When I spoke to my new partner about this, I felt even more shame but kept it going until it was too much and I told her I was cured. This caused much suspicion and questioning but I maintained the ruse.
The relationship developed and the idea of us meeting came up. I readily agreed and I was feeling fairly good about myself. What I didn't realize was that she had been listening to the lies but never actually believed much of what I said. She challenged me continually and I denied everything and felt more shame as a result. Today, we are still together but the relationship does not have a basis of trust, unsurprisingly. I am trying to lead a more genuine life where I express myself honestly but it is a work in progress. However, the trust needs building from the ground up and causes problems every day. If only, I could have my time again.


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Bay Area business leaders and law enforcement executives attended Elite Interactive Solutions' second Remote Guarding Summit in Dublin, California on October 26, 2017. Hosted by Elite's Law Enforcement Advisory Board, the summit was designed to inform law enforcement executives on the ways Remote Guarding is revolutionizing the security industry and providing significant benefits to law enforcement.
The myriad benefits for Remote Guarded facilities include: dramatically improved officer safety, elimination of false burglar alarms, force multiplication, and effective prosecution support.
The goal of the summit was to help law enforcement and business leaders understand the benefits of this technology-based service, which is significantly improving the security levels of their communities.
Captain Nate Schmidt of Dublin Police Services was happy to hear of the benefits Remote Guarding brings to law enforcement. "This is a great new solution that would be very beneficial towards improving officer safety and saving us time towards investigating false alarms," said Schmidt.
Increased officer safety is a result of Remote Guarding security agents remaining in contact with officers throughout an incident and providing live suspect descriptions, positions and warnings of possible weapons. In fact, Elite trains its agents to be live eye-witnesses to crimes in progress, which warrant a priority police response. Additionally, Remote Guarding not only enhances officer safety, but also has the documented ability to increase the likelihood of an arrest and conviction. Arrest rates for police calls increase from less than 1% with burglar alarms to as high as 40% with Remote Guarding.
Remote Guarding represents a massive breakthrough in the use of technology in security services. However, Elite's VP of Security, Forensics and Engineering, Rudy Aragon, was quick to point out that it takes much more than technology alone to prevent crime. "Technology has never solved a crime on its own and never will. Having the right expertise is essential to creating a successful Remote Guarding solution. We take the time to combine security consulting, system design, state of the art technology, customized processes and highly trained agents into a solution that makes true crime prevention a reality," said Aragon.
The summit attendees also included business owners and managers who interacted with law enforcement executives to learn how to improve security on their properties. Attendee Michael Clayton, Director of TAC Group was enthusiastic about what he learned.
"The summit was quite informative, and the application of Remote Guarding in various industries is very interesting. The quick response it generates from law enforcement would help reduce business losses significantly," said Clayton.
Beyond generating enhanced police responsiveness, Remote Guarding has repeatedly shown the ability to dramatically increase crime prevention levels. The foundation of this revolutionary result is the capability of agents to speak directly to suspects via voice-downs that use speakers on the client property. These efforts, which most often engage trespassers and intruders before they even start their criminal activity, cause intruders to leave the premises nearly 97% of the time, reducing the need to call police. To date, Elite has prevented over 70,000 crimes and assisted in over 1,100 arrests.
Elite's Law Enforcement Advisory Board works to deepen ties with and inform law enforcement agencies across the country on Remote Guarding. Keith Bushey, a member of the Elite Law Enforcement Advisory Board, presented many of the benefits at this year's summit. "Law enforcement receives many benefits that help prevent crime and save on precious resources when property owners engage in Remote Guarding solutions. This summit helped illustrate how powerful collaboration between law enforcement and private industry can truly be," said Bushey.


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Unlike the beauteous and quiescent beginning of Ralph Vaughan Williams' "The Lark Ascending" that we hear more often in live performance, A Sea Symphony is rousing, massive, commanding, and majestic soon after its opening measures, with the pomp and arrogance of empire pulsing through its exclamatory choral armada. The audience at the Duke Family Performance Hall may have been startled by the onslaught of this opening movement, but with three Davidson College choruses, two vocal soloists, and the Davidson College Pro Arte Orchestra arrayed before them, they couldn't have been completely surprised. A glance at the first line, "Behold, the sea itself," of the Walt Whitman text tipped us off to the imperative tone that was coming, and the three teeming pages of text that followed in the program booklet were a clear indication that it would not be long delayed.
The juxtaposition of America's signature poet with this British composer's first symphony becomes more natural when you realize that the lives of Whitman (1819-92) and Vaughan Williams (1872-1958) overlapped a full 20 years and that the composer began the piece just eleven years after the Good Gray Poet's death. Two of the five poems that form the text were actually published during the composer's lifetime and two others were first unveiled just a year before he was born. The exuberance of a composer reaching his prime blends powerfully with the confidence of a poet who had already become his nation's voice. Similarly, the commercial aspects of Whitman's "Song of the Exposition," written and read at the invitation of the American Institute at the opening of 40th Annual Exhibition in New York (1871), blend perfectly with the sea-spectacle of ocean vessels that Vaughan Williams paints with his chorale.
While this concert was staged at the Knobloch Campus Center at Davidson College, it quickly became apparent that I might construe the "Pro" component of Davidson Pro Arte in a couple of ways. Most of the musicians, 68 percent of the 40-piece ensemble, were indeed professionals, recognizable as members of the Charlotte Symphony, including four of its principals. Nor did I need to worry about the maturity of the solo vocalists. Bass-baritone Dan Boye and soprano Jacquelyn Culpepper have sung with the Charlotte and North Carolina Symphonies as well as appearing in numerous Opera Carolina productions. With all that local professionalism on hand, it might be useful to step back and appreciate how special this event was. Vaughan Williams' Sea Symphony isn't merely outside the core repertoire that most American orchestras perform; the only American recording I can find of this grand work came from the Atlanta Symphony on the Telarc label in 2006.
No, American singers do not often take on this quintessentially American text, and everybody on hand seemed buoyed by the occasion, including Pro Arte director Christopher Gilliam. And why not? The brass section, the three choruses, and timpanist Justin Bunting were all called into action before the strings. Once this éclat was exuberantly played out, the piece became more interesting as the text shifted from its brief "Exposition" excerpt to a judiciously trimmed version of "Song for All Seas, All Ships." In a piece headed toward the mystic universality of Whitman's visionary "Passage to India," these invocations of all nations' flags, all captains, all sailors on all seas served as a bustling, worldly foreshadowing. To give us this bustling sensation, Vaughan Williams stirred in all his forces.
Boye took up most of the opening stanza alone, beginning with "Today a rude recitative," but after the baritone invoked the sea's "dashing spray," the choruses – with another thump of timpani – whooshed in with the sudden onset of "the winds piping and blowing." We stayed on a fairly even keel when the focus shifted from the elements to the captains and sailors. It was only when Culpepper launched the final stanza, "Flaunt out O sea your separate flags," with a flourish of the brass behind her, that the full grandeur and variety of the opening Moderato maestoso movement was reached, fueled by the soprano's most forceful and memorable work. Like Boye, she interacted with the chorus, but before fading into sublimity, Culpepper gave way to mighty entrances from Boye and the chorus in the penultimate line, "A pennant universal," as her entrance – and her high notes – sealed the kinship between this first movement of Vaughan Williams' symphonic output and Beethoven's last.
To contrast with this sunny, majestic opening, Vaughan Williams chose "On the Beach at Night, Alone" for his Largo sostenuto. Boye was sterner than necessary, sterner than the gentle women's voices behind him, in the meditative opening lines before the music, and the text rose up to the cosmic "All souls, all living bodies." Like the opening "Song for all Seas," the second movement circled back to its opening line, but here the cellos and Erica CiceTara Villa Keith convinced me that it was a joyous plunge, over and over, into the waves.
A triumphal ending like this in a section Vaughan Williams titled "The Waves" might have seemed excessive if his outer movements hadn't ended in sublimity. The beginning of the final "Explorers" movement, with text culled from three of the nine sections of "Passage to India," offered a different kind of contrast. Orchestra and chorus grew so soft, delicate, and slow that we seemed to be floating in a mist, perfectly complementing the first line of Whitman's section 5, "O vast Rondure, swimming in space." The chorus built to an affirmation nearly as mighty as the waves' when we reached the description of a poet, "The true son of God,: who shall come after scientists and engineers have done their work. But this concluding movement was not yet half done. Vaughan Williams re-launched his finale from total silence, setting the last two sections of Whitman's "Passage" and bringing the solo voices back into his grand scheme.
After the largely devotional section 8, we set sail jubilantly as Culpepper, Boye, and the chorus took turns proclaiming "Away O soul!" Timpani and cymbals piled on shortly afterwards in the "Sail forth" stanza of section 9, punctuating a piercing high note from Culpepper. Softer at the end and fading away, Culpepper and Boye were at their sweetest, truly sailing away into the horizon – and because it was to India, eastward into a gleaming sunrise. Only the strings remained with the basses in the wake of the departed voices, reminding me of the primal quality that underpins creation in the opening bars of Wagner's Ring cycle. It's so soft and low that neither of the recordings I have – or a couple more I referenced on Spotify – comes close to replicating the special benediction the contrabasses bestowed on the ending. That's another reason why this live Sea Symphony was so rare and treasurable.


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Back in the summer of 2008 everything was so rosy for Polly Toynbee. Eleven years of Labour dominance, the Prime Mentalist was in power and, according to her, the NHS was going from strength to strength:
"This anniversary week the NHS has never been in better health. Never good enough, but now is the golden age on just about every available measure. No deficit but a surplus, no winter ward closures, no annual crises. Best of all, mortality amenable to healthcare figures – the avoidable death rates – now show a 21% improvement, far more than any other EU country. As those figures cover only 1998 to 2003 before the big spend, they are expected to have improved sharply."
As Polly penned that piece from the confines of whichever million-pound house or Tuscan villa she was staying in that week, just what was happening back in the real world? This week's Francis Report found that hundreds of patients had died needlessly at the mid-Staffordshire trust in the years between 2005 and 2008.
"Fundamental rights were denied," Francis says, slamming the "appalling and unnecessary suffering". Polly saw a golden age, Francis found a "lack of care, compassion, humanity and leadership". For Polly it was a story of the NHS never being in better health, for Francis: "this is a story of appalling and unnecessary suffering of hundreds of patients. There was lack of humanity".
Truly the envy of the world…


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Mass Media in Nigeria
Nigerian media is considered free and independent and seeks to expose corruption and delinquency. Over 100 independent media have been registered. But journalists operate under difficult conditions. Radio is the main source of news for most, followed by television, social media and newspapers.
Radio and TV
Radio is the most important news source in Nigeria. For many poor and rural areas, radio is the only daily source of news. 62 percent of the population listen to radio daily, and 34 percent say it is their main source of news. About half of Nigerians have access to television.
The supposedly most important radio channel is BBC Africa, which broadcasts in several languages. The State Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria (FRCN) has broadcasts in five zones, where it is broadcast in English and around 15 other Nigerian languages. The Nigerian Television Authority (NTA), established in 1976, is state-controlled and is responsible for all television operations in the country, with broadcasters in all states. In addition, there are a number of private TV and radio stations.
Internet and social media
Nearly half of Nigerians have access to the internet, and newspaper websites rank highly in use. Social media is increasing in size, from two to 20 percent between 2002 and 2015. Especially young people in the cities use blogs and twitter as main news sources and discussion forums.
The use of social media was crucial to the comprehensive mobilization of the protests in 2012 (Occupy Nigeria), which was perhaps the largest mass mobilization in history. Civil society used social media to monitor the elections in 2015. This was highlighted as important for making that election seen as the freest and fairest in the country's history.
There are dozens of newspapers in Nigeria; weekly, daily and Sunday newspapers.
At the end of the colonial era, Nigerian newspapers and journalists were the bearers of independence and colonial resistance. From the liberation in 1960 to a wave of privatization in the 1990's, most newspapers were state-owned. Today, most newspapers are in English, and there is greater newspaper circulation in the south than in the north. But there are a number of regional and local newspapers in local languages.
Press Freedom
Government-critical media had a particularly difficult period under President Abacha (1993-1998). Critical journalists were imprisoned and newspapers were closed for periods. Opposition radio Radio Kudirat (named after Kudirat Abiola, the wife of the winner of the 1993 election, Moshood Abiola), was driven from Stavanger from 1996 to 1998, with support from the Norwegian Foreign Ministry (UD) and Worldview Rights.
With the introduction of electoral democracy in 1999, it became easier for the media to operate. At the same time, the Reporters Without Borders organization is concerned about the freedom of the press in the country.
It is particularly difficult to cover politics, terrorism and corruption. Journalists are exposed to threats, violence and denied access to information from government and police. There have been several raids against editors in recent years, and several journalists have been arrested. A cybercrime law from 2015 restricts online freedom. In addition, many journalists are not paid wages, but rely on financial support from sources. This provides the basis for corruption in the media.
A 2018 research study reports that Nigerians have relatively low confidence in the media (compared to Kenya and South Africa). Between 40 and 45% say they do not trust Nigerian media. A large majority believe they sometimes or often encounter disinformation or "fake news." International media has higher confidence than Nigerians.


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God In Space, God In Time
The Significance Of Keeping The Sabbath
Rabbi David Fohrman
Founder and Lead Scholar
What is the real significance of the Sabbath Day? In this video, Rabbi Fohrman examines a description the Bible gives of the Sabbath and asks: What does it mean to bring God into this world through space and through time? How are we supposed to "make" Shabbat, as instructed in the Bible?
Join Rabbi Fohrman as he examines the term "melacha" and explains that time and space are the two realms in which we explore our connection with God. Through this analysis, we learn how God exists outside of time and space, and why the Sabbath is significant - because it's the day we bring God into our world.
This is Rabbi David Fohrman, and welcome to Parshat Vayakhel-Pekudei. You are watching Aleph Beta.
This week I want to talk to you about a verse that many of you know very well, it's a verse that actually comes from last week's Parsha, but it's part of the Kiddush prayer which we make on a Sabbath afternoon as a way of sanctifying the Sabbath.
What Is the Significance of "Making" the Sabbath?
The verse is very, very familiar, but its meaning, I think, is very strange once you actually start to think about it. Here's how the verse goes.
Veshamru benei yisrael et HaShabbat, la'asot et HaShabbat l'dorotom brit olam.
Now there it is in Hebrew, it's considerably more difficult to translate the words in English. Veshamru benei yisrael et HaShabbat – that's pretty easy, the Children of Israel shall keep the Sabbath, they shall observe the Sabbath. Now here's where it gets hard; La'asot et HaShabbat – to do the Sabbath or to make the Sabbath. L'dorotom brit olam – for generations, forever. What does that even mean? You should guard the Sabbath to make the Sabbath? It's just almost a non-sequitur. If you just said, you should guard the Sabbath, make sure that you don't transgress any of its laws, so I would understand what that means, you shouldn't do any prohibited labor on the Sabbath. But what does it mean to guard in order to make the Sabbath?
I guess in modern hip language you say, hey, do you do Sabbath? But we don't think, like 'doing Sabbath,' as 'making Sabbath,' in a literal kind of way. The Sabbath isn't something that you make, the Sabbath is there, it's a point in time. Your job is just to make sure that you don't transgress any of its laws, so you keep the Sabbath. You make the Sabbath and you make it by guarding it? What does that even mean?
Okay, so I think we can get some insight into this question if we sort of pull back the zoom lens for a moment and focus on the entire second half of the Book of Exodus and its structure. This week's Parsha brings to a close the Book of Exodus, so it's a good time to stand back and ask what it is we've been reading all these past weeks?
In Search of the Sabbath's Significance in the Bible
In looking at the second half of the Book of Exodus, here's the structure that seems to emerge. I mentioned it briefly last year in our Parsha video on Pekudei. There's a chiasm here, an ATBASH structure. First element mirrors the last element. The second to first mirrors second to last. Third to first, third to last. All converging towards a kind of center. Now we've talked about chiasms before, we talked about one in last week's Parsha that spanned just about five or six verses. This chiasm spans hundreds and hundreds of verses, it's huge, it's fascinatingly elegant, it has about 250 pieces to it. For those of you who want to look at this chiasm in great, great detail, I refer you to a series on this website on the Golden Calf and its aftermath. The last three lectures of that series are devoted to an exploration of this chiasm. But let me just give you some of its basic ideas and then I want to examine its implications with you.
Okay so here's kind of a simplified look at the chiasm. If you go to the very end of Parshat Mishpatim, just kind of at the halfway mark, more or less, in the Book of Exodus. You find a story about God coming down in a cloud, and revealing Himself to Moses and the people of Israel. The cloud is at the top of Mount Sinai and it covers the mountain. Next, we launch right into Parshat Terumah and Tetzaveh, and that's all about the construction of the Mishkan, the Tabernacle. The laws of the Tabernacle take us all the way through the middle of Chapter 31 in Exodus, where all of a sudden we get this little interlude about the Sabbath. That's where the verses I was just talking to you about came from. And right after this, we get the disastrous episode of the Golden Calf.
Now the Golden Calf and its aftermath takes up the balance of Parshat Ki Tisa. Coming out of that what do you have at the beginning of Parshat Vayakhel? You have the Sabbath once again at the beginning of Chapter 35. After the Sabbath almost the rest of our entire Parsha, Vayakhel-Pekudei, is devoted to the actual construction of the Mishkan, the Tabernacle. Laws for the construction came earlier in Terumah-Tetzaveh, now the actual construction comes in Vayakhel Pekudei. Finally, at the very end of Pekudei, this week's Parsha, we get a little section about the cloud once more, but this time there's a cloud of revelation that's not on top of the mountain, but down below covering the Tabernacle.
Okay, so there you have it, pretty much a chiasm. The center seems to be the Golden Calf, radiating out from that Sabbath, Mishkan, cloud on either side. So now the question is okay, great, so there's this chiastic structure here, this ATBASH pattern, but what, if anything, does it mean?
I think that if we get the answer to that question right it will actually give us some insight as to what the entire second half of Shmot is really all about. The chiasm spans the entire second half of Shmot, it might be telling us something about the theme of this vast section of Biblical text.
Think about what these elements are about. The cloud of revelation, it's about God coming out of His world wherever that is and coming into our world. Think about the Mishkan – the Mishkan is really about that, God gives the Ten Commandments on these two tablets, but the centerpiece of the Mishkan is those two tablets, when they get put in the Aron, in the Holy of Holies. The Mishkan is about building a place for God's presence, making a place for God in the world.
Now skipping Sabbath for a moment, going to the Golden Calf, we might say the Golden Calf is the anti-version of all of this, it's an unsuccessful attempt to bring God into the world in a way that He did not command. The people thought that Moses' encounter with God at the top of Sinai had ended in failure, that Moses was dead, and therefore, in panic, they tried to create a vehicle for revelation in their own way. This indeed is how the Ramban – Nachmanides – understands the whole episode. So the Golden Calf represents a failure to bring God into the world.
Now the only other real element left within this chiasm, in terms of the large major themes of it, is Sabbath, leading us to wonder whether that's what Sabbath is about too? Is Sabbath about bringing God into the world, and if so, how exactly does Sabbath relate to Mishkan?
God Exists Outside of Time and Space
So here I want to reference a beautiful little book on the Sabbath by Abraham Joshua Heschel entitled simply "The Sabbath," and his central thesis of the book is that the Sabbath is a place for God. It's a place for God in time. Essentially his argument is that what the Mishkan is to space, the Sabbath is to time. God has a special place in both of these realms, neither of which is native, so to speak, for God. God does not need space, God does not need time, these are constructions of God for the express purpose of allowing human beings to exist. But after having created the world, God wants a little summer home here, so God would like a place for Himself in space and in time.
You see it actually at the very, very beginning of the Torah. After the six days of the creation of the universe there's a seventh day, a day that God takes for Himself. God sets aside that day, blesses it, rests in it. Think about rest as opposed to work, when you work you're doing, you're too busy to actually be there, when you rest you're there. God is there in the seventh day. What happens right after that seventh day that is God's? The next thing God does is He plants a garden, the Garden of Eden.
In the very beginning God had a place for Himself in time, and God had a place for Himself in space. We were ultimately exiled from the Garden, we couldn't be there with Him anymore after eating from the tree of knowledge but since then, the mandate given to us has become clear: "recreate this for Me. In the beginning I made this for Myself; a place in space, a place in time, now you make it for Me. You create a place in space – a Mishkan, and you create a place in time, the Sabbath."
Now here's the fascinating thing to consider, how do you build the Mishkan? You build it through the process of melacha, creative labor. That's the word the Torah uses to describe the construction of the Mishkan, but it's also the word that the Torah uses to describe what we must desist from on the Sabbath. To guard the Sabbath means NOT to do melacha, which leads to a mind boggling conclusion. Let's go back to that puzzling verse.
How Man "Makes" the Sabbath
Veshamru benei yisrael et HaShabbat – Israel must observe the Sabbath, must keep the Sabbath, by staying away from melacha. To what end? What happens when you do that? La'asot et HaShabbat – it creates the Sabbath. The Sabbath just isn't a static thing in time, it's a day of rest, it only happens when you rest, rest is what creates it. If engaging in melacha is the way that you build the Mishkan, disengaging from melacha is the way that you build Sabbath. It's the way you make Sabbath. Sabbath is something you make by observing it.
Now I want to probe just a little bit farther with you and ask, why should it be this way? If Sabbath is to time what the Mikdash, the Mishkan, is to space, why is it that the way you build in space is the mirror image of the way you build in time? Why the inverse relationship between these two?
Here's a wild theory. Maybe it has to do with the nature of time and space themselves.
Understanding the Significance of Keeping Shabbat
As it turns out something we've learned in just the last hundred years or so, is that time and space themselves have a fascinating inverse kind of relationship to one another. Einstein's famous theory of special relativity talks about the relationship between time and space and tells us some counterintuitive things about them, mind-bending things. One of the things it tells us is this, the faster you go through space the slower you go through time. As you go in motion through space the faster you go, the closer you get to the speed of light, the slower you go in time. Time actually slows down for you.
As crazy as this sounds, this hypothesis has actually been tested and found to be true. Two clocks, two incredibly precise atomic clocks were taken, one left on the ground, the other put in a 747 and flown for hours and hours, making an entire trip around the world. When the clocks were then again compared, the one that was moving at just 500 miles an hour – just a small fraction of the speed of light – the one that was moving had actually slowed down relative to the other clock. Time had gone slower for it. In just a small, fractional way, but the faster you go the more this effect is felt.
Leading to what is sometimes called the twin paradox. For those science fiction fans out there, Orson Scott Card talks about this in his book Ender's Game. But the paradox actually comes from scientific writings, not science fiction writings. If you took a pair of twins and left one on the Earth and sent the other in a spaceship going really, really fast, approaching the speed of light, that ship could travel for 50 years, and by the time it arrived back on earth, the twin that was in the ship would have aged just days, while its twin would be 50 years older.
The faster you go through space, the slower you go through time. Movement through space is the inverse of movement through time. So perhaps it comes as no surprise that the way you build in space is by engaging in melacha and the way you build in time is by refraining from it.
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|Sat, Apr 4th 1998, 00:00
Latest Posts
|Posted On
|Digital QST Survey
|on 5/4/13
|I have to agree with some of the comments above.
1) My primary and secondary computer systems are linux based. Regardless of what some people may think, :FLASH" on Ubuntu 12.10 or 12.04 is NOT stable under firefox, and there is no solution for it yet. (Problem first reported in November 2012.)
2) I have IOS based devices, and QST is totally unreadable there as well--- the print is way, way to small. (If you really want to have fun, try reading it on an iPhone. By the time you finish any article, including the letters to editor column, you will have no idea what the material was about, especially after flicking your fingers to expand the text to a readable size - not to mention pure page navigation.)
3) I do have a windows XP system available to me, running under VirtualBox. Eventhough I have multiple monitors, I have not been able to find a way to span monitors with Windows under VirtualBox. Under VMware, it would span monitors, but VMware no longer functions...
4) I, too, would prefer that QST be available under PDF, but understand why ARRL might not want to do so at thjis time --- primarly DRM rights.
5) When I first heard about the digital QST, I expressed my opinion about LINIX support - and was promptly ignored.
6) And before anyone thinks that I and some others are against "anything new", I'd just like to say that I have been in "Information Technology" for more than 50 years!
73, Bill wb4alm


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Then it was time to put the card together. I arranged the thin Jelly Bean Green strips on the right side of the card, then stamped the large "Thank You" from Ways To Say Thank You by Picket Fence Studios. Next, I arranged the Asters and added enamel dots to the centers. Lastly, I added one of the sentiment strips I cut at the beginning of the project.
Thursday, May 30, 2019
Stamping Friends Trifecta Blog Hop & Giveaway
Then it was time to put the card together. I arranged the thin Jelly Bean Green strips on the right side of the card, then stamped the large "Thank You" from Ways To Say Thank You by Picket Fence Studios. Next, I arranged the Asters and added enamel dots to the centers. Lastly, I added one of the sentiment strips I cut at the beginning of the project.
75 comments:
Always love stripes with flowers, that is a great application of the Cut-Align! Gorgeous photos!ReplyDelete
I LOVE the color combination on your first card with those green stripes in the background. And of course the pink flowers. My favorite! And your little birds are so darling. Super cards!ReplyDelete
Lovely cards! Your Elegant Aster Card is my favorite!ReplyDelete
Just lovely!ReplyDelete
So enjoy your color choices!ReplyDelete
Love the birds! So precious.ReplyDelete
Love your cards!ReplyDelete
The Misti has changed my stamping too, especially good because of the arthritis in my hands! Lovely cards, like the aster card the most!ReplyDelete
Beautiful card and wonderful colors. I can see a lot of products I would love to own from these companies.ReplyDelete
Beautiful cards....the Thank you card I always need in my stash....the Wishes card...well, that was a brilliant way to use the mini stamp set. I so love that you used the plaid background paper from the paper pack...it just made those little red birds stand out....great job...ReplyDelete
Thank you so much for sharing in this fun blog hop today.
love the colors on the first card, and the stripes add a little something to it!ReplyDelete
Thank you for the lovely inspiration! I love all 3 of these companies!ReplyDelete
Angie - what lovely projects - I particularly like the flowers with the stripes - so pretty.ReplyDelete
Lovely cards. I love those little birds!ReplyDelete
Beautiful cards. Love them.ReplyDelete
Beautiful cards! I love my Misti tools. I think I need the Cut-a-line next. Yes, you NEED more GKD patterned paper packs. The one you used today is one of my favorites.ReplyDelete
These cards are looking beautiful.. love the way you used the patterned paper..loved your blog post..ReplyDelete
Loving the stripes! Just beautifulReplyDelete
Your cards are so sweet!ReplyDelete
Great cardsReplyDelete
I'm in awe of all the gorgeous creations that I am seeing...holy moly!! Love, Love, LoveReplyDelete
I really like you CAS designs! The way you colored the flowers in the first one is sooooo perfect! And I like the sentiment too!ReplyDelete
Beautiful cards! I have the cut align on my wish list and of course have now added those amazing brushes and beautiful stamp and die set. Thanks so much for sharing your talents.ReplyDelete
Beautiful cards, love those stripes. Thanks for sharing your talents with us.ReplyDelete
Beautiful cards! Thanks for sharing!ReplyDelete
Beautiful cards! I love the colours of the Asters; so pretty. I'm going to need that Cut-Align, I can tell. Straight lines aren't my forte!ReplyDelete
Those green strips really add wow! So pretty!ReplyDelete
Lovely cards!ReplyDelete
wonderful cards, Angie - have a MISTI and some Gina K. stamps, but not I think I need that cut/align tool and the brushes!!ReplyDelete
Sweet cards!ReplyDelete
The pink and yellow Asters are beautiful!!ReplyDelete
I love that first card - the stripes really make the flowers popReplyDelete
Lovely Cards!ReplyDelete
Beautiful cards! I appreciate your comments on the Cut Align. I struggle with cutting my little sentiment strips too. Something else for my wishlist!ReplyDelete
Your cards are so fresh and crisp looking, love your combinationsReplyDelete
Love your beautiful creations. Thanks for sharing!!!ReplyDelete
Beautiful cards! Love the pretty flowers and the way you colored them, and also those adorable birds! Great Trifecta hop! Enjoying the collaboration with all of these awesome products!ReplyDelete
Thank you got really showing off the cut align!! Can't wait to get one!ReplyDelete
- AnonymousMay 31, 2019 at 2:48 AM
Nice job! This is so much funReplyDelete
Such lovely cards.ReplyDelete
Both the cards are great, but I love how you put those asters on the green stripes, perfect!ReplyDelete
Gorgeous cards! Love The patterned paper on the red.ReplyDelete
- ThereseMay 31, 2019 at 10:00 AM
Just love the first card using the green stripes behind the flowers, beautiful card,ReplyDelete
Love the cards and the cute little birds on your wishes card.ReplyDelete
A nice job creating these.ReplyDelete
Pretty cards! Your flowers look AHmazing!!! WOW!ReplyDelete
Very cute cards! I love how you inked your asters on the first one.ReplyDelete
Lovely card! Nice to meet you! I like your work~!ReplyDelete
Fantastic cards. Love the arrangement ofReplyDelete
the flowers on the side of the first card.
The second is simple but so cute.
thanks for sharing.
Awesome. I love the thin stripes behind the beautiful flowers.ReplyDelete
i was SO tempted to get the ASTERS kit when we were at Gina's store. I just had to walk away. Glad to see it here and your thoughts on the cut alighn.ReplyDelete
Nice cards-a wonderful use of all the tools in the trifecta. I will take inspiration from your green stripes-the partial page of green is a clever idea.ReplyDelete
Thanks for sharing all these great products and your pretty card!ReplyDelete
Lovely cards!ReplyDelete
I just love your cards, Angie! Those little birds- so sweet and great colors!ReplyDelete
Such wonderful cards! Loving the cut-align...ReplyDelete
Thanks for sharing...
I love both of these cards! I don't have the Cut Align rulers yet, but they look like they would make cutting small pieces so much easier. I agree, Gina K. paper is the best!ReplyDelete
Love the green strips with the flowers and the cute little birds on the second card!ReplyDelete
Beautiful cards! Both are clean and crisp. Thanks for sharingReplyDelete
Such sweet cards!ReplyDelete
That bird card is so cute. :)ReplyDelete
Beautiful creations! I especially love the flowers and stripes!ReplyDelete
Very pretty cards. I am fascinated by the Cut Align Ruler.ReplyDelete
Wonderfully fresh and happy! Beautiful cards!ReplyDelete
What sweet cards! I really love the little red birdies. Lovely.ReplyDelete
Your cards are all amazing!! Thanks so much for sharing with us.ReplyDelete
Such cute and cheerful cards.ReplyDelete
Loved all of your cards. Might have to buy the brushes and rulers. Thanks for sharing.ReplyDelete
Wow Angela :) Such a beautiful summery card!!! Love that color palette and the composition! Thanks for the inspiration :)ReplyDelete
I can't cut a straight strip either and this tool sounds like the solution to my dilemma. Beautiful card!ReplyDelete
Gorgeous cards! So much inspiration on this hop!ReplyDelete
Pretty flowers and cute birds. I like the striped background on the first oneReplyDelete
Love your clean style. Very inspirational project for me cause I love to make CAS cards.ReplyDelete
Adorable cards, Angie. I just love the Elegant Asters stamp set.ReplyDelete
WOW! This MUST HAVE BEEN A HUGE HOP, Angie! I LOOOVE my Mini Misti too! AND I have the Cut-Align coming in the mail..... LOL I don't stamp without my Misti either & look forward to using the Cut-Align! Your cards came out WONDERFULLY!!!! ;) INKY HUGS DEAR LADY for you SWEET VISITS!!!!!!!!!!!! ;)<3ReplyDelete
Peace of the Season - Day 2 Limited Edition Set Hop
**Compensated affiliate links may be used at no additional cost to you!** Hello! Welcome to Day 2 of the December Limited Edition Set Hop! ...
Welcome to Day 2 of the September Impression Obsession Release! We hope you enjoyed the samples yesterday! Each day (September 6th & 7...
Hello! I am so excited because today Unity Stamp Company and My Sweet Petunia (the maker of the MISTI) are teaming up for a fun hop...


text:
Item #: SPGL961571-L
Engraved Moonshine Mason Jar - is currently on backorder. You may still purchase now though and we'll ship as soon as more become available.
An engraved moonshine label design created for your best moonshine, or any drink of choice. Comes engraved with a name- please be sure to add ( 's or s' ) if needed.
- 16 oz. glass drinking jar
- Measures 5 1/4" in height x 2 5/8" in diameter
- Jars do not come with lids
Shipping or Processing upgrades
Gift Message Information & Add On
Clicking a link above will open a new window


text:
Looks like Apple's new Airpods will arrive in time for the winter holiday shopping binge after all. On Tuesday morning the wireless earbuds became available for purchase online with a ship date of Wed December 21, the same day they will also arrive in Apple's brick-and-mortar stores.
When it announced Airpods in September, Apple said the $159 headphones would begin shipping in October. But on October 26, with the month nearly concluded, the company said it was delaying their retail availability. "We don't believe in shipping a product before it's ready," an Apple spokesperson told BuzzFeed News. "We need a little more time before AirPods are ready for our customers." Apple did not provide an explanation for the postponement, its first big delay of a new product since the white iPhone 4 in 2010.
Apple introduced AirPods in September alongside the headphone jack-less iPhone 7, touting them as a technically superior alternative to wired earbuds. Packed with a custom-designed Apple W1 chip, accelerometers, optical sensors, beam-forming microphones, and antennas, Airpods are diminutive in-ear computers and a big part of Apple's vision for the future of audio.
"These are as advanced a project as Apple Pencil," Apple SVP Phil Schiller told BuzzFeed News back in September. "We started this project when we started the Watch project. We knew we needed a great wireless solution for audio. We said, 'What if you could design what the future of headphones should look like?' That's what we asked the team to do."
Asked again to explain the issue behind Airpods' delay today, Apple declined comment. But prior to today's announcement, a person familiar with the product's development told BuzzFeed News Airpods had required additional and unexpected "fine-tuning" related to sound performance and battery life. It's worth noting that Apple said today that BeatsX — which rely on the same proprietary wireless chip as Airpods and were also supposed to ship in October — will ship in February 2017.
Airpods feature a buttonless design that relies on double taps and Siri commands to skip songs or make phone calls, and a "magic sauce"-soaked wireless chip that Apple says will solve the conga line of connectivity problems from which Bluetooth headphones have historically suffered.
"It's unbelievable to me still how much stuff we were able to cram in there," John Ternus, vice president of Mac, iPad, ecosystem, and audio engineering at Apple told BuzzFeed News in a September interview. "We do a lot of products that are just packed with technology, but these are arguably the most densely packed products we've ever made. There is NO wasted space. NONE."
Update: Shortly after Airpods became available for pre-order on Apple.com, shipping estimates slipped from December 21 to December 29, and then to "4 weeks."