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News and Events at the WSU Libraries
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Washington State University has joined the Open Textbook Network (OTN), a consortium of colleges and universities working to advance open textbook initiatives.
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With assistance from WSU Provost Daniel Bernardo and use of one-time money, the WSU Libraries have been able to put off journal cancellations planned for this year. Each year, even when we receive increases in funding, we must cut journals due to price inflation from publishers.
Updated: 08/02/2016 - 14:58
While her husband was stationed in Okinawa, Japan, three years ago, Heather Wiegmann photographed a Japanese white-eye, or mejiro, amid the first cherry blossoms of spring.
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Updated: 08/02/2016 - 15:13
It is part of human nature to collect things. Washington State University Libraries' exhibit of personal employee collections includes such treasures as vintage purses, holiday Beanie Babies, 1940s-era menus, shot glasses and gaming miniatures.


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Août 2016
A combination of the biggest players in any industry is usually frowned upon, yet the potential merger of Canada's two largest fertilizer producers may prove to be an exception.
Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan Inc. and Agrium Inc. said Tuesday they're in talks about a merger of equals. For buyers of their potash outside of North America, things would look little different after the transaction. Both companies, along with U.S. producer Mosaic Co., already operate a joint venture that handles their exports. That means any deal shouldn't pose harm to competition, according to Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Jason Miner.

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Devotee: There is a doubt circulating among some devotees about the authentic location of 'Mayapur,' the birth site of Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. There is also a controversy among some devotees about the Adbhuta Mandir. Will you please say something to clarify these issues?
Swami Narasingha: Some sahajiyas and mundane academics claim that Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's birth site is in Ramachandrapur (a suburb of modern Navadvipa town). However, according to the text of Bhakti-ratnakara Mayapur (Yogapitha) is located in Antardvipa, on the eastern bank of the Ganga.
Ramachandrapur in modern Navadvipa is located in Modrumadvipa on the western bank of the Ganga. Thus the site claimed by the sahajiyas as the birth site of Mahaprabhu could not be the original location. As for the Adbhuta Mandir - Iskcon has recently claimed that they are building the Adbhuta Mandir predicted by Sri Nityananda Prabhu. However, the skyscraper temple constructed at Yogapitha (Mayapur) by Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakura in 1935 has been accepted by paramahamsa Vaishnavas for the past 69 years as the Adbhuta Mandir. Thus Iskcon could not be building what has already been built.
When we speak of Mayapur we do not mean any temporal or mundane location in this material world. Mayapur is the epicenter of the Lord's pastimes in eternity. This Mayapur manifested at the time of Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's appearance in 1407 Sakabda (1486 CE) and has since sometimes been manifest and sometimes not manifest. This is the nature of eternal truth. It is sometimes appearing and sometimes disappearing. This is called prakata and aprakata-lila.
The name of 'Mayapur' is found in Bhakti-ratnakara, Urdhvamnaya-tantra, Brahma-yamala, Ananta-samhita, Krishna-yamala and Kapila-tantra, although it is not mentioned in either Chaitanya-charitamrita or Chaitanya-bhagavata.
Chaitanya-charitamrita and Chaitanya-bhagavata make specific mention of 'Navadvipa' meaning 'nine islands'. At the time of Mahaprabhu's appearance Navadvipa was known as 'Nadia', which is the corrupted form of the name 'Naudiya', meaning 'new place'. The 'new place' was originally established by King Lakshmana Sena of Vikrampur on the eastern side of the Ganga. Only after Mahaprabhu performed His pastimes in various places in 'Nadia' did the area become known among the Vaishnavas as Navadvipa. The area 'Navadvipa' encompasses all the places of the Lord's pastimes - including Antardvipa the place of His appearance or Mayapur.
In modern day Navadvipa there is a place referred to by some sections of the sahajiya community as Prachina Mayapur or 'old Mayapur'. This name Prachina Mayapur only came into use in 1928 nearly 41 years after Srila Bhaktivinoda Thakura and Srila Jagannatha Dasa Babaji discovered the location of Mayapur, the birth site of Mahaprabhu, on Antardvipa.
It is mentioned in Bhakti-ratnakara that Mayapur is located in Antardvipa (on the eastern bank of the Ganga), which was sometimes known as 'Atopura'. This is described in detail by Narahari Chakravarti Thakura.
According to the sahajiya account, Mahaprabhu's birth-site is in Ramachandrapur where it is alleged that the dacoit-king Vira Hamvira (who ruled Visnupura from 1586-1621) had built a temple. According to reliable records Vira Hamvira was a disciple of Srinivasa Acharya but there are no records of his ever having built a temple at Navadvipa to celebrate the appearance place of Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. Thus the account of the temple allegedly constructed by him is only hearsay.
The sahajiyas further contend that when the alleged temple built by Vira Hamvira was destroyed by the movement of the River Ganga, that later on, the chief adviser to Lord Hastings, Divan Ganga-govinda Singh, rebuilt it on the same spot with red sandstone in 1792. Floods from the Ganga claimed this temple in 1876. It is well known that the temple built by Divan Ganga-govinda Singh housed Deities of Sita-Rama and not a Deity of Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. Indeed this is unusual if we are to accept that the temple built by Ganga-govinda Singh was constructed to celebrate the birth site of Sri Chaitanya!
When Bhaktivinoda Thakura visited Navadvipa town he wrote that he was very unhappy with what he found.
Every Saturday, I went to Navadvipa to search out the places of the lila of the Lord, but I did not find many and I was very unhappy. At the present time the people of Navadvipa only pay heed to their stomach etc. They do not make even a little effort in relation to the places of the lila of the Lord.
Bhaktivinoda continued his search and after years of research, earnest prayer and at last a divine revelation, the site of Mahaprabhu's appearance place was revealed to him in a vision. Bhaktivinoda spoke of this as follows:
One night, Kamala and a clerk and I went up on the roof in order to look around. It was 10 o'clock, and was very dark and cloudy. Across the Ganga, in a northerly direction, I saw a large building flooded with light. I asked Kamala [if he saw it] and he said he had. I asked the clerk and he said, "I did not see anything." Because of that I was utterly amazed. In the morning I looked carefully at the place [where I saw the building] from the roof of Rani dharmashala, and I observed that there was one Tal tree in that location. When I asked others about this place they said that this distant place was known as Ballal-dighi and that the remains of the fort etc. of Lakshmana Sena were close by. That Monday I returned to Krishnanagar and the following Saturday I went back to Ballal-dighi. I saw that wonderful phenomenon in that place again at night, and the next day I went to see the area on foot. Upon inquiring with the elderly people of that place (Muslims), I was informed that this was the birthplace of Sriman Mahaprabhu. I gradually saw everything [in the area] and ascertained where all the small villages mentioned in the Chaitanya-bhagavata and in Narahari Thakura's Bhakti-ratnakara and Parikrama-paddhati were. (Svalikhita Jivani by Srila Bhaktivinoda Thakura)
Professor Nishikantha Sanyal, a disciple of Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakura, has written in this connection as follows:
To the person with any antiquarian sense the difficulty is all but solved by the traditions that linger still in the village itself. We know from the villagers that the present Mohammedan inhabitants, who are in occupation of part of Mayapur, are the descendants of recent immigrants. The village was in a depopulated condition before the coming of the Mohammedans. That it was at one time a place of residence of Vaishnavas is also known to these Mohammedans. They also know that it is the Birth-place of Sri Chaitanya. They have inherited some names of the different parts of the village such as Vairagi-danga (Vairagi's mound), Kholbhangar-danga (mound where the khol was broken), Barajpota (Brajapattan), Shiva-doba (Shiva's pool), etc. These names refer to famous incidents in the career of Sri Chaitanya and the Vaishnava tradition. There are also current in the village highly significant superstitions. The Tulasi plant grew perennially all over one of these un-occupied homestead lands. Those who had attempted to occupy the land for purpose of habitation or even for cultivation, found that all crops are inevitably destroyed by the irrepressible Tulasi plants and some terrible harm befalls the occupant. Everyone is also cautioned against disturbing any portion of that particular mound in any way. Many had suffered terribly for trying to do so. That mound is sacred ground, because Nimai was born there. The Mohammedan inhabitants make offerings to the shrine that was subsequently erected on the spot. They firmly believe that the place possesses supernatural qualities. It would be worthwhile to collect all the current-stories which are fast becoming mythology as the villagers are becoming irreverent and partisan by outside influence.
That these traditions were naturally taken to be genuine is proved by the fact that when the site was identified forty three years ago by Thakura Bhaktivinoda as the village Mayapur where Sri Chaitanya was born, no person belonging to the locality disbelieved him. As a matter of fact there was no opposition from any quarter at that time and for a long period afterwards. (The Harmonist, Vol-28, January 1931)
Bhaktivinoda Thakura confirmed the location of Mahaprabhu's birth site with the help of Jagannatha Dasa Babaji, the most respected and senior Vaishnava of the times. This incident occurred in 1887. Bihari Dasa Babaji, the servant of Jagannatha Dasa Babaji, remembers this occasion:
Once Bhaktivinoda Thakura arrived at the residence of Jagannatha Dasa Babaji with a kirtana party. The party, accompanied by Babaji Maharaja then quickly advanced towards Sri Mayapur. During this time another kirtana group was approaching from the Vamana-pukura side. The two parties chanting the glories of Sri Chaitanya assembled together at the place of the present day Yogapitha. Over the age of 130 years, Jagannatha Dasa Babaji, being humpbacked, normally could not sit in an erect position. But when he would perform the congregational chanting of the Lord's holy name he would extend his body by the distance of five hand lengths and spring upward a distance of over one meter! How wonderful it was when he pointed out the location of Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's appearance site. It is also still fresh within my mind the way he struck his stick on the ground with a resounding "crack". He pointed out some distance away, a well that contained the broken hull of a mrdanga. Sometimes Jagannatha Dasa Babaji would chastise persons who were opposed to the authenticity of Sri Mayapur. (Interview, The Gaudiya -1928)
The Yogapitha at Mayapur was also accepted as the birth site of Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu by such great Vaishnava personalities as Gaura-kishora Dasa Babaji and Vamshi Dasa Babaji. Once a charlatan devotee claimed he had a dream that Yogapitha was in modern Navadvipa but this was sharply contested by Gaura-kishora Dasa Babaji and Vamshi Dasa Babaji. Gaura-kishora dasa Babaji said,
"Those great personalities who have discovered the birthplace of Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu are to be followed. Simply because this person has had a dream that this is the birthplace of Sri Chaitanya is not proof in itself. Those persons to whom holy places of pilgrimage are manifested never collect money with the intention of finding other holy places. Those persons who are actually followers of Sri Chaitanya are able to find the place where Sri Chaitanya was born. The way in which Bhaktivinoda Thakura and Jagannatha Dasa Babaji Maharaja discovered Mahaprabhu's birthplace must be taken as a real fact.
Then on the following day Vamshi Dasa Babaji, taking one small shovel in his hand, went to the place where that person was preaching that he was representing the original birthplace of Sri Chaitanya. Vamshi Dasa gradually began to cut down the fence in front of that place. He showed the people how it was improper that this person was imitating that which had already been discovered by previous acharyas. (From An Era Not to be Forgotten printed in The Gaudiya)
After Bhaktivinoda Thakura and Jagannatha Dasa Babaji had established Mayapur as Mahaprabhu's birthplace, one Sashibhushana Bandyopadyaya wrote in a periodical called Pallavasi Patrika that the real Yogapitha was somewhere in the district of Ramachandrapur. Although his statements were only based on hearsay there was a protest by the sahajiyas followed by a court case. There was no evidence to prove that the previous site where Ganga-govinda Singh had built a sandstone temple had ever been recognized as the birth site of Mahaprabhu. There were hundreds of elderly people living in Navadvipa at that time who had visited the sandstone temple dedicated to Sita-Rama, before its being claimed by the flood water of the Ganga, but none of them could come forward to the courts to say that they remember that temple commemorating the birth site of Sri Chaitanya.
The court ruled in favor of Bhaktivinoda and stated that further evidence was needed in order to establish any claim of Mahaprabhu's birthplace being in the modern town of Navadvipa.
The sahajiyas began to take other steps to disprove the authenticity of the Mayapur birth-site on Antardvipa but to no avail. Then in 1916 (two year after the disappearance of Bhaktivinoda), one Vraja-mohana Dasa Babaji tried to find archeological evidence to disprove Bhaktivinoda's claims. It is said that he dug more that 700 holes in the modern Navadvipa area along the Ganga until at last he finally found a piece of red sandstone - which in the end did not verify anything.
It is mentioned in the book Sarasvati-jayasri that Vraja Mohana soon after approached the Gaudiya Matha and agreed to publish his findings in favor of the Mayapur discovered by Bhaktivinoda if they would bear the financial expenses for publishing his maps and book. When the Gaudiya Matha refused, Vraja Mohana became angry and swore to wreak havoc. Eventually the dubious findings of Vraja Mohana were published in a book entitled Navadvipa-darpana with the help of the famous map publisher, Sri Dvijendranath Dhara. Later however, Dvijendranath Dhara admitted that he was sad that such an erroneous book had been published with his help because the contents of the book and its maps were full of fallacious additions and mistakes.
The courts never accepted the findings of Vraja Mohana as evidence in the case - thus in 1934 the government of India represented by the Honorable Governor Anderson of Bengal (the third most politically influential person in the British Empire) made an official proclamation that the birth site of Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu was none other than the Yogapitha in Sridhama Mayapur established by Bhaktivinoda Thakura, Jagannatha Dasa Babaji and their followers.
"The Devils work is never done" -- still the ishtaka-vadis (followers of Vraja Mohana's brick) and other sahajiyas continue to beg the question and attempt to dispute the actual birth site of Mahaprabhu, but this is of little consequence in the face of Sri Chaitanya's eternal service being spread throughout the world from Yogapitha at Sridhama Mayapur.
It has been predicted by Sri Nityananda Prabhu that the eternal service (nitya-seva) will manifest (vikasha) from a wonderful temple (adbhuta-mandir) constructed on the birth site of Sri Chaitanya.
adbhuta-mandir ei haibe prakasha gauranga nitya-seva haibe vikasha
A wonderful temple will appear, from where Lord Gauranga's eternal service will manifest. (Sri Navadvipa-dhama Mahatmya, ch-5)
After establishing the place of Sri Chaitanya's birth Bhaktivinoda Thakura set out to fulfill Sri Nityananda Prabhu's prediction of the Adbhuta Mandir at Mayapur and this was later taken up by Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakura who completed the Adbhuta Mandir in 1935. That the temple at Yogapitha build by Sarasvati Thakura is the Adbhuta Mandir predicted by Sri Nityananda Prabhu is confirmed in the following excerpt from an article Opening Ceremony of the Lord's Temple –
When Sriman Jiva Gosvami Prabhu was performing Navadvipa parikrama, Nityananda Prabhu told him about Sri Mayapur:
chari-shata-varsha gaura-jana dhari haile sri murti seva habe sarvopari
Four hundred years after Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's appearance, the worship of His Deity will manifest and He will be worshipped in a magnificent manner.
SHAPE \* MERGEFORMAT This prophecy of Sri Nityananda Prabhu was fulfilled. We hear even more from the mouth of Sri Nityananda:
punah kabhu prabhu techa habe balavan habe mayapure ei rupa vasasthana adbhuta mandir ei haibe prakasa gauranga nitya-seva haibe vikasa
By the Lord's desire, this place will become prominent again and people will live in Mayapur as before. A wonderful temple (Adbhuta Mandir) will appear, from where Lord Gauranga's eternal service will manifest.
Then, in 448 Gaurabda, in order to fulfill Sri Nityananda's prediction, the great soul Bhakti Vijaya (disciple of Sarasvati Thakura) dug the foundation for the great temple (Adbhuta Mandir) at Yogapitha. Following the desire of Sri Gaura's associate, the Deity of Adhokshaja Visnu, Who was worshipped in the house of Sriman Mahaprabhu, manifested Himself from the earth in the presence of a large number of people on Wednesday 15th June 1934.
Let the inhabitants of the world see with their own eyes and feel within the core of their hearts how these statements of Sri Nityananda Prabhu have been fulfilled by one who is non-different from Nityananda Himself. Today, by the grace of Sri Nityananda's manifestation of Sri Gurudeva, the bhakti-vijaya-pataka (the flag of pure devotion) flies over the sky-scraping Adbhuta Mandir (at Yogapitha Sridhama Mayapur). (The Gaudiya, March 16th 1935)
Since the building of the Adbhuta Mandir by Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakura in 1935 the eternal service of Sri Chaitanya has indeed manifest not only in Bengal and India but also throughout the world.
It is not stated anywhere that Krishna consciousness will first be preached globally and thereafter the followers of Sri Chaitanya will come to Mayapur to do the Lord a favor by honoring His birth site with a temple. This is a gross misconception. Unfortunately, the members of modern day Iskcon think that their 'plan' to build a very large temple in Mayapur will be the fulfillment of the Adbhuta Mandir prediction. They unwittingly undermine the position and achievements of Bhaktivinoda Thakura and Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakura.
The expertise of the 'propaganda machine' sometimes gets carried away in the 'self-adoration' society and arrives at erroneous conclusions. It should be pointed out however that all the disciples of Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakura (including A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, Swami B.R. Sridhara Maharaja, Swami B.P. Kesava Maharaja, Swami B.P. Puri Maharaja and all others) accepted the temple constructed at Yogapitha as the Adbhuta Mandir predicted by Sri Nityananda Prabhu. In light of that, in the years that followed the opening of the Adbhuta Mandir there were many articles and essays that appeared in The Gaudiya, The Harmonist, and other publications of Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakura where it was mentioned that the construction of the temple at Yogapitha was the fulfillment of Sri Nityananda Prabhu's prediction.
In light of the fact that Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakura is the parama-guru of every devotee in Iskcon one would think that Iskcon devotees would be sensitive and eager to understand Sarasvati Thakura's desires and contributions to the sampradaya, but surprisingly they show little or no interest. Other than maintaining a minimal regard for Sarasvati Thakura and the previous acharyas in our line – for all practical purposes Iskcon leaders have 'divorced' Srila Prabhupada from the rest of the sampradaya by preaching apa-siddhanta everywhere and imitating achievements of previous acharyas in his name.
Many Iskcon leaders have said that they accept Srila B.P. Puri Gosvami Maharaja of Sri Gopinatha Gaudiya Matha in Mayapur as their shiksha-guru, but at the same time they do not seem to care for his opinions on any topics other than shalagrama and Deity worship. However, for their benefit Puri Gosvami Maharaja has spoken about the Adbhuta Mandir as follows:
With the help of a wealthy disciple, the late Sakhi-charan Bhakti-vijaya, Srila Prabhupada fulfilled Srila Bhaktivinoda Thakura's prediction of an extraordinary temple (Adbhuta Mandir) being built at Sri Yogapitha. When the foundation of the skyscraper temple was being dug, on June 13, 1934, a four-armed Deity of Vishnu was discovered in the ground. Srila Prabhupada studied the Siddhartha-samhita and, according to the positioning of the weapons and symbols in the Deity's hands, identified it as Adhokshaja Vishnu accompanied by His Sri, Bhu and Nila potencies. Several expert archeologists, including Sri Ramaprasad Chandra, attested to the Deity's antiquity. Srila Prabhupada commented later that this was the Deity formerly worshiped by Sri Jagannatha Misra himself. This beautiful Deity is currently being worshiped at the Yogapitha temple in Mayapur. (Of Love and Separation - A few Glimpses at the Lotus Feet of Srila Prabhupada)
The members of Iskcon have conveniently forgotten that the idea to construct the 'Planetarium' or "The Temple of Understanding", as it was called by Srila Prabhupada, was originally the idea, conception and desire of Srila B.R. Sridhara Maharaja of Sri Chaitanya Sarasvata Matha. Sridhara Maharaja wanted to build such a temple in Koladvipa but found the project too ambitious for his means. He then decided to share his idea with an old admirable friend, Srila Prabhupada (A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Maharaja). Sridhara Maharaja remembers as follows:
I asked Swami Maharaja (AC Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada) to construct a temple where the whole Gaudiya Vaishnava philosophy will be demonstrated. I had a mind to construct such a temple here, but that was too ambitious and I could not do it. When I was told that he would build a temple there (in Mayapur), I humbly put forward my desire. I wanted a temple to be built according to the Brihad-Bhagavatamrtam of Srila Sanatana Goswami. The whole structure of Gaudiya Vaishnava philosophy will be represented there in that temple. Bhur, Bhuvar, Svar, Mahar, Janar, Tapo and Satyaloka will be shown in a spiral way, and then Viraja, Brahma-loka, Para-vyoma, Goloka-Vrndavana. The idea is to demonstrate the structural position of Gaudiya Vaishnava theology, and from where Krsna has come down to this world to very kindly give us the clue to how we can be uplifted there, to the highest place. That should be dealt with in a scientific way. Whoever comes to have the darshan of the temple will leave with an idea of the whole structure of all the religious conceptions to ever come into the world. The development is in a scientific basis. What is Bhur-loka? The land of experience of the five senses. Bhuvar-loka? Without this body, the mental experience world, and there are further gradations Svar, Mahar, Janar, Tapa. Bhu-loka is somewhat Prithvi-loka (Earth); there is also Preta-loka, the world of the dead; there is Deva-loka or Svar-loka, heaven; above Deva-loka is Mahar-loka where resides Bhrigu and other rishis. Then there is Tapo-loka where the Chatuh-sana reside, and then Satya-loka of Lord Brahma.
Then Viraja, the highest position aspired for by the Buddhists, prakritilaya. And above that, brahmalaya, the end aspired for by the Shankarites; then Siva-loka, Bhakta-Shiva, and Vaikuntha, the Land discovered and made known to the world by Sri Ramanujacharya. In that area of Para-vyoma, there are so many Vaikunthas in so many different phases of the pastimes of Lord Narayana who resides in the centre. Then above is Ayodhya with Ramachandra and the first introduction of vatsalya-rasa (Divine Parenthood). Then there is Krishna with many Queens in Dvaraka, and Krishna in Mathura. Again, in the Mathura sphere is Vrindavana, Govardhana, and Radha-kunda. From what standpoint does the theistic conception develop higher and higher - this is to be depicted. He (A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada) accepted this plan and asked his followers to construct such a temple. But I am too old. He could not see it fulfilled, and perhaps I too may not see it. (Taped discourse, 1981)
Srila Prabhupada also confirms this in the following conversation:
Srila Prabhupada: I do not know for how long I will be able to carry on. So, I came to see Sridhara Maharaja.
Devotee: If you all go away, then the world will become dark.
Srila Sridhara Maharaja: [to Prabhupada] It is so wonderful that the will of the Lord becomes manifest through someone.
Srila Prabhupada: I want very much, Maharaja, that you come and stay at Mayapur. Because Prabhupada [Bhaktisiddhanta] always desired that you preach. He told me quite a few times, "Why don't you pull him out?" [They both laugh.] You know, I also tried to some extent before, but somehow or other it did not work out. Now, why don't you come and stay at Mayapur? Srila Prabhupada told me also, "Sridhara Maharaja is one of the finest preachers." I want to take you everywhere. At least at the place we have in Mayapur, people are coming from all over the world. If you just agree, then whatever kind of building you want, I will arrange it for you. They are trying to build a house for me. So both of us will stay there. And whenever you want, you can come here to your matha.
Srila Sridhara Maharaja: Yes, as long as I am alive to fulfill [Bhaktisiddhanta] Prabhupada's desire.
Srila Prabhupada: This is my earnest desire. Since you could not go around the world and preach, at least stay there and people will come to you. I shall make that arrangement. If you stay, then it will be helpful to me also. Sometimes I need to consult with someone and there is no one. There is no one that I can consult with. I feel this deficiency very greatly.
Devotee: If he [Srila Sridhara Maharaja] stays in Mayapur, all kinds of people will get to hear from him.
Srila Prabhupada: Yes, that's right.
Srila Sridhara Maharaja: Yes, people from all kinds of cultural backgrounds will come there.
Srila Prabhupada: Yes, and they are already coming. And in that house I will make arrangements for an elevator so that you won't have to go through the difficulty of walking up and down the stairs. You won't even have to move a step yourself. I'll make arrangements for a car and an elevator. My disciples are telling me that they will build a house for me. So, both of us will stay in that house. Most of the time I am traveling around, so if you are there, they can get some guidance. So, Maharaja, please, give me the order and I will make all the arrangements for you.
That Planetarium [The Temple of Understanding] also will be built under your direction. My idea is to combine the Indian culture and the American money--the lame man and the blind man policy. I tell them also that this will be very beneficial for the world." (Excerpt of 1977 conversation at Sri Chaitanya Sarasvata Matha, transcription by Bhakti Charu Swami)
For decades Iskcon leaders have struggled with the concept of what 'The Temple of Understanding,' now being referred to by them as the 'Adbhuta Mandir', will represent. This is due to their having neglected to humbly approach the original architect of "The Temple of Understanding" to find out what was his conception of such a grand temple.
Of course that is all in the past and the original plans for the Iskcon "Temple of Understanding" (sometimes now being called "The temple of Misunderstanding") have now been reduced in size by 70% from what they were in the time of Srila Prabhupada. This has come about due to the fall downs of numerous Iskcon gurus and project financiers.
Even though Iskcon only has a plan on 'paper' to build their temple, still, self-adoration dictates to them that their paper plan is the 'Adbhuta Mandir' (ignoring the glory of the Adbhuta Mandir already constructed at Yogapitha). Such are the effects of false pride. It is improper or offensive, as Vamshi Dasa Babaji has demonstrated above, for devotees to imitate that which has already been done by previous acharyas. But as already mentioned, the proposed Iskcon temple is now 70% less 'adbhuta' than as originally conceived of by Srila Prabhupada and it unfortunately bears none of the original theistic conception outlined above by Srila Sridhara Maharaja. Even the Deity conception at Iskcon Mayapur is no longer the same as originally given by Srila Prabhupada.
The onus is now on Iskcon leaders to either accept that the Adbhuta Mandir as predicted by Sri Nityananda Prabhu was built by Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakura at Yogapitha or it is up to them to prove via guru, sadhu, and shastra that the temple at Yogapitha is not the Adbhuta Mandir. The latter would not be advisable, for as Professor Sanyal has cautioned in his article above -- anyone who tries to bear harm to Yogapitha runs the risk of meeting with "terrible suffering".
If Iskcon wants to remain connected to the Gaura-sarasvata-parampara (rupanuga-sampradaya) then they would do well to accept the above conclusions or they are destined to continue on the path of becoming an apa-sampradaya (pseudo-disciplic succession).
Devotee: There is a doubt circulating among some devotees about the authentic location of 'Mayapur,' the birth site of Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. There is also a controversy among some devotees about the Adbhuta Mandir. Will you please say something to clarify these issues?


text:
Former Democratic presidential candidate Gary Hart said Friday that he plans to return to public life in the fall by making a series of speeches on domestic and foreign policy and added: "My own view is that people are not going to want to talk about the events in May."
Hart was referring to his abrupt withdrawal from the Democratic presidential race on May 8 after his campaign was paralyzed by reports that he had spent a weekend in Washington with Miami model Donna Rice while his wife was in Denver.
In a long interview with The Times, the former Colorado senator said he is working in his Denver law firm, hopes to organize an international trading company and spends much of his time "talking on the phone to friends from all over the country."
"My first priority is my wife and children. I'm spending time with them," Hart said, speaking by telephone from his office. "But I am also answering my mail, saying 'thank you' and 'I'm sorry' to my friends and supporters.


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Conveniently located on Route 70 in Brick, New Jersey, this motel is just 13 minutes' drive from the beach and boardwalk at Point Pleasant. The Garden State Parkway is 5 minutes' drive away.A cable TV is provided in each room at Brick Motor Inn, which also provides an in-room microwave and refrigerator for its guests. A desk and an en suite bathroom are included as well.
A 24-hour front desk welcomes guests to the Brick Motor Inn. WiFi access is provided free of charge and guests can purchase refreshments from the on-site vending machine.Forge Pond Park is just 4 minutes' drive from the motel, while Windward Beach park is 5 minutes' drive away. Lakewood Township Airport is 4.
5 km away.
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Free private parking is possible on site (reservation is not needed).
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Your credit card will be used to guarantee the reservation. The hotel will charge you directly for room and tax. No deposit will be charged. The hotel reserves the right to authorize your credit card prior to check-in.If you dont check-in to the hotel on the first day of your reservation and you do not alert the hotel in advance, the hotel reserves the right to cancel your reservation and may charge you a penalty.
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The reservation holder must present a valid photo ID and credit card at check-in. The credit card is required for any additional hotel specific service fees or incidental charges or fees that may be charged by the hotel to the customer at checkout. These #START_PHOTO#charges#END_PHOTO# may be mandatory (e.g., resort fees) or optional (parking, phone calls or minibar charges) and are not included in the room rate.
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WiFi is available in the hotel rooms and is free of charge.
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All children are welcome. There is no capacity for extra beds in the room.
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15 % Tax
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The hotel reserves the right to pre-authorise credit cards prior to arrival.
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USD 19.35 tax per room is excluded from the rate.


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Reviews and Press Clips for Nature Wars
A New Review of Frankie's Place
by George Smith
Russell Baker
New York Review of Books
Feb. 21, 2013
      Glancing out the kitchen window one sunny afternoon not long ago, I was startled to see two beautiful red foxes copulating in the garden. It was not the unabashed sexual display that was remarkable. Mating must be routine exercise out there, judging by the frequency with which brand-new rabbits can be seen eating the lawn, but foxes are another matter. This is an in-town garden at a well-trafficked intersection two blocks from the county courthouse, definitely not a fox-friendly location. A single fox doing nothing at all on this turf would be a newsworthy sight; two foxes engaged in propagating the species would seem to border on the unthinkable.
      Jim Sterba, on the other hand, believes it entirely thinkable. His Nature Wars: The Incredible Story of How Wildlife Comebacks Turned Backyards into Battlegrounds argues persuasively that events like this foxes-in-the-garden sighting are evidence that humans are losing some kind of property rights struggle with creatures of the wild. He cites an extensive history of resolute and sometimes blatantly hostile real-estate invasion by beavers, Canada geese, wild turkeys, and white-tailed deer, all of which were once assumed to be picturesque and even lovable denizens of the dark and safely remote forest. In-town appearances by coyotes and bears are now commonplace in communities across the country, and trespassers in my own garden, aside from the foxes, have included groundhogs, possums, skunks, feral cats, and one blue heron that ate all the koi with which we thought to beautify the fish pond.
      Just today, as this is written, the local newspaper has arrived with a front-page headline declaring, "Vultures Take Over Leesburg Neighborhood." Some 250 of these valuable but socially insufferable birds, it states, have "taken over" a residential area—"stripping bark off trees, eating rubber off roofs, cars, hot tub, pool, and boat covers and destroying grills."
      In the past fifty years or less, all these woodland creatures seem to have discovered that life among the humans can be just as comfortable as it is in the forest, and the eating perhaps even easier. The woods have no garbage cans and dumpsters filled with discarded food, no lovingly tended tomato plants, no ready-to-pluck dahlias and nasturtiums, no tasty, newly planted shrubs.
      Best of all from the animal viewpoint, humans are no longer the same dangerous predators who once pushed the beaver close to extinction and reduced the entire North American white-tailed deer population to a trifling 500,000 scarcely a century ago. Sterba believes that this human withdrawal from combative relations with woodland animals is one of the major causes of their proliferation: man as killer has undergone a softening change.
      This kinder, softer American, Sterba notes, has only a remote relationship with the natural world he inhabits. Over a span of some four hundred years Americans necessarily cultivated a close grasp of nature's laws and whims in order to survive the cruelty of a primordial wilderness, and to level forests, make land productive, and become competent at hunting, fishing, trapping, and animal husbandry.
      Now, in little more than a single generation, this long relationship with nature has withered in a culture that finds Americans giving themselves up to the indoor ease of the technological way of life. Today's average American spends most of the day indoors or inside an automobile traveling some hellish commuter road between workplace and home. Experience of his own natural habitat comes largely from watching beautifully photographed films on television. In Sterba's word, he has become "denatured."
      Denaturing has produced an unrealistic and somewhat sentimental view of woodland creatures, which, as Sterba construes the situation, is one reason so many seem to feel they can trespass in our gardens with impunity.
      His book, written with considerable charm and more wit than commonly found in works that deal with ecosystems, includes extensive and often entertaining treatments of such common nuisances as beavers, Canada geese, and feral cats, as well as various animal support lobbies that make life miserable and sometimes dangerous for wildlife control agents. For the denatured reader, there is a wealth of useful statistics.
      Is it generally known, for example, that the beaver is the largest rodent in North America, that the adult male may be four feet long from nose to tail tip and weigh as much as sixty pounds? Or that the giant variety of Canada goose, weighing ten to twenty pounds, does not migrate but likes to settle in groups of hundreds, sometimes thousands, on golf courses and public parklands where, with their distinctively hyperactive digestive systems, they must void their bowels approximately fives times an hour? Or that the population of feral cats is thought to be somewhere between 60 and 100 million, that they have human supporters—even "national cat protection groups"—that wage bitter struggles against songbird lovers who see the wild felines as a threat to the future of beauty on the wing?
      Sterba refers to human champions of this animal or that as "species partisans." Though sympathetic to their devotion to animals and their care for the environment, he clearly disapproves of some of the tactics they employ in pursuit of their high-minded objectives. Officials of an upstate New York village planning to rid the community of an infestation of Canada geese find themselves, for example, confronted by TV crews summoned to cover a protest against a pending "goose Holocaust." After sharpshooters are hired by Princeton, New Jersey, to cull its deer population, "the mayor's car was splattered with deer guts and the township animal control officer began wearing a bulletproof vest after finding his dog poisoned and his cat crushed to death." People "denatured" from their own habitat tended to treat the environment and its other inhabitants in mindless ways, unintentionally and often with the best of intentions.
      Early environmentalists, like Thoreau, wrote of a landscape despoiled by ignorance and exploitation, and this narrative of loss through human meddling—the idea of "man the despoiler," in Sterba's phrase—still ran strongly through the last century's environmentalist culture. Sterba writes that this idea led to the notion that the natural world "was a benign place" where wild creatures lived harmoniously among themselves, and only man was vile:
      This idea was in striking contrast to the amorality of a Darwinian nature that was indifferent and random, its creatures living in a world of predators and prey, struggling to eat, reproduce, and survive. In a benign natural world, wild animals and birds not only got along with one another but were often portrayed as tame and peaceable, with human habits and feelings.
      This, in exaggerated form, was the world of faux nature packaged for delivery to people who wanted to believe that animals were just like us. Bambi and Lassie are two of the best-known practically human specimens that warm the popular heart. Those who seek something closer to Darwinian reality may prefer Bugs Bunny.
      Though tightly focused on the resurgence of wildlife, Sterba's book is basically about the recent extraordinary changes in the American landscape, the rapidity with which they happened, and how intimately they were interlocked. He defines the major events as the regeneration of the nation's great eastern forest, the "slaughter and comeback" of its wildlife, and the spread of human population from urban concentration into suburban, exurban, and rural sprawl. His study is confined largely to the vast American deciduous forest land between the Atlantic Ocean and the prairie flatland, where approximately two thirds of Americans now live.
      During America's first 250 years, early settlers cleared away some 250 million acres of forest. Yet the forest comes back fast. By the 1950s, one half to two thirds of the landscape was reforested. Most of us now "live in the woods," Sterba writes. "We are essentially forest dwellers." The new forests "grew back right under the noses of several generations of Americans. The regrowth began in such fits and starts that most people didn't see it happening."
      Why did it happen? For one thing, because oil, gas, and coal replaced wood as the major fuel for heating and cooking. Because new building techniques and materials reduced wood's importance to the construction trades. And because the family farm began to vanish, leaving the abandoned acreage to follow earth's natural impulse, which is to produce wild grasses, weeds, bushes, shrubs, and small trees that turn into big trees.
      Then, of course, even the bleakest urban areas may yield to a civic impulse to primp a bit with touches of greenery, as in New York where 24 percent of the city's area is now covered by a canopy of 5.2 million trees. Nationally, Sterba reports, tree canopy covers about 27 percent of the urban landscape.
      A lot of this regenerating forest is included in what Sterba calls "sprawl," a new kind of communal development created by the fateful American decision to let the automobile shape our lives. With the car's ability to transport a commuter rapidly over considerable distances, human habitations have sprung up in scattered settings, ever more distant from cities—deeper in the woods, as it were. As this motorized workforce flung people outward, the scattering population began to produce new, smaller workplaces—little urboids, too small to be cities, too lifeless to be towns. Bursting forth here and there in the spreading nowhere, they produced "exurban sprawls that have broken free of the gravitational pull of the cities and now float in a new space far beyond them," as David Brooks has written in The New York Times.
      Sterba says that sprawl "can include suburbs, exurbs, golf courses, cropland, pasture, parks, highway median strips, parking lots, McMansions, Burger Kings, and people." Though not officially defined as forest, sprawl areas, he says, are so covered with trees that they "have the feel of a forest," and for many wild creatures all the comforts of forest home. In short: ideal territory for a wilderness creature struggling to flourish after a brush with extinction. Hence, foxes in the garden, beaver dams flooding the soccer field, geese emptying their bowels in the old swimming hole, coyotes biting faithful old Rover, and Bambi's ungulate kin crashing into three thousand automobiles every day.
      These creatures that once delighted us by remaining remote and shy of human company have lately changed from remote to chummy, from shy to importunate. For many they have begun to seem just another variety of pest; for some, they are simply menaces. Geese, for instance, have lost many devotees since several were sucked into the engines of a jet departing LaGuardia Airport, in January 2009, and forced an emergency landing on the Hudson River, which 155 people survived only because of the extraordinary skill of pilot and crew.
      It is the white-tailed deer, however, that dominate all discussion of wilderness creatures versus human society. This may be because there are simply too many deer for their own good. Sterba's figures indicate that as recently as 1900 all of North America had a deer population of perhaps 500,000. I recall the excitement of seeing a deer standing perfectly still on a northern California mountainside in 1956. Seeing a deer at all in those years was a thrilling event. Now it is likely to be merely irritating, if not downright alarming.
Vincent J. Musi/National Geographic Stock
Feral cats in the Westport neighborhood of Baltimore, 2010
By the 1990s the deer population had exploded. Various estimates for the United States put it at 25 to 40 million and growing unchecked, and apparently uncheckable. By 2006 this vast and scattered herd was being called "a mass transit system for ticks carrying Lyme disease." Sterba's figures put deer damage to farm crops and forests at more than $850 million; the deer had eaten $250 million worth of landscaping, gardens, and shrubbery. By eating plants that grew under large trees they damaged songbird habitats and put certain bird groups at risk.
"But threats to forests and songbirds paled in comparison to the whitetail's menace to people in the form of collisions of deer and motor vehicles, which were occurring at a rate of three thousand to four thousand per day," according to Sterba. "The toll of cars crumpled, people killed and injured, Lyme disease contracted, gardens destroyed, crops eaten, and forests damaged," he writes, justified The New York Times's editorial conclusion that "white-tailed deer are a plague."
Sterba lists several factors that made "such beautiful creatures become so much trouble." These include a lack of predators, a decline in hunting, changes in habitat, mismanagement by state wildlife agencies, and human sprawl.
Whitetails are "quick studies," he writes. It took them very little time to discover that "people who have sprawled across the landscape aren't the predators they used to be." The sprawl people brought with them attitudes that created ideal conditions for a whitetail explosion. Sprawl culture with its "exurban subdivisions, big-box houses on multiacre plots, weekend places, second homes, hobby farms, and even semiworking farms" created "a mosaic of hiding places, open places, feeding places, watering places, bedding places." Moreover, sprawl people grew many plants they did not eat, harvest, or market. Using "prodigious amounts of fertilizer, water, and hired labor, they grew plants mainly to look at." They created "deer nirvana," a wildlife biologist said.
Then, says Sterba, they made one last crucial adjustment: they cleared the landscape of the last major deer predator remaining: themselves. Most did not hunt. They posted their property with "No Hunting" signs and passed laws against discharging firearms that effectively put large areas of landscape off limits for hunting:
Suddenly, for the first time in eleven thousand years, hundreds of thousands of square miles in the heart of the white-tailed deer's historic range were largely off limits to one of its biggest predators. Suddenly, an animal instinctively wary of predators, including Homo sapiens, found itself in a lush habitat where major predators—drivers being the exception—didn't exist.
Thinking of possible ways to avert a disaster in deer–human conflicts, Sterba imagines a return of the human predator. He writes of "professional" hunters who are seen as "new saviors" in some suburbs where sharpshooters are hired to kill deer and are paid with tax dollars. He describes a proposal to have professionals train local hunters to become "urban deer managers," with the costs offset by selling venison in farmers' markets. "It seems like a good solution," he concludes, "but it probably won't happen anytime soon."
Copyright © 1963-2013 NYREV, Inc. All rights reserved.
By Donna Seaman
9:19 p.m. CST, November 11, 2012
    The drive from the Upstate New York airport to my parents' house took longer than the flight from Chicago, and I was elated to finally be in sight of the house. But the driveway was occupied by deer. Five elegant young does turned their large, deep, dark eyes on us with the disdain of teenagers annoyed at being interrupted. We gazed back, simultaneously thrilled by the proximity to such beautiful animals and impatient to park and stretch our legs. The deer flicked their tails, swiveled their ears, nosed the ground and slowly, grudgingly, sashayed onto the grass.
    As we extracted ourselves from the car, they gracefully promenaded across the lawn, slipping in among the trees along a busy street that funnels traffic onto Route 9, the heavily traveled highway that parallels the Hudson River.
    Jim Sterba, a distinguished foreign correspondent and national affairs reporter who was in the thick of things in Asia during and after the Vietnam War, escapes New York City on the weekends to stay in Dutchess County, not far from where I grew up. Sterba's first book, "Frankie's Place," is a memoir about courting and marrying his wife, the journalist and author Frances FitzGerald, whose own account of the Vietnam War, "Fire in the Lake," won the Pulitzer Prize.     His second book, "Nature Wars: The Incredible Story of How Wildlife Comebacks Turned Backyards into Battlegrounds," is about why herds of deer now occupy our driveways and yards, eating our flowers and plants.
    Sterba begins "Nature Wars" with an impressive roll call of all the wildlife he and his wife see around the cottage they rent on a former 180-acre dairy farm. As I read this census, I find myself nodding. Even in our Poughkeepsie neighborhood, we see lots of different songbirds, woodpeckers, chipmunks, squirrels, deer, wild turkeys, rabbits, woodchucks, coyotes, foxes, raccoons, beavers, ducks, eagles, turtles and blue heron. But there was no such cavalcade of wildlife when I still lived at home, back around the time I read Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring."
    This fall marks the 50th anniversary of Carson's galvanizing exposé of the "sinister" effects of DDT and other chemical pesticides that were in widespread and wanton use following World War II. Carson's now classic book of warning begins with "A Fable for Tomorrow," which presents a world in grim opposition to the vitality Sterba describes.
    "There was once a town in the heart of America where all life seemed to live in harmony with its surroundings." Carson describes "prosperous farms," wildflowers, trees, an "abundance and variety" of bird life, streams full of fish, deer and foxes, all abruptly transformed when "a strange blight crept over the area ... a shadow of death." Animals, people, plants and trees began to sicken and die. "There was a strange stillness." What caused this catastrophe? "No witchcraft, no enemy action had silenced the rebirth of new life in this stricken world. The people had done it themselves."
    Carson's clarion book has been compared to Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin" in terms of its role as a catalyst for social change. The environmental movement did coalesce in the wake of "Silent Spring," and laws were passed to protect endangered species and the air, water and land that sustain all of life. Even so, environmental threats continue to multiply. The battles to protect wetlands, forests, rivers, oceans, public lands and wildlife against pollution, destruction, decimation and global warming rage on. Environmental writers continued to sound the alarm. Carson wrote that science and literature share the same mission, to "discover and illuminate truth," and her intrepid and eloquent followers are many, including Gretel Ehrlich, John McPhee, Wendell Berry, Terry Tempest Williams, Barry Lopez, Rick Bass, Barbara Kingsolver, Rebecca Solnit, Michael Pollan, Bill McKibben, Carl Safina, David Quammen and Elizabeth Kolbert. Yet there have been some phenomenal improvements. The facts about wildlife resurgence that Sterba present in his mind-bending dispatch from the new world of "people-wildlife conflicts" are startling and staggering.
    Remember the coyote who sauntered into a downtown Chicago Quiznos? The cougar Chicago police shot dead in Roscoe Village? Consider the more routine animal nuisances: herds of garden-devouring deer, gaggles of excreting Canadian geese and battalions of beavers busy chewing down cherished trees and building dams that cause infrastructure-damaging floods and even disrupt "the water flows around electrical power generation facilities." We have sprawled into animal terrain, building houses, malls, corporate parks and golf courses, and now, Sterba writes, "critters have encroached right back." And why not? We have enhanced their habitats and eliminated predators — although we do accidentally kill an appalling number of animals with our cars, and millions of birds die in collisions with high-rise windows. Filled with wonder over the beautiful animals that are now all around us, we feed wild birds (supporting a hugely profitable bird seed industry) and even coyotes and bears, inviting deadly attacks. And don't get Sterba started on the subject of feral cats.
    It is exciting to see wildlife. Consider, there were no deer left in Illinois, Indiana and Ohio by the late 19th century. No beavers anywhere. Restocking and restoration efforts have been a tremendous, resounding success. We owe profound thanks not only to environmental writers, but also to all the unsung biologists, environmentalists, policymakers, attorneys, grass-roots activists, government staffers and politicians who ensured that we averted ecological disaster 40 years ago. But just as we had no clue as to what havoc we were unleashing with the use of DDT, we have not been aware of the consequences of renewed animal populations. We've even been oblivious, Sterba tells us, to the return of the trees. The halt to deforestation in the late 19th century initiated an era of luxurious regrowth. Citing tree counts and aerial survey, Sterba asserts that we are all, in essence, forest dwellers now, even those of us who live in the heart of big cities. Trees support wildlife.
    Sterba is ferociously well-informed and lucid in his chronicling of "how we turned a wildlife comeback miracle into a mess." His book is a tale of noble intentions and unintended consequences, ignorance and aggression, idealism and irony, reality and responsibility.
    Here's one example of the many Sterba considers. Pulitzer Prize-winning political cartoonist Jay Norwood Darling — nicknamed "Ding" because he "regularly dinged (President Franklin D.) Roosevelt" — was also "an ardent and knowledgeable conservationist." So FDR appointed him to a committee formed to figure out a way to restore the country's imperiled waterfowl. Also on board was Wisconsin-based Aldo Leopold of "A Sand County Almanac" fame, the man who founded the profession of game management. Leopold's paradigm-alerting land ethic, as he explained, "changes the role of Homo sapiens from conqueror of the land-community to plain member and citizen of it." This crucial land ethic also "enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants, and animals, or collectively: the land." A vision to live by.
    Roosevelt then appointed Darling director of what would become the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (for which Carson later worked). Darling proved to be a formidable and effective protector of ducks and geese, so much so that his agency inadvertently established the very conditions that nurtured today's immense population of "nuisance" Canadian geese.
    So we find ourselves in a quandary. American wildlife has rebounded from near-extinction to overabundance, and many of us recoil from the need to cull animal populations.
    How easy it is to hold fast to outmoded assumptions, to grow rigid in one's perceptions, to tune out the "other side." Thoroughly researched and powerfully written books such as "Silent Spring" and "Nature Wars" induce us to question our thinking, opinions and values. It's one thing to argue that animals are sentient beings and that we should never abuse or unnecessarily kill them. It's another to allow naďve and wishful fantasies about wild animals to cloud our understanding of what's at stake when nature gets out of balance, even if it's thanks to our interference, however well-intentioned. We are going to have to figure out how to live safely with all those amazing and, yes, precious, deer, geese and beavers, those coyote and cougars and bears.
    Donna Seaman is a senior editor at Booklist and editor of the collection "In Our Nature."
Copyright © 2012, Chicago Tribune
BARRON'S, Dec. 7, 2012
    Nature Wars by Jim Sterba. Well worth the effort if you are engaged in conservation issues. Sterba starts his book on the borders of Maine's Acadia National Park. Seeing some grapevines choking off a ravine and stream, Sterba rips out the interloping vines so the original forest can take hold. But his research reveals that the vines were probably planted in the 19th century, when the entire area was bucolic farmland. John D. Rockefeller Jr. bought the land, which was turned over to Acadia in 1961, and a new forest devoured the pasture that existed before.
    That is the thesis of this book: The major annihilation of nature in the U.S. occurred in the late 19th century, when everything from buffalo to hardwood forests was felled wholesale. The conservationist efforts of the past 100 years have been so successful that wildlife such as coyotes, turkeys, bears, and deer — not long ago a sight so rare that Americans stopped their cars to get a look — have become plentiful pests. At times this book reads like a well-reported tabloid exaggeration, but it will surely make you look differently at the "narrative of loss" at the heart of our environmental news coverage.
Nature Wars' details an uneasy relationship
Jim Sterba takes a thoughtful look at Americans' widespread and enduring ignorance of the natural world.
By Hector Tobar, Los Angeles Times
Dec. 7, 2012
    The nature-challenged reader will discover many new and startling facts in Jim Sterba's new book. Among them all one stands out: Not only are America's Eastern forests roaring back to life, they've been doing so for more than a century.
    Sterba, a veteran reporter for the Wall Street Journal and New York Times, literally stumbles onto this truth one day amid the majestic trees of Maine's Acadia National Park. He sees feral grapevines strangling a birch tree. When he gets out of his car to rip the vines out, he finds a rusting 1927 Maine license plate.
    After talking to the locals, Sterba realizes he's walking on the ruins of a farm that's been swallowed up by a new forest. The grapes were there before the trees, "a remnant of a very different civilization that had existed not long ago."
    In some of the more densely populated corners of New England, trees have been filling up abandoned farms since the 1850s. Now armies of cute and cuddly creatures are filling up those forests too, including white-tailed deer. So many deer, in fact, as to become odious and obnoxious.
    Sterba's book is a much more sweeping and thoughtful work than its unwieldy and tabloid-sounding title would suggest. At its best, "Nature Wars" isn't really a book about the conflict between man and nature. Nor is it about the clashes between those who defend nature and those who seek to manage it. Instead, it's best read as a history of Americans' widespread and enduring ignorance of the natural world and how that ignorance has created new and strange ecosystems — especially in our sprawling suburbs and exurbs.
    Consider, for example, the weird, epic saga of the largest rodent on the continent, Castor canadensis, otherwise known as the North American beaver. Beavers were wiped out in Massachusetts by frontiersmen and Indian trappers and traders in the early 18th century — they never coexisted with European settlers.
    But in 1928 they returned to western Massachusetts as the descendants of 34 beavers from Canada released in the Adirondacks a few decades earlier. Sterba shows how beavers soon thrived in resurgent forests now largely free of their old predators — including humans, no longer interested in slaughtering them en masse for the fur trade. By 1996, the state's beaver population was estimated at 24,000.
    Those beavers now live amid strip malls and golf courses. "People and beavers were sharing the same habitat as never before," Sterba writes. "They had similar tastes in waterfront real estate. Both like to live along brooks, streams, rivers, ponds and lakes with lots of nice trees nearby."
Sterba relates the story of the beaver and other troublesome wild creatures with wit and impressive reportorial diligence. He shows us how new suburban residents plant pretty trees in their yards, only to see the beavers chew them down to build dams that flood those yards.
    The recent natural history of North America is filled with such stories. In Sterba's often amusing narrative, species such as the wild turkey are cast in the role of victims in one era, only to reappear as pests in another.
Like human history, bird history repeats itself — the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.
    In "Nature Wars," Canada geese disappear across the U.S. as their habitat perishes thanks to human development. But they come back thanks to human restoration efforts and to hunters who breed them as live decoys to shoot other birds. Soon much of America from the Great Plains to the Eastern Seaboard is filled with geese.
    Unlike their ancestors, however, many of these modern-day geese refuse to migrate. Why should they? In the ensuing century, Sterba writes, humans had created a goose paradise filled with "… soccer fields, playgrounds, and parks, all planted in what happened to be the favorite food of Canada geese: grass."
    The geese are pretty to look at and defended by geese lovers — who face off with geese detractors fed up with the birds' disgusting droppings and by their annoying tendency to clog jet engines and cause planes to crash.
    One lesson Sterba draws from all this fraught history is that Americans have forgotten how to be stewards of the natural world around them. We Americans don't understand nature in the same way that Sterba did when he was a boy growing up on a Michigan farm in the 1950s; Americans today have become so immersed in "virtual reality," he writes, that they prefer to have "the natural world delivered to them on a digital screen." Even their house cats are "denatured" — back on the farm, he says, cats had real, honest "work" to do.
    Not only are these facile points, they conveniently ignore that Sterba grew up during a time when rural people continued to radically alter their environment. Among other things, they sprayed their fields with pesticides that wiped out songbirds and nearly caused the bald eagle to become extinct. Nor are all the current-day defenders of wild turkeys, beavers, feral cats, white-tailed deer and other "nuisance" animals the shrill, misinformed and naďve people Sterba repeatedly makes them out to be.
    "The screamers I can handle," a man who traps feral cats tells Sterba, referring to cat lovers. "It's the quiet ones you have to watch."
Beyond such predictable characterizations, there's a lot in "Nature Wars" for the reasoned and concerned human to learn about the changing natural landscape.
White-tailed deer, Sterba shows us, thrive in the faux rural, predator-free zones of many an American exurb. He paints a vivid and memorable portrait of these new eco systems, where only one, plentiful species is capable of bringing balance and harmony among living things: homo sapiens.
AUDUBON MAGAZINE, Nov. 2012.
    Whether it's deer in the backyard or raccoons in the chimney, nature is making a comeback—in suburbia. In his new book, Nature Wars, reporter Jim Sterba explores how, ironically, many Americans are living closer to nature than ever before—and how ill-equipped we are to deal with it. After centuries of uncontrolled hunting and clear-cutting devastated ecosystems, the environmental movement inspired people to try to restore some kind of natural balance. While conservationists have unquestionably made incredible strides, Sterba argues that, close to home, we've overcompensated, paving the way for wild creatures to live in our lushly landscaped environs—with plenty of food and protection—but not in harmony. Beavers flood septic systems, deer devour plants, and black bears forage in our trash bins. At the same time, some suburbanites shy away from management strategies such as hunting and trapping—activities that, along with enacting ordinances to ban feeding wildlife and requiring that trash be stored in more secure bins, can help municipalities overcome this growing problem, Sterba argues. "Groups have to come together to find ways to manage the natural space where they live for the good of the ecosystem as a whole and not simply one overabundant or problematic species within it."
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, Nov. 17, 2012.
By Stephen Budiansky
    As a reporter covering the anti-hunting movement for The Wall Street Journal in the 1990s, Jim Sterba got to know quite well the many activists he terms "species partisans." There were the feral-cat zealots, who labeled a scientist a "cat murderer" when he simply published a study showing how many millions of songbirds are killed each year by the nation's free-roaming felines. There were the deer devotees, who held a vigil and lighted one candle for each of the 576 deer—"my closest friends," said one activist—killed in a controlled hunt at Quabbin Reservoir in western Massachusetts. And there were the Canada goose protectors, who turned out with a television crew in tow to decry an impending "goose Holocaust" in Clarkstown, N.Y., when town officials proposed culling hundreds of the birds, which had become a major nuisance.
    None of these activists were exactly publicity-shy. But a funny thing happened on Jan. 15, 2009. That was the day that United Airlines Flight 1549 struck a flock of geese on takeoff from New York's LaGuardia Airport, lost both engines, and was piloted to a near-miraculous safe landing minutes later in the Hudson River by Capt. Chesley Sullenberger.
    Expansion of suburbs into forests has created ideal habitats on their margins for deer, who are drawn into backyards and cul-de-sacs by abundant food.
    Overnight the goose activists melted away. "As a journalist, I had been in contact with some of these people for years," Mr. Sterba writes. "They were eager for public attention. After Flight 1549, they stopped answering my emails and returning my phone calls." Since then thousands of geese around airports have been rounded up and euthanized with scarcely a word of protest. "Geese Gassed? Good!" ran a headline in the New York Post.
    The rise and fall of goose activism epitomizes the contradictory American attitudes toward wildlife and nature that Mr. Sterba documents in "Nature Wars."
    On the one hand, as Americans grow ever farther removed from the farm and the rough realities of wresting their subsistence from nature, they have begun to apply the same relentless anthropomorphism to animals in the wild that has long characterized their relationships with cats and dogs. Spurred by canny marketing that encourages people to look upon wild birds as "outdoor pets," the bird-feed business is now a $5 billion industry.
    On the other hand, major changes in both settlement patterns and ecology are bringing humans and wildlife populations into ever increasing conflict: Another booming business these days is "nuisance wildlife control companies." It is the perfect irony, Mr. Sterba notes, that spilled seed from bird feeders is a significant cause of the trouble, attracting skunks, raccoons, rats and even black bears that drive frantic homeowners to call in "control experts."
    Underlying it all is a shift in agriculture over the past century to high-yield production, especially in the Midwest, allowing sprawling residential development to invade what was once farm land. "Where do most people in the United States live? They live in the forest," Mr. Sterba observes. More than 100 million acres of forests have regrown on what were once cleared farm fields in the eastern United States. The changes have not only brought people in contact with wildlife but also produced ecological conditions that favor a number of species whose populations have unnaturally exploded—deer, most obviously, but also beavers, geese, turkeys, moose and bears. People feel the impact—literally, in the 3,000 deer-car collisions per day. But so do threatened bird and plant species, whose habitats are being wiped out by ravenous herds of famished deer.
    In recounting a series of clashes over wildlife management in recent decades, Mr. Sterba shows that policy makers who aim to address these problems frequently must resort to hypocrisy and deceit to navigate the morass of public sentiment. Princeton Township, N.J., offers a vivid case in point. There, a proposal to allow limited hunting as a way of keeping the deer herd in check produced predictable outrage, including a death threat to a local official.     Eventually the town hired a professional company that specializes in suburban deer control, their major selling point apparently being that, unlike a bunch of yahoo hunters, they do the dirty work invisibly, shooting the deer at night using silencer-equipped rifles with infrared telescopic sights. "Afterwards, they gathered up the carcasses, along with bloody leaves and other debris, leaving no evidence of the cull," Mr. Sterba writes.
    Evasion and wishful thinking routinely trump scientific understanding in the stories Mr. Sterba investigates. In Massachusetts, rapidly growing numbers of dam-building beavers have flooded basements and septic tanks, contaminated wells, and undermined utility towers and railroad embankments. In 1996 the Humane Society of the United States launched a successful referendum campaign to ban the use of lethal traps to catch beavers in the state. Wildlife officials tried to point out that the ban would simply "turn what were valuable resources harvested for fur into pests to be eradicated at taxpayer expense." They also called attention to the incorrect statements that trapping opponents had made in advertisements supporting the misleadingly named "Wildlife Protection Act." In response, the Humane Society complained that the state wildlife division was violating the law by "lobbying." State election officials ordered the agency not to issue any further statements.
    The result has been exactly what the experts warned. Trappers were driven out of business, and beaver numbers soared. A few former trappers, however, have reinvented themselves as "professional wildlife damage controllers," charging local governments $150 per beaver for removing "problem" animals. Instead of using the now-banned lethal traps that instantly dispatched a beaver, they have to employ cumbersome and supposedly "humane" live traps that hold the terrified animal for hours until it can be retrieved, bashed on the head and disposed of.
    Mr. Sterba is particularly good at untangling the complex politics and strange alliances that have formed in these battles. Birdseed companies, outraged that federal and state wildlife agencies had (correctly) advised against using seed mixtures containing grains that birds simply discard, fought back by going after the agencies' funding. In 1996 they scuttled a plan that would have provided new revenue sources to the agencies to make up for dwindling fees from hunting licenses. Deer hunters and deer lovers have more than once joined forces to sabotage scientifically grounded management proposals, such as banning the winter feeding of deer. Meanwhile, bird lovers and bird hunters have joined hands in support of the eradication of feral cats.
    The larger theme of "Nature Wars" is that even the most pristine-looking landscapes have been shaped by centuries of human occupation and continue to be altered, often radically, by the unplanned perturbations brought about by humans: marauding pet and feral cats; garbage Dumpsters that make life a breeze for bears; suburban sprawl that creates forest-edge habitat ideal for deer. The hordes of nonmigratory geese found along the East Coast today, far from being natural, are the descendants of birds captively bred a century ago as "live decoys" by hunters, who used to blast huge flocks of birds with cannons loaded with shot. Mr. Sterba argues that humans are now responsible for managing the mess they have made, whether they like it or not.
    "Nature Wars" suffers some from its journalistic origins. The writing is clear though never exactly eloquent. A few strained attempts at writerly turns of phrase—Americans, the author writes in the introduction, have substituted "a great deal of real nature with reel nature"—fail to come off. And Mr. Sterba isn't always good at synthesizing his generally excellent reporting into sharp conclusions.
    At the end of the book he somewhat lamely suggests that the solution is for all of us to get off our couches, get outdoors and learn more about nature, which is fine but a bit like suggesting that if only people were smarter they wouldn't do such dumb things. And, alas, his own book offers plenty of evidence that the fantasies about nature and animals sustained by modern American society are robust enough to survive even considerable contact with the real thing.
    —Mr. Budiansky's books include "The Bloody Shirt," "The Nature of Horses" and "Perilous Fight: America's Intrepid War With Britain on the High Seas, 1812-15."
Review: Wildlife proliferation is hot-button issue
By Jerry Harkavy
Associated Press
The usual hot-button issues such as taxes and zoning are beginning to take a back seat in some communities to disputes that include deer, beavers, feral cats and bears.
Wildlife-related controversies have been springing up in towns throughout the country, pitting neighbor against neighbor, animal-rights activists against biologists and, in some cases, even prompting death threats.
In "Nature Wars," Jim Sterba ("Nature Wars: The Incredible Story of How Wildlife Comebacks Turned Backyards into Battlegrounds," Crown) lays out battle lines that emerged after populations of species that declined to near-extinction by the end of the 19th century came roaring back as the nation's forests regenerated and city dwellers moved to the suburbs and exurbs. Farmland reverted to woods and subdivisions, while the ensuing sprawl created hospitable habitat for all sorts of wild creatures.
"It is very likely that more people live in closer proximity to more wild animals and birds in the eastern United States today than anywhere on the planet at any time in history," writes Sterba, a longtime reporter for The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.
The nation's white-tailed deer population, which sank as low as 350,000 more than a century ago in the face of uncontrolled hunting, rebounded to an estimated 25 million to 40 million by the 1990s. What had been considered an elegant creature became "long-legged rats" linked by researchers to more than 1 million motor vehicle collisions annually and blamed for $850 million in damage to farm crops and forests. They are also carriers of tick-borne Lyme disease, which the author contracted three times in 11 years.
Controlling the size of the deer population poses a monumental problem. Young people prefer computer games and television to hunting, while generations reared on Disney's "Bambi" bristle at the idea that sharpshooters should be hired to thin the herd.
If hunters are fewer in number, trappers are even harder to find. That's been a bonanza for beavers, blamed for the most costly damage by any species. But even as the industrious rodents triggered complaints throughout Massachusetts about damage to structures, trees and water supplies, the state's voters banned the use of an effective trap that kills instantly but that critics depicted as cruel.
Canada geese no longer migrate; instead, they befoul golf courses and soccer fields in their year-round turf, and can be responsible for hundreds of deaths if they are sucked into the engines of a jetliner. Wild turkeys have gone from novelty to nuisance, attacking pedestrians and flying into car windshields. And bears have advanced into populated areas, drawn by easy-to-obtain food.
The author takes issue with the boom in wild bird feeders, seeing it as a manipulation of nature that spreads disease and benefits neither the birds nor the environment. But he reserves his sharpest critiques for activists on behalf of feral cats, numbering up to 100 million and blamed for killing up to 1 billion birds in North America. Those who think the feral animals should be killed, rather than trapped, neutered and released, have been subject to death threats, according to Sterba.
This book is sure to initiate discussion about an issue that seems likely to move closer to the forefront in the years ahead. Sterba's views certainly won't win support in all quarters, but he articulates them forcefully, and he presents solid evidence to back them up.
Boston Globe
June 10, 2012
Trevor Corson: Journalist and former lobsterman
Journalist and former lobsterman
Trevor Corson is a journalist who also knows how to haul in a lobster trap, which he did for two years off Maine's Little Cranberry Island and chronicled in his first book, the bestseller "The Secret Life of Lobsters: How Fishermen and Scientists Are Unraveling the Mysteries of Our Favorite Crustacean." He returned to the edible ocean with "The Story of Sushi: An Unlikely Saga of Raw Fish and Rice." Corson speaks at the New England Aquarium Thursday at 7 p.m.
BOOKS: What are you reading?
CORSON: I'm reading an interesting book that comes out in November that combines my interest in human and animal behavior. This is a really interesting book, "Nature Wars" by Jim Sterba. It goes back and looks at how our ideas of wilderness and the wild are fairly warped. I love reading something that destroys my daily working presumptions about something. This book combines my two obsessions in reading. One is more biological, ecological books. The other is human history. I've also been reading books on East Asia. I've been reading "Modern China" by Jonathan Fenby, who's a journalist, not a historian, which I thought would make for an interesting approach, and "Japan" by James McClain. It's been fascinating reading these books back to back.


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Balcony Art Houses in Santorini
Class: N/A
per night
Balcony Art Houses Hotel in Santorini is a beautiful complex found in a quiet and peaceful spot in the village of Imerovigli, built along a paved path running along the edge of the cliff, offering panoramic views to the Aegean Sea.
Balcony Art Houses Hotel combines traditional architecture and hospitality with modern facilities for a relaxing vacation. There is an outdoors pool with hydro-massage, and a spacious sunbathing deck where guests can relax. There is also a poolside bar serving drinks and refreshments, and a rich buffet breakfast is served every morning.
Balcony Art Houses Hotel in Santorini offers a variety of uniquely decorated houses for guests' accommodation. The houses are all air conditioned, and completely independent. Each is uniquely decorated with tasteful furnishings and works of art and decorations by local artists. The units have luxurious bathroom, comfortable living area, and private veranda with incredible views to the caldera.
- Capital: 2 kms (Town)
Main Facilities
- Swimming Pool
- Jacuzzi
- Pool/Snack bar
- Garden
- Air-condition
- Internet Service
- WiFi Free (Public Areas)
- Breakfast
- Breakfast Buffet
- Bar
- Parking
- Reception
- 24 Hour Front Desk
- Luggage Room
- Fax / Copy Machine
- Safety box
- Excursions - Tours
- Laundry
- Tumble dryer
- Ironing
Room Facilities
- Room Service
- Balcony
- Large Verandas
- Air-conditioning
- Internet access
- Free Wi-Fi
- Safety box
- Shower
- Jacuzzi
- Non smoking room
Sorry, the pricelist for this accommodation is not available.
(Prices are per room per night and include all taxes)
Please send a request to the hotel reservation department in order to be notified for their rates.


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Eurozone growth hopes emerge after industrial data
LONDON A larger-than-expected increase in industrial production across the 17 European Union countries that use the euro has raised hopes that the recession in the currency bloc has eased or even ended.
Official figures released Tuesday from Eurostat, the EU's statistics office, showed eurozone industrial output rose a monthly 1 percent in March, double the rate expected in the markets and the biggest gain since July 2011.
As a result, industrial production during the first quarter was up a quarterly 0.2 percent.
This will provide a boon to eurozone economic growth figures -- the first estimate for the first-quarter is due Wednesday. The consensus in the markets before the industrial production figures for March were released was for eurozone GDP to have fallen a modest 0.1 percent, far less than the previous quarter's 0.6 percent decline.
"The data therefore bode well for GDP to show a significantly weaker decline ..... and even raises the possibility of the recession having ended," said Chris Williamson, chief economist at Markit.
Even so, the overall figure masks a huge divergence in economic performance across the eurozone, with many countries, such as Greece and Spain, still in recession. The eurozone as a whole has been in recession -- officially defined as two straight quarters of economic contraction -- since the end of 2011.
Even if Wednesday's figures from Eurostat show a flat reading, or a rise, few economists predict a marked upswing over the remainder of the year.
Forward-looking economic surveys of investors and business managers have registered little improvement in spending and investment intentions, while unemployment remains around a record high of 12 percent. The European Central Bank's decision earlier this month to cut its benchmark interest rate to a record low of 0.5 percent was also predicated on a grim assessment of the economic outlook.
"The latest industrial data confirm that the eurozone has recovered a bit after the disastrous end to Q4," said Ben May, European economist at Capital Economics. "But for now at least, we would not bank on further rises in production over the coming months driving a recovery in the wider economy."
Many countries in the eurozone are seeing their economies shrink as their governments enact often tough budget austerity measures to get a handle on their debts. Cuts to pay and pensions and public sector redundancies have been hurting near-term economic growth. Meanwhile, reforms that make the economy more competitive will take longer to yield benefit.


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The Phagwah parade has drawn thousands of people to Richmond Hill to celebrate the Hindu holiday Holi for more than two decades, and organizers wanted the event to basically be the same as it always has been — crowds of people dancing, singing and, what is often the trademark of the event, throwing colorful powder.
But this year, some involved in Sunday's parade said some of the police who were not from the 106th and 102nd precincts were culturally insensitive and aggressively took powder from individuals, including from women's purses.
More than 25,000 people came to Richmond Hill last weekend to celebrate Holi, a religious holiday celebrated to mark the coming of spring. Celebrations are held across the world, most of which include participants throwing colorful powders at each other.
"The NYPD brought police from all over who had no idea about this parade, what it is, and they could be very insensitive to the nuances of the parade and the culture," said Roy Singh, a parade organizer. "They went into ladies' pocketbooks on the floats. They were very belligerent in seizing the powder. They even pushed people aside to get onto the floats."
Singh emphasized they had no problems with officers from the local 106th and 102nd precincts, but with officers who did not know the area. He said of the approximate 100 officers there, there were about 28 from the 106th and 102nd precincts.
A police spokeswoman said they were both following a city law that was implemented after the anthrax scare in 2001 that does not allow individuals to use powder along parade routes and working to accommodate parade organizers, who she said had requested that police ensure parade goers did not throw powder along the route. Police did allow individuals to throw the colorful dye at the Smokey Oval Park in Richmond Hill.
One week after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, letters containing anthrax were mailed to two U.S. Senators and a number of news media offices, which killed five people.
The NYPD spokeswoman noted there were no summonses or arrests in relation to the confiscation of powder on Sunday.
Police from the 106th and 102nd precincts, which have been monitoring the parade for years, said they had a good time at the event.
"I thought the organizers did a great job, and I had a great time," said Officer Ken Zorn of the 106th Precinct.
Vishnu Mahadeo, president of the Richmond Hill Economic Development Council, agreed the police were too aggressive in confiscating the powder.
"When you take away the powder, it's like having Christmas without a Christmas tree," Mahadeo said. "The police took the key element out."
Mahadeo said police took powder, confetti and perfume away from him, his wife and his 12-year-old child as they walked toward the parade route but were not on the route itself. He said hundreds of bags were confiscated. Police could not verify how much was taken.
"This is not an acceptable practice," Mahadeo said. "This is a part of our culture and an intrusion into our culture and customs."
Mahadeo said he and others are considering legal action against the police.
"This community is becoming very conscious, it's no longer a first-generation immigrant community," he said. "We're second-, third-generation Americans, and it's sad we're being treated in this type of disrespectful manner."
Assemblyman Mike Miller (D-Woodhaven) said he was looking into what happened at the parade.
"We're disappointed because this is a celebration of their culture and traditions, and we're still trying to talk to police about why it was confiscated and how we can move forward so that in the future they can have their celebration without being worried."
Singh said organizers have aired their concerns to the NYPD, and he said police have asked them to draft a document about the holiday for them to disseminate to officers in the future.
"The 106th and 102nd police already understand us, but it's the other police that we want to give this to," Singh said of the document.


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After reading this article about what the disconnection between what doctors say and what patients hear, I can't help but wonder how you can teach something like that. Especially since half of the problem -- the patient half -- won't be at the CME activity, most likely. Or maybe you do include patients in this type of education? If anyone is tackling this, I'd love to know how you go about it, and how you measure the results.
Hide comments


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At 2002-11-07 08:13 -0500, email@example.com wrote: >i have a problem with the page-numbering. >is it possible to calculate with >fo:page-number and fo:page-number-citation so that >i do something like this: > ><fo:page-number-citation/> - (<fo:page-number/> - 1) ??? No ... these two formatting objects add glyphs to areas on the page, they are not representations of abstract numbers for use in arithmetic. >the other question: is it possible to >put fo:page-number in <xsl:variable/> ??? The construct can go in a variable as a result tree fragment to be added to the resulting XSL-FO file on demand, but a given page's page number cannot. My impression is you are missing an important aspect of XSL in that the XSLT is "arms length" from the XSL-FO. Your stylesheet acts on your XML to produce XSL-FO, but the XSL-FO engine works on your resulting XSL-FO instance only when the instance is completely created. There is no feedback loop between the on-the-fly formatting interpretation and the stylesheet transformation. Formatting involves supplying the engine with contingencies for situations the formatter might find itself in, rather than querying the formatter for real-time situations. I hope this helps. ..................... Ken -- Upcoming hands-on in-depth XSLT/XPath and/or XSL-FO: - North America: Feb 3 - Feb 7,2003 G. Ken Holman mailto:firstname.lastname@example.com Crane Softwrights Ltd. http://www.CraneSoftwrights.com/f/ Box 266, Kars, Ontario CANADA K0A-2E0 +1(613)489-0999 (F:-0995) ISBN 0-13-065196-6 Definitive XSLT and XPath ISBN 0-13-140374-5 Definitive XSL-FO ISBN 1-894049-08-X Practical Transformation Using XSLT and XPath ISBN 1-894049-10-1 Practical Formatting Using XSL-FO Next conference training: 2002-12-08,03-03,06Received on Thursday, 7 November 2002 10:33:21 UTC
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.3.1 : Tuesday, 6 January 2015 20:58:26 UTC


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But let's move on to the food... shall we? This was a VERY busy month... between regular meals and Thanksgiving, this recap is loaded!
I started off this month with baked pesto chicken. I needed an easy meal and truly this is as easy as it gets. I used a nut-free pesto so Landon could have some, but I should have known the green sauce would be a no-go. He's a decent eater when it comes to meat, he LOVES meat, but forget about veggies. He saw the green on this and refused to believe it wasn't something I was trying to sneak into him... so needless to say John and I were the only two enjoying this meal!
That same night I also made cheesy garlic biscuits. I know the two don't really go well together but I had decided to put my piece of chicken over a huge salad (and put John's over pasta...which Landon did eat, of course) and wanted something carby, so biscuits it was. I made a horrible mistake though... I didn't grease my skillet and the poor biscuits stuck so badly. Ugh. It was a pity I tell you... a real shame.
I remade three of my all time favorite meals this month. The first was chicken marsala casserole. I was recently asked what my favorite meals are to make, and after I rattled off a short list, I decide to make a menu with all three favorites in one week. It was a good week I tell you. The day I made this Landon was getting over a horrible cold which resulted in him not eating for a week. If you know his growth issues (he's off the charts for weight) it's VERY hard when he goes weeks without eating. I couldn't chance him refusing this so I sat there, diligently picking each mushroom out of his bowl. Usually if I chop them up he eats them, but I wasn't taking chances this time. Good thing too- we all loved it, and Landon finally ate a meal!
Probably my hands down favorite dinner is peanut noodles with shredded chicken and Asian veggies so I was thrilled to make it. I don't often make peanut butter dishes now that Landon has been diagnosed with his allergy but we do still eat peanuts in the house so I decided to make this. It was as good as I remembered. My only regret is I made it on a Thursday so I didn't get to take the leftovers to work since we go out to lunch on Fridays. Sure, I had to scrub every surface after eating to ensure the peanut sauce wasn't anywhere... but it was worth it!
I had conferences this month and needed several easy meal nights. One night I simple took this sweet onion pot roast out of the freezer for my mom, John, and Landon to enjoy while I was at work late. Landon is a huge fan of this, as is John, so it was a perfect and easy dinner.
When a cookie craving hit recently I decided to make buttermilk chocolate chip cookies. These used to be my favorite. I have to say they have since been dethroned in my house, but they were nice for a little variety!
When my students won their marble celebration this month (our behavior system) they decided they wanted to cook in the class. I turned to my trusty crockpot salsa con queso recipe since I know it was kid-tested and kid-approved from my students last year. Sure enough it was a huge hit again. 10 year olds love cheese... they are very smart people!
And now onto Thanksgiving. As a food blogger there's a certain amount of "pressure" to try new recipes (or else what are you going to blog?!) but truly I don't think of Thanksgiving as the time to get crafty. Thanksgiving is a classic meal and calls for classic tried and true recipes. Each year I add a couple new things, but there are several classics that always make the table. Here's a list of what was remade this Thanksgiving:
Raspberry baked brie- this went completely, and quickly. I love it... I love the creamy cheese with the sweet raspberry... so good.
Spinach dip- seriously I think I make this recipe monthly for one event of another!
Cranberry sauce- Really, nobody eats it... a little bit here or there, but I feel it's a must for Thanksgiving. I think with all the other amazing food on the table cranberry sauce takes a back seat.
Stuffing- I pretty much wait all year for this. It's the only time I make this stuffing and it's so classic and simple, but it's just my favorite.
Corn casserole- I can assure you that my family would revolt if this wasn't on the table at any major holiday, but especially Thanksgiving. This has become synonymous with the holiday in our home. It's also become a huge hit with my friends.. I had several people I know make this for the first time this year and they all raved. I really need to take an updated picture of this... because this picture does it no favors!
And that is that! This year I tried out a new dessert (coming soon!), a new mashed potato recipe (also coming soon!), and a new turkey brine. The rest of the gaps in the meal were filled in by guests, and it was a wonderful holiday had by all! Now onto the hustle and bustle of the holiday season!


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This weekend I made these cute CC holders... These can be used as small envelopes to keep mini cards... Have a look!
Papercreationsink - Show flowers
This is super pretty... You're sending me the template.. DO NOT FORGET IT... :-)
These are so cute and so useful. How much nicer to receive your gift card in one of these:)
These are sooo adorable!!!
Oh wow, how creative. These are so pretty and a perfect gift idea. Lee x
Your color coordination is fantastic. You should be in the fashion designing industry!
loved these!!! :) wld love it if u can share the template :)
This s so pretty,love how u decorated it!!
Really unique idea Priya!! Such nice colors u've used :)
wow..these are so pretty...i have quite a few credit cards..waiting for these pretty holders ;) loved the one with heart embellishment...please do mail me the template...and as always super work...clean , neat and elegant
beautiful just beautiful ...i really like all your gift card holders u use pp in such a good way liked your idea of using a flower and heart as a locking mechanism at the back,this is a very nice gift idea thanks for sharing.
lovely ones!! looks so pretty
delightful! very very pretty!
What adorable gift card holders. Love your flowers and papers that you used. anyone would be delighted to get these. Thank you for joining Paper Creations Challenge - Pat
What a great idea! I love the size of them and all that fun paper is perfect! Thanks so much for joining us over at the Send A Smile 4 Kids challenge. Good luck and I hope you will come back and play with us again!
Hugs, Sarah
Ooooh these are so pretty Priya, fab papers and design and such great gifts. Thank you so much for joining in with us at Cupcake this week :) Donna ♥ x
Wow- great project! Love the flowers and all the special touches! Thanks for sharing it with us at Paper Creations Ink!
Oh these are lovely gift cards. Fab papers! Thanks for joining us at Cupcake this week! Hugs Shelly x
OMGoodness what a cute project just love it..
Thanks for playing with the Paper Playtime Queen's
The Scrapbooking Queen
These cc/gift card holders are super cute!..they sure make gifting extra special!:)
These are really sweet! Thanks for joining us Paper Playtime for our anything goes challenge. :-) Amy
very cute holders ..
would love to make one for myself !
Gorgeous makes, and very creative. I love how you have created your own template. A very inventive idea.
Thank you for you really nice comments on my blog. They were much appreciated.
These are so cute. I especially love the polka dotted one with the little heart on the inside. Thanks for joining the Stampin' Sisters in Christ Challenge this week!
Very cute - love them both. I am so glad you could join us at Stampin SIsters in Christ.
These are all so very cute, love the paper choice and colors for all of them! Thanks for joining us over @ Send A Smile 4 Kids, hope to see you again :)
Very pretty and great gifts! Thanks for playing with us at Paper Playtime!
Hi Priya! Thanks for the comment on my blog, that was too sweet. I love your blog & your cards are amazing. I'm in love with the blue flower card holders.. too cute!
These holders are gorgeous Priya what a clever idea.
Thanks for sharing these creations with us at Fashionable Stamping Challenges.
Hugs Shirley x x
Hi Priya, what gorgeous gift cards. I love the colours and your papers are beautiful. Such a brilliant idea! Thanks for joining us at cupcake craft challenge this week. Hugs, Denise x
These are very pretty Priya and such a lovely idea too.
Thanks for joining in with the Fashionable Stamping Handmade Flowers challenge and hope to see you again.
Fliss x
These are gorgeous. Thanks for joining us at Creative Craft Challenge. Bev x
Do accept the Butterfly Award from my blog
OMG...amazing !! Very very pretty !
i am looking at all ur posts today itself... what lovely stuff priya!!! super cute
Beautiful Creation I Love your work and hope to see more of it
Thanks for Joining us atPaper Creations Ink
Priya Thank You for dropping by my blog am glad you consider our popsicle pen stand as a fav!
Beautiful cards. Do checkout my quilled cards at www.eigth.in/wordpress
Almost all of the people today want to have a credit card because it can be used conveniently anytime. This is used at times when you want to go on shopping but you do not have enough funds to purchase such things