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Mithras Reader Volumes I and II
An Academic and Religious Journal of Greek, Roman and Persian Studies
edited by Payam Nabarz
published by Twin Serpents Press
Vol I, PB, £24.95, 100pp
Vol II, PB, £15.55, 104pp
reviewed by David Rankine for the Esoteric Book Review
As I received these two volumes together I decided to cover them both in the same review, though I shall consider the contents of each volume in turn to give them the attention they deserve. Both follow the same style, being divided into three sections, followed by reviews at the end. The sections are Academic Papers, Arts and Religious Articles, a template which works well to provide a wide range of material with something for most people.
Volume I begins with Continuity and Change in the Cult of Mithra by Dr Israel Campos Mendez, a study of the links and contuinty between the Persian (Iranian) god Mithra and Mithras as worshipped by the Romans in their mysteries. Exploring in detail both the similarities and differences, Dr Mendez presents a step-by-step argument for continuity that avoids leaps of faith and relies on solid facts and logical deductions to present a substantial and enjoyable argument. The second paper is an Introduction to Classes of Manichean. Mithraism and Sufiyeh by Dr Saloome Rostampoor. This piece compares and contrasts the similarities and differences between the different religions, whilst providing background information on the religions, such as the appropriate commandments, and makes for a fascinating comparison.
The essay Entheos ho syros, polymathes ho phoinix: Neoplatonist approaches to religious practice in Iamblichus and Porphyry by Sergio Knipe is for me the highlight of Volume I. This overview of the religious approaches of these two key magickal philosophers is fascinating and extremely lucid and enjoyable. Particular emphasis is given to Porphyry's On Abstinence from Killing Animals and On the Mysteries of Egypt by Iamblichus to illustrate their diverging approaches, whilst indicating their significance to future schools of thought. If you are unfamiliar with these two giants of the past, this article provides an ideal introduction to some of their most significant ideas.
The final essay in this first section Mithraism and Alchemy by David Livingstone looks at the alchemical connections in the Mithraic ladder of initiation, drawing on the writings of figures such as Zosimus of Panopolis to explore the connections of these two diverse areas through the planetary symbolism inherent in both. The second section contains a number of pictures showing exhibits from the For example Mithras exhibition by Farangis Yegane, which explore the symbolism of the myths contained within Mithraism through her paintings and installations.
Section 3 begins with an article by Guya Vichi on his relationship with Mithra, which resulted from a meditation, and includes an Ode. This is followed by a Hymn to the Sun by Katherine Sutherland and a piece by Payam Nabarz on the Mithras Liturgy with the Orphic Hymns. This latter piece is a practical rite of planetary magick, which combines the original source material with inspiration to fill in the gaps and ensure a flow which makes sense and provides a suitable catharsis for the dedicant.
Volume II follows the same format, and Section 1 starts with the essay Factors determining the outside projection of the Mithraic Mysteries by Dr Israel Campos Mendes. This paper focuses on the social factors within the Mithraic mysteries, including their relevance within the Roman legion structure. By concentrating on the social dynamic we are reminded of the function of the mystery cult beyond the mystery, and this is a thought-provoking paper. The next essay is The Mithras Liturgy: cult liturgy, religious ritual, or magical theurgy? by Kim Huggens. By studying the evidence Kim Huggens argues convincingly and precisely that the ritual may well be a rite for use by magicians who had ascended through the seven grades.
Section 2 includes more images from the For example Mithras exhibition by Farangis Yegane, as well as a striking Mithras-Phanes image by James Rodriguez, photographs of the Temple of Mithra in Garni (Armenia) by Jalil Nozariand a depiction of Mithras by Robert Kavjian. Section 3 contains a range of invocations and poetry to entrance and delight the reader. These include a Mithras Sol Invictus invocation by M. Hajduk, a translation of Sappho's Ode to Aphrodite by Harita Meenee, and the poems Norooz Phiroze by Farida Bamji, Disappearing Shrines and Moving Shrines by S. David, and The Sleeping Lord by Katherine Sutherland. This section reaches a climax with Payam Nabarz's article The right handed handshake of the Gods, emphasising the significance of this act through the ages, as well as Mithra's role as god of contracts and agreements.
These readers represent the top end of the publications being produced today, exploring as they do the latest academic thought, artistic impressions and personal experiences, presented in three streams which each offer their own flavour and pleasures. In a field where rehashing third hand and lack of originality is all too common, these works are a refreshing change and well worth purchasing for your bookshelf, to be stored on the shelves for books that actually get read!


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(Reuters) - Major League Baseball is driven by money. Truckloads of it.
Attendances, merchandise sales and television ratings are all up and there is plenty of cash to go around.
The richest teams are valued at over $1 billion and the best players are paid tens of millions of dollars each year, but the big bucks are no guarantee for success on the diamond.
There's a cheaper and seemingly better way - it's called the Cardinal Way - and it is a recipe that has made St. Louis one of the great franchises in America's favorite pastime.
On Wednesday, the Redbirds will visit Fenway Park to face the Boston Red Sox in the opener of the 109th World Series.
If money was the deciding factor, the Red Sox would be a sure bet to win. According to Forbes, the club is valued at over $1.3 billion, almost double the Cardinals, and boasts one of the biggest payrolls in the sport.
But if history was the deciding factor, the Cardinals would be the overwhelming favorites. While the Red Sox have won the World Series just twice since 1918, St. Louis have won 11 times since 1926, the most of any National League team and second only to the American League's New York Yankees.
Their last victory came just two seasons ago and they have made the World Series four times in the last decade, sticking with a simple philosophy the club pioneered in the 1920s.
Unable to compete with wealthier clubs for the best players, the Cardinals - who won a World Series in 1934 with a team nicknamed the Gashouse Gang because of the team's shabby appearance - relied on a system where they developed their own players in minor league competition.
It is a system that has been adopted throughout the sporting world but the Cardinals remain the standard-bearers for getting the best out of their local talent.
Whenever a big name player is injured or traded, instead of opening the chequebook, the Cardinals simply find a replacement from their feeder leagues.
Their roster for the World Series includes 10 rookies and the youngest manager in MLB, 41-year-old Mike Matheny, a former St. Louis player well versed in the Cardinal Way.
"We've been fortunate to be in an organization that winning is a tradition, winning is an expectation," he said after the Cardinals beat the Los Angeles Dodgers in the NL championship.
"We start talking early on about the history and the championships, the great players who have been through here and people who have made their mark on this organization and in the game.
"So we take a lot of pride in trying to carry ourselves like a championship club."
While the club expects success, making the World Series was anything but easy this year. They needed to win their last six games of the regular season to win the NL Central Division and secure home-field advantage, which proved decisive.
With a brilliant rotation, led by Adam Wainwright and 22-year-old Michael Wacha, and a powerful lineup that includes slugger Carlos Beltran, the Cardinals came from behind to win their divisional series with Pittsburgh at home.
Then they overpowered the big-spending Dodgers to reach their fourth Fall Classic against the Red Sox, also at Busch Stadium in Missouri.
St. Louis won the first two, in 1946 and 1967, both in seven games, but Boston won the most recent, in 2004, ending an 86-year title drought.
"Whenever we clinched a spot in the postseason, they were talking in the clubhouse about how not everyone gets this opportunity," said Wacha, who was named the Most Valuable Player of the NL championship series. "We have so many rookies on our team that we just try and embrace everything.
"(We're) trying not to take it for granted and really just take advantage of this opportunity that we're in, and make a push here in the World Series."
Reporting by Julian Linden; Editing by Frank Pingue

subset: commoncrawl


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Production of the Mustang started in Dearborn, Michigan on March 9, 1964 and the car was introduced to the general public on April 17, 1964 at the New York World's Fair. It is Ford's 3rd earliest nameplate currently in production. Original sales forecasts predicted less than 100,000 units for the first year. This mark was exceeded in 3 months from rollout. Another 318,000 would be sold during the model year (a record), and in its very first eighteen months, more than one million Mustangs were developed. Looking for Mustangs for sale in White Hall AR is easy now. Just use the internet to search for them near you.
Classic Mustangs For Sale
All these were VIN-identified as 1965 designs, however several modifications were made at the traditional opening of the brand-new model year (start August 1964), consisting of the addition of back-up lights on some designs, the intro of alternators to replace generators, and an upgrade of the V8 engine from 260 cu into 289 cu in. In the case of a minimum of some six-cylinder Mustangs fitted with the 101 hp 170 cu in Falcon engine, the rush into production included some uncommon quirks, such as a horn ring bearing the 'Ford Falcon' logo beneath a trim ring emblazoned with 'Ford Mustang.' These characteristics made adequate distinction to require designation of the 121,538 earlier ones as "1964 1/2" model-year Mustangs, a difference that has sustained with purists. Buy Classic Mustangs in White Hall AR and live the muscle car dream.
The 1973 OPEC oil embargo brought with it more stringent pollution laws and the desire for fuel-efficiency. This was likewise the first time in automotive history that the Huge 3 were having to compete with imports. The brand-new Mustang II was smaller than the very first variation however, due to the additional devices required to meet brand-new US emission and safety regulations, was heavier than the very first design. Efficiency was lowered and in the very first year just 385,993 cars were offered. 2nd generation Mustangs were readily available in between 1974 and 1978 and readily available in a coupe and hatchback variation. 1979 the Mustang was revamped a 3rd time. This time it was based on the larger Fox platform and the interior was really large enough for four individuals. The trunk was bigger therefore was the engine bay. The body designs readily available included a coupe, hatchback and in 1983 a convertible. In 1979 the Third generation Mustang acted as an Indianapolis 500 rate vehicle and Ford developed 10,478 commemorative replicas. The third generation Mustangs were produced from 1979 to 1982. Now has never been a better time to buy the Ford Mustang Of Your Dreams in White Hall AR with special collector financing available.
4th generation design was readily available from 1994 to 2004. 1994 Brought about the first major redesign for the Mustang in 15 years. Patrick Schiavone integrated a number of styling from earlier Mustangs. The base model included a 3.8 OHV V6 engine from 1994 to 1998, and was mated to a basic 5-speed manual transmission or optional 4-speed automated.


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CLARKESVILLE - Garvin F. Brady, Jr., 81, passed away Saturday, February 16, 2013.
Survivors include his wife, Carol Ann Brady; daughter and son-in-law, Carla Brady and Christopher Cook; stepsons and daughter-in-law, Mark A. Jordan, and M. Clifford and Norma D. Jordan; step-grandson, Bradford F. Jordan; and step-granddaughter, Ashley R. Jordan.
A graveside service will be held at 1 p.m., Wednesday, February 20, at Barrow Memorial Gardens with the Rev. David Crisp officiating.
Tim Stewart Funeral Home, Lawrenceville, is in charge of arrangements.
Please sign online guest registry at www.stewartfh.com
Garvin Brady (2-16-13)
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Cairns City Motel
With our quiet and convenient location and our friendly and knowledgeable staff, we hope to make your time in Cairns pleasurable.
If you are looking for a relaxing, unpretentious and economical accommodation for your stay, look no further.
Our facilities include an in-ground salt water swimming pool, WiFi, tour desk and on-site parking (limited availability), all for your convenience.
If while you're here you are looking to explore a few of Cairns main attractions, you'll only be a short walk away to The Reef Casino, The Swimming Lagoon, The Esplanade, Reef Fleet Terminal, Cairns Central Shopping Centre, Rusty's Markets and More!
We offers a free shuttle bus service from the Airport from 08:00 until 20:00. Please make your way to bus stop number 6 (at domestic arrivals) and inform the driver that you are staying at Cairns City Motel.
Please let us know your expected arrival time in advance. You can use the Special Requests box when booking, or contact the us using the contact details found on the booking confirmation.
Availability & RatesTo view availability and prices please select dates and click 'Update Dates'
Hotel Facilities & Policies
- Air Conditioning
- Airport Transfers
- Breakfast Not Included
- Ceiling Fan
- Child Friendly
- Credit Cards Accepted
- Free Airport Transfers
- Free City Maps
- Free Parking
- Free WiFi
- House Keeping
- Laundry Facilities
- Luggage Storage
- No Curfew
- Non Smoking
- Outdoor Swimming Pool
- Parking
- Swimming Pool
- Taxes included
- Tea & Coffee Making Facilities
- Tours/Travel Desk
Cancellation PolicyThis property has a 1 day cancellation policy. Failure to cancel within this time will result in a cancellation charge equal to the first night of your stay.
Must-Read Hotel InfoThis property has specific Terms & Conditions.
We have a free shuttle bus transfer service from the airport, between the hours of 08.00 - 20.00. Please make your way to bus stop number 6 (domestic arrival) and let the driver know you are staying at Cairns City Motel and they will bring you straight to us.
Check in is between the hours of 15.00 - 19.00. Please contact us to let us know your expected arrival time in advance. If you expect to arrive after 19:00, you must contactus in advance to arrange a key collection, using the contact details found on the booking confirmation.
We also have free luggage storage facilities and Onsite manager with 24 hour check-in (conditions apply)'
DirectionsShow MapHide Map
Reception is open from 9am - 1pm and 3pm- 7pm every day. If you are arriving outside of these hours, please call or email us prior to your arrival and we can arrange a key collection.
Cairns City Motel is centrally located in Cairns, our street address is 169 Lake St.
We are 15 minutes from the airport via shuttle bus / taxi and walking distance from the bus and train stations.
We are offering a free Airport Pick up between 8am-8pm.
If arriving on the Greyhound bus, walk past the Reef Fleet Terminal and up Spence Street. Lake Street is the Third street on your right-hand side. Cairns City Motel is just 3 blocks down on the left hand side.
From the Premier bus stop in Lake Street get off the bus and walk north up lake st away from the bus station past the taxi rank. Cairns City Motel is just 3 blocks down on the left hand side
If you are arriving by train, from the station go through the Cairns Central Shopping Centre onto Shields Street. Take the Third Street on the left ( Lake ) and we are on the left hand side about 3 block along.
Located Near
The motel is ideally located within the city centre of Cairns. It is only a 5 minute walk to all tourist facilities and close to the Business centres. It is also the perfect base to experience Cairns and its Tropical North of Queensland.
Explore the sheer beauty of our ancient Mountain covered Rainforests, our rolling hills of the Tablelands and the worlds spectacular Great Barrier Reef. The list of attractions and tour operators is abundant.


text:
iz_ needed a new logo design and created a contest on 99designs.
A winner was selected from 100 designs submitted by 17 freelance designers.
Bombsheets.com is a site that sells sheets but needs a modern logo that reminds people of comfort.
Bombsheets.com is a simple website that sells bed sheets. An ideal logo would inject a sheets-buying mood in the user's brain.
Here's a link to a current mockup - http://yfrog.com/0mbombsheetscommockp
Don't try to design a logo to match it- we are going to design the rest of the page - background, color scheme, marketing text, etc - based on the logo you design. Bonus points if your logo shows that you've thought about this. Thanks for your submissions!
- I am truly open to all your ideas
- Logo should say "Bombsheets," "Bombsheets.com," or something similar (ie, can't be a bomb with a "BS" in it).
- Should have a tagline: use "You can buy sheets from a computer" or "Because bedbathandbeyond.com is a nightmare" or think of your own! We'd like the flexibility to change this part whenever.
- Some thoughts to get you going: bomb, starry night, beds, sleeping cap, moon, zzz, softness.
- A fugly logo.
- A fancy script font - this site is meant to appeal to people of all ages, not just grandma.
Find out how a design contest works or learn more about our logo design services.


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FireFighter Wife Tank
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Go from so-so to super with this layerable essential.
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We ship all of our orders through the United State Postal Service (USPS) & UPS and take 1 - 4 business days to arrive after being shipped. We use both First Class and Priority Mail shipping methods, which are delivered 6 days a week. Orders arrive between 7 - 10 business days of being ordered. Product washing instructions are included with every order.
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This helps us determine the pricing based on the number of colors in your design.
- (plus white base)
You can also specify the colors used in your design eg "Red", "Blue", "pantone 1809".
If you dont tell us, our professional designer will work it out for you.
- (plus white base)


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Vicki Andruszkiewicz
|Assistant Coach
Vicki Andruszkiewicz begins her first season as an
Assistant Coach for the Corsairs.A former basketball playerunder
Head Coach AmandaVan Voorhis and a former two-sport (basketball and
softball) star at UMass Dartmouth, Andruszkiewicz is familiar with
the selling points of UMass Dartmouth, and is aware of the demands
placed upon student-athletes today. A 2009 UMD graduate and a
native of Danvers, MA, Andruszkiewiczserved as team
captainforboth the softball & basketball teams. She earned her B.A. in Spanish with a minor in Education while making either the Dean's List or Chancellor's List in each of her eight semesters at UMass Dartmouth.Andruszkiewicz currentlyteachesSpanishat Somerset High School.


text: Jimmy Fallon's been about as high-profile a video game enthusiast as you can get these last few years. His late night talk show has offered up early looks at big releases like Halo 4 and the Wii U, along with offering exposure to developers and execs. But this new singalong with Disney starlet Selena Gomez is something altogether different. There's no hardware release to hype or gameplay to show. The duo sing a cover of singer/songwriter Sam Hart's Mario Kart Love Song—which is, yeah, a little corny but still kinda sweet. It makes you think that Mario Kart is now the kind of shared experience that echoes across a generation of people.


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Q&A | Joslin's Suzanne Ghiloni on Diabetes and Pregnancy
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Pregnancy is still one of the most challenging times for women with diabetes. A new book from Joslin can help.
Staying Healthy with Diabetes—Planning & Managing Your Pregnancy was written by Suzanne Ghiloni, R.N., B.S.N., C.D.E. and edited by Florence Brown, M.D., with much help from other Joslin staff. Here, Ghiloni answers seven questions about pregnancy and diabetes.
Why did you decide to write a book on this topic?
It was long overdue. We receive many inquiries from women with diabetes and their family members who are interested in learning about how to prepare for a pregnancy with diabetes. We also find that there are women who have an unplanned pregnancy and would like know how to optimize their diabetes self-management skills and reduce the risk of complications to themselves and to their baby.
You hope that women will read the book well in advance, before they are pregnant?
Absolutely. Our program goal is to have women with pre-existing diabetes be prepared for the experience. Pregnancy with diabetes is a vigorous nine-plus months. An unplanned pregnancy is often traumatic and for women with diabetes it has more serious implications. High blood glucose is not healthy for the developing baby. Medical appointments need to be much more frequent, usually every two weeks, and this certainly impacts a woman's life. Planning and awareness can make a pregnancy less stressful.
In the book, we not only explain goals and targets but the reasons for achieving them. When you understand why you're doing something, you're much more likely to do it.
Besides the appointment schedule, what do women usually find most surprising?
Most women who haven't had any pre-pregnancy counseling are shocked to learn that they are expected to have normal—or very close to normal—blood glucose levels. That can be frightening to women as they are worried that they cannot achieve this.
On the positive side, we want women to be aware that there are very high success rates for pregnancy with pre-existing diabetes, and that their healthcare team will work closely with them to make it a success.
At the Joslin-Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center Diabetes in Pregnancy Program,we help women learn the diabetes self-management skills necessary to control blood glucoses at normal levels. We ask women to come for preconception care ideally six months before they plan to become pregnant so we can work with them more intensively to enhance their control. (We're aiming for an A1C level of under 7% and as close to 6% as possible without low blood glucoses before pregnancy.) These visits give us opportunities to assess how women manage with diabetes and to enhance their self-care skills as necessary. And they can meet the team and begin to feel comfortable with us.
The book has lots of details about diet—what do you emphasize?
The goal is healthy eating for two. The meal plan remains as important as it is in diabetes in the non-pregnant state. We work to make sure that the woman gets adequate nutrition and nutrients to support a healthy pregnancy. We cover topics such as calcium, iron, carbohydrates, glycemic index, caffeine and mercury. Collaboratively, we work very hard to match the insulin and the carbohydrate intake, because we are looking for such tight control. A target of one-hour-after-meal blood sugars of 130 requires fine-tuning of carbohydrate counting.
What do you say in the book about exercise?
We hope that women already are getting exercise, since starting a new exercise program in pregnancy is not ideal. However, if a woman has not been exercising, we will encourage moderate exercise, such as walking, as long as the treating obstetrician agrees. We know that it helps with blood glucose stabilization, weight maintenance, cardiovascular health and feeling good in general. It also helps make labor and delivery somewhat easier.
Joslin's clinical guidelines for pregnancy, which we updated this fall, now recommend that women aim to enter pregnancy with a normal body-mass index, or at least lose some of their excess weight if needed. Exercise can help in achieving a healthier weight before pregnancy.
Are you seeing an increase in gestational diabetes?
Yes, gestational diabetes has been increasing, just as obesity and type 2 diabetes having been increasing. In addition, the new guidelines have lowered the targets for that diagnosis.
Most women who develop gestational diabetes are feeling wonderful and all of a sudden they get a phone call: You have gestational diabetes! This is often traumatic to hear. Sometimes the obstetrician doesn't have enough time to explain, or the office staff delivers the news. So the women tend to be quite worried until they come in for an appointment here.
How do you help with the emotional aspects of pregnancy with diabetes?
We want women to have a positive attitude and to know that we're in it together with them. We're the personification of the JoslinCare team concept—the woman is always at the center but she's got help. It's a time when it's really important to have other support people.
At Joslin we provide coaching support, because we see women go through the ups and down. Almost every woman says to me, "Every time I see a high blood sugar on my meter I become upset." And we know that with type 1 diabetes, and even with type 2, they'll see some high numbers. Our work is to provide reassurance and especially to provide education on how to prevent and remedy the highs and lows.
We see the women so often that we get to know them very well, which is nice. And we typically rotate visits between the physician and the educators because each of us brings our own area of expertise to each appointment.
The most wonderful aspect of our work is knowing that we have played a part in this new life. One of the nicest compliments I've received in my work as an educator was from a former pregnancy patient who told me that she thinks of me, and how I helped her, on her son's birthday every year.
The new book is available on the Joslin store. For more information about the Joslin-Beth Israel Pregnancy Program, or to make an appointment, please call 617-732-2496.
Page last updated: March 26, 2019


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NEW SHAPES! This panty is shown here above in our standard Full Cut standard design, but is now also available in many beautiful different cuts! Click here for photos showing the various shapes available!
These super satin panties are just so cute, double lined with satin so what you see and feel on the outside you also feel the shiny satin that every one who wears them wants to feel on the inside! So you get that extra satin-swishy feeling when your wearing them - pure heaven!
Trimmed with gorgeous white lace as shown.
With comfortable elasticated waist and legs, these cute black satin panties feature a dainty fixed white lace bow on the front with a dainty little flower, and our high quality lace on the legs.
Also available in ANAL-SEX and COCK-HOLE versions! With a hole over the ass, surrounded by sweet lace - designed for great anal sex! Or choose the hole for the cock to poke through! Or choose BOTH holes for extra kink!
See photos of the holes here!
These panties can also be made with a crotch-less slit in them - great for
We can also make these panties with a higher-waist style! See high-waist photos here!
These panties can also have a rear Zip!!
See photos of our rear Zip design!
These panties can also be made lockable!
See photos of our Panty-Lock system!
Available in these exact garment sizes:
We can now make these panties in really big custom sizes! (tell us your Waist and Hips size when (or after) ordering.


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Moscow's ban this week on all imports of U.S. food and agricultural products is a retaliatory response to tighter sanctions slapped on Russia by the West for meddling in Ukraine.
So where will it be felt? Ask farmers in Modesto, California.
Modesto is in the heart of the state\'s vast nut-growing region and is a major source of the world\'s almonds, even in Moscow.
California's agricultural exports hit $18.2 billion in 2012, the latest year for which we have complete data, or 13% of the nation's total.
According to the California Agricultural Statistics Review, the state's single biggest export crop is almonds, and California tree nut growers recently targeted Russia as a key growth market. Despite concerns the ban will derail this plan, data show the damage to California growers will be far from catastrophic.
California sold $102 million worth of almonds to Russia in 2012. While that's a big increase from $76 million the previous year, it still works out to be just 3% of the crop's $3.39 billion export value.
Pistachios are No. 2 on the list. Russia bought $17.4 million worth in 2012, a mere 1.6% of the state's total pistachio exports.
From there on, values plummet: Russians bought $5.8 million worth of California rice, $5.8 million worth of dried plums, and $5.1 million worth of wine.
Overall, in 2012 Russia ranked only15th in terms of export markets for California farmers ($145 million), which pales alongside No. 1 Canada ($3.15 billion) or No. 2, the European Union ($2.51 billion).
So, while California's farmers hate to see any market dry up, being shut out of Russia is likely to have a much smaller impact on their livelihoods than the severe drought they are currently grappling with in their own backyard.
– Jim Jelter
More must-read stories from MarketWatch:
What Russian sanctions mean for salmon prices
Russia says military drills near Ukraine completed: report
Wall Street hopes Russia will give peace a chance


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Ashley Monroe 'Feeling Some Relief' After Serious Kidney Infection
After canceling a few shows due to a very serious kidney infection, Ashley Monroe reports she is out of the hospital and feeling some relief from the pain.
The talented singer-songwriter was admitted to a Nashville hospital on Thursday (July 10) and subsequently called off her shows planned for that weekend, telling fans, "I have to cancel the rest of the shows for this run because of a severe kidney infection. This is very serious and I'm heading back to Nashville to go to the hospital."
Now, after receiving great medical care, Monroe is happy to report good news.
"I'm finally feeling some relief after spending two nights in the hospital. I'm very grateful to everyone for their prayers and understanding during this time," she says.
The singer will take it easy for a few days before she resumes her concert schedule on Friday (July 18) in Cincinnati, Ohio, with two other shows back-to-back in Kentucky and Michigan to follow.
Hopefully, the shows will go on without any pain!
Startling Facts About Women in Country Music


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In 2001 she moved into retail and became a co-owner halter cocktail dresses of a boutique selling clothes by young British designers.
amp;quot;Our wedding clientele has gone threw the roof thanks to amazing support from wedding publications and word of mouth.She has worked as senior designer for international Ad agency BBH, working on award-winning campaigns for leading brands from Lynx to Levi's"Outside the office, friends and family often asked me to help with personalised cards and invites.Thank you so much to Archibald Photography for submitting these gorgeous wedding day photographs.amp;quot;The Groom wore trousers and a waist coat made by Territo Tailor, Park Street, Bristol, using fine black and white patterned fabric and a black tail coat, a purple silk pattern tie from T M Lewin and black shoes from Jeffrey WestEdible Food Design provided the catering.I'd like to ask you to stop and think about that for just a second, because it means that if you purchase a design from Yulia, you are buying a totally unique little work of art, that no one else in the whole entire world will own a copy of.
There is The Designer Wedding Show, then there's a touch of real luxury, with Absolutely Beautiful Weddings don't miss out!Jemma is a Guest Blogger for Love My Dress and can be contacted by email with any freelance feature writing enquiries.Luella's Boudoir (who now stock most of their products online woooooooooo!A traditional white three tiered cake was chosen.
As the venue was very contemporary, we needed something quite simple but also striking so continued with the calla lillies but also added the purple flower.My ring is plain paladium band and my husbands is a two tone tungston carbide ring with a brushed strip around the centre summer cocktail dresses Aido wore a black suit with texturised ivory waistcoat from Moss Bross.I knew he would do a fabulous job and went the flowers arrived on the day I was overwhelmed with how beautiful the table displays were.
I can highly recommend Miss Pickering's Flower School, and my home will be a more beautiful place for it.The photograph above were my own personal chocolates!Instead of a more traditional bridal bouquet, Mary opted for a dried wheat bouquet, with matching wheat/acorn boutonnieres.amp;quot; Deb wore a pretty orchid flower in her hair Dan is a musician and had recently written a piece of music that I loved so we asked a friend to play it on the keyboard as I walked down the aisleForgotten Flowers!Looking back it's hard to imagine how we would have done it without her!with affairs, the story is often very similar each time so we wanted to make it a bit different.but it's unique and individual.amp;quot; "Our first dance was to Nina Simone, Feeling Good.Alex also made a Victoria Sponge so that we had a cake that we could cut too.It's hard to choose between them isn't it?Then I found this dress in a local store nearby our house in Nacka and I loved the fitting, puff sleeves and the lace details.We are here at the Holiday Inn and we are showcasing hundreds of amazing donated gowns, along with great local vendors for our brides-to-be.Emmy Shoes is appointment based as it is essential that we give each customer enough time to chat and try on shoes and hair decorations in a relaxed environment.Hannah and Nick got married on blue cocktail dresses 13 August 2010 at The Swan on Streatley an idyllic and romantic setting for a wedding if ever there was one.Just a few beautiful images I'd like to share with you this afternoon, that showcase some of the designs available at Liberty in Love, online bridal accessories boutiqueSiu Coll from Liberty in Love tells me more"Julia Jeckell, a brilliant hair and make-up artist whom I'd worked with on the first Liberty in Love shoot, contacted me to see if I would be interested in collaborating on a bridal fashion shoot.Part of the reason this Blog was established, was to truly inspire Brides, Grooms and others planning a wedding.She's thinking of an all-white theme with lots of bling and crystals.I just love Bride Michelle's vintage style wedding dress and her pretty bouquet that looks as though the flowers that make it up were gathered fresh from a countryside walk that very morning.We also used the fabric in bird shaped cut outs to form the table numbers" Cheese Cake PleaseA Wedding cake was a stacked cheese cake from The Cheese Shed; "it was only fitting, as I married a a cheese-aholic!Jenny'spearl bracelet was from Laurel Lime, and I bet you are wondering where that pretty clutch isfrom eh?So, what happens to the dresses in the end?Good afternoon peeps It's time again for me to extend a very warm welcome to a new Love My Dress sponsor, McKInley-Rodgers Photography.Over the next week, I will be posting the usual content up to Friday 24th December, when I will post the last blog feature of 2010.


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Airbus' A380 is ready to "Own the sky"
When the A380 first entered commercial service, it was "Love at first flight" – and with more than five years of worldwide operations to its credit, this 21st century jetliner has proven it is ready for long-term relationships.
Concurrent with Airbus' launch of the newest A380 marketing campaign: "Own the sky," the aircraft lived up to its billing during the first days of the Paris Air Show with the announcement of Doric Lease Corp's Memorandum of Understanding for 20 aircraft, as well as the commanding presence of two double-deck jetliners at Le Bourget Airport.
The new "Own the sky" campaign highlights the A380's central role in helping airlines generate more revenue, stimulate traffic and draw passengers. By attracting passengers, the A380 provides carriers with the best opportunities to optimise revenue across their networks – with more seats for growth, connecting traffic, and higher yields.
There are three advertisements in the "Own the sky" campaign tailored to specific pillars: growth, revenue and cabin. They underscore the A380's benefits, including enabling airlines to strengthen their markets, controlling market share and fares; providing opportunities to capture growth while offering unmatched comfort and global accessibility; and increasing network productivity by maximising the efficiency of arrival and departure waves.
Doric Lease Corp CEO Mark Lapidus acknowledged the factors that inspired the "Own the sky" campaign when he said his company's 20-aircraft commitment probably would not be enough to meet demand once potential leasing customers realize the economic benefits of adding the A380 to their fleets.


text:
October 2009 Artist of the Month - SusiQ
October 1, 2009 12:51 am
Tags: AOM, Artist of the Month, photography, Renderosity, SusiQ, Writers
Each month the Renderosity community votes on The Renderosity Artist Of The Month [AOM] ... October's AOM is SusiQ!
We congratulate SusiQ for an outstanding collection of works in the Writers Gallery!
Who is "SusiQ"?
In one short descriptive sentence, I'm a crazy 'almost 40something' single working mum of two teenagers and who constantly hears voices in my head from characters that want to get their stories told. LoL.
I live in the beautiful Hibiscus Coast of Southern KwaZulu Natal, Margate, South Africa. This place inspires artists of all genres to let their hair down and create what ever is in the hearts and head. Sure, the crime may be tough and the work scarce but when you look at all of God's glorious creations around you, you just feel the peace and wonder seep into your very soul. Writing flows throughout the generations of my family. My late maternal grandmother was a published poet and my mother has always had ink for blood although she didn't pursue the goal of published works. I grew up sitting next to my mother, dictionery in one hand and a thesaurus in the other, spending long hours perusing words for crosswords together. And yes, my daughter has also inherited our love for the English language. In school I had a short little dynamic and inspirational English teacher. She taught me to stand firm and overcome my fear of wobbly kneed public speaking and so started my path of poetry writing and sharing.
How long have you been writing?
I have pages and pages of handwritten stories from my first years of high school filed away. So I started writing short stories from around 13 and got into poetry at around 16 (thanks to Mrs Terry Lloyd). From there writing became as natural as breathing.
What are you currently working on?
At the moment I am working on raising my two hellion teenagers who leave me little time to write. But on the odd occasion when I can steal time away from them and when my PC decides to co-operate with me I have a 'work in progress' on the slow burner. A snippet can be seen in my gallery "Work In Progress".
Of course there is always a spontaneous poem that bubbles out from time to time - especially when I see the artwork here by the amazing Renderosity members. Another thing I am working on is the framework for this year's NaNoWriMo (National November Writers Month) if I can manage to go on strike as a mother for a month. It is a 50,000 word story to be written in 30 days (during November). We cannot start the story or write anything that we will be using in the story, but a good idea of what you intend writing about or rather storyline, is very important to keep writers block away.
What do you think your best piece of work is and why?
My favourite is the trilogy of Humor of Teenage thinking. This was really fun to write and so close to home. Trying to fit myself in my son's size 12 shoes was a challenging quest. My most successful piece of writing was the poem that was published in a recent Christian Poetry Anthology in South Africa. That was the 'cherry on the cake'.
Who/what inspires you?
Life inspires me. To be part of an amazing group of writers in the RenderWriters gallery is inspiration itself. You just have to read some of those real works of art and you are inspired! Living among interesting people and family, in this damaged yet still beautiful world, calls to be poured out in words on paper (or screen). It can be a tatty plastic bag floating on the wind or a digital photo posted in a gallery. A pure icy raindrop splattering on my goosefleshed skin, a funny comment from a highspeed speech of my daughter, the constant caressing of the ocean on the beach. You name it - it all has potential to inspire. You just need to open your perspective a little and let life guide your pen, paintbrush or shutterspeed. Even troubles you go through can be used to inspire!(Link)
How has this online community (Renderosity) enhanced your work, relationships, and learning?
Renderosity is fantastic for developing and sustaining your talent. I have made friends from all over the world, can get amazing advice and can build up my confidence in what I do. Without people like Tallpockets, Leanndra, DennisReid, Warblade, Drace68, Rgus and Meico, (too many wonderful people to mention them all here!) I would not have had the confidence to submit my work for publication. Any queries I have and that I post, I can be certain of receiving helpful and honest advice.
Do you have any comments or advice for other writers/artists?
Absolutely! Open yourself up to experience life. Don't be afraid to experiment in the talent God has given you. And most of all don't let yourself become isolated. Build a group of amazing friends who can inspire and support you through both the tough times and good. When you are lost and don't know what to write about, ask someone to challenge you. Persist in what you do and at the end you'll be able to stand back and sigh with contentment.
Thank you all for the great honour of being October's Writer Artist of the month. Hugs and live life large!
We invite you to have a further look at SusiQ's Renderosity Gallery!
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copied, printed, or reproduced in any manner without written permission from the artist.
Artist of the Month is highlighting a talented Renderosity artist that has been nominated by mods and admins, and voted by the community. Recognition is given to this member for their collection of works for that year.
Since we only select one AOM per month, it is not about their works for that particular month. Instead, it is about highlighting a talented artist's works for that year, and they are recognized during that month.
To learn more about Renderosity's Artist Of The Month [AOM] award, and to view our past AOM's, please visit the AOM page, which can also be found on the sidebar under Highlights.
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Article Comments
Whooooo Hooooo.. and bugger me I didn't even vote for ya.. cause I never checked who was up for AOM. You go girl.. you've always had that fantastic manipulation of thought, emotion and words... I love it... oh... are you sure you're not a Poser character.. you're quite a glamour. Big hugs Lady.. and big Congrats!!!!
Wonderfully done, kudos to you SusiQ, read your lines here and well understands your point and how you see things and your world about you. To draw inspiration about you from the everyday and beyond is whats at the core of writing and in our souls & heart. Much thanks for sharing your slice of life with us. It enriches us all.


text:
Fine Invention: Women on Science and Ecology
Quiver, by Susan B. A. Somers-Willett. University of Georgia Press, 96 pp., $16.95.
Interpretive Work, by Elizabeth Bradfield. Arktoi Books, 112 pp., $20.
Drift Ice, by Jennifer Atkinson. Etruscan Press, 92 pp., $16.95.
For years, Emily Dickinson kept an herbarium in which she pressed, dried, sexed, and identified by scientific name four or five hundred specimens of wild and cultivated flowers. The poet clearly loved botany, as she did the particularities and peculiarities of scientific class and order. Not surprisingly, Dickinson's passion for technical advancement manifests in her verse:
"Faith" is a fine invention
When Gentlemen can see—
But Microscopes are prudent
In an Emergency.
Given Dickinson's social obligations and constraints as a woman of the nineteenth century, it's not too difficult to understand why the poem's knowledge is gendered masculine. During this period, it was "Gentlemen," after all, who were most often privy to and responsible for public ideas, large or small, scientific or empirical. With time comes progress. By the 1930s, Marianne Moore's zoological studies were coded not necessarily as male, but rather according to the poet's exacting moral eye. With the publication of Adrienne Rich's "Power" in 1974, the female-authored poem that takes science as its subject seems to have undergone a major shift: Rich's portrait of world-renowned physicist and chemist Marie Curie emphasizes the complexities of a woman whose "wounds came from the same source as her power" (emphasis mine).
In the following poem from New Goose (a book of poems written between 1936 and 1944), Lorine Niedecker underscores the benefits and dangers of the introduction of machinery to natural terrain:
For sun and moon and radio
farmers pay dearly;
their natural resource: turn
the world off early.
Juxtaposed with "radio," Niedecker's "sun and moon" act as literal and figurative objects. In other words, the opening line identifies light and heat sources not only as natural phenomena, but also as manufactured products for which men "pay dearly." Such technology allows the farmers to extend their workdays via electricity, as well as cultivate crops with greater efficiency. The poet's ironic use of "natural" further emphasizes ecological manipulation: the stanza's artificially generated energy-sources are hardly indigenous to Niedecker's Midwestern landscape.
It's the ambiguity of the final phrase, "turn the world off early," however, that truly politicizes the harvested terrain. While "pay" evokes commodity—the farmers' (i.e. man's) ability to regulate the earth according to fiscal need—it also suggests that there is an ecological price for such mechanization. Here, the poet warns readers that technology-based land management introduces not only agricultural advantages, but also risks. According to Niedecker, the very same tools used to cultivate the environment may very well prematurely drain its natural resources.
Science and faith, animal and human nature; the methodical study of the material world versus the steadfast belief in an unknown higher being; the power and risk, recklessness and responsibility that come via interactions with the environment: these are the subjects of poetry's ongoing conversation about the natural world. From satellites monitoring wind in Earth's atmosphere to the changing migration of wildlife attributed to global warming, with scientific discovery and ecological change the tensions at the forefront of a new nature poetics evolve. With disparate subjects and a wide range of poetic strategies, Susan B. A. Somers-Willett's Quiver, Elizabeth Bradfield's Interpretive Work, and Jennifer Atkinson's Drift Ice update the central tensions introduced by Rich, Moore, and Niedecker. Rather than politicize a scientific icon, propose a set of moral attributes, or sketch ecological vulnerability, Somers-Willett, Bradfield, and Atkinson personalize the nature poem. But what happens when scientific and ecological matters are made intimate?
According to Susan B. A. Somers-Willett's Quiver, mathematics, astronomy, and botany, among other subjects, aren't solely intellectual pursuits, but are also linked to "the brittle, illogical instructions of love." From the first page forward, Somers-Willett makes the project of her sophomore collection clear: the title poem's speaker figures herself and her spouse as a graph of loops whose vertices collide: "the beauty of the husband / drawing his path upon my body." At this moment, physics becomes intimate, which begs the question: Are Quiver's readers meant to accept the premise that those branches of knowledge so often associated with logos are functioning agents of Eros? The collection's title suggests as much; quiver is both verb, "to tremble," and noun, "a container for arrows"—as in, "the archer Eros / had no clear target beyond what physics could explain" (title poem)—as well as a diagram used in string theory. At its core, therefore, Quiver asserts an affinity between the sciences and the erotic as the book's speakers and subjects question whether some means of study can ultimately lead to a lasting proof for love.
Quiver updates Rich's historical (and very public) account of Curie, whom Rich defines in "Power" by test-tubes and pencils, the "cataracts on her eyes," the "radiation sickness," the "body bombarded for years." In contrast, Somers-Willett's "Love as an Aid to Hypothesis"—note the title's conflation of pathos with scientific terminology—describes a more private version of "Marie" who is "open as the field in Brittany" where she and her husband
first make love, tumors softly knuckling
in his side, in her side, exposed. In the lab,
they figure their question into fact:
If and only if to marry is to surrender
one's parts to the other, then his body
will adore and adore her painfully…
Unlike Rich's version, in which Curie's spouse and scientific cohort, Pierre, is notably absent, Somers-Willett's complicates the couple's relationship by staging both public and private interactions. According to the poem, with marriage comes the surrendering of "one's parts to the other" (physical, intellectual, emotional) so that even suffering— those "tumors softly knuckling"— becomes an intimate exchange. The partnership, therefore, isn't exclusively academic, nor is Curie a female martyr. Instead, "Love as an Aid to Hypothesis" reveals an intense and complicated collaboration between husband and wife that results in scientific advancement as well as intense pleasure and pain.
The poem generates momentum via a series of calls and responses beginning with "If." These sentences introduce theorems—for example, "If pitchblende is placed between four charged plates / then one may measure its weight by the balance . . ."—that are later followed by more private narration about the couple. As the poem shuts down, Somers-Willett's syntax tightens. The suggestion of suffering ("…his body // will adore and adore her painfully") unleashes a series of brusque assertions: "The body repeats itself," claims the poet in the final lines, "in sickness, in health… // The radon gas under glass clouds over. / From him, she will never recover." The poem's shift from theoretical musings to swift declarations privileges the physical and emotional certainties of death and grief above scholarly supposition. Like the slant rhyme that binds "fact" to "lab," the decisiveness of the final couplet resonates due to Somers-Willett's formal strategies: coupled with successive end-stops, the closed rhyme suggests that Curie's inability to "recover" results from both physical exposure to "radon gas," and the psychological toll taken by her husband's death. Thus, according to "Love as an Aid to Hypothesis," scientific progress is not without private consequence.
Quiver dedicates at least six of its poems to genetics, and Somers-Willett is quick to characterize forefather Gregor Mendel as the good monk that readers expect. In "Campanology," Mendel "naps in his human cell, / his shrugging penis curling fatly into his innocent thigh." While the Mendel-centered poems lack copulation, their expression is by no means devoid of erotic tension. "First Sex," for example, includes language such as ovum, sweet-bottomed, throat, sticky mouth, as well as actions like "The monk frees / the flowers' sexes," and "the style hot with nectar / reaches up." Such diction prepares its reader for the poem's final turn, during which the plant's "whole body" begins
singing deep praise
of his touch and oh
yes Mendel this
moment is the best
of glory's evidence—
one can see it even
in the white blossom's
effusion of bliss.
In "First Sex," Mendel's meticulous chromosomal study ultimately climaxes in song. While phrases like "effusion of bliss" and "glory's evidence" may seem tonally excessive, that the botanist's touch elicits a "deep praise" toward which "the whole body" sings is significant to Somers-Willett's overall collection. Such musical tropes recur through Quiver and arrive, for example, in the form of "a giant gaping mouth," ("Dark Matter: A Love Story"), "a string / tied to the throat" ("The Golden Lesson") and "singing matins in the plot" ("Thaw and the Beginning of Everything"). Essential to such imagistic patterns is the function of poetry as scientific encomium. "Campanology," for example, suggests that each praiseworthy "bloom / is a call to music." Its final lines laud Mendel and his experiments as examples of "youth // beating out its name like an anthem, / like rain on the body of a bell."
In "The M in M-Theory," it's "the slanting light of days // that seem to sing everything." Unlike Quiver's less successful poems, which appear stunted by fact, "The M in M-Theory" trades the lyric mode for the conversational. Exploitation of the second person and a series of associative leaps increase the poem's overall speed. Rather than simply restage scientific or historical record, the poem investigates (with great linguistic energy) the unknown. "The M," we're told,
might suggest metaphysical, magic, mystery,
The character with its mitered joints joining
your body, the room, this language
of simple light and bones…
Unlike the well-documented development of atomic energy (see "Oppenheimer's Lament"), for example, M-theory as a work in progress allows the poet room for imaginative meandering. As Somers-Willett notes, "M" connects five types of string theory through dualities in an attempt to explain all physical phenomena. The theory is not without skeptics:
The scientists themselves
could not agree on the precise meaning and so now
math enacts speculation, theory's shadow
growing larger across the wandering stairs
of the mind…
So, too, grows the poet's creativity as she follows "M" from "man, muscle, magnetic, make" to some
brief and unspeakable
name written and slipped between the ribs
of a clay monster, so that the monster comes
alive, so that this monster begs to hum
its rude praise for the rose, its damp red
throat opening in what tremolo.
While Quiver often moves between songs of scientific elation and the erotic, the collection is not without grief. Many of the poems alluding to or directly implicating Darwin are somewhat elegiac. In "Everything from Shells," for example, a lesson on mating barnacles raises "the ghost of Darwin's daughter" who, "seized over in a tubercular cough," ultimately proves "the theory: / the strongest slip though." "At Four a.m., She Is Reminded of Survival of the Fittest" is another study in loss; the poem features friends who discover and leave a dying fawn "to the hawks and the dogs and the rain." Ultimately, however, Quiver catalogues in a primarily lyric mode a range of radical and imaginative thinkers. No scientific subject is too complex, no theory too far-fetched for investigation. For Somers-Willett, even dark matter becomes "a love story." Whether vibrating on earth or in some distant galaxy, every body is atomic.
Although different from the scientific icons spotlighted by Somers-Willett, Elizabeth Bradfield's bodies—female, aquatic, suburban, exotic, rural, terrestrial, butch—are no less electric in their singing. Shortlisted for a Lambda Literary Award and the recipient of The Publishing Triangle's Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry, Interpretive Work is built on the traditional nature poem, while pushing the form forward by juxtaposing ecology with the politicized subjects of gender identity and sexuality. Simply stated, Bradfield does not enter into dialogue with the environment as a conventional means of investigating the world's origins, lamenting the loss of a loved one, or courting some sublime-inspired epiphany. Instead, nature acts as a framework through which the poet labors to destabilize notions of normative sexuality. "Hormonally imbalanced females of all deer species / have been known to grow antlers" asserts the book's first sentence ("Creation Myth: Periosteum and Self"), merging both male and female traits, and animal and human nature. And with that fact Bradfield is off, charging headlong into Alaska's cul-de-sacs and wooded landscapes to prove that "love changes what it's drawn to" ("Nonnative Invasive") and that "what's daily and familiar is worth a second look" ("Brachyramphus marmoratus").
Critical to Bradfield's collection is the notion of sustained effort—physical, mental, emotional or otherwise. In fact, Interpretive Work is as concerned with vocation as evocation. Throughout the collection, the poet acts as a field guide whose expertise encompasses species both domestic and wild, and whose repetition of tasks brings with it the riks of exhaustion and boredom. "Mid-Trip Mid-Season," for instance, introduces a weary speaker whose job description includes mingling with sightseers during the cocktail hour on a harbor cruise:
No one wants to know
what's outside unless it's off the charts—a bear
swimming to a moose being ripped
by killer whales while a wolf pack howls
on shore, bald eagle glaring from a cedar snag.
That kind of thing.
Not too surprisingly, the poem's central tension results from the speaker's preference for "the broad blur of vista" outdoors over those inside the ship's lounge whose "points of interest" are "assigned by placards." Ultimately, "Mid-Trip Mid-Season" criticizes communal apathy as well as cultural attitudes that value environment as sheer entertainment; only half way through the season and already tired of the tourists' insatiable appetite for bigger-better-more, the speaker has "lost for a while the will" to pose simple social questions such as "Where / are you from? What made you come / to Alaska? What did you hope to see?"
Such cynicism is present elsewhere in Interpretive Work, particularly in those poems that depict the treatment of nature as commodity, as when entire species are reduced to facts and photo opportunities. In "The Shepherd of Tourists on a $20 Sunset Cruise Speaks," for example, everything has its cost—wonder and awe, environmental and social connectedness. During the course of the poem, a leader of a whale-watching expedition discovers that after "the third time today, twelve miles out and back / to the whales" her ordinary enthusiasm for the ocean-dwellers wanes. In response to the vacationers' seeming indifference to their surroundings, Bradfield asks, "What can I say that will matter beyond this, / your annual ten paid days?" According to "The Shepherd of Tourists…," in places where fiscal value is assigned to natural phenomena, "empathy and longing fog the air, thick as diesel exhaust." Thus, human desire ("longing") becomes an ecologically destructive agent ("diesel" fuel); "exhaust," furthermore, echoes "exhaustion," underscoring the extent to which the speaker's innate love of environment is in danger, due to social and professional fatigue.
Also significant to "The Shepherd of Tourists on a $20 Sunset Cruise Speaks" is the speaker's revelation that whales "rest one half of their brains at a time." Like the humpback, the tour guide is both mentally present and absent; whereas the whale shuts down half its brain to sleep, the guide's mind wanders as she performs her routine among candy racks, crowded decks and flashing cameras. The link between animal and human nature becomes increasingly pronounced as Bradfield moves from water to land. Upon returning to suburbia, the naturalist finds herself the observed rather than the observer. "Remodeling," for example, features a lesbian couple who "want a hole in the north wall, a hole / then a window, for light, for the green spruce / just beyond the vinyl siding." A window, however, is a thing seen not only out of, but also into; as it stands, the pair can't forget the night they were watched:
the boys climbed the shed roof
and saw this:
my shirt up around my neck,
your hand on my breast, my body beneath
yours, moving.
In response to the voyeurs, one lover buries her face "in the couch, as if / they might assume … short hair meant man." Despite an attempt to obscure her gender, the damage is done. Although the couple doesn't "admit // to each other that [they] waited for the spray paint, / the busted taillights," both women experience paranoia about the neighbors' potentially hostile response to their lesbianism. Bradfield doesn't make obvious the stimulus of the lovers' later shift in attitude; by poem's end, however, both interiors—house and couple— have been transformed. No longer concerned with the public gaze, the pair now wants "to announce how much we love / the sky, how its light finds us, too, / even here."
What becomes clear over the course of the book is that it's not same-sex couples who require site-specific adaptation, but the attitudes of some who surround them. Revising the biblical narrative of a lost child's redemptive return, Bradfield's "Prodigal" discovers,
it is our families, not we, who are returning
from turning away. Where
did they go? To the sneer of neighbors,
the clucking of tongues. To the straight
and married place they'd hoped
we'd end up, and they waited.
In Bradfield's parable, the children remain true to themselves and never arrive in that "straight / and married place." Instead, heterosexual relatives experience ideological evolution. This fact becomes apparent when, with the speaker's eighty-year-old grandmother at the helm, the family falls in line for a group portrait:
[My grandmother] told the photographer, in front
of everyone, to not forget us, you and me,
paired in the spot where my married cousins
had posed with their children. So there we are,
on her wall, spotlit, shocked, and grinning.
To some extent, the prodigals' turn from judgment and isolation toward understanding and reconciliation reflects the overall arc of Interpretive Work. The disgruntled tour guide whose ecological love is on the verge of collapse ultimately reestablishes her connection with the natural world. Likewise, in a series of odes that dissolve neat dichotomies separating male and female ("Butch Poem 5: Recognition and Praise" and "Butch Poem 7: In the Mexican work visa office," for example), speakers celebrate gender fluidity. Whether the poems survey public environments or personal spaces, the reintroduction of wonder and awe energizes the writing, adding new tensions that extend Bradfield's narrative reach beyond what sometimes amounts to no more than the anecdotal. "Whalefall," for example, explores an ocean "more vast / than the myth of Wyoming—endless / plains, plentiful herds, sky / uncharted still." While the poem's primary mode is elegiac ("whalefall" is the term for carcasses on the seafloor) it moves beyond the commemorative as Bradfield comes to the revelation that she "need[s] to believe / in the beauty of falling. / The stunning ache of descent.…" This admission resonates in multiple ways due to the consistent pairing of natural and domestic terrains throughout Interpretive Work. Thus, the "beauty of falling" refers not only to the humpbacks' "silent" bones but also to the "unreasonable calm … the unrelenting salt" of love as it's characterized in Eros-centered poems like "Endurance."
Unlike the Romantics, Bradfield doesn't demand of nature the sublime: "There wasn't much exclaiming," she writes in "Off the Beach":
There wasn't
much drama, but, I suppose, relief
that such a simple thing, a thing
so out of our grasps, should perform
this task demanding our attention.
The poet asks us to accept the curious nature of the living on its own terms. Although by no means kindred in style or prosody, Bradfield's nature studies and their ethical inferences extend Marianne Moore's Modernist zoological portraits. Whereas Moore implicates her intellectual self in the work, Bradfield's animals (human and otherwise) are entirely personal. Whether evoking rescued birds or fallen lovers, Interpretive Work ultimately suggests that it remains our moral obligation not to "forget how frightened their small hearts made us / when we first held them" ("No More Nature").
Of the three collections, Jennifer Atkinson's Drift Ice most often treats eco-poetics as a vehicle for spiritual contemplation. In order for a hiker to fully experience Alaska's Eagleck Bay, for example, she must not only recognize its beauty, but confront as well the terrain's deep environmental scars resulting from the disastrous oil spill of 1989. Rather than respond with contempt as her boot sinks "six or eight inches deep in the subsoil / clumps of tarry Exxon sludge," the hiker determines to choose faith in renewal and admits, "I'm not above believing in rebirth." Whether set on Alaskan waters, the Long Island Sound, or the Sri Lankan shoreline pre- or post-tsunami, the poems ultimately investigate tensions between the known and unknown, the seen and unseen. An example of self-interrogation, mindful observation, and conscious examination of myths relating idealized notions of wilderness, Drift Ice underscores the importance of recognizing, accepting, and thereby honoring a "world unknown and unknowable however beloved" ("Beneath the Surface").
Not as erotically overt as Somers-Willett, nor as politically willful as Bradfield, Atkinson also connects her love of nature with the nature of love. Dedicated to the poet's husband, "I Slept but My Heart Was Awake" characterizes the couple's long familiarity via verse-chorus patterns that fuse the wild and the domestic: "Daylilies bloom at the border of marsh and woods. / My love, careless after loving, loves the wind that touches us." In "Waiting for Her Daughter's Diagnosis," the poet explicates through nature-based imagery a mother's deep affection and concern for her sick child. Restaging a dream, Atkinson figures illness as "a snowy egret" whose "flimsy legs" become "kindling" she'd like to break. The bird is further described as gazing
Down, as if clairvoyant, past
The surface.
Impassive, hunting, stock
Stillness its only lure, the egret
Waits, then jabs past the seeming
Calm to some unwary minnow
Small enough to swallow whole.
Atkinson's primarily trochaic lines (the antithesis of iambic surefootedness) create a sense of spillage, their front-loaded stresses further enacting the mother's sense of struggle. What's most striking about the above excerpt, however, is Atkinson's exploitation of metaphor. Transforming the speaker's daughter into a hunted thing—that unsuspecting "minnow"—underscores not only the child's vulnerability, but also her mother's helplessness when confronted with the randomness of death and disease. Sonic closure creates additional emphasis: by the final line, the child's fate seems to be sealed as Atkinson links "minnow" to both "swallow" and "whole" via end and internal rhymes.
Drift Ice is most compelling, however, when it strays from the familial, taking environmental crises as its primary focus. What saves such poems from slipping into political propaganda or didacticism is Atkinson's personal accountability. Although the speaker in "Before the First Goldenrod Blooms" has "walked these trails for 40-some years," what she concludes after decades of meditative exploration is that "I took for granted plenty / And solitude in—with—what I called 'nature.'" Atkinson doesn't differentiate between small and large crimes committed against nature. She treats individual ingratitude, for example, with the same seriousness as suburban infringement upon natural terrain. In fact, throughout the collection, the only person the poet seems to judge is herself:
I'm getting on
and what I know wouldn't fill an acorn cap,
Doesn't grant me the warrant
to search beyond the plain sight details—
("In Plain Sight")
Atkinson's combination of self-assessment and humility leads to further attention to the outside world, specifically fast-disappearing wild spaces and landscapes injured by technology. As a witness of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, Atkinson sees Niedecker's premonition about the tenuous relationship between machinery and the environment come to fruition as full-scale disaster. "Good Friday, 1989," for example, revisits Bligh Reef off the coast of Valdez, Alaska fifteen years after the Exxon-Valdez oil spill. The title's rhetorical use of the phrase "Good Friday" immediately works to align ecological disaster with that sacred day of mourning and sacrifice traditionally observed during Holy Week. More powerful still is Atkinson's resistance to her own lyric impulse. Of the sky that fateful night, she claims,
In retrospect I'm tempted to call it tenebrous dark,
For the rich mythic sound, the liturgical grandeur,
The once and once onliness of the words,
But that March night was all so routine—
A night run's insomniac boredom,
A good drunk to numb it, See ya …
The lesser poet (or one without Atkinson's discipline) might give into the temptation to romanticize catastrophe by lyricizing the "tenebrous dark." Rather than distract the reader with poetic language, Atkinson instead focuses on the evening's conventionality. The poem's tension between the routine and the extraordinary ("…money, media, and blame spill in, / as the effort to hose things clean begins: / more error to displace and efface error") is, quite frankly, frightening. By resisting the quixotic, Atkinson ultimately underscores the daily risk with which "hot oil slides down the pipeline" as a "tanker plows through the swells off Las Palmas, Long Island, / Galicia, the Niger delta …" Like the anniversary of the holy day with which it is aligned, "Good Friday, 1989" ultimately suggests the ease with which such eco-catastrophic events may recur.
Although Atkinson locates the second of her four sections in Prince William Sound, Drift Ice does travel elsewhere. The collection's excursions lead to places as diverse as Pemaquid Point (Maine), Albemarle County (Virginia), Salmon River (Connecticut), and the Sri Lankan destinations of Pilgrimage Mountain and Kandy's Temple of the Tooth. Equally varied are Atkinson's formal strategies. Although primarily invested in the lyric, Drift Ice reflects the poet's interest not only in traditional stanzas, but in fragmentation, linear indentation and caesurae, as well, as in these lines from "Mare Incognita":
Apart, arrested, a calmed sea, Galilee in a teacup,
Unwhorled, de-eddied, discurrented
A mind of one held thought.
The end of involution.
"Hollow Tree Canon" utilizes caesura and wordplay which manifests the abrupt entry of the deer and the
speaker's paradoxical stasis and ecstasy.
… When a deer broke
Huge through the undergrowth, too huge to imagine
Fitting, to clatter hard-hooved up the street,
I stood trans posed, ec-
Static, et cetera. For once actually
Here. More here than here,
Self like an echo. From a hollow tree
Formal and structural strategy aside, consistent in Drift Ice is Atkinson's commitment to witnessing, for better or worse, that which surrounds her. Answering from a contemporary perspective Thoreau's nineteenth century assertion that "in wildness is the preservation of the world," Atkinson cites, in the poem by that name, a managed wilderness area where "rangers have cut a quarter acre of mature white pine in hopes that white pine seedlings will sprout in the clearing. Duck lovers have planted duck boxes. Hunting here is permitted in autumn only and never on Sundays." Having carefully assessed and catalogued her surroundings ("the state has preserved us some wilderness") Atkinson asks, "Henry; now how are we to preserve the world?" Drift Ice takes as part of its project the preservation—or at the very least, defense—not of wilderness, but of wildness. In "Let Me Pause for a Moment," neither the "ancient / Calving ice—lacial flesh" is priority, nor the promise of "new ice / prickling the salt-bog sedge." In fact, not even the "idea of the wilderness / Or even the sacred" is cause for immediate reflection. Instead, Atkinson asks us to honor the great mystery that is the present:
Look at that block of floe ice,
Flat, sun-haggard, low in the water:
Sprawled across its deck, a harbor seal
And, like sealing wax on a contract,
Her blood and newborn pup
Steaming in the cold spring air.
Ultimately, the contract sealed in Drift Ice is one that lays out the terms for "A new world between the boulders, / A New World with pine tree, thistle, beach pea" ("Island Mandala"). Whether this world is realized or imagined is unknown, as Atkinson doesn't distinguish between the two. Instead, she asks us to "listen to wind in a forest, / Surf on a coast, birds singing in a meadow." Atkinson dedicates their song to a "pure land. The Pure Land"; fact or invention, we are told, "She calls it There."
No longer relegated to the fringes of labs or field studies, or confined to the margins of literary circles, contemporary female scientists and poets continue to explore the ever-shifting relationship between nature and humanity. Clearly not the "meddling intellect" that William Wordsworth claims "Misshapes the beauteous forms of things ("The Tables Turned"), Somers-Willett, Bradfield, and Atkinson are poets whose deep personalization of science and ecology extend and deepen the nature poem's reach to target the emotional life concealed behind the intellectual exterior.
Of reading Darwin, Elizabeth Bishop writes, "One … sees the lonely young man, admires his eyes fixed on facts and minute details, sinking or sliding giddily off into the unknown." It's the scientist's vacillation between intense "heroic observation" and imaginative ambling ("a sudden relaxation") that Bishop claims "one seems to want in art, in experiencing it" (letter to Anne Stevenson, Jan. 1964). For Somers-Willett, Bradfield, and Atkinson, it is this active interiority coupled with an intense connection with the natural world that leads to new questions and dialogue:
What feral curiosity drives these children
to shake the specimens and rap the glass?
("Crossing Drosophilia," Somers-Willett)
In the lab, beneath
the long, audible bulbs, a fan turns on. New note
in the underlying hum of machines at wait. Like
monks chanting, this sound; like the buzz
I heard once by a river, the earth's own
stasis, its churning; like the overlapping breaths …
("Love Song of the Transgeneticist," Bradfield)
Left behind: blue mussel shells, shark's eyes,
A thousand periwinkles, everything that moves.
How to know the holy? By its shadow.
How to draw its image? With a stick in the sand.
("Ordinary Amber," Atkinson)
Quiver, Interpretive Work, and Drift Ice interrogate with great excitement contemporary scientific and ecologically-motivated subjects. Taken together, their poetics is like any great experiment: it finds pleasure in study and clarification, joy in the investigation of variables and ideas. However disparate their scientific and artistic temperaments may be, Somers-Willett, Bradfield, and Atkinson ultimately discover the convergence of mystery and meaning, danger and wonder.


text:
Why hello there. Please sit down. Yes, take a sip of that brandy. The fireside is quite nice this time of year. And it's a perfect place to watch this most gentlemanly review of that most gentlemanly of Ferraris, the 456 GT.
This is New Orleans' JT Nesbitt, prominent motorcycle and sometimes car builder. He owns this Ferrari 456 GT, and if you happen to be wishing for a break from your most recent readings of 19th Century literary classics, then his review of the purchasing and ownership experiences are worth a watch.


text:
Read and learn… definition of blogosphere.
Diver Under Wharfimage by The Dive Guys
Copyright 2007-2011 Kiwiology
Please remember that these blogs are listed here for your viewing pleasure and that Kiwiology does not own, manage or have any control over the content of blogs on this website. The content of these blogs and their posts belong the blog owners and authors. Check out our policy on listing blogs.
WordPress NZ Web Design by SiteSmart


text:
GMN International
Welcome to GMN International – an association of legally independent accounting firms worldwide.
GMN International is a well-established association of quality professional accounting firms which provide accountancy, audit, tax advisory and business consultancy services to businesses worldwide – with the same care and skill you find locally.
Through our personal, closely-forged relationships, our understanding of your business and our networks of contacts, we are able to provide solutions in all major trading centres in areas like:
Business establishments and structures
Due diligence engagements
Legal and banking contracts
Management consultancy
Local taxation
Accounting and audit compliance
To be successful in their cross–border activities, businesses need access to professional and approachable experts with first–hand knowledge of local regulations, culture and customs.
... avoid the pitfalls, speak to us.


text:
Dropshippers.com> Dropship
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text:
Dr. Theodore Kardash, an obstetrician-gynecologist who had been head of gynecologic services at Maryland General Hospital and whose accomplishments as a physician were the pride of his Russian immigrant parents, died April 9 at the Charlotte Hall Veterans Home in St. Mary's County after complications from leg surgery. He was 96.
"He said he would make it to his 96th birthday, and he did," said his daughter, Linda Armiger of Solomons. "It was Easter weekend and we had all the family. He saw all the family and that's what it wanted to do. That was Dad."
Dr. Kardash was born in Baltimore to Camilla and Frank Kardash, who came from the Russian cities of Minsk and Kiev and owned a number of taverns in the city. The last one, Kardash's Cafe at Pratt and Collington streets, was where the family celebrated many holidays.
He graduated from City College, the University of Maryland, College Park, and the University of Maryland Medical School and lived and practiced in Baltimore for his entire career.
While collecting her father's belongings, Mrs. Armiger found letters written by her grandparents to relatives in Russia, praising their oldest son for his accomplishments.
"When he finished college and medical school, it was overwhelming for his parents," she said. "They were very proud and sent everything back home to the family."
Dr. Kardash and his late wife, the former Margaret Miller, were married for 70 years, but they eloped and kept their marriage secret for two years while he finished college, Mrs. Armiger said.
He served as a Navy physician during World War II with the Marine Corps' 1st Division in Guam. He also served with the 3rd Marine Division in China. He never spoke to the family about his war experiences, but after his death Mrs. Armiger found a number of black and white photos from that time, each with careful notations on the back recording the date and location.
"It was like he compartmentalized it," his daughter said. "It was over and behind him and he wanted to go on to the rest of his career."
He was honorably discharged in 1946, having been awarded the Victory Ribbon and the Asiatic Pacific Campaign Ribbon.
After the war, gynecology, in which Dr. Kardash was trained, was combined with obstetrics and he had to return to school to be certified.
During his career, he taught at the University of Maryland Medical School and also volunteered at the Women's Correction Center in Jessup, Bendix Corp., and the United States Marine Hospital.
He was head of gynecologic services at Maryland General Hospital when he retired in the mid-1980s. He referred to that time as "the golden age of medicine."
He loved playing golf and was a member of the Baltimore County Country Club and the Country Club of Maryland. And when the U.S. Women's Open came to Five Farms in Baltimore County in 1988, he set up a wellness trailer for the women golfers and volunteered his time there.
He and his family enjoyed Preakness, too, and Mrs. Armiger said he was very proud of having attended the event for 50 consecutive years.
"We would go to the races both Friday and Saturday and my father arranged for us kids to get on the track and show off our equestrian skills," she remembered. "There were always 10 to 12 of us and we would picnic in the grandstands all day and then go back to someone's house for a sit-down dinner.
"My daughter picked up the tradition and has kept it going for the last 10 or 15 years. Still the same tickets."
Services and interment were private.
In addition to his daughter, Dr. Kardash is survived by a son, Daniel Kardash of Fallston; a brother, Michael Kardash of Rehoboth, Del.; three granddaughters; and six great-grandchildren. Dr. Kardash's wife died in 2008.


text:
8 posts
To the freesound team and the masses of talent who post their samples.
Just felt the need to write this...
I spend most my time on freesound cruising from genre to genre, listening to the endless amount of creations and gathering inspiration.
I mean that sincerely, every time I come away from freesound, I leave with new ideas and inspiration for my own creations.
So, my thanks to freesound for a fantastic and inspirational resource and to everyone who shares their work in this community.
And I leave you with a quote that resonates and has stayed with me for many years...
"The artist provides that which life does not"
Hey your welcome!
...I didn't do anything
just to say same as Ricky.
thank you so much for this .... freesound.
a great tool for all sound technician and other sound addict...
thank again.
I also agree with the Thank you's and I too say Thanks for this super opportunity!
Thank you to freesound and the very talented people contributing.
Like a massive encyclopedia, I find my self surfing through sounds that are not related to my original search, but compelling and thought provoking none the less.
I have used audio from free sound in my most recent iPhone app:
and provided an audio credits page both on my website and in the app:
Barrett Davis
Tree Frog Software
there is an forum topic for that:
Wunderbare Seite mit wunderbarem Inhalt!
One HUGE thank you from me.
This website is like my temple of sound!
8 posts


text:
Comment Letter in response to a the federal regulatory agencies' joint notice of proposed rulemaking
Comment Letters to Regulators
October 5, 2000
Manager, Dissemination Branch
Information Management and Services Division
Office of Thrift Supervision
1700 G Street, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20552
Attention: Docket No. 2000-68
Dear Madam or Sir:
On behalf of the Community Bankers Association of Illinois ("CBAI"), I am submitting this comment letter in response to the federal regulatory agencies' joint notice of proposed rulemaking on the subject of consumer protections for depository institutions' sales of insurance ("the proposed rule"). CBAI is a professional, not-for-profit trade association representing the interests of more than 530 financial institutions. CBAI's members, which include commercial banks, savings and loan associations and savings banks, can be found in each of Illinois' 102 counties and may be chartered by either the federal government or by the State of Illinois.
CBAI provides numerous services for the benefit of its membership, but its primary mission is acting as an advocate for the interests of community banking in Illinois. To this end, CBAI monitors legislative, regulatory and legal events, both at the State and federal levels, that may impact the interests of CBAI's members. The proposed rule raises the following issues of concern to CBAI and its members, and we appreciate your consideration of these comments.
Section 536.20---Definition of "You"
The definition of "You" includes, in addition to the financial institution, "any other person selling, soliciting, advertising, or offering insurance products or annuities to a consumer" at an office of the financial institution "or on behalf of" the financial institution. The definition provides that a person acts "on behalf of" the financial institution if that person sells, solicits, advertises or offers insurance products or annuities and: (1) the person represents that the action or transaction is by or on behalf of the financial institution; (2) the financial institution receives a commission or fee derived from the sale of the insurance product or annuity as a result of cross-marketing or referrals by the financial institution or its affiliate; (3) documents evidencing the sale, solicitation, advertising or offer of the insurance product or annuity identify or refer to the bank or use its corporate logo or name; or (4) the sale, solicitation, advertising or offer takes place at an off-premises site that identifies or refers to the financial institution or uses its corporate logo or name.
CBAI is familiar with advertising by at least one financial institution that is owned by an Illinois-based insurance company. The advertising in question includes the "Member FDIC" display, but also prominently includes the display of the parent insurance company's corporate logo. That logo includes the insurance company's name and the words "Auto," "Life," and "Fire," which are references to insurance coverages available from the parent insurance company.
Under the proposed rule, it is apparent that if the insurance salesperson uses the financial institution's corporate name or logo, the salesperson could be deemed to be acting "on behalf of" the financial institution and would thus be subject to the prohibitions and requirements of the proposed rule. It is not clear, however, that the converse would hold true. The risk of confusion, misunderstanding or deception experienced by a consumer is no less of an issue when the financial institution, while advertising a banking product or service and its FDIC insurance, cross-markets its affiliated insurance products by prominently displaying the parent insurance company's logo. CBAI encourages the federal regulators to consider a definition of "You" or "covered person" (or the explanation of "on behalf of" contained within the definition of "You" or "covered person") that will address this loophole. Otherwise, community banks that are not subsidiaries of or affiliated with insurance companies may be at a competitive disadvantage with respect to the ability of financial institutions owned by or affiliated with insurance companies to cross-market banking and insurance products without complying with the consumer protections of the proposed rule.
Section 536.30---Practices that "would lead a consumer to believe..." or "could mislead any person..." regarding coercion, tying, etc.
Section 536.30(a) prohibits practices that "would lead a consumer to believe that an extension of credit, in violation of Section 106(b) of the Bank Holding Company Act Amendments of 1970, is conditional upon" the tying of the credit to the purchase of insurance from the financial institution or its affiliates or the coercion of the consumer to refrain from purchasing insurance from an unaffiliated entity. Section 536.30(b) prohibits practices or advertisements that "could mislead any person" to the erroneous conclusion regarding whether the insurance product is federally-guaranteed or insured, whether the insurance product involves investment risk, etc.
CBAI encourages the federal regulatory agencies to amend or clarify the language quoted in the preceding paragraph in order to establish a standard of reasonableness or, conversely, a good faith defense of the financial institution against an unreasonable belief or understanding by the consumer. Otherwise, a consumer could allege that (s)he was led to a belief or to an understanding that led to some detrimental result, notwithstanding the fact that the solicitation or advertisement, when viewed objectively, should not have led a reasonable person to that same belief or understanding.
CBAI notes that the relevant "anti-tying" language in Section 106(b) of the Bank Holding Company Act amendments of 1970 (12 USC 1972) states that financial institutions "shall not...extend credit...or furnish any service...on the condition or requirement" (emphasis added) that the customer conduct additional specified business transactions. Illinois' Financial Institutions Insurance Sales Law (215 ILCS 5/1400 et seq.) prohibits Illinois financial institutions from offering banking products "on a condition or requirement" that the customer obtain insurance from the financial institution or its affiliate. We note the language of Section 106(b) of the Bank Holding Company Act Amendments of 1970 and of the Illinois statute because such language more objectively places a prohibition on the financial institution, as opposed to potential issues resulting from the subjective judgment, understanding or belief of any particular consumer.
Thank you for your attention to and consideration of these comments. If you have any questions or seek additional information, please feel free to contact me.
Jerry D. Cavanaugh
General Counsel
Community Bankers Association of Illinois