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CH-100 Internet Linking Hub
The CH-100 makes a perfect addition to the Catlink system by providing multiple connections. The CH-100 connects directly to a DSL or CABLE modem and supports up to ten Catlinks. It can be located anywhere a high-speed Internet connection is available. Digital control and audio packets received from one CL-100 Catlink will be forwarded to up to twenty other Catlinks.
Cabinet Dimentions 5.0 x 5.0 x 2.0 Inches
CH-100 Features
- Hub Identification.
- User Approved Look-up Table.
- Supports Catlink Constant Connect Mode.
- Selectable Port Settings.
- Active Low Logic Input to Disable the CH-100 Hub.
- RS-232 Port for Set-up and Operational Display.
- Front Panel Display.
HUB Identification
The CH-100 does not have a voice synthesizer. However, if a Catlink interrogates the Hub, it will send a series of digital packets containing the Hub's identification and the identification of any Catlinks that are currently connected to the Hub.
User Approved Look-up Table
In normal mode any CL-100 Catlink knowing the IP address of the Hub can connect. If the CH-100 is operated in the controlled mode, only Catlinks having their MAC address in the Hub's look-up table will be able to connect.
Selectable Port Settings
The CH-100 port number may be changed. This permits multiple Hubs to share the same IP address when they are connected to the same router.
RS-232 Port Operation
The CH-100's RS-232 Port is used to assign the Hub's identification, IP, Mask and Gateway addresses.
CH-100 Front Panel Display Indicators
The CH100 will transmit information data packets on its UDP port. The identification of each CL-100 connected to the HUB will be displayed. When a CL-100 transmits, its ID will turn green and when it "pings" the HUB the "P" box will flash red.
CH-100 Parameters Display
Four LED indicators display the CH-100 activity. The green POWER LED will light when +12VDC is supplied to the CH-100. The red HEARTBEAT LED will flash once a second to indicate the CH-100 is executing its program. The yellow CONNECT LED will light when the CH-100 is connected to a DSL or CABLE modem. The green ACTIVE LED will flash when data is being sent or received.
Parameters Display Security
For security purposes you must enter the HUB username and password to display the IP and PORT address and use the DUMP and BLOCK control buttons.
CH-100 Specifications
|TI ARM Cortex M3
|Memory Look-up Table
|20 User IP Addresses
|Internet Protocol
|Voice - Control UDP
|Logic Inputs
|Active Low (Sink to Ground) to Disable the CH-100
|Front Panel LEDs
|Power, Heartbeat, Internet Connect, Internet Activity
|Operating Temperature
|-15 to +55 degrees C
|9 - 15VDC at 200ma max
|5.0 X 5.0 X 2.0 Inches
Ordering Information
CH-100 Internet Linking Hub Wired and Tested $299.00

subset: commoncrawl


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E. D. Baker scored international acclaim for her debut The Frog Princess, a Book Sense Children's Pick. The Salamander's Spell features sisters Chartreuse and Grassina in a tale of magic, humor and grave danger.Grassina has always lived in the shadow of her perfect older sister, Chartreuse. But when a terrible spell leaves the Kingdom of Greater Greensward in great danger, it is Grassina who finds the magic to set things right. This hilarious prequel to The Tales of the Frog Princess series introduces new characters and brings back familiar fan favorites.
©2007 E.D. Baker (P)2010 Recorded Books, LLC
"Continues the evolution of the series from a simple retelling of a well-known fairy tale into an entertaining saga featuring a fully developed magical world of its own." ( School Library Journal)
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I did like the story but It was to slow and very predictable to me and I didn't care to much for the characters
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text:
Parents of Children on the Spectrum Share Their Museum Experiences 02-25-13
February 25, 2013 from 10:00AM–12:00PM
Hosted at The Metropolitan Museum of Art by the Museum Access Consortium and the National Autism Association New York Metro Chapter
Rebecca McGinnis: Good morning, everyone! I think we're going to go ahead and get started but do please feel free to refresh yourselves, caffeinate, have more sugar at any time throughout the morning, ok? I'm Rebecca McGinnis. I oversee access and community programs here at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and I'd like to welcome you all here. We are delighted to be hosting this workshop on welcoming people with autism spectrum disorders to our museums and thank you all of you, parents who are participating in this workshop. We really appreciate your input and we'll learn a lot from you. Before I hand over to Cindy to introduce the day, I just wanted to mention that the Met has a program called Discoveries, which some of you know about, for children and adults with developmental and learning disabilities and autism spectrum disorders. The program has been running for something like 25 years, but it's something that we're always looking to learn and develop and we have been working especially really as a result of the MAC initiative in large part to making the MET more friendly and welcoming to people with autism spectrum disorders. I'm looking forward to learning a lot. I just wanted to say pick up a brochure and one other thing is that we just launched in December an online resource for parents of children with autism spectrum disorders and adults with ASDs to help to make the museum more welcoming, more user-friendly and to help people prepare for a visit and we would really welcome all your feedback. It's something we've just started and we'd appreciate your thoughts on it. Without further adieu, please let me introduce Cindy VandenBosch who is going to tell you a little bit about MAC and about the morning. Thanks!
Cindy VandenBosch: Thank you, Rebecca, and thank you so much to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. We're really grateful to have a venue and a place to host this event. My name is Cindy VandenBosch and I'm the manager of a program that we're running for three years focused on improving the experiences and making museums and cultural institutions of various different types more welcoming to people who have autism and also their family members and caregivers. And so, we're really grateful–to echo what Rebecca said–we're so grateful for the parents that are here today.
By way of introduction though, I'd like to describe a little bit about what the Museum Access Consortium is and does. We are a volunteer-based association and we bring together individuals that are from cultural institutions, but also from the people that have experience with disability or from the disability fields–we try to bring these groups together to discuss how we can make museums more welcoming for everyone. And so, we have over 100 cultural institutions that are represented as part of our network, also service organizations, educational institutions, design firms, consultants, exhibit designers. So, through professional development workshops and other types of educational opportunities, we try to provide opportunities for collaboration and dialogue. We define accessibility broadly to include architectural, physical, programmatic, communication, attitudinal, and other forms of access. And we take as a basic tenet that increasing accessibility for people with disabilities increases access for everyone and makes experiences more enjoyable for all of us.
This workshop, as I mentioned, it's part of a three-year long series and we have partnered up with various partner organizations for many of these workshops focused on improving access for people who are on the autism spectrum. We are really thankful to the FAR Fund for making this possible and Shirlee Taylor, can you wave your hand back there? So this is Shirlee Taylor and she's here from the FAR Fund and has been very engaged in this program and in this workshop series, and we're so pleased to have her at every single workshop and we thank you so much. This is in fact MAC's very first grant. We've been around for over 15 years and it's been a volunteer effort but yet we have a three-year grant now, which has increased our capacity to offer 12 workshops on this very topic. This today is our sixth workshop in that series of twelve and I recognize a lot of people in the room who have been to most of those workshops, if not all of them. But I'd like to see by show of hands just to gauge which types of cultural institutions are represented in the room. How many people are here from art museums today? Ok, so about I would guess, maybe a quarter of the room. How many people are here from historic sites or history museums? So maybe about 10 people. And how many people, raise your hand if you are here from a science museum? [In sad, quiet voice] Oh, we have one science museum (laughter). Where are you coming from?
Audience member: From the zoo.
Cindy: Oh, from the Central Park Zoo! What about the botanical gardens, do we have anyone here today maybe from the gardens or the park system? No, ok. Anybody who is from a cultural institution but I didn't call out the type of cultural institution that you're from? Yeah?
Audience member: The New York Public Library.
Cindy: From the New York Public…That's right, of course! So the New York Public Library is here today. Is there anybody else? No? Yeah? Jessica?
Jessica: I'm a teacher.
Cindy: A teacher, ok. And where are you a teacher?
Jessica: The Lavelle School for the Blind.
Cindy: The Lavelle School for the Blind. Ok. Who else do we have here today? Oh, actually let's get the…
Audience member: Hi, I'm a researcher in the blindness field and I work for Bridge Multimedia, which makes television accessible for people who are blind or visually impaired, and we're thinking also kids with autism, so we're trying to find that out.
Cindy: Do we have anyone else here from say a school? We are going to introduce…Oh, yes!
Audience member: I'm from Cane University, I'm Gillian Furniss and my focus is art education and autism.
Cindy: Ok. So, welcome to all of you and welcome to the National Autism Association–New York Metro Chapter. This all came together today. We started a conversation with Kim Mack Rosenberg and Peggy Becker, who are the President and Vice President of the New York Metro Chapter of the National Autism Association, probably about a year ago with the idea of bringing together parents for a conversation like we're going to have today. This, as I mentioned, this is the sixth workshop that we've had in this series and we spent a lot of last year bringing in clinicians, educators to educate us on autism, on the history of its diagnosis, on therapies and approaches in the classroom and how we might apply that to our work in the museum field. But this year, we've really had a focus on hearing from people who have autism themselves. So our last workshop, we partnered up with the organization called GRASP, which is comprised of adults who are on the autism spectrum, and we heard from adults who have worked in or volunteered or visited museums and they shared their experiences and stories, and it was incredibly helpful. That was about a month ago. And now today, we get to hear from parents and their experiences of taking their children who have autism spectrum disorders about what it's like going out to cultural institutions in the city. And so I'm going to pass it over to Kim Mack Rosenberg and Peggy Becker to provide a little bit of an introduction to the National Autism Association New York Metro Chapter and the work that they do in the city, as well as to the parent speakers that we have here today. Thank you so much!
Kim Mack Rosenberg: Thanks, Cindy and Rebecca, and thank you all for coming this morning! We're really excited to be partnering with the Museum Access Consortium to bring this workshop together. NAA New York Metro is an all-volunteer organization run mostly by parents, some grandparents, and some professionals, which has as its main mission to empower people with autism spectrum disorders and their family to reach their fullest potential. And what we do are a number of things: we have educational programs that run on a monthly basis, sometimes multiple times a month. Two hour presentations that we bring professionals in on all kinds of issues relating to autism. We have parents and professionals attend those. We do special workshops. We have a parent mentoring program which pairs up parents who have a lot of experience in different aspects of autism with families who need some one-on-one support. We help fund a summer program for a couple of weeks in the summer, when kids have that break between the end of the year-round school program and the start of the next school year so that the kids have that continuity. We're able to do that at $50 or $75 charge for an entire week. We're very proud of we've been able to do as volunteers and the reason we've been able to do a lot is because of an incredible supportive base of parents in the city who volunteer either on a one-by-one basis or work really hand-in-hand with us to make everything happen. And we're excited to be here and Peggy is going to introduce the parents who volunteered today.
Peggy Becker: So thank you to all of the parents who volunteered to do this. We think it's going to be really, really constructive. I'm just going to go around and say their name, the name of their child, and the age of their child. But could you guys raise your hands when I mention your name, please?
Ken Siri has a son named Alex Siri and he's 14, Ken's son is 14. Holly Kane has Julian who is 15. Beth Rosenberg has Jack who is 14. Norene Chin has Michael who is 9. I'm Peggy Becker and my son Daniel is 14. Kim has Henry who is 13. Susan has Ana-Francisca who is 11. Mary and Paul Johnson have Andrew who is 22. That is all of our parents, I believe.
Kim: Beth!
Peggy: Oh, Beth!
Beth: One more!
Peggy: Why aren't you on the list? Sorry!
Beth: I was a little late.
Peggy: Sorry, Beth Latimer! And she's one of my best friends. [Laughter] Beth Latimer has Thomas who is 14, is he 15 now?
Beth: In a couple more weeks, almost 15.
Peggy: Almost 15. Thanks everybody!
Cindy: So I'm just going to introduce the structure of the small group discussions. Because while we've done a lot of panel discussions in the past, we've been hearing from people that have attended the workshops that they really want to dig in and share experiences and have it be more interactive. And so this is one of the first times that we've done a workshop in this fashion. Thank you for participating in this experiment.
At your tables, each of you have a facilitator at your tables. At table number one over here, we have Danielle Linzer who is standing with the camera over here. And then at table number two is Meredith Wong from the Jewish Museum and she's over by table number two. Table number three we have Lori Stratton who is facilitating. So that's table number three at the back. Table number four is Barbara Johnson. And table number five. Where is our facilitator for table number five? Oh, there you are! Miranda, who was checking people in, Miranda Appelbaum will be facilitating at table number five. What the facilitators will be doing, they'll be opening up introductions. We'd like those to be brief introductions to have everyone introduce where you're coming from and a little bit about yourselves and if you're one of the parents, a little bit about your child, and then we're going to have the parents share their own experiences and they'll have the floor for about 20-25 minutes. We ask that, if possible, if you can refrain from asking questions until you know that both parents have had the time to really express themselves and share their stories, their experiences, their viewpoints. One of the things about that is we will hear examples and want to hear examples, by the way, both about the parents and your childrens' experiences that have been very positive and memorable and meaningful at cultural sites and also some of the visits that maybe didn't go as well as you had hoped. In those cases, what might have helped to improve those situations? Now for the representatives from cultural institutions in the room, some of those examples might be specific to certain museums but as we all know, some of these scenarios could play out probably in most of our institutions. So let's take this as an opportunity to use that example to learn from–for all of us–it's not just about that one institution; it's something that could happen at any of our institutions. There will be that sort of sharing, the parents will talk for that 20-25 minutes. After that, you see that you have flipcharts on your table. We ask that together you engage in a session where you discuss reflections. What have the listeners at the table absorbed and learned? And put them down on paper because we're going to try to document this as much as possible. Also, questions that popped up for you. There might even be bigger questions that we should address at another workshop. Think of that as a kind of parking lot for some of the bigger issues that you might not be able to tackle together today. And then the sheet underneath it is the next step, which is ideas and best practices. For the museum professionals, talk about the programs you're thinking about doing and bounce it off the parents. See what they have to say, write down what you learn. And then we're all going to report back. I'll go around and see how we're moving along, but we'll probably get back together and share out with both the parents having the opportunity to speak and one representative in the group from the museum field to talk about your conversation and what you've been learning with the rest of the room. We'll probably do that around 10:20. Oh sorry, not 10:20. It's 10:25 right now. 11:20. Thank you so much and enjoy your conversations. And I'll be coming around to turn on smaller recorders because again we're trying to document as much as possible to share with other museums.
[Groups break out for approximately one hour of small group conversations]
Cindy: We have a couple of minutes– two minutes left–for small group discussions and then we're going to report back to the room. So if you can identify someone in your group who can summarize in fewer than five minutes your conversation, some of the highlights, what you took away from the conversation. We'll go around and summarize in that way and then we also want to hear from some of the parents and what they're really taking away from the experience. If you can identify someone in your group, that would be great and just wrap up.
Cindy: Ok, folks. We're going to wrap up now. I know there's probably so much more to say and share but we're going to do it collectively in the room so that we can hear–I walked around the room and there were different kinds of conversations taking place–and I'm looking forward to having you all share. Are there any brave souls that want to step up? Ok, I'm going to start over here with table number five. And if you can do me a favor, so this part - while we had the smaller audio recorders, we'll probably be listening to those and writing down some of the things you discussed to share more broadly. But for the recording, from this point forward, please be sure to speak into the microphone if you're contributing to the broader discussion in the room as this will be posted on the Museum Access Consortium website. Introduce your name and your institution, if you are here representing an institution.
Audience member: This is Brigid Cahalan from the New York Public Library. I think we had a really fascinating discussion. I'm sure everyone else feels that way as well and what I liked to hear about were the new terms that I learned. For instance, social stories. Maybe you all know what that is, but it's preparing someone ahead of time for what they're going to see, including things like "this is how the entrance looks," "this is what the security guard will be doing going through your bag," [chuckle in room] and that's a great idea for libraries and probably every place, as well as museums. And we also brought up the idea of taking advantage of particular skills, like perhaps the ability to remember a lot of facts, to absorb and remember facts, and have a teen docent program using children on the spectrum with that type of skill. Also, things like, staff training for all, that everyone at an institution has to be aware of what might happen and what to do about it. A place to go, a safe place to go where children can express themselves physically. Also things like, let's say in a library, which might be in a museum or a public library, having things like a–we have something called tumblebooks that will give visual, that you can look at books, which may have to do with an exhibit or not, and you can see them moving and you can turn the pages and you can hear audio. This would be a way to reinforce or prepare children for perhaps a storytime or to go over a storytime or a book connected with an exhibit of some sort. Those are a few highlights.
Cindy: Thank you so much, group number five. What about another group! Oh, yes! We'll go with group number four. Maybe we'll just go backwards.
Audience member: Hi, I'm Aaron Feinstein. I'm representing ActionPlay. We do training and program development for museums and cultural centers to meet the needs of children with autism and special needs. This was also a very, very awesome, productive, fruitful discussion, and some of the reflections we came up with were: a clear message of welcome makes a difference, to be able to just say that you're welcome at any institution so when a parent calls, they know that they're invited. And a positive and understanding attitude helps lower stress levels. That applies to the welcome. Advance info, virtual tours, Ken suggested the idea of using virtual tours so that a child would be able to experience some element of the museum before they actually step into the museum. Suggestions for self-guided tours as well. And we brought up that a lot of times parents can be hesitant to ask for programs and resources and a lot of it is that they just don't want to be rejected in the process of asking about it. We brainstormed and thought about solutions of how one when they call the museum or look on the website, how they can plan their visit. Have clear info on the website about sensory-friendly spaces, quiet entrances, etc. The Visitor Center also, possibly using a visual tool so that people can know that this is a sensory-friendly environment. Some of that also came up when we spoke about language just in general. Is this "autism-friendly"? I think that limits lots of learning disabilities, various syndromes that would also want be able to use this space and would want to use the information as well–so not to be limiting in the language. Small groups in spaces that are physically protected so that parents can have information about where they can go in the museum so they can have the best experience. Also, to connect with organizations in New York City, like the NAA–New York Metro Chapter, I think Resources for Special Children was brought up, which are great organizations that get the information out. As well as multi-modal opportunities, hands-on activities, physical movement, ways that kids can be active and involved in the space. Thank you.
Cindy: Thank you so much, group number four! [applause] Alright, group number three!
Audience member: Hi everyone, I'm Jenn Candiano, I'm the Associate Coordinator of Autism Programs at the Queens Museum of Art. So, we had a really lively discussion that focused a lot around teen programming and we talked a little bit about how to advertise and market programming and to use not necessarily market towards people with autism by saying autism in the title. A lot of teen groups, we talked about having alternative parent groups at the same time. A question that we had was whether parents should be involved past 12 years old and our parent coordinators had the idea that a parent group at the same time in another space would be a good alternative. So, some programs within the museum that teach job skills and just the general need for more teen programs. We also took some time to think about the times and the days of the programs. We had some conflict between is it better on the week or the weekends? The consensus was that weekend afternoons was best for a teen program. Also, thinking about tactile experiences while being in the galleries, so having something for children to hold on to while they're in the galleries and an experience to relate to the artwork. While they're going around, having something to refer to while they're looking at the art. And last–two other things were the visual schedule–so how important that is to structure both the educator, the parents, and the children during the programs. Using the visual schedule–a visual schedule just maps out what's going to happen throughout the session in a numbered format with simple words and maybe a picture drawing to show what's going to happen. Children can cross that off during the group. Social programs. We talked about teen programs to be more social-based and just a place for kids to come hang out and open up your institution that way.
Cindy: Thank you group number three!
Audience member: I'm Mayrav Fisher. I work at the Guggenheim Museum and a lot of what was said here we also talked about so I will only add things that were not mentioned. I think we started off with this big question of whether cultural institutions should think about creating special programs for families with children with special needs or work towards universalizing our experiences that are offered to the general public to families with children on the spectrum. And that was an interesting conversation and I guess one that doesn't have one correct answer. But what we heard from parents is they like to have choice in that depending on who your child is and what their mood is on a given day, you might choose a different way of visiting an experience in a museum. One good thing that all good cultural institutions should write down right now is the New York State Office for People with Developmental Disabilities has grants that they give for not-for-profit organizations in family support funded grants. I didn't know about it. This is definitely new to me, so I'm going to follow up on that. We talked about how based on some of our experiences working with school groups with children on the spectrum, we suggested creating - and heard from parents they would appreciate having - a sequential family program, kind of like you'd sign up for four or five times that happen maybe once a month or every weekend, I don't know, it's something to think about. That repetition breeds familiarity and a stronger sense of comfort in a new space and a new institution. That for families who choose to come on their own, it might be really nice for cultural institutions to create special brochures that they can pick up at the desk or something they can download on the website of a pre-curated experience and suggestions and tips, on which galleries you might want to consider because they have the least sensory distractions and quiet spaces and works of art that might work for you and other resources. We talked about social stories. I'm not going to go over that. There was one suggestion here that I think the public library has experimented recently with individual intake form interviews for people that are going to begin to come regularly to the library. We thought that that was a really nice way to customize an experience for a specific individual and their needs, specifically teens, but we talked about how in cultural institutions, doing the individual intake just isn't reasonable because we don't have the staffing for that but it could work in some cases. I think it was…Peggy, is that your name? Peggy suggested creating, for institutions that have on-your-own for parents with children on the spectrum, to actually have a parent orientation about your institution and what it offers and what are some tips and suggestions on how to bring your child to that museum to empower the parents before they come with their children. And I think it's MoMA that just started a Facebook group for their families and that's a wonderful place to reinforce vocabularly and some of the images they just saw so that the kids and the parents can go back and continue the community of learning on Facebook. One other thing is to make sure that we educate not just education staff but visitor services staff in general in the institution that ties into the sense of welcome and appropriate response to sometimes challenging experiences that might happen in public spaces. So, that's it! Thank you!
Cindy: Thank you, group number two! And now, group number one! Who would like to report?
Audience member: I'm Rachel Rappaport. I'm from the Children's Museum of the Arts. I won't…I'll just talk about some of the things that you haven't already shared because we talked about a lot of the same things. We spent a lot of time talking about multi-sensory activities and interactive activities, incorporating for different learning styles, so sound, visual–putting the day's agenda on a schedule so people can see it and reiterate it, and not just speaking it but really driving it home. One thing that stuck with me was also emailing out that schedule to parents or sharing that on the website beforehand so parents can prepare the child before coming to the museum.
We spoke a little bit about things that you wouldn't otherwise think about in terms of our programs, like family restrooms and the importance of that, diet and children's needs in terms of what's in the snack bar in the cafeteria, certain special diet foods to have available. Even just in a program, taking a time-out for a snack is really important for kids. We were fortunate to have parents who had two different experiences. One of our parents went more to public programs and general hours at museums and her experiences during open hours. The other parent shared more about programs and going to MoMA's CreateAbility and programs at The MET. It was a nice balance between the two different approaches. What was interesting was that, each way works better for different families. So as we're thinking about programs, really not just looking at programs, but also looking at how we make our general hours more accessible. We talked a little bit about getting the word out in the schools and then also we spoke a lot about dividing into small groups and that while it's great to all come together, that really dividing into small groups with a teaching artist or a facilitator in each group and allowing that teacher to really have a more personal connection with the kids and learning what their one special thing that may draw them out a little bit more. And then we talked a little bit about how to divide into small groups and having some transition time. That parents don't all…Everyone may not show up at 9:30, some might come at 10, so how do you use that time to transition and then to divide up into groups from there.
We spoke a lot about big spaces. Some children may feel overwhelmed by the big space but others really enjoy that space. How do you use different spaces in different museums? I think a lot of that goes back to individualizing the programs and really allowing the teacher to find those times to pull certain children in and understand what their needs are. Which led us to speak about how you get parents to share that information about their children. One great suggestion was that when parents come in, to get a note card and have the parents write down a few notes about their child and hand it to the teacher so that the teacher can quickly have reference to what the needs of each child is without getting too personal or putting the parent on the spot in any way. I think that was it.
Cindy: Ok, thank you! I'm curious if any of the groups talked about.. There are a lot of museums that create programs or adapt their spaces or have earlier opening hours or quieter times. They put a lot of work into that side of things but they don't necessarily always have success in reaching families and reaching visitors or family members who have autism. Did any of the groups discuss marketing to a degree? That was discussed over here. Would you mind sharing a few things that came out of that part of the conversation?
Audience: Ok! Hi, my name is Cliff Davis. I'm the father of a seven year-old son with autism and I work with New York City Children's Services in their Developmental Disabilities Unit in the Office of Child and Family Health. One of things we were talking about and one of the things that's my job is to help link youngsters who are in the community with the proper supports and services. And each borough has their own Developmental Disabilities Council, which is a place where families go and private non-profit organizations, service providers go, and the government actually that oversees special needs funded programs. So it's a real great opportunity to do outreach for those programs, you're running those special programs. These are families who really want to have their children to participate greater and to be greater included in programs and services. So, I can certainly send anybody the list of the different Developmental Disabilities Councils. They each have their own website, they each have their own resource guide, meeting calendars, etc. And if museum folks want to go down and outreach for their programs and present on their programs, they would immediately be linked with folks with developmental disabilities who would want to participate. It's an untapped bunch of people who are just looking for ways to be included.
Cindy: Thank you so much! Oh.
Audience member (Peggy): I had the idea of creating a central database where museums could just register their programs, like maybe the museum access consortium could have that family website. My other idea was that maybe the NAA could have representatives come speak to parents about the programs that are out there. Not just their own programs, but visiting museums, connecting to museums, that could be very helpful in reaching out to parents.
Cindy: So I'd like to dedicate a little bit of time…We're very excited to work with the National Autism Association NY Metro Chapter and connect with more organizations in order to get the word out. That's a pretty obvious and it's sort of the beginning of a partnership and so we're pretty excited about that. But what I'd like to do at this point is give parents a little bit of time to share. Now that you've spent an hour with the people at your table, your impressions from the experience and what you're taking away from this experience as you think about going home and think about future experiences that you might have with your child around the city? Maybe if you can take a couple of minutes to provide your own feedback and thoughts after having this experience today. So, maybe we'll start at table number one. Susan, would you like to share?
Susan: I just want to say thank you. I started crying as I thanked the people at this table initially. We so appreciate all you do for our kids. We are regular attendees, my daughter and I, are regular attendees at the MoMA program and the MET program. You can tell there's a lot of care and thought and love put into those programs. And a lot of the things we had on our list are things that these programs are already doing. The individualized attention, picking up on my daughter's interest in Charlie Brown and incorporating that through music and through drawing in the program yesterday. We're very, very thankful in helping our children become the best they can be. Thank you for listening to us today.
Cindy: Are there other parents that would like to share?
Mary Johnson: My name is Mary Johnson. Our son Andrew is 22. I guess it's just been an amazing journey for us because when he was little, he was non-verbal, non-compliant, non-cooperative, and a handful. And we did a lot of unusual therapies with him. He finally learned how to read at the age of nine. And he had vision therapy at age 17 and he stopped skipping words [inaudible]. At age 21, he got a high school regents diploma with a presidential award for academic excellence and he is now a freshman at Landmark College in Vermont, which is a school exclusively for kids with learning disabilities. On every table, there is a little card that we printed up. My son made a 13-minute autobiographical documentary on what it is like to live with autism which we think is amazing and we hope you will enjoy it. Also on this card is our emails in case you are curious, you want to know some of the therapies we used to help our child learn how to read, or if you have an interest in Landmark College, we'd love to be a resource.
Cindy: Thank you so much. Mary and Paul Johnson came to us today through Barbara. Barbara Johnson from Cathedral of St. John the Divine.
Audience member: I'm Beth Latimer. My son is 14. I just have to say I'm dazzled incredibly, hopeful, and optimistic that all of these hearts and minds have come together on this issue and that there's not one simple answer. It's quite clear that the variety and complexity of solutions you are all coming up with together as a group are right on target. And I'm really excited for things to move forward here and I'm just so grateful for all of you who are here. It's really quite dazzling. Almost speechless but not really. [laughter] Just really grateful and thankful and excited and hopeful about what can be accomplished.
Cindy: Any other parents who would like to say a few words based on the conversation today.
Audience member: This is my first time to this group and I find it to be amazing. I've taken my son to museums with varying degrees of success so-to-speak. Will he behave? Will he be understood? Will he be escorted out? We've had those things and we've had varying experiences of welcome. And the idea that a whole group of people are getting together just with the idea of making sure that folks feel included and welcome and coming up with creative ideas to make sure they have a better experience is something that I never thought was happening in a room in the city and it's really encouraging. Hats off to all of you. This is a really great thing that you're doing for our families.
Cindy: Thank you. Are there any other parents that would like to share? Alright, Peggy?
Peggy: I think based on this discussion here and what I've heard from everybody. I'm way more likely as a parent to dig into all kinds of cultural institutions' websites and things and look for opportunities to bring my child to them, way more likely than I was beforehand. I really appreciate it.
Cindy: That's very encouraging. Thank you for those kind words. Yes, Paul?
Paul: Paul Johnson, married to Mary, father of Barbara [laughter]. This didn't come up particularly with our discussion but one of the things that is true of Andrew's experience was that he was able to be a docent at the Prospect Park Zoo at age 14, 15 as a summer job. He excelled at this job even though it required social skills and things that were not his strong suit, but he took to the job and learned all of the facts. That is his strong suit. So, just encouragement to be open to having kids on the autistic spectrum to be in programs that might not be designed for them. The other thing I'm thinking of is the Museum of the Moving Image was a key for him entering a museum experience where it was his subject and it was interactive and boy, did that accelerate a lot of things for him. So, just encouragement in that direction.
Cindy: Thank you. Ok, Beth?
Beth: I'm Beth Rosenberg. I just want to say following up on Paul and I've had the pleasure of working with Andrew and he's amazing, just amazing. All of these little kids become big kids and we need to get them jobs. I am really scared for my kid, and maybe other parents here feel scared as well, but I don't know what my kid is going to do. I don't even know if my kid is going to go to college or make it through community school. So, I want to plead with everyone here to please open up your museum or cultural institution to internships for these kids. It is the best way for these kids to learn. Yes, it takes more time. They need more hand-holding. They need more job-coaching. If everyone sitting at this amazing table could say, "I'm going to commit to taking one or two kids under my wing for the next year for a summer internship, a weekend internship, we're going to see a lot more hopefully progress in the world of autism." The congressional hearings that were just on. Some of the senators talked about the tsunami–they called it the tsunami–of 18 year olds that are graduating, that are leaving the school system. What are we going to do with these kids? Are they going to sit and watch TV? We've got to give them job skills and we've got to give them experience and museums are very nurturing, lovely places to learn this. Whether it be filing in the museum bookstore, helping a group of kids going around. A lot of these kids are great with younger kids. So I just want to plead that you open your yard to these kids. We can place tons of kids in your institutions if you would let us.
Cindy: Thank you so much, Beth. That's such an important point. We heard that from the speakers that we had last month. There was a woman who works at Kykuit and it has been life-changing for her. And she shared why that's the case, the ability to go deep into a topic and the development of social skills. So, that's something that I think is really important for all of the institutions and I think we here in the room all agree on that. Is there anyone else that would like to share something? Any reactions? Anything you'd like to share more broadly with the room? Miranda..
Miranda: I'm Miranda. I'm from the Intrepid. I think that one of the really great things, especially about the people in the room, but many museums that aren't represented here is that it's a really welcoming community of museum educators, too. So if you ever want to observe a program at a museum, I'm sure that the coordinators would be more than welcome to have you. If you ever want to advertise your programs, I know we put out flyers for lots of museums at ours. There's a lot of resources in the room for that as well.
Cindy: Thank you, Miranda. That sort of leads into how we're going to take the many conversations that we've had here today and put it back out to you. We're actually going to listen to the recordings, document some of the stories that helped illustrate why the best practices, like a social story or visual schedule, are so important based on some of the examples that you provided in your groups. Yeah, Jackie?
Jackie: Jackie is asking for a list of email addresses. So, I think what we'll do is that we'll follow up with a survey. As part of that survey, there will be a couple of questions to get feedback so that when we do these types of workshops in the future, we continue to improve upon them, but we'll also ask if you're willing for us to share your email address and whoever includes their email address, we'll be sure to distribute that along with the institution, if you're representing an institution, or if you're a parent. So I think that's probably the best way we can do that. I think that's a great idea. So we're going to post the audio clips from today's workshop, as well as blog posts and a pdf file on our website that highlights some of the stories, as well as the ideas and best practices, questions, reflections, and hopefully we continue to grow and build knowledge and understanding. What's interesting about that is today we have about 50 people in the room. But whenever we post this information on websites, we get emails from all over the world and all over the United States, from people in rural towns don't have the good fortune that we have to connect with one another at a table with other professionals and individuals who are connected with and affected by autism. We really appreciate everyone being here today. There's one final thing. Museum Access Consortium is planning its first public event, meaning that this summer we're in the process of putting together an event, where museums and zoos and the botanical gardens, representatives from those institutions will be invited to set up tables and we're going to invite the public in to learn about what's available, whether it's a program or you have adapted your environment. Those are the kinds of things you'll be able to share person-to-person. At the end of the day, a lot of times it's the relationships that you establish that are the strongest entry point. This is all in-process, but we are still working on a venue and a date. If you're on our email list, that's great because we will be making announcements there both for museums to apply to participate and that will be happening within the next month or so. And then also making an announcement there and on our blog and on Facebook about the actual date and we'll make that months in advance. That's about it. I don't know if there's anything else that I'm missing.. Oh, the National Autism Association. Would you like to share a few things about how people can be engaged with the National Autism Association?
Kim: What I wanted to do was encourage all of the museum professionals here and other cultural institutions who have such wonderful programs and information to share to do things like use our Facebook page to share with the community. We actually have a really active Facebook page not only of parents in New York City but we have people who have friended us from all over the country. And a lot of times we'll even hear from friends who are coming to New York to visit looking for things that are friendly and welcoming for them to do with their kids on the autism spectrum. So I think that parents would really appreciate that. We can either post it for you or if you just want to go on and post it, feel free. I know some of you already do and we really appreciate it. We so appreciate all of the programming you're doing and we want to do what we can to help you get the word out too so that more families know about wonderful things that they can take advantage of in New York. So thank you.
Cindy: I'd just like to thank a few people for making this possible today in closing. First of all, I'd like to thank all of the parents. I think you all deserve a round of applause [applause]. Especially Kim and Peggy, they recruited most of the parents that are sitting at the tables today and were very thoughtful about the diverse range of experiences that these families have had so that we could match them up with all of the various institutions that we have here today. So there was a lot of work and creative thinking that went into that on their part and we really, really sincerely appreciate it. I'd also like to thank our facilitators: Miranda, Barbara, Danielle, Meredith, Lori Stratton for stepping up and volunteering to facilitate…Meredith, did I get to you?
Meredith: Yes.
Cindy: good! For volutneering and stepping up to facilitate these conversations today. So let's give the facilitators a round of applause [applause]. There are also a couple of museums I'd like to thank. The Museum at Eldridge Street loaned us three of their audio recorders and The Metropolitan Museum of Art also did so that we could record the individual conversations. So I'd also like to thank you for that and also The Metropolitan Museum of Art for opening their space to us so that so that we could be here in the first place and recording the session. We just really, really appreciate it. And, of course, thank you, Shirlee Taylor, from the FAR Fund. So, we're very excited about the things that are to come in the next year and when we collect feedback in the survey, we ask that you give your ideas of what other kinds of workshops you'd like to see. Parents, you're welcome to come to these workshops whenever you'd like. We'd love to have you here. This is all about bringing together people both museums and also people who have experience with disability or family members who do. And finally, the New York Metro Chapter of the National Autism Association. Have a great day everybody!
** End **


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RIVERSIDE – A large slow-moving low pressure system will bring heavy snowfall to the mountains of Riverside County this weekend, meteorologists said today.
The National Weather Service issued a winter storm watch for mountains areas above 6,000 feet from Friday morning through Friday evening, saying six to 10 inches of snow accumulation was possible.
The agency also said that the mountains will be subject to strong winds, with gusts up to 60 miles per hour likely.
"Residents and travelers into higher elevations in the mountains should be prepared for hazardous winter weather conditions and possible road closures," an NWS advisory said. "If possible, carry chains and take extra food and clothing."
As for the rest of Riverside County, moderate to locally heavy rainfall is expected this weeken


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Re-thinking Investment Income Taxes
October 31st 2011 Posted at Investment Tax Policy, Uncategorized
6 Comments
It is accepted dogma of economic theory that higher taxes on business profits and investment income discourage investment and stifle growth. That is the justification for allowing the richest and most privileged Americans to pay lower taxes on investment returns than the working stiff pays on wages and salaries.
I don't challenge that dogma. It is indisputably true.
But, taken to its logical conclusion, that suggests that the best way to stimulate investment, hiring, and economic growth, would be to repeal all corporate profit and investment income taxes. So why don't we do that? Why don't we repeal all corporate profit and investment income taxes?
Presumably because we (society) think that it would be unreasonable to allow the already privileged to accumulate still greater wealth without contributing a fair share to the costs of government and society. Here again, I share the collective opinion. I think the rich derive great benefits from society and I think they should fairly share the burden of supporting that society. In fact, I think it is unfair and unreasonable that the wealthy pay lower tax rates than the working class – even though I understand the dogmatic and pragmatic rationale.
Which raises a conundrum: How do we repeal investment income taxes to stimulate economic activity without giving the wealthy a free ride? And since we're addressing a modification of existing tax policy, can we restructure policies in a manner that removes distorting incentives and encourages the "invisible hand" of Adam Smith's capitalist theory to operate more efficiently?
FlatTax advocates argue that we should replace corporate profit and investment income taxes with some variation of a consumption tax: a Value-Added Tax, or a National Sales Tax, or some alternative variation or combination of regressive transactional taxes which would penalize that portion of the population who consumes all their income annually and favor the privileged and lucky few who are already accumulating an increasingly large percentage of the national wealth. (To give credit to their benevolent natures, most FlatTax proponents do argue they would provide credits or adjustments for the poor to offset the inherent regressive nature of consumption taxes. However, as I see it, taxes which favor the rich and favor the poor are still regressive toward the working middle class.)
So I have a different alternative. How about if we tax wealth instead of investment income? Just like real estate. (Actually, not like real estate. Because we tax real estate on gross value, but I think we should only tax wealth on a net basis.)
Think about it. Why don't we repeal corporate and investment income taxes, and estate and gift taxes, and instead tax accumulated net wealth at a flat 2% annually?
Our efforts to tax investment profits generate a multitude of undesirable unintended consequences. In the first place, as per the old accountant's axiom, "profit is just an opinion". Our tax laws have stimulated an entire industry revolving around manipulating "profit" for the purposes of tax avoidance. The higher the rates, the harder and more aggressively businesses work to shelter their income from the tax man. Worse yet, Congress conspires with them to do it. The existing rat's nest of complex laws and regulations all emanate from Congress' efforts to manipulate the system. Special treatment under the tax code is the tool they use to buy and sell power and influence. Why don't we take that tool away from them and return equal treatment to the tax code?
Capitalist theory suggests that economic efficiency is achieved when the market blindly rewards individual self-interest. Note, that invisible hand of the market is supposed to be blind of managed objectives, just like Lady Justice, devoid of favoritism, operating with its thumb clear of the scale and allowing the market freedom to accumulate the benefits of unfettered commerce. But our existing tax code imposes penalties that obstruct that efficiency and discourage productive investments.
You don't believe it? Let's look at three simplified examples. Alan, Bob and Charlie each have two million dollars in accumulated net wealth.
Alan invested his entire $2 million in a sole proprietorship. He works exceptionally hard and runs a profitable business. He draws a small salary but takes most of his income as return on his invested capital. Let's assume a 12% return on assets, or $240,000 per year. If he doesn't shelter his operations through some tax advantaged ownership structure it's taxed as ordinary income – with a top marginal rate of 35%. If he structures the business as a corporation and leaves the money in the corporation he will have more flexibility to shelter some of it from taxes by manipulating "profit", but corporate taxes will still take a nominal marginal bite of 39%.
Bob invests his entire $2 million in publicly traded equities. Unless it's a loss position (so he can use it to shelter other gains) Bob never sells anything in less than 365 days. For arguments sake let's say Bob earns the same 12% annual return on his investments, an equal $240,000. So the portion of his portfolio which turns over each year is subject to a long term capital gains tax, currently set at 15%, less than half Alan's marginal tax rate. To the extent Bob doesn't need his investment income to support his current expenditures, and doesn't churn his portfolio, he can defer his capital gains and pay zero tax on a current basis. Thus, Bob, the passive investor, pays far less toward the support of society than his equally wealthy entrepreneurial neighbor, Alan. In rough, round figures let's say at least 50% less. Depending upon just how infrequently he churns his investments, his annual tax bill could be much less than that.
Charlie took his entire $2 million and bought a painting by Picasso. He keeps it on the wall in his paneled office for his personal viewing pleasure. Although he doesn't intend to ever sell it, for symmetry 's sake let's assume it is appreciating in value by 12% per year, providing Charlie with the same annual investment return as Alan and Bob. Yet Charlie pays zero annual tax. Yes, he may eventually pay something in estate taxes. It's hard to tell how much because Congress has been manipulating estate taxes like a yo-yo. (If he dies this year, he pays nothing because the estate tax has expired. If he died last year he would have paid nothing because his assets were under the $3.5 million exemption. If he dies next year he could pay 55% of any value in excess of $1 million – unless Congress changes the law again – which it almost certainly will.) But as long as he lives, and maintains ownership of his Picasso, he will pay no annual tax on its appreciating value.
So there you have it. Three men of equal wealth pay three entirely dissimilar tax bills. Certainly, if there is justice or rationality in our system the man who pays the lowest tax bill is being rewarded for activity which represents the highest benefit to our society. Yes?
Look again. Charlie took $2 million out of economic circulation. The primary benefit of his investment is the private smile that comes over his face when he sits quietly in his office. Our tax code favors his choice. Alan, the entrepreneurial businessman, actively building the economy, pays the highest tax bill.
In my scenario, they would all three receive an equal tax bill, 2% of $2 million, or $40,000. The Invisible Hand of capitalism would operate freely. The distorting influence of investment profit taxes would be removed. Each man would benefit from the wisdom of his own decisions. At my posited 12% annual return, their 2% of assets would convert to the equivalent of 16.7% of income. If, alternatively, they invested more conservatively in bonds paying a 5% return, their tax bill would be equivalent to 40% of income. As a percent of their accumulated wealth and ability to pay, each investor's tax bill would be entirely equal. In contrast to existing policies, where the tax man reduces one's bill in response to cautious decisions or poor returns, under my proposed system each investor would retain the full benefit (or risk) of their respective choices.
Isn't that how a free market is supposed to work?
Comments, replies and rebuttals are invited and will be welcomed.
Douglas Hopkins
Author – A Citizen's 2% Solution: How to Repeal Investment Income Taxes, Avoid a Value-Added Tax, and Still Balance the Budget.
PS – for the FlatTaxers out there – Abolishment of employment taxes and establishment of a modified flat tax applied to all earned income is an accompanying feature of my proposed 2% Solution. (For the record, I believe characterizing social security "contributions" as anything other than general tax revenues is simply a polite fiction, conveniently hiding the fact that the working middle class pays higher marginal tax rates on earned income than their more affluent and successful neighbors. See Social Security: Trust? Or Ponzi Scheme?.)
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6 Responses to "Re-thinking Investment Income Taxes"
Wealth is just differed consumption, differed income. A wealth tax punishes the contentious and rewards the spendthrift. If you don't think the rich pay enough taxes, adopt a progressive payroll tax and bleed them at the source:wages. Taxing wealth is wrongheaded, though your plan might be better than the status quo.
For the optimal tax regime, see this:
[…] Re-thinking Investment Income Taxes Share and Enjoy: […]
True. He has been in cigaapmn mode ostensibly his whole life. It is all he knows. Maybe he and his herd of sheep can explain to the rest of us how the wealthy got rich off the backs of the poor? If, as they claim, they don't have anything, how is that possible? The truth is there are fewer poor and more to come on the backs of entrepeneurs, innovators, and real taxpayers. But unlike entitlement whiners, the rich, for the most part contribute willingly.
An interesting proposal, Douglas. But your example is far from "middle class." I would like to hear an example for a guy making less than 30,000/year with a lot of credit card debt, an upside down mortgage, and no assets other than small appliances and such. This is your average American these days.
If you're only taxing wealth, would this guy pay any taxes at all?
Maybe this is where it starts, and as conditions improve, like the rising tide, even the lower class debtor class would rise out of poverty and when no longer under the oppressive thumb of the IRS, start to accumulate taxable assets.
But, I see a problem here: a new bureaucracy that might be just as bad as what we have now: Because, there would have to be some sort of "official" appraisal of value for property, artwork, financial products, stocks. If your 2% system has any hope of success, this office would have to be incorruptible, indisputable…and this is the sort of thing that government finds difficult if not impossible to manage.
But, all in all, I think it has merit.


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Late last year I gave a talk in London, "Dinosaur Bones: The End (and Ends) of Photo Criticism," in which, among other things, I bemoaned the fact that the newspaper and magazine industry has begun to replace specialized critics grounded in the visual arts (like me) with "cultural journalists," generalists with no depth of knowledge about anything in particular. I predicted dire consequences for intelligent, informed discourse about the arts in general and the visual arts specifically.
The example I used in that talk — simply because I'd chanced upon it serendipitously, it was recent, and it appeared in a UK publication — was Jane O'Brien's story, "Gertrude Stein celebrated at two Washington DC museums," posted at BBC News Online on October 14, 2011, which opens forthrightly as follows:
"I've often wondered whether approaching a subject from a standpoint of total ignorance sharpens my investigative powers, or whether it simply leads to inevitable embarrassment from which I'll never recover. That thought was uppermost when the National Portrait Gallery announced the opening of an exhibition on Gertrude Stein. Of course I'd heard of her — wasn't she that famous feminist who burned her bra in the 1960s? — But beyond that I really had no idea who she actually was."
As I said in London that November evening, "There you have cultural journalism in a nutshell, atypical only in the candidness with which its author confesses her incompetence for the task at hand and her editors' and publishers' willingness to lay on the table her lack of qualification for this assignment."
Now I'm able to direct your attention to a made-in-the-USA example of cultural journalism with contemporary photography as its subject: "Art photography: When 'reality isn't good enough,'" by Ashley Strickland, posted at CNN on August 11, 2012. Here's an excerpt:
"Ansel Adams, one of the greatest photographers of the 20th century, retouched his images. In the darkroom, Adams would burn his shadows darker and dodge the brightness lighter to create dramatic black and white photos."
Never mind that this does not in any way constitute "retouching," a specific way of altering negatives and prints that has nothing to do with burning and/or dodging during exposure. This example hardly does justice to the dramatic naïveté, enchanting ignorance, and sweeping pointlessness of Strickland's breathless venture into what for her is clearly new and unexplored territory. As with the O'Brien piece on Stein, its terrifying implications manifest themselves only after you consume the whole enchilada. Read it and weep. Don't say I didn't warn you when your train gets lost.
(You get what you pay for. According to a CNN bio note, "Ashley Strickland is an associate producer with CNN.com. She likes twisting her own soft pretzels, perfecting pineapple upside down cake, tackling English toffee, sharing people-pleasin' pizza dip, sunflower cheesecakes and green soup and cajoling recipes from athletes." Exactly.)
With the Chinese Communist Party heading towards its once-every-decade leadership change, the CCP's thousands of official censors nowadays work overtime to suppress public dissent in order to preserve the appearance of "social harmony" with which the upper echelons justify their dictatorship. They hope thus to ensure a superficially smooth transition, though in actual fact the torch will get passed over violently roiling waters.
The Bo Xilai-Gu Kailai scandal engulfing the current regime has already created severe disruption of the Party's image in the eyes of the Chinese public (not to mention the international loss of face for their cohorts in the ruling class). Apparently there's backstage infighting aplenty, though of course none of that makes it into the mainland Chinese media. To preserve the façade of apparent calm, the media — including the blogosphere — has also been forbidden to discuss Arab Spring and popular social unrest elsewhere in the world, out of fear that such discourse might spark comparable upheaval in China itself (referred to as a potential "jasmine revolution").
Yet the Chinese citizenry finds ingenious ways around the Great Firewall, in order to access sources of information from outside the mainland. And they demonstrate remarkable savvy in outwitting the censors via homonyms, codewords, double entendres, images, and other methods of voicing their opinions while maintaining plausible deniability if and when confronted by officialdom.
The latest example is the surge of popular support within China for the embattled Russian all-girl punk-rock protest band, Pussy Riot, given prison terms last week for protesting the ties between Vladimir Putin and the Russian Orthodox Church. According to some China-watchers who prefer to remain anonymous, the current Chinese fad for the wearing of "face-kinis" — lightweight beachwear masks ostensibly intended to keep your features fashionably pale in a country where suntanned equates with peasant — in fact constitutes a covert vote of support for Pussy Riot, whose trademark balaclavas have become iconic internationally, an ironic and surely unintended side effect of their persecution by Russia's unconstitutional but nonetheless thriving church-state alliance.
It's an extremely oblique (and thus very Chinese) way of signaling support of Pussy Riot — called in the Chinese media 暴动小猫, or Bao Dong Xiao Mao, which translates roughly as "Kitten Riot." The famous rift between the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China that began in 1960, with Nikita Khrushchev and Mao Zedong at the helms, has nominally healed, with normalization beginning with Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev's 1989 visit to Beijing. So these seemingly spontaneous "Free Pussy Riot" manifestations on China's beaches, obviously in opposition to Putin and his regime, certainly don't follow the current mainland kissy-kissy party line in relation to Russia.
Also, by supporting a group of nonconformist artists challenging the authority of the former KGB spy turned Russian politician and national leader, participation in the "face-kini craze" represents tacit support for dissident Chinese artists like Ai Weiwei and Liu Xia, viewed by the Chinese generally as the homegrown counterparts to Pussy Riot. The female band's objections to Putin's return to power via rigged elections last February doesn't differ that much from the demand by current imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize awardee and Liu Xiaobo (husband of the artist Liu Xia) for free elections in China.
Be that as it may, how do you object to or prevent people from donning beachwear ostensibly for the purpose of looking well-to-do while protecting themselves against skin cancer and jellyfish? I think Beijing will have a very hard time parsing this, and an even harder time figuring out how to put a stop to it. They'll have to hope that western journalists will continue to misunderstand this movement as a mere fashion fad until they find some way to clamp a lid on it. Good luck with that.
Subsistence Farming Update: Disaster struck our back forty (that's forty feet, not forty acres) early Sunday morning, August 26, around 2:30 a.m., as an abandoned house at 16 Grove Street, directly downhill from us, caught fire for the fourth time in six months. This five-alarm conflagration followed three others, two of them serious, on April 21, April 27, and July 4.
None of these did any serious damage to our house, though our rear windows got hot enough that a blast of cold water from a firehose cracked the exterior layer of one thermal pane. But we have most of our vegetable and fruit plantings — peppers, string beans, snow peas, cucumbers, squash, cantaloupe, eggplant, tomatoes, blackberries, a fig tree — just this side of a retaining wall between our property and the house below. The vines of some of these had wrapped themselves around the wrought-iron fence atop the retaining wall, so the rising heat scorched them, withering some of the leaves of the blackberries and the fig tree and cracking the bark on some branches of our Japanese maple.
Streams from the fire hoses created their own havoc, knocking eggplants and tomatoes off their stems and blowing one almost-ripe cantaloupe somewhere not yet determined. We're still not finished clipping off the damaged stems and leaves. No question that we've lost some of the bounty, especially the beans and snowpeas. And we'll have to enjoy some of it early; we had to harvest all the cantaloupes, grown with seeds from one I'd bought at our local supermarket.
But some things will recover quickly; we still have at least another month of good growing weather ahead. Some may go into shock (like the blackberries, I predict) but come back next year. And some, like our peppers, act as if nothing had happened. Nothing to compare with the devastating midwest drought, but we feel those farmers' pain.
While I've definitely experienced the impact of the recession, working as I do in the arts and education sectors of the economy, this nearby house and its sad fate represent my most immediate and tangible encounter with the consequences of the '08 meltdown.
Our neighbors, the previous owners of what's become this wreck, bought it in the '80s, improved it, took good care of it, lived there for two decades — then remortgaged it with the market at its peak, shortly before the housing crisis hit. Unable to make the new mortgage payments, they put it up for sale, couldn't find a buyer at any price, then decamped overnight, leaving it to the mortgage holder, Chase Home Finance LLC. Chase, a division of J. P. Morgan (one of the worst offenders in the vast toxic-mortgage scam that propelled the '08 crisis), doesn't care about it, so the place has been looted, and vandalized, and now burned. What was a solid, livable residence three years ago has turned into a blight, and a danger to our community.
We'll make our calls to the borough president's office, to put some pressure on, and with luck they'll come soon, tear it down, and cart it all away — it's now officially designated as uninhabitable, which marks it for demolition. However long it takes for that to happen, I'll keep you updated.
This post supported by a donation from the Estate of Lyle Bongé.


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Praise for Declan Burke: "Burke shows again that he's not just a comic genius, but also a fine dramatic writer and storyteller." – Booklist. "Proust meets Chandler over a pint of Guinness." – Spectator. "Among the most memorable books of the year, of any genre." – Sunday Times. "A hardboiled delight." – Guardian. "Imagine Donald Westlake and Richard Stark collaborating on a screwball noir." – Kirkus Reviews. "A cross between Raymond Chandler and Flann O'Brien." – John Banville.
Wednesday, July 23, 2014
Interview: Darragh McKeon, author of ALL THAT IS SOLID MELTS INTO AIR
Born in Tullamore in 1979, Darragh McKeon was only seven years old when the disaster took place. The obvious question is, why Chernobyl?
"Adi Roche's foundation brought kids from Chernobyl to Tullamore when I was about 12 or 13," Darragh tells me when we sit down in Dublin's Fitzwilliam Hotel. "Those kids were the first outsiders, or foreigners, I'd ever met. And I was really intrigued. I didn't understand anything about Chernobyl. I knew it was an event, and they were here for recuperation, but we'd get these little stories about their lives. They didn't speak English, obviously, and we didn't speak Russian, so we only got small details, but even the idea of them living in Soviet tower-blocks was fascinating – the tallest building in Tullamore was only three stories high.
"Then later I saw the documentary Black Wind, White Land, which Adi Roche made with Ali Hewson, and I remember them interviewing the farmers, who came back to the exclusion zone afterwards. A lot of them were old people, and the land was totally radiated and toxic and deadly, but it was home. The draw of the land was very powerful, and that really struck me – and that's a very Irish theme, we could instinctively respond to that. It was fascinating to me that the pull of home can be that strong that you'll give your life for it."
So began an obsession with Chernobyl which has culminated in All That Is Solid Melts Into Air, a novel that centres on Grigory, a doctor who arrives at the disaster site in the immediate aftermath; Maria, his estranged lover, and a proscribed journalist; and Maria's nephew Yevgeni, a teenage musical prodigy.
It's a fascinating tale, not least because the characters find themselves suddenly embattled by an invisible foe that is impossible to fight back against.
"I've been to Chernobyl since I wrote the book," says Darragh, "and I've talked to some nuclear physicists, and someone said a very interesting thing. He said radioactivity is silent, it's colourless, it's tasteless, we can't see it – none of our senses are attuned to picking up radioactivity. He said it's because that it wasn't part of our evolution, that those kind of man-made, highly toxic elements only came into existence about a hundred years ago.
"When you go to Chernobyl now," he says, "yes, it feels abandoned, and it feels like a momentous event in history happened, but that's it – you can't actually see it. It's not a war-ravaged landscape. It's actually a very peaceful place."
For a novel so impressively illuminated with images of terrible beauty, it was what McKeon couldn't see that proved most seductive to him as a novelist.
"With radiation, it's a long-term, completely invisible phenomenon, and that's quite interesting for a writer, because the kind of writing I like tends to get under the surface and explore the roots of things. And that whole [Chernobyl] accident happened under the surface. I mean, 9/11 happened and we all knew straight away, it was iconic, and some of the shock and horror of that event was its visual impact. But nobody even knew Chernobyl had happened until a radar in a facility in Sweden started going crazy days later."
Previously a theatre director based in London, McKeon has recently moved to New York. His experience in the theatre, he suggests, gives him an unusual perspective on writing fiction.
"When you're a director you're the audience's representative in the rehearsal room," he says. "And one of the things I learned very quickly was that if you're bored then the play's dead. I think I took that experience into my writing. Maybe I'll have a better sense of what's interesting and what's not, what's coming across well."
The nuclear meltdown at Three Mile Island in the US is mentioned in the novel, and McKeon also cites Robert Oppenheimer, 'tinkering with the atom in the deserts of New Mexico during the Great Patriotic War: I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.' He doesn't intend for the novel to be read as a cautionary tale, however.
"I wrote it out of curiosity, and from observation, and I tried to chart that line," he says. "I certainly didn't write it with an agenda. I think that's dangerous ground for a novelist. There's not really that many writers who can pull that off, combine a strong, artistically valid story and also have an agenda. George Orwell is maybe the only one. I was very careful to be as objective and neutral as I could be."
He applies the same care to his treatment of the clean-up operation that followed the disaster, when the Russian authorities – horrifically, perhaps, to a Western mindset – deliberately sacrificed lives for the sake of the greater good.
The novel offers a running commentary on perceptions of weakness and strength, albeit as seen through the eyes of the Russian and Ukrainian protagonists.
"I think we don't understand the Russian relationship with strength," he says. "We look at Putin with his shirt off and think he's naff, but there that kind of image is so important, it's ingrained. Something that I found really interesting was Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who wrote The Gulag Archipelago and was the great dissident writer of that period of oppression. He came back to Russia in Yeltsin's time, and when Putin was elected he said, 'Finally, we are going to be strong again.' Even Solzhenitsyn had this obsession with strength. So I tried to accept that as much as I could and not judge it."
McKeon is already working on his second novel, which will be set in South America, and believes he is unlikely to return to theatre.
"I did always want to write, and I think that I probably always felt that I was a writer, but you have to get to the age, I think, at which you have something to say. Or that you have enough experience to make it worth putting down on paper. Like most writers, I tried to write when I was in my teens, and I just didn't have anything to say. I didn't have enough life experience.
"I think at this stage I've figured out now that you are what you spend your time doing," he says. "I think you can't have it both ways – I kind of figured that out halfway through writing the book. So I may end up doing a show or two, but I'm a novelist now. I mean, it took me a long time to admit that to myself," he laughs, "so I might as well stick to it now." ~ Declan Burke
This interview first appeared in the Irish Examiner.
Tuesday, July 22, 2014
Monday, July 21, 2014
Review: THE SILKWORM by Robert Galbraith
Eyebrows were raised, first in surprise, but later in admiration, as The Cuckoo's Calling – which initially sold relatively few copies – went on to become an almost universally acclaimed bestseller. It also scooped the LA Times' Book Prize in the 'Mystery/Thriller' category.
Set in London during the bleak winter of 2010, The Silkworm (Sphere) is a sequel to The Cuckoo's Calling, and again features the private detective Cormoran Strike. A war veteran who lost a leg to an IED device in Afghanistan, Strike is a gruff, hulking but surprisingly sensitive soul who was named after a mythical Cornwall giant. His brush with death has left Strike physically and mentally scarred, but he is a proud man determined to live life on his own terms. Despite being belatedly acknowledged by his millionaire rock star father Jonny Rokey, Strike lives, as his straitened circumstances dictate, in a tiny flat above his office in Denmark Street.
Also returning from The Cuckoo's Calling is Robin Ellacott, the young woman Strike employed on a temporary basis to handle the paperwork, but who proved herself vital to the success of his previous investigation, and who now harbours serious ambitions of becoming a private investigator herself, despite the friction this causes with her fiancée, Matthew.
Proving, in The Cuckoo's Calling, that the model and socialite Lula Landry was murdered has made something of a minor celebrity of Cormoran Strike, and established a clientele that is for the most part composed of wealthy businessmen attempting to prove their mistresses' infidelity. Bored by their self-absorption, Strike is intrigued when he is approached by a rather dowdy woman, Leonora Quine, who wants him to find her missing husband, the author and former enfant terrible, Owen Quine. It's not the first time the impetuous Quine has folded his tent, and Leonora is sure that Quine's agent, or his editor, will be able to point Strike in the right direction.
Soon, however, Strike discovers that Quine has gone to ground because he has written a slanderous novel, titled Bombyx Mori – which translates as The Silkworm – in which vicious pen-portraits of his wife, editor, publisher, agent and peers are easily identifiable to anyone in the publishing industry. When Quine is discovered murdered in a vile fashion, and in a manner terrifyingly similar to the climax of Bombyx Mori, the police immediately suspect Leonora Quine. Determined to prove her innocence, Strike plunges into the murky world of literary publishing in search of the real killer.
It's hard to avoid the feeling that JK Rowling hugely enjoyed loosing her bluff, no-nonsense private detective on the literary world. Bombyx Mori represents hilariously bad literary fiction, an overwrought Pilgrim's Progress stuffed to the gunwales with classical references, necrophilia, cannibalism and sadomasochism. Strike, for all his size and bulk, moves carefully through this world, sidestepping the blades that regularly flash into the hands of the embittered cast of back-stabbing publishers, editors, agents and PR people. And then, of course, there are the literary authors themselves, all of whom seem to be involved in a complex Mexican stand-off fuelled by envy, insecurity, greed and mutual loathing.
All of which is good fun, if excessively caricatured, but even as Rowling weaves a satisfying complicated plot around a lurid cast of characters, her instinct is to place Strike and Robin front and centre. The investigators make for a fascinating pair, both individually and in tandem – both are struggling with personal relationships, which gives the 'will they / won't they' sub-plot an added frisson – and while there is very little that is new about this kind of relationship, that seems to be point: Strike and Robin make for a double act strongly reminiscent of Holmes and Watson, even if here it's Strike, rather than his assistant, who has recently returned wounded from Afghanistan. Indeed, the homage to the golden age of the mystery novel is evident throughout, not least when the denouement, with all the suspects present, takes place in a London club 'that had the feeling of a country house, cosy and a little scruffy.'
The novel also functions as something of a love letter to the city, or perhaps more accurately a well-thumbed and dog-eared London A-Z, as Strike limps his way down its mean streets and alleyways, lurching into a variety of pubs, clubs and restaurants, noting as he goes the more unusual sculptures and the less-travelled routes. These digressions, and the occasional poetic flourishes that see Strike on his way, are in stark contrast to the main thrust of Rowling's storytelling, in which the prose is as functional and direct in its devotion to advancing the story as Owen Quine's Bombyx Mori is meandering and prolix.
It is telling that Cormoran Strike sees fit, on a number of occasions, to remind us of his pragmatic philosophy in work as in life, which is 'to do the job, and do it well.' JK Rowling, as Robert Galbraith, has done the job and done it very well indeed. ~ Declan Burke
This review first appeared in the Irish Times.
Sunday, July 20, 2014
I Want To Live Like Roscommon People*
King House at 1pm on Saturday, July 26th.
Meanwhile, and if you're a dedicated fan of Irish crime writing, Sinead Crowley will be talking about her debut novel, CAN ANYBODY HELP ME?, on Sunday, July 27th. For all the details of the festival – which incorporates literature, film, comedy, classical music, drama and poetry – clickety-click here …
*With apologies, obviously, to all Pulp fans.
Meanwhile, and if you're a dedicated fan of Irish crime writing, Sinead Crowley will be talking about her debut novel, CAN ANYBODY HELP ME?, on Sunday, July 27th. For all the details of the festival – which incorporates literature, film, comedy, classical music, drama and poetry – clickety-click here …
*With apologies, obviously, to all Pulp fans.
Posted by Declan Burke at 8:22 AM No comments:
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Once again I bring you news from the old world!!! That would be the world when the word Photoshop might have meant a place where you go to buy a camera…or film. Adobe was a type of house construction in the southwest part of the US, and the phrase post-production was a place where they manufactured all kinds of posts.
It was a time when you had to create what you thought up in your mind in the camera, and you never gave it a second thought. Well maybe you did when you just might have bit off more than you could chew and couldn't translate what you were thinking onto an actual piece of film.
It taught a whole lot of us oldsters how to be really good photographers, and not really good computer artists or digital technicians; as is the case today. It seems to so many in my online classes with the PPSOP and in my "Stretching Your Frame of Mind" workshops I conduct around the planet that Photoshop and photography go hand in hand. That couldn't be farther from the truth. You don't need any kind of post-processing to be a good photographer. The same goes for all the new do-das, buttons, knobs, programs, modes, dials, histograms, flashing things on the back of your camera, and by the way, you don't even need auto-focusing. AF is a luxury, not a necessity.
YIKES, who new!!!!!
The above photo was taken for a new catalog that Rubbermaid Sundial Furniture was publishing. They gave me two truckloads of their new line of outdoor furniture to take up and down the coast of California to photograph any way I wanted. This above photo was taken at Pt, Reyes, which is close to San Francisco.
We took one of their new plastic designs that was waterproof and climbed down to where the waves were crashing against the huge boulders. After determining the size of the waves and the time between each one, we set the chair up and I waited until a wave had exploded behind the chair to snap the shutter. By using the readings from my Sunpath program and sighting where the sun was going to set with my Morin 20000 hand bearing compass, I knew that the waves were going to be backlit.
Visit my website at: www.joebaraban.com, and be sure to check out my 2013 workshop schedule at the top of this blog. Come shoot with me sometime.
Don't forget to send me a photo and question to: email@example.com


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What A Traditional Irish Coffee Mug Should Be Like
Irish coffee mugs are a beautiful and elegant way to serve any beverage, and most definitely the best way to serve traditional Irish coffee. Typically made of heavy crystal, although some more affordable varieties are available in heavy glass. They come in a variety of shapes but the most common is a tall, beer stein motif with a short, narrow 'wine glass' base.
The Irish coffee mug is most often used for the cousin to the 'hot toddy' Irish coffee. This blend of coffee and whiskey is delightful on a cold winter's night and is a traditional Irish remedy for a cold or the flu. Strong black coffee is poured into the Irish coffee mug, a shot of strong Irish whiskey is added to the mix, and then topped with a very generous amount of thick, rich cream. In a traditional Irish coffee the cream is not whipped but many chose to substitute whipped cream for thick regular cream.
Whether you are drinking Irish coffee or any other liquid refreshment, Irish coffee mugs add pizzazz to your experience. A beautiful set will make any service more enticing and they make a great conversation piece as well.
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Moscow is pressuring Ankara for guarantees for the implementation of the "Turkish stream"
The agreement on the construction of "Turkish stream", which for so long tried to negotiate Ankara and Moscow finally signed. Key plans to bypass Ukraine's gas pipeline is increasingly taking shape. However, the story of how long Russia is trying to persuade Turkey of the benefits of this project, it looks absurd.
Relations between Russia and Turkey exactly one year described a full circle.
"Recent events have clearly shown that placing a strategic goal, the Kremlin has persistently bends the line, despite any obstacles"
Just these days ago friendly for many years relations between the two countries began to sharply cool off in connection with the Russian military operation in Syria. It ended, as we know, the destruction of the Turkish air force Russian bomber, that he has transferred the situation of the freezing point to the ignition.
The past six months, relations between Russia and Turkey was gradually restored. New the starting point was apologize to Ankara for the downed aircraft, and a powerful impetus to bilateral relations received after a failed military coup. By many accounts, the Kremlin was directly put his hand to Erdogan to stay in power, by providing that crucial information at the right time.
The conclusion for the year was Vladimir Putin's visit to Istanbul to attend the world energy Congress, to meet with the President of Turkey and attend the signing of the intergovernmental agreement on the construction of "Turkish stream."
This trip, among other things, is highly symbolic for bilateral relations between the two countries.
Russia and Turkey share many topics of varying degrees of closeness and contradictions: from Syria to the food embargo, from the plant to the missile defense system.
However, Putin's visit demonstrated the priorities of Russia, and those in the relations with Turkey, obviously, is the "Turkish stream". That is, the creation of alternative ways of gas supply to Europe, South in this case, and deliverance from dependence on gas transit through Ukrainian territory.
Difficulties with the implementation of the "Turkish stream" appeared shortly after his sudden and triumphant announcement in December 2014. The reason was the bureaucratic delay in the Turkish side. As a result, even before the crisis in Russian-Turkish relations project by the end of summer 2015, in fact, was in a coma, and the subsequent sharp deterioration in relations gave observers reason to say that "Turkish stream" is dead, and Russia's attempts to diversify routes of gas supplies to Europe failed.
Recent events have clearly shown that placing a strategic goal, the Kremlin has persistently bends the line, no matter what obstacles (even such as being on the brink of war with the country-partner). And in the end gets her.
One can only guess what arguments are used by Moscow in dealing with such a difficult partner, Turkey. There is reason to believe that the Kremlin no longer relies solely on its good will and common sense.
Announcing the lifting of the food embargo and agreement on a discount on gas after signing of the intergovernmental agreement on the construction of two branches of the gas pipeline under the Black sea give reason to think that the Kremlin in its relations with Turkey now prefers to lay in the arrangement a sufficient number of fuses, guaranteeing the execution of the plan. The main declared in the agreement goal is the construction of "Turkish stream" by December 2019 must be made unconditionally.
The situation from a rational point of view seems absurd.
It would seem that Turkey as no one else was interested in becoming the largest gas hub, which will provide her additional leverage over the South (and not only) Europe. However, it almost torpedoed the project. Was lost more than a year, Russia required a lot of patience and a lot of additional efforts to return the project to work the rails.
The situation in a somewhat caricatured form repeats the Soviet practice, when the Soviet Union the whole country were directed, and sometimes an iron hand was in the "bright future". Only if in those days it was about idealistic projects, the benefit of which has not always been obvious, but now Russia has to maintain a particular pressure initiative is obviously beneficial for its partners projects: no, you will be the main gas hub for Europe, no, we're good neighbors with developed diverse relationships, and to fight will not.
In a sense, the history with the construction of "Turkish stream" is the clearest way demonstrates a decrease in the level of pragmatism and rationality in contemporary international relations. No difference with Europe, which the third year has been self-inflicted in the form of anti-Russian sanctions, is not here.
The question is whether Russia will be enough to work in such conditions, when almost each kind word need to be enforced by gun.


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"The forthcoming issue of KBR Magazine will be focusing on Treasuring Sibling Relationships. It is brimming with practical advice on this important topic. To whet your appetite for what it will contain, here are some thoughts on how you can love and bless your siblings."
"Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!"
(Psalm 133:1)
Guest Post by Acacia T.
Siblings are a special gift from God, yet in so many homes, relationships between brothers and sisters are strained. God wants us to dwell together in unity (Psalm 133:1). How can we promote peace and joy in the home?
Be humble.
Pride is the cause of most relationship struggles. Philippians 2:3-4 says, "Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory; but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves. Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others." Be willing to be "wrong," let your siblings make decisions, and put them first. You will be amazed at how quickly this will bless your relationship with them. As they see you genuinely care about them enough to put aside your own desires, they will respect you more.
Serve your siblings.
Paul goes on to say that Jesus, the Lord and Creator of all things, took upon Himself the form of a servant. How much more should we who are nothing without God, willingly serve our brothers and sisters? It is encouraging to keep in mind that when we do so, we are ultimate serving Jesus. Not even the smallest act of service done for the Lord will be overlooked by Him!
"And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me."
(Matthew 25:40)
Invest in their lives.
Our little brothers and sisters look up to us and follow our example. When we do our chores cheerfully, speak kindly, and honor our parents, our siblings will be encouraged to do the same. Psalm 127 says that children are a heritage from the Lord. May we be like Christ who said, "Suffer the little children to come unto me" (Mark 10:14). We can also invest in our siblings by spending time with them and doing things with them that they enjoy doing.
Respect them.
We should show respect to our siblings, accepting instruction meekly. Remember that the older ones often have more responsibilities, and look for ways to lighten their load. Philippians 2:3 says, "Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory; but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves." We should esteem our siblings, whether they are younger or older, better than ourselves.
Be sensitive to their struggles and needs.
When your sibling is having a hard day, be loving and kind. There could be more to their struggles that you see. Pray for them and be willing to listen. One thing I want to work on is asking my brothers and sisters how they are doing and being willing to share my heart also. When we are sensitive to our siblings, they will learn to trust us and share their burdens.
Most importantly, we need to keep our eyes on the Lord, Who makes all things possible (Matthew 19:26). Pray that He would fill your heart with love for your brothers and sisters and seek to be a blessing. These relationships are precious, and will last a lifetime, so let's treasure the time we have together!
"…by love serve one another."
(Galatians 5:13)
If you're interested in writing a guest post for KBR Ministries, click here.


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Why I Chose the "Borderless Income System" (says Ewen Chia)
As my business grew, I became very selective about the systems I promoted, because there's so much junk online.
So, when I found the Borderless Income System three years ago, I wanted to make sure it met my three main criteria:
To answer the first question, I looked at a metric called EPC (Earnings Per Click), which is gross sales divided by clicks.
If you haven't heard of EPC, here's an example:
Let's say you spend $100 on Facebook ads for 200 clicks, and make $500 in gross sales. That means you spent 50 cents per click, and made $5 per click, or a $5 EPC.
In order words … would you pay 50 cents to make $5?
Of course you would; that's like putting $1 into a vending machine and getting $10 back!
It's a very good return on your money.
To answer the second question, I researched the program, and made sure they honored their guarantees.
I also looked for testimonials, and confirmed their customers were happy.
I did this because my audience would not have been happy with me if I endorsed a bad program.
In this case reading is not a good choice – watch the video – click here or press these images.
In this short video, he'll tell you about the Borderless Income System, and how it met his strict criteria for High Sales, Good Fulfillment, and Affiliate Support.
You will like it because…
When you join today, you also get a personal coach.
Your coach will be an Internet Business expert, who has used the Borderless Income System to earn commissions themselves.
The company behind this system is willing to train and pay these coaches, because they know that coaching triples your chance of success.
And when you're more successful, that means more sales for the company (and more commissions for you).
It's a win-win.
So, as you go through the 21-step training, your coach will guide you and show you how to apply it.
They will answer your questions, encourage you, and push you to send more leads and increase your commissions.