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"Killed by Dessert," ah yes, sounds like a lovely way to go. Imagine the country's best pastry chefs serving you their favorite desserts all night in the company of other fellow sweets lovers. That's exactly what's going down at Momofuku Milk Bar Brooklyn on Monday, January 16.
Big-time chefs Michael Laiskonis, former executive pastry chef of Le Bernardin, Brooks Headley of Del Posto, among other notables, join Momofuku co-owner and chef Christina Tosi to bring you a culinary adventure you'll never forget. Experience ultimate decadence at a special pop-up dinner to be held at the Williamsburg location of Momofuku Milk Bar.
The chefs will personally introduce you to some of their favorite desserts in an intimate dining experience. Dessert with the finest in town--now, this is worth putting that New Year's resolution on hold for just one night. The list of the participating chefs include:
Bill Corbett, Executive Pastry Chef of The Absinthe Group
Brooks Headley, Executive Pastry Chef of Del Posto Restaurant
Christina Tosi, Pastry Chef/Owner of Momofuku Milk Bar
Francisco Migoya, Associate Professor of The Culinary Institute of America
Lincoln Carson, Corporate Pastry Chef of The Mina Group
Michael Laiskonis, former Executive Pastry Chef of Le Bernardin
Tickets cost $125 per person (includes beverages, excludes tax and gratuity) and the seating is limited to 50. Savory canapes will be served followed by two plated desserts from each chef. Net proceeds benefit Share Our Strength, a national organization fighting to make sure that no child goes hungry in this country. For ticket information, click here.


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Export 3 results:Author [ Type] Year
Filters: Author is Jones, L [Clear All Filters]
Conference Abstract
"Maximising dose efficiency in quantitative STEM to reveal the 3D atomic structure of nanomaterials", IMC19, Sydney, Australia. 2018.,
"Quantifying 3D atomic structures of nanomaterials and their dynamics using model-based scanning transmission electron microscopy", Spring Meeting of the EMRS, Nice, France. 2019.,
"Strategies for quantifying 3D atomic structures of nanomaterials and their dynamics using dose-efficient ADF STEM", PICO2019, Vaalsbroek, The Netherlands. 2019.,

subset: commoncrawl


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The world's largest annual human migration officially began this past weekend in China. Starting Saturday during this year's Spring Festival traveling period, also known as Chunyun, millions of travelers will be taking trains, planes and buses to various destinations all over the country.
Transportation services are preparing for an unprecedented amount of travelers this year. According to the National Development and Reform Commission, China's central planning agency, an estimated 3.41 billion people will be traveling this Chunyun, which will be the largest in China's history.
The mass rush of travelers will put China's public transportation and infrastructure to the test. Luckily for the Chinese, traveling domestically is now easier and more efficient than ever. New trains, including a newly unveiled high-speed railway, reaching new stops are expecting to see 225 million customers this season, a 4.6 percent increase from last year. The new high-speed bullet train has reduced the 22-hour trip from Beijing to the southern metropolis of Guangzhou to just 8 hours.
Train travel also seems to be growing as the preferred Chinese mode of transportation, resulting in huge lines at train ticket booths and crowds of travelers at train stations. As a result, several additional security personnel have been distributed in stations to assist travelers and help with crowd control.
The Chunyun travel season, which will last for 40 days, will end on March 6 and surround the main event, the Lunar New Year. This year, the first day of the Lunar New Year, or Chinese New Year, lands on Feb. 10 and will bring many Chinese in big cities back to their hometowns. Celebrations during the holiday typically last one week and include several holiday traditions.
Homes are thoroughly cleaned, ridding living spaces of any bad luck and making way for incoming good luck. Doors and windows are adorned with red paper banners and paper cutouts showing themes of happiness, longevity and wealth. On Chinese New Year's Eve, families gather for a traditional feast. In Northern parts of China, jiaozi, or steamed dumplings, are typically served at the celebratory meal. Over the course of the days-long celebration, people have plenty of time to meet with friends, family and co-workers, exchanging traditional foods, gifts and even money.


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Express. Home of the Daily and Sunday Express.
Martinez rues late free-kick
Wigan boss Roberto Martinez claimed his "magnificent" team had been denied victory against Tottenham by a wrongly-awarded free-kick.
The 18th-placed Latics, who would have moved out of the Barclays Premier League relegation zone had they hung on for all three points, instead had to settle for a 2-2 draw with Spurs at the DW Stadium after the ball bobbled off the unfortunate Emmerson Boyce into his own net in the 90th minute.
It had hit Boyce from a Tom Huddlestone free-kick that resulted from a coming-together between Spurs full-back Kyle Walker and his opposite number Jean Beausejour, and Martinez said: "If you see the replays, it puts extra salt in the wounds. It was not a free-kick - it should never have been a free-kick."
He added: "Kyle Walker is pulling Jean Beausejour and he is too honest, staying on his feet. We need to accept that - sometimes when you are down there, the results or the lucky breaks don't go your way."
Despite his disappointment at the way it finished, Martinez was keen to praise his players' efforts during a contest in which an early defensive blunder by the hosts had allowed Champions League-chasing Tottenham to open the scoring.
A hesitant exchange of passes between Latics defender Maynor Figueroa and goalkeeper Joel Robles in the ninth minute led to the latter cannoning an attempted clearance against the outstretched leg of the approaching Gareth Bale, and the ball rebounded straight into the net.
Wigan equalised within two minutes through a header from Boyce, whose late own-goal subsequently cancelled out the Callum McManaman thunderbolt that had put them 2-1 up four minutes into the second half.
Tottenham remain fifth with four matches to go, level on points with fourth-placed Chelsea and a point behind third-placed Arsenal. Sunday's fixtures see Chelsea play Swansea at home and Arsenal host champions Manchester United.
Asked whether he regarded the result as two points dropped or a point gained in the pursuit of Champions League football, Spurs boss Andre Villas-Boas said: "It depends on the results of our opponents. It is intimately related to that.
"We can still be in control of our own destiny or not after [Sunday's] results. Normally away from home a point is important at this stage of the season. When everybody needs three points, I think it is a difficult situation for teams. It all depends on what happens [on Sunday]."


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He was weepy last night, probably over-tired from his busy elementary-school day.
"I don't want you to die," he said, tears trembling in his eyes. "I'm so afraid to lose you. I want you to live forever."
I pointed out that it wouldn't be much fun for me to live forever, if he wasn't going to be there too. I would, however, try to live a good long life. Can't promise any better than that.
He wasn't reassured. "Don't leave me."
In a burst of inspiration, Star Wars came to my aid. Again.
"Of course I'll never leave you," I said confidently. "Remember, Obi-Wan never really left Luke. He was always there, watching over him, even after he died. Right?"
A little nod, a spark of hope. Bedtime business resumed its calm routine.
And I will always be with him.
Friday, February 5, 2010
I will always be with you
He was weepy last night, probably over-tired from his busy elementary-school day.
Posted by Saralee at 5:40 PM 1 comments


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Collegiate A Cappella in The NY Times and McSweeney's; A New Group; Survey
The ACB will return to regular posting in January 2011. In the meantime, some news bits:
-You know collegiate a cappella is hitting it big when it gets the satirical treatment in both The New York Times and McSweeney's in the same week.
-The Temple News posted this article about new co-ed a cappella group, OwlCappella.
-The 2010-2011 ACB Collegiate A Cappella Group Survey is live. We emailed invitations to every group we could find an address for, but are still eager to reach more folks. If you didn't receive an invite, or otherwise haven't answered yet, we welcome and encourage you to participate in the survey here.


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YAY!!! It's the last day of school for Kendall! Of course, we celebrate the last day of school EVERY year, but this year it's an even bigger celebration and a sigh of relief. Kendall had a really rough year, with a teacher who was...oh, how shall I say it...less than nurturing. Downright mean some days. Not any fun at all, really. If they were having a field day, or rally, or party of any kind, she did whatever she could to suck the fun right out of it for those kids. My happy-go-lucky kid was miserable and hated school by the third month. I am SO GLAD 4th grade is over for her! On to 5th and (hopefully) a better year!
So today, on my last day of semi-autonomy ( I still have Noah attached to my side), I am taking a moment to update here, then I plan to run around the house and pick up, make beds, start laundry, and clean up the kitchen before trying to fit in 30 minutes of yoga. Shower, head into town to pick up Noah's health form for his kindergarten registration, hit the bank, and then to Kendall's school for the last-day-of-school Arnett Howard concert...always a blast!
We leave for our big trip to the Canadian Rockies on Tuesday, so I am hoping to find the time to at least sit out clothes for the kids' suitcases and start thinking ahead for things we need to take, like swimsuits, goggles, base layers, fleece pullovers (yep, it's the mountains, people!), and small items to keep them busy on the long flight and even longer drive. Photography equipment. Snacks. Some Caribou coffee for Sarah...it's her favorite, and she can't get it in Canada. Time to start getting serious! Oh yeah, and I also have to reserve our car and hotel room for the first night. So much to do, and yet I sit here blogging.... :) Oh well...a few minutes won't kill me.
We had the 4th grade band meeting last week, where the band director talked to us about band, the benefits of playing an instrument, the camaraderie of the band, etc. I already knew Kendall was interested, so there was no shock when she wanted to go back this week for a "fitting". She had thought that she wanted to play the sax, but once we went through the whole fitting, she decided the clarinet was a better fit for her. I couldn't have been happier, since we actually have a clarinet that the neighbor girl gave Kendall a year or so ago. I had brought it with me to the fitting to have it checked out and they said it was in great shape and she was good to go. How lucky am I to not have to fork out $900+ for a new instrument? Soooooooo happy!!! For the record, I also would have been thrilled if she had chosen the flute...since we still have the one I played. I could have died when she said she wanted to play the sax! But that's the way it goes more times than not, probably. Whatever instruments you have are NOT the ones the kids want to play, LOL! So anyway, I'm feeling like I totally lucked out this time around. Woo-hoooo!
Other than that, there's really not anything super exciting going on around here. I've almost got my garden finished, now I just have to make sure Luke waters while we're gone. We planted strawberries, basil, chives, oregano, cilantro, mint, flat leaf parsley, tomatoes (5 varieties), turnips, parsnips, onions, lettuce, cabbage, leeks, canteloupe, peas, and green beans. I still have 2 beds to plant, which will house zucchini, cucumbers, and carrots. I'll be very happy to have that finished! And even more happy when we start to harvest! Well, actually, we've already had a mini-harvest...check out my flat leaf parsley and lettuce I cut the other night...
Crazy, right? Does anyone need any flat-leaf parsley???? What the heck am I going to do with all that? And there is still PLENTY out there. Holy moly.
Looks like it's going to be a gorgeous day, so I'd best get my work done and get moving...have a great day, peeps!
Thursday, June 02, 2011
1 comment:
- Kate said...
holy parsley, batman! you'll have lots of fresh breath in your house :)
i keep thinking of you when i place our peapod order every week b/c they now sell graeter's ice cream on there. raspberry chip, eh?
have a great trip!!
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WAYNESVILLE, N.C. — All lanes are open on Interstate 40 in the North Carolina mountains toward Tennessee after a rock slide over the weekend got cleaned up.
A state Department of Transportation spokeswoman confirmed Monday the two westbound lanes of I-40 in Haywood County are open after workers moved abut three dump-truck loads worth of rocks that fell from a slope onto the road's shoulder.
Traffic was narrowed to one lane near mile marker 7 so the debris that fell Friday night could be removed safely. The second lane re-opened Saturday evening.
NC DOT is telling motorists they may see above-average traffic congestion during the holidays, especially in areas near Asheville, Winston-Salem, Charlotte, Fayetteville and Raleigh from midday until the early evening.
Credit: The Associated Press.


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Change a drawing of a rabbit into a real live bunny!
Here is a wonderful comedy routine to produce a live rabbit- and it's SO EASY!
Show a black slate with a rabbit sketched on it. Put the slate into a slot in a wooden box, and open the front door of the box to show that the picture of the rabbit is the only thing in the box. Close the door, say a few "magic words" and - PRESTO! Open the box and take out a real, live rabbit!
Using a live animal in your show is a surefire way to get a fantastic reaction! And kids LOVE bunnies! This sturdy box is specially constructed to safely and securely produce a live animal. The box is a generous 14" x 11" x 9", but it is recommended that you use a dwarf rabbit or a baby rabbit, rather than a large adult rabbit, for the comfort of the animal.
You supply the live animal.Box is constructed of wood. Size is 14" by 11" by 9".
You could also use a live ferret or a dove with this box. You could still use the drawing of the bunny for a comedy effect (you put in a picture of a bunny, but take out another animal), or you could use a drawing of the correct animal instead of the drawing of the bunny. Use this trick as part of a full routine of producing, then vanishing the bunny. Use this trick to produce your rabbit, then use the Rabbit Wringer or other vanishing box to then make him disappear.
The cookie settings on this website are set to 'allow all cookies' to give you the very best experience. Please click Accept Cookies to continue to use the site.
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Pearls and Piggytails
Haddie - Bubblegum
$ 24.99
We recommend a gentle or hand wash cycle in cold water for machine washing. To extend the life of the flutter tanks please always lay flat to dry.
You will fall in love with these deep, vibrant, explosive colors. We want you to always enjoy these Flutter Tops and get the maximum life out of them so you may want to consider a vinegar soak before washing to extend the color life. Instruction on how to do a vinegar soak can be found on Heinz website http://www.heinzvinegar.com/tips/laundry-room
Please check measurements before ordering.
All sales are final. No returns or exchanges.


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He is an honest liar. And he is impressive! James Randi, former magician – or as he would like to be called performer – has made a name being the most formidable foe that magicians or psychics have ever faced. He is one of them – only brutally honest! He would tell the audience that he is going to lie to them, then lie to them and then tell them again that he lied to them, yet his audience will be left amazed. He had the arrogance in his personality and dexterity with his performance to call himself 'Amazing'; 'the Amazing Randi' quickly became a TV celebrity.
Challenging the fraudsters
His unwillingness to just lie low and let the powerful charlatans carry on their money-making tricks has made him more famous than ever. He has set up his own organization dedicated to exposing tricksters, claiming to have supernatural powers. There is a lot at stake too! The James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF) offers a prize of $1,000,000 to anyone who would prove that he/she is a psychic or a possessor of whatever supernatural power they claim! The prize has never been claimed since inception and, what more, many have backed out of the challenge; well-known TV charlatan and self-proclaimed psychic Sylvia Brown is one such example. So what's at stake for the people taking the challenge? Their entire reputation.
On TV in a grand style!
Now, Justin Weinstein and Tyler Meason are filming a documentary called 'An Honest Liar: The Story of the Amazing Randi'. This documentary will trace Randi as he does what he has been the best at doing – uncovering frauds. The film will track the adventures of "an Ocean's Eleven-type team for a carefully orchestrated exposure of a fraudulent religious organization", as Randi puts it. The documentary will also feature well known skeptics like Adam Savage, Richard Dawkins, Bill Nye and Neil deGrasse Tyson.
Watch the progress of the documentary below:
An Honest Liar – Work-in-Progress trailer from Justin Weinstein on Vimeo.
You just don't get away from the awesomeness of the Amazing Randi! He has exposed the best of the worst – people like Peter Popoff and Uri Geller. This is just his next victim!


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England's "West Country" has charm, scenery and better weather! Cornwall - the English Riviera? On the very south-western tip of England lies the beautiful county of Cornwall. With a delightful mix of superb beaches (among the best in Britain), outstanding scenery and charming towns, villages and … [Read more...]
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Begin quote It was so much fun! Surfing a wave back to shore was by far my favorite part!
San Diego and southern California offers some of the most spectacular coastal and ocean kayaking destinations in the country. Locally, La Jolla Shores is THE location to kayak. Tour the Seven Caves and paddle through La Jolla's Underwater Park where you can see seals, sea lions, dolphins and leopard sharks. This is a truly memorable experience and one of the top outdoor activities to do in San Diego.
San Diego Bay and Mission Bay are two other wonderful bodies of water to paddle. Both offer a protected location for beginners to enjoy, but are large enough for a moderate workout for those that want to cover a few miles. Mission Bay is home to two species of birds, the Least Turn and Great Blue Heron. Both can be seen nesting from the water. San Diego Bay has some famous residents as well. Green Sea Turtles can be found in South Bay during parts of the year.
Farther north, the Channel Islands National Park, also know at the Galapagos of N. America, offers one of the top kayaking destinations in the world. Rugged islands, towering cliffs, remote beaches and large sea caves are a few of the appealing features. One of the least visited national parks, the reward of paddling here greatly outweighs the difficulty in getting there.
Kayak Outings


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April 25, 1924 - February 18, 2013
Newburgh, NY
Alma Darrow, of Newburgh, NY and late of New Windsor, NY, passed away on Monday, February 18, 2013. She was predeceased by her husband, Milton.
Alma was an avid golf and tennis player, and with her late husband, Milton, was a member of both the Newburgh and Osiris country clubs, the Hollybrook Golf and Tennis Club of Pembroke Pines, Florida, and Congregation Agudas Israel.
She is survived by her children, Ellen and Joseph Rones of New Windsor and Lewis Darrow of Menlo Park, California; siblings, Lenore and William Krohn of Oceanside, New York and Bernard and Jeanne Waxman of Sarasota, Florida; grandchildren, Melissa Rones and Kelly McLaughlin of Winchester, Massachusetts, and Michelle and Mark Noble of Penn Valley, Pennsylvania, and Michael Darrow, Max Darrow and Holly Druocher of Menlo Park, California; great grandchildren, Abigail, Charles and Elijah Noble, and great grand dog, Max.
Funeral services were held Wednesday, February 20, 2013 at 10:30 a.m. at Congregation Agudas Israel.
Burial was in Congregation Agudas Israel Cemetery.
Funeral arrangements were by Christian D. Garrison of the Doulin Newburgh Funeral Home Inc. (845) 562-0068.


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Ottawa Collab Toastmasters
Ottawa, ON
Ottawa Collab Toastmasters exists to create community, enhance leadership and refine our communication skills. Join us as we build a new club to grow and learn together.
What is Toastmasters? Ever wonder how Toastmasters can benefit you?
Come and experience a free Toastmasters meeting in action!
FREE introduction meeting, come and see what we're all about, meet some new people and have some fun! We meet every week on Thursdays from 12pm-1:30pm.
For more info email firstname.lastname@example.com


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There are no Upcoming Shows listed for this artist.
Rudyard's British Pub
2010 Waugh Dr
Houston, TX 77006
Food, Beer, Music, Comedy, Darts. We have it all.
Rex Navarrete
Many claim that college is the turning point in one's life, when one finds his or her future. This was the case for San Francisco Bay Area comedian Rex Navarrete, when Navarrete's college professor told him he was wasting his talents. "He told me, 'Get out of my office-we shouldn't be joking here, you should be taking those jokes to the stage," recalls Navarrete of his Asian American Studies professor Dan Gonzales, the teacher who supported his dream to be a comedian in 1989. That spring, 19 year-old Navarrete was baptised by fire, entertaining a crowd of 800 at the annual Asian Pacific Islander Student Union conference at UC Santa Cruz. "I was looking for my identity then just as everyone else was at that age," says Navarrete. "Much of my material was very serious, it lacked comedy. I figured that I had some important stuff to say, so say it in the format of stand-up. This is where I started to take comedy as a vehicle seriously." By the early 1990's, Navarrete began seeing his routine evolve through the use of characters, many of whom were struggling underdogs. His portrayals, which ranged from his ESL teacher Mrs. Scott to his Uncle Boy and to Maritess the domestic worker, gave him the voice to air his thoughts on issues and speak about things that otherwise wouldn't be mentioned. Navarrete gathers all of his material from what he calls "real Rex moments," reality and shared life experiences. "I think everything has humor; you will always find humor. I don't always make stuff up. Even though most of my material is geared for a Filipino audience, if you're smart enough you'll understand the universality of it. Look at the comedy traditions of Jewish and African American comics, which are now the mainstream through Seinfeld, Bruce, Allen, Rock, Pryor and Murphy. Our struggles become our comedy." "My parents never knew I would become a comedian. They did think I would go on to become an architect or join the Army as I planned. I led a dual life; I would play the role of a Filipino at home and at school be the American with my classmates. I bought my first Eddie Murphy album in middle school and memorized 'Comedian' with my friends. That was my first real introduction to stand-up comedy and the art of storytelling." A lot has happened since then. Navarrete has performed his brand of comedy all across the nation touring numerous colleges, universities and community events. He has become a household name in Filipino American homes. In 1998, he released his first comedy CD entitled, "Badly Browned", which was followed by another CD in the summer of 1999, "Husky Boy". Both have become bestsellers on the Classified Records label and have brought high praise by listeners across the country. In the summer of 2001, he released his third CD album this time under his own label Kakarabaw Productions entitled, "Bastos". As a major follow-up to the three CD's and touring like crazy in Asia and North America, he produced, directed and released "Hella Pinoy", his first ever, live standup DVD concert. Shot in San Francisco, it has all the hidden goodies including a feature-length performance, a behind the scenes documentary, his early days of standup and much more. It's become a must have DVD in anyone's comedy collection. He currently travels all over North America touring cities such as Los Angeles, New York, Seattle, Houston, Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver and Hawaii doing his one-man show. In 2004, he brought his act to the peoples of Germany, Austria and Switzerland sharing the bill with renowned Philippine vocalist, Regine Velasquez. He has also had the distinction of becoming the most celebrated stand-up comic to perform to multiple sold-out shows in Manila, Hong Kong and Singapore since 2002. He regularly returns to Manila, which has become fertile ground for his style of stand-up, inspiring the growth of an emerging local stand-up comedy scene. His next plan of attack is to perform in Australia and the United Kingdom, where fans eagerly await his arrival. In late 2005, the release of his sophomore DVD entitled, "Badass Madapaka!", showcases Navarrete on his Pacific region tour of Los Angeles, San Francisco, Honolulu and Manila. This will be the first international tour DVD by any Filipino-American artist. The San Francisco show was taped in front of a sold-out house at the historic Warfield Theater in downtown. The Los Angeles taping filled up the also historic Wiltern LG Theater. One will truly be able to experience Rex's fan-base from all angles. His other current projects include his own television series, "Rex In The City", for MTV Philippines, which shares his stand-up talents to a younger, hipper TV viewing audience throughout the Philippines. For the upcoming animated series in 2006, "The Nutshack", Navarrete voices many of the series' key characters in this groundbreaking Filipino-American animated production. Navarrete remains to be a one of the hardest working, relatively unknown American comedians today though he's performed alongside notable national headliners as George Lopez, DL Hughley, Paul Mooney, among others. He does plan to release a number of other comedy albums on CD and DVD's under his label for fans to enjoy in the future. Presently, he lives on the island of Oahu in Hawaii where he just loves to relax quietly, swim and fish when he can. The future seems to only give him the chance to connect with a larger audience that is now finally getting the opportunity to witness the changing face of American stand-up comedy. All three CD's and both DVD's can be purchased online at www.brownjungle.com. Kakarabaw Productions photos by Jo Avila, BJ Formento & Nerinna Valera. Illustration by Andre Sibayan.


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"The Oasis of Now" by Sorab Sepehri [Why This Book Should Win]
We're only hours away from announcing the two winners of this year's BTBA awards, but it's never too late to promote one of the finalists. The piece below was written by BTBA poetry judge, Bill Martin.
The Oasis of Now by Sorab Sepehri, translated from the Persian by Kazim Ali and Mohammad Jafar Mahallati (Iran; BOA Editions)
One of the books that surprised and impressed me most from this year's BTBA poetry submissions was Sohrab Sepehri's The Oasis of Now, translated by the American poet Kazim Ali and the Iranian scholar of religion Mohammad Jafar Mahallati. Like most readers of English, I was unfamiliar with the work, because like most Persian-language writers, Sepehri—who was born in 1928, lived most of his life during the reign of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, and died in 1980, a few months after the revolution—is practically unknown in Anglophony. But something of his poetics, I've since discovered, has long been available "in translation" in the films of Sepehri's countryman Abbas Kiarostami, a staple of film festivals and world cinema courses. The muted colors and rustic life-world, simple narration and gentle irony of Kiarostami's first international success, Where is the Friend's Home? (1987), for instance, can be understood not only as opening a view onto everyday life in Iran—which was my primary takeaway when I saw it many years ago—but as enacting a philosophy that the filmmaker and the poet shared (the film's title is a line in one of Sepehri's canonical poems, "The Address," which is included in this book). According to Hamid Dabashi, who has written at length about this connection, Kiarostami's faith in immediate observation and the "fictive lucidity of the real" can be attributed to the influence of Sepehri's poetry (and probably of his painting as well—he was equally well known in his lifetime as a visual artist).
Historically American readers have tended to understand literature from politically repressive countries unaffiliated with the United States mainly in terms of its political value, without reflecting on the ways in which our own reading practices are ideologically determined or inflected. What this may mean for literary translation and the place of world literature, of translated poetry, of a book like this, in the US, is a question at the back of my mind in reading it. Sepehri's work does not ask to be understood "politically"—by contrast with other poets of his generation like Farough Farrokhzad and Ahmad Shamlu—because his domain is the lyric subject's engagement with nature and his mode is highly deflective even in its insistence on a kind of affective immediacy. Nevertheless, this poetic itself has come to be understood in political terms. Dabashi puts it in a nutshell: "Sohrab Sepehri cut through the thick politicization of his age to grasp a primal moment of wonder in the world." And this may also be a key factor in his translatability. Although Kiarostami's Iran of the eighties, a fundamentalist theocracy hobbled by a war instigated by its (then US-backed) neighbor Iraq, was far different from the country Sepehri lived in a decade and more earlier (when he was criticized for not taking a stand against the abuses of the—then US-backed—Pahlavi regime), their mutual embrace of the primacy of perception may have provided existential coherence in a time and place disorganized by political ideology. Is that coherence available to us, English-language readers, disorganized (or organized—you choose!) as we are by capitalism? Can "primal moment of wonder in the world" ever be anything other than a commodity for us market segments? And what would it mean for this poetry to win a prize endowed by a megacorporation as part of its brand positioning? (A lot of money, that's what!)
Well, there are universal values, and translation is possible. Something that Dabashi hints at and another scholar, Massud Farzan, addressed forty years ago as crucial to Sepehri's work is, in addition to the influence on it of Buddhism, its connection to Sufi apophatic theology, the "via negativa . . . the cleansing of the heart's and mind's mirror of its dust and grime." This mystical affiliation informs the frame that Ali and Mahallati give his work in the introduction to the book, and also affirms the fantasy I had in reading him of an affinity with Tomaž Šalamun, another poetic descendent of Rumi. (I imagined a genealogy involving other poets on the American scene, too: Whitman, Dickinson, Rilke, Trakl, Lorine Niedecker, Robert Lax, Gary Snyder, Fanny Howe; but none seemed so closely related.) Like Šalamun's poetry, Sepehri's cleaves and coheres at odd angles to the Anglophone avant-garde. But while Šalamun refracts sense paratactically and with scintillating speed, Sepehri is much slower, tellurian, more liable to syntax, haunting, his epiphanies so figurative and deliberate they often come across as platitudes. Yet the experience of reading him is more robust, ample, and structured than it may appear at first sight:
Beyond the poplars
sweet innocence beckons.
I paused by the stand of bamboo to listen as the wind susurrated through.
Who was speaking to me?
A lizard slid into the water. I walked on.
Hayfield, cucumber patch, rose bush, oblivion . . .
At the stream I doffed my sandals to dangle my feet in the water.
How alive I am,
how green like the garden.
So what if sadness creeps down the mountain slope?
Who is that hiding behind the trees?
Only a water buffalo grazing.
Like most of the poems in The Oasis of Now, this one, "Golestaneh," reads like a rehearsal of reverse apperception, with the "human position" of the subject reconceived in relation to nature through repeated gestures—questions, reappraisals, simple descriptions, epiphanies—a repertoire of moderated ecstasy. This poetic redirection of the subject toward nature, or as Jonathan Skinner has put it, this "turning of the poem out of doors" and the "extending and developing" in these poems of the "perception of the natural world," that signals the potential inspiration of Sepehri's work for ecopoetics. This is not a book that immediately announces itself as avant-garde or new, it does not brandish its modernism, and does not in fact seem so easily commodifiable, but the more time one spends with it, the more it astonishes and yields.
The Oasis of Now is made up of three sections of Sepehri's poetry from the mid-1960s, the high point of his career, which followed on his encounter with Buddhism and coincided with extensive travel in China and Japan, India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. It begins with the long poem "Water's Footfall" (Ṣedā-ye pā-ye āb, 1965), which Omnidawn published as a bilingual chapbook in 2011; the midsection comprises the 25 poems of the book "A Measure of Green" (Ḥajm-e sabz, 1968), which as Houman Sarshar points out, in his excellent Encyclopaedia Iranica entry on Sepehri, was written between 1962 and 1967 and "comprises virtually all of Sepehri's best-known and most anthologized works" (a translation of this book by David L. Martin was published in 1988); and it wraps up with another long poem, "The Traveler" (Mosāfer, 1966). Sepehri's collected works, "Eight Books" (Hašt ketāb, 1978), included everything already published along with a previously unpublished series of poems, Mā hič, mā negāh—a title that is basically untranslatable but means something like "We are nothing but looking," as Kazim Ali says in the interview below. Sarshar also points to the influence on this final phase of Sepehri's poetry of Ralph Waldo Emerson's essay "Nature," and to the echo in this title of Emerson's line: "I become a transparent eyeball; I am nothing, I see all." Hopefully English-language readers will be able to read more of Sepehri's remarkable and important work very soon.
I was curious to hear more about the translation of Sepehri's work in preparation for writing these ruminations, so I conducted a brief interview with Kazim Ali over Skype last week. Here it is:
WM: How did you come to Sohrab Sepehri's poetry?
KA: My father, in around 2002–2003, was working in Iran on an international hydroelectric dam project, which is what he does. And he asked me what I would like him to bring back as a gift. I said I'd love to read some Iranian poets. So he brought back some volumes of poetry that had been translated into English from Farsi, but published in Iran in a very basic translation. I didn't think too much of it, although I recognized that there was a mystical aspect that was appealing to me, in terms of the work that I do myself. It wasn't until a while later that my partner, Marco, who is a photographer, needed text for a project he was working on, and took the book off the shelf and read this couplet out loud to me, which as I later learned is an iconic Sepehri couplet: "I am a Muslim, the rose is my qibla." I thought it was actually very beautiful, and I often thought of that line and quoted it and other lines from the same passage later on. But I didn't think about doing a translation of Sepehri's poetry until several years later when Poets' House and City Lore, two institutions in New York City, held their "Poetries of the Islamic World" event [in May 2011].
In preparation for that event, I felt like, even though they had invited me as an American Muslim poet, I wanted to bring something from the Muslim world. Particularly because the Cold War against Iran has not only been a political Cold War, but has had a cultural impact as well, in terms of its cultural isolation. So I thought I would bring some Iranian poets to the attention of the American audience. Because, as you know, it is a very ancient and storied literary culture, I mean it's incredible, the literature of Iran and literature in Farsi, the classics, everything. And not just literary culture, but visual culture and music, all of it. I was thinking of what has happened with the cultural damage and fallout from the Iraq invasion, and the horror of something like that happening again. So there was a political motivation for me. I really wanted to get something of Iranian literature to American readers so they that they can better understand what this country is about.
Luckily for me, I have a colleague here at Oberlin, Jafar Mahallati, a wonderful scholar in the Religion Department, who is very interested in Iranian poetry. I asked him if he would be interested to tackle this with me, and we sat down and did it. I had the old, bad translation to work from, and he and I would sit together and he would recite the Farsi to me, and we would talk through the poem and all the different nuances. You know, with Sepehri there are so many different layers of meaning, oftentimes we would be very confused by the images and metaphors he was using and have to tease out the multiple layers. He uses lots of images of birds and plants and stuff like that. And Jafar would say something like, "Well, you know, the interesting thing about this plant is that it only blooms in the nighttime, so Sepehri is saying such and such by using it." So we would spend an hour on a page of poetry, just talking through it. And then I would go and create it as an English poem. And then I would send them to him and he would say, "This is great," or "this image is not exactly right," that sort of thing. We did the whole book like that together. The final part, "The Traveler," I did mostly on my own. But he did go through it, so it was a collaboration from beginning to end.
WM: The book you got from your father, from Iran, was that a single volume of Sepehri's work, or was it his work in an anthology?
KA: It was two books of his in one: the long poem "Water's Footfall" and another book which we've translated as "A Measure of Green." And there was another volume as well, which we're working on now, which had two more books of Sepehri's in it. One of them is "The Traveler," which went into The Oasis of Now; and the other is a book with a title that is very hard to translate, but means something like "We are nothing but the looking" or "Our life itself is an observation." It's like Emily Dickinson's line "As all the Heavens were a Bell, and Being, but an Ear." But with Sepehri, being is a looking. We don't know how we're going to translate the title. This is the problem when working on Sepehri, it's all very esoteric and metaphysical and philosophical.
Sepehri had six collections of poetry that he published in his lifetime, and then included two sections of new poetry in his collected works, Eight Books. We're just working our way through it. We'd like to finish his body of work, but it's going to be a long project.
WM: You mention Dickinson. Another poet I thought of when reading the book was Rilke, in terms of a kind of embodied metaphysics in Sepehri's poetry. And I thought of the way American poetry was saturated with Rilke in the 1980s, and also of the presence here of a poet like Tomaž Šalamun, and this made me wonder why Sepehri isn't more available in English, and where you see Sepehri's home on the American poetry scene.
KA: There are actually other recent English versions of Sepehri out there. Sholeh Wolpe, who has published translations of Farough Farrokhzad both here and in England, has done some of his work. Kaveh Bassiri and Jean Valentine did a handful of his poems together. The poet Robin Magowan has also done some. So some individual poems have been translated by different people here and there, but yes, The Oasis of Now and the Omnidawn chapbook are the only full books available here. I feel very personally connected to Sepehri's work, as a poet who is invested in the metaphysical stuff, and someone who is steeped in the religious tradition as well. Sepehri was an iconoclast in a sense, he wasn't part of the Muslim orthodoxy. That line "I am a Muslim, the rose is my qibla," is an ironic line, in a way, but I feel there is a deep sincerity under the skin of irony. Sepehri often plays fast and loose with literal meanings and metaphorical meanings, flirting with the ordinary and quotidian and turning it into a mythical condition. Working with a native speaker has allowed me to really get underneath the skin of those lines and find a universality in them.
As for finding a home for his work on the American scene, one of the criticisms that we've gotten so far, in a review in American Poetry Review, was that I made Sepehri sound too American, or something like that. But there is something about the postmodern American lyric that's very close to the classical poetics of disjunction that exists in Farsi and Arabic poetry. You know Adonis, the Syrian poet? He wrote an interesting piece on modernism in the Arab world, where he said that, "Our modernist moment in Arab literature happened in 700 A.D." What happened to British and American literature in modernism in the 20th century was already happening in the Arab world in the 700s. So their classical literature is like our postmodern literature. The ghazal and all these other forms, which are centered around the notion of disjunction, came out in 1700–1800 over there; and their contemporary lyric has a lot of affinities with what's happening now in contemporary American literature. So as far as Sepehri sounding American, I can see that.
WM: Is there anything else about Sepehri, about the book, that you would want people to know, in terms of framing it, its reception in English?
KA: Sepehri is one of the major figures of 20th century Iranian literature. Like a Whitman or Robert Frost. You know how "the road less travelled" is a line from Frost—the same thing goes for Sepehri. People quote him in everyday life situations. When we were preparing the introduction, we discovered that a newspaper in Afghanistan had just used a line of his for the headline of an article on religious intolerance—it was the line that goes "We have to rinse our eyes clear of habit so we can actually see"—and it was unattributed because everyone knows it. Sepehri is a great window into a certain type of contemporary, progressive Iranian thought. Which people here don't think exists. So I'm really glad that the book got out there. I'm very grateful to BOA. I mean, they rushed it; they took the book in February and published it in October. So I'm really grateful to them for seeing the importance of the book and getting it out there, and I'm grateful to every organization that's promoting it, because I think it's very important to engage with literature from this part of the world now.


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STORIES FROM THE HEART: Internet's `PirateGray' fighting heart disease in honor of her dad
Grayson Burger grew up watching her father struggle with heart problems.
The last few years, the 20-year-old from South Brunswick, N.J., has been building a career out of her online persona: PirateGray.
In December, she combined her passions to produce a video about her dad's fight and the American Heart Association's […]


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St. Bonaventure has chosen the nonfiction book "Just Mercy" by Bryan Stevenson as its common read for 2015-2016. This All Bonaventure Reads selection explores the inequity embedded in the U.S. criminal justice system.
"Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption" was released in October and focuses mainly on the work of the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Ala., a legal practice Stevenson founded as a young lawyer that is dedicated to defending those most desperate and in need.
One of Stevenson's first cases was that of Walter McMillian, a young man who was sentenced to die for a notorious murder he insisted he didn't commit. It transformed the lawyer's understanding of mercy and justice forever and illustrates numerous ongoing challenges in work advocating for social justice.
About the author
7 p.m. | Monday, Oct. 26
Address by: Anthony Ray Hinton (above, right), an exonerated death row inmate, and Charlotte Morrison, senior attorney with the Equal Justice Initiative
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After last year's drought, lawns may need help this year
With all of the rain this week, lawn businesses will be ramping up because many front yards will struggle.
On Milwaukee's east side, people can see the grass again. Rick Halverson knows what that means for his East Side Lawn Care.
"It's very busy right now," Halverson said.
But before your fire up the lawn mower, there are some things you need to know.
Lawn care experts said they love the rain right now; this was not the case last summer.
"Last year, we had a serious drought because we had about three months where the grass literally died because there was so little rain," Halverson said.
Homeowners probably have to spread seed on bare spots.
"After you put the seed down, put a little bit of straw," Halverson said. "That'll not only keep the moisture in, but that'll keep the birds and other varmints from eating your seed."
Peter Sawchuk also shared Consumer Reports' to-do list so a lawn looks great without spending too much money.
"Certainly there are some things you can do to save. First, people over-fertilize. People tend to fertilize three and four times a year. You can really get away with doing it twice a year," Sawchuk said.
Before using the lawn mower, clean it out.
"Secondly, get the old fuel out, and replace it with new fuel that has stabilizer in it," Sawchuk said.
Change the oil in the lawn mower, too.
"That's very important because engine life goes down as the oil level goes down," Sawchuk said.
Last year's drought may have ruined some lawns so badly that new sod will be needed.


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Saturn's moon Rhea may also have rings
The Cassini spacecraft has found evidence of material orbiting Rhea, Saturn's second largest moon. This is the first time rings may have been found around a moon.
A broad debris disc and at least one ring appear to have been detected by a suite of six instruments on Cassini specifically designed to study the atmospheres and particles around Saturn and its moons.
"Until now, only planets were known to have rings, but now Rhea seems to have some family ties to its ringed parent Saturn," said Geraint Jones, a Cassini scientist and lead author on a paper that appears in today's issue of the journal Science. Jones began this work while at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Katlenburg-Lindau, Germany, and is now at the Mullard Space Science Laboratory, University College London, UK.
Rhea is roughly 1500 km in diameter. The apparent debris disc measures several thousand kilometers from end to end. The particles that make up the disc and any embedded rings probably range from the size of small pebbles to boulders. An additional dust cloud may extend up to 5900 km from the moon's centre, almost eight times the radius of Rhea.
"Like finding planets around other stars, and moons around asteroids, these findings are opening a new field of rings around moons," said Norbert Krupp, a scientist with Cassini's Magnetospheric Imaging Instrument from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research.
Like finding planets around other stars, and moons around asteroids, these findings are opening a new field of rings around moons
Since the discovery, Cassini scientists have carried out numerical simulations to determine if Rhea can maintain rings. The models show that Rhea's gravity field, in combination with its orbit around Saturn, could allow rings that form to remain in place for a very long time.
The discovery was a result of a Cassini close fly-by of Rhea in November 2005, when instruments on the spacecraft observed the environment around the moon. Three instruments sampled dust directly. The existence of some debris was expected because a rain of dust constantly hits Saturn's moons, including Rhea, knocking particles into space around them. Other instruments' observations showed how the moon was interacting with Saturn's magnetosphere, and ruled out the possibility of an atmosphere.
Evidence for a debris disc in addition to this tenuous dust cloud came from a gradual drop on either side of Rhea in the number of electrons detected by two of Cassini's instruments. Material near Rhea appeared to be shielding Cassini from the usual rain of electrons. Cassini's Magnetospheric Imaging Instrument detected sharp, brief drops in electrons on both sides of the moon, suggesting the presence of rings within the disc of debris. The rings of Uranus were found in a similar fashion, by NASA's Kuiper Airborne Observatory in 1977, when light from a star blinked on and off as it passed behind Uranus' rings.
"Seeing almost the same signatures on either side of Rhea was the clincher," added Jones. "After ruling out many other possibilities, we said these are most likely rings. No one was expecting rings around a moon."
One possible explanation for these rings is that they are remnants from an asteroid or comet collision in Rhea's distant past. Such a collision may have pitched large quantities of gas and solid particles around Rhea. Once the gas dissipated, all that remained were the ring particles. Other moons of Saturn, such as Mimas, show evidence of a catastrophic collision that almost tore the moon apart.
"The diversity in our Solar System never fails to amaze us," said Candy Hansen, co-author and Cassini scientist on the Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrograph at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), USA. "Many years ago we thought Saturn was the only planet with rings. Now we may have a moon of Saturn that is a miniature version of its even more elaborately decorated parent."
These ring findings make Rhea a prime candidate for further study. Initial observations by the imaging team when Rhea was near the sun in the sky did not detect dust near the moon remotely. Additional observations are planned to look for the larger particles.
Notes for editors:
These findings have been reported in 'The Dust Halo of Saturn's Largest Icy Moon, Rhea' by Jones et al. in today's issue of Science.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the ESA and the Italian Space Agency. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, USA, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. ESA developed the Huygens Titan probe, while ASI managed the development of the high-gain antenna and the other instruments of its participation.
The Magnetospheric Imaging Instrument was designed, built and is operated by an international team led by the Applied Physics Laboratory of the Johns Hopkins University, USA.


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Matt Talbot Bridge in Dublin, December 2010. Image Anthony McEvoy
irishweatheronline.com | Jun 20, 2011
By Mark Dunphy
A UK-based long range weather forecaster has issued a severe winter weather warning for 2011-2012. The advisory has been issued following one of the coldest winters experienced in Ireland and Britain more than 45 years.
James Madden from weather organisation Exacta Weather correctly predicted the harsh conditions experienced over the last two years, and is once again forecasting record breaking snowfall and freezing temperatures during November, December and January.
One of Madden's primary methods of analysing long range weather conditions is his analysis of solar cycles. Last week Irish Weather Online carried a story from the National Solar Observatory (NSO) and the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) stating that a missing jet stream, fading spots, and slower activity near the poles are signs that our Sun is heading for a rest period even as it is acting up for the first time in years.
Dr. Frank Hill, associate director of the NSO's Solar Synoptic Network, said of the results: "this could be the last solar maximum we'll see for a few decades. That would affect everything from space exploration to Earth's climate.
National newspapers, including the Irish Independent and Irish Times, subsequently carried stories warning that a decrease in solar activity will bring Arctic Winters to Ireland and Britain over the coming decades.
Commenting on the solar cycle, James Madden said: "Periods of low solar activity at present and what we have seen in recent years influence the Earth's atmosphere by allowing the stratosphere to cool. This has a somewhat more profound effect over Northern Europe and the UK in terms of colder and snowier winters, due to jet stream patterns that block warm air from reaching us and create more moisture."
"Although sunspot activity has increased somewhat this year and there has been an increase in solar flare activity, the activity is minuscule in comparison to what it should be like during a solar maximum and in terms of frequency. Periods of low solar activity such as this have future repercussions of low solar activity in future cycles and produce extra cloud cover that reflects sunlight with a cooling influence on Earth. The lack of major sunspots and solar flares clearly indicate a slower conveyor belt within the sun. We are now in a very weak solar maximum and my observations indicate that the next solar cycle will also be weak", he added.
Commenting on La Nina and the Gulf Stream/North Atlantic Drift and their effect on our weather, Mr. Madden stated: "It is visible to see from recent NOAA satellite images that the Gulf Stream/North Atlantic Drift has drastically altered within the last few years. The Gulf Stream is basically a huge volume of heated water that brings warmth to the UK in terms of a mild atmosphere. This softens the climate we experience for the latitude we lie on. For example let's take Newfoundland who lie on a similar latitude to the UK, yet they experience much harsher winters as they do not benefit from this valuable heat source.
"La Niña is the cooling of the Pacific Ocean near the equator and influences changes to atmospheric pressure and wind changes. In terms of the UK this makes the jet streams in the North Atlantic stronger and therefore offers more precipitation in the form of widespread heavy snowfall during below average temperatures as cold easterlies dominate", he explained.
Mr. Madden also said that the dust and ash particles released by the recent volcanic eruption in Iceland and Chile would also contribute to cooling down of global temperatures. He continued: "Converted sulphur dioxide emissions from volcanic eruptions can also cause sunlight reflection in the atmosphere. "
He said he expected the 2011-2012 winter to follow a similar pattern in terms of how November and December was in 2010 for the vast majority of the coming winter.
"It will be exceptionally cold and snowy with well below average temperatures. I fully expect to see records broken with the highlands of Scotland being once again particularly hard hit. It is therefore vital to start preparing now in terms of high energy bills and raising awareness amongst the most vulnerable and elderly people of society", Mr. Madden concluded.


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Lost the last 2 weeks. Would've won had I started Stewart 2 weeks ago and CJ last week.
QB : Phillips Rivers
RB : CJ Anderson
WR : Alshon Jeffrey
WR : Allen Robinson
TE : Gronk
FLEX : Christine Michael
FLEX : Jimmy
K: Vinatieri
DEF: Seahawks
Bench: Ty Montgomery, Travis Benjamin, Jonathan Stewart, Devonta Booker, Cole Beasley
Someone dropped Willie Snead. Should I attempt to get him through waivers? Drop Beasley? Rawls was also dropped a few weeks ago and is available. With what Pete said yesterday, he is one week away. Christine is not the answer and Rawls may come back and beast out a la last year. Is he worth a snatch at the expense of Beasley?


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Friday, October 17, 2008
Albino Squirrel Visits Our Yard
We have lived in our current home for almost 13 years now, and despite the yard being full of trees, (all of which we planted, or had planted) I have only ever seen 3 squirrels here, which is a-okay by me, as I am afraid of the little creatures! (Years ago, when I was 17, I was chased by a rabid one...STOP LAUGHING... It was outside at a home I was visiting. At first I thought the squirrel was just friendly, but then I saw the madness behind its beady little eyes. As I walked away, it started to follow me, the faster I walked the faster it followed, and when I took off running, it chased me in fast pursuit! As I approached the front of the house, I lunged for the handle of the home's screened porch door, racing through the threshold and yanking the door closed behind me. At this very moment the crazed squirrel took a flying leap through the air, and landed on the screened door, spread eagle and at face level! Again... STOP LAUGHING! It was very traumatic! Had it not been for that door being there right at that moment that nutty squirrel would have been hanging on to the back of my head, with it's sharp little claws wrapped around my face!! We had to beat it off of the screen door with a shoe! I have had the willies for squirrels ever since... can you blame me!?!)
Anyway, 2 of those 3 squirrel sightings took place this week, and imagine our surprise when one of them turned out to be an Albino Squirrel! (Yes,she has red eyes!)
Despite my fear of squirrels, I feel intense maternal urges of protection for this little one, and have been thrilled that it has visited our yard several times now. We have named her Snowdrop, and I hope that she will find protection and happiness here, living in peace with the bunnies, (and me)!
Forgive these pretty awful pictures... it is the closest that I have been to a squirrel in sometime, and I feel terrible because I unintentionally scared her... poor thing. She was getting nervous with my photography, and made a sudden dash down the tree. I screamed like a cat with it's tail on fire, and that scared her even more. Poor little Snowdrop ran from tree to tree, as I stood frozen in fear. Anyway, every time she came to a new tree, she turned and looked to see if the crazy lady was still within sight, and then in a panic ran off to a new spot, zig-zagging across our yard like something out of a Looney Tune cartoon! Eventually she ran into the neighbors yard. However she did come back the next day, so hopefully all is forgiven. Much to Snowdrop's credit, she held onto her black walnut the entire time! Reminded me of the little critter from the movie Ice Age! I look for her now all the time, hoping she will return again. (I promise Snowdrop, the crazy lady will behave, and leave you in peace!)
24 comments:
- kelly said...
I'm sorry. I had to laugh. I know it's not right, but the story of you being chased by a squirrel... it's *kind of* funny, you have to admit.
I'm sorry that it has left you so terrified of squirrels, though -- I love those little critters!
Meanwhile, the image of you and Snowdrop scaring the crap out of one another in the backyard might be even funnier than you being chased by the rabid squirrel! Thanks for the chuckle. :)
- October 17, 2008 at 1:48 AM
- T.Allen said...
I did laugh...and I shouldn't have because as a native NYer now living in AZ the past 5 years have been interesting to say the very least. Snowdrop is very pretty and I'm glad despite your incident with the rogue rabid squirrel you are finding comfort and even companionship with her. I wonder what stories she'll tell her squirrel pals about camera wielding wild women!
- October 17, 2008 at 3:41 AM
- High Desert Diva said...
Ha! How can we not laugh? Although I have to say, I would have been freaked out too!
Snowdrop is pretty cute!
- October 17, 2008 at 7:38 AM
- Jackie said...
I too woud have been afraid if a squirrel had chased me. But you did well...no camera shake despite your fear.
- October 17, 2008 at 7:50 AM
Oh I laughed and laughed some more. It's just too visual!
I only saw an albino squirrel once, when I was in high school. Poor thing was being chased away by the grey squirrels and I felt protective on it. Watching it raised a lot of my high school social insecurities...
- October 17, 2008 at 7:53 AM
- jacquie said...
ok, i choked back my giggles out of respect...love that snowdrop has made your yard part of her territory. i hope you and she find a peaceful coexistence.
- October 17, 2008 at 9:31 AM
That explains SO much!
- October 17, 2008 at 11:24 AM
I am no fan of squirrels myself (they dig little holes all over my yard and, since I have a killer cat, also end up dead on my front porch more than I care to admit), but I have never seen an albino squirrel, and that is SO COOL. Thanks for the pictures!
- October 17, 2008 at 11:30 AM
- Jennifer said...
LOL!!! She's a cutie. My dad new a priest who was trying to be like St. Francis maybe... he attempted to feed a squirrel out of his hand and the squirrel bit him! Punctured his finger, so you were right to run like the wind.
- October 17, 2008 at 12:21 PM
- SandraRee said...
Victoria, I didn't laugh I promise...giggled a little, chuckled definitely! :D
Bless your heart, thanks for being so brave! I'm so glad you were able to get some pics of this beauty, I've never seen an albino squirrel before!
And I love the Japan needle book in your previous post!
- October 17, 2008 at 2:57 PM
- Start To Finish Supplies said...
Wow! Thats crazy!
- October 17, 2008 at 2:57 PM
- please sir said...
What?! I have never seen this before - so neat!!
- October 17, 2008 at 4:13 PM
- Michelle Engel Bencsko said...
Laughing is good for the soul. Thank you for that.
I am not a fan a squirrels just because they make a mess of my yard, but this gal is pretty endearing.
- October 17, 2008 at 4:41 PM
- Hey Harriet said...
Ha! I hear of squirrels being referred to as 'nutty squirrels' sometimes. Now I understand why. I previously thought that it was because they ate nuts. No! They ARE nuts! The one you encountered all those years ago sounds beyond nutty. He/she sounded downright psycho! I couldn't help but laugh at your story. Sorry! I do think Snowdrop looks very sweet. I'm sure she will learn to grow more comfortable around you in time & the two of you will become good friends :)
- October 18, 2008 at 3:48 AM
- Jaimee McClellan said...
Okay, now that I've stopped laughing...I thought those type of things only happened to me!
I can't believe you were able to overcome your fears and get as close as you did to this one - which I find all the more creepy...yet interesting too :)
- October 18, 2008 at 9:16 PM
- Rachel said...
I would be traumatized if a squirrel chased me, too! : )
- October 19, 2008 at 4:53 PM
- Michelle said...
Wow, who could blame you? Once when I was a little girl, I had my long Easter dress on and went out in the backyard. When I came in, a Praying Mantis was on the bottom of my dress. I had never seen one before and I was SO scared!! I still hate them to this day!
- October 19, 2008 at 8:15 PM
- Bascom Hogue said...
- This comment has been removed by the author.
- October 19, 2008 at 8:58 PM
- Kim said...
I too was once chased by a crazy squirrel. Mine was protecting a bucket full of nuts that was on the side of the garage that we got that afternoon as a *bounus* at an auction. I feel your fear!
That is a very cool squirrel! I have never ever even heard of anyone seeing an albino squirrel before!
- October 19, 2008 at 11:17 PM
- picciolo said...
hehehe! How unusual to see an albino squirrel, I hope it manages to keep safe as it certainly stands out!
: )
- October 20, 2008 at 4:39 AM
- Amy C said...
that little critter is so cool. Your story is too funny but too freaky at the same time.
- October 22, 2008 at 12:16 PM
Snowdrop looks like she is a nursing mom so you may be blessed with seeing babies soon as well. She looks really healthy so keep up the black walnuts. I have fed our squirrels for 30 years and they have brought us untold amounts of pleasure over the years. Enjoy them while you can.
- October 22, 2008 at 2:52 PM
- Victoria Bennett Beyer said...
Please forgive my laughter...it is the kind of thing that is funny if it isn't happening to you.
That's so neat you are blessed with an albino neighbor...nature is so interesting!
- November 14, 2008 at 12:16 PM
aw so cute
- October 14, 2009 at 4:27 PM


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Allure, from the series Lexicon in the portfolio Gesture
Anne Zahalka
14 May 1957 -
Anne Zahalka's work can be closely related to images from the past. Among her most well known are photographic reformulations from the canon of art history. Re-staging images from the Flemish masterpiece 'The Arnolfini Portrait,' Jan van Eyck, 1434, to photographer Max Dupain's 'Sunbaker' 1937, Zahalka has unsettled image hierarchies.
She has exhibited widely in Australia and abroad, in exhibitions including 'Supernatural artificial' at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, Japan, 2004 and 'Fieldwork: Australian art 1968 – 2002' at the National Gallery of Victoria in 2002; she was also the recipient of an Australia Council Fellowship in 2000.
'Allure' and 'Rhetoric' 1994 combine images of hands in various gestures with symbolically charged objects and text. They are related to six other works, titled 'Assert'; 'Sincerity'; Confident'; 'Restrain'; 'Open' and 'Silence'. They are also more broadly related to a work in the Gallery's collection from the series 'Gesture', 'The Merchant's Agenda' 1994.
Collaging imagery from medieval European painting, 'Allure' shows a woman's hand reaching toward an apple on a black background. The apple combined with a feminine hand recalls the biblical story of Eve. In contrast 'Rhetoric' depicts a pair of masculine hands juxtaposed with a gun, set on an orange background. There is a gendered subtext here: by invoking art-historical representations of gesture, Zahalka references the prescriptive notions of gender that are manifest in Western art history.
While critically engaged with the frames of art history, these works also have a delicate beauty, and manifest what curator Jim Logan described as 'Gesture as an outward expression of the soul' (J Logan, 'Gesture: towards a lexicon' Anne Zahalka Sydney: RoslynOxley9, 1994, np)
Media category
Materials used
dye sublimation print
25.3 x 25.3 cm image; 27.8 x 27.8 cm sheet
Signature & date
Signed l.r. verso, black fibre-tipped pen "A. Zahalka". Not dated.
Gift of Amanda Love 2011. Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program.
Not on display
Accession number
© Anne Zahalka. Licensed by Copyright Agency
Shown in 1 exhibition
Exhibition history
Loveart: the Love collection, Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre & Liverpool Regional Museum, Casula, 03 Dec 2010–20 Feb 2011


text:
The David Ross Education Trust is a network of unique and diverse academies.
We are collectively working to become the country's leading group of academies, committed to ensuring each and every one of our students has the support and opportunities to succeed.
Underpinning this mission are the three objectives that shape the decisions and ambitions of the Trust and our academies. These are:
Academic Excellence
Our drive to ensure that every child has access to an outstanding education that has academic excellence at its heart
Strong Community
Our desire to build a strong and sustainable network of academies that responds to the needs of the communities we support
Outstanding Opportunities
Our ambition to deliver outstanding enrichment opportunities to all our students
The David Ross Education Trust was established by the David Ross Foundation, a charity established by David Ross. To find out more about their work, please click here.
We are committed to being a transparent and open organisation. All information about our finances, policies and procedures can be found by clicking on the link below:
We hope that this website gives you a flavour of what life in a DRET academy is like, the opportunities that are on offer and the achievements that are obtained.


text:
(→JDK 9 EA build 148 and later)
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JDK9 EA Support

JDK9 EA Support

'''NOTE''' EA build NetBeans development builds. [[#not_working|What does not Work chapter]] .
[[#not_working|What does not Work chapter]].
NetBeans IDE [http://bits.netbeans.org/download/trunk/nightly/latest/ Daily Development builds] contains also early (under development) support for [https://jdk9.java.net/download/ JDK 9 EA development builds] namely the new modular system for Java. (Download http://bits.netbeans.org/download/trunk/nightly/latest/)
NetBeans IDE [http://bits.netbeans.org/download/trunk/nightly/latest/ Daily Development builds] contains also early (under development) support for [https://jdk9.java.net/download/ JDK 9 EA development builds] namely the new modular system for Java. (Download http://bits.netbeans.org/download/trunk/nightly/latest/)
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==What DOES NOT work==
==What DOES NOT work==
build on top of JDK9 EA build [http://mail.openjdk.java.net/pipermail/jdk9-dev/2016-November/005276.html of ] and :
//. () . of JDK9 EA to . . . ---..''' to ''' IDE Java .to .
===Other features===
===Other features===
Revision as of 09:25, 16 January 2017
JDK9 EA Support
NOTE Always use latest JDK9 EA build when working with NetBeans Daily development builds. Refer to What does not Work chapter for latest updates on compatibility issues.
NetBeans IDE Daily Development builds contains also early (under development) support for JDK 9 EA development builds namely the new modular system for Java. (Download http://bits.netbeans.org/download/trunk/nightly/latest/)
Features are not complete, at this stage, and WILL break in the future. JDK 9 EA is the moving targets, which have not reached Feature Complete status yet.
The work started for Java SE support and projects (NB Ant project). Other areas like Java EE or Maven are not being worked on for JDK9 EA at this time. Later when Java SE support will be in desired state NetBeans developers of all other modules should start to use this for their work on making other NB modules to support JDK 9 EA and module system.
Sources and builds are available on AS IS basis (daily development builds) without any warranty and testing. Bugs could be filled for JDK 9 EA support into bugzilla with Keyword JDK_9.
Features and UI is still being designed and will change. Don't use these builds for real work! A lot of exceptions ...
NetBeans JDK9 support development is ongoing effort till NetBeans 9 reaches its Feature Freeze mileston.
Getting Started
- The NetBeans JDK 9 build runs on top of Java SE 8, you can download the latest update of Java SE 8 here. JDK 7 and older is not supported by NetBeans after NetBeans 8.1 release.
- Download the latest JDK 9 Early Access from https://jdk9.java.net/download/ page
- Download NB Daily Development build from http://bits.netbeans.org/download/trunk/nightly/latest/ or build it from sources.
- In some operating systems NetBeans, by default, launches on the most current JDK version available. Installing JDK 9 EA might cause the NB 9 daily development build, as well as other versions of Netbeans, to run with JDK 9. Although it is is possible to run the NB JDK 9 branch on JDK 9 (see below for instructions), you should consider configuring NetBeans (every version installed) to launch with JDK 8 (see Changing NetBeans JDK runtime platform below for instructions)
- Register the latest JDK 9 EA build as a Java Platform in NetBeans JDK9 build by means of Tools | Java Platforms | Add Platform.
What works
NetBeans JDK 9 builds support:
- NB Java SE project support one JDK9/Jigsaw module - Single module project.
- Maven projects
- module-info.java support: editing works and using its statement to set module boundaries for projects
- All Editing features work according to what is declared in module-info.java
- Using other NB Java SE Single module projects as libraries (project dependency) is possible
- Compilation works
- Run & Debug projects work
- Unit tests can be compiled and run.
- All other features unrelated to Java language like SCM should work.
What DOES NOT work
Strong Encapsulation
When running NetBeans IDE daily Dev build on top of JDK9 EA build 150 or newer you might experience issues when some APIs are not accessible, this is due to strong encapsulation of APIs in non exported packages invoked through setAccessible() - this no longer works in b150 and newer. Similar exception will be printed to terminal or log file:
java.lang.reflect.InaccessibleObjectException: Unable to make field transient some_package.some_class.some_field accessible: module java.xyz does not "opens abc.xyz" to unnamed module @2a5ca609 at ....
Particular class/field/module might vary. NetBeans IDE JavaSE and JS distributions were fixed since daily build 201701130001 (Jan 13th) and now opens several packages for reflection. It might happen than when running daily dev build on top of JDK9 EA with additional modules/clusters installed then setAccessible to some other field might be used. It might be also invoked from bundled 3rd party library we even cannot fix. In such a case add a statement like this, e.g. -J--add-opens java.base/java.util=ALL-UNNAMED (provide your module and package) to netbeans.conf netbeans_default_options= and run IDE again. For modules in standard netbeans distros (Java EE,...) report the bug to NB Bugzilla using JDK_9 keyword. We will fix that in netbeans.conf in upcoming daily build.
Other features
- Multiple JDK9 modules in one NB project
How to start
This chapter uses NetBeans Java SE project type, based on Apache Ant.
Add JDK9 EA as a Java Platform
After adding JDK 9 EA as Java Platform to NetBeans create Jave SE project using New Project wizard. Setup the project to JDK9 in project Properties:
- In Libraries customizer set Java Platform to your JDK 9 EA Java platform.
- In Sources customizer set Source /Binary Format to JDK 9
Add module-info.java
Then add module-info.java. It is available under New File templates in category Java.
When adding module-info.java to existing application with some libraries on CLASSPATH then last step of New Java Module Info wizard lists these libraries.
It is possible to decide whether libs should stay on CLASSPATH or to be moved to MODULEPATH. See State of the module system paper, section Compatibility and Migration on how jar files without module-info are treated by JDK9
java.base module is by default added to any JDK9 app. You can now edit module-info.java with requires,...
Project dependencies
Dependencies on Java Platform modules e.g. java.scripting is done in module-info.java file.
Project can have also dependency on another JDK 9 EA modular (module-info.java) NB project. Use Project Properties | Libraries customizer to add another project either into modulepath or classpath. Use Add Project... button.
This customizer was redesigned from previous NetBeans versions to adapt to coexistence of modulepath and classpath in JDK 9.
JUnit tests
NetBeans currently supports JUnit tests which are part of same module as tested sources. If interested how modulepath, classpath, addExport, addmods, addReads are handled to run Junit tests then read this thread: JUnitTask + JDK9 question
The structure is very similar to non-modular Java development. Simply add JUnit tests into Test Packages or leverage existing JUnit tests in a project. Then run the tests using project context menu 'Test Alt+F6 or Test File (Ctrl+F6) for single Java file.
JUnit tests in own module
NetBeans also support inside Java SE single module project to place tests inside own module. This is the only case when two module_info.java files can be used in this type of project. This way tests are more like black box as they are not a part of source module, thus module boundaries and package readability among modules play a role.
Start by adding module_info.java into Test Packages. Rename the module to something meaningful and different from source files, e.g. testModule Then add JUnit tests into some package. Resulting structure should look like following screen shot:
module_info.java looks like following:
NetBeans perform compilation and test execution which could replicated using these two command lines (just for illustration) using Ant junit task:
- Compile: javac -mp build/classes:junit.jar -XaddExports:srcModule/pkg=testModule -XaddReads:testModule=junit -d build/test/classes test/module-info.java test/pkg/test/AppTest.java
- Run Tests: java -mp build/test/classes:build/classes:junit.jar -addmods srcModule,testModule -XaddExports:srcModule/pkg=testModule,testModule/pkg.test=junit -XaddReads:testModule=junit -cp hamcrest-core.jar -m junit/org.junit.runner.JUnitCore pkg.test.AppTest
Maven Projects
With release of Apache Maven Compiler Pluging v 3.6.0 it is possible to develop Maven projects in NetBeans 9 for JDK9. Simply open or create Maven project in NetBeans IDE. Set appropriate JDK 9 EA as Project Java Platform and change Source/Binary Format to 9.
If module_info.java is present in Maven project then all Java libraries used in a project became JDK9 modules - are placed to MODULEPATH by Maven Compiler Plugin.
It is also possible to add declared dependencies to module_info.java via a context action on the dependency node.
NetBeans Maven support is under development to provide other productivity features for Maven projects.
- Unit tests are not working, waiting for Maven Surefire plugin to support JDK9.
- has to support modulepath
- failures and warnings in jar(error), javadoc(warning), aggregate(error)
maven-war-plugin, maven-ear-plugin
- needs to detect new version scheme
- and maybe some other plugins depending on maven-archiver
see also https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/MAVEN/Java+9+-+Jigsaw
Other Features
Module Dependency Graph
The Graph View of the module-info.java file provides module dependency graph.
Running NetBeans on JDK9 EA as run time Java platform
It is possible to try this NetBeans build to run on JDK9 EA build as NetBeans IDE runtime platform. Use it with care as JDK9 EA is still under development as well as NetBeans JDK9 branch. We adopt NetBeans JDK9 to JDK9 EA changes but in some cases it takes some time.
Necessary command line options are in nb_install_dir/etc/netbeans.conf file. If you discover you need to -add-export another JDK module then add it in this file and file a bug for NB JDK9.
Changing NetBeans JDK runtime platform
How to change a JDK NetBeans uses for runtime is specified FaqJdkHome or in FaqNetbeansConf.


text:
- How we help
- Who we help
- Find a solution
- Insights & education
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- About us
This section provides a brief introduction to equities, including benefits of investing in equities and the risks involved:
Equities are pieces of a company, also known as "stocks." When you buy stocks or shares of a company, you're basically purchasing an ownership interest in that company. A company's stockholders or shareholders all have equity in the company, or own a fractional portion of the whole company. They buy the stocks because they expect to profit when the company profits. Companies issue two basic types of stock: common and preferred shares.
Both public and private corporations can issue common shares. Common shareholders are the owners of a company and initially provide the equity capital to start the business.
Common share ownership in a public company offers many benefits to investors. The following are some of its main advantages:
There are also a few drawbacks to owning common shares. Although part owner of the business, common shareholders are in a relatively weak position, as senior creditors, bond holders and preferred shareholders all have prior claims on the earnings and assets of a company. While interest payments are guaranteed to bond holders, dividends are payable to shareholders at the discretion of the directors of a company.
Preferred stock is a class of share capital that generally entitles shareholders to fixed dividends ahead of the company's common shares and to a stated dollar value per share in the event of liquidation. Typically, the preferred shareholder occupies a position between that of a company's creditors and its common shareholders. If a company's ability to pay interest and dividends suffers due to poor earnings, the preferred shareholder is better protected than common shareholders but worse off than creditors.
There are many different variations of preferred shares, including convertible, retractable, and variable-rate preferred shares. Most Canadian preferred shares are cumulative: when dividends are withheld, they accumulate in what is known as arrears. All arrears of cumulative preferred dividends must be paid before any common dividends can be distributed.
As preferred shares have characteristics of both debt and equity; they provide a link between the bond and common equity sections of a portfolio. Because there is such a wide variety of preferred shares available, they are suitable investments for most investment portfolios.
One shortcoming of preferred shares is that many are non-voting. However, after a specified number of preferred dividends are withheld, voting rights are usually assigned to preferred shareholders.
No matter where you are in life, equities have an important role to play within a properly diversified portfolio. They can help with building your savings, maximizing your income and protecting your wealth:
Yes. Equity investments vary in their risk but are generally considered higher risk than cash-type investments or bonds.
Equities offer growth of capital and dividends but you must endure the unpredictable ups and downs (risk) of the stock market. This is one of the many reasons equities are often more suitable for longer investing time horizons.