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Another Washington dusk, another motorcade, another intimate evening played out in public view. On Oct. 3, just a day after their failed Olympics bid in Copenhagen, Barack and Michelle Obama slipped into a Georgetown restaurant for one of their now-familiar date nights: this time, to toast their 17th wedding anniversary. As with their previous outings, even the dark photographs taken by passers-by and posted on the Web looked glamorous: the president tieless, in a suit; the first lady in a backless sheath.
The Obama date-night tradition stretches back to the days when the president spent half his time in Springfield, Ill., reuniting at week's close with his wife, who kept a regular Friday manicure and hair appointment for the occasion. But five days before he ventured out for his anniversary dinner, the president lamented what has happened to his nights out with his wife.
"I would say the one time during our stay here in the White House so far that has. . . ." He paused so long in choosing his words that Michelle Obama, sitting alongside him, prompted him. "Has what?"
"Annoyed me," the president answered.
"Don't say it!" the first lady mock-warned. "Uh-oh."
"Was when I took Michelle to New York and people made it into a political issue," he continued, recalling the evening last spring when they flew to New York for dinner and a show, eliciting Republican gibes for spending federal money on their own entertainment.
We were in the Oval Office, nearly 40 minutes into a conversation about the subject of their marriage. Watched over by three aides and Gilbert Stuart's portrait of George Washington, the two sat a few feet apart in matching striped chairs that made them look more like a pair of heads of state than husband and wife. The Obamas were talking about the impact of the presidency on their relationship, and doing so in that setting — we were in the room that epitomizes official power, discussing the highly unofficial matter of dates — began to seem like a metaphor for the topic itself.
"If I weren't president, I would be happy to catch the shuttle with my wife to take her to a Broadway show, as I had promised her during the campaign, and there would be no fuss and no muss and no photographers," the president said. "That would please me greatly." He went on to say: "The notion that I just couldn't take my wife out on a date without it being a political issue was not something I was happy with."
Everything becomes political here, I offered, gesturing around the room.
"Everything becomes political," he repeated very slowly. Then he said: "What I value most about my marriage is that it is separate and apart from a lot of the silliness of Washington, and Michelle is not part of that silliness."
Perhaps she is not. But the Obamas mix politics and romance in a way that no first couple quite have before. Almost 10 months ago, they swept into Washington with inauguration festivities that struck distinctly wedding-like notes: he strode down an aisle and took a vow, she wore a long white dress, the youthful-looking couple swayed to a love song in a ceremonial first dance and then settled into a new house. Since then, photograph after official White House photograph has shown the Obamas gazing into each other's eyes while performing one or another official function. Here is a shot of the Obamas entering a Cinco de Mayo reception, his arm draped protectively around her back. Next, a photo of the president placing a kiss on his wife's cheek after his address on health care to Congress. Poster-size versions of these and other photographs are displayed in rotation along the White House corridors. It's hard to think of another workplace decorated with such looming evidence of affection between the principal players.
The centrality of the Obama marriage to the president's political brand opens a new chapter in the debate that has run through, even helped define, their union. Since he first began running for office in 1995, Barack and Michelle Obama have never really stopped struggling over how to combine politics and marriage: how to navigate the long absences, lack of privacy, ossified gender roles and generally stultifying rules that result when public opinion comes to bear on private relationships.
Along the way, they revised some of the standards for how a politician and spouse are supposed to behave. They have spoken more frankly about marriage than most intact couples, especially those running for office, usually do. ("The bumps happen to everybody all the time, and they are continuous," the first lady told me in a let's-get-real voice, discussing the lowest point in her marriage.) Candidates' wives are supposed to sit cheerfully through their husbands' appearances. But after helping run her husband's first State Senate campaign in 1996, Michelle Obama largely withdrew from politics for years, fully re-engaging only for the presidential campaign. As a result, she has probably logged fewer total sitting-through-my-husband's-speech hours than most of her recent predecessors. Even the go-for-broke quality of the president's rise can be read, in some small part, as an attempt to vault over the forces that fray political marriages. People who face too many demands — two careers, two children — often scale back somehow. The Obamas scaled up.
"This is the first time in a long time in our marriage that we've lived seven days a week in the same household with the same schedule, with the same set of rituals," Michelle Obama pointed out. (Until last November they had not shared a full-time roof since 1996, two years before Malia was born.) "That's been more of a relief for me than I would have ever imagined."
The couple now spend more time together than at nearly any other point since their early years together. On many days, they see Malia and Sasha off to school, exercise together and do not begin their public schedules until 9 or even 10 o'clock. They recently finished redecorating the White House residence, the first lady requesting an outdoor rocking chair for her husband to read in, the president scrutinizing colors and patterns, said Desirée Rogers, the White House social secretary. The pair recently began playing tennis. (He wins, she admitted; for now, he added.) This summer, the first lady surprised her husband for his birthday by gathering his old basketball buddies for a weekend at Camp David.
Barack and Michelle Obama are also a more fully fused political team than ever before, with no other jobs to distract them, no doubts about the worthiness of the pursuit dogging them. Theirs is by no means a co-presidency; aides say the first lady has little engagement with banking reform, nuclear disarmament or most of the other issues that dominate her husband's days. But their goals are increasingly intertwined, with Michelle Obama speaking out on health care reform, privately mulling over Supreme Court nominees with the president and serving as his consultant on personnel and public opinion. When they lounge on the Truman Balcony or sit inside at their round dining table, she describes how she believes his initiatives are perceived outside Washington; later, say advisers, the president quotes the first lady in Oval Office meetings.
If winning the White House represents a resolution of the Obamas' struggles, it also means a new, higher-stakes confrontation with some of the vexing issues that fed those tensions. Their marriage is more vulnerable than ever to the corrosions of politics: partisan attacks, disappointments of failed initiatives, a temptation to market what was once wholly private. Some of the methods the Obamas devised for keeping their relationship strong — speaking frankly in public, maintaining separate careers, even date nights — are no longer as easily available to them. Like every other modern presidential couple, the Obamas have watched their world contract to one building and a narrow zone beyond, and yet their partnership expand to encompass a staff and two wings of the White House. And while the presidency tends to bring couples closer, historians say, it also tends to thrust them back to more traditionbound behavior.
For all of their ease in public, the Obamas do not seem entirely comfortable with the bargain. As they talked about their marriage, they seemed both game and cautious, the president more introspective about their relationship, the first lady often playing the big sister dispensing advice to younger couples.
Then I asked how any couple can have a truly equal partnership when one member is president.
Michelle Obama gave what sounded like a small, sharp "mmphf" of recognition, and the fluid teamwork of their answers momentarily came to a halt. "Well, first of all. . . ." the president started. His wife peered at him, looking curious as to how he might answer the question. "She's got. . . ." he began, but then stopped again.
"Well, let me be careful about this," he said, pausing once more.
"My staff worries a lot more about what the first lady thinks than they worry about what I think," he finally said, to laughter around the room.
The question still unanswered, his wife stepped back in: "Clearly Barack's career decisions are leading us. They're not mine; that's obvious. I'm married to the president of the United States. I don't have another job, and it would be problematic in this role. So that — you can't even measure that." She did add that they are more equal in their private lives — how they run their household, how they raise their children, the overall choices they make.
Interpreting anyone's marriage — a neighbor's, let alone the president's — is extremely difficult. And yet examining the first couple's relationship — their negotiations of public and private life, of conflicts and compromises — offers hints about Barack Obama the president, not just Barack Obama the husband. Long before many Americans, Michelle Obama was seduced by his mind, his charm, his promise of social transformation; long before he held national office, she questioned whether he really could deliver on all his earnest pledges. For nearly two decades, Michelle Obama has lived with the president of the United States. Now the rest of us do, too.
JUST BEFORE THE Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. pronounced Barack Obama and Michelle Robinson man and wife on the evening of Oct. 3, 1992, he held their wedding rings — signifying their new, enduring bonds — before the guests at Trinity United Church of Christ. Michelle's was traditional, but Barack's was an intricate gold design from Indonesia, where he had lived as a boy.
Neither needed a reminder of just how fragile family — the black family, marriage, life itself — could be. Barack Obama Sr.'s relationships, not just with his wives but also with his children, were fleeting; in 1982, he died at the age of 46. Michelle's parents had a long, stable marriage, but her maternal grandparents split without ever formally divorcing, and her paternal grandparents separated for 11 years.
Before Michelle, Barack had brought only one woman to Hawaii to meet his family, according to his younger half-sister, Maya Soetoro. He in turn was Michelle's first serious boyfriend, according to Craig Robinson, Michelle's brother: none of the others had met her standards.
During their three-year courtship, the couple shared thrilling moments, like when Barack became the first black president of the Harvard Law Review. But there were crushing ones too. In early 1991, Fraser Robinson, Michelle's father, came down with what seemed to be the flu. Just a few days later, he was brain-dead, and his family had to decide whether to end life support, according to Francesca Gray, his sister. Barack was in the middle of classes, with no money to speak of, but he flew to Chicago anyway. At the wedding the following year, Craig Robinson took his father's place in walking Michelle down the aisle.
The Obamas were married just a month before the presidential election, a time of mounting excitement for Democrats in their neighborhood of Hyde Park and beyond. Bill Clinton looked as if he might take the White House back from Republicans. Barack was helping by running a voter-registration drive so successful that he won notice in Chicago newspapers and political circles. (Clinton ended up carrying Illinois, then a tossup state.) Obama's efforts also helped make Carol Moseley Braun, a fellow Hyde Park resident, the first African-American woman in the U.S. Senate. Suddenly politics seemed full of new possibilities. Barack had talked to Michelle about running for office; she had misgivings but thought the day was not imminent.
For the moment, he was enmeshed in writing his memoir, "Dreams From My Father." He had retreated to Bali for several weeks to work on the manuscript and was still preoccupied with it after his return. "Barack was just really involved in the book. [Michelle] and I would do lots of shopping and movies," Yvonne Davila, still a close friend, remembered.
"Barack doesn't belong to you," she told me she warned Michelle.
IN THE ANNALS of presidential coupledom, the Obamas more than slightly resemble the Clintons: a pair of Ivy League-trained lawyers, the self-made son of an absent father and a wife who sometimes put her husband's ambitions ahead of her own. But unlike Bill Clinton, who turned his wife into an unlikely Arkansan, Obama planted himself on his wife's turf. And while the Clinton marriage seems forged in shared beliefs about the promise of politics, the Obama union has been a decades-long debate about whether politics could be an effective avenue for social change. Even as a community organizer, Barack aimed to prod elected officials into action. His wife, who was more skeptical of politicians, tried to bypass them: when she took a job promoting community-organizing techniques, she focused on what neighborhoods could accomplish without their help.
In 1995, a State Senate seat was opening up, and Barack, then 34, announced his candidacy. "It allowed me to get my feet wet in politics and test out whether I could get something done," he told The Times two years ago. Because he wasn't from Chicago, had degrees from two elite schools and a background that others found odd, a friend said, he felt he had to begin by running for a relatively modest office.
As the Obamas sat with friends around their dining room table, eating Michelle's chili and planning the run, she was plainly hesitant. "She was very open about not wanting to be in politics," Davila said. Michelle had always wanted to be a mother, three years had passed since their wedding and now her husband — with his all-consuming memoir just finished — would be gone several days a week. Michelle "just wasn't ready to share," Carol Anne Harwell, who became the campaign manager, recalls. Besides, he was the former president of the Harvard Law Review, a writer and a teacher at a premier law school, the University of Chicago. Springfield was home to financial scandal so pervasive it was barely considered scandalous. "I married you because you're cute and you're smart," Michelle later said she told her husband, "but this is the dumbest thing you could have ever asked me to do."
She became his most energetic volunteer anyway. "She did everything," Craig Robinson says. Every Saturday morning, she and Davila knocked on doors for petition signatures that would put Barack on the ballot.
As a first-time candidate, Barack could be stiff; friends remember him talking to voters with his arms folded, looking defensive. Michelle warmed everyone up, including her husband. "She is really Bill, and he is really Hillary," one friend recently put it. But like Hillary Clinton — and countless other political wives — Michelle sometimes took on the role of enforcer. If a volunteer promised to gather 300 petition signatures, "299 did not work because 300 was the goal," Harwell says. "You met the wrath of Michelle."
Harwell also noticed that the candidate's wife was constantly trying to upgrade the campaign, eliminating anything that seemed tacky or otherwise redolent of the less-than-exalted standards of Illinois state politics. Instead of a beers-in-a-bar fund-raiser, Michelle arranged a party at the DuSable Museum of African American History with a band and a crowd of young professionals. When Harwell found an inexpensive office space with dingy walls, Michelle vetoed it. "She was like, 'Oh, no, no, no,' " Harwell says. " 'Why would we reduce ourselves to this?' "
ONE DAY LAST SPRING, I walked into the Hyde Park apartment the Obamas bought when they married, hoping to find clues to their old lives.
Their unit, part of a complex of redbrick houses turned condominiums, had a few appealing touches — a green-tiled fireplace, a dining room with elaborate woodwork and a small porch in the back (where Michelle let her husband smoke, a friend said). But the apartment was narrow and worn, with fixtures that must have been aging even several years ago.
The Hole — as Michelle called her husband's tiny, dark office — lived up to its name. The cramped master bedroom had a closet barely big enough for one wardrobe. Where did Michelle keep her clothes? The apartment was neat, friends said, but bursting with children's gear and toys. The dining table tilted so much that food sometimes skidded south, eliciting an embarrassed look from Barack.
He would eventually learn to make his way in the State Senate, but his initial reports home were dismayed: Republicans held control, legislation he drafted was not even heard and even some Democrats teased him about his name. "He would call me and say: 'This person is an idiot. They get an F,' " Harwell says.
"He went to Springfield without fully appreciating all of the consequences," said Judson Miner, Barack's boss at the civil rights law firm where he'd been working for several years. Shortly after arriving, Barack called Miner to tell him that he was scaling back his legal work: he could not stay on top of it from downstate. Barack took on a heavier teaching load to compensate for the lost income. Michelle, who had given up corporate law, now earned less than $50,000 a year at her nonprofit job training young leaders, a former colleague estimates.
For Barack's swearings-in, Michelle would travel to Springfield. Harwell remembers Barack calling up with a report from downstate: " 'Michelle just couldn't believe it, she had to come down to see this mess for herself.' "
As she heard Barack's tales from Springfield, Michelle learned "how good legislation vanished overnight for political reasons," Valerie Jarrett, one of the Obamas' closest friends, told me recently in her White House office, where she is senior adviser to the president. This, Jarrett said, left Michelle even more frustrated than her husband. "He's more of a pragmatist," Jarrett says. Michelle "takes a very principled position, and she thinks everyone should do the right thing."
If Barack's career was not going quite as he had hoped, Michelle did not seem settled on what she wanted to do professionally. She had taken a new position organizing student volunteers at the University of Chicago. After she became a mother in 1998, she was tempted to stay home, but like many political spouses, she felt financial pressure to work.
"Michelle would say, 'Well, you're gone all the time and we're broke?' " the president recalled when I spoke to the two of them. " 'How is that a good deal?' "
"You do the math," Michelle told her friend Sandra Matthews, one day as the two sat on a playground bench. "The time is coming pretty soon when I'm going to have to decide. I'm torn."
When she interviewed for a job at the University of Chicago Medical Center, her baby sitter canceled at the last moment, and so Michelle strapped a newborn Sasha into a stroller, and the two rolled off together to meet the hospital president. "She was in a lot of ways a single mom, and that was not her plan," recalls Susan Sher, who became her boss at the hospital and is now her chief of staff.
In addition to serving in Springfield and teaching law, Barack Obama was making his first bid for national office, challenging Bobby Rush, a popular South Side congressman. The race placed further strains on the Obamas. Unlike the wife who smiles tightly and insists everything is fine, Michelle sent a clear series of distress signals not only to her husband but to everyone around her. "Barack and I, we're doing a lot of talking," she would say when asked how she was holding up, according to the Rev. Alison Boden, a former colleague at the University of Chicago.
Barack initially seems to have seen his absences as a manageable issue, something to be endured, just as he had as a child when living apart from his mother. Entering politics would be hard on a family, he knew, but he didn't quite understand until he lived it, Jarrett told me. Sher remembers Michelle "talking to him, after the kids were born, about the importance of sheer physical presence, which wasn't something he was really used to. She talked about how important it was for them to at least talk every day."
Barack helped as much as possible: on top of juggling jobs, he paid the household bills and did the grocery shopping, often wandering supermarket aisles late at night. When business in Springfield was done for the week, he always drove home that same night, sometimes arriving past midnight. "As far as I was concerned, she had nothing to complain about," he wrote in his second book, "The Audacity of Hope."
One afternoon in July, sitting in Jarrett's airy West Wing office, I asked her how the young politician responded to his wife's assertions that he was leaving her to raise their children alone. Jarrett, whose own marriage ended in part because of career-related conflict, not only recalled Barack's replies but she also started reciting them. " 'I'll make it work,' " said Jarrett, speaking in his voice. " 'We can make it work. I'll do more.' " It sounded as if she could have been describing the Barack Obama of today, certain of his ability to juggle an intimidating number of priorities.
Two months later in the Oval Office, I asked the Obamas just how severe their strains had been. "This was sort of the eye-opener to me, that marriage is hard," the first lady said with a little laugh. "But going into it, no one ever tells you that. They just tell you, 'Do you love him?' 'What's the dress look like?' "
I asked more directly about whether their union almost came to an end.
"That's overreading it," the president said. "But I wouldn't gloss over the fact that that was a tough time for us."
Did you ever seek counseling? I asked.
The first lady looked solemnly at the president. He said: "You know, I mean, I think that it was important for us to work this through. . . . There was no point where I was fearful for our marriage. There were points in time where I was fearful that Michelle just really didn't — that she would be unhappy."
Several years later, he devoted several pages of "The Audacity of Hope" to the conflict. (Judging from interviews, more than a few Chicagoans knew that Michelle once openly resented what her husband's political career had cost her, so he may have been wise to raise the issue before anyone else.) In the end, what seems more unusual than the Obamas' who-does-what battles — most working parents have one version or another — is the way they turned them into a teachable moment, converting lived experience into both a political message and what sounds like the opposite of standard political shtick.
"If my ups and downs, our ups and downs in our marriage can help young couples sort of realize that good marriages take work. . . ." Michelle Obama said a few minutes later in the interview. The image of a flawless relationship is "the last thing that we want to project," she said. "It's unfair to the institution of marriage, and it's unfair for young people who are trying to build something, to project this perfection that doesn't exist."
IN THE HISTORY of Barack Obama, his landslide loss against Rush is now regarded as a constructive political failure, the point at which he shed some early dreaminess and hubris and became a cannier competitor. For the Obamas, this period was also one of constructive personal failure, forcing them to reckon with their longstanding differences.
Michelle Obama accepted that she was not going to have a conventional marriage, that her husband would be away much of the time. "That was me, wanting a certain type of model, and our lives didn't fit that model," she told me in an Iowa lunchroom in the summer of 2007. "I just needed the support. It didn't have to be Barack." Craig Robinson later told me that he and his sister, Michelle, had another realization: if their father, a city water worker, had the kinds of opportunities their generation did, he probably would not have been home for dinner every night, either.
Michelle's mother, Marian Robinson, offered crucial help, often picking up Malia and Sasha after school. The Obamas' closest friends — doctors, lawyers, M.B.A. types — also faced the strains of two-full-time-careers-plus-kids marriage. Now they banded into a kind of intergenerational urban kibbutz, a collective that shared meals and carpools and weekend activities.
Unlike many political wives, Michelle was almost never alone. And she mostly skipped public events. When Barack spoke at the 2002 rally protesting the impending invasion of Iraq, now considered a pivotal moment of his career, his wife was not present. "I've had to come to the point of figuring out how to carve out what kind of life I want for myself beyond who Barack is and what he wants," she told The Chicago Tribune during his 2004 U.S. Senate campaign.
During that race, Michelle was still a somewhat reluctant partner: at the outset, they made a deal that if he lost, he would get out entirely. "It was a compromise," Marty Nesbitt, one of the president's closest friends, told me. "O.K. One. More. Try," he explained, banging out each word on a side table.
When her husband was far outspent by a local millionaire in the primary, Michelle "was almost like the mama cub coming to protect her young," says Kevin Thompson, a friend and former aide. By the time it became clear that Barack might be the third African-American senator since Reconstruction, she was headlining a few campaign events herself. "It really clicked with her that this may be the destiny everyone was always talking about," Thompson said.
Michelle, who was often wary of her husband's ambitions, may have also pushed him ahead with her high expectations of what he could achieve. "Forward propulsion" is the quality Maya Soetoro says her sister-in-law brought to Barack's career.
Two years after the Senate race, despite lingering reservations, she helped her husband define his reasons for running for president. On an autumn day in 2006, the Obamas sat in the Chicago office of the consultant David Axelrod, surrounded by advisers, weighing whether Barack should move forward.
"What do you think you could accomplish that other candidates couldn't?" Michelle asked, according to Axelrod. The question hung in the air. Clearly, an Obama agenda would not look very different from that of Hillary Clinton or John Edwards.
"When I take that oath of office, there will be kids all over this country who don't really think that all paths are open to them, who will believe they can be anything they want to be," Barack replied. "And I think the world will look at America a little differently."
A FEW DAYS before the Indiana and North Carolina primaries, Anita Dunn, a political consultant who joined the Obama campaign, was reading the newspaper when a voter's quote, expressing surprise that Barack Obama was a good family man, leapt out at her.
Ever since Obama made his debut on the national stage, he'd been a solo act, telling the story of his singular, even lonely-sounding journey. In Pennsylvania, where Obama lost, "the visuals of so many of our rallies was him alone," Dunn told me, which did nothing to allay voters' concerns that the candidate was too distant — too foreign, professorial or precocious. Now Michelle and sometimes the girls were appearing more frequently onstage with Barack. Dunn shared the quote about Barack being a good family man with advisers, reinforcing their growing view that he was a more appealing candidate when surrounded by his family. The candidate beat expectations in both Indiana and North Carolina, all but locking up the nomination.
The Obamas began the presidential campaign, it seems, still thinking of politics as Barack's pursuit, not Michelle's. She would need to participate heavily only at the beginning and end, and not much in the middle, Michelle told Sher. Despite her outward confidence, there were clues she was not entirely comfortable in her new role: staff members recall that of the 26 primary debates, forums in which he struggled, she attended only two or three. At the first, in Orangeburg, S.C., she sat frozen in the audience, so anxious she was unable to speak. "It was like sitting next to a pillar of salt," says Melissa Winter, now her deputy chief of staff. She refused to even watch the remaining debates, avoiding television screens lest she catch a clip.
She also struggled to figure out where she fit in her husband's organization. Political operatives have a habitual disdain toward candidates' spouses, one adviser told me, which Michelle, who had trouble obtaining even routine information like talking points, initially could not overcome. She had only two staff members and no speechwriter, and when she raised issues like the need to reach out more to women voters, she wasn't sure she had any influence on her husband's advisers.
Because the couple rarely campaigned together, interactions between them swelled with intermediaries. Winter would get a nightly phone call from Barack, then pad down a hotel hallway and tap on her boss's door. For Michelle's 44th birthday, Barack deputized Winter to prepare his gift, a silver pendant necklace. "He wanted to be sure I had it wrapped appropriately, that it had a ribbon on it," she told me. "There was a lot of back and forth."
When Jarrett officially joined the campaign at the behest of both Obamas, in addition to a long list of duties, she served as Michelle's representative, as well as a kind of marital guardian and glue. Michelle took her concerns about Barack — for instance, her worry that his schedule allowed him no time to think — to Jarrett, who passed them on to aides. Barack worried, Jarrett said, that his wife had taken on too much. "Was that O.K. with her?" Jarrett says he wanted to know.
From the beginning, Michelle turned Barack's courtship all those summers ago into a parable of political conversion, casting herself as a stand-in for the skeptical voter. When she first heard of him, his name and background seemed weird, she told voters who probably felt the same way. The first time Barack asked her out, she refused. He was a newcomer, her mentee, so it would be strange for him to become her boyfriend (or the president). But slowly he worked on her. One day she heard him give a speech and found herself captivated by the possibilities of what might be.
"When you listen to her tell that story," Robert Gibbs, the campaign spokesman and now the White House press secretary, told me, voters thought, "It's O.K., yeah, this could work."
She also played a vital role in heading off the most promising female candidate in United States history. It was essential for the Obama campaign to present some sort of accomplished female counterweight to Hillary Clinton, to convince Democratic women that they could vote for Barack Obama and a powerful female figure besides. Consciously or not, Michelle made herself into an appealing contrast to the front-runner. She was candid; Hillary was often guarded. Michelle represented the idea that a little black girl from the South Side of Chicago could grow up to be first lady of the United States; Hillary stood for the hold of the already-powerful on the political system. And Michelle seemed to have the kind of marriage many people might aspire to; Hillary did not.
As the campaign accelerated after the first voting contests, Michelle Obama went from headlining intimate campaign events to enormous ones. Television cameras appeared, and some of her more forceful comments were endlessly replayed. When cable shows, bloggers and opponents fixated on her — on her supposed lack of patriotism, her supposedly angry streak — Barack was irate. As unflattering reports played on television, he would tell aides stories about her parents, about her as a mother, according to Gibbs, as if defending his wife in private could somehow help. Barack even met with the Fox executives Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes in part to insist that they treat her more respectfully.
Michelle was annoyed that advisers — who had noticed for months that she could grow a bit too vehement in speeches — had never informed her of the developing problems, according to aides. Fearful of hurting her husband's chances, she even raised the prospect of ceasing to campaign, said one adviser who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter. Jarrett recalls that "she felt she had not gotten support." According to Sher, "She was hurt at the idea that it was possible she wouldn't be an asset." It was almost as if she was reverting to an old pattern in her marriage: let Barack be a politician, and she would stay out of it.
But unlike other times, Michelle did not withdraw. In fact, the woman who had once resisted campaigning now told friends she enjoyed the crowds, the laughs and the votes she was earning. Her husband promised that the staff could fix whatever problems she faced. And he clearly needed her help. After years of leaving his family behind, he now turned to his wife to help carry him to the presidency.
"I've never done this before," she said to her husband's team, according to two aides. "I just need you to tell me what to do."
Campaigns often prove toxic to participants' personal lives, but Jarrett says the Obamas' relationship improved in the crucible of the race. "They both rallied to each other's defense and support," she says. "By having to work hard at it, it strengthened their marriage."
ON A HUMID September day, Mayor Richard M. Daley of Chicago stood on a platform on the South Lawn of the White House hawking his city's Olympic bid. The Obamas flanked him, consciously or unconsciously assuming a series of identical positions as he spoke. When Michelle Obama clasped her hands in a downward triangle, the president did, too. When he folded his arms across his chest, so did she. During their own short speeches they gave outsize laughs at each other's mild jokes and even mimed what the other was saying. As the president noted that the White House was just a tad larger than their home in Chicago, the first lady pinched her fingers to demonstrate. Milling around afterward, watching judo and fencing demonstrations, the couple leaned into each other, talking and nodding.
Friends who visit the White House describe occasionally turning corners to find the first couple mid-embrace. They also seem unusually willing, for a presidential couple, to kiss, touch and flirt in public. It may be that they are broadcasting their affection to the rest of us, an advertisement of their closeness. Or they may simply be holding tightly to each other as they navigate new and uncertain terrain. "Part of what they provide each other with is emotional safety," Jarrett explained.
In many ways, the Obamas have made the White House into a cocoon of sorts, with weekends full of movie-watching ("Where the Wild Things Are"), Scrabble games and children's talent shows. They have surrounded themselves with those who have known them longest and best: Marian Robinson, the first lady's mother, has settled in (unaccustomed to being waited on, she won't let the staff do the laundry). Marty Nesbitt and his wife, Dr. Anita Blanchard, left Chicago to rent a house nearby for the summer, while Maya Soetoro, the president's half-sister, and her husband, Konrad Ng, just moved here temporarily from Hawaii.
Though the president reads aloud with his children in the evenings — he and Sasha are finishing "Life of Pi" — parenting in the White House is more complicated. Because the first couple cannot move freely about, their relatives take Malia and Sasha to the bookstore, on a walk through Chinatown, to the multiplex to see "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs." Last spring, according to Sher, well-meaning White House residence staff members tried to give the girls cellphones, so their parents could always reach them; the first lady stepped in to refuse.
Even the Obamas' jokes seem like coping mechanisms for the epic changes in their lives. They are still in their 40s, and they appear to deal with the grandeur and ritual of their new home with a kind of satirical distance that is hard to imagine coming from first couples of a pre-Jon Stewart generation. The president playfully addresses his wife using her official acronym, "Flotus" (first lady of the United States). She keeps up a running commentary on her husband as he navigates his new home, according to friends and relatives. Seeing him in the Oval Office cracks Michelle Obama up, she told me. "It's like, what are you doing there?" she said, gesturing to the president's desk. "Get up from there!" In September, as they waited to greet a long, slow procession of foreign dignitaries and their spouses at the Group of 20 Summit in Pittsburgh, the first lady whispered in her husband's ear about things "that I probably shouldn't repeat," he said.
"She can puncture the balloon of this," he added, making him feel like the same person he was 5 or 10 years ago.
CLEARLY, THE OBAMAS prefer to think of themselves as largely unaltered. "The strengths and challenges of our marriage don't change because we move to a different address," the first lady said, the president studying the carpet as she answered. But even as they serve as sources of continuity for each other, their own partnership is undergoing significant change, not just in outward circumstance — the city, the exposure, the security, the staff, the house and so on — but far more fundamentally. Michelle Obama has gone from political skeptic to political partner to a woman with a White House agenda of her own, and an approval rating higher than the president's.
Initially, her office was seen as so peripheral by some in the West Wing that one aide referred to it as Guam: pleasant but powerless. Now Michelle Obama is towing the island closer to the mainland. In June, she appointed Sher — a lawyer, health care expert and member of the tight knot of hometown friends — her chief of staff. "The first lady wants her office to be fully integrated into the president's agenda," Sher says. Early this summer, for example, the first lady directed her staff to plan events that could help support health care reform and then volunteered to speak publicly on the topic. The president and first lady share a speechwriting staff, the East Wing's press and communications team attends their West Wing counterparts' meetings and every week, Dunn, Sher and Jarrett meet to discuss the integration of the president's and first lady's business.
When asked about how her insights affected the president's thinking, the first lady seemed to bristle at the question. "I am so not interested in a lot of the hard decisions that he's making," she said, drawing out the "so." "Why would I want to be in politics? I have never in my life ever wanted to sit on the policy side of this thing." Earlier in my conversation with them, the president faced forward, even leaning a bit away from his wife, but now he uncrossed his legs, swiveled and studied her, looking amused.
"Did she say she's not interested in policy?" Sher, who also attended the Oval Office interview, tried to recall the next day, shaking her head and smiling. "She always says that." (The first lady may have learned from Hillary Clinton's example the perils of appearing too involved with policy.) While her boss has a limited appetite for policy details on many subjects, Sher explains, she regularly reads briefing papers from her staff on social issues. Early next year, aides say, the first lady will become the administration's point person on childhood obesity, working with her husband's policy advisers as well as her own on a problem that has stymied public-health experts for years. While the overall success of the administration is Barack Obama's test, Michelle Obama is beginning to gauge her ability to affect public opinion and behavior as well — which means risking criticism and failure.
The first lady also speaks to her husband about White House management and personnel decisions. "She is not shy about expressing her views at all," Sher told me, recalling a conversation last spring between Barack and Michelle about a personnel problem. "She was like, you should do this, dah dah dah dah and dah dah dah," Sher said, smacking the table. The first lady was so forceful, Sher said, that the president just grinned back until they both started to laugh. "It's probably great that she does get worked up about injustices," Sher went on to say. "It clearly seems to have an impact on him."
Michelle Obama is also one of her husband's chief interpreters of public sentiment. On almost every "domestic issue that's come up — up and through health care," the president told me, the first lady has offered "very helpful" insights on "how something is going to play or what's important to people."
"She's like a one-person poll," he explained. "Everyman!" the first lady called out.
"We'll sit at the dinner table," the president said. "If our arguments are not as crisp or we're not addressing a particular criticism coming from the other side, Michelle will be quick to say, I just think the way this thing is getting filtered right now is putting you on the defensive in this way or that way." (Sometimes, Sher says, when the president is describing some complicated issue, his wife interjects: "You know what? People don't care about that.")
During the campaign, Michelle Obama made much of her regular-person credentials, but they may now be expiring. She has not only a personal trainer and a stylist but also a staff of chefs and gardeners. Her world is somewhat less rarefied than that of her husband: she can steal away with less fuss, and her events bring her into more contact with ordinary citizens than his constant march of briefings. But her celebrity is nearly as great as her husband's, her world nearly as artificial. (By the time of the Democratic National Convention, Michelle told friends, she stopped knowing what the weather was each day: she lived in the permanently controlled climate zone of airplanes, cars and hotels.) A year or two ago, when Barack Obama talked about staying grounded, he mentioned his wife; now he tends to talk about his children or his dog instead. All presidential couples experience this sort of isolation, which is part of why they tend to come to resemble each other more than they do the rest of us.
As the great experiment of the presidency rolls on, the Obamas may finally learn definitive answers to the issues they have been debating over the course of their partnership. The questions they have long asked each other in private will likely be answered on the largest possible stage. They will discern whether politics can bring about the kind of change they have longed for and promised to others, or whether the compromises and defeats are too great. They will learn whether they were too ambitious or not ambitious enough. And even if they share the answer with no one else, the two will know better if everything does in fact become political — if their marriage can both embrace politics and also at some level stay free of it.
Then, in three or seven years, the president's political career will end. There will be no more offices to win or hold, and the Obamas will most likely renegotiate their compact once more — this time, perhaps more on Michelle Obama's terms.
The equality of any partnership "is measured over the scope of the marriage. It's not just four years or eight years or two," the first lady said. "We're going to be married for a very long time."


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Radeberger Pilsner Review
Beer of the Day: Radeberger Pilsner
Since we couldn't make it to Oktoberfest this Fall, it seemed fitting to sip on a German-brewed beer in hopes of its transportative properties. With that in mind, we bring you a classic Teutonic tipple: Radeberger Pilsner ($8 for 6). Founded in 1872, Radeberger is purportedly the first German brewery (still in business) to produce pilsner exclusively and has earned an impressive assortment of fans since then, including King Frederick Augustus III of Saxony and Chancellor Otto von Bismarck.
Keep reading to find out if this German import is up to snuff.
Lovers of lighter lagers, this golden brew is for you. Like a jazzed-up version of Coors Light, this beer delivers for those looking for a refreshing beer that still peppers the palate with hops-forward flavor. Despite its Germanic origins, we'd recommend making this your beer of choice for watching Monday Night Football at home, a decidedly American pastime, as it would pair exceptionally well with salty snacks. This pilsner is an easy-drinking, ever-so-slightly fruity option that is sure to please.

subset: commoncrawl


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|The daisies of Fukushima, Japan: You, too, can have mutant flowers at home. Just plant them near your microwave oven, and as you give yourself cancer by irradiating plastic and such, your buds may warp and mutate or simply die (twitter.com/san_kaido).
|Maybe the Messiah arrived on a corn tortilla, maybe not. But are the Virgin Mary (the Western version of Buddhist Kwan Yin, Goddess of Mercy and Compassion) praying in church?
(TheLipTV) We live in a cynical world, a deeply cynical world. Is seeing believing?
|We're not racists. Our parents are. We're no more biased than Daisy's Dukes. Who needs White Power when you already got White Privilege? Watch FOX News, and leave our Confederate heritage alone like them Good Ol' Boys (Dukes of Hazard).
Joel Landau (NY Daily News, July 23, 2015
|She never had a chance. Arm of Fukushima mannequin sticks out of rubble in area devastated by 2011 earthquake, tsunami, nuclear meltdown (David Guttenfelder/AP).
|US and UK governments oppose Japan (E).
Maybe don't stop to smell these flowers. Pictures of [mutant] white daisies growing in some odd shapes near the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in Japan have gone viral. The plants are growing quite oddly by the area that had a meltdown of three of the nuclear plant's six reactors following a horrific earthquake and tsunami in 2011. More
For regular updates on Fukushima radiation headed for U.S., see rense.com
For regular updates on Fukushima radiation headed for U.S., see rense.com
- Did Buddhist missionaries "discover" America before Columbus? (You'll be surprised what American historian Edward P. Vining found in 1885)
|Hey, N-word, freeze/Let's see your license!
Former University of Cincinnati police officer Raymond Tensing has been released on a $1 million bail after pleading not guilty to the murder of Sam DuBose. Tensing, who is white, [executed] the 43-year-old African-American man on July 19 after stopping him for not having a front license plate. Two additional officers, Phillip Kidd and David Lindenschmidt, have been placed on administrative leave.
Meanwhile, new information shows that Officer Phillip Kidd and another officer on scene during the DuBose shooting were involved in the death of an unarmed African-American man five years earlier.
|Don't fear us. Don't fear us. We're police.
According to documents revealed by The Guardian, Phillip Kidd and Officer Eric Weibel were part of a seven-officer team that Tased and shackled a mentally ill man who was having a psychotic episode. Democracy Now! speaks to Iris Roley, longtime police accountability activist with the Cincinnati Black United Front.
She is the cousin of Kelly Brinson, who died after being Tased and restrained by Univ. of Cincinnati police officers in 2010. Two of the police officers involved in Roley's cousin's death were at the scene of Sam DuBose's shooting and later lied to investigators to try to corroborate Officer Ray Tensing's false claim about being dragged by DuBose's car. More
- Why do murderer-dentists hate lions?
- Top officials critical of killer Ohio cop indicted for murder
- KPCC FM, Los Angeles, SoCal Public Radio (scpr.org)
- Mysterious goings on (BehindTheBlack.com)
- Trump? Racist Jeb Bush wants "minorities"
- When China rules the world, Beijing will host all Olympic Games
- Suspect in "Deadliest Catch" killing commits suicide: A 24-year-old man suspected of gunning down "Deadliest Catch" producer Joe…
2 robbers beat up 32-year-old man in Manhattan, steal iPhoneTwo men pummeled a 32-year-old in broad daylight near the waterfront in…
Philly 'monster' who killed own dad charged in rape, murderA 56-year-old "monster" who killed his own father was charged in the…
SEE IT: Doctor holds dying friend's hand after ISIS attackA powerful photograph showing a severely injured doctor holding her dying…
Royals gather for Princess Charlotte's christeningBritain's Princess Charlotte will have her christening Sunday.
|I'm Cecil the Lion. I'm dead (video)
|Elk Foot, Taos Pueblo (E.I. Couse)
The Americas were the last great frontier to be settled by humans, and their peopling remains one of the great mysteries for researchers. Two major studies of the DNA of living and ancient people try to settle the big questions about the early settlers: Who were they? When did they come? How many waves arrived?
But instead of converging on a single consensus picture, the studies, published online in Science and Nature, throw up a new mystery: Both detect in modern Native Americans a trace of DNA related to that of native people from Australia and Melanesia. The competing teams, neither of which knew what the other was up to until the last minute, are still trying to reconcile and make sense of each other's data.
|Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz (beacon.org)
"Both models...see in the Americas a subtle signal from" Australo-Melanesians, notes Science co-author David Meltzer, an archaeologist at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. "A key difference is when and how it arrived in the New World."
The Nature team concludes it came in one of two early waves of migration into the continent, whereas the Science team concludes it came much later, and was unrelated to the initial peopling.
For the Science paper, nearly 4 years in the making, researchers sequenced 31 complete and 79 partial genomes from people in North and South America, Siberia, and Oceania. They compared these with previously sequenced genomes of three ancient skeletons: the 24,000-year-old Mal'ta child from Siberia, the 12,600-year-old Anzick child from Montana, and the 4000-year-old Saqqaq individual from Greenland. More
|First Native Americans are East Asian and aboriginal: DNA study (Science Mag)


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Community and Friendship
President Ronald D. Liebowitz delivered this address to the Class of 2012 on September 7, 2008.
Welcome! I trust your first week on campus has gone well. From everything I have heard, your move-in, registration, first-year seminar meetings, and all of the other beginning-of-the-year activities have gone smoothly. The mosquitoes, unfortunately, decided to come out in full force to welcome you to Vermont, though they were not part of the official orientation program.
Many people deserve a lot of credit for helping to make your orientation such a success. At the risk of offending those who I might overlook, I will only thank Katy Abbott, Associate Dean of the College, and ask her to thank all those who helped make your and your parents' introduction to Middlebury enjoyable and relatively easy. Thank you, Katy.
I, along with my faculty colleagues, am thrilled you are here, and we look forward to getting to know you in class, during our office hours, and in multiple events and venues on campus.
Convocation addresses, such as this one, allow presidents to speak to incoming students directly and as a class—something not likely to occur again until Commencement. With such an opportunity, I have, during my first four years as president, felt compelled to impart what I would call "practical advice" to the incoming class, along with some general words of wisdom on this celebratory and very special occasion.
As such, I have encouraged, even exhorted, the past four incoming classes to heed the following advice:
- take full advantage of this remarkable opportunity—the gift of a liberal arts education. About 2 percent of all undergraduate students in the United States study at a residential liberal arts college like Middlebury and are presented with all the opportunities such an education provides. Don't take anything for granted; don't sit back; jump in and be a part of all that is going on here.
- take risks and explore disciplines you never had the opportunity to study before college. The "tried and true" is not likely to open new doors for you, nor is it likely to push you to grow in ways a liberal education will if you give it a chance.
- take some laboratory science courses even if you have no intention to major in the sciences. Given the environmental and health-related challenges humankind now faces, it is almost irresponsible not to be scientifically literate; besides, the excellence of our science programs seems to be one of the best kept secrets in higher education these days, so go check out our science departments: I don't think you can miss McCardell Bicentennial Hall, so no directions required.
- take as many courses known for writing assignments and oral presentations as you can. One cannot underestimate the value of learning to write and speak clearly when one graduates and engages the real world. This is the time and place to improve on your communications skills, to get constructive criticism and encouragement, not when you are asked to make your first presentation or deliver a cogent argument at your first job.
- take the initiative to learn outside the classroom. You will find countless opportunities to volunteer in the local community, establish new organizations, or help to nurture and develop existing ones during your four years. You will also meet some very smart people here in addition to the faculty: your classmates, staff members, and folks from town. All can serve as teachers and mentors in significant ways, and will complement the excellent education you will receive in the classroom.
- and finally, and perhaps most importantly, take advantage of the outstanding Middlebury faculty, who are ready and willing to teach and mentor you over the course of the next four years. They were, or should have been, the major reason for coming to Middlebury.
Though none of us really puts all that much stock in the college ranking game, I think ... well, in fact I admit that I know the Middlebury faculty was recently ranked as the best in the country by the Princeton Review. (I believe the category in which they were ranked first was called "professors get high marks."). Whether or not you put any stock in such rankings, our faculty, and their commitment to undergraduate education, is second to none, and they are eager to engage you, challenge you, mentor you, and help you pursue your goals while here, so take advantage of such a resource.
And while I am at it, how about joining me in thanking those faculty members here today for receiving external affirmation of what we already know about them and their great commitment to our students? Thank you, faculty colleagues.
Though I have shared with you some things I typically advise entering students to consider as they begin their Middlebury education, and usually elaborate on those themes in much greater detail, I would like to focus the remainder of my comments today on something different.
As natural as it would be for me to focus my comments on the remarkable academic opportunities in front of you, I believe the most important message I can convey to each of you today centers on two related concepts: community and friendship. Though these concepts may appear to have little to do with the academic experience you envision over the course of the next four years, they represent, especially at a residential liberal arts college like Middlebury, the foundation of your education. The quality of the community in which you live and study, and the depth and sincerity of the friendships you develop, will play a large role in how much you will grow and take with you from Middlebury.
At residential liberal arts colleges, one often hears about the strength of the "community." It is one of the major reasons faculty and staff choose to locate and work at places like Middlebury: though isolated, one feels connected … feeling part of something with an important mission … knowing that individuals are cared for in some vague, way—not too intrusive, but just enough for those in the community to know that if something is wrong, one is never alone and is cared for.
It is a major reason students explain, year in and year out, why their experiences here differ in some fundamental way from their friends' experiences at peer institutions: the majority of Middlebury students, we often hear, view learning as collaborative rather than competitive; we hear that most students are motivated to learn rather than simply to get high grades; and we hear that students routinely look out for, and care for, one another.
Such feelings of "community" are consistent with the Greek concept of "koinonia," which means "communion by intimate participation," and the Latin concept of communitatem, or "fellowship." Communitatem is related to the word communis, meaning "common, public, shared by all or many," and itself is derived from the words com, meaning "with," plus unis, meaning "one," or from com plus munis meaning "exchange or obligation." Both meanings, "with one" or "with exchange or obligation" signify a greater commitment on the part of the individual than simply to him or herself.
Today, the word "community" is more broadly used in the English language, usually to connote people living together or sharing something, almost anything, in common. It has become overused, a cliché of sorts, and therefore has lost much of its oomph or meaning as a descriptor of the quality of a place for both the individual and collective. And it has also been politicized by the ideological battles over how one protects an individual's rights while also remaining conscious of the needs of the greater community.
There is neither an easy nor definitive answer to where one's individual rights and freedoms begin and end, and where one's actions need to be circumscribed because one is a member of a larger group. When one voluntarily joins a community, as each of you has done in choosing to attend Middlebury College, one forfeits some degree of individual freedom, yet one still needs to learn the culture and values of that community; to understand the accepted limits of one another's behavior as it relates to the larger community; and how active a role one could play in ensuring that a certain standard of behavior—a standard that approximates one's own expectations—is understood, accepted, and adhered to by all the members of that community.
These issues represent an important part of your education, and the degree to which you and others take an active role building a strong sense of community according to the ancient ideal, will determine how rich your learning experience will be.
As I often say to assembled groups of College constituents, I believe our college gets most things right when it comes to supporting each student as an independent and creative thinker, yet we come up short too often when it comes to engaging students on how certain behavior infringes on the rights of the larger community.
The irresponsible use of alcohol, though committed by a relatively small minority of students, is by far the greatest cause of disrespectful behavior toward the community here at Middlebury. I should point out that I am not suggesting, or even advocating, that students should not drink. I know better, and I also know the majority of students who drink, drink responsibly and do so largely in social gatherings.
I am, however, saying that those who do drink irresponsibly need to understand how their behavior often results in disrespect toward their fellow students, staff, and, in indirect ways, their faculty, and that they are diminishing the quality of life and education not only for themselves, but for many others.
Of course one has the right to drink oneself into a stupor and suffer the individual consequences such behavior generates: drunkenness; arrest by the Middlebury Police Department; the not-too-pleasant feel of a hangover or two; missing class; earning lower grades; underperforming on the athletic fields; and so on. But the impact beyond the individual—on the community—becomes all too familiar to fellow students, presumably "friends," staff, and administrators who must literally and figuratively clean up the mess. Dorm and property damage, verbal abuse, fighting, and sexual assaults are just some of the incidents that come with irresponsible alcohol use on campus.
The educational or experiential "cost" of disrespectful behavior is the diminishing of what one will learn and experience at Middlebury. It prevents the integration of many groups of students, especially students who come from other cultures and who openly wonder why students so accomplished in class, appear to be so awkward and, shall we say, "less distinguished" when it comes to socializing with alcohol.
Less interaction and engagement within the study body translates into missed opportunities for students to hear different perspectives on politics, the arts, and life in general, and to learn more about the vastly different and rich cultures that coexist on our campus. In other words, it leads to behavior that interferes with the larger, loftier, goals of a liberal arts education.
If one truly believes in community, and wishes to be part of something that, by its very nature, supports and nurtures its members and provides great opportunities for personal growth, one must help to establish the limits of unacceptable behavior and play a constructive role in curbing those who exceed those limits. If one chooses to stand by and allow the destruction of property and the disrespect of individuals, one needs to ask how committed that person can be to the idea of community, and to all that a residential liberal arts education has to offer.
Which is where the second concept I wanted to address today comes in—friendship. Friendships at Middlebury are special. For a host of reasons, students develop deep and meaningful friendships during their four years here…deeper, I would argue, than at any other college or university with which I am familiar.
We of course live in a relatively remote location, which means so much of what goes on during one's years here is about interacting with people. There are no major metropolitan areas nearby to absorb a student's intellectual and social energies. For good or bad, and I believe it is for the good, much of those energies expended are shared largely within the confines of our 350-acre main campus.
The word friend comes from the Old English freond, meaning "to love, to favor." Froend comes from the Old Teutonic frijojanan, and is closely related to the Old English freo or "free." The connection with the word free is that a friend, unlike a family member, is someone you like or love by choice. Similar to the word community, however, the use of the word "friend" has become so commonplace that the power of its original meaning has been eroded. As Jean de La Fontaine, a French poet, wrote, "Everyone calls himself a friend; foolish he is who believes it: nothing is more common than the name friend, and nothing is more rare than the real thing."
The link between living in a vital, supportive community, and reaping all its benefits, may very well lie in establishing true friendships. But developing true friendships means more than calling oneself a friend. The "real thing," using La Fontaine's words, requires effort: one needs to go well beyond the casual acquaintance ... one needs to care about those you consider your friends…to look after them when they are in trouble ... to help them avoid it when they are not ... and to be able to, indeed feel compelled to, intervene when you believe they are acting in ways that put themselves and others in danger.
A significant body of research supports the long-held view that excessive abuse of alcohol has a significant destructive impact on the development of the brain before one reaches one's mid-20s. A number of neurological studies have shown that the long-term impact on individuals aged 21-24, who regularly drink enough to attain blood alcohol levels just below the legal limit, recorded greater incidences of brain impairment than individuals who drink the same amount and were only four years older. Brain impairment, in these studies, includes a decrease in the ability to learn new information, form memories, and perform a number of cognitive functions—things that seem vital to your academic work, let alone your everyday life.
With this knowledge in hand, friends should not let friends drink to excess. A failure to intervene calls into question the depth and value of the friendship, and is likely to weaken the sense of community one enjoys when members of the community look out for one another.
You will be glad to know that I am the first to understand that administrators cannot dictate good behavior. Nor can we alone set the standards of friendship within a community. That needs to come from the community itself, and the fact is that students represent the largest group in this particular college community.
Thus, as you settle in and begin the exciting process of taking new classes, meeting new people, joining or starting new organizations, or playing your sport, think about the kind of community you wish to be part of during the next four years. Think about how you and your actions will contribute to that community, help to make that community as strong as it will be, and how your involvement needs to be active, not passive, if you truly aspire to getting the most out of your Middlebury experience. This is a remarkable place, and the degree to which it meets your expectations and provides what you will need to meet the challenges you will face upon graduation is, to a very large extent, up to you.
Two thousand years ago Aristotle helped us to begin thinking about how one's desire and attempt to live a fulfilling, dynamic, and enriching life is related to, and dependent on, an individual's deep, strong commitment to the values of one's community. It is up to you to help define those values and to take part in shaping this remarkable community you officially join today. We are here to guide you on your four-year journey, and we look forward to watching you grow and to seeing you take an active role in defining what we as an academic community become. Grab some potential true friends and hit the ground running.
Good luck, and thank you.


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I go to a few speechwriters' conferences, and I blog and do workshops about women and public speaking. From time to time, a speechwriter--usually a male speechwriter--will ask, "Do I need to write differently for women speakers?" or urge me to give a talk about what's different in writing for women speakers.
I can't give that talk because you don't need to write differently for women speakers. But I do want you to write differently for male speakers, and use your influence with them.
For those of you who are already eager to reply to what's below with "But not all speechwriters do this," I get that. But women have been sitting for centuries through speeches with the components I'm asking you to change, and those speeches are not writing themselves.
If you write differently for male speakers, your speaker wouldn't refer to women only or mostly as mothers, wives, and daughters when the women in question really are CEOs, bankers, legislators, or executives. That includes praising said CEOs, bankers, legislators, or executives with "and she's a devoted mother of three," as if that made all the other achievements pale in comparison (as was done to Marie Curie when she won a Nobel Prize, among countless others). Some male speakers only refer to women as mothers, when there are plenty of us without children who also vote, buy products and run companies. Most politicians' speechwriters do it, but I want speechwriters of all kinds to set a better pace. Don't define women solely in terms of their relationships to other people. Challenge yourself, and your speaker, to describe women in terms of their work and their worth beyond their relationships, just as you do when you're writing about men. I don't want to have to sit through another speech in which my gender is so narrowly defined.
If your speaker only quotes men, or only points to men as exemplars of whatever you're peddling, your speech is ignoring half of history and half of the present day. I want you to search out women's quotes and women leaders to use as examples. The Eloquent Woman Index of Famous Speeches by Women has more than 160 speeches loaded with great quotes, and I maintain a Pinterest board of great quotes by eloquent women. There's no excuse for not quoting women. Bloomberg News has just made this the standard for its journalism: "All Bloomberg News enterprise work must include at least one woman's voice, and preferably a balance of men and women. Women are engaged in every topic we cover. Our journalism should reflect that variety." Let's try it in speechwriting. I don't want to sit through speeches in which no women serve as exemplars worthy of quoting.
Writing differently for male speakers also means omitting the sexist or suggestive content that I hear too many men repeat and too many women report, as if we're endlessly reliving a 1950s Rat Pack routine or an episode of Mad Men. We live in a misogynistic culture. That doesn't mean you have to perpetuate it when you write a speech or plan a presentation. And if you think that removes "all the fun," you've just admitted, if only to yourself, that you're not thinking about your entire audience. You've admitted that you're willing to help your speaker disrespect half your audience. Both are cardinal sins for a speechwriter. If it's your speaker who is inserting these comments, speak to him about it. I don't want to sit through those speeches, either.
If your male speaker is addressing a group of women, please don't try to fix the women by giving them helpful tips when the real issue is persistent sexism in our culture. Telling women they just need to be more confident, to speak up more, or to be more assertive suggests that the problem begins and ends with women, and that they are somehow both flawed and responsible for the situation. Research shows that women can accurately size up negative biases in their audiences. They often don't negotiate for raises or ask questions, not because they don't see their own worth, but because they have figured out (accurately) that both men and women are less likely to view them positively or meet their requests. Instead, I want your speech to note what your male speaker will do to ensure equity across the board in his sphere of influence. If he's addressing a group of women, I'd like to see him ask them what's on their minds, listening rather than prescribing solutions. While he's at it, I want to see him take as many questions from women as from men in the Q&A. Women notice this persistent and easy method of silencing them.
When I get that question about writing differently for women, I know that the questioner may be hoping that I will answer as I do, that they need not do so. Why should there be different types of writing? they might be thinking. I agree in principle, but wonder why I rarely hear speechwriters ask about changing the ways they write for men. It's not just another case of "what do women want?" but what all speakers can do. Unless we can consider both options, we're not really examining this question, intellectually or fairly.
I believe that speechwriters, so often charged with describing the cutting-edge, can be leaders here. I believe that most speechwriters and speakers don't want to discriminate or further bias, but are unlikely to recognize when they're doing it. Speakers who want to be real thought leaders and role models would talk about gender diversity because women are half your market, half your employee pool, half your suppliers, half your voters, half your donors and volunteers--at least. If you want your male speaker to resonate with half his audience, a half he might not be reaching now, these are easy steps to take to boost his influence.
You'll be boosting your own influence at the same time. Speechwriters rarely get credit for their work. That's baked into the job, so your speaker can look and sound smart and eloquent. But speechwriters also can be influential, which is a different kind of power. Speechwriters can have great influence in this way. Will you?
(Creative Commons licensed photo by TED Conference)
Come to my pre-conference workshop at the Spring Speechwriters and Business Communicators Conference in Cambridge, UK, this April. What goes into a TED-quality talk will help speakers, speechwriters and conference organizers understand how to craft and deliver a talk in the style of TED, whether you're getting ready for a TEDx conference or just a presentation in this popular style. Go to this link for more details on what's included, as well as a significant discount for readers of The Eloquent Woman. The workshop is on 15 April, and the conference is 16-17 April. Please join me!
Inspiration, ideas and information to help women build public speaking content, confidence and credibility. Denise Graveline is a Washington, DC-based speaker coach who has coached nearly 200 TEDMED and TEDx speakers--including one of 2016's most popular TED talks. She also has prepared speakers for presentations, testimony, and keynotes. She offers 1:1 coaching and group workshops in public speaking, presentation and media interview skills to both men and women.
Thursday, January 8, 2015
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Monkey see, monkey brew: Center City's Monkey Paw
For Guinness' sake: Straight burger and no monkey business!
Yeah yeah yeah. It was the Jewel Box and now it's Monkey Paw. Apart from that, same crowd, same sunset blinding everybody looking out the front door.
Big difference: beers. They make half of them right here, in the tiny room next to the bare-bones saloon. And the rest are interesting craft brews, not your big-chain disguises like Blue Moon.
I'm in here (Monkey Paw Pub & Brewery, 805 16th Street, right beside the 5 Freeway, 619-358-9901)...
at Happy Hour (and it's a good one, from 5:00-8:00 p.m. daily)...
...and meet Cosmo the new brewer here.
He started February 27th. And here he is serving behind the bar while he's brewing out back.
"Yeast makes the beer, not me," he says. "They're alive. We're partners. That's what's fun."
They pretty-much let him have at it with the half-dozen brewing tanks right behind this wall...
...but the other thing he likes about this job is its location.
"This has been my zip code for 26 years," he says. "I went to high school up the road. This is my neighborhood. And now I get to play all day in it."
Talk about local pub.
I end up getting his Guinness look-alike ($4 happy hour, dollar off regular price).
He calls it "Downs Family Irish Stout" after the Gospel group. He gives me a one-gulp taster of the real Guinness to show the difference. I can't tell.
Then when I mention I gotta have something solid to help this down he points to a little hole in the wall. "That's the order hatch for the food," he says.
Menu's full of greasy kid stuff. Everybody says their cheese steaks are great, specially the Naughty Monkey with their own sauce, plus pepperjack, spicy Serrano, and onion slaw. Comes with waffle fries. Except it's $12, and I need to go cheap tonight.
Jess, the gal behind the food hatch, says the cheapest thing is their custom burger ($6). "But that's like, bun, burger, fries. No frills," she says.
"Done, I say. "OK, add bacon."
That's an extra buck.
So I'm halfway down my un-Guinness when Jess turns up with da boiger...
...She was right. Bun, burger, bacon. You'd get six McDoubles for these same six bucks.
But hey, not just paying for the food here. Plus, ketchup to the rescue and we have some color in there! Also malt vinegar squirted over the waffle fries, and flavonoids start sparking.
And here's the thing. Without the usual mountain of stuff, lettuce leaves, slippy tomato slices, flick-out dill pickles, it's actually a pleasure to eat and just taste the meat.
I hear it's the guys who own Hamilton's and Small Bar who took this over. With their fanatical interest in on-the-spot beers, I swear it's the best thing that could have happened to the late-lamented Jewel Box.
Cosmo says he prefers hoppy to malty, and he's got a bunch of his own concoctions coming out over the next few weeks. Can't wait.
More like this:
- Downtown: Sliders in Salvation Alley — May 25, 2013
- Luck of the Island at McP's — March 17, 2013
- Eat hearty, eat arty: gyros hit Coronado — March 4, 2013
- Animalized! First Bar Downtown delivers $1 IPAs, sensational sprouts — March 1, 2013
- The Counter: East Village's littlest burger? — Jan. 21, 2013
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|The one where I got photo bombed by Spider-Man
|Muk Spa Shampoo & Conditioner
|Shine Spray and Treatment Oil
The Muk spa range also included a hair mask but I gave it to TheBrunetteOne as she had longer hair than me and would put it to better use!
Price: Retail price wise is ok, it is more than supermarket brands of course but less than the other salon brands. A little goes a long way with the shampoo as well. You also use very little of the treatment oil each time. The styling tool is RRP$199.95, it would be one of my buy it for myself as a treat item. But I managed to curl my own hair (my hair cut does not allow curling now due to layers or I would demo it too) and I have to admit that I secretly love it.
Purpose: Hey my hair is straightened and don't you think I look totes hot? LOL but seriously my picks would be the shampoo and treatment oil.
Hit me up with comments of Spider-Man awesomeness and your lipstick on teeth at awkward moments stories. Or you can just tell me how hot my hair looks. :)


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Discover Panasonic's retail solutions at Euroshop 2017
With more than 100,000 visitors and more than 2,500 companies from about 60 countries EuroShop is one of the biggest retail trade fairs and an indispensable information and communication platform for top decision makers in retail.
Join Panasonic at Euroshop 2017 and gain first-hand insight into how our specialist technology is helping to transform customer experience throughout the sector.
We will demonstrate the integration between our sophisticated retail technologies and solutions bringing a completely new experience to our customers in store and giving you more flexibility than ever to grow your business.
From fixed to wireless, from audio and video to a single platform - Panasonic can help you communicate more efficiently in your shop, being a single or multiple branch location or even nationwide to global location.
Combined with solutions across our business divisions, we can present a seamlessly integrated portfolio allowing business to concentrate on their competencies and maximise revenues.
For joining us at the show (Hall 6 | Booth 6H58) just fill out the form below and we will provide you with a free access code.


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- Inside Athletics
- Tickets
- Fan Zone
- Media Zone
- Social
- Shop
- Donate Now
JOHNSON CITY, Tenn. (Dec. 14, 2009) - ETSU volleyball head coach Lindsey Devine announced Monday the signing of four Bucs to the 2010 class. The Bucs signed Megan Devine (Kingsport, Tenn.), Krista Hughes (Williamsburg, Va.), Nicole DeVries (Orangeville, Ill.) and Summer Kremer (Mills River. N.C.).
"Collectively, this is a tremendous class that we have coming in next season," Devine said. "They are a very versatile, athletic and competitive group of players that I am looking forward to working with. They all come from terrific programs, and have experienced high level of success with championships at both their high school and club level."
Devine, a 5-foot-11 outside hitter from Dobyns Bennett High School helped lead the Indians to the 2009 State Championship as she was named the TSSAA Tournament MVP. Devine was named the Conference Player of the Year, All-State, All-Region, All-Conference and All-District in 2008 and 2009. In 2008, Devine was also named the Northeast Tennessee Player of the Year. Devine is a two-sport star earning All-Region and MVP honors in basketball in 2008. Devine currently plays for the Kingsport Volleyball Club where she helped the KVC Club qualify for Nationals as they placed 18th at the tournament. Devine was selected to play for Team USA Red at the High Performance Championships in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. in 2009.
Coach Devine on Megan Devine
"Megan is a very smart and skilled outside hitter. She is able to be explosive in the front row with a variety of shots, but she also has the defensive skills that make her an impact player in the back row."
Hughes, a 6-foot-0 outside hitter from Jamestown High School, was an All-State selection in 2008. As a senior, Hughes was named First-Team All-District and tallied 45 kills in a match. Hughes posted 220 aces, 1,001 kills, 288 digs and 213 blocks including 138 solo blocks while at Jamestown. Hughes also plays for the Coastal Volleyball Club under David Albaugh.
Coach Devine on Krista Hughes
"Krista's athleticism will enable her to be a factor at the net in attacking and blocking. She hits a heavy ball. I feel that she has such an upside so I can't wait to get Krista here out on the court."
DeVries, a 5-foot-9 setter from Orangeville High School was named First Team All-Conference from 2006-08. Devries earned First Team All-Area honors in 2006 and Second Team All-Area honors in 2007. She plays for Club Fusion Volleyball. In 2007, she helped guide the Club Fusion 15 Black team to a fifth place finish at Nationals in the Open division.
Coach Devine on Nicole DeVries
"Nicole is exactly what we wanted in the setter position. Along with her skill, she is very passionate, quick and full of energy, and a fun player to watch."
Kremer, a 5-foot-9 outside hitter from West Hendersonville High School was a member of the 2008 undefeated AA State Championship Team tallying 14 kills in the championship match. Kremer was named to the All-Conference and All-Area Teams from 2007-09. A three-sport athlete, Kremer was a four-event qualifier for the North Carolina State Track Meet in 2007 and received All-Area and All-Conference honors in basketball in 2009. Kremer plays for the Biltmore Volleyball Academy coached by Talia Ogle. While with the BVA, Kremer was selected to the Carolina Region 16U Platinum All-Tourney Team in 2008 and to the Carolina Region High Performance Team in 2007.
Coach Devine on Summer Kremer
"Summer has great work ethic and quickness, which in my mind are two key ingredients that will make her such a valuable player within our volleyball program."
For more information on ETSU volleyball and all other Buccaneer athletic news please visit www.ETSUBucs.com.


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No country, no culture, no person today is untouched by what happens in the rest of the world. Technological innovation, environmental degradation, economic gain & loss, nuclear weapons, instant communication have all created unprecedented familiarity among the world's many cultures. With this historic development, the Dalai Lama understands that the essential task of humanity in the 21st Century is to cultivate peaceful coexistence.
Many believe in the inevitability of an escalating "clash of civilizations". Peaceful coexistence has long been problematic with religion, and while previous conflicts over religious differences may have been significant and regrettable, they did not threaten the very survival of humanity. Now, when extremists can persuade followers with the immense emotional power of faith and have access to powerful technological resources, a single spark could ignite a powder keg of frightening proportions.
Yet the Dalai Lama shows how the challenges of globalization can also move us in another direction, to a deeper plane where nations, cultures, and individuals connect through their shared human nature. All major religions confront the same perennial questions; each have distinct forms of expression. But this marvelous diversity of insight has the potential for inspiring dialogue which can enrich everyone's pursuit of wisdom. All faith traditions turn to compassion as a guiding principle for living a good life. It is the task of all people with an aspiration to spiritual perfection to affirm the fundamental value of the compassion. In this way we can truly develop a deep recognition of the value of other faiths, and on that basis, we can cultivate genuine respect.
In Toward a True Kinship of Faiths, the Dalai Lama also explores where differences between religions can be genuinely appreciated without serving as a source of conflict. The establishment of genuine harmony is not dependent upon accepting that all religions are fundamentally the same or that they lead to the same place. Many fear that recognizing the value of another faith is incompatible with having devotion to the truth of one's own. Nevertheless, the Dalai Lama profoundly shows how a sincere believer can, with integrity, be a pluralist in relation to other religions without compromising commitment to the essence of the doctrinal teachings of their own faith.
An issue of central importance for the Dalai Lama personally and for the entire world in general, Toward a True Kinship of Faiths offers a hopeful yet realistic look at how humanity must step into the future.


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Your preteen wants to play a new video game at a friend's house—but is that game appropriate for your child? How will you know? Here's how you can find out:
How are Video Games Rated for Content?
Most video games are given a third-party rating by the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB). This rating is intended to provide "objective information" to help parents make informed choices about the games their kids play.
An ESRB rating has three parts:
- An age-appropriate category designation,
- Content descriptors, and
- Information about the "interactive elements" of a game, for instance, whether or not a game shares a user's location or other personal information.
What are the Basic Ratings Categories?
- EC – Early Childhood. No objectionable content, and a game that was created specifically for young children.
- Everyone. Fun for the whole family. Cartoon-style violence at best, and generally no profanity or suggestive themes included.
- Everyone 10+. Generally appropriate for preteens and older. May contain mild violence or mild language, but overall very tame.
- Teen. This is the gaming equivalent of a PG-13 movie rating. According to ESRB, a game with this rating "May contain violence, suggestive themes, crude humor, minimal blood, simulated gambling, and/or infrequent use of strong language."
- Mature. A video game comparable to an R-rated film. A game with this rating is likely to include some combination of graphic violence, blood and gore, sexual content, and strong profanity.
- Adults Only. Consider this the NC-17 rating of video games. ESRB describes these games this way, "May include prolonged scenes of intense violence, graphic sexual content and/or gambling with real currency."
Where Can I Find More?
A detailed explanation of the ESRB rating system, including specific content descriptors and interactive element designations is online at: http://www.esrb.org/ratings/
Mike Nappa is an author of more than 50 books. He is also the founder of Nappaland Literary Agency and a former book acquisitions editor. He is featured each month in ParentLife magazine and in Trends and Truth Online on the ParentLife blog.


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from the weekend
Some of the our weekend. Saturday was fun but I've been at my desk since early this morning. It's a mess.
Other Stories
12 comments:
Love your pictures! Israel's outfit is so cool. Hope he is feeling better.ReplyDelete
Ahh, a package from Donna Wilson, always a joy! I received one too, this weekend, with a rainy day-scarf. Wondering what's in yours? Greetings from Holland!ReplyDelete
And I hope Israel is feeling better! Croup can be so scary.ReplyDelete
You take the most beautiful photos! I hope your son is feeling better!ReplyDelete
- AnonymousNovember 21, 2011
i'm loving the beads!!!!ReplyDelete
lovely details!ReplyDelete
I'm not sure what that third photo is but it looks beautiful and delicious!ReplyDelete
- AnonymousNovember 22, 2011
your l'il man is always so dapper:)ReplyDelete
Hello! Looks busy and beautiful! Have good week.ReplyDelete
It was a little egg cup, yes, it's always fun receiving something form Donna Wilson!
From one Boise dweller to another, where oh where is that beautiful little pink pastry from? MMMMM!!ReplyDelete
Hi Kimberly,ReplyDelete
it's Princess cake, a Swedish dessert that we brought home from Ikea. Sorry!
Thank you for your comments, I love hearing from you!
Questions, comments or sponsorship inquires, please contact me via the 'contact' link.


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FRESNO, Calif. — Raw milk from a Central California dairy is being recalled after tests confirmed bacteria called campylobacter was found in its raw cream.
Don't miss these Health stories
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Rates of women who are opting for preventive mastectomies, such as Angeline Jolie, have increased by an estimated 50 percent in recent years, experts say. But many doctors are puzzled because the operation doesn't carry a 100 percent guarantee, it's major surgery -- and women have other options, from a once-a-day pill to careful monitoring.
- Larry Page's damaged vocal cords: Treatment comes with trade-offs
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State health officials say at least 10 people have fallen ill after consuming products from Organic Pastures in Fresno County between January and April. None were hospitalized.
California State Veterinarian Annette Whiteford issued a quarantine order for the dairy's products Thursday. The state also issued a statewide recall of its raw milk, raw skim milk, raw cream and raw butter. Consumers are urged to dispose of any of the dairy's products they may have.
The dairy's owner, Mark McAfee, says he believes the test results are incorrect. He has requested a hearing with the California Department of Food and Agriculture Friday.
It's the second recall in six months for the company, which was forced to recall milk contaminated with E.coli in December.
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.


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BOISE, Idaho, April 23 (UPI) -- An Idaho dance troupe said companies are employing their services to assist in "the creative process."
John Michael Schert, co-founder and executive director of Boise-based dance troupe Trey McIntyre Project, said the dancers visit company offices, perform a routine and lead employees in discussions about the creative process of creating and refining a dance, CNN Money reported Tuesday.
"We teach them the dance after we've discussed it so that they can experience that translation of verbal cue to action," Schert said.
"We've decided that we have a real asset, which is the creative process itself. We're selling that," Schert said.
"Artists live the whole process of inspiration. We decided to refine it as a tool," Schert said. "We want companies to understand what they are creating, whether it is a marketing strategy or a healthcare policy, and get them to think about where they get hung up, and how to find ways around those stopping points to come up with new ideas."


text: By Avel Manansala / 11/20/2008 FacebookPinterestTwitterLinkedinemail Crispy Buntot ng Tuna (Tuna Tail) Sumptuous Tuna Dish Like this:Like Loading... Like this:Like Loading... FacebookPinterestTwitterLinkedinemail Categories: Avel Manansala Avel Manansala aka Bariles, is a native of a bustling city down south of Mindanao Island. He is a consultant on Blogging, Social Media, and Marketing . He is co-founder of the SoCCSkSarGen Bloggers and Lead of Google Business Group (GBG)- General Santos. He is also a Google Local Guides champion. If you need more info on any of these fields, please leave him a message. Be the first to write a comment. So what do you think? Cancel reply Latest Post Gensan News Online is 12 years old! TRENDING: Watch Gensan Local Guide in Official Google YouTube Video investigate San Francisco City Sights Gensan Airport now 95% finished (See latest photos) How to Market your Online Presence across the Globe A young General's Journey to Space and Beyond Smart accelerates LTE rollout in SOCCSKSARGEN (2020 Tuna Festival goes Digital) Gabay Guro ties up with PayMaya to provide financial account for teachers Facebook Page Facebook Page


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Based on a true story, a couple are camping in Algonquin park when they are attacked and partially eaten by a bear. In this fiction, the author adds the kids who witness the attack, albeit from the inside of a giant Coleman cooler, and then have to survive alone in the wilderness. The story is narrated by the little girl who is now in sole charge of her younger brother. In order to make him obey her, she sometimes resorts to a game where he is the dog and she is the master, "Sit and stay, Alex." And the bear is a 'big black dog' to the children. When Anna lashes out at her brother in grief and then feels guilt about it she says, "I am different because the black dog is inside."
This is the kind of story we read in the paper and want to know every detail about so that we can reassure ourselves that it won't happen to us. But this couple had done everything right – they were on an island where bears rarely appear, their food was properly stowed, and worst of all, five days later when they were discovered, there was a package of untouched hamburger sitting out even as the bear was still guarding their remains. This was not about the food. Tragedies we cannot predict or explain do happen and we must wrestle with those 'black dogs' in our lives.
The book is written in a child's voice which is believable but might be tiresome for some. It was not done as skillfully as Emma Donaghue's Room to which this book will inevitably be compared. She might have alternated the child's voice with another narrative which would have given a bit of a break.
Algonquin park is one of my favourite places and this story will not diminish my love for it. We all have our own bear stories to share and we all have our black dogs inside of us, no matter where we are.


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For Social Video Start-Up Threadlife, Shorter Is Better
The Valley still hasn't cracked the secret to social video apps.
And it isn't for lack of trying. Since Facebook snapped up photo-sharing application Instagram for $750 million earlier this year, the next logical step was to move to video. Now there's no dearth of apps that serve up user-generated videos captured through the smartphone.
Add Threadlife, the latest from Zappos founder Nick Swinmurn, to that pile. His app's premise is much like a few others: Where video is concerned, shorter is better.
Threadlife's stock in trade is the three-second video clip — dubbed a "stitch" in the whole sewing theme — a play on the idea that, as with photos, we're apt to consume things quickly when they're easy to view fast. That's much along the lines of Viddy, a competing app that has been around for much longer, which holds 15-second time constraints on each clip.
Threadlife's value proposition, however, is a bit different. Users can compile their short video "stitches" into themed "threads." It's a simple way to explicate a process — like restoring a project car you have in the garage, from rust bucket to street-ready — over a period of time, each clip adding another segment on top of the last. Or, for the sappy parent crowd, a way to curate the first days, weeks and months of a new addition to the family.
The company is keeping both the social and anti-social demographics in mind. Threads can be private or public, and all content within the app is shareable out to Facebook and Twitter. Smart, in that the app can keep private moments cordoned off, yet still capable of attaining user growth via social channels.
And yet the challenges are considerable. The social video app market is completely flooded. Acquisition exits may not be as easy to come by, as some apps have already been snapped up by giants like Twitter and Autodesk.
Facebook, too, doesn't seem to be taking a side in the war among these types of start-ups, instead inviting all developers to integrate their social video apps into the Open Graph platform.
And despite never launching, social video application Vine subscribed to the short-form thesis; the app recorded in quick increments, only taking in video when you hold your finger down on the "record" button, and stitched those together afterward. Moreover, Twitter acquired Vine prelaunch, so Threadlife may have to compete with an app backed by one of the most popular short-form communication services in the world today.
Will Threadlife crack the social video app dilemma? I don't know. But at the very least, it will make for a good story.