text:
Does PSA Promote Prostate Cancer?
Reviewed and critiqued by Stephen B. Strum, MD, FACPJune 2005
By William Faloon
The acronym PSA stands for prostate-specific antigen, the most abundant protein synthesized in the prostate gland. Men have their blood tested for PSA in order to detect prostate cancer at an early stage when it is often curable. The PSA test can also help assess the efficacy of various prostate cancer treatments.
Until now, PSA has been viewed only as a blood indicator of prostate cancer, infection, or inflammation. Emerging evidence, however, reveals that PSA may be more than just a marker of prostate health. It appears that PSA itself may play a role in the progression and metastasis of prostate cancer,1-3 thus opening up new therapeutic pathways for preventing and treating this epidemic disease.
A significant amount of published data associates high intake of certain nutrients with reduced incidences of prostate cancer.4-12 A few studies suggest that these same nutrients may even help control advanced stages of the disease.13,14
Scientists are now finding that some of these nutrients function to reduce or interfere with PSA activity in the prostate gland. With new data suggesting that PSA itself may be involved in the progression and spread of prostate cancer, the anti-PSA activity of these nutrients becomes significant and helps explain why men who consume certain nutrients have lower incidences of the disease and a slower progression of disease when prostate cancer has been diagnosed.
Staggering Statistics on Prostate Cancer
Cells in the prostate gland are very prone to gene mutation, while other tissues in the same anatomical region, such as the seminal vesicles, develop primary cancers at a significantly lower rate.15
Autopsy evidence indicates that prostate cancer is histologically evident in up to 34% of men aged 40-49 and up to 70% of men aged 80 and older.16,17 Most men, however, never progress to clinically diagnosed disease, indicating the presence of control mechanisms that keep prostate cancer cell colonies small and thus controlled.
It now appears possible to partially regulate some of the genes that ordinarily enable cells to divide out of control and eventually form a prostate tumor, which may then proliferate, invade, and metastasize. These new findings make it more important than ever for men to monitor their blood PSA levels to detect prostate cancer at its earliest stages.
Treating Advanced Prostate Cancer with Lycopene
Cancer confined to the prostate gland is usually curable.18-23 The medical literature indicates, however, that untreated prostate cancer leads to continued growth of the tumor cell population. This greater tumor burden is associated with genetic mutation that is likely responsible for the development of hormone-insensitive prostate cancer.24-27 Once prostate cells mutate into aggressive hormone-refractory forms that escape into the body, metastatic prostate cancer usually is diagnosed and the patient faces a grueling battle to survive.
In a study of 20 patients with metastatic hormone-refractory prostate cancer, each patient received 10 mg a day of lycopene for three months.14 No other treatment was given. One patient achieved a complete response, defined as a reduction of PSA (to under 4 ng/ml) and the absence of any sign of the disease for eight weeks. Six patients (30%) had a partial response, defined as a 50% reduction in PSA and alleviation of other symptoms such as bone pain if present. The disease remained stable in 10 patients (50%) and progressed in three (15%). A remarkable 63% (10 of 16) with bone pain were able to reduce their daily use of pain-suppressing drugs. The study concluded, "Lycopene therapy appears to be effective and safe in the treatment of hormone-refractory prostate cancer."
In another study of 54 metastatic prostate cancer patients, half (27) were castrated, while the other half were castrated and given 2 mg of lycopene twice daily.13 Castration (removal of the testes) reduces testosterone levels and is a treatment for those with androgen-dependent prostate cancer. After six months, PSA declined significantly in both groups, but more so in the group receiving lycopene. After two years, 40% of the castrated group had a PSA reduction of less than 4 ng/ml, compared to 78% in the lycopene group. Bone scans showed that twice as many patients in the lycopene-plus-castration group attained a complete response compared to the castration-only men.
The author concluded, "Adding lycopene to orchidectomy (castration) produced a more reliable and consistent decrease in serum PSA level; it not only shrinks the primary tumor but also diminishes the secondary tumors, providing better relief from bone pain and lower urinary tract symptoms, and improving survival compared with orchidectomy alone." What is impressive about these two studies is that only small doses of lycopene (4-10 mg/day) were used. That low doses of lycopene produced such favorable results in these late-stage prostate cancer patients is quite remarkable and worthy of further study.
Lycopene Reduces Prostate Cell DNA Damage
Because cancer is initiated and promoted as the result of ongoing DNA damage, researchers conducted a study to evaluate the genomic effects of lycopene in men with localized disease. For three weeks, a group of 32 men consumed tomato sauce each day supplying 30 mg of lycopene. Prostate tissue was obtained initially at biopsy and then again after surgical removal of the prostate gland.28 After three weeks, PSA levels declined by 17.5% and a blood marker of DNA damage fell by 21.3%. An analysis of the prostate tissues showed that the lycopene-supplemented patients had major reductions in many of the DNA factors that usually favor uncontrolled prostate cancer cell propagation. Moreover, in the lycopene-supplemented patients, prostate cancer cells as well as hyperplastic prostatic tissue showed an increase in apoptosis (programmed cell death). This study showed that prostate cells readily take up lycopene, with cellular lycopene levels increasing 2.92-fold after only three weeks. This increase in lycopene correlated with a significant reduction of DNA damage in prostate tissue.
Boron Shrinks Prostate Tumors, Reduces PSA in Mice
As noted earlier, most doctors regard PSA solely as a useful laboratory marker for diagnosing prostate cancer. At a cellular level, however, PSA functions as an active growth factor in the prostate gland. One such mechanism involves PSA's enzymatic ability to degrade extracellular matrix (structural support) proteins such as fibronectin and laminin.1 This action of PSA may promote tumor growth and metastasis. Another potential tumor-promoting action of PSA involves freeing insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1) from its binding protein (BP-3), providing increased local levels of IGF-1, leading to tumor growth.2,3 To understand the nature of our enemy—the cancer cell—we must realize that the tumor cell is functional and produces cell products that favor its growth, invasiveness, and spread!
Studies by Gallardo-Williams and colleagues have shown that boric acid and boronic acid significantly inhibit the degradation of fibronectin by enzymatically active PSA.1 In another study in mice, the same authors used immunohistochemistry staining of tissues to show that expression of IGF-1 in tumors was markedly reduced by boric acid. In response to both low- and high-dose boron supplementation, PSA levels plummeted by an average of 87%, while tumor size declined by 31.5% on average. Also noted was a significantly lower incidence of mitotic figures in the boron-supplemented groups. Mitotic figures reflect DNA synthesis and proliferative activity.29
Consistent with these findings, a recent study showed that boron inhibited the proliferation of prostate cancer cell lines DU-145 (an androgen-independent line) and LNCaP (an androgen-dependent cell line) in a dose-dependent manner.30 These animal and cell line studies appear to be relevant to humans, based on a report from UCLA in which Cui and colleagues showed that men with the highest dietary boron intake reduced their prostate cancer risk by 54% compared to men with the lowest boron intake! While the authors noted that the observed association should be interpreted with caution because of the small case sample size and the nature of the cross-sectional study design, clearly these findings deserve further investigation. If the above-cited animal studies can be replicated in human patients, boron at doses ranging from 6 to 15 mg a day may become an effective and very low-cost adjuvant therapy.12
Hidden Dangers of PSA
Because PSA may contribute not only to prostate cancer progression but also to the ability of these cells to escape the prostate and metastasize to distant sites within the body, we can no longer think of PSA as merely a blood marker reflecting prostate health.
In fact, many, if not all, of the biomarkers used in tracking a wide array of cancers may have specific cancer-facilitating properties. Therefore, in men with prostate cancer, and perhaps even in those trying to prevent the emergence of prostate cancer, taking steps to keep PSA levels low may reduce one's risk of developing this illness or having it progress to a clinically symptomatic condition.
The easiest way to reduce PSA levels by half is to inhibit the enzyme 5-alpha reductase, which transforms testosterone into the more androgenic dihydrotestosterone (DHT). DHT has a growth-promoting effect on prostate cells that is significantly greater than that of testosterone. In the peer-reviewed literature, this differential effect of DHT on prostate cell growth is 2.4-10 times greater.31-33
The most effective DHT-lowering prescription drug is Avodart®. Unlike the more popular Proscar® that inhibits only type 2 5-alpha reductase, Avodart® blocks both type 1 and type 2 5-alpha reductase, thus reducing blood DHT levels by 93%. Using a 5-mg dose of Avodart®—10 times that routinely prescribed for BPH—Andriole and colleagues demonstrated a 97% reduction of intra-prostatic DHT.34 Lazier and colleagues found that Avodart® inhibited DHT-induced secretion of PSA as well as cancer cell proliferation, and that at higher doses, Avodart® resulted in cancer cell death in both androgen-dependent (LNCaP) and androgen-indepen-dent (PC-3) cell lines.35
Such findings are pertinent to human clinical trials of Avodart®. In a study of 4,325 men with benign prostate enlargement who were randomly selected to receive either Avodart® (0.5 mg/day) or placebo, those receiving Avodart® had a cumulative incidence of prostate cancer of 1.2% compared to 2.5% for the placebo group at 27 months of follow-up. This equates with a 52% reduction in prostate cancer in the Avodart® group.36 In another study using Proscar®, 18,882 men aged 55 or older (with normal digital rectal examination results and a PSA level of 3.0 ng/ml or lower) were randomly assigned treatment with Proscar® (5 mg/day) or placebo for seven years. Prostate cancer was detected in 803 of the 4,368 men in the Proscar® group and 1,147 of the 4,692 men in the placebo group, for a 24.8% reduction in prevalence over seven years. High-grade cancers were noted in 6.4% of Proscar®-treated patients compared to 5.1% of men receiving placebo.37 (As noted earlier, Proscar® suppresses only type 2 5-alpha reductase, whereas Avodart® blocks both type 1 and type 2 5-alpha reductase. Avodart® thus appears to be the better drug.)


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Tight end Fred Davis is one my favorite potential value signings in free agency. Coming off a serious injury and a seriously weird courtroom drama, he shouldn't cost a lot, but he has the skill set to be a difference-making tight end.
The Washington Redskins know Davis best, and it sounds like they intend to keep him.
"The Redskins have told others they expect to re-sign Davis," John Keim of the Washington Examiner writes.
Keim didn't intend for this information to be headline news, but it's telling. The Redskins are operating with the hope and expectation that they will be able to bring Davis back. In the meantime, they might have tried to depress Davis' value by questioning his ability to come back 100 percent from a torn Achilles tendon.
Keim writes that the Redskins are "likely" to be paying Davis in 2013. They have Logan Paulsen on the roster, but Davis has a much higher ceiling as a game-breaker if he's healthy. Perhaps Davis won't be back at full strength early this year, but he's a nice long-term, low-cost gamble. That's especially true if other tight ends on the market like Dustin Keller and Jared Cook get signed first.Follow Gregg Rosenthal on Twitter @greggrosenthal.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Navigate the internet without restrictions or limits through a global VPN servers network. Protect your online activity and identity and speed up your internet connection.
Click for more information on how to configure L2TP VPN connection on Windows 8.1. You can use this method as a substitute for using WASEL Pro VPN client for Windows.
Click for more information on how to use WASEL Pro VPN application for iOS using OpenVPN protocol instead of L2TP.
Click for more information on how to use standard OpenVPN client to connect to WASEL Pro VPN servers on Windows instead of using WASEL Pro VPN application.
Merging WASEL Pro with iWASEL and b.VPN has been accomplished successfully.
SSH Tunneling feature is now accessible for Android users with WASEL Pro OpenVPN application.
New update for WASEL Pro OpenVPN application for Android is available. The new version is 1.26.


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Presentations and Publications
From UA Libraries Digital Services Planning and Documentation
- DeRidder, Jody L., Berger, Sherri; Chapman, Joyce; Garcia-Spitz, Cristel; Menges, Lauren. "Hunting for Best Practices in Digital Library Assessment," a working session at the 2013 Digital Library Federation (DLF) Forum in Austin, TX, 4 November 2013.
- DeRidder, Jody L. "What Do Researchers Want?", part of a panel on "Exploring the User Experience with Digital Primary Sources" at the Society of American Archivists 2013 annual meeting in New Orleans, 11-17 August 2013.
- Whitver, Sara Maurice; Matheny, Kate; Vaughn, Jennie. "Go Local! Using Digital Archives as Alternative Textbooks in First-Year Writing", poster presentation (with handout) at the Association of College & Research Libraries 2013 annual meeting in Indianapolis, IN, 10-13 April 2013.
- DeRidder, Jody L.; Rhodes, Sarah; and Rudersdorf, Amy. "Digital Preservation Basics," a workshop at Computers In Libraries 2012 in Washington DC, 20 March 2012.
- DeRidder, Jody L. "An Introduction to Digital Preservation: Make Plans to Manage Content and Provide Access Over Time," webinar presented for the Association of Southeastern Research Libraries, 21 February 2012.
- DeRidder, Jody L. "An Introduction to Digital Preservation: Considerations for Storage and Protection of Content," webinar presented for the Association of Southeastern Research Libraries, 14 February 2012.
- DeRidder, Jody L. "An Introduction to Digital Preservation: Steps to Identify and Select Content," webinar presented for the Association of Southeastern Research Libraries, 7 February 2012.
- DeRidder, Jody L. and Presnell, Amanda Axley. "Digital Access in Context: Mass Digitization of Manuscript Collections," presented at the Technology Forum at the University of Alabama Libraries, 5 January 2012.
- DeRidder, Jody L. "Providing Access to Digitized Content Via the Finding Aid: A Usability Study" [Powerpoint], at the SAA Research Forum of Archives 360°: 75th Annual Meeting of the Society of American Archivists, in Chicago, IL, 23 August, 2011.
- DeRidder, Jody L. "Just Enough Light to See: Minimal Metadata for Access" [Powerpoint], at the Metadata and Digital Objects Round Table Meeting during the SAA Research Forum of Archives 360°: 75th Annual Meeting of the Society of American Archivists, in Chicago, IL, 22-27 August, 2011.
- DeRidder, Jody L. "Cheap, Quick, and Pretty: Mass Digitization of Large Manuscript Collections" [Powerpoint], part of a panel presentation on "More Access to More Content: The EAD Finding Aid and Other Effective Tools for Large-Scale Digitization" at Archives 360°: 75th Annual Meeting of the Society of American Archivists, held in Chicago, IL, 22-27 August, 2011. Other panel presenters include Laura Clark Brown, Jody Allison-Bunnell, James Roth, and Karen Weiss (chair).
- DeRidder, Jody L. 2010. "Institutional Identifiers: NISO I2 Working Group", part of a panel presentation on Linked Data -- Enabling Standards and Other Approaches at the ASIS&T Annual Conference, held in Pittsburgh, PA, 22-27 October, 2010. Presentation coauthored with Mark Needleman; other panel presenters include Marcia Zeng, Sam Oh, Jon Phipps, Ed Summers, and Gail Hodge. Available from [1].
- Presnell, Amanda A. 2010. "Leading the Way Toward Low-Cost Digital Collections: The S.D. Cabaniss Digitization Project," poster presentation at the Alabama Library Association 2010 Convention in Huntsville, AL, April 15, 2010.
- DeRidder, Jody L. 2010. "Digital Library Development from the Bottom Up, or: Organization, Clarity, and Sanity: Digitization for the Future On a Shoestring" presented at the Computers in Libraries 2010 Conference in Arlington, VA, April 14, 2010.
- DeRidder, Jody L. 2010. "Digital Libraries and Long-term Access for the Rest of Us: The University of Alabama Acumen Experience", a joint presentation by Tom Wilson, Jody DeRidder and Tonio Loewald, at the Coalition for Networked Information Spring 2010 Membership Meeting in Baltimore, MD, April 13, 2010.
- DeRidder, Jody L. 2010. "From Confusion and Chaos to Clarity and Hope," [2] a chapter in Digitization in the Real World: Lessons Learned from Small to Medium-Sized Digitization Projects, Kwong Bor Ng and Jason Kucsma, ed. To be published by the Metropolitan New York Library Council, 2010.
- DeRidder, Jody L. 2009. "Bringing Order to Chaos: Preparation and Organization for Long-Term Access" [3]. Delivered at the Southeast CONTENTdm Users Group 2nd Annual Meeting [4] Charleston, SC, October 13, 2009.
- DeRidder, Jody L. 2009. "Preparing For The Future As We Build Collections" [5] presented at the Society of Imaging Science & Technology Archiving 2009 Conference [6] in Arlington VA, May 2009. Article by the same name published in the Proceedings. Poster developed by Jeremiah Colonna-Romano: .
- Dixon, Austin R. "Use of Cue Sheets in Audio Digitization", in Code4Lib, Issue 23, (2014).
- DeRidder, Jody L. "First Aid Training for Those on the Front Lines: Digital Preservation Needs Survey Results 2012", in Information Technology and Libraries, Vol. 32, Iss. 2 (2013).
- DeRidder, Jody L.; Presnell, Amanda Axley; and Walker, Kevin W. "Leveraging Encoded Archival Descriptions for Access to Digital Content: A Cost and Usability Analysis," in American Archivist (Spring/Summer 2012), Vol. 75, Iss. 1.
- DeRidder, Jody L. 2011. "Benign Neglect: Developing Life Rafts for Digital Content," in Information Technology and Libraries Vol. 30, Issue 2, June 2011. Preprint is temporarily available.
- DeRidder, Jody L. "I² and ISNI: Improving the Information Supply Chain with Standard Institutional Identifiers," in Information Standards Quarterly (ISQ) (Summer 2011), Vol. 23, Iss. 3.
- DeRidder, Jody L. "Leveraging EADs for Low-Cost Access to Digitized Content at the University of Alabama Libraries", in Journal of Library Innovation, Vol. 2, No. 1 (2011).
- DeRidder, Jody L. 2011. "Overhead Scanners: Reports from the Field" in Library Hi Tech Vol 29, Issue 1, pp. 9-33, 11 March 2011.
- Arora, Nitin. 2010. "AudioRegent: Exploiting SimpleADL and SoX for Digital Audio Delivery," Code4Lib Journal, Issue 10, 2010-06-22. Available from http://journal.code4lib.org/articles/2882.
- DeRidder, Jody L. 2010. "Metadata In, Library Out. A Simple, Robust Digital Library System," coauthored with Tonio Loewald. Code4Lib Journal, Issue 10, 2010-06-22. Available from http://journal.code4lib.org/articles/3107.
- DeRidder, Jody L. "From Confusion and Chaos to Clarity and Hope" a chapter in Digitization in the Real World: Lessons Learned from Small to Medium-Sized Digitization Projects, Kwong Bor Ng and Jason Kucsma, ed., (Metropolitan New York Library Council, 2010)
- DeRidder, Jody L. 2008. "Googlizing a Digital Library" An exploration of effectively and efficiently providing full-text web search capabilities to a dynamically-generated set of digitized materials, in order to leverage the power of web search to enhance access. Code4Lib Journal, Issue 2, 2008-03-24. Available from http://journal.code4lib.org/articles/43.
- DeRidder, Jody L. 2007. "Choosing Delivery Software for a Digital Library". Library Hi Tech News, 24:9/10, 2007, pp. 19-21.
- DeRidder, Jody L. 2007. "The Immediate Prospects for the Application of Ontologies in Digital Libraries." Knowledge Organization, Vol. 34, No. 4, December 2007.
- DeRidder, Jody L. 2007."Embracing More of the Information Life Cycle: Opportunities for Academic Librarians".
- DeRidder, Jody L. 2007. A short report [7] and PowerPoint presentation [8] on Dublin Core metadata [9] terms and uses.
- DeRidder, Jody L. 2006. "Metadata in Digital Libraries" [10]. A 2006 overview of various forms of metadata currently in use in digital libraries in the US, and the purposes of each.


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Hairs to You, Helen!
Although Mark is LUSH's hair expert (he is a trained trichologist after all!) and very skilled at making wonderful hair care products, he often shares his ideas with Helen. Lucky then that Helen's such a whizz in the labs that she can take those seeds of an idea and turn them into fabulous, genuinely effective, hair-softening liquid conditioners!
Q: Hello Helen! So tell us a bit about Veganese – what's so good about it?
A: Well, Mark had the idea that he wanted a vegan conditioner, as we would normally use lanolin to soften the hair. The name was the easy part - but creating it was slightly more of a challenge! I started with getting some beautiful agar agar. It's a lovely seaweed that's incredibly popular in Japan and makes the most wonderful soft jelly when it's 'dissolved' in hot water. It's also the perfect substitute for lanolin, as it has the same conditioning qualities and makes the hair soft and easy to comb.
Q: Which is the conditioner you're most proud of inventing?
A: Retread. Without a doubt. Why? Because it's bloody difficult to get loads of melon and yoghurt into a conditioner without it starting to grow in the pot! Jo Evans (LUSH's first ever employee) bought us a book called 'Atomic Cocktails', full of wonderfully obscure cocktail recipes. I was particularly taken with one called 'Hoolie Coolie Cantaloupe Cure'; a cocktail full of fruit and yoghurt – so I made it into a conditioner!
Q: Which is your favorite conditioner to use?
A: Retread again. We call it a triple strength conditioner, which might put people off as it sounds so heavy. But if you wash your hair with Rehab first, then take a generous scoop of Retread, your hair will be lovely and soft, full of volume and most importantly, really strong and healthy. Plus the perfume that Mark made for it is just lovely.
Q: How often should you shampoo and condition your hair?
A: That really depends in how you like your hair. Some people prefer their hair the day after it's been washed, when it's less fluffy and frizzy – others like to wash their hair twice a day. I suppose what we try to do at LUSH is create products to help get your hair to do what you want it to do. There's no hard and fast rules – wash your hair as often as you like, it'll do no harm.


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Did a wizard play a resurrection spell on deceased Dungeons and Dragons creator Gary Gygax? Not exactly, but it turns out that Gary's sons Ernie and Luke are launching a gaming publication called Gygax Magazine this month. What's more, the publisher is a new company called TSR, which happens to be the name of the company that Gygax and partners founded in 1973.
What ensues is an adventure more complicated than the most devious dungeonmaster could devise. Sit down, pass the Doritos and the 20-sided dice, and look over at the player-characters for tonight's session: Luke and Ernie Gygax, working with D&D veterans like former Dragon Magazine editor Tim Kask; Wizards of the Coast (the Hasbro subsidiary which owns the rights to D&D); and Gary Gygax's second wife Gail (not the mother of Luke and Ernie), who represents his estate and claims to "own all rights to the use of his name and likeness, and all intellectual properties." You can follow the characters here and here. As for Gygax Magazine, at this point the Web site merely describes it as a tabletop gaming magazine, states that TSR is not affiliated with Wizards of the Coast, and offers a sign-up list for notification of when the publication is available. However, Kask has said that the magazine will cover a variety of roleplaying games
How this adventure will play out, I have no idea. Wizards of the Coast is likely to defend its copyright, and Gygax's widow will certainly defend her interests, though how you stop two guys named Gygax from publishing a magazine called Gygax will be interesting to see. However, what is clear is that with hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue at stake, the dungeon is sure to be full of lurking 57th-Level Attorneys casting Cease-and-Desist spells.
This is not the first time that D&D has moved from the kitchen table to the courtroom, as when Gary Gygax and co-creator Dave Arneson sued each other. Nor is it uncommon in the entertainment world for children of a famous name to cash in on it. Yet it's still sad. D&D has never been my favorite roleplaying game (I'm more partial to games like Traveller or Call of Cthulu), but it is still a cultural icon that introduced tens of millions to roleplaying. D&D is the vanilla ice cream of roleplaying games, perhaps not the most innovative anymore, but the game that other RPGs are and will always be compared to. I suspect that Gary Gygax would have wanted less courtroom drama and more people having fun with the game he loved.


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Richard Robbins, the composer who created memorable scores for such films as "A Room With a View," "Howards End" and "The Remains of the Day" during a quarter-century collaboration with director James Ivory and producer Ismail Merchant, has died. He was 71.
Robbins died Nov. 7 at his home in Rhinebeck, N.Y., of Parkinson's disease, said Michael Schell, his longtime partner.
Robbins created the score for nearly every Merchant Ivory film from "The Europeans" in 1979 to "The White Countess" in 2005. He earned back-to-back Academy Award nominations for his original music for "Howards End" (1992) and "The Remains of the Day" (1993).
PHOTOS: Notable deaths of 2012
"I always felt that if anything happened to him and we didn't have his music, then it really wouldn't be a Merchant Ivory film," James Ivory said in an interview last week. "His music was integral to our films."
That long, remarkably fruitful creative partnership came about almost by happenstance.
In 1976, while he was serving as acting director of the preparatory school at the Mannes College of Music in New York, Robbins began teaching piano to the youngest daughter of Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, the award-winning novelist and screenwriting collaborator of Merchant and Ivory.
Jhabvala and Robbins soon became friendly and she introduced him to the filmmakers, who agreed to produce a documentary on the school's young musicians, "Sweet Sounds," which Robbins directed. The following year, he was Merchant's assistant on "Roseland," a film about ballroom dancers set at the famous dance palace in New York.
Of their initial meeting, Ivory said Robbins "liked us and we liked him, and then he gradually became a composer. I don't think that was something he ever thought he'd be doing, writing film music, but what happened to him was what happened to me and to Ruth: Ismail just kind of assigned us our roles and that was that.
"I think the more Dick did, the more he realized he could do. And soon, he was writing really wonderful original music."
The first score Robbins developed for a Merchant Ivory film was for the period drama "The Europeans," based on the Henry James novel, which drew on the music of Clara Schumann and Stephen Foster. But his work embraced a wide range of music and musical styles: He created an opera for 1980's "Jane Austen in Manhattan," incorporated street sounds of India for 1983's "Heat and Dust" and evoked Parisian nightclubs of the Jazz Age for "Quartet" in 1981.
Although his compositions were heavily influenced by the minimalist composers Philip Glass and Steve Reich, Robbins also occasionally wrote romantic, lushly orchestrated music, including for "Maurice," the 1987 film based on the E.M. Forster novel. The score won a top award at the Venice Film Festival, and Robbins often described it as his favorite.
Of the melancholy, evocative score for "The Remains of the Day," Robbins said in a 2000 interview with writer Chris Terrio that his inspiration had come from a single scene featuring actress Emma Thompson.
"I know when ... the hard part of writing the score is over, because I know how I feel about a character," he said in the interview posted on the Merchant Ivory website. "That's a great relief. That can happen all at once: It can be as simple as watching one of the characters enter a room or walk down a hallway. In 'The Remains of the Day,' it happened when I first saw the shot of Emma Thompson walking down the hall toward the camera. That did it."
Robbins was responsible for choosing and supervising all the music for the Merchant Ivory films he worked on, from the pop songs for "Slaves of New York" in 1989 to the Puccini aria "O mio babbino caro" for "A Room With a View." And when an actor played music in a film — Helena Bonham Carter playing a Beethoven sonata in a key scene from the same 1985 film — he guided that too.
"Dick was right there, advising her and telling her how to play it, although those are her hands and she plays it every step of the way," Ivory said.
Richard Stephen Robbins was born Dec. 4, 1940, in South Weymouth, Mass., and began playing the piano at the age of 5. After graduating from the New England Conservatory in Boston, he received a fellowship through a fund established by the philanthropist Frank Huntington Beebe to continue his studies in Vienna for a year.
In addition to his work as a composer, Robbins made brief appearances in several Merchant Ivory films, often as a dancer, a favorite pastime. And in 1994, inspired by a leper couple he had heard singing a duet beneath his Bombay hotel window, he directed a Merchant Ivory feature documentary, "Street Musicians of Bombay," about the street life of that Indian city.
Robbins' work was honored in 1996 at a gala concert at Carnegie Hall to benefit AIDS research. The actors Hugh Grant, Vanessa Redgrave, Sharon Stone, Joanne Woodward and Christopher Reeve were among those who spoke and read between compositions.
In addition to Schell, an artist who was his partner for more than 20 years, Robbins' survivors include his brothers Donald, William, John and Peter.


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"You are standing on, or are about to visit, one of my favourite places. The jewel in the crown of the fabulous coast of Antrim. A site of World Heritage and therefore ranked alongside Mount Everest and the Giant Redwoods of California for it's importance to humankind.Volcanic activity helped Finn Mc Cool forge this wonder of the World some 60 Million years ago. It is today the habitat of rare plants and animals. Please treat their home with the pride and the care it deserves."
- A reminder of the past -
A Causeway to all our futures.
David Bellamy
For centuries countless visitors have marvelled at the majesty and mystery of the Giants Causeway. At the heart of one of Europe's most magnificent coastlines its unique rock formations have, for millions of years, stood as a natural rampart against the unbridled ferocity of Atlantic storms. The rugged symmetry of the columns never fails to intrigue and inspire our visitors. To stroll on the Giants Causeway is to voyage back in time.
Your imagination will travel along stepping stones that lead to either the creative turbulence of a bygone volcanic age or into the mists and legends of the past.In 1986 the Giants Causeway Visitors centre opened, coinciding with the World Heritage Conventions addition of the Causeway to its coveted list of sites, which are of exceptional interest and universal value.
The facilities at the Causeway Centre now include Tourist Information offices, Bureau De Change, Accommodation Booking Service, an Interpretive Audio-Visual Presentation and a Souvenir Shop. The National Trust are the custodians of the Causeway and provide the National Trust Shop and Tea Rooms (for opening times please contact directly). The Causeway Coaster bus service from the centre to the Causeway is now running in conjunction with the opening hours of the centre. The range of amenities on offer is geared to accommodate your individual needs and ensure that all our guests can benefit from and enjoy their visit.
The centre caters for the interest and enjoyment of the half a million tourists that visit the Giants Causeway each year. The management, the staff and our facilities are at your disposal during a visit that we hope will be the first of many.
In 2007 the Giant's Causeway visitor centre received a National Award of Excellence for 'Best Tour Visit' by CIE Tours International, for the 5th consecutive year.
The new Visitor Centre, designed by Heneghan Peng opened in July 2012. It has already received well over 300,000 visitors from over 150 countries, along with awards for its sensitive architecture and sustainability.
The Visitors Centre is open all year round except Christmas Day and New Years day.
|Vist the National Trust website.
Mobility parking and Visitor Centre is accessible.
There is an accessible trail and the grounds are partly accessible.
Some visitors may require assistance from their companion.
Accessible toilets and Changing facilities (key on request).
The causeway stones are uneven and can be slippery. Supervise children at all times. Wear sensible footwear and clothing.
For more safety information visit the National Trust website.
Explore the Giant's Causeway with an interactive exhibition .
Outdoor audio guide availiable and an audio guide for visually impaired visitors also available.
Enjoy local food and refreshments in the Visitor Centre.
Local and unique gifts for sale in the gift shop.
Tourist Information Centre.
Parking across three car parks and Park and Ride facility.
Baby-changing facilities.
Pushchairs and baby back-carriers admitted.
Accessible path for pushchairs.
Dogs must be kept on a leash.
|Vist the National Trust website.
When the news of the "discovery" of an amazing natural phenomenon broke on an unsuspecting world in 1693 it was by the presentation of a paper to the Royal Society from Sir Richard Bulkeley, a fellow of Trinity College, Dublin. The "discoverer" had, in fact, been the then Bishop of Derry a year earlier. The news caused quite a stir in 'the polite society' of the time and in 1697 a draughtsman was sent to make drawings of the Natural Curiosity on the North East tip of the island of Ireland.
What seems remarkable to us now, in the 21st century, is that there was much argument as to whether the Causeway had been created by men with picks and chisels, by nature, or by the efforts of a giant. For in the 17th century nothing like it had been seen before. As an artist, Miss Susanna Drury spent, in 1740, quite some period of months on site. Depicting the magnificence that she found, ensured that the Causeway became noted on The Grand Tour. And it was not until 1771 that a Frenchman, Demarest, announced the origin of the causeway to be the result of volcanic action.
Sixty million years ago Antrim was subject to intense volcanic activity, when highly fluid molten rock was forced up through fissures in the chalk bed to form an extensive lava plateau.
The dramatic cliff like edge of the plateau forms the Causeway coastline. The larger fissures, through which the lava flowed, can be clearly seen as bands of dark rock which cut down the cliff faces and jut out to sea. There were three periods of volcanic activity which resulted in the flows, known as the Lower, Middle and Upper Basalts.
It is the Middle Basalts rocks which forms the columns of the Giants Causeway. The rapidly cooling lava contracted and variations in the cooling rate resulted in the world famous columnar structure.
The columns are mainly hexagonal though there are some with up to eight sides. Weathering of the top of of the lower Basalts formed the Inter Basaltic Bed - the band of reddish rock which is a feature of the area. The same action of the weather created circular formations round a nugget of basalt which are known locally as "giants eyes".
Some other formations with popular names are the Chimney Stacks, The Harp, The Organ and the Camel's Hump.
Perhaps less well known is the fact that the area is a haven for sea birds such as fulmar, petrel, cormorant, shag, redshank guillemot and razorbill. Rock pippits and wagtails explore the shoreline and eider duck are found in sheltered water.
The National Trust has made an inventory of rare and interesting plants which have survived the feet of many thousands of visitors. They include sea spleenwort, hare's foot trefoil, vernal squill, sea fescue and frog orchid making this an exciting place for botanists, with also, in summer, great stretches of sea campion.
The Giants Causeway has something to offer almost every interest, be it plants to be viewed through a magnifying glass or standing in awe among the columns.
As you leave, look over your shoulder and with eyes half closed you may just catch a glimpse of the giant form of Finn McCool striding among his works.
The Giants Causeway was included on the World Heritage site list in November 1986. It is on the list as both a cultural and natural site, one of only 25 in the world to achieve this status. This is because the Causeway meets two of UNESCO's criteria for this:
(1) It is a prime example of earth's evolutionary history during the tertiary epoch.
(2) It contains rare and superlative natural phenomena
The site also has outstanding cultural value in that it contains the wreck of the Girona.
The Giant's Causeway lies at the foot of the basalt cliffs along the sea coast on the edge of the Antrim plateau in Northern Ireland. It is made up of some 40,000 massive black basalt columns sticking out of the sea. The dramatic sight has inspired legends of giants striding over the sea to Scotland. Geological studies of these formations over the last 300 years have greatly contributed to the development of the earth sciences, and show that this striking landscape was caused by volcanic activity during the Tertiary, some 50-60 million years ago.


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Ruben Villager
Lanox Oracle
No Longer Human
Bethma Guard
Elder Citizen
Velder Noble
Shelling Guardian
Elder Citizen
Elder Citizen
Altera Savior
: Greetings and Meetings!
Sometimes saying hi can be the hardest thing to do~
Regularly greets new forumers in the Getting Started section on the forums!
: From Another Time and Space
"Nothing can keep us apart"
Regularly visits and posts in the INT section of the forums
: Academic Aisha
"This sort of magic requires many years worth of experience to master!"
Spends a bit too much time on the Aisha character specific section...
: Ancient History
Has it been that long? Time sure flies, doesn't it, Midnight?
Been a forumer since 2013.
: Squeaky Clean
Not a pickle out of place!
Assists with keeping topics in their rightful sections and reporting/removing spam
: Top Poster
Awarded to the top 10 posters of all time.
Created by Gunz224
: 5k Post Club
For players with over 5,000 Posts.
Created by Actek
: Guide Maker
Given to players who create exceptional guides on the forums.
Created by FlightWings


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Magic Slice™ Non-Slip Flexible Cutting Board is a thin, lightweight, embellished, 12 x 15 inch flexible plastic cutting board with an innovative Non-Slip backing. It can be rolled so you can funnel chopped food into pans and bowls. Magic Slice has exceptional graphics that can match your kitchen colors or theme (over 30 designs to choose from). Magic Slice is easily cleaned and has antibacterial construction using Tricloban™. In short, Magic Slice makes Food Preparation a Work of Art! Also, Magic Slice makes a great placemat!
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To post comments, simply sign up and become a member!


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You may remember that back in October we created a new forum dedicated to the Game Artisans Comicon Challenge, 2010. The community jumped in with gusto and some truly amazing entries made their appearances. Check it out:
As you can see, ZBrush helped these talented artists express visions in highly original ways. Apparently, the judges agreed! The winners have been announced and at least 9 out of the 10 entries in the 3D category used ZBrush! What an excellent showing for our community!
We would like to congratulate all the winners in this contest. Every year, the work gets more and more incredible, raising the bar ever higher. You should be proud!
Check out the winners below. Then please join us in wishing everyone a hearty congratulations!
A few words from Damien:For this Comicon, I didn't want to work on a traditional super hero. The fact that you had to change the character's age was very interessting to me. I'm a big fan of the Zelda games; I played almost all of them but I really want to play a more mature Zelda game.
I thought this Comicon challenge was perfect to make my own version of Link for a more mature game. The idea was to make him an old warrior that came through a lot but is still strong. I also wanted to keep a cartoon style but with a more realistic rendering to get this mature feeling.
My workflow for this character is quite simple. I made a quick 3d sketch and tweaked it in Photoshop until I got a good concept. Then I worked on the high-res model. The basemesh is done in modo, sculpting and details in ZBrush. I also made a quick polypaint to get a first diffuse color map.
Then I made the low-poly model and baked the normal, occlusion and diffuse maps. I worked the textures in Photoshop to add more details and realism. The final render was made using the Marmoset Toolbag .
It was really lot of fun to work on this character. Let's hope Nintendo make a game for him soon
A few words from Yaroslav:While I was thinking about what comics hero I would like to do for this year's Comicon Challenge I watched "The Wrestler" movie. I immediately realized who my entry would be (Lobo) and what kind of design I was going to apply to this guy taking into account his age (approx 45-50). I did the first sketch for my Lobo, but it was too classic... But it was from that place that my true one was born.
Since my Lobo is about 45-50 years old, I decided that he needed me to apply colors to hair and beard, scars on his skin and all this sort of stuff... but still needed us to be able to see the fire inside to "Kick and Rock" some asses!
For all sculpting and finalizing my meshes I've been using ZBrush 4 with its amazing masking tools, new brushes and brush modifiers (and many many more features). Kick-ass stuff!!! I then rendered my work with truly kick-ass Marmoset Toolbag.
A few words from Jocelyn:Everybody knows Batman, so it was a good challenge to try to make my own one unique approach that still looks like the Bat. I had no clear idea about what I would do, exactly but I wanted him dark, futuristic and looking like he was merging with his suit.
I chose to make him old and blind; I liked the idea of the weakness. Doing pets is something I enjoy a lot, so I came up with drones helping him to see and fight!
My basemeshes were built in 3ds max and all the sculpting was done in ZBrush. As my idea was not fully clear, I drew up a quick sketch and started researching nice forms directly within ZBrush. It's really powerful to conceptualize armor pieces and change them quickly. I used Photoshop and ZBrush's ZAppLink to texture the head. All my maps were baked with XNormal.
Also, I didn't have time to do the fur on his back. This is why there is an empty UV space but I guess I avoided a lot of problems.
Finally, I rendered it in the Marmoset Toolbag in real-time. It was really fun to give an atmosphere with all the lights you can create, and the possibilities were almost infinite.
I had a lot of fun doing this guy, and I'm glad people enjoyed it ! Thanks everybody for watching!
Jaco's website
Luffy thread - Ange's website
Ms marvel thread - Sam's website


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Deadline: 24/01/2019
2019 Residencies at PINEA-LINEA DE COSTA // Call for Performers & Choreographers
Art Residency for research, production, meetings, and exhibitions in a coastal & artistic context.
Description of the Residency Program
PINEA-LINEA DE COSTA is an Artist in Residence Program located in Rota, Cádiz Bay, Southern Spain.
With a successful six-year trajectory, our organisation has become a reference between international artists-in-residence programs in Europe, is one of the most prestigious A.I.R programs in Spain, praised by critics and specialised press.
We aim to stimulate creativity through interaction with the local environment, artists and cultural institutions and seeks to foster cross-cultural relations between participants and the local community.
PINEA-LINEA DE COSTA is a place for artistic research, production, meetings, and exhibitions. An A.I.R. program for artists & curators working in site-specific projects whose aim is to dynamically contribute to improving the town, by involving the community in an active way.
Duration of the residency
The duration of this residency program is minimum one month and maximum three months.
Disciplines supported and technical information
ARTISTS from any nationality to develop their projects in a multidisciplinary context.
We offer to artists in residence the possibility to live in the studios: single bright studio- rooms which are provided with wi-fi, two work desks, shelves, closet, and single cosy chair-bed. The accommodation is not a rental, but a free courtesy for artists in residence memberships. However, artists can opt to rent other accommodation in a different location (for example if they don't want to live and work in the same space or if they want to be accompanied by friends or relatives). Anyway, in both cases, the artist membership dues are the same.
Studio/ workspace
We are strategically located between the town historic center and the local natural spaces as beaches and dunes. PINEA-LINEA DE COSTA STUDIOS can accommodate up to four artists, and we are equipped with four independent studio-rooms, Wireless Internet connection, shared fully equipped kitchen & bathroom, and our fully equipped gallery for events & exhibitions.
Materials and equipment
Reference material/library, projector (only for events), scanner, tv and DVD player, stationary equipment (craft knives, self-healing cutting mat, staplers, rulers, felt tip pens etc.), jigsaw, drill, tool set (hammers, screwdrivers, hacksaws etc.), extension cables, airbrush compressor, plastic buckets and utensils, glue gun, one easel, blackboard...
Fees and support
Expenses paid by the organisation
Curatorial ongoing support & advice Tutoring at the studios
Single studio
Event (presentation and/or exhibition at the full equipped Gallery) Basic tools
Press Release
Catering at the event
Expenses paid by the artist
Artist in residence membership subscription (600€/month).
Note: Once your application has been approved, your place will be secured on receipt of full payment of your membership dues. Travel, transport, visa, daily living expenses, medical insurance, and production are not included in the dues.
Expectations towards the artist
The artists are expected to give a presentation and/or exhibit their work at our professional full equipped gallery.
Application information
Please send us the required information by e-mail to email@example.com
Personal information:
- Full name / date of birth / gender
- Passport photo & Passport copy
- Language(s) spoken
- City/Country
- Website
Project information:
- Samples of Previous work (PDF, website, link to Dropbox or similar)
- Your CV (max one A4) and Artists Statement explaining the general motivation of your artistic research (max one A4)
- Brief Motivation Letter with the theme: "Why am I going to PINEA-LINEA DE COSTA to work in a diverse, multidisciplinary context"? (max one A4)
- Project description: the artist must submit a specific project for this residency – successful applications will ideally include a workshop or other activity involving the local community (max one A4)
- Preferred time of residency: (minimum 1 month, maximum 3 months)
Important notice: The artists in residence membership will start their projects on the 2nd calendar day of the selected month, ending on the 29th calendar day of the selected month (on the 28th calendar day on February).
Selection Process
Residents will be selected by the PINEA-LINEA DE COSTA Team based on the quality of their work, commitment to their practice, and the ability to interact positively with the community at large. If your proposal is selected, we will send you an email within not more than ten days.
2019 Residencies at PINEA-LINEA DE COSTA // Call for Performers & Choreographers
Application deadline
Residency starts
Residency ends
More information
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In his 28-year career with the Visiting Nurse Association of Ohio, Mario M. Danese has risen through the ranks of its finance department to his current position. At the same time, the home health care and hospice provider's industry has grown from one in which it was a pioneer to one the nomination describes as saturated. That meant he was constantly helping the organization cope with an increasingly complex market and ever-changing reimbursement methods to provide a balanced budget. He is a frequent presenter at national meetings of Visiting Nurse Association of America, the national advocate for VNA, as well as at the state level on financing for home care and hospice. "Beyond the skillful management of the resources of the VNA of Ohio, Mario contributes to the organization's growth and profitability by helping to formulate the most successful business strategies for the ever-changing home health and hospice industry," the nomination said. "His intimate knowledge of best practices in the industry as well as his exceptional ability to forecast budget based on trends and referral patterns has helped the VNA navigate some difficult waters in the finance area." Besides the typical CFO role, he helped VNA craft its strategic plan, revamp several of its business lines and serves as a "go-to person" for VNA's CEO and executive staff. In 2008, he helped VNA's first new CEO in years take the reins, and last year he stepped outside his CFO role to negotiate the sale and lease of its Cleveland building. He also takes part in union negotiations. Since philanthropy is vital to such an organization, the nomination said he also has been open to finding creative ways for supporters to aid VNA. He originated an idea for VNA to allow employees to donate vacation time to philanthropy, something few companies permit. The University of Akron graduate, who has a master's degree in business administration from Baldwin Wallace University, also is known as a teacher at VNA. He created a Medicare 101 training program that helps staff understand the federal program's unique structure. He relishes the chance to help both new employees and new board members learn how Medicare's intricacies shape both their jobs and the organization. Outside the office, Mr. Danese is a director of the Ohio Educational Credit Union, where he serves on its executive, audit and other committees. He also works on finances as a parish leader at St. Mary of the Immaculate Conception in Avon and has taught accounting at Lorain County Community College and Cleveland State University.
Visiting Nurse Association of Ohio,
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Oh joy. Just what I love. Pre-arranged relationships. 1 way to scare of potential interested parties that.
Where are the guys at?Miyu - Agile is alright, however I don't really want any super acrobats or people who are invincible. I don't really see how someone would know about parkour so far into the future when all forms of previous frivolities are wiped out etc.
Name: (Be realistic, nothing Japanese or 'Rain' or crap like that) Weapon: (also just quickly tell us how you got the weapon. Only the military have heavy duty guns and such, most weapons are home made. NO SWORDS)
Someone please tell me what those words in capitals are? I said no swords, so why does someone have a sword?I may delete this interest check, re-do it and put in more rules because this is just getting a bit silly.
Are you still looking for male characters?
so where do we post characters?
Yes!Keep hold of them till the OOC
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La La Land
WRECK the halls with cows of folly
Fa la la la laa, la la moo moo
'Tis the season to be sorry
Fa la la la laa, la la boo hoo
Con we now our client Darryl
Fa la laa, la la laa, it comes that waaay!
Troll the surly in-law, Carol
Fa la la la laaa, la la cheapskate
SEE the blazing cheeks before us
Fa la la la laaaaa, la UN-I-BROW
Join the creepy penguin chorus
Fa la la la laaa....
"We're on a mission from God."
Thanks to Elizabeth S., Erin L., Gene H., Jami K., Ted S., & Tiffany F. for reminding everyone it's not too late to get your copy of Wreck the Halls for Christmas. Aw, you guys are the BEST.
P.S. Did you donate your dollar today?


text:
Acafandom and Beyond: Alex Doty, Abigail De Kosnik, and Jason Mittell (Part Two)/
Conversation Jason:
In reading over Alex and Gail's excellent provocations, I find myself reading fairly fannishly - not because I'm an admirer of their work (although I certainly am), but because even though they each present arguments that might seem to contradict my own stated position, I highlight and (to evoke our host) poach the moments and examples that confirm my own ideas. In Alex's post, I see evidence of the usefulness of writing what you believe and feel without a label - he might be framed as an acafan fore-parent, but the work that inspired so many of us didn't need that label to forge a model.
And his post points to another example of a slippery term that has had much more semiotic utility than either acafan or postmodern: queer. As we all know, this was not a term coined for academic convenience or trendiness, but rather a reclamation of an already powerful signifier that has come to define a field in seemingly (for a sideline observer like myself) coherent, pragmatic and politically efficacious ways. The semantic history of queer proves that terms can matter, but suggests that we should also engage with terms that already matter and fight the important fights, rather than coining and squabbling over new ones.
Both Gail and Alex's posts highlight the role of affect in writing about culture, and the importance of owning up to our personal engagements. But while Alex chose to "inject the I" into his work through both political and emotional investments, Gail chooses to speak Vulcan over Klingon, tempering affect while foregrounding her taste and identity. I'm sure that adherents of the term acafan would allow for both styles of fannishness under its rubric, but that points to challenges of the concept: either you must delineate the category in a way that excludes some significant modes of engagement, or you create a large umbrella that loses its explanatory power. I'm left unsure why labelling either of their approaches, or those of the many others who have participated in this series, as "acafan" helps us understand or justify the resulting work.
So I'm left with a question for both of my esteemed co-provocateurs: what would be different for the type of work you do without the term acafan to categorize it?
Oh, quite simply, I think of myself as an "acafan" because Henry employed that term. He could have called it "lorax" and I would have said, "Yes, that's what I'm trying to do with my work, with my career. I'm trying to be a lorax!" As Alex is the fore-parent of so much great cultural studies and queer studies work, so Henry is the fore-parent of so much great work in fan studies. (Thus it is so great to have these two strands of genealogy touch points through this conversation, though of course their work has always been relevant to each other's.) I came into fan studies through the Henry route, and so Henry's terminology is mine.
But actually I would like to take up the question of using "queer" as a possible descriptor for "acafan." I know that's not literally what you suggested, Jason, but I have often wondered about drawing a connection between the two terms. On the one hand, "acafan" "queers" both academic and fan, Henry has explicitly referenced the origins of his early fan studies work in the emergent queer studies movement, fans generally use terms like "outed," there is something real at stake for those of us who are academics who "come out" as fans, and one of Henry's landmark contributions was showing that it could be done with respect to popular media, that one could and maybe MUST "out" oneself in academic work as a fan.
On the other hand, earlier in this discussion, John Edward Campbell asked "those who identify as 'acafans' to be a bit more reflexive about comparisons of fans to sexual minorities," emphasizing rightly that the dangers for people who "out" themselves as sexual minorities are far more acute and severe than for people who "out" themselves as fans.
If either of you has any thoughts on the intersections of "queer" and "acafan," as two terms that could be brought to bear on one another or may support or serve one another, or as two terms that are and must remain very distinct and separate, I would be really interested in them.
I'll begin with Gail's provocation about how she tries to have her academic work speak critically about fandom and things she is a fan of rather than have her speaking as a fan, and how this particular positioning as an acafan (one I think most acafans take on) runs the risk of reinforcing "the old equivalences" of fan with "irrationality" and "overemotionalism" and academic with "rationality" and critical "distance." I agree with you, Gail, that this positioning may be a matter of "tone," and I will add "degree," rather than a wholesale denial or repression of emotion, but I have always been frustrated by how deploying this position always seems to demand we "control" our expressions of enthusiasm because they are, somehow, antithetical to the intellectual work we do. Is it really be impossible to conceive of a piece of work that veers between Photoplay and "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema," and that is taken seriously in the academy?
Jason, you really are being a provocateur when you ask if we would really lose anything in terms of how we go about our business without the term "acafan" (or "postmodern"). I suppose I would say "no" and "yes." No, in the sense that those of us who were/are intent on combining "the personal is the political" type investments in our work would have proceeded (and did proceed) without a concept to work within or under.
But, yes, in the sense that it is handy to have a term like "acafan," or the earlier "scholar-fan," to indicate a "performance" option (as you put it, Gail) for scholarship. Once a term like this is established, it can provide some added weight to the struggle to legitimate certain types of scholarly performance. (I know, even while writing out "legitimate" I was cringing, but a girl's got to eat, so. . .) While, as Jason points out, this term (whether applied to a person or to a product) can mean many things to many people, it does gesture toward a group of people (self-identifying and not) and body of work that has attempted to expand and complicate just what constitutes a "scholar" or a piece of "scholarly" or "academic" work. And I do feel a kinship with these folks and with this project--though I guess don't really need a term to describe all this, I suppose. How's that for equivocating?
As to understanding acafandom, the acafan, and acafan production as "queer" somehow, I don't see why not, for the reasons Gail outlines, primary among them the impulse to critique categories with an eye to deconstructing them. Following this line of thinking, then, the queer goal of acafandom should finally be to trouble the categories of "fan" and "academic" (and academic and fan discourse) so much that we are left with exactly what Jason is calling for--a space that allows "our arguments and ideas to speak for themselves" no matter what their approach, methodology, for form. So, Jason, maybe you can just wait a while for acafandom to do its queer work!
I appreciate that both of you equivocate about my question, and even though I'm skeptical of the term, I'm similarly on the fence. Such labels certainly have their uses for community-building, group identification, and signalling a set of sympathies so that others can find like-minded fellow travellers - I imagine that on some social network like Academia.edu, tagging yourself as an acafan could be useful (as would tagging ourselves as Loraxes for that matter!). But as academics in the critical humanities, we need to be careful in how we use our labels, as today's marker of convenience is tomorrow's site of political factioning or terminological warfare: when will we see articles positing that we are now in the era of post-acafandom, to be followed by neo-acafandom?
To pull out another term that emerged from the theoretical stew of postmodernism (but I'd argue need not be labeled as such to be useful), what I think is going on around these acafan conversations is a form of strategic essentialism. There is a tactical utility for scholars, especially in vulnerable untenured positions, to be able to grasp onto a term like acafan and highlight how prominent figures in our field like Henry & Alex embrace it - it helps situate ones work & identity within an area of study that has validity and legitimation. But what happens when a hiring or review committee asks "so what does that mean?" I think it's most useful and honest to be able to embrace labels not just for their pragmatic utility, but because they actually help explain what it is you do and how you do it.
As for the queer question, I get the parallel in terms of issues of visibility and categorical instability, but echoing John Edward Campbell's point that Gail cited, I fear that it might unintentionally belittle the huge power differentials between being a fan and being a sexual minority. The odds that someone would suffer tangible discrimination or violence for being a fan are so much less than for being queer, and the fandoms that would probably carry the greatest stigma are themselves already queered. In other words, nobody's going to care that I "outed" myself as a sysop for a Lost fan wiki, but a scholar who writes BDSM slash fanfic has legitimate reasons to keep that aspect of her fandom closeted - but I'd argue that's less because it's a fan activity than because it's a queer type of fandom. Might a strategic use of the term acafandom would help her by validating such activity within an established community? Perhaps, and if so, that's as good of a justification for the term as I could imagine - although my skepticism about the incoherence of the category remains.
Gail: Jason, you're such a hater! It's awesome - I like the "hater" position and use it very frequently myself (cf. Jonathan Gray's outstanding work on "anti-fans" and "non-fans"). You're a non-fan of the "acafan" term and an anti-fan of the potential for terms like "post-acafan" (!) and I respect that. I actually don't use the term "acafan" to refer to myself in any promotion review-type situation, or to define myself or my work to non-acafen, but I do *think* of myself as an acafan and I like that a term exists as a "tag" that other scholars use so that I can find them and their work and understand something about their methodologies and what their goals are.
"Acafan" works well for me as a kind of search term (though I've never typed that into Google) - if someone is called an "acafan" or refers to themselves using that term, even in passing, it's helpful for me to recognize them as someone whose work may have some relevance and importance to my own work.
But just going back to the lorax example quickly, I am also fine with other tags like "fan studies scholar," "scholar-fan," "fan theorist," "fan cultures scholar," etc. And that circle of terms can widen outward quickly to "cultural studies scholar," "media studies scholar," "digital culture theorist," "Amy Pond who studies online communities," etc. I just find terminology useful for a quick assessment of whether someone's essays or books or blog entries or LiveJournal posts or conference papers are worth time and attention - Are they working on projects that are of interest to me, or not? Are they using approaches and frameworks that I might want to learn about, or not?
But I do think that as the acafan approach gets to be more and more common, with new generations of scholars emerging for whom the question of whether or not they should declare their fandoms is not even a question, that the term may become specific to a time frame. "Some scholars and fans in the late 1990s and early 2000s, sensing commonalities and overlaps in their theoretical and critical work, used the term 'acafan' to define themselves. Today, it is well-known that everyone who studies media of any kind is a fan, a non-fan, or an anti-fan, and that anyone who thinks that passion and emotion are not integral to media criticism and analysis is an idiot." (from the Future Encyclopedia of Media Studies, copyright 2042).
I do hope, though, that if and when "acafan" goes away, that we who were acafen remember that academics and fans can and should talk to one another, that they/we are not that different from one another, that the "meta" done in fandoms and the "studies" done in academia are similar kinds of work. I am especially concerned here about fans' possible marginalization from future academic discussions, since academics have access to (some) institutional legitimacy and research funds that many fans do not.
Thank you both, Alex and Jason, for weighing in on whether "queer" can or mustn't be thought of as pertinent to "acafan." Both of you suggest that much acafan work can do, and is already doing, queer work - and so inspires discomfort and encounters disapprobation because of its queerness, not because of its acafanishness. To me, that means that it is useful to think about "acafan" and "queer" together, and to articulate their relationships, but that in any discussion of the two concepts together, it is crucial not to mistake the social positioning of one for the social positioning of the other.
Alex: Well it looks as if I am bringing up the rear (to coin a phrase). It seems as if where we are leaving "acafan" is understanding it as a concept that might have certain uses for academic fans if not for "civilian" fans (sorry, I was an Army brat) when it is used carefully and strategically--but that it may have a shelf life, so we shouldn't get too attached to it. I think that between and among them, our provocations and responses have compellingly suggested some of the potential benefits of using "acafan" as well as some of its limitations or problematic aspects.
Reading both of your follow-up comments on "acafandom" and/as "queer," I realized that I probably sounded a bit flippant in my last response on this. As a queer and an acafan--yes, I will hold onto that label for a while longer though I don't really need it to do what I do, even though I still think it helps explain what I do to some extent, although Jason is correct in suggesting that sometime you need to define "acafan" for people before talking about your specific acafan work-- I agree that while as concepts they can be interestingly compared to each other, this should not suggest that "open" acafans leave themselves open to anything like what "open" queers do--except, possibly, as Jason suggests, when the acafan/acafan work is itself queer.
I like Gail's encyclopedia entry for "acafan(dom)," especially the final sentiment, which is an interesting reversal of what many undergraduate students think: that analysis and criticism have no place in expressions of (their) fan enthusiasms. That is, they will no longer enjoy (or enjoy less) popular culture texts or personalities once they have certain (academic) critical and analytic tools. Hey, this might be something else the concept and products of acafandom are useful for--showing students that you can simultaneously think critically and emote when you watch a film, listen to a song, contemplate a celebrity, etc. etc. etc. A carefully selected acafan article or two--along with a general discussion of "acafan(dom)"--have done wonders in my undergraduate classes along these lines.
Abigail (Gail) De Kosnik is an Assistant Professor at the University of California, Berkeley. She has a joint appointment in the Berkeley Center for New Media (http://bcnm-dev.berkeley.edu/) and the Department of Theater, Dance & Performance Studies (http://tdps.berkeley.edu/). Her current LJ userpics are: The Beatles, Don & Peggy, Starbuck & Apollo (Kara & Lee), Rogue, Blair Waldorf, Torvill & Dean, Lisbon & Jane, Tony & Pepper, Daniel & Betty, and Mal & Zoe. At this time, she's looking for a good Arya Stark icon.
Alexander Doty is Chair of the Department of Communication and Culture at Indiana University and a Professor in this department and in the Department of Gender Studies. He has written Making Things Perfectly Queer and Flaming Classics, co-edited Out in Culture, and edited two special issues of Camera Obscura on divas. An old fogey, he is currently not active in any web-based fan communities, but in the past he has been known to put his 2-cents up on broadwayworld.com, and to indulge the consumer side of his fandom by buying risque postcards of 1920s stars George O'Brien and Ramon Novarro on Ebay--and, yes, he will end up writing something on at least one of them in order to justify these purchases to his "aca" side.
Jason Mittell is Associate Professor of Film & Media Culture and American Studies at Middlebury College, and a Fellow at the Lichtenberg-Kolleg at the University of Göttingen, Germany, for the 2011-12 academic year. As an aca, he's written Genre & Television (2004), Television & American Culture (2009), Complex TV (in process) and the blog Just TV (ongoing). As a fan, he's been active in the Lostpedia community, transforms Wilco songs for the mandolin, and calls his fantasy football team The Heisenberg Helmets.


text:
WATCH: Attempted Abduction of 10-Year-Old Girl Caught on Tape
(PHILADELPHIA) -- A 10-year-old girl and her 2-year-old brother were walking back from buying sweets in South Philadelphia when a man suddenly came from behind and tried to make off with the terrified girl.
He placed his hand over her mouth lifted her from the ground and, as the girl's brother screamed, the man stumbled as he tried to drag the girl towards his car. After struggling for a brief period, the man eventually gave up and fled the scene.
The attempted abduction in South Philadelphia Tuesday was caught on video and now detectives from the Special Victims Unit are using it to hunt down the would-be kidnapper.
The Philadelphia Police Department has been a pioneer in the use of YouTube and social media, including Twitter and Facebook, to help solve crimes. Their Facebook page has more hits than any law enforcement page except the FBI page. Since last February they have used the wide distribution of video and social media to catch 87 suspects, including alleged murderers and rapists.
Two unrelated murder cases were solved by surveillance tape from one corner store. In one case, the suspect's own mother turned him in after seeing her son on one tape. In the other, a rape and murder was solved when a neighbor recognized the man who was following the victim.
When Bas Slabbers was attacked on a city bus in late May, no one on the bus would assist him or call 911. After police released video of the attack via social media, however, they got several tips about the identity of the attacker and made an arrest. Witnesses apparently didn't want to risk getting involved while the crime was occurring on the bus, but were willing to identify the attacker electronically.
At a press conference Wednesday, Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter said that alleged crimes, like the one caught on tape Tuesday, are "completely unacceptable."
"Our children must be able to walk around their own neighborhood without lowlifes like this individual coming up and grabbing them, touching them, or doing anything else. It's completely unacceptable, totally outrageous, we need the public's help," Nutter said.
Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio


text:
|Birth Date:
|Newark, Calif.
|High School:
|Newark Memorial HS
2010 All-Big West Honorable Mention
2010: One of three players to play and start in all 52 contests...Led the Gauchos in RBI (21) and walks (25)...Was the team-leader in doubles for the second-consecutive year and her 11 are tied as the 10th most in a single season by a UCSB player...Currently ranks fifth all-time in the UCSB record books with 33 doubles and is ninth with 76 RBI...Was second on the team for on-base percentage (.368) and total bases (48)...Her .245 batting average was third on the team and second among 2011 returners as was her .345 slugging percentage and 34 hits...Scored 15 runs...Had eight multi-hit games and two games with a season-best three hits...Was named Big West Co-Player of the Week on May 17 after leading the Gauchos to a series win over league champion UC Davis...During the series, she batted .600 (3-for-5) with a grand slam, six RBI, four runs and four walks...Put together a pair of four-game hit streaks (Mar. 6 thru Mar. 13 and Apr. 2 thru Apr. 10)...The former streak featured three consecutive games with a double...During the latter streak, she posted three multi-hit showings in including a 3-for-4 performance at Cal State Fullerton (Apr. 3) with an RBI, double and walk...Drew two walks in a game on four occasions...Posted a .928 fielding percentage at third base and led the team with 111 assists.
2009: Started all 51 games for the Gauchos...Was fifth on the team with her .271 batting average...Led the squad with her 13 doubles - ranking third in the Big West - and was second on the team with 32 RBI, which was seventh in the conference... Led the conference after getting hit by 16 pitches, which is a single-season school record...Ranked seventh in the Big West in on-base percentage (.417) and assists (116) ...In conference play, she was tied second among league leaders in doubles (6) and posted a league-leading eight hit-by-pitches...Had 10 multiple-hit and multiple-RBI performances...Went 2-for-3 with a double, a home run and three RBI in the season-opener against Oregon (Feb. 6)...Season-high four RBI came one game later as she went 3-for-3 with a home run, a walk and an additional run in the 9-2 win over McNeese State (Feb. 8)...Third homer of the season came during a 3-for-5 showing against Long Beach State (Feb. 14), which was accompanied by another run, two RBI and a double...Had three RBI in the Mar. 24 win over No. 4 UCLA...In the final game of the season against Cal State Fullerton (May 9), she went 3-for-3 with a run, a double and a walk...Put together two five-game hit streaks: Feb. 19 thru Feb. 22 and Apr. 5 thru Apr. 11.
2008: Started all 54 games during her first season in the blue and gold...Batted .260 during the season with 40 hits and 17 runs...Was third on the team with nine doubles, tied second with two triples and third with four home runs...Her 23 RBI ranked third among the Gauchos...Posted a .422 slugging percentage...Went 5-for-7 during stolen base attempts...Posted a .945 fielding percentage and ranked fourth in the Big West with 116 assists...Had a season-high three hits against Syracuse (Feb. 29), a game in which she went 3-for-3 with a run, two RBI, a double and a walk...Tallied a season-high three RBI on two ocassions: against Loyola Marymount (Mar. 9) and against Pacific (May 4)...Tied a UCSB record for doubles in a game with two against Cal State Fullerton (May 9)...Strung together a 12-game hitting streak running from Mar. 9 thru Mar. 30...The aforementioned streak included five games with two hits apiece...Ended the season amidst a four-game hitting streak.
Played at Newark Memorial High School under coaches Rachel Kahoalii and Clare Alcott...Was an All-Mission Valley Athletic League First Team recipient three consecutive seasons, 2005-07...Was also named Second Team All-East Bay...Helped her team to a second-place finish in the North Coast Section during the 2006 season...Was also a four-year letterwinner for the Cougar volleyball team...Was runner-up for her school's Athlete of the Year and Scholar-Athlete honors...Set school weight lifting records for squats and bench press.
Played for Strike Zone under coach Don Ford.
Jessica Robin Beristianos was born in Fremont, Calif. on May 20, 1989...Parents are Olivia and Bob Beristianos...Has a twin sister named Laura and two older siblings: Kristine, who played softball at San Francisco State, and Matthew...Has yet to declare a major at UCSB, but aspires to one day be a pediatrician...If she didn't play softball, she would probably play volleyball or water polo...Favorite athletes include Alex Rodriguez, Barry Bonds, Omar Vizquel, and Albert Pujols...Favorite team is the San Francisco Giants...Enjoys watching "The Notebook", "Harry Potter", "Beauty and the Beast", "Serendipity" and "Big Daddy"...Her favorite television show is "Friends"...Enjoys the "Harry Potter" book series and books by Nicholas Sparks...Her favorite aspect of UCSB is the beach.
YearAvgGP/GSABRH2B3BHRRBIBBOB%SB/ATT 2008.26054/5415417409242311.3295/7 2009.27151/51144223913133220.4173/3 2010.24552/52139153411012125.3680/0 TOTAL.259157/1574375411333387656.3728/10
|at Cal Poly
|six times
|4/3/10 - most recent
|eight times
|5/15/10 - most recent
|Runs Batted In
|two times
|5/14/10 - most recent
|Stolen Bases
|Loyola Chicago
|nine times
|5/1/10 - most recent
|eight times
|5/14/10 - most recent


text:
Hello folks, I'd like to introduce you to someone. This is Marjorie. She is my hero/tailor.
I am forcing her to be my friend.
And obviously, my first step towards achieving this goal was to make her cookies. Specifically, these Sesame Seed Cookies.
Okay, I think I should do some 'splaining. First off, I am taking a Projects in Photography class this semester, and it focuses primarily on portrait photography. Which is pretty rad, in my opinion, since I never get around to actually shooting posed portraits and I have really wanted to give it a try. For our most recent assignment we had to pick a Ghanaian that we were relatively chummy with (or not--just depends on how confident you are with potentially awkward situations) and photograph this subject over an 8-12 hour block of time. So, I chose Marjorie, who is the go-to seamstress for most of the students in my program. She always came off like somewhat of an enigma to me, in part because of her no bullshit attitude and somewhat stony countenance. Plus, she can sew a pretty 1960s cocktail dress in about 6 minutes, from raw fabric to ironed lapels.
So I set up a date to come in and shoot some pictures of her, and in preparation I make a batch of these Sesame Seed Cookies (mainly to get on her good side before I would proceed to bug the hell out of her with my camera). Another example of how baking cookies has helped me where my social skills are lacking! I hand her the tupperware containing the cookies, and she takes a bite, and says "You did good" and then continues her cutting and measuring. I felt like I was in a detective movie and had just returned to my boss with a particularly juicy bit of info, and the P.I. gruffly patted me on the shoulder and told me "Ya did good, kid." Yay!
Anyway, I shot a million pictures, only got a few that I like, and none that I love. Oh well, c'est la vie. At least the cookies were a hit, and that's what I should be talking about anyway! So I'll hop to it.
These cookies are really good. You must excuse their appearance, because once again my crazy oven situation messed them up pretty badly. But the dough is delicious and the flavor of the actual baked cookie is pretty awesome. The sesames get all toasty and pack a bunch of flavor as well as crunch. I would most definitely make these again, because not only are they easy to make, but they are unusual, so you can impress your friends (and friend-crushes) without breaking a sweat.
Sesame Seed Cookies
Makes about 4 dozen
- 1 cup all-purpose flour
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
- 1 cup packed light-brown sugar
- 1 large egg
- 1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
- 1 cup hulled sesame seeds, toasted
{End Results}
Baking Difficultly: 1/5
Ingredient Accessibility: 4/5
Tastiness: 4/5
Attractiveness: 3/5
Is it worth it?: Yes! Especially those of you who are fans of sesame flavor...you know who you are.
Baking Difficultly: 1/5
Ingredient Accessibility: 4/5
Tastiness: 4/5
Attractiveness: 3/5
Is it worth it?: Yes! Especially those of you who are fans of sesame flavor...you know who you are.
Drink: No drink. Nothing.
Song: Side with the Seeds -- Wilco
Activity: These would be good served at a nice little tea party or to give as a gift. See above anecdote.
Activity: These would be good served at a nice little tea party or to give as a gift. See above anecdote.


text:
NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — The dollar rose against the Japanese yen Thursday after a round of positive U.S. data in a holiday-shortened week.
The U.S. stock market is closed on Friday for the Good Friday holiday.
Jobless claims edged up by 2,000 to 304,000 in the week ended April 12, remaining near their lowest level since 2007. Economists had expected claims to hit 315,000, according to a MarketWatch survey.
Manufacturing in the Philadelphia area picked up in April, with the Philly Fed diffusion index rising to 16.6 from 9.0 in March. The 16.6 reading was the highest since September and beat expectations.
The dollar USDJPY, -0.04% rose to ¥102.42 from ¥102.24 late Wednesday. Japan downgraded its view on the economy on Thursday, spurred by a decline in consumer spending that was visible after the sales-tax hike went into effect April 1.
The Australian dollar AUDUSD, +0.0295% fell to 93.22 U.S. cents from 93.71 U.S. cents late Wednesday.
The euro EURUSD, +0.0543% was unchanged at $1.3815 from late Wednesday. Producer prices in Germany fell 0.9% in March from a year earlier, notching a bigger decline than had been expected, and becoming the latest data report to highlight the weak level of inflation in the euro zone. Continued levels of low inflation could threaten the European Central Bank's medium-term inflation outlook and has led to speculation that the ECB could be forced to ease further.
Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen on Wednesday said a strong U.S. economy that meets the Fed's employment and inflation goals could be achieved by the end of 2016, showing "how far we have to go" before the recovery takes root. Recap: Live blog and video of Janet Yellen's speech and Q&A
The euro hasn't fallen significantly against the dollar despite comments from ECB officials about how the high exchange rate has further depressed inflation. The euro hit a 2014 high above $1.39 in March, marking the highest level since late 2011, according to FactSet. And continued dovish rhetoric from Yellen has weighed on the dollar, said Kathleen Brooks, research director at Forex.com, in a note.
The ICE dollar index DXY, +0.04%, which pits the dollar against six rivals, has fallen nearly 6% since its peak in July, even as the Fed began reducing its monetary stimulus, she said. In recent trade, the index edged up to 72.852 from 79.827 late Wednesday.
"If EURUSD continues to hover around 1.40 and the Fed sticks to its current message then the ECB may have to unleash the big guns in the form of negative deposit rates, or QE, to weaken the EUR once and for all," Brooks said in a note. "Ultimately, it could be the Fed, rather than weak inflation, that may force the ECB to embark on radical policy measures in the near term," she added.
The WSJ Dollar Index BUXX, -0.08%, an alternative gauge that measures the dollar against more rivals, rose to 73.03 from 72.98. The British pound GBPUSD, +0.0000% edged down to $1.6790 from $1.6797.
Read more on MarketWatch:
China's 'shadowy' credit bill coming due
Investors now have an excuse to drive like maniacs


text:
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text:
Few of our graduate students at the School of Environmental and Forest Sciences (SEFS) arrive here by following the exact same script. After all, the very nature of pursuing scientific training—always asking questions, always refining methods and ideas—tends to favor detours over simple, direct routes.
That's why many of our students make their way here more like a pinball than an arrow; not out of aimlessness or lack of dedication, by any means, but by seeking diverse experiences and allowing those to shape and guide them. These students come with an appreciation that some of the most exciting discoveries and decisions can happen on the go, firsthand and unplanned, and that being open to the world is often the best way to find your place in it. In many ways, that's how Cameron Newell found his way to the Master of Environmental Horticulture program at SEFS a year ago.
Newell grew up about an hour northwest of Melbourne, Australia. After earning a bachelor of science with majors in botany and zoology at Monash University in Melbourne, he spent a few years exploring an assortment of jobs, from driving seeding drills and rouseabouting on farms in the west, to working for the Victorian state government one summer as a firefighter. "It was the wettest summer in 100 years," he says, "so I ended up filling sandbags more than putting out fires. It was a good thing, I guess, but you don't make as much money that way."
For one 18-month stretch, Newell hooked up with a filmmaker who was looking for a camera assistant on a documentary. The project involved capturing a year in the life of crocodiles, following them from babies and nesting mothers on through to mating. Newell didn't have any experience as a cameraman, but before he knew it he was spending weeks in the field filming up around Darwin and other remote reaches of the country. "It was kind of scary most of the time," he says, "sitting in a little flat-bottom boat filming crocodiles."
At the end of that string of jobs, Newell set off with his brother on a seven-month backpacking adventure through South America. They flew into Santiago, Chile, and then trekked through Bolivia, Peru and Ecuador before spending a short time in Colombia. Near the tail end of the journey, while still in Ecuador, Newell met Susan North—his "soul mate, an amazing woman from San Diego," he says. "My plans changed a bit from there."
So after their last stop in Colombia, the brothers headed their separate ways, with Newell traveling up to the United States with Susie. From there, they would spend the next two and a half years dating long distance while Newell worked on several other documentaries—including films about kangaroos, flying foxes and red crabs—and applied for a green card to live in the country. When he was finally able to join Susie in San Diego full-time, he spent about two and a half years working in environmental consulting.
During that time, he'd been thinking about ways to get more engaged with environmental restoration and sustainable farming. "My parents had a nursery growing up," he says, "so I was always growing plants. I had my own little side business doing small-scale stuff on farms, putting in windbreaks, things like that. But sustainable agriculture has become a bigger interest of mine through time and jobs, and I wanted to work out a way to pair agriculture and restoration."
He started digging into potential graduate programs that would give him the flexibility and hands-on field application he wanted. That's what attracted him to the Master of Environmental Horticulture degree program with SEFS, where he's now working with Professors Kern Ewing and Jim Fridley. His research focuses on habitat restoration for pollinators in small agricultural areas in Seattle and surrounding communities, including Duvall and Carnation. "Pollination is a big thing at the moment with the collapse of the honey bee populations," he says. "There's going to be an increased need for native pollinators."
Newell has just completed his first year here, and this summer he's carrying out some pollinator surveys in a few local towns to determine which pollinators are around and active. He's also gotten involved with the local project tracking the reemergence of Western Bumble Bees in the Seattle area, so he'll be out chasing bees from time to time.
He has about a year left in his program, and after that Newell says he'd eventually like to work in Africa or somewhere else in the developing world. What happens in the meantime, of course, is all part of the adventure—and could end up leading him in another direction entirely!
All photos © Cameron Newell.


text:
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
it's a (nameless, numberless) bento
Actually, I'm just now reminded by an old friend of mine who would label her VHS tapes with random names like "Fred" and "Victor". The tape (remember those?!) might be full of Friends episodes or old A-Team reruns, and you'd never know it by the title she'd put on the tape. I thought she was a little nuts. [okay, more than just a "little", but she reads this blog, so I've got to be nice ;-)]. Anywho, maybe I'll have to start doing something like that for these bento posts. "A bento named Betty" does have a nice ring to it.
Back on subject, this was my little girl's bento lunch from today. It was a preschool day, so no fun little picks or forks.
On the left are pieces of Polish sausage and cheddar cheese. The sausage was leftover from dinner the night prior.
On the right is a silicone cup of clementine orange segments and small grapes, corn puffs (faux Pirate's Booty) fill in the rest.
Packed in that handy dandy Sassy box. :)
5 comments:
- Alie said... [Reply to comment]
I SO hear you on the numbering... I've taken to calling mine "pizza", "pizza II", "pizza again" "Pizza yet again" etc..... It's awful!
So I have some questions because I'm thinking of getting the Sassy box for my boys. For this lunch, why did you use the inner yellow container? Was it so you could use the cover or just to make a smaller space? And why did you decided to use the silicone muffin cup instead of the insert that comes with the box? Also, do your kids have any problem opening the boxes?
Hope you don't mind answering these...
- March 2, 2010 at 7:45 PM
- Melissa said... [Reply to comment]
I'm happy to answer questions! I'm laughing because I almost put all this info in my post, but then I deleted it. LOL
I used the inner yellow dish for the sausage and cheese because I packed that the night before. The sausage was my husband's leftovers, and I knew I'd be packing it for my daughter ("super yummy hot dogs" is what she calls it). So it was easy to cut that up and add the cheese, put the lid on it and have in the fridge ready to drop into the bigger bento box in the morning!
I put the fruit in a silicone cup for a couple reasons, #1- because I thought I'd be able to fit more puffs in around it than if I had put the fruit in one of the Sassy dishes (but I don't think that actually was the case), and #2- because the silicone cups were right on my counter-top drying rack and the little Sassy dishes were somewhere in the deep abyss I call my Bento Bin. LOL ;-)
- March 2, 2010 at 8:00 PM
- Alie said... [Reply to comment]
Thanks so much! How funny that you almost put the info in your post. Feel free not to delete next time! ;)
- March 2, 2010 at 8:16 PM
- Jayne said... [Reply to comment]
Looking forward to the bento named Victor. Your friend sounds pretty genius to me :)
- March 2, 2010 at 9:40 PM
- Melissa said... [Reply to comment]
Oh, she had her moments. ;)
Did you feel your ears burning? Hee! :)
- March 2, 2010 at 10:16 PM


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How to Change Your Kindle Paperwhite's Name
By default, your Kindle Paperwhite is named Your Name's 1st Kindle, where Your Name is your first name. This name appears in the upper-left corner of the Home screen. You can change this name, if you want, to something more interesting or fun.
For example, some people name their Kindles after famous literary characters or authors. Others choose meaningful words, such as Catalyst — the Paperwhite is a catalyst for reading. You can change the name from the device itself or from your computer.
To change your Kindle Paperwhite's name from the device, follow these steps:
Tap Menu→Settings→Device Options.
Tap Personalize Your Kindle→Device Name.
Using the onscreen keyboard, enter a new name for your Kindle Paperwhite.
Some Kindle Paperwhite owners use their name and phone number as their Kindle Paperwhite's name. That way, if they misplace their Kindle Paperwhite, their contact information is prominently displayed on the Home screen for some kindhearted soul who finds the device and wants to return it to its rightful owner.
Tap the Save button to complete the process.
To change the device name through your Amazon account on your computer, follow these steps:
Go to www.amazon.com/myk.
If prompted, enter your e-mail address and password.
Click the Sign In Using Our Secure Server button.
Click Manage Your Devices, which appears on the left side of the screen.
Your Kindle Paperwhite appears in the list of registered devices.
Click Edit next to the Kindle's name.
In the dialog box that appears, type a new name and then click the Update button.
You can also add personal information or a message, such as "This Kindle Paperwhite belongs to your name. If found, please call xxx-xxx-xxx" to the Personal Info section of the Settings menu. To do so, follow these steps:
On the Kindle Paperwhite, tap the Menu icon.
Tap Settings→Personalize Your Kindle→Personal Info.
Use the onscreen keyboard to enter the desired information.
Tap Save.
Note that this information appears only in the Personal Info section — not on the Home screen — and won't be readily apparent to anyone who happens to be looking at your Kindle Paperwhite.