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It always starts with a voice in the night.
"Switchboard of Miami. How can we help you?"
"I'm tired, I'm real tired," the caller says softly, his words a bit slurred with fatigue and liquor, and on this Thursday night the volunteer who answers the call in the switchboard's fourth-floor SW Eighth Street office knows in his bones that there could be trouble ahead. For close to 23 years, Chuck, a 49-year-old attorney with the state government who lives in Bay Harbor Islands, has been coming practically every week to take the calls of anyone who needs help in the Miami area, offering them guidance, referrals, a person to talk to, or, in some cases, a reason to live. Chuck has handled thousands of calls over the years, but each one, marked by pain or confusion or simple loneliness, has to be treated as a special case. Each of the callers needs someone to listen to his or her problems, and Chuck, an outgoing man sporting a well-trimmed mustache and a gray pinstriped suit, knows how to listen.
(Like most of the other Switchboard of Miami counselors, Chuck doesn't want to give his last name because he'd like to be shielded in his personal life from the dozens of disturbed people who regularly call the hotline. Other volunteers use aliases on the phone lines to preserve their privacy.)
The man on the other end of the phone line -- one of 9000 callers the switchboard averages each month -- is depressed about his continuing drinking problem and says he wants to enroll tonight in one local hospital's inpatient treatment program. The hospital, though, won't admit him now, and he's desperate to get in right away. He's convinced that no other program will do. Married for more than twenty years, he's also certain he's become a burden to the wife and kids he loves dearly. Chuck suspects something more is going on. About fifteen minutes into the conversation he learns what it is.
"Do you know what a .380 hollow-point bullet can do to a heart cavity?" the man suddenly asks.
"I have some idea," Chuck answers, remaining calm.
"I've got one right here," says the man, Dave. [All callers' names and a few identifying details have been changed to protect identities and honor Switchboard of Miami's strict confidentiality policy.] As they continue talking Chuck speculates that the gun isn't in the same room with Dave, and learns that the family is elsewhere in the house. He reaches for a special "suicide-assessment form" and begins circling answers to statements that place each suicidal caller in different risk categories. Under the risk factor labeled "means," Chuck circles the word gun, which marks Dave as high risk, as does his alcohol use.
Chuck wants, above all else, to keep Dave on the phone. "As long as he's talking," Chuck notes later, "he's not killing himself." He allows Dave to unburden himself about his past failed flirtations with alcohol treatment, then steers the conversation to Dave's feelings about his wife and two kids. "You deeply care about your wife and kids," Chucks points out, seizing on what the counselors at the switchboard call a "hook," another reason to stay alive.
Chuck tells him, "There's a program that could help you, but you can't get in it until tomorrow. If you can hold on a few more hours, your life might be able to be different." Helping someone make it through the night -- basic as it may seem -- is one of the hotline's main goals with their most depressed callers.
To that end, Chuck gets Dave to agree to talk tonight to a counselor with Alcoholics Anonymous. It is a small victory for hope. Chuck, wearing his phone headset, turns to his computer screen and punches up AA's 24-hour crisis line, one of 2000 social-service programs listed in the switchboard's database. To Chuck's way of thinking, a recovering alcoholic can, in this case, do a better job of dealing with Dave than he can A plus he can't stay up all night talking to Dave. Chuck's shift ends at 9:00 p.m.
He reaches into an adjoining empty cubicle and places the call to AA on another phone while Dave listens. There is a certain danger in all this: At any moment Dave simply could hang up and decide to carry out his suicide threat. Soon Chuck gets an AA operator on the line and tells him, "I'm talking to someone who is threatening to kill himself." He makes arrangements for a counselor to call Dave and then firms up a commitment from Dave to call the switchboard back if anything goes wrong.
After the conversation ends Chuck feels a bit down himself. He's done his best yet he's troubled by the continuing apathy in Dave's voice. Afterward Chuck says, "I still see significant danger for him." It is one of the frustrations of this work that Chuck usually will not learn what happens to callers after he talks to them. In this case, however, the switchboard's daytime counselors contact Dave twice over the next few weeks and learn that he has entered the treatment program, joined a support group, and says he's doing fine.
Even when Chuck and the hotline's other counselors have saved a life, few people call or write to say thanks. "There's very little gratitude," Chuck notes; nevertheless, the twenty staff members and volunteers who take phone calls during a 24-hour period get other satisfactions. "You go home from a shift feeling that Miami's a little better," he points out.
For 26 years the Switchboard of Miami, located in the Brickell area, has been making life easier for many in Dade County, first for college students and hippies, later for the entire community. Now it is a $1.7 million a year operation whose 40 staffers and 75 volunteers offer more than just phone help; that includes in-person counseling for teens, antidrug and AIDS-prevention efforts in schools and in the Annie Coleman Gardens Housing Development, and a few other initiatives, including an after-school T-shirt business that serves as a mentoring and apprenticeship program. (The largest share of its revenues, 47 percent, comes from the Florida Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services, with the United Way providing 18 percent of the funding and the federal government 16 percent.)
Still, the heart of the organization remains the helpline, the county's only comprehensive 24-hour counseling, crisis intervention, and information and referral hotline. Since the late Sixties it has continued to be a window into the underside of life in sunny Miami, even as its calls have evolved from desperate inquiries about bad acid to questions about AIDS. Through it all one thing has remained constant: "There's so many people with so many problems," says Jerry, a retired Miami Beach police department administrator who works the Friday overnight shift. "It's like the old TV show -- there are seven million stories in the naked city." These are a few of them.
The dedicated people who field all these calls are, in some ways, like a special breed of telemarketer. "We're selling life," says Denise, a Southern Bell technician who previously worked as a sales rep for the company for a few years. At Southern Bell she learned how to prod people subtly to think about the advantages that new phone features could bring them. "Similarly, I'm going to try to help people figure out what benefits they can get in their lives," she explains. "It's not very directive. You ask, 'What can you do tonight to make yourself feel better? What do you like to do?'" She adds proudly, "I can talk to people easily."
She can use this skill, if necessary, to keep a person on the line long enough to ask police to trace a call during a life-threatening emergency. Curiously, she now works in Southern Bell's "networking center," which is responsible for implementing all trace requests, and she's actually been in the center when the helpline has requested a phone trace, information used by rescue teams to go to the location of someone in imminent danger. It is, however, the operators' ability to project empathy and warmth, rather than any sophisticated technology, that ultimately keeps people alive.
When Chuck faces a potentially lethal crisis, for instance, he pulls out all the stops in his relentless effort to convince a person that life is worth living. He is, basically, trying to close a very valuable deal. When needed he'll abandon the low-key style favored by most counselors and turn on all the extroverted charm he can muster, as if the caller might be made to believe that a world in which such friendliness exists might not be so bad after all.
Take the morose girl who calls a short while into Chuck's recent Thursday-night stint. She clearly needs encouragement, and as the call progresses she'll get more and more of it. Early on he senses how fragile she really is, and, seeking to make a connection, asks -- and gets -- her first name, Rita. She had phoned the night before to speak to another counselor, and in a halting, fuzzy voice she now tells Chuck, "I have a problem. I still feel like killing myself." She's in a program for emotionally handicapped kids and, she says, both her parents beat her.
"Do you want to report your parents for abuse?" he asks.
"I called HRS but they didn't do anything. I showed them the bruises but they didn't care."
He tries to reassure her that she's a credible person, and if she continues to report the abuse, the social services agency will take some action.
"Nobody cares."
"We care, I assure you. I can't run out there and stop it, but I can report it to HRS. They generally take reports from us seriously. I'd be happy to take your full name and address and phone number."
She won't give him that information and soon begins harping, in a childlike way, on what has helped make her so depressed.
"Everyone hates me," she says, her voice tinged with a petulant sadness.
"Do you think I hate you?"
"Really? Well, let me share with you -- the only person I can truly speak for is me. I do not hate you."
"You're just paid to say that."
"I beg your pardon. I'm not paid to say that. I'm not paid at all here. Rita, I'm a volunteer." He sounds, oddly enough, almost like an offended gentleman in some drawing-room comedy.
"I want to get out of this fucking world," she continues.
"I don't want you to get out of this world, I want you to get to someplace that's safe," Chuck says. He asks if she's tried living with any other relatives, and discovers that she's stayed with an aunt and uncle -- and found it tolerable. Although they want her to live with them permanently, she insists, "They don't like me."
In fact, she adds sadly, "Nobody likes me. I take drugs, I cut my wrists."
"Those are not the characteristics of a person who is unlikable," he says with an air of mock formality. "Those are the characteristics of a person with problems."
As they continue talking he learns that she has a boyfriend who might want to live with her, relatives willing to take her in, and only a few months to go before she turns eighteen. "It seems that you have a lot of possibilities other than killing yourself that could help your situation," he tells her.
"I still want to kill myself."
"I understand that, but there are other things you can do." He soon gently raises the possibility of low-cost counseling; her family has nearly exhausted funds for the psychiatric care she once received, but he still sees hope for her. "We don't like the fact that you want to kill yourself," he adds. "Is that okay with you?
"It's not okay with you? You would rather that we want you to kill yourself? You're going to have to accept us for what we are, people who'd much rather if you don't kill yourself." There's something strangely jocular about all this, a form of repartee that doesn't completely mask its deadly serious purpose. Eventually all the back-and-forth makes her laugh.
"See, you just laughed," he points out.
"No I didn't."
"Don't kid me," he says with a broad smile on his face. "I gotcha. The world isn't entirely black -- you laughed."
"You were laughing at me."
He's talking to her now like an old friend. "Oh, you know you're just trying to hold on to this black depression and not let me get you out of it!"
Her defenses are crumbling. "You made me laugh," she asserts.
"Yes, it was totally deliberate!" he proclaims, acting amused by it all. "It's true that I did it."
After the laughter she seems more willing to talk about the things she likes in her life, although her conversation is still laced with grim references to pills she can take or the glass she can use to slit her wrists. Still, before the call ends she reads him a poem she has written and tells him that her boyfriend is coming over later. She is, he believes, out of danger -- for now.
"Call us back at 358-HELP whenever you need somebody," he concludes.
"Bye," she says in a friendly way. No miracle cure has been achieved, and before retreating back into the silence she at least knows there's a place she still can turn to.
The call has taken about an hour of Chuck's time. "I usually don't spend that much time with a caller," he says, "but she was really depressed." He completes the suicide-assessment form, and ranks her as a moderate risk. "She's probably not going to do anything tonight, but in the long run she's a potential suicide."
Direct suicide-related calls make up roughly two percent of Switchboard of Miami's helpline cases, but the possibility of it exists for many of their callers. And each new phone call also may bring with it the threat of a crisis in progress. With 70 or so hours of classroom training and supervised phone work, the volunteers are expected to handle it. Even the newest volunteer may be called on to diffuse a dangerous situation. On a recent Tuesday night Jim, a bearded cabinetmaker, begins his first solo shift as an operator after four earlier sessions monitored by a supervisor. On this 5:30 to 9:00 p.m. shift there are three counselors on duty, and it falls to Jim to take a frantic call from a Spanish-accented young woman who is screaming, "Is this suicide information? Our friend is trying to do it! She's taken a lot of pills!"
"What kind of pills?" Jim asks, but he can't get a clear answer. Part of the problem is that Jim doesn't speak Spanish and there's no one manning the phones now who is fluent in the language. (At least one bilingual person is usually on duty at all times, although today that volunteer, Steve, is running slightly late.) It seems that the caller's friend, a recent Central American immigrant stuck by herself at a relative's house, may have taken as many as twenty pills. A nearby operator, Karen, a volunteer for two and a half years, rushes over to hear the ongoing conversation, then recommends that they set up a three-way call between the caller, her friend, and the switchboard. They need someone who speaks Spanish, so they ask another volunteer to go look for Jorge, the switchboard security guard who -- like everyone else associated with the organization -- has been trained in phone counseling.
Before they can find Jorge, however, Steve breezes in, arriving after speeding along the highway from West Palm Beach. A young fast-food store manager, he is there on only his second day of volunteer work and he is expecting to enjoy a breather before starting to answer the phones. As the only Spanish speaker in the room, though, he's thrust into the crisis immediately, takes the headphones from Jim, and, after setting up the three-way call, begins coolly talking to the pill-popping woman, Maria, and her friend. As he speaks to them -- mostly in Spanish -- he occasionally presses the mute button and fills in Karen on what's going on: "She took the pills to get high.... She's been drinking...."
He needs to keep Maria talking while he waits for her friends to show up at the house where she is staying. As they talk, it becomes clear to Steve that the woman is not in imminent danger of overdosing: The drugs are prescription medicines for migraine headache. Still, the woman is high and maudlin and has fallen down a few times. He soon finds himself in the midst of a domestic melodrama when her boyfriend gets on the line, and Maria, weeping, tells him, "I promise I won't do it again." Steve continues to listen and talk until one of her friends enters the house and picks up the phone. Then Maria speaks up again: "Everything's fine."
During his 25 minutes on the phone, Steve says after hanging up, he was so focused on Maria's needs that he didn't have time to be nervous. "You're so well-trained," he points out, "that I was only feeling caring and concern."
Most calls -- more than 80 percent -- are not so urgent as Maria's. Usually they involve people with a range of worries and emotional problems, often involving relationships. The callers seem to feel there's nowhere else to turn for advice. And a weekend night can be a particularly tough time to be alone and confused.
It's around eleven on Saturday night, and Jorge, the short-haired, muscular security guard, is settling in for his overnight counseling shift. A teenage girl phones, her voice shaky with panic, and says, "I'm worried that I had sex with my boyfriend. He penetrated for just a second, and I told him to get off. He didn't use protection. Ten minutes later, he came." She wonders if she can get pregnant.
Jorge won't answer the question directly -- "I'm not a medical doctor" -- and tries instead to get her to take precautions for the next time. She moans in distress and he tells her, "You can't change the past. But you can plan ahead for the future." Because she didn't ask for a birth-control referral, there's not much more he can do.
Confusion about sex is still rampant among the young, at least according to the phone counselors who field such calls frequently. Ed, a retired business-college teacher who volunteers twice a week, cites two common questions -- Can the girl get pregnant if she did it standing up? Can she get pregnant during her period? -- and an uncommon one: "A fifteen-year-old boy called after he used a condom, and asked me, 'Can I use it again on the other side?'"
There's also a small group of callers who turn to the hotline not as a resource for sexual questions but as an outlet for their kinky fantasies. The operators usually can tell when they're being used that way and make sure to hang up if such talk continues. Sometimes a counselor isn't sure and may give the caller the benefit of the doubt for a while. So on one Friday night, shortly before eleven, a man calls and tells the 76-year-old woman who answers that he's not sure if wants to watch his wife having sex with another woman. He keeps talking earnestly about his wife's desire to dominate him, but when he asks to speak to another woman counselor the switchboard operator knows it is likely a bogus call. "You have to make up your own mind," she says, before hanging up the phone with matter-of-fact irritation. "I think he was masturbating."
Other callers have sicker reveries. One man is simply listed in the switchboard's files as "Penis," because he calls with an elaborate, plausible explanation of how he lost his member in an accident, or as a result of illness. Before a novice counselor knows what's happening, this caller feverishly jerks off. How he simultaneously reconciles a castration fantasy and masturbation in his own mind has not been made clear.
Most calls, however, come from people in genuine pain over their troubled personal lives. On any evening you can hear a teenage girl complain about her 29-year-old mother sleeping with a 17-year-old boy, or an overweight woman in her 40s who feels trapped still living at home with the mother she envies.
For some, the turmoil in their love lives has lasted for years and there's little the switchboard operators can do to alleviate it. In the last few weeks a middle-age woman, Jane, has begun calling the hotline regularly in the evenings to mull over what do about the man she's been seeing for fifteen years. On a Friday night she calls again and says to Amy, a young counselor, "I love this man I know and he doesn't love me."
"You refuse to let go," Amy says. "We talked about this a few weeks ago." At the end of their conversation Amy gives her the name of a Women Who Love Too Much support group to call, and Jane seems willing to go. Still, the next night she calls to talk about her unrequited love all over again. If this keeps up Jane may find herself classified as one of the "actives," the disturbed or simply lonely people who call as many as several times a day.
There are about 150 actives and the helpline operators have come to know them well. These regulars know the counselors and their shifts, too, sometimes timing their calls to try to reach their favorites. Novice counselors can refer to computer files on the constant callers; it doesn't take long, however, to learn their stories.
One of the most persistent is Larry, a manic-depressive who lives alone on Miami Beach. He calls only when he's in his manic phase, and when he can't sleep he may call as many as fifteen times a day; recently, with the aid of new medication he's been taking, he's started sleeping at night more, giving the counselors a break from his incessant phoning. "It's nice to get a little peace," says one. Yet Larry still calls frequently to discuss whatever happens to be on his mind. Even so, the operators manage to treat him with friendliness and respect.
Sometimes, his calls refer to what are probably fantasies about his career. By about 8:30 on a Thursday evening when he calls in for the third time that night, he starts expounding about his dreams of running for office. Each call at the switchboard is answered randomly and so now Chuck is his designated listener. The man wants to run, he insists, an "upbeat" campaign.
"Sounds nice," Chuck says amiably during their five-minute talk. "Maybe you'll turn into one of those wise old people with acolytes listening to your every word." Not surprisingly, Larry calls back later.
On the phone he sounds extroverted, coherent, almost normal. The file on him tells a different, grimmer story. "Comments: Larry has been hospitalized for depression and suicide attempts.... Meds: Lithium, Haldol, Prolixin, Prozac.... Action plan: General support. Active listening. Encourage him to continue his group support at [a local clinic]. Reinforce his participation in social activities. Time Limits: 5-10 minutes, reduce after first call."
Chuck, who has spoken to Larry for years, has a tolerant attitude toward him, offering him plenty of warmth but little in the way of direct advice. "I'm not going to help his situation by doing it any other way," he explains. The switchboard must be doing something right -- Larry is still alive, after all.
While some of the other regular callers often are in more serious pain than Larry, there is little the counselors can do except offer reassurance and urge them to continue seeing their doctors. Their conversations offer insight into lives shaped by a chronic mental illness. So when Nancy phones on a Saturday night, the prescription medications she's taking are starting to kick in and she tells Jorge, in a rambling, slurred manner, how unhappy she is. "Should I try to make myself go into a coma?... Call the cops and make them shoot me -- I'm suffering, but I'm not capable of killing myself. I don't think God put me here to kill myself."
Eventually she gets tired, and Jorge tells her, "Get a little rest and call us tomorrow."
Nancy answers, "Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow, it's never going to come any more. There used to be tomorrows, but after my mom passed there's been no tomorrows, there's only been todays. I have to stay here and suffer."
The file on Nancy tells why she has so little to look forward to: "Black schizophrenic female with substance-abuse problems and multiple hospitalizations. Resistance to medications. Suicide attempts." The recommended "action plan" includes "assessment of her intent to suicide" and "focus on identifying problem and alternatives she can take." For "significant other," it lists only a doctor.
Hearing so much misery on a regular basis can take its toll. These helpline counselors, though, are devoted to their work. In addition to her day job as a secretary at the University of Miami, Amy, 26, generally works two eight-hour weeknight shifts that end at 3:00 a.m. A plus she volunteers at a hospice on weekends. She, like many of the others, downplays her own altruism, saying only, "My interest is in psychology." Most are drawn to the work because of a simple desire to help others and serve their community, and for some those reasons are deepened by pain they've experienced personally. It enables them to relate closely to a caller, even though the lives of a counselor and client may be very different. Denise, the Southern Bell technician, notes that as an overweight woman, "I'm able to be sensitive to others. I understand how they feel."
The challenge the volunteers all face, though, is not letting their caring for others overwhelm them. Jorge, after finishing his talk with the schizophrenic Nancy, observes, "You've got to train yourself to leave it right here in this room." Chris, working the overnight shift with Jorge, adds, "You empathize with them, but you try not to feel their pain so much that it interferes with what you're trying to do." Both Jorge and Chris are still young, however, and have been fielding calls for only eighteen months. They might not be so sanguine about it all if, like Chuck, they had been listening to tales of suffering for more than two decades.
It has not been easy for Chuck to strike a balance between caring too much and caring too little. "You can't do this work effectively unless you're relatively empathetic, but if you overempathize, you take the problems home with you," he points out -- and ultimately become ineffective. On the other hand one risks becoming mechanical and insensitive. This issue became so pressing that Chuck dropped out twice from the hotline in the Seventies, once for six months in 1974, the other time for a year in 1977. "Both times, I felt myself becoming jaded," he says. He noticed that he was getting impatient with callers, waiting for them to tell their stories so he could place them in a category -- such as "teen pregnancy" -- and then offer them a standard response. In recent years he has been able to find a middle ground between the extremes of being oversensitive or blase.
He's certainly had plenty of time to work on his counseling style. When Chuck first volunteered for the switchboard, the organization and Miami were very different from the way they are now.
Back then he was a 25-year-old air force officer at the Homestead air base who was seeking a place to offer his help. Chuck showed up one spring day in 1971 at the two-room switchboard office in the Center for Dialogue building abutting a church on NW 26th Avenue. When this air force officer, with his short hair and tie, came into the office, he saw a room covered in black with an upside-down American flag painted on the ceiling. A long-haired young man with a beard, headband, and beads came around a corner to greet him, and Chuck said, "I'm sorry, I'm in the wrong place."
It was indeed the Switchboard of Miami, founded in 1968 by students at Miami-Dade Community College as a housing referral service and eventually evolving into an emergency hotline for the hippie community and other young people. The Center for Dialogue was then a magnet for radical groups, and Chuck recalls walking down the hallway and seeing bullet holes from a shooting incident involving the cops and a black militant wanted for a school bombing. "It was a very exciting time," Chuck remembers, and part of that intensity was found in his sometimes risky volunteer work.
On his very first call after completing his training, he listened to a young man shouting, "We've got an overdose here, man. You better get here now!" At the time -- and for the first five or so years of its operation -- rather than call police or fire-rescue squads, the switchboard sent out its own volunteers on emergencies. "There was so much polarization then that calling them could get our callers arrested," Chuck recalls. He and another counselor rushed over to an old third-story apartment only to find the door wide open, and, inside the bedroom, a young "freak" in shorts sprawled across a bed, unconscious. Chuck tried CPR and couldn't revive him. Then they called police to report the death.
A lot of the calls in those years involved illegal drugs. Callers were generally younger and they sometimes wanted to know answers to such questions as, "Is the orange acid the good stuff?"
The truly desperate also turned to the switchboard then as they do now. Once, in the late Seventies, Chuck got a call from a man who'd lost his job as a janitor after eighteen years at the same firm. He said he planned to kill himself. "I'm just calling to say goodbye," the man told Chuck, a loaded gun laying ready next to him. Chuck convinced the caller to let him and another counselor visit, and when Chuck and a female colleague arrived they encountered a bizarre scene: a polite, heavyset man with a gun in his belt who served them tea and cookies while he spoke about blowing off his head. While talking to him they found he cared a lot about a young boy he mentored as part of a Big Brothers-style program. They got him to think about the impact his death might have on his young friend, and then, when he left the gun on a coffee table to go back into the kitchen, Chuck removed the bullets. Before they left they helped him realize there were friends who could perhaps assist him in finding work and a young boy who would miss him. Then they all hugged each other, and when Chuck walked out he felt drained but exhilarated.
"It felt great," he remembers. "We'd made a difference for someone I liked and kept him from dying."
In a few cases even the most determined counselor can't save a life. Chuck has had the horrifying experience of listening on the phone to a woman getting steadily weaker after taking 200 Valium. The rescue crew arrived too late to save her.
Almost always, though, his intervention makes a difference. He once kept a frightened twelve-year-old girl on the phone as he summoned HRS caseworkers to her house; all the while he heard her father pounding on the door, trying to get in and beat her up. The week before he'd broken her arm.
To Chuck, after taking thousands of calls, the underlying problems people face in Miami haven't really changed. People still get lonely and depressed, and, he argues, callers' needs for a place to stay, medical care, and food are no different today than they were years ago -- with one difference. "We used to deal with poverty-stricken students. Now there's a different population," he observes, referring to the influx of poverty-stricken immigrants.
Switchboard of Miami helpline director Nelson Rodney sees it differently: "We get different calls now, because society has changed in 26 years. The problems we get now are more complex, more difficult to handle." Rampant homelessness, crack addiction, AIDS -- in some ways, they make dealing with an overdose of 'ludes seem easy.
The mission, however, remains the same. "We've always been on call to help the community meet its human needs," Rodney explains. In doing so the hotline also serves as an early warning system for gaps in social services: Frantic calls for food following Hurricane Andrew made it clear there was no centralized resource for food distribution or referrals for the hungry, and that spurred Switchboard of Miami's leaders to join with other groups in lobbying for a government-funded food bank. It also has pushed for more slots in drug-treatment programs and homeless services. In the future, Rodney predicts, the helpline will follow the latest innovation in this field: setting up kiosks in drugstores with a do-it-yourself computerized-referral program and a direct phone line to the switchboard. No matter how high-tech the switchboard may become, however, the need for one-on-one help will remain.
The personal touch the hotline offers is no lucky accident; it arises from a thorough, in-depth training program. The program is considered valuable enough that other organizations, from Metro Police Department 911 operators to South Miami Hospital, are willing to pay up to $500 a day for it. "You can't teach empathy," says Nelson Rodney, "but you can teach people how to project empathy." The 60 hours of classroom training offered by the switchboard is free to potential volunteers who make a six-month commitment to work the phone lines. In recent weeks the switchboard has been teaching the staff of the Center for Haitian Studies, along with a few other volunteers; the Haitian graduates then will add their Creole-speaking abilities to the hotline.
On a recent weekday a dozen students are being plunged into the grim world of suicide intervention. Cathryn Lowe, the training coordinator, tells them, "People are ambivalent A they want to get rid of the pain but they don't want to die. That can be your lucky ring; you can get your hooks into that ambivalence." Besides learning in these classes about such topics as family disputes, the hallmarks of depression, and the types of suicidal behavior, students also are given an instruction sheet about the "Do's and Don'ts of Suicide Intervention." Among the missteps: "Don't engage in a debate with the suicidal person because you may not only lose the debate, but also the person." Another no-no: "AVOID GUILT TRIPS."
Students are asked to perform the roles of both counselor and caller, but before they do that Lowe plays them two tapes: one of a successful role-playing exercise, the second a blood-curdling conversation between a Metro-Dade 911 operator an actual victim who has ingested pills before calling. The operator clearly hasn't been trained in intervention techniques. Her comments during the crisis are a textbook illustration of counseling mistakes: She makes value judgments, puts the caller on hold, fails to establish a human connection, tells the person not to cry.
The students will, Lowe hopes, do better. The role-playing today involves a Haitian man, Romuald, and Carolyn, a young psychology student. (Before the weeks of training are over each student will have undergone hours of role-playing.) Their chairs are placed back to back, and he acts noticeably depressed. "I received bad news today," he says, and Carolyn responds, "Do you want to tell me about it?" Gradually he reveals that he's tested positive for AIDS. "I want to put an end to it all," he says, then admits that he's got a loaded gun on him. "Do you have any friends you can talk with?" she soon asks.
Lowe interrupts, pointing up to Carolyn, "You need more reflecting of his feelings." One key to keeping the caller on the line -- and alive -- is what the switchboard calls "active listening," in effect reflecting back to the caller the sentiments he's expressing and listening for the emotions that underlie his words. "Acknowledge his aloneness," Lowe instructs. And she offers a note of reassurance: "As long as you're getting communication going, there's no need to reach for the panic button just because there's a gun."
In the real world that sort of advice is helpful because it can be far more nerve-wracking trying to counsel a real potential suicide than one of your fellow students. For instance, on a Friday night, shortly after 10:00, a caller barks at Amy, "I'm a fucking suicide." He's slightly drunk and quite upset: "I can't let go of my past." He's just finished watching the film Platoon and it's dredged up all his old memories of the Vietnam War.
"What did this movie bring back to you?" she asks.
"The killing of a bunch of innocent people," he says with true anguish in his voice. "I tried to put it all behind me, but it's not going away." He can't bring himself to tell his girlfriend about it, he drinks to drown his guilt, and even a visit to Vietnam a few years ago didn't salve the wounds.
"The bottle's not helping," Amy tells him.
"The bottle has nothing to do with it!" he snarls.
"This pain is never going to go away if you try to keep it quiet," she says softly. "Is suicide going to cure the pain?"
He admits he doesn't really want to kill himself because of a fear that he'll be denied a fulfilling afterlife. Nevertheless, he has a plan anyway: "I'm thinking about slitting my wrists. If you place a band around the wrists to raise the veins, you'll die quieter."
Amy asks, "You're telling me you don't really want to do that, so why not try counseling?"
Halfheartedly, he responds, "Okay."
She gets his number for a followup call, then tells him if he wants to call back later tonight, "I'll be here."
The promise of someone who'll listen at the other end of the phone line is what keeps people calling around the clock. What makes the Switchboard of Miami work is the willingness of counselors like Amy and Chuck to offer simple human warmth to whomever calls, no matter how serious -- or mundane -- their problem may be.
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The last call Chuck takes tonight is from a lonely college girl who's just broken up with her boyfriend. She's distressed by a dating scene that puts so much emphasis on physical beauty. "Everyone needs somebody to care about them, and I want to find someone I'm comfortable with," she says.
"That sounds reasonable," Chuck agrees. He tries to comfort her by saying, "I think there are relatively large numbers of people out there who don't put a priority on having a woman look like Christy Brinkley."
She perks up. "I'm going to try it, I'm going to meet this person," she says. "Thank you for being there."
The shift is over, and by the time Chuck drives home to his apartment in his white Mazda, he has put the evening's calls behind him. He has a dinner to eat, cats to feed, legal cases to think about. And before he goes to bed, just as he does every night, he'll say the Lord's Prayer, and ask the Lord to send blessings and care to those who deserve good health and a safe return home. He usually mentions his parents, a few friends, and his two ex-wives, but tonight he adds another name to his prayer list: Rita, the young girl trapped with abusive parents and a heart filled with despair. The counselors at the hotline aren't the only ones ready to listen. God's switchboard, it seems, is open all night, too.


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The Office of Personnel Management is ramping up its efforts this fall to attract interns and recent graduates to government service.
The agency has posted draft guidelines for hiring interns into the Pathways Programs and will accept applications for the prestigious Presidential Management Fellows program from Nov. 5 to Nov. 19.
Agencies must complete a memorandum of understanding with OPM to participate in Pathways; so far, OPM has 14 such agreements with agencies, according to Kimberly Holden, deputy associate director for recruitment and hiring at OPM. "As with any new program, there always are going to be challenges," Holden said in an interview with Government Executive. "We are working daily with agencies."
Holden said agencies are grappling with how to comply with public notice requirements and post job opportunities in a way that simplifies the application process and helps candidates track the status of their applications. Currently, there are fewer than 50 postings for internships and recent graduate jobs on USAJobs.gov, but they vary across departments and disciplines. For example, NASA is looking for candidates with an advanced degree in engineering for internships at the John F. Kennedy Space Center in Florida, while the Census Bureau is seeking recent graduates to fill IT specialist positions.
Interested applicants should watch the six-minute YouTube tutorial from OPM on USAJobs.gov to most effectively search for openings. Tip: Type "internship" or "recent graduate" in the What box and leave the Where box empty.
Pathways grew out of a 2010 executive order directing agencies to make it easier for students and recent grads to pursue careers in the federal government. The new program includes three tracks: for current students, recent graduates and Presidential Management Fellows. Participants will be classified under a new Schedule D within the excepted service and every program will honor veterans' preference. Excepted service positions are designed to streamline the hiring process and have different evaluation criteria from the competitive service, in which applicants compete for jobs under the merit system. The PMF program in particular is more competitive than it used to be. "The major difference is in the assessment process," Holden said. Around 10,000 candidates are expected to apply; 600 to 1,000 will be accepted, according to agency estimates.
The revamped intern and recent graduate pipeline, particularly the track for recent graduates, is designed to streamline the programs and make them more transparent. Many unions and other observers criticized the controversial and now-defunct Federal Career Intern Program, which some agencies used to circumvent the traditional federal hiring process.
Holden said OPM has reached out to postsecondary schools nationwide to promote Pathways and public service. "Colleges and universities are begging us to come and meet with them to educate them," she said.
The success of Pathways likely won't be known for at least another year. Agencies have to report to OPM on their results as well as the following year's anticipated workforce needs.
(Image via hxdbzxy/Shutterstock.com)

subset: commoncrawl


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Dell and Red Hat to Co-Engineer Enterprise-Grade, OpenStack Private Cloud Solutions
- Dell and Red Hat collaboration to enable customers worldwide to build and use highly-scalable, open, private cloud solutions based on OpenStack
- Dell becomes first company to OEM Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform
- Dell joins the Red Hat OpenStack Cloud Infrastructure Partner Network as an Alliance Partner
- Dell to deliver Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform through a dedicated practice within Dell Cloud Services
Dell and Red Hat Inc. (NYSE: RHT), the world's leading provider of open source solutions, today announced the companies will jointly engineer enterprise-grade, private cloud solutions based on OpenStack to help customers move to and deploy highly-scalable cloud computing models. As part of the expanded relationship, Dell becomes the first company to OEM Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform. The co-engineered solution will be built on Dell infrastructure and Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform. The solution will be delivered by a Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform practice within Dell Cloud Services.
Dell and Red Hat have partnered for more than 14 years to bring global customers value by collaborating on Red Hat solutions across Dell's enterprise offerings. Just as Dell and Red Hat collaborated in the early days of Linux, Dell is showing its vision by becoming the first to OEM Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform. With today's announcement, Dell and Red Hat are strengthening their longstanding collaboration and commitment to help businesses confidently embrace open source-based cloud computing models. With this development, customers worldwide will not only benefit from the co-engineered solutions, but the companies combined cloud expertise, enterprise innovation, and dedicated support and portfolio of services.
Dell and Red Hat will also jointly contribute code to the OpenStack community and collaborate on Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform 4, currently in beta, which integrates OpenStack Havana, Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Hypervisor, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5. In addition, Dell plans to work closely with Red Hat on several future-state projects including:
- OpenStack Networking (Neutron) to enable Software-Defined Networking and Networking-as-a-Service between interface devices such as virtual network interface cards, and
- OpenStack Telemetry (Ceilometer) to provide OpenStack resource instrumentation, which can help support service monitoring and customer billing systems.
Lastly, Dell is joining the Red Hat OpenStack Cloud Infrastructure Partner Network as an Alliance Partner, the highest tier of program membership. The Red Hat OpenStack Cloud Infrastructure Partner Network connects both business and technical resources to third-party technology companies who are aligning with Red Hat's OpenStack product offerings.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform combines the power of Red Hat Enterprise Linux with Red Hat's OpenStack cloud platform to deliver an enterprise-grade, scalable and secure foundation for building a private cloud. The alliance with Red Hat complements Dell's cloud strategy of offering customers open, flexible and scalable technology to build, use and control cloud infrastructures.
Additionally, Dell now offers Dell Cloud Consulting and Application Services to provide expert guidance in helping assess, build, operate and run cloud environments and enable and accelerate enterprise OpenStack adoption. Dell's expertise spans the hybrid cloud spectrum, with service options ranging from cloud readiness assessment, infrastructure design and operations, and application design and modernization. As a result, Dell customers can achieve increased efficiency and greater realization of the business benefits of cloud computing.
Supporting Quotes
Paul Cormier, President, Products and Technologies, Red Hat
"Our collaboration with Dell keeps getting better and today's announcement to co-engineer OpenStack solutions marks a significant milestone for both companies and customers. Just as we successfully collaborated with Dell to establish Red Hat Enterprise Linux as an enterprise industry standard, we're now extending our collaboration to help establish Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform as the standard for open private cloud in the enterprise. Dell and Red Hat are committed to jointly developing and delivering enterprise-grade OpenStack offerings to help customers pursue private cloud today, and advanced computing models in the future."
Marius Haas, Chief Commercial Officer and President, Enterprise Solutions, Dell
"Dell has been a long-time advocate and participant in the open source and OpenStack communities, pushing the charter of an open alternative to proprietary, enterprise computing systems. Our agreement to co-engineer OpenStack solutions with Red Hat takes our commitment a step further in helping customers obtain and deploy OpenStack solutions for an enterprise-grade, private cloud infrastructure to meet their evolving business needs. We will extend our work with Red Hat to apply our combined experience in commercializing open source for the benefit of our mutual customers as well as the open-source community on its development of networking, storage and compute capabilities."
The joint Dell-Red Hat solution is scheduled to be available in 2014.
Get more Red Hat news or subscribe to the Red Hat news RSS feed
About Red Hat, Inc.
Red Hat (NYSE: RHT) is the world's leading provider of open source software solutions, using a community-powered approach to reliable and high-performing cloud, Linux, middleware, storage and virtualization technologies. Red Hat also offers award-winning support, training, and consulting services. As the connective hub in a global network of enterprises, partners, and open source communities, Red Hat helps create relevant, innovative technologies that liberate resources for growth and prepare customers for the future of IT. Learn more at http://www.redhat.com.
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Wichita State hoping to shock Louisville in Final Four matchup
Atlanta, GA – The only top seed to survive the NCAA Tournament to this point, Louisville, takes part in its second straight Final Four, as the Cardinals meet the surprising Wichita State Shockers in one of two national semifinal games being played on Saturday evening at the Georgia Dome.
The winner of this game will take on either Syracuse or Michigan for the national title on Monday night.
Rick Pitino is making his seventh trip to the Final Four, tying for fourth all-time with North Carolina's Roy Williams. The Cardinals overcame a very emotional evening in Indianapolis last weekend, and routed the Duke Blue Devils (85-63) to move onto the Final Four. The team navigated the Midwest Region prior to the win over Duke, by disposing of NC A&T (79-48), Colorado State (82-56) and Oregon (77-69). Overall, the Cardinals have won 14 straight games and are now tied for the most wins in school history at 33-5 (1980 and 2005). The team ranks seventh in Final Fours (10), sixth in tournament victories (68) and fifth in overall tournament appearances (39).
Gregg Marshall's Shockers have also set a school record with wins this season. The team's upset of Ohio State in last weekend's Elite Eight moved it to 30-8 overall. Despite losing out on the Missouri Valley Conference regular season and tournament titles to Creighton, it is Wichita State that survived its bracket with West Regional wins over Pittsburgh (73-55), top-seeded and top- ranked Gonzaga (76-70) and La Salle (72-58), prior to disposing of the Buckeyes. The Shockers have embraced the Cinderella moniker in this event, where they are making just their 10th all-time appearance. Wichita State is 12-10 in NCAA Tournament play with one other Final Four appearance, that coming way back in 1965.
These two teams used to be regular foes in the Missouri Valley Conference (1963-74) and as a result, there has been more than a few previous meetings between them. Louisville holds a 19-5 series advantage, although the two haven't met since 1976.
It was West Regional MVP Malcolm Armstead's 14 points and seven rebounds that led the Shockers to yet another upset win, this time over Ohio State in last weekend's regional final at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. Cleanthony Early and Fred VanVleet added 12 points apiece, while Tekele Cotton finished with 10 points for Wichita State, which overcame a poor shooting performance by shutting down the Buckeyes, who hit an ugly 31.1 percent from the floor, including only 5-of-25 from behind the arc. The Shockers dominated play in the first half, taking a 35-22 lead into the break after holding the Buckeyes to just eight field goals and outrebounding them 27-17 over the first 20 minutes of action. WSU built up a 20-point lead in the second half, but the Buckeyes came roaring back with a 25-9 run to make a game of it, falling in the end by just four points.
A grind-it-out team that lacks any real star power, Wichita State gets it done with hard work.
"First of all, they're very good people. They let us coach them," said Marshall following the Ohio State win. "They have great character. I mean, there are times when it's not easy in our practice sessions. They allow us to coach them. The team comes first, and they bought into defense and rebounding. Number two, they're athletic. They're strong. They're physically and mentally tough."
Hard-nosed defense has been the name of the game for the Shockers, who come into the Final Four allowing just 60.9 ppg, while holding the competition under 40 percent shooting (.393). In addition, the team enjoys a +8.0 rebounding margin, while forcing 13.1 turnovers and 7.5 steals per game. Early headlines a trio of double-digit scorers with 13.7 ppg. Carl Hall is next in line at 12.5 ppg and tops the team on the boards (6.9 rpg). Armstead runs the show at the point, with the ability to both find his own shot (10.9 ppg) as well as direct offensive opportunities to others (3.9 apg).
It was a back-and-forth game with the Blue Devils last weekend in the first half, when sophomore forward Kevin Ware tried to block a Duke 3-pointer and came down awkwardly on his leg, suffering a compound fracture that left everyone in Lucas Oil Stadium and millions of lookers-on at home shocked and dismayed by the fallen Cardinal. After several minutes on the side of the court to address the injury, Ware was carted off and taken to the hospital, leaving his emotionally-charged teammates to finish the task at hand.
"Basically, the bone popped out of the skin. It broke in two spots," Pitino said. "Remember the bone is six inches out of his leg, and all he's yelling is 'Win the game, win the game.' I've never seen anything like that."
The Cardinals delivered, turning a 3-point halftime lead into a 22-point rout, thanks to suffocating full-court pressure and plenty of offensive fireworks. Russ Smith, who was named the Midwest Regional MVP, put on another super performance, finishing with 23 points. Backcourt partner Peyton Siva poured in 16, while center Gorgui Dieng and forward Luke Hancock finished with 14 and 10 points, respectively. Dieng had a huge impact in the paint, adding 11 rebounds and four blocks to his solid stat line.
"I don't think we could have gathered ourselves -- I know I couldn't have -- if Kevin (Ware) didn't say over and over again, 'Just go win the game,'" said Pitino. "I don't think we could have gone in the locker room with a loss after seeing that. We had to gather ourselves. We couldn't lose this game for him."
Smith (18.9 ppg) has been electrifying and pretty much unstoppable in the postseason, averaging 26.0 ppg in the first four games of this event. Dieng (10.2 ppg, 9.5 rpg, 78 blocks) has provided balance with his physical presence down low. Siva (9.9 ppg, 5.8 apg) is both a scoring threat and premier distributor. The Cardinals possess great depth in terms of role players, even with the loss of Ware, as Chane Behanan (9.6 ppg), Wayne Blackshear (7.8 ppg) and Hancock (5.7 ppg) can help at both ends.
Ware, who had successful surgery to repair his leg, will be on hand to watch this game and will certainly serve as inspiration for his team.
"He'll be with us in Atlanta," Pitino said in a press conference this week. "Kevin is from Atlanta. He gets to go home, be with his family and be with us on the bench."


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Featured News - Current News - Archived News - News Categories
UB hosted 5,357 international students in 2011-12 academic year
The 2012 Open Doors Report on International Educational Exchange, released this week in Washington, D.C., finds that, for the tenth year in a row, the University at Buffalo is among the top 20 institutions in the U.S. hosting international students.
In the 2011-12 academic year, UB hosted 5,357 international students, and the number increased this fall, according to Stephen Dunnett, Ph.D., vice provost for international education at UB.
"As the Open Doors report confirms, the competition for international students is intensifying, as many of the major public and private universities, both here and abroad, vie for the best students from around the world," he said.
Dunnett noted that potential enrollees, like students everywhere, face increasing economic challenges and are concerned about their post-graduation employment and further educational prospects, another recruitment challenge.
"It is to the credit of our outstanding international enrollment management team - Joseph Hindrawan, Steven Shaw and Raymond Lew - all of whom spent a good portion of the fall semester recruiting overseas, that even in this difficult environment UB continues to increase its roster of international students and to be a model of best practices in international admissions and enrollment," Dunnett said.
The Open Doors Report, which can be found online at http://www.iie.org/Who-We-Are/News-and-Events/Press-Center/Press-Releases/2012/11-13-2012-Open-Doors-International-Students, offers a detailed analysis of the status of international student exchange. It is published by the Institute of International Education, the leading not-for-profit educational and cultural exchange organization in the U.S. The IIE has conducted an annual statistical survey of the international students in the U.S. since 1919.
According to the report, the 2010-11 New York state enrollment figure for international students was 82,436, a 4.5 percent increase from last year and the second highest enrollment in the country (California, with an enrollment of 102,789 came in first).
Although international student enrollment in U.S. colleges and universities dropped 3.75 percent overall in the 2003-06 political climate, enrollment has enjoyed an increase of 31.2 percent since 2006-07 and, with the most recent increase of 5.7 percent, stands at more than 764,495 students.
The report noted increases in the number of students from 12 of the top 25 places of origin, including Brazil, China, France, Indonesia, Iran, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Spain, the United Kingdom, Venezuela and Vietnam.
"At the same time," the report stated, "numbers declined from several major sending countries, including India (down 4 percent), South Korea, (down 1 percent), and Japan (down 6 percent). The factors driving these declines may include global and home country economic factors, growing higher education opportunities at home and stronger employment opportunities at home after graduation."
The University at Buffalo is a premier research-intensive public university, the largest and most comprehensive campus in the State University of New York. UB's more than 28,000 students pursue their academic interests through more than 300 undergraduate, graduate and professional degree programs. Founded in 1846, the University at Buffalo is a member of the Association of American Universities.


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Main Site - :: Why Won't God Heal Amputees? ::
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Yes, we do. Our daughter is a freethinker, always has been since day one even though her dad made her go through all the catholic stuff. When she turned 18 he gave her a choice to continue to go to church or not. She told him, "NOT!!!" He says he is disappointed in her for that choice and that he feels like he has failed her. Our son is still at home and it is a repeat scenario, son hates church and churchy stuff, he says he can not swallow the BS but is not old enough to tell his dad "No" yet. Son confides in me his dismay with what they are telling him. I direct him to resources for his own discovery of facts. Son will make his own decision when he is 18 and seems to be following in daughter's foot steps. Dad is the odd man out in the family. Both his family and mine are not religious and most are proclaimed freethinkers now (it has not always been this way though).
Already happened. Daughter is an adult now and out of the house and a freethinker. Son is 12 y.o. Hubby is holding son hostage. Son must go with dad to church every Sunday and also to indoctrination classes that dad teaches every other Sunday night.
My hubby is a good man, he's just psychotic when it comes to religion.
I can't believe that I didn't think of this one earlier. "Memnoch the Devil" by Anne Rice. And yes, this is from well before she started writing for Jesus. The only drawback is that the entire book is a lot easier to follow if you've read the earlier books in the "vampire chronicles", and are familiar with at least the backstory of Lestat. At any rate, it doesn't necessarily support an atheist point of view, but rather provides a lot of situations that force a person to look at their beliefs from a different perspective and at least ask themselves the all-important "what if" question.If he were more of a reader, I'd even suggest starting him off with "Interview with the Vampire" and have him go through the whole series. That way, you wouldn't even have to consider it as part of the "deal" since it was leisure reading.
It's easy to know that there are no gods for an atheist as I am. To believe in a god, and in my opinion to be unsure about a god's existence, one must take every concept of what a god might be and ignore it, making the word "god" meaningless.
Velkyn, thank you for the supportive response! I apologize for being defensive in my previous response. I'm still dealing with feelings of shame and embarrassment due to my former belief in Jesus. I feel like an adult that believed in Santa Claus.
No offence, but that seems like the wrong order. Indoctrinate him till 18, then let him make up his mind about what he wants. IMO, he should be left alone as far as religious thought until 18, then given the choice.
Quote from: Fridge on March 22, 2009, 11:24:50 PMNo offence, but that seems like the wrong order. Indoctrinate him till 18, then let him make up his mind about what he wants. IMO, he should be left alone as far as religious thought until 18, then given the choice.I agree, but in the real world, that is not what happens.Here in Australia, my daughters were made to go to 'Religious Instruction' at primary school.So when they informed me, I said "That's nice, let me know when you get to study the Muslim Religion"....blank looks and they asked "What !!"I repeated what they said "Religious Instruction" - then added "there are many different Religions"....oh, we are only doing Christianity" they replied.So I simply said "Does that sound right ?"They thought about it and said "No".They decided to attend, but with an open and critical mind.After a few sessions, they reported that "this Christianity stuff is full of contradictions, and seems to be just like 'fairy stories' - as there are no facts to back up their claims".I agreed and suggested they also look at other religions.fyi. They found that most of the other Religions also had similar 'fairy stories' along with 'no facts' to back up their claims, so I said "Welcome to the real world. Each of YOU need to make up your own minds based upon the evidence given to you"...."But Dad, they offer no evidence, just a lot of singing and comforting words"."Yes, they do, don't they" was my reply.


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Seven Deaths Confirmed in Arkansas
Authorities have now confirmed seven deaths in Arkansas after a severe storm
Category: Announcer Blog
Pants on My Head
Living with a 2-year-old is . . . interesting. That's the best word I can come up with. Sometimes it's frustrating, sometimes it's hilarious, but it's never dull.
My daughter Lily is 2, and makes every day an adventure. I never know what she's going to do. I remember that my oldest daughter, Ava, was more predictable when she was 2-years-old.
This morning I gave Lily an apple to eat. I washed the apple, removed the sticker and handed it to her. Twenty minutes later She handed me what looked like a little twig. On closer inspection, I realized it was the stem of the apple she had eaten. "Where's the core Lily? Where are the seeds?" I asked. She looks at me, smiles and says "I ate it Mommy". She had eaten the entire apple. Pips and all. Crazy.
This past weekend, she tried to dress our dog Thursday in doll clothes. She started crying when Thursday wouldn't sit still long enough for her to close the Velcro of the doll dress.
Lily is like a stand up comedian. She's always got a new joke. She'll come running out of her room wearing 2 pairs of pants on her head and say "Mommy, I'm an octopus! I have 8 legs!" She'll wiggle her hands, feet and shake her head to wiggle her other 4 "legs".
My older daughter Ava is worried about being proper. She's is the ultimate first born. She worries that her room is getting too messy. She gets upset when she spills food on her clothes. She reminds every member of the family to use their very best manners. The only person who can get 4-year-old Ava out of her worry-wort state is Lily. When Lily starts pretending, or starts a gag, Ava laughs so hard you can hear her all the way across the house.
I need to spend more time enjoying life from the perspective of a 2-year-old. I'm too serious sometimes. I'm sure God put Lily in my life to remind me it's OK to have fun even when the dishes aren't washed. Lily is the comic relief in our family. Maybe it's time to put a pair of pants on my head and play octopus with her.


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Nothing has worked out the way Garrett Williams had hoped, and he couldnt be happier about it.
Im doing what Im supposed to be doing, Williams said Friday at the Lost Dog Bar & Lounge where he was catching up with old friends and family during a holiday break from the Southern California sunshine.
What Williams is doing is preparing for his first starring role in a Hollywood feature film, something that was not even a pipe dream when he graduated from Fort Lewis College in 2007 with a degree in business and marketing. Hell start shooting Nor the Moon by Night in November in Hawaii, but it has been a strange journey for the Colorado Springs native.
Plan A went like this: Attend college on a scholarship (Williams played for two seasons at New Mexico State before transferring to FLC for another three as a 240-pound defensive end); get a job (he landed a lucrative position with Magellan, an offshoot of Mercury after graduation) and get the girl (he had a serious girlfriend at the time whom he believed would be his wife). So far, so good.
Enter life and Plan B, which is really never the plan, and it was no different for Williams. Four months after graduation and into his new job, a bitter breakup forced a life change for him. He packed up his Jeep and headed West, settling into a small loft above a Hollywood gym. Working the graveyard shift at a nearby pharmacy, he met many working actors and actresses and started asking questions about show business. He also dropped about 70 pounds; he now weighs in at 170.
What I learned is, put yourself out there send pictures, get representation, do commercials, Williams said.
And it worked for him, despite having never acted a day in his life before arriving in California. He got a few jobs as an extra in a few commercials and then met one of the right people during shooting for a Hooters advertisement.
He said, youd be perfect for The Young and the Restless, and he knew someone there, so thats what I did for the next two years, Williams said.
The soap-opera role led to Williams first starring role in a movie, 2011s Red Ice. A motion picture with a $2 million budget might have made for blockbuster material in the 1950s, but its not much to work with in todays Hollywood.
Its just a terrible film I havent even shown my family yet, Williams said.
Hes not the first actor to advance his career through less-than-memorable projects. In fact, its how a performer handles him/herself in such a situation that often catches a producers eye.
Williams caught more than one. This new year is shaping up to be another life-changing one. Before Nor the Moon by Night shooting begins, Williams will go to Canada to shoot November Ice, a hockey movie intended to shine a negative light on the role of enforcers, or goons in the NHL.
A second project, which is still in the confidential stages, will send Williams to Paris where hell co-star with a major Hollywood actor (no, we cant say who it is just yet).
But what will undoubtedly be Williams biggest role will be as a Marine charged with defending a remote South Pacific relay station from the Japanese during World War II.
Nor the Moon by Night, written by accomplished screenwriter and producer Graham Rushton, is a huge step forward for Williams. The film has a budget close to $20 million, so Rushton and Williams hope to draw a big-name director for the job. As for Williams, he knows how fortunate he is to have made it this far in the process.
You struggle for so long, and its feast or famine in this business. I met with Graham in Palm Springs in October, and I thought the odds of procuring that job were miniscule.
Then he offered, I was stunned, and all of a sudden, I was the lead in a $20 million film. Its a snowball effect; once you get known and working, you keep getting work. This will be a life-changing year for me.
While he may be on the verge of hitting it big, Williams doesnt sound at all like someone who believes his own hype. He spent his summers on his family ranch near Pagosa Springs and considers this area home after spending his college years here as well.
When I was really struggling early, my mom would say, Are you sure you dont want to come back to Durango? Those were the happiest years of your life, he said. But I left here to go there, and its coming full circle. I left with a dream, and Im accomplishing it. I dont believe in luck you make your own luck. But I made myself a promise; despite any success or failure, Im not changing.
Not once did Williams allude to the material benefits of Hollywood stardom. If money is a motivating factor for him, its so he can share it, not hoard it.
Im a simple guy, and I see this as providing a platform to help others, he said. This is one of those weird jobs that affords that. You dont have to take the a-hole route as an actor no ones any better than the guy cashing us out at the store, and I hate the people who are arrogant because they have a fan or two.
There are millions of people who just want something to eat right now. If its for yourself, whats the point a house on every continent? You cant take it with you but if you can change someones world, thats my lifes purpose.


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vehicles - choose a jigsaw puzzle to solve
An online jigsaw puzzle marketplace for vehicle fans. Lots of pictures for fans of cars as well as motorbikes. But we are not limited to road vehicles - you may also find space ships and aeroplanes if you prefer! Ship or train fans would also find a puzzle of choice in this category. The category aims all the marvelous machines. Come and play online. Always for free!
Copyright 2018 puzzlefactory.pl. All rights reserved.


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SOURCE: New Directions Technology Consulting
November 29, 2012 09:30 ET
New Directions Technology Consulting, LLC, Is Exclusive mHealth-Market Developer for the mMed Patent Portfolio for Mobile Medication Management
New Directions Technology Consulting, LLC, Is Exclusive mHealth-Market Developer for the mMed Patent Portfolio for Mobile Medication Management
HUNTINGTON, NY--(Marketwire - Nov 29, 2012) - U.S. Patent 8,212,658, the fifth in a portfolio of patents protecting technology that could significantly advance medication management, has been issued by the USPTO. New Directions Technology Consulting, LLC (New Directions) is the exclusive market developer of the intellectual property.
New Directions Managing Director Napoleon Monroe, the inventor on all patents in what is called the mMed portfolio for mobile medication management, brings his decades of experience in manufacturing, licensing, regulatory process and risk management to the effort.
"Optimum management of chronic and acute health problems that require medication therapy depends on patients following instructions for treatment prescribed by medical professionals -- what's called 'adherence,'" said Monroe. "But patient nonadherence impedes wellness and drives up to $300 billion of avoidable U.S. healthcare costs, with costs of related lost productivity arguably even greater."
Monroe continued: "As the world's mobile-communications user community grows, new 'smart' tools, such as in the patent claims, can be developed to help patients themselves successfully manage medication therapies outside institutional settings."
He noted that advanced mobile medication management systems using technology protected by the mMed patent portfolio could include:
Such systems could not only give "a critical boost to medication adherence," but also could provide "additional benefits to all stakeholders" in the healthcare supply chain: patients, caregivers, employers, insurers, government and taxpayers, said Monroe. When at Survival Technology (now part of Pfizer), Monroe invented three medical devices that were patented and commercialized, and led teams that invented, prototyped, tested, commercialized and/or scaled up such products as the EpiPen and the Antidote Treatment Nerve Agent Auto-Injector delivery system.
In addition to providing reminders and facilitating the replenishment process, systems based on technology protected by the mMed patent portfolio could do much more, Monroe said, including:
mMed Patent Portfolio
Monroe noted that one additional U.S. and foreign patents are pending. He added that global healthcare distribution and service company Henry Schein, Inc., where he had been vice president for private-label activities, is the assignee of the patents in the portfolio.
Through New Directions, business opportunities related to the mMed patent portfolio include: licensing of patents or the entire portfolio, licensing for specific disease conditions or geographies, or partnering to develop tools, platforms or systems based on the patents. The U.S. portfolio of granted patents includes:
U.S. Patent No. 7,752,085 (issued 7/6/2010): Product Information Management System
U.S. Patent 7,871,393 (issued 1/18/2011): Injection Device and Case with Reporting Ability: Covers means for showing that a drug containing injector is not being carried by the assigned person by comparing two location reports.
U.S. Patent 8,044,778 (issued 10/25/2011): Injection Device and Case with Reporting Ability: Covers means for including one or multiple medications and dosage forms in cases and communicating added information.
U.S. Patent 8,149,111 (issued 4/3/2012): Central Facility that Communicates with Portable Container via Mobile Device
U.S. Patent 8,212, 658 (issued 7/3/2012): Product Container for Use with Device Capable of Long-Range and Short-Range Communications
Monroe said: "Greater patient autonomy through technology can result in better health outcomes and reduced costs. Providing medication management tools to patients also presents tremendous business opportunities for those at the forefront of the evolving mHealth industry."
About New Directions Technology Consulting, LLC
New Directions Technology Consulting develops commercial opportunities for its clients, primarily in areas of healthcare. The firm's focus is on medication management; telemedicine; advanced drug-delivery systems; and healthcare products information management, including track-and-trace labeling, quality systems and product standards.
For more information about the mMed patent portfolio, please go to www.mmedhealth.com.
Note: mMed is a trademark of New Directions Technology Consulting, LLC. Any other names of actual companies, organizations, entities, products or services may be the trademarks of their respective owners.
Rick SacksEmail Contact
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This is the part we forget when calling for coaches to be fired. We forget the lives affected, some by the bounce of a football, others by the whims of an owner or a head coach.
This is the part we forget when calling for coaches to be fired. We forget the lives affected, some by the bounce of a football, others by the whims of an owner or a head coach.
Ben Kotwica calls it "the cries and the smiles'' that permeate every NFL organization this time each year. He has seen plenty of both in his six-season career. He has seen sturdy coaching bonds strengthened through ungodly work hours inevitably torn by departures.
Kotwica received a special dose of cries and smiles this week. He became the rare Jets' coach getting a promotion. Kotwica, West Point Class of '97, a former Army linebacker who played at 5-foot-10 and 200 pounds, was named special teams coach on Tuesday.
His hiring was a relative footnote amid the much-anticipated news conference of owner Woody Johnson and coach Rex Ryan. The preceding days had included the Jets' dismissal of general manager Mike Tannenbaum, quarterbacks coach Matt Cavanaugh and offensive coordinator Tony Sparano.
Kotwica, the blood-and-guts leader of Army's last great football team, the 10-2 Independence Bowl squad of 1996, was bumped up from his position as assistant special teams coach. He is replacing legendary coach Mike Westhoff, who retired.
"This thing is pretty volatile,'' Kotwica said Wednesday. "I consider myself fortunate going into seven years in the organization.''
It was a shining moment in Kotwica's coaching career. In six years he went from the Army prep school's defensive coordinator to the Jets' special teams coach. But Kotwica "didn't look at it too much like that.'' The calendar read Jan. 9, eight months before the Jets' season opener, and Kotwica was the typical NFL coach racing against time. And specific to the Jets, this wasn't exactly a time for celebration.
"I'm very grateful and fortunate to replace Mike,'' Kotwica said. "That was my first sentiment. My second sentiment was, 'How are we going to get better?' It's not good when you are sitting at home and there are other teams playing.''
Westhoff took some heat this season for the Jets' special teams gaffes. Now the focus of the Jets' "special forces,'' as West Pointers call the unit, will be squarely on Kotwica, groomed for the job by the Jets and Westhoff. Of course, Kotwica knows a thing or two about intense pressure. When NFL coaches make too many mistakes, they get fired. When military personnel make too many mistakes, or sometimes even one, people die.
Kotwica's first career included seven years in the Army as a decorated officer. He flew the AH-64 Apache Longbow, the world's top attack helicopter, more than 1,000 combat hours during the second attack on Iraq. He served in Bosnia, Korea, Iraq. Kotwica was an attack helicopter platoon leader in support of the 82nd Airborne Division from 1998-2001, where he was responsible for 20 soldiers.
Now he's responsible for about the same number of people wearing a different shade of green. When it's suggested that the Jets' special teams struggled this season, Kotwica said, "I think we did a lot of great things, as well. I think what happens is you have those big plays that don't work out well and they get exacerbated.''
Kotwica rattled off several special teams stats of which the Jets were highly ranked. But he knows the bottom line in coaching — win or heads will roll. Kotwica has had a front-row seat for six seasons.
"We are moving toward 2013 and making sure it doesn't happen again,'' he said.
His wife, Christina, just gave birth to their fourth child in August, joining siblings ages 4, 10 and 12. Kotwica has a lot to celebrate, just not right now. He must take the phone call on another line. The 2013 season is around the corner.
Twitter: @th_KevinGleason


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Galaxy's Magee named MLS Player of the Month
New York, NY – Los Angeles Galaxy forward Mike Magee was selected as Major League Soccer's Player of the Month on Wednesday for the month of March.
Magee got off to a blistering start in a season-opening 4-0 thrashing of the Chicago Fire on March 3 when he bagged his first career hat trick.
The striker continued to be an offensive threat as he converted a penalty kick in the Galaxy's 1-0 win over the Colorado Rapids on March 24, and then tallied the opener in the club's 2-2 draw with Toronto FC last Saturday to give him five goals this campaign.
The award is selected each month of the regular season by journalists from the North American Soccer Reporters.
Following are the 2013 MLS Player of the Month winners:
March: Mike Magee (Los Angeles Galaxy)


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PROLAW Student Journal of Rule of Law for Development
The PROLAW Student Journal is an annual electronic publication of the PROLAW Program and is published on the PROLAW website. Our readership primarily includes cross-continental persons trained in law, legal practitioners, judges, development experts, policy makers, justice reformers, Government officials, and professionals whose work involve issues relating to rule of law development. Our publication is currently electronic and enjoys a wide global readership. The Journal is in its 3rd edition.
The PROLAW Student Journal was founded by the students who attended the LLM Program in Rule of Law for Development in the academic year of its launching, 2011-2012. The students are responsible for setting submission guidelines, editorial standards, reviewing submissions and making the final selection of commentaries and articles for publication. Each successive group of PROLAW scholars will further develop and continue this important new platform of exchange on key rule of law issues.
The PROLAW Student Journal aims to educate and sensitize, primarily the members of the legal, academic, socio-economic and development communities on cross-cutting rule of law development issues. It places emphasis on making feasible recommendations for improvement in understanding, adhering to and promoting the rule of law, worldwide. Thus, while we welcome articles on more traditional rule of law development issues, submissions/articles relating to cross-cutting contemporary issues that render strategic approaches and recommendations, which may also have a wider socio-economic impact - are given more favorable weight for publication.
The PROLAW Student Journal is managed entirely by students in the Program. Click here for a list of the Management/Editorial teams of each year group.
Contributors / Authors
We invite the submission of unsolicited articles, essays and commentaries for consideration in the PROLAW Student Journal and review every submission received. To date, the preferred contributors to the Journal have been the legally trained international development scholars enrolled yearly in the PROLAW Program, PROLAW Alumni, Faculty Members and Visiting Lecturers/Professors. External contributors or other experts are also invited to make submissions.
All prospective contributors are urged to carefully consult the submission guidelines and editorial standards before submitting any content for inclusion. We look forward to receiving your submissions and sharing it with our readers.
Contact Us
To contact the current Editorial team with suggestions or questions or to propose external contributions to the PROLAW Student Journal, please use the following e-mail address: firstname.lastname@example.com.
Click here to view the submission guidelines and applicable editorial standards for contributors.


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As I negotiate the cows, motorcyclists, pedestrians and trucks in the new Ford EcoSport mini SUV on a buzzing stretch of road in Goa, on India's west coast, it soon becomes apparent why this type of car can work in the urban jungle.
The Ford EcoSport is built in India, and driving in the country's traffic madness is something not to be taken lightly. Luckily for Ford (and me), the EcoSport SUV has excellent vision from the driver's seat - including large side mirrors - so you can see what's happening around the car.
The 1.0-litre turbocharged three-cylinder EcoBoost engine packs 92kW of power and 170Nm of torque, and is perky enough for the manic overtaking manoeuvres you often have to make in this type of driving.
The engine has the typical, albeit slightly muted, three-pot warble, but unlike some three-cylinder engines, this one isn't harsh under acceleration. Instead, the power delivery is smooth and linear.
The engine is a frugal little thing, too, with a claimed usage of just 5.3 lires per 100km on the Indian cycle. It should be close to that for local claimed figures, too.
It comes mated solely to a five-speed manual gearbox (a larger 1.5-litre engine is also available and it gets an auto), which is bad news for the majority of Aussie buyers who will more likely want the car's gearbox to do the thinking for them. The company says it isn't working on an auto for the engine, either, which is a shame - it could be a great option.
Still, the five-speed manual's shift action is smooth enough, and while you do have to use the gears to keep it the engine revving in its ideal range, it is quite an lively little unit if you push it hard, and can draw on its broad torque band at lower revs.
The 1.5-litre four-cylinder engine is the same as that seen in the Fiesta (with 82kW and 140Nm), with a choice of five-speed manual or six-speed dual-clutch automatic. It uses 6.3L/100km for the manual and 6.4L for the auto.
A diesel version is available for some markets, but similar to Renault, which recently pulled plans to offer a diesel version of its Captur mini SUV in Australia, Ford's local arm suggested low demand in this size segment couldn't justify offering it.
Ford says there will be no local suspension tuning for the car, but if it drives anything like the pre-production models we tested, there won't be any issues with how it copes with Aussie surfaces when it arrives in December 2013 to take on the likes of the incoming Nissan Juke, Holden Trax, Opel Mokka and Peugeot 2008.
The suspension irons out bumpy sections of road with ease, providing a comfortable and cushy ride in most situations. Most road surfaces in India aren't great, but the car showed good body control over bumps. It does make a bit of a racket over sharp-edged potholes an speedhumps, though.
The steering has nice feel to it, and is light at low speeds to make city manoeuvres easy. As speeds rise, so does the steering weight, with good precision through corners.
There is a little bit of body roll, but that is to be expected from a car with 200mm of ground clearance. Despite its chunky looks - and the fact it is capable of wading through 550mm of water - the EcoSport will only be available in front-wheel-drive in Australia.
Inside, the EcoSport is surprisingly spacious given its compact dimensions - it's shorter than most small cars, but has a decent amount of rear seat room. The airconditioning did a great job of keeping the cabin cool, despite the hot and muggy weather outside.
Another positive of the EcoSport's interior is its storage. There are nine cup/bottle holders in the cabin, and 20 caddies in total, including a handy drawer under the passenger seat. The huge front-door pockets are large enough to hold an umbrella - apparently that's ideal for monsoon season.
The boot is "big enough to fit a washing machine" if you fold and tumble the 60:40 split-fold rear seats, with a maximum of 705 litres of cargo space. With the seats in place, the boot is a decent 362L.
However, the boot door opens to the wrong side. When you park next to the kerb, you have to walk around the rear door to access the boot. And there's also the spare wheel hanging off, so you'll need to be careful when reverse parking.
Another not-so-good point is the fit and finish quality. There were numerous mismatched gaps and flimsy plastics and no grab handles on the hood-lining. The buttons on the stereo felt very cheap, and there were noticeable differences in panel gaps when comparing cars. All vehicles at the launch were pre-production model and not quite indicative of the finished product, so hopefully the quality issues will be resolved.
Ford Australia hasn't said how the car will be priced, but hinted at a starting point in the low $20,000s.
We expect to see a few model lines, including the Titanium version we drove, which had leather, rear parking sensors, 16-inch alloy wheels and push-button start.
Expect all EcoSport models sold in Australia to come with USB input, Bluetooth phone and audio connectivity with voice control.
Vital statistics
Price: from $20,000 (est)
Engine: 1.0-litre turbocharged three-cylinder; 92kW/170Nm; 5.3L/100km, 126g/km CO2
Transmission: five-speed manual; FWD
- Interested in buying Ford EcoSport? Visit our Ford showroom for more information.