text:
- Research
- Open Access
Decreased Toll-like receptor 8 expression and lower TNF-alpha synthesis in infants with acute RSV infection
© The Author(s) 2010
- Received: 27 January 2010
- Accepted: 14 October 2010
- Published: 14 October 2010
Toll-like receptors (TLRs) are part of the innate immune system, able to recognize pathogen-associated molecular patterns and activate immune system upon pathogen challenge. Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is a RNA virus particularly detrimental in infancy. It could cause severe lower respiratory tract disease and recurrent infections related to inadequate development of anti-viral immunity. The reason could be inadequate multiple TLRs engagement, including TLR8 in recognition of single-stranded viral RNA and diminished synthesis of inflammatory mediators due to a lower expression.
Intracellular TLR8 expression in peripheral blood monocytes from RSV-infected infants was profiled and compared to healthy adults and age matched controls. Whether the observed difference in TLR8 expression is a transitory effect, infants in convalescent phase (4-6 weeks later) were retested. Specific TLR8-mediated TNF-α production in monocytes during an acute and convalescent phase was analyzed.
RSV-infected and healthy infants had lower percentage of TLR8-expressing monocytes than healthy adults whereas decreased of TLR8 protein levels were detected only for RSV-infected infant group. Lower protein levels of TLR8 in monocytes from RSV-infected infants, compared to healthy infants, negatively correlated with respiratory frequency and resulted in lower TNF-α synthesis upon a specific TLR8 stimulation. In the convalescent phase, levels of TLR8 increased, accompanied by increased TNF-α synthesis compared to acute infection.
Lower TLR8 expression observed in monocytes, during an acute RSV infection, might have a dampening impact on early anti-viral cytokine production necessary to control RSV replication, and subsequently initiate an adaptive Th1 type immune response leading to severe disease in infected infants.
- Respiratory Syncytial Virus
- TLR8 Expression
- Respiratory Syncytial Virus Infection
- Healthy Infant
- Convalescent Phase
Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), an enveloped ssRNA pneumovirus of the Paramyxoviridae family, is an important cause of lower respiratory tract (LTR) infection in a small percentage of infants, although virtually all infants become infected. Frequent reinfections implicate inadequate development of immunological memory perhaps due to the virus-mediated subversion of innate and/or adaptive immune mechanisms [1–3]. In recent years, more effort has been made to explore innate immune mechanisms involved in immunopathological processes observed in severe LRT disease during primary infection in infants [4–6].
Innate cellular defense can be triggered by a variety of mechanisms, including host recognition of pathogen-associated molecular patterns (PAMPs) through pattern recognition receptors. Structural RSV glycoproteins are recognized by surface TLR2 and TLR4 [7–9], while viral RNA engages cytoplasmic retinoic acid inducible gene I (RIG-I) in infected epithelial cells (primary RSV target) [10–12]. However, in immune cells with ability to endocytose viral particles and present antigens, such as dendritic cells (DC) and monocytes/macrophages, viral RNA could be sensed via endosomal TLR3, TLR7 and TLR8 [11, 13–15].
The cellular recognition of a virus activates multiple signaling pathways, such as NF-κB transcription factor and the interferon-regulatory factors (IRFs) [16], with subsequent release of multiple and potent antiviral cytokines, among them tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α) and type I interferons (IFN) [17, 18]. Myeloid dendritic cells (mDC) and monocytes/macrophages, activated via endosomal or cytoplasmic RNA sensors, also release IL-12p70 necessary for the activation of NK cells and cytotoxic T-lymphocytes and IFN-γ production [19–21]. IFN-γ is required for driving the Th1 type response, as opposed to inappropriate Th2 response detected in RSV infection [22].
Functional TLR studies in healthy newborns, a population with a risk to develop LRT infection encountering RSV, have revealed a decreased synthesis of antiviral cytokines implying an inadequate TLR activation [23–25]. Moreover, cord blood mononuclear cells express lowered levels of myeloid differentiation factor 88 [26], a central signaling adaptor molecule for the majority of TLRs (except for TLR3), that has a significant role in preventing severe disease development in RSV-murine model [27]. It seems that the absence of endosomal TLR-stimulation is responsible for the development of low affinity anti-RSV antibodies, causing severe disease upon infection upon vaccination with formalin inactivated virus [28].
The aim of this study was to determine the expression of TLR8 in peripheral blood monocytes during an acute severe RSV LRT infection and compare with a healthy infant/adult controls and infants in the convalescent phase 4-6 weeks later. Ability of monocytes to produce TNF-α upon short-time stimulation with specific TLR7/8 ligand was measured in the acute and convalescent phase. Possible correlation between the severity of disease and TLR expression in RSV-infected infants was also analyzed.
Patients and clinical findings.
Clinical findings
Controls (n = 10)
Bronchiolitis (n = 12)
Pneumonia (n = 3)
Total (n = 15)
Age (months)
Gestational age
Birth weight (kg)
Mode of delivery
(normal/caesarian surgery)
WBC count (x109/L)
CRP (mg/L)
ESR (mm/h)
Wheezing (No. of cases)
Wheezing duration (days)
Hospital stay (days)
MRR (/min)
Oxygen supplementation
(No. of cases)
Oxygen supplementation
Pulmonary X-ray scan
(No. of cases)
Control blood samples were obtained from healthy infants and adults (N = 10, aged 21-39 years). A healthy infant group consisted of 10 infants (aged 1-13 months; median age 5 months) hospitalized for minor surgery, free from allergic, immune and hematological disorders.
Patients and controls were included in the study after written consent had been obtained from their parents/guardians or from themselves. The study was approved by the Medical Ethics Committees of both hospitals.
Virus identification
RSV infection was confirmed by detecting the virus in nasopharyngeal secretion by direct immunofluorescence test (Light diagnostics, Temecula, USA).
Isolation of PBMC and cryopreservation
For the analysis of TLR8 expression, cryopreserved peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) obtained from fresh heparinized blood upon density gradient isolation were used. Briefly, blood was diluted in PBS to 1:1 volume ratio and centrifuged for 30 minutes at 800 g on Ficoll-Paque Plus (GE Healthcare Bio-Sciences AB, Uppsala, Sweden). Isolated PBMC were resuspended in ice-cold freezing media (10% RPMI 1640, 80% fetal bovine serum and 10% dimethyl sulphoxide) at 2 × 106 cells/mL concentration. Aliquots of cell suspension (1.0 mL) were transferred to Nalgene Cryo freezing containers (Nalge Nunc International, Rochester, NY) and placed overnight in an -80°C freezer. The frozen specimens were transferred to liquid nitrogen within 24 h and maintained until thawed. In parallel, serum samples were obtained and kept frozen at -20°C.
Intracellular TLR8 detection
The frozen PBMC were thawed in 37°C water bath with continuous agitation until completely melted and resuspended slowly in warm RPMI 1640 media supplemented with 10% FBS. The cells were centrifuged at 400 g for 5 minutes and then washed again in staining buffer (1% fetal calf serum, 0.1% NaN3 and Dulbecco's PBS) to completely remove traces of DMSO. Viability was estimated by trypan blue dye exclusion.
PBMC aliquots were placed in sterile 12 × 75-mm polystyrene round-bottomed tubes (Falcon, Becton Dickinson, Lincoln Park, USA) and incubated for 15 min in the dark at room temperature with antibodies for an anti-CD14 APC (Becton Dickinson, Heidelberg, Germany). The cells were washed with staining buffer, fixed with fixation buffer (4% formaldehyde in Dulbecco's PBS) for 30 min at 4°C, and washed with staining buffer. The cells were then washed with permeabilization buffer (1% FCS, 0.1% NaN3 and 0.1% saponin in Dulbecco's PBS) and stained with PE-conjugated anti-human TLR8 PE (Imgenex, San Diego, USA) for 30 min at 4°C. Unbound antibody was washed away by centrifugation in permeabilization buffer and cells were resuspended in staining buffer before analysis by flow cytometer. Isotype-matched controls for the surface and intracellular staining were included.
PBMC culture and intracellular TNF-α production
The samples of fresh PBMC were resuspended in RPMI 1640 medium containing 10% autologus sera. Cell suspensions were incubated in a cultivating medium alone or with the addition of specific TLR-ligand. For TLR4 stimulation (positive control), 0.1 μg/mL lipopolysaccharide E. coli 0111:B4 (LPS; Sigma, St Louis, USA) was dissolved in the cultivating medium, whereas TLR8 stimulation was achieved using 5 μg/mL thiazoloquinolone derivate (CL075; Invivogen, San Diego, USA), respectively, for 6 h at 37°C in 5% CO2 atmosphere, in the presence of 10 μg/mL brefeldin A (BFA; Sigma). Additionally, 100 μM chloroquine (Sigma) was added to designated tubes one hour before the activation to block TLR signaling and subsequent cytokine production.
After stimulation, the cells were fixed in fixation buffer for 30 minutes and stored at -80°C until further processed as follows: frozen fixed cells were thawed in 37°C water bath with continuous agitation until completely melted and resuspended slowly in staining buffer. The cells were centrifuged at 400 g for 5 minutes. After washed in permeabilization buffer, cells were labeled intracellulary with APC-conjugated anti-TNF-α (Becton Dickinson, Heidelberg, Germany) and FITC-conjugated anti-CD68 (AbD Serotec, Oxford, UK) monoclonal antibodies for 30 minutes at 4°C. Myeloid maker CD68 over CD14 staining was chosen since a robust monocyte stimulation causes CD14 downregulation (Additional file 1: Fig. S1 and Additional file 2: Fig. S2). Unbound antibody was washed away by centrifugation in permeabilization buffer and the cells were resuspended in staining buffer before analysis by flow cytometer. APC- and FITC- conjugated isotype-matched control antibodies were included.
Flow cytometry
Cell samples were analyzed using CellQuest Software on a FACSCalibur flow cytometer (Becton Dickinson, Mountain View, USA). The forward and right-angle scatters were used to establish leukocyte subpopulation gates. The analysis included collecting 2 000 events in monocyte gate. Monocytes were designated as CD14+ cells for the TLR8 expression analysis whereas CD68+ cells were acquired for TNF-α analysis. TLR mean fluorescence intensity (MFI) values were calculated as difference between TLR-specific and unspecific isotype control antibody MFIs [30].
Statistical analysis
The non-parametric Kruskal-Wallis ANOVA and Mann-Whitney U-test were used inter-group statistical analysis. p-values were corrected for multiple inter-group comparisons. Statistical relationship between variables was assessed by means of the Spearman rank order coefficient. Statistical tests were part of the software package Statistica v6.0 (Statsoft Inc., Tulsa, USA).
Anti-TLR8 antibodies recognize functional receptors
Decreased expression of TLR8 in monocytes from RSV-infected infants
Lower TLR8-mediated TNF-α synthesis in monocytes from RSV-infected infants
Higher TLR8 expression and TNF-α synthesis in the convalescent phase
Decreased TLR8 expression and TNF-α synthesis correlate with disease severity
Correlations of clinical data and experimental findings.
Clinical findings
% TLR8+ monocytes (n = 15)
TLR8 MFI in monocytes (n = 15)
% TNF-α+ monocytes (n = 10)
TNF-α MFI in monocytes (n = 10)
Age (months)
WBC count (x109/L)
Wheezing duration
Oxygen supplementation (days)
Heart rate (/min.)
MRR (/min.)
Hospital stay (days)
RSV primarily infects respiratory epithelium where it can be detected by different pattern recognition receptors [10, 12, 31]. In lungs, resident airway macrophages and DC also enrolled the virus and initiate early innate immune responses responsible for the virus replication control [32, 33]. In early infection phase, infiltrated monocytes differentiate into macrophages, becoming the most abundant mononuclear cells in lungs [34]. The importance of macrophages in RSV infection was confirmed by their depletion that increased RSV replication [33] and augmented pathological response [35]. Therefore, monocytes entering infected lungs differentiate into macrophages or myeloid DC might participate in RSV control, sensing the virus via different receptors including the TLR-family. Human monocytes/macrophages and myeloid dendritic cells express TLR8 and could sense RNA viruses [36]. In our study we showed lower percentages of peripheral blood monocytes expressed TLR8 in RSV-infected infants compared to other groups (Figure 3). TLR8 levels were significantly decreased during acute RSV infection compared to healthy infants (Figure 4), indicating that deficient virus recognition by monocytes/macrophage could compromise efficient anti-RSV immune response and development of more severe disease. Synthetic TLR8 ligands can induce Th1 immune responses regardless of whether monocytes/macrophages or monocyte-derived DC were used [19, 37–39]. Therefore, decreased TLR8 expression in monocytes from RSV-infected infants might explain lower Th1-polarizing cytokine production i.e. TNF-α, IL-12p70 and IFN-γ observed during acute RSV-infection [22, 40–42]. In our study, healthy infants, compared to adults, had lower percentages of TLR8-positive monocytes but higher TLR8 expression levels that compensated for the total amount of intracellular TLR8 (Figure 4).
The functional relevance of decreased TLR8 expression in monocytes from infected infants was analyzed measuring intracellular TNF-α synthesis upon TLR8 stimulation. As expected, significantly lower percentages of monocytes from RSV-infected infants produced TNF-α compared to healthy adults and infants (Figure 5). Although Levy at all [25, 43] shoved that in vitro TLR8 stimulation of newborn blood samples induce comparable TNF-α levels to adult blood measured by ELISA, we tested amount of TNF-α production on a single cell level by intracellular staining technique. We found that monocytes from healthy infants produced less TNF-α than adults (Figure 6) that coincide with findings by Kollmann et al [43]. Monocytes from RSV-infected infants produced even lower TNF-α levels compared to healthy infants implicating acquired innate immunity suppression frequently observed in acute viral infections, respectively.
To test whether a difference in TLR8 expression and specific TNF-α production is the transitory effect occurred during acute RSV infection, infants were retested in the convalescent phase (4-6 weeks after first sampling) and increase in TLR8 expression levels was observed but haven't reached levels from healthy infants (Figure 7). Percentages of TLR8-positive monocytes from RSV-infected infants in the convalescent phase didn't statistically differ to acute phase (data not shown). Moreover, specific TLR8 stimulation of monocytes from infants in acute infection induced less TNF-α than in the convalescent phase, measured as percentage of monocytes producing TNF-α (Figure 8) and TNF-α MFI (Figure 9) confirming functional relevance of the observed lower TLR8 expression in diseased infants.
Since only a fraction of all RSV-infected infants develop severe LRT disease and virtually all children become infected at least once by the age of two, it may be that decreased TLR8 expression predisposes for severe disease. In our study TLR8 levels in monocytes negatively correlated with disease severity, described as tachypnea (Table 2). In concordance, percentage of monocytes producing TNF-α during acute RSV infection positively correlated with minimal oxygen saturation (Table 2) upon TLR8 stimulation. Both findings implicate impaired early innate immune response in infants with RSV-bronchiolitis linked to lower TLR8 expression and subsequent lower TNF-α release, that has been associated with acute RSV infection [44, 45]. Moreover, recently published analysis of TLR8 polymorphism linked to allergic asthma, indicate importance of TLR8 in type 1 vs. type 2 immune response balance that has been also impaired in infants with severe RSV infection [46].
Opposite to our findings, acute viral infections would increase TLR8 expression via type I IFN autocrine mechanism, respectively. Increased mRNA for TLR8 were detected in PBMC from infants with acute rotavirus infection [47, 48]. Interestingly, Th2 cytokines like IL-4 and IL-13 downregulate toll-like receptors involved in anti-viral immune response [49] and could explain our findings of lower TLR8 expression, since RSV causes significant Th2 cytokine production [22, 42] versus Th1 cytokine response predominantly found in infants infected with rotavirus [48]. Whether the observed decreased TLR8 expression is RSV-specific, infants with other viral infections should be investigated.
Lower TLR8 expression in monocytes during acute RSV infection might have a dampening effect on the early anti-viral cytokine production, upon RSV recognition, necessary to control viral infection and leading to severe LRT disease in infected infants. Depressed TLR8 expression in the convalescent phase might contribute to the subsequent RSV reinfections, frequently observed in infants.
We would like to thank Alma-Martina Cepika, M.D. (University Children's Hospital, Zagreb, Croatia) for constructive discussion. The study was supported by the Croatian Ministry of Science grant no. 021-0212432-2439.
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Almost a year ago Disney shut down pre-production on "The Lone Ranger" until those involved could reign in the budget from $250 million to a more economical $215 million. As a result the key players involved cut action sequences and their own upfront fees, but it did get the production going again and filming began late February in New Mexico.
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subset: commoncrawl


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- 5 Days
Course Outline
This Java training course is intended for students with experience in a procedural or object-oriented language. It covers most Java syntax elements, including recent additions such as Generics and AutoBoxing. In addition to the fundamental library classes that would be needed in any Java program, it also covers several other important APIs, including Collections and Streams.
The class introduces the concept of objects as one of the first topics, in order that the later concepts are covered with an OO perspective. The material is based on Java 5 and 6, but most concepts would apply in 1.4 as well.
If you are new to object-oriented programming, you should take our Introduction to Java for New Programmers class instead.
- Learn how Java works.
- Understand the "write once, run anywhere" concept.
- Understand and learn how to create basic Java objects.
- Learn how to implement flow-control concepts in Java.
- Understand Java's package concept and create packages of Java classes.
- Understand Java arrays and write code to create and use arrays.
- Learn how to write Java classes using inheritance.
- Learn how to create and use interfaces.
- Understand and use the concept of polymorphism in an application
- Understand how Java's exception-handling mechanism works and learn how to apply exception-handling to Java applications.
- Understand and use the Java Logging API.
- Understand and use inner classes.
- Understand Generics and use them with the Collections API.
- Learn about Java's Streams concept, and how to appy that to files using text and binary data.
- Create and run JUnit tests for Java classes.
- Significant Object-oriented Programming Experience in a language such as C++ or C#.
- Java Introduction
- Conventions in These Notes
- The Java Environment - Overview
- Writing a Java Program
- Obtaining The Java Environment
- Setting up your Java Environment
- Creating a Class That Can Run as a Program
- The
- The
- Useful Stuff Necessary to go Further
- Using the Java Documentation
- Java Basics
- Basic Java Syntax
- General Syntax Rules
- Java Statements
- Blocks of Code
- Comments
- Variables
- Data
- Primitive Data Types
- Object Data Types
- Literal Values
- Constants and the
- Mathematics in Java
- Expressions
- Operator Precedence
- Multiple Assignments
- Order of Evaluation
- Bitwise Operators
- Compound Operators
- Expressions that Mix Data Types: Typecasting
- Creating and Using Methods
- Creating Methods
- Variable Scope
- Basic Java Syntax
- Java Objects
- Objects
- Object-Oriented Languages
- Object-Oriented Programs
- Encapsulation
- Creating and Using an Instance of an Object
- References
- Defining a Class
- Java Beans
- Constructors
- Method Overloading
- The
- Garbage Collection
- Java Packages
- Dealing with Keyboard Input
StringBuffer, and
- Creating Documentation Comments and Using javadoc
- Javadoc Comments
- Objects
- Comparisons And Flow Control Structures
- Controlling Program Flow
- Boolean-Valued Expressions
- Complex
- Simple Branching
- Two Mutually Exclusive Branches
- Nested
if... elseStatements - Comparing a Number of MutuallyExclusive Options
- Comparing a Number of Mutually ExclusiveOptions - The
- Comparing Objects
- Conditional Expression
do. . .whileLoops
- Additional Loop Control:
- Breaking Out of a Loop
- Continuing a Loop
- Classpath, Code Libraries, and Jar files
- Using
- Creating a
jarFile (a Library)
- Using
- Controlling Program Flow
- Arrays
- Arrays
- Defining and Declaring Arrays
- Instantiating Arrays
- Initializing Arrays
- Working With Arrays
- Array Variables
- Copying Arrays
- Arrays of Objects
- Enhanced
forLoops - the For-Each Loop
- Multi-Dimensional Arrays
- Multidimensional Arrays in Memory
- Example - Printing a Picture
- Typecasting with Arrays of Primitives
- Arrays
- Inheritance
- Inheritance
- Payroll with Inheritance
- Derived Class Objects
- Polymorphism
- Inheritance and References
- Dynamic Method Invocation
- Creating a Derived Class
- Inheritance and Access
- Inheritance and Constructors - the
- Derived Class Methods That Override Base Class Methods
- Inheritance and Default Base Class Constructors
- The Instantiation Process at Runtime
- Example - Factoring Person Out of Employee and Dependent
- Typecasting with Object References
- Typecasting, Polymorphism, and Dynamic Method Invocation
- More on Overriding
- Object Typecasting Example
- Checking an Object's Type: Using
- Typecasting with Arrays of Objects
- Other Inheritance-Related Keywords
- Methods Inherited from
- Inheritance
- Interfaces
- Interfaces
- Creating an Interface Definition
- Implementing Interfaces
- Implementing Interfaces - Example
- Reference Variables and Interfaces
- Calling an Interface Method
- Interfaces and Inheritance
- Some Uses for Interfaces
- Interfaces and Event-Handling
- Interfaces and "Pluggable Components"
- Exceptions
- Exceptions
- Handling Exceptions
- Exception Objects
- Attempting Risky Code -
- Guaranteeing Execution of Code - the
- Letting an Exception be Thrown to the Method Caller
- Throwing an Exception
- Exceptions and Inheritance
ExceptionClass Constructors and Methods
- Creating and Using Your Own Exception Classes
- Rethrowing Exceptions
- Initializer Blocks
- Static Initializer Blocks
- Assertions
- Exceptions
- Generics and Collections
- Fundamental Collections: Sets, Lists, and Maps
- Iterators
- Creating Collectible Classes
- hashCode and equals
- Comparable and Comparators
- Generics
- Basic Generics Syntax
- Bounded Types and Wildcards
- Advanced Topics
- Type Erasure
- instanceof Tests
- Multiple-Bounded Types
- Inner Classes
- Inner Classes, aka Nested Classes
- Inner Class Syntax
- Instantiating an Inner Class Instance from Within the Enclosing Class
- Inner Classes Referenced from Outside the Enclosing Class
- Working with Inner Classes
- Inner Classes, aka Nested Classes
- Streams
- Introducing Streams
- Input Stream Clases
- Output Stream Classes
- Using System.in
- Files and Directories
- Filename Filters
- Creating a Directory Listing
- Files and Streams
- Writing to a File
- Creating a File Copying Program
- Working with Binary Data
- Primitives
- Object Serialization
- Properties and Properties Files
- Introducing Streams
- Unit Testing
- Software Testing Concepts
- Unit Testing
- Using JUnit
- Creating a Test Case
InterSource Geneva, a premier Information Technology training firm, offers over 400 different courses on server, database and programming technologies, as well as end-user classes for the most popular office, graphics and design applications. We serve clients in Switzerland (Geneva, Lausanne, Bern, Basel, Zurich) and throughout Europe (France, Germany, Austria, Finland, Sweden, England, Netherlands, Spain, etc.).
InterSource offers custom, private courses at client sites, standard public courses in our Geneva classroom, and online training via live Web conference. Training is offered in English and many other languages (Francais, Deutsch, Espanol, Italiano.)
For an overall view of our offerings, please visit us at www.intersource.ch.


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For more information or for help planning your perfect Straz Center wedding, contact Marisol Rocha at (813) 222-6334 or email@example.com.
For inspirational wedding photos, visit our Special Events at the Straz Center Facebook page.
To see some videos some of our brides have shared with us, visit our wedding videos page.


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The general history of the Russian Mennonites has not yet been written. The bits and pieces of the underlying body of evidence have not yet reached critical mass. Thousands of individual stories and events have not yet congealed into a larger narrative of human experience of war and revolution, of social growth and economic prosperity, devolving into dissolution and famine. We know that it is essentially a history of dispersed communities, broken families and individual descent into despair and isolation. The crushing suffocation of individualistic religious experimentation and social non-conformity, of political iconoclasm and creative pioneering on the cutting edge of society, the borderlines of organized settlement and national delimitations — all these larger historical trends and developments are at the heart of the Mennonite story. As a progressive, pacifist mobile diaspora it could not survive the massive assault on its unique individuality by the ideological conformity and collectivist imperialism in conflict. Every Mennonite story, every Mennonite memoir, every Mennonite village history is a story of idyllic 19th century evolution from poverty to riches and 20th century destruction by war and revolution, by communism and Nazism, by dekulakization, exile and dispersal, relieved only by the miraculous escape of a remnant, a minority who found freedom in a promised land on remote shores.
These three highly individual stories of three remarkable Russian Mennonite women, told in diverse and unique ways, are just a few examples in a spate of new memoirs from survivors or descendants of the victims of totalitarian extremism. Justina Neufeld, Mariechen Harder and Ann Dyck were ordinary Mennonite girls, born to a life of comfort and security within the fold of quiet, pacifist families. But they were destined to grow up in turmoil and pain and barely survive the vicissitudes of war and revolution, famine and destitution. In this the three accounts share the same content, but their stories are clothed in very different prose: satin and lace for Dyck provided by her daughter-author Edith Friesen, tailored wool and cotton by John Harder for his niece Mariechen, and linen and medical cotton by Neufeld for Neufeld, since she tells her own story. She tells it in starkly realistic prose, being a registered nurse, rather than professional writers like the other two. Edith Friesen writes the most complicated, refined and multi-level essay, frequently fusing into poetic lyricism. She deftly constructs a convivial drawing-room conversation with four siblings: her mother Ann, two of her aunts, Lydia and Martha, and their brother John. But in the background, fading in and out of the conversation like some ethereal angelic ghost, is her grandmother Katharina, a person of consequence, long after her death. This is the story of three generations in mystic communion, sharing the joys and sorrows of similar yet far different lives. The artistic physical design of the book reflects the shimmering prose, interlaced with narrative, description, interpretation, and conversation and faded pictures of individuals floating in and out of the frame of reference. Edith Friesen is a stylist of distinction, such as few Mennonite memoirs reveal. This conscious effort to shape and color the story at times detracts from the subject and draws the reader's attention to the author.
Justina Neufeld of Gnadental in the Baratov-Schlachtin settlement has written a standard autobiography. As historical raw material it is the most useful of the three memoirs. Social historians, interested in providing realism and authentic ethos in their work, love the kind of detail and minutiae packed into Neufeld's account about everyday events. The arrival of spring, milking time, butchering day, swimming in the village pond, gathering eggs, interacting with Jewish peddlers and gypsies, weddings, snow storms, departures, arrivals, the daily struggles with war and its contretemps — these form the backbone of the Neufeld story. She does not hesitate to share with us how a Mennonite teenager deals with the mysteries of her first menstruation, which made her think she was having a baby. Her descriptions of life during the war is rich in detail and honest in its unfiltered youthful enthusiasm, whether dealing with life under occupation in the Ukraine, on the
great trek, during the hardships of resettlement in Poland or at the end of war with Germans and black American soldiers in Alsace. It was in Alsace, now part of France again, where Peter Dyck the MCC worker eventually found her and facilitated her emigration to America. Her style is clear, stark and pedestrian at times, but she is never boring or uninformative.
As a trained historian and writer John A. Harder's translation and editing of Mariechen Harder's letters from Kleefeld in the Molotchna to her relatives in Manitoba during the difficult years of Stalin's collectivization and industrialization campaigns, with all its destructive effects of Mennonite farmers and their disintegrating communities in Ukraine, bears all the earmarks of professional standards. In brief introductory notes he puts each letter by Mariechen and her friends and relatives in its historical context and provides enough information to give the book a kind of running progressive narrative. He presents with the help of her translated letters a clear and nuanced profile of an educated and mature Mennonite woman under great duress. The central theme of these long letters, which frequently turn into social and political commentary or reports covering the village, its inhabitants and government policies and their shattering effects on traditional social and religious values, clings to the ultimately failed attempt to emigrate. While these letters together become a kind of memoir studded with numerous names of persons unknown and uninteresting to non-family members, it does end up in painting a picture of life under the stress and strains of collectivization. Most of the experiences depicted are familiar to readers of such memoirs. There are detailed accounts of life in Siberian exile or slave labor camps in the far North, as well as confrontations with Communist agents and kolkhoz administrators, which add valuable detail to our knowledge of life in rural Russia during the late 20s and early 30s. There are some awkward translations in places and nearly all the maps are printed in reverse order, hence illegible. This is not a minor error in that there are frequent references to places on specific maps. This book throws light on the lonely life of unmarried women in Russia at the time and challenges the life of single women in a family oriented community, falling apart at the seams because of
families torn apart.
As in all memoirs written by ordinary people there is a combination of repetitive innocuous experience and banal recitation of daily events which can be of interest only to those readers who themselves have had similar experiences or have older members of the extended family who have. Select any paragraph at random and you will find this to be true:
From the time he was nine years old he helped with plowing, harrowing, cultivating, weeding, mowing, and threshing. By age fourteen he carried heavy sacks of wheat up to the attic for winter storage. After graduating from high school he enrolled at Chortitza in the Pedagogical Technikum where Gerhard had also attended. Jake writes 'in 1933 the heating system failed in the school and dormitory, and my hunger pains became unbearable. So I fled at night. I waited till I knew who the watchman would be. When it was Mr. Dyck's turn, I sneaked out without him noticing. It was a bitterly cold night. I lugged my satchel of sparse belongings along, walking the two kilometers to the train station. The train was not heated either, but I rode to Dolginzewo station where I got off and walked the rest of the thirty kilometers to Gnadental. Half frozen, I got home and then became ill.' Had he not gotten home he might not have survived (p. 207). In this paragraph Chortitza, the Pedagogical Technikum and the hunger year 1933 would all be signals stimulating interest to hundreds of people who could and can identify themselves with experiences attached to them. For such individuals the banal facts in the sample become living history and reifying confirmation of individual worth within a larger community of faith.
Even a polished autobiography like that of David G. Rempel's is filled with banal detail of interest only to the family chronicler and eye-crossingly boring to the point of ennui to everyone else. That is why memoirs are of greater interest to social historians and anthropologists than they are to the average reader. Some pages further into the text quoted from Neufeld we find the following paragraph:
His next threat came from the NKVD. The Russians had obtained permission through the Yalta Agreement to comb all of allied occupied Europe for their citizens and repatriate them to Russia by force. Miraculously, Jake was not picked up by the NKVD, because he was moved from one camp to another, always arriving at the new camp just after the NKVD had been there and left (p. 209). Clearly, this passage because it deals with more than mundane issues might well be interesting to readers beyond the immediate family or ethnic community. This is how an extraordinary individual experience becomes a universal human dilemma.
In Edith Friesen's commentary, following a passage that recreates a family discussion about Hitler and Stalin, she compares the evil deeds of these men on the basis of the shape and size of their mustaches. In fact, she does it more than once. This struck me as too cute and innocuously irrelevant, not to say trivializing, to be taken seriously and hinting perhaps that the author was out of her depth. Yet further thought led me to the conclusion that she may very well have consciously taken a cue from Charley Chaplin, whose humor was anything but innocuous. Sometimes, the only thing you can do when confronting the horror and monumentality of the evil deeds these men left behind, is to laugh at them and ridicule them. In the case of John Harder's edited letters, filled with names of unknown and unidentified people — to non-family members or people not from Gnadental — and seemingly meaningless little events and facts, have the unintended cumulative effect of demonstrating the success of the much derided 5-Year-Plan of the Soviet oppressor. To Mariechen telling her relatives in Canada what happened to all those friends and villagers demonstrates in graphic detail how the old family and communal ties were dissolved and a new soviet society and kolkhoz economy was built up by coercion and violence. By telling us who was next on the list for dekulakization, who had been arrested, who had died of malnutrition, who had been sent to freeze and starve in the tundra or whose family had been torn apart and deprived of a loved one, whose barn had been torn down to build a kolkhoz pigsty — she tells us how collectivization works. Mariechen Harder gives us a rare insight into the painful and costly process of collectivization, valuable far beyond mere ethnic Mennonite nostalgia.
The most important Mennonite memoir recently published is probably David Rempel's A Mennonite Family in Tsarist Russia and the Soviet Union (Toronto, 2002), which is actually written and edited by his daughter Cornelia Rempel Carlson. By that standard all three of the books under review come close to meeting the standard and can be uniformly recommended to readers beyond the Mennonite world. They come close in terms of their approach, not the scope or range of factual content. All of them are largely the work of women, establishing finally a trend in the continuing stream of Mennonite recollections of life during the difficult times between and during two world wars. The world they describe was a world largely deprived of men and as such their literary coming of age is long overdue.


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AMC Entertainment has entered an agreement to acquire Carmike Cinemas, which would create the largest chain of movie theaters in the country.
Under the terms of the agreement announced Thursday, Chinese-owned AMC would buy Carmike for $30 a share, in a deal valued at $1.1 billion, including assumption of Carmike's debt.
Shares of both publicly traded companies soared in after-hours trading on Wall Street.
Leawood, Kan.-based AMC is currently the second-largest U.S. movie theater operator, behind Regal Entertainment Group. Carmike is the fourth biggest.
Adding Carmike's 274 locations would expand AMC's reach to 653 theaters, making it the world's biggest chain. Knoxville, Tenn.-based Regal operates 572 cinemas.
The acquisition of Carmike, known for its strong presence in small towns, suburbs and rural areas throughout the country, will allow AMC to significantly increase its customer base. AMC is largely concentrated in urban areas, including Los Angeles.
Carmike runs a handful of theaters in Southern California, including locations in Temecula and Thousand Oaks.
In recent years, AMC has invested heavily in renovating and refurbishing its multiplexes with features such as upscale food offerings, reclining seats and new sound and digital equipment. AMC Chief Executive Adam Aron said the company plans to also make improvements to Carmike's theaters.
"The addition of Carmike increases our scale and our scope and allows us to take the successes we've had and extend them to these additional theaters," said Adam Aron, who was named CEO of AMC Entertainment in December.
"Wherever you go, this deal is complementary," Aron added. "We're strong in large cities, they're strong in smaller cities. We're strong in the Northeast, and they're strong in the Southeast."
AMC was acquired by Chinese real estate and media conglomerate Dalian Wanda Group in 2012 for $2.6 billion, creating the world's largest cinema company. Wanda owns the biggest chain in China, where the film business is booming.
The acquisition mirrors Wanda Chairman Wang Jianlin's ambition to increase his position in the global entertainment business. Wanda also recently bought Burbank production company Legendary Entertainment for $3.5 billion, and is considered a potential bidder for Paramount Pictures or another U.S. studio.
The deal is the latest example of consolidation in the U.S. theater business.
Carmike, headquartered in Columbus, Ga., recently bought Robert Redford's Sundance Cinemas for $36 million. The deal encompassed five theaters with 37 screens, including the Sundance Sunset in West Hollywood, as well as theaters in San Francisco, Houston, Dallas and Seattle.
In 2013, Regal, the nation's largest theater chain, acquired Hollywood Theaters, a Portland, Ore., chain that operates 43 theaters in 16 states, for $191 million in cash and about $47 million in assumed lease obligations.
"Fragmented industries have been consolidating for 100 years, and the movie theater business is a fragmented industry," Aron said.
The cinema industry is coming off a strong year at the box office, which hit $11 billion in the United States and Canada for the first time ever in 2015.
However, the exhibition industry has faced ongoing pressure because of long-term stagnation in domestic theater attendance. The average movie ticket price hit a record $8.43 in 2015, thanks to the increase in pricier options, including IMAX and 3-D screenings.
AMC this week reported fourth-quarter profit soared 40% to $41.6 million, thanks in part to the Disney-Lucasfilm blockbuster "Star Wars: The Force Awakens." Revenue jumped 10% to $783.9 million.
The acquisition announcement came after the close of Thursday trading on Wall Street. During the trading day, AMC's stock increased 55 cents, or 2%, to $25.70.
Follow Ryan Faughnder on Twitter for more entertainment business coverage: @rfaughnder


text: If your little one always has their head in the clouds, or above them in this case, theyll love our Space Adventure long sleeve kids t-shirt. Available in a choice of colours, the shirt has a coloured outline of a spacesuit, with the words Space Adventure written across the helmet. There is also white space dust around the helmet.


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Preferred Hotels
- Book Now
- ibis Orly AeroportThe ibis Orly Aeroport is located just steps from Orly Airport and a few miles from downtown Paris. This lovely hotel offers free Wi-Fi internet access, an on-site restaurant and a 24-hour reception. The rooms at ibis Orly are simply decorated and include a TV and a work desk.
- Book Now
- Novotel Paris OrlyThe Novotel Paris Orly is connected to Orly Airport by a free shuttle service, and is located just 15-minutes from Paris. It offers an outdoor swimming pool and free Wi-Fi access. The guest rooms are modern and spacious and have a private bathroom with a shower and a bathtub.


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I'm very into the holidays this year. More than ever before. And I'm attributing this newfound festive spirit almost entirely to my sweet Lu. Although she is completely unaware of the holiday magic glimmering all around her, I still feel like it's my duty to embrace the season, crank up the Christmas music, decorate not … Continue reading
Filed under Breakfast …
Seven Spoons Strawberry Spread
Strawberry season is upon us. What better indicator that spring has arrived? Shady groundhogs and April showers are unpredictable, but when strawberries appear at the farmers market, it means, undoubtedly, that spring has sprung. I have never been much of a preserves, jam or jelly kind of gal. I like my fruit raw and ripe. But, … Continue reading
Ch-Ch-Ch-Chia…Breakfast Pudding
I'm pretty sure I nearly gave myself diabetes last week. We were in Portland, where the folks are unabashedly friendly, drive sloooow, and know how to cook. Lex took the train down from Seattle and cozied up with me, Tom and Ryan in our Airbnb nest just off of Division Street. For five solid days, we ate … Continue reading
Pretend Like It's the Weekend Banana Pancakes
A few weeks ago, Pom and Hen headed down to Haiti to visit Sister Hazel and returned with liters of homemade Haitian peanut butter. It is the best peanut butter on earth, if you ask me. Pom thoughtfully sent me two containers – one made by Gerline and one by Lelen – both friends of Hazel's. Gerline … Continue reading
The Mint Train
Now I've been smiling lately, thinking about the good things to come And I believe it could be, something good has begun Oh mint train sounding louder Glide on the mint train… Yes it's the mint traaaaaaaaaiiiiiin All aboard! Ride just one stop on the mint train and you'll see what I mean. Mint is … Continue reading
Baked Oatmeal Breakfast Revolution
B.O.B. Let's start a breakfast revolution! B.O.B. Let's start the day off right! B.O.B. Let's take the Baked Oatmeal Breakfast challenge! #BOB WHO'S WITH ME?! BRB, I may have lost my mind… Okay, so I've got this recipe for you. I think a Baked Oatmeal Breakfast (aka B.O.B.) should be part of your morning routine. … Continue reading
Applesauce by Happelsauce
Yesterday we ate. Collectively, as a country it was our day to be grateful and gorge. When our corner of the world was getting dark, I pictured us from above. Lights flicker on, turkeys emerge browned and fragrant from hot ovens, wine sloshes in clinking glasses, and stories new and old rise up, up, up … Continue reading


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Safaath Ahmed
Safaath Ahmed
Safaath Ahmed won the Queen's Young Leaders Award in 2016, for her work as a leading women's rights activist elevating the role of women in the Maldives.
After completing her studies abroad, Safaath returned to the Maldives to lead Women on Boards – a non-profit organisation dedicated to promoting gender diversity in the workplace through capacity development workshops, scholarship programmes and advocacy campaigns.
Building on this success, Safaath established Women and Democracy in November 2016, at the end of her Queen's Young Leaders year.
In September 2016, she was one of 17 young people to be chosen as a United Nations (UN) Young Leader for the Sustainable Development Goals. As such, she is working with Office of the UN Secretary General's Envoy on Youth to help get young people working towards the sustainable development goals.
You can read more about Safaath, her work and her year as a Queen's Young Leader here on Leading Change.
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Tonight's project was investigating del.icio.us and LibraryThing and both sites were truly fascinating.
Since getting my broadband up and running at home I have been pushing my little Mac Mini to the max checking out all those mysterious sites which were heard of but never seen (at least not at my workplace!). Blogs, RSS feeds, wikis, podcasts, vidcasts, photo sharing – "social software" "web 2.0" "library 2.0", it was time to play…
Here are my thoughts so far on what I've tried and tested…
This was my first real venture into the 2.0 world. As we are unable to download anything at all onto our work PCs I wanted an RSS reader that I could access from anywhere. Bloglines has certainly transformed my online experience although it has given me indigestion a few times when all the blogs I subscribe to get updated at once with really interesting posts! Now I check my RSS feeds at least once a day and can even sort them into folders like my email. I also have my blogroll from Bloglines showing on my blog here (over on the right there) and it updates here when I update it there.
The more blogs I read the more I looked at links to Flickr. I don't take a lot of photos but I did enjoy uploading some of my favourites and I always enjoy looking at other people's photos. There is so much more to Flickr that I haven't even looked at yet like groups and forums.
Blogger My Blogging tool of choice! I tried a couple of others but this was the simplest to set up and just start blogging. I'm on the Blogger Beta version so there are some bugs and new things arriving but I'm certainly blogging and you're reading it here!!
MySpace The one that most people have probably heard of! Although I'm probably the target age group etc I have to say that almost no one I know uses this site! I mostly joined up because one of my favourite bands Cato Street Conspiracy moved there and I thought I'd investigate. So far I have found my younger sister and someone I went to university with 10 years ago – not exactly a social hub… On a more practical note this site is blocked at work as we have the same filters in place as the schools and MySpace is very firmly on the dodgy list in the UK. Think it may be sometime before we have a MySpace presence as excellent as Denver Public Library over here.
PBWiki Peanut Butter Wiki – as a peanut butter addict I had to use this as my first attempt at creating a wiki. Mostly I used it to plan with the idea of an interactive staff manual for my interlibrary loans department and it was simple and easy to use. Before I knew it I had a wiki that worked and would be really useful, no more carrying round notes or uploading PDF files to an antiquated staff intranet. I'm really interest in taking the staff wiki idea forward… watch this space!
del.icio.us Tonight I used del.icio.us for the first time but I doubt it will be the last. I'm always finding things at home and then wanting to look at the website at work (or vice versa) and I also use PCs on the enquiry desk at work and can't remember the website address of every bookmark on my desk PC. I do not have the memory of an elephant!! del.icio.us was so easy to use that I can't believe I didn't try sooner. Originally I was put off by mentions of Google toolbar and downloading toolbar buttons (not approved of at work!) but I have no Google toolbar and adding bookmarks to del.icio.us is as easy as adding them to my browser. Haven't looked at anything else on the site yet, just added some bookmarks and tagged them to see what happens but I'm looking forward to having a play.
LibraryThing Another site that I"ve heard a lot about but never looked at. Now I have a pile of books on my desk that I have "catalogued" and I'm very excited by this site. I don't imagine I'd use LibraryThing for some of its suggested uses – if I'm in a bookshop and can't remember whether or not I own a copy of a book then I don't own it and don't need to look at LibraryThing on my mobile to check my home catalogue! But imagine being able to check your local library catalogue via a mobile phone. LibraryThing is so much friendlier than most library OPACs I've seen and does everything new LMS suppliers offer and more. Working in interlibrary loans I've looked at most public library OPACs in the UK and a good number of the academic ones as well, none of them make me want to stay and look around once I've found the book I want. LibraryThing does.
I did plan to include a jargon free guide to these sites as well but this post is already too long so this is the end, for now…


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Also sprach John Daggett: > > - The <allow> element would list domains that are licensed to use the > > font. A meta URL, "any", would signify that the font could be used on > > all domains. > > This is a root string proposal in another form and suffers all the same > problems Agreed. I do not think we will find consensus around a format with root strings. -h&kon Håkon Wium Lie CTO °þe®ª firstname.lastname@example.com http://people.opera.com/howcomeReceived on Thursday, 16 July 2009 20:45:31 UTC
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.3.1 : Tuesday, 6 January 2015 21:01:40 UTC


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Clearview Cassette Training
Course Overview
The Clearview® Blue Cassette and xPAK are the central building blocks of every component in the FieldSmart® product portfolio. This enables service providers to standardize on a single building block, allowing a single fiber management component to be stocked for both environments, and craft-personnel the ease of working with a single fiber management platform regardless of Inside or Outside Plant deployment—saving training and installation time. Clearview Black incorporates the same flexibility and scalability of Clearview Blue in a 50% smaller footprint.
In this section, we will spend a significant amount of time to teach and explain the benefits of Clearfield's modular and scalable design philosophy built around the craft-friendly Clearview Cassette to help you better understand why we do what we do.
Every member of the training course will receive thorough hands-on demonstration outlining the proper procedure to assemble, land, and splice both Loose Tube and Ribbon Fiber in each of the Clearview Cassettes. You will also learn the proper installation and splicing techniques for using the CraftSmart® 900um Splice-On Connector (SOC) to repair a termination in the case that a Clearview Cassette pigtail is damaged during installation or maintenance. In addition, we will let you in on the numerous tech tips that we have learned along the years, such as how and when to perform a Redirect "S" in the Clearview Cassette.
- Assemble and configure the six components of a Clearview Cassette
- Top cover
- Expansion ring
- Splice tray
- Radius limiter
- Cable assembly tray
- 12-pack adapter plate
- Splice loose tube and ribbon fiber into the Clearview Cassettes and xPAKs following Clearfield's Best Practice Procedures
- Be able to reroute fiber to switch cable exit "Redirect S"
- Utilize the 144 Ribbon Breakout Kit and High Fiber Ribbon Breakout Box
Hands-On Training
- Clearview Blue Cassette Construction
- Clearview xPAK Assembly
- High Fiber Ribbon Breakout Kit and Box
Video Demonstrations
- Splicing in the Clearview Cassettes
- Clearview Blue
- Clearview xPAK
- CraftSmart Splice-On Connector


text:
Words are vultures
come to gnaw the last
bit of meat from bone.
They strip away
all reason,
the seductive embrace
of imaginings.
Words are a shadow play
where the figures cast
are illusions, and the
substance of reality
is overshadowed.
Words are binders
in the glue.
holding tight one object
to another, locked
in contracts non-negotiable.
Tread carefully
when words are spoken,
your soul is up for sale
and will be gone
if freely given to . . .


text:
Friday, March 2, 2012
Film Review- Persuasion (1995)
The actual story, however, is told from the woman, Anne Elliott's, point of view. Anne wanted to marry him, she loved him, but a nosy though well-meaning family friend persuaded (and keeps persuading) her not to. Quiet, obliging, a little on the older side, Anne does what's best for everyone else, which almost gets her married to the wrong man. Amanda Root does a great job with an essentially very straight-forward character. She's not a gorgeous Hollywood actress, and she does look a little bit older than our usual Emma, Jane, or Marianne "Austen heroines". I liked it. In fact, Persuasion may be my favorite Austen novel of all, because it suggests that it's never too late to find happiness, and that mousy people can learn to stand up for themselves and make the life that they want. Root shows all the patient suffering of a woman faced with the man she lost, watching him seem to move on. She looks simultaneously peeved and resigned that no one seems to think of her unless it's to get rid of her, and watching her play peace-maker between fractious relatives is humorous and sympathetic.
The lovely settings of the seaside, Bath, and the country all make for diverting and pleasant backdrops. The costumes are perfect, in that they aren't too luxurious, some of the diversity within uniforms is shown, and characters are more fully-rendered through what they wear. Our heroine is never too pretty, she shouldn't be, and yet she never looks shabby or ugly either, with a careful restraint in color that is bumped up towards the end.
A pleasant movie and an easy-to-read book, I recommend both to young and old alike.
7 comments:
Thank you so much for posting this! :-) I thought the costumes of this movie were great, and I think that Persuasion is my favorite Jane Austen novel! :-) I love Captain Wentworth!ReplyDelete
He is great, isn't he? Beats the pants off of Edward in S&S.Delete
Persuasion is my favorite book and I love the movie. She does look the proper age, unlike Emma Thompson and Kate Winslet in P & P.ReplyDeleteReplies
Have you seen the more recent version of Sense & Sensibility? The actresses in that one were younger and they spent more time on the youngest sister, Margaret.Delete
Persuasion is my favourite Austen novel and I love this movie. I saw it when it was quite new, but I have returned to it several times- especially when I feel a bit fragile.ReplyDelete
I remember reading an article about Persuasion once where it commented on Anne's sexiness. Of course Austen doesn't go outright and say it, but every single man in the book falls for her and the rest likes her company a lot. Only Anne, being so used to being a nobody, never realizes that.Replies
I think that Anne's obliviousness to her own charms is part of what makes her so likeable. If she knew the effect she had on others she wouldn't be as disarming.Delete
Persuasion is my favorite Austen novel as well, as it speaks to the possibility of second chances. You can feel Anne's inner heartbreak when Captain Wentworth returns into her life, seeming so totally out of reach.ReplyDelete
And this movie, my favorite. I love the lead actors, but also love the side story of Frederick's sister and husband. Jane Austen giving us a rare look at a happily married couple.


text:
Johann Nepomuk HUMMEL (1778-1837)
Piano Sonata Op. 13 No. 6 in E flat (c. 1805) [32:41]
Piano Sonata Op. 20 in F minor (c. 1807) [25:16]
La contemplazione, una fantasia piccola, Op. 107 No. 3 (c. 1825) [9:12]
Susan Alexander-Max (fortepiano)
rec. 26-27 February 2008, Ampithéâtre de la Cité de la musique, Paris, France
Johann Nepomuk Hummel was no Beethoven, and his ten piano sonatas do not rival the mastery of Beethoven's. They are - or at least the earlier ones recorded here are - structurally rather wayward, somewhat rhapsodic, and by no means great. Nevertheless they're enjoyable and make for pleasant listening. One does not mind the genial company of Hummel even as one remembers that, for instance, the rather plain fantasy "La contemplazione" dates from after Beethoven's sublimely contemplative final works for the keyboard.
The E flat sonata, Op. 13 No. 6, is quite extroverted and bold, at least at its onset. The opening theme brings to mind (oddly) a sort of proud, major-key version of the Dies irae chant. This music is very Haydnesque, and pleasingly so, with many lovely turns of phrase and appealing melodies, although Hummel is rather more verbose than Haydn: this sonata is thirty-two minutes long. Even so, it is formally more concise than the second sonata on the program, with an unusually eloquent slow movement.
The F minor sonata, Op. 20, is made interesting by its piquant opening theme and the first movement's interesting emotional mix. There is no drama here, except perhaps of the domestic kind: quietly earnest, troubled but not about to alert us to the fact. The finale is stop-and-start, with one pause memorably interrupted by the sudden appearance of Mozart's "Jupiter" Symphony, thinly disguised and not at all relevant to the rest of the musical material. "La contemplazione" is a modest little work of ten minutes which dates from considerably later than the two sonatas, though Hummel's musical style is not appreciably different for the two decades which had passed.
My main pleasure in listening to this album was the marvellous instrument which Susan Alexander-Max plays; it is an 1814 Joseph Brodmann fortepiano, with a marvellously warm sound, somewhat less vivid in color than modern instruments but possessive of its own kind of beauty. Connoisseurs of fortepianos will want to hear this CD as a matter of course - that is why I picked it up - but this is one of the most attractive instruments I've heard and thus one of those I would be most likely to recommend to a newcomer to period performances.
Alexander-Max herself plays with dedication and poetry, very much committed to the advocacy of these works. The Chandos sound is very good, and in sum this is a good find for admirers of the era and the fortepiano, or for those interested in Hummel and the contemporaries of Beethoven. That said, the name "Beethoven" does call to mind many things which Johann Nepomuk Hummel, for all his charm, was never to be. The liner-notes, by Alexander-Max herself, say that "the biggest jolt to Hummel's self-confidence came with the arrival of Beethoven in Vienna." At least Hummel was intelligent enough to appreciate, in Beethoven, a man who achieved the kind of greatness he would never attain.
Brian Reinhart
Enjoyable sonatas on a beautiful instrument … see Full Review


text:
We have a tradition that all of our Yom Tovim (including Chanukah and Purim) are more than mere markers on the calendar to commemorate events from the distant past. They are all alive and kicking in real-time with their historic significance being transposed into the present.
In the same way that the first Pesach was all about our freedom, those days on the calendar that we refer to every year as Pesach are infused with the attribute of freedom. And so on for all the other Yom Tovim.
On the chag of Shavuos that we celebrated yesterday and the day before (in chutz L'Aretz), we were once again zoche to the hashp'ah of receiving the Torah as we are every year at that time.
Rav Shimshon Pincus z"l, says that the truth is that every time we learn Torah we are experiencing a Mattan Torah.
And then he asks the obvious question:
"Then what's so unique about Shavuos?"
Based on a Shavuos ma'amar by Rav Pincus, Rabbi Yerachmiel Goldman answers in his name as he tells us that it's Chag HaShavuos that makes it possible for us to receive the shefa of Torah all year round. It's the shoresh for all of our Torah.
From that yesod, Rabbi Goldman then reveals to us in the name of Rav Pincus z"l, the unbelievably holy and mystical process by which all of us learn Torah.
For starters we are reminded that Mattan Torah also means a matana, not in the sense that we were incredibly fortunate to be given such a gift but rather that it was impossible that we should have been given such a gift because Torah is beyond human comprehension. Unlike chochmah b'almah where we are hard wired to be able to receive Hashem's Siyata D'shmaya in understanding the Second Law of Thermodynamics and such, Toras Hashem comes to us by virtue of a wireless hookup because we are only able to understand it because the Shechina is here with us. Without the active work-a-day presence of the Shechina we would have no chance of understanding Toras Hashem.
By definition that means that if you learn Toras Hashem, the Shechina is there with you. And as a caveat that means that Torah has to be learned as Toras Hashem, not as just another chochmah, chas v'shalom.
But Rav Pincus z"l, doesn't stop with the Shechina. The process of our learning is even on a more rarefied and personal madreiga because we are told that any Jew sitting and learning Torah is receiving it from the Mouth of Hashem Yisborach.
Or put another way, every time you sit and learn you are learning b'chavrusa with Hashem.
Rabbi Goldman tells us in the name of Rav Pincus z"l, that if Moshe Rabbeinu had to learn from Hashem all the more so us. If the learning of Torah was up to us it would be constricted by our own limits.
When learning with Hashem there are no limits because it's Hashem that gives wisdom.


text:
Posts Tagged '401k cash out'
Cashing Out Your 401k Retirement Plan
If you need to take money out of your 401k and are under the age of 59 ½ you can always cash out your 401k. Maybe you are leaving your job and want to take your money out, or maybe you need it for some emergency bills. In any case here is some 401k info to give you a better understanding of what it is and what the advantages and disadvantages of it are. (more…)
Cashing out your 401k
If you want to get out a 401k distribution then you should consider all of the advantages and disadvantages, especially if you are withdrawing money early.
If you are over the age of 59 ½ all money that you take out is penalty fee, but you still need to pay taxes on it. It is important to note that you do not have to start manually taking money out from your account until you turn 70 ½. (more…)


text:
Chapter 1
NB: This is unedited and subject to complete change. FYI. Also there is a prologue which I'm not including here.
1:40 a.m. Four Days later. Palace of Fine Arts Rotunda, San Francisco, California
Durian kept his arms crossed over his chest while he waited for the human woman to come to. She felt enough like magekind to set off warnings, but he already knew he had nothing to worry about on that account. Magekind, yes, but she was something else, too. Something she shouldn't be; and that concerned him more than her insignificant gift. Such as it was. Which was almost nothing.
That, in itself, was remarkable.
If he was reading her correctly, and he knew that he was, she was one of the kin. Just as he was. That ought to be near impossible. Unfortunately for her, there weren't many ways— two or three at most —for someone born human to end up with magic from someone like him.
Her eyelids fluttered, but she'd been aware long before he saw the color of her irises. An icy blue, fittingly cold for what she was. Her eyes closed again.
"There is no point," he said, "pretending you're not yet conscious."
She moved her leg and winced. Her eyes opened all the way. She looked at him straight on with her cold blue eyes. The anima behind her gaze fascinated him. "Is he dead?"
"Shit." She moved her other leg.
The situation, whether she realized it or not, was about as dire as it got for someone like her. "The only reason I haven't terminated you, human, is my curiosity about why you tried to kill Christophe dit Menart."
She pushed herself to a sitting position. She made another face while she arched her back. "Does it matter?"
"Yes." He picked a speck of lint off his sleeve before he returned his attention to her. He held her gaze, but stayed out of her head. For the moment.
"What for?" She wasn't trying to use her magic. Not any of it. Her right forearm and a quarter-sized area at her right temple were marked with a delicate green tracery that could have been mistaken for tattoos if the lines weren't swirling under her skin.
"I am curious," he said in a low voice, "to know how someone like you got within inches of making today Christophe's last on earth. He's not usually so careless."
Sitting, she scooted back until she could lean against the base of the column. "Inches, huh?" Durian didn't answer and she let out a puff of air. "Close but no cigar. Damn. Where is he now?"
"I am not at liberty to disclose that information." Knowing dit Menart was out there and pissed off didn't do much to improve Durian's mood. That was another disaster he had to deal with later. And yet, dealing with dit Menart was going to be a good deal more pleasant than the conversation he would have had to have with Nikodemus, the warlord to whom he'd sworn fealty, if she'd managed to kill the mage.
"Why not?"
He took his time studying the woman. If all he had to go on was expression alone, he would have suspected she was serious. As it was, he had a great deal more to go on. He knew for certain that she was serious. "Who are you?"
The woman took her time looking him up and down. "I'm not at liberty to disclose that information."
He leaned toward her; just a tip of his shoulders in her direction, really, but enough to make his physical point. "Unless you are a bigger fool than I take you for, you know I can get the information without your cooperation."
Her eyes widened, and for the first time since she'd opened her eyes, he locked onto her emotions without having to try. Terror. Quickly suppressed.
"Fuck you," she said.
Durian shrugged. "This will go much better for us both if you answer my questions." He glanced down, saw that one of his trouser's legs wasn't falling in line with his knee, and reached to straighten the crease. "Now. Who are you?"
He arched an eyebrow. "And what am to make of that response, pray tell?"
"That's my name." She rested the back of her head against the pedestal and stared at the rotunda ceiling. He'd dampened a perimeter around them that so that no human wandering by would see them. That meant she couldn't see out. She was mildly claustrophobic but hiding it well. "Grayson Spencer." She lifted a hand and let it fall to her lap. Her mouth curved but the result wasn't much of a smile. "You can call me Gray."
Interesting, her attitude was. She was a good deal braver than he would have expected from someone in her condition and predicament, confronted, as she was, with someone like him.
Gray brought up one knee. Pale knee cap showed through a frayed rip in her jeans. "Since we're getting all familiar here, you?"
He tipped his head to one side. They were not at the point where he was going to even things by telling her his name. "Why did you try to shoot Christophe? Were you unable to use your magic against him?"
She snorted. "As if my magic would give Christophe anything worse than a hangnail."
Durian waited for something more to leak from her thoughts but nothing did. She had impressive control. Practiced, one might say. Curious. That sort of control generally meant a far more powerful witch than she was. A few more pieces of the puzzle clicked into place.
"Okay if I stand up?"
"Be my guest."
She did, and he got his first thorough look at her. Chronologically, she appeared to be in her late twenties, maybe early thirties. You never knew with one of the magekind how old or how powerful they were. Not from just looking at one. Dit Menart could pass for twenty-seven or eight, and he'd been living in Paris before Columbus sailed the ocean blue. So, there was no telling what this human's true age was.
Gray Spencer was tall for a human woman. Five seven or eight, if he had to guess. Her face was an odd combination of pretty and cute. She was too skinny and dressed like— he had no idea what to call it. Christ, it hurt his eyes to look at her.
A man could go blind from looking at her shoes, high-top canvas sneakers painted in interlocking puzzle shapes of neon orange, blue and purple that extended from the rubber trim at the soles to the aglets. With the exception of one lace that was nothing but shredded string at the end. Then there was the rest of her clothes.
Surely, no one dressed like that on purpose. Ragged black jeans faded to charcoal, a too small orange and green striped T-shirt that didn't reach the waist of her tight jeans and short spiky improbably red hair that looked like she cut it herself. Without looking. Streaks of pink amid the red added to the virulent effect. In contrast to her hair, her eyebrows were dead black. The combination of all that wrongness was what made her face seem less pretty than in fact it was. A silver skull the size of his thumbnail dangled from the metal bar that pierced her navel. Not a ruby anywhere. Very curious.
He started a slow walk around the woman.
She tracked him so that she stayed facing him. The traceries on her arm and temple moved faster. "What else do you want to know?"
"How long were you apprenticed to dit Menart?"
Her eyebrows drew together in what appeared to be genuine confusion. "Apprenticed?" Her puzzlement came through clearly, physically and psychically. "To Christophe?" She laughed. A wild bitterness edged the sound. "Oh, God, that's rich."
"If you weren't his apprentice, how did you come by the magic that makes you one of the kin?"
Her black eyebrows drew together. A smudge on her cheek that he had taken for dirt was, in fact, a fading bruise. "You mean a fiend?"
"Yes." He focused on her traceries. The color deepened as he watched. The magic was reacting to him. To what he was.
"Admiring my tats?" She lifted her arm.
"They're not really tattoos." She tipped her head. "Seems like you know that. I don't know what they are." She sounded lost, unbelievable though that was. He jerked his gaze from her arm and studied her face. He thought about going into her head and just taking the information he wanted, but didn't. Not yet. "I take it you know."
Durian nodded. "There is one obvious way for you to have come by those."
"Really?" She kept her arms loose as she moved with him.
"And, alas for you, not many others."
"I didn't do anything." She lifted her arms and let them drop. "They just showed up."
He came close enough to take her right hand in his. She flinched at the contact. A flash of her fear came at him with the force of a freight train before she shut him out. Emphatically. That brief contact was enough to confirm what was already obvious. Durian pulled her hand toward him so her forearm stretched between them. His finger hovered over the inside of her forearm, but he did not touch her. Cold blue eyes stayed on him and for a moment, a moment only, she connected with him. He cut her off immediately.
Gray took a step back. He didn't let go of her hand so she didn't get far.
"These so very delicate colorings appeared underneath your skin in the forty-eight to seventy-two hours following your murder of the fiend whose magic you now hold."
Her eyes, huge and arctic blue, widened. The paleness of her irises made her pupils seem unnaturally dark.
"I hope the ritual was painful. Especially after you lost control and let it get away from you." He pushed away her hand. He was guessing about that, of course. "You deserve every agonizing moment you've experienced since then."
"I didn't perform any ritual, and I didn't kill anyone." Her eyes blanked out long enough for Durian to notice but not long enough to figure out what that meant. Not that there was any great mystery about that.
"What drugs did you take before you went after Christophe?"
"None." She shoved her hands in her back pocket. She shivered. Just once.
She didn't look like or act she was coming off a copa-induced high. Copa would have turned her eyes from pale blue to turquoise. It would, however, make sense for a witch who'd damaged herself, which he now knew to be the case, to resort to copa in the hope that the drug would restore contact with her magic. She wouldn't be the first. Or the last. He had no use for witches.
"I know what you are," she whispered. He didn't need to be in her head to know she was terrified. Which, again, was interesting.
Still, he wanted to give her a chance before they did this the hard way, though, he had no expectation of hearing the truth. "If it wasn't a ritual that burned you out, what did? A talisman?"
A talisman was an object that contained the spirit of a ritually murdered fiend. The magekind used them to enhance their magical abilities. It was possible for, say, a witch, to crack one open and take on the magic inside. The procedure was risky, but success conferred longer life and more power. Most mages of sufficient ambition considered it worth the risk, and there were indeed significant dangers. If failure didn't kill them outright, they died after a degenerative period not unlike the woman's current condition.
Her eyebrows drew together. "What? No. It wasn't a talisman."
"Then we are back at the ritual, which you deny."
"I didn't perform any ritual." She shook her head. "I couldn't have."
He stared into her wide blue eyes and saw the lie there. "I ought to obtain a sanction on you right now."
"I don't know what that means. Obtain a sanction on me."
"Request permission to terminate you." How could one of the magekind, possessed of enough power for a killing ritual, be so bloody ignorant? He tipped his head to one side. "I would receive it, I assure you."
"So, what, you're an assassin?"
He didn't answer.
She wasn't stupid. She knew what his silence meant. The human ground her back teeth so hard he could see her jaw muscles contracting. "There wasn't any talisman. And I wasn't the one performing a ritual. It was Christophe."
She looked around the rotunda again, trying, he supposed, to penetrate the darkness around them. Her magic flared up— the magic she'd killed for, not the magic she'd been born with —but it was unfocused, as if she could pull, but didn't know what to do next. She'd murdered for that magic, and she couldn't use it. There was justice in the world because sooner or later that stolen magic was going to kill her.
He let his mind connect with hers until he felt the chaos of her mostly human reactions. Getting past her block wasn't easy.
"Stop," she said.
Sensations came at him too fast to examine in the careful manner he preferred with a potential sanction. She felt human. She felt magekind. Most of all, she felt like one of the kin. What he didn't get from her was any evidence that she was a liar. And yet she must be.
She clapped her hands to the sides of her head. "I said, stop it."
Something wasn't right, and he disliked not knowing. He didn't pull out of her mind, but he stopped looking around. The intensity of her panic unnerved him. "Start talking."
Her hands fisted at her sides, and her eyes flickered out again. Her breathing was shallow, her heartbeat a rapid thub-dub in the back of his head. She was seconds from some sort of psychic meltdown.
He took a step closer. She smelled, if not rank, then like someone in dire need of a bath. "Go on."
She raised her eyes to his, so full of anger and resentment that was not directed at him, that he cocked his head, far more interested in her now than he had been moments before. "Christophe killed one of his magehelds."
"And Christophe dit Menart" —he gave the name a subtle emphasis— "did not complete the ritual? Forgive me, but that is difficult to believe."
Her physical state stabilized, and, with that, her panic receded. She shrugged. "He didn't."
"You," he said, "have the dead fiend's magic, and that makes it next to impossible you didn't do the deed yourself."
She shifted her weight from one foot to the other. "I didn't kill Tigran."
Christ. Her vocalization of the fiend's name came with a whole host of conflicting emotions. He didn't say anything for half a breath. Outside the barrier he'd erected around them the chill night air penetrated like the memory of cold. Cold but not cold. The fog was coming in.
"I'm not saying I didn't want to. But I didn't kill him."
She wasn't lying. Impossible as that was, Durian was sure of it. He was less interested in her denial than the way her voice sounded thick with emotion, the way her mouth thinned with, if her body language was to be believed, her effort to keep back tears. You'd think she'd been the victim herself.
"Who killed Tigran?"
"Christophe," she said in a choked off voice. Her hands fisted and unfisted at her sides, and her eyes stared blankly forward. At nothing. Her shoulders slumped. "I saw it happen."
"The ritual in question isn't a trivial piece of magic." Even the late and unlamented Álvaro Magellan had been known to have help on hand for that sort of thing.
"No kidding."
She ran a fingertip along her right eyebrow and then rubbed the whorl near her temple. Her hand trembled. Curious. Very curious. She was the color of chalk and that made the traceries stand out even more.
"Presumably, you were assisting dit Menart."
"Me?" Her gaze snapped to him and it was laser sharp. Whatever emotional low she'd hit earlier was over. Her expression hardened to ice. "I want to kill Christophe. So, no, I wasn't helping. I didn't want to be there."
"Then why were you?"
"He had a point to prove."
"Which would be?"
She shivered again, but it didn't last long. She had a hold of herself now. "Don't disobey. Ever."
"And why would he need prove that to one of his own kind?"
"His own kind. Is that what I am?" She walked to him and didn't stop until mere inches separated them. "I don't know what the hell I am anymore." Her eyes were an uncanny blue. "Have another look. I'll let you just this once." One corner of her mouth quirked like she thought she was amusing. "If you find out what I am you let me know."
Durian gazed into her eyes. Her lashes were long and black as sin. He wondered if she was insane.
"Go ahead," she whispered. "You have my permission."
He touched the bottom curve of her eye sockets, pressing that tender skin to feel the shape of the bone itself. First the left, then the right, too. Humans were fixed to just one form. She had nothing but this so easily damaged, corporeal existence.
He stroked his fingers along the lower rim of her eye. "Gray," he said, and he heard in his voice the soft silk of a lover. "Don't show me lies."
"I won't."
"You understand, don't you, that if I find out you've lied, that if you did kill Tigran, I will terminate you without bothering to ask for permission?"
She held his gaze.
"Do you have a different story to tell me?"
"Nope." Her eyes, a lighter blue than the sky, met his without fear. This was not insolence from her. She had, he understood, made peace with death some time ago. Most of his sanctions never saw him coming, but this woman, she looked into the abyss of what he was with full awareness of the consequences. She was either stupid, insane or telling him the truth. He wasn't sure which would be worse.
"Very well."
Her eyes lost focus again, and she stopped shielding herself at all. Not even the minimal protection the kin used as a matter of course. He eased into her head and found anguish. Such overwhelming anguish it was at first impossible to get anything from her but that. She swallowed, blinked twice and managed to pull herself together. Given the state of her emotions, he was impressed she could. Then more impressed when she focused on the events he wanted to know about.
The terror she'd felt that night flowed back to him. Sharp as a knife. Defiance, too. Hopelessness. An image came at him. Christophe standing over a body that was familiar to her. The mage's arms were bare, and her memories were detailed enough for him see the words tattooed on Christophe's skin.
Intimate. A lover. But not Christophe's.
The words the mage had said that night carried power that resonated in her still. She'd known what was happening. She'd known Tigran would die. And she had both wanted him to die and been desperate that he not and unable to do anything to stop what was happening.
Other images cut in, but they weren't from the night Tigran died. Her alone with Tigran. Touching. Bodies sliding together. A terrible, keening grief. She'd cut herself off from her emotions and lived when others hadn't. A room. Bodies entwined. Horror and a cold, deep rage. Christophe's knife descending. Such pain and anger, too. Everything mixed up, out of order.
Durian forced himself to retreat, if only to preserve the necessary detachment. His heart raced with hers, his breath catching in his throat. He kept his hands on her face. He could see and feel that she wasn't here. Not present in the now. Her mind had stayed with Christophe and the mageheld who'd died that night.
She was breaking down before his eyes.
"Gray." He didn't force their mental connection any deeper. He was afraid her mind might completely shut down if he did, leaving her no way back to sanity. She gripped his wrists and, hell, he was in danger of falling into that maelstrom of emotion all over again. He wasn't in possession of her, that state of an indwell where physical boundaries vanished. Not yet. But he was at the razor's edge.
Besides, he had what he needed. He knew what had been done to her.